“You know him! Then when you next meet him will you tell John Fiske from me that I thank him—thank him most heartily and truly—for all the pleasure and profit his work has been to me!”
“I shall write to him to-morrow!” I said. “I know it will be a delight to him to have such a message from you!”
“No!” said Tennyson, “Don’t write! Wait till you see him, and then tell him—direct from me through you—how much I feel indebted to him!”
I did not meet John Fiske till 1895. When the message was delivered it was from the dead.
IV
On the next morning I saw Tennyson again in his bedroom after early breakfast. He looked very unwell, and was in low spirits. Indeed he seemed too dispirited to light his pipe, which he held ready in his hand. He said that he had not yet got the lines he wanted: “The Voice of the People is the Voice of God”—or: “The Voice of the People is the Voice of England!” I think that he had been over the altered text again and that some of the cutting had worried him. Before I came away after saying good-bye he said suddenly, as if he had all at once made up his mind to speak:
“I suppose he couldn’t spare me Walter Map?”
Walter Map was a favourite character of his in the original Becket. He it is who represents scholarly humour in the play.
When I told Irving about this he was much touched, and said that he would go over the play again, and would, if he possibly could see his way to it, retain the character. He spent many days over it; but at last came to the conclusion that it would not do.
At this last meeting—at that visit—when I asked Tennyson what composer he would wish to do the music for his play he said: