“He told it not; or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist:”
he turned to me and said:
“Do you know that when that was published they said I was scoffing. But”—here both face and voice grew very very grave—“I did not mean to scoff!”
When I told him of my wonder as to how any sane person could have taken such an idea from such a faithful, tender, understanding poem he went on to speak of faith and the need of faith. There was, speaking generally, nothing strange or original to rest in my mind. But his finishing sentence I shall never forget. Indeed had I forgotten for the time I should have remembered it from what he said the last interview I had with him just before his death:
“You know I don’t believe in an eternal hell, with an All-merciful God. I believe in the All-merciful God! It would be better otherwise that men should believe they are only ephemera!”
When we returned to the house we lunched, Lady Tennyson and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson having joined us. Then we went up again to the study, and Tennyson, taking from the table the book in which he had been writing, read us the last-written poem, The Churchwarden and the Curate. He read it in the Lincolnshire dialect, which is much simpler when heard than read. The broadness of the vowels and their rustic prolongation, rather than drawl, adds force and also humour. I shall never forget the intense effect of the last lines of the tenth stanza. The shrewd worldly wisdom—which was plain sincerity of understanding without cynicism:
“But niver not speäk plaain out, if tha wants to git forrards a bit,
But creeäp along the hedge-bottoms, an’ thou’ll be a Bishop yit.”
Tennyson was a strangely good reader. His voice was powerful and vibrant, and had that quality of individualism which is so convincing. You could not possibly mistake it for the voice of any one else. It was a potent part of the man’s identity. In his reading there was a wonderful sense of time. The lines seem to swing with an elastic step—like a regiment marching.