In 1833, the sudden death of Hallam, then Emily’s betrothed, produced on Alfred’s mind a deep and ineffaceable impression. While brooding over his sorrow, the idea came to him of expressing his emotions in verse which might be a fitting tribute to the dead. At different times and amid widely varying circumstances, were composed the elegiac strains and poetic musings that make up “In Memoriam,” a poem representing many moods and experiences. It is a work occupying a place apart in literature. Its merits and defects are peculiar. There is no other elegy like it, and it may be doubted whether a second In Memoriam will ever be written. Tennyson erected an appropriate and imperishable monument to the memory of his lost friend. In conferring immortality upon his beloved Arthur, he gained it for himself. His best claim on the future is to be known and remembered as the author of “In Memoriam,” his masterpiece.
Equally enduring is the melodious wail—“Break, break, break,” one of the sweetest dirges in all literature. Hallam was buried (Jan. 3, 1834) at Clevedon by the Severn, near its entrance to the Bristol Channel, within sound of the melancholy waves. Singularly this exquisite song, which breathes of the sea, was not composed here, but “in a Lincolnshire lane at five o’clock in the morning,” as the Laureate himself has declared. It was written within a year after Hallam’s death, Sept. 15, 1833.
Not much has been learned of Tennyson’s early manhood. No very definite picture can be formed of his life after he left college. He seldom wrote letters. Even his most intimate friends could not succeed in carrying on a correspondence with him. What happened to him is not, however, all a blank. A few scraps relating to his history are found in the letters of Carlyle, Fitzgerald, Milnes and others. A number of autobiographical fragments are sprinkled through the poems which he wrote between 1830 and 1850, but they refer more to his spiritual development than to the outward events which constitute memoirs.
Mrs. Tennyson and her family continued to live at the Rectory after her husband died, March 16, 1831. In the autumn of 1835, she removed to High Beach, Epping Forest, (“In Memoriam,” CII., CIV., CV.), and about 1840 to Well Walk, Hampstead. Here she made her home the rest of her life with her sister, Mary Ann Fytche—nearly all of her sons and daughters having married and scattered. She died February 21, 1865, at the age of eighty-four.
Alfred’s university career was cut short by his father’s death. For some years he remained at home—a diligent student of books and a close observer of nature. He roamed back and forth between Somersby and London, alternately in solitude and with his friends.[4] Fitzgerald tells of his visiting with Tennyson at the Cumberland home of James Spedding in 1835.
Here Alfred would spend hour after hour reading aloud “Morte d’Arthur” and other unpublished poems, which his scholarly friend criticized. In 1838, he was a welcome member of the Anonymous Club in London, and for several years he had rooms in this city at various intervals.[5] It was his custom to make long incursions through the country on foot, studying the landscapes of England and Wales and pondering many a lay unsung. Thus he became familiar with the natural features of the places illustrated in his poems with such pictorial fidelity and vividness, though not with photographic accuracy.
Through this long period he was unknown to the great world. He lived modestly, though not in actual want. His books brought him no substantial returns till long after 1842. There was but little left of his patrimony, if any, when he was granted a pension of £200 in 1845. This timely aid was obtained for him by Sir Robert Peel, chiefly through the influence of Carlyle and Milnes.
Henceforth fortune graciously smiled upon him and made amends for past neglect. His reputation was becoming well established, and new editions of his poems were being called for. The Queen chanced to pick up one of his earlier volumes, and was charmed with the simple story of “The Miller’s Daughter.” She procured a copy of the book for the Princess Alice; this incident, it is related, brought him into favor with the aristocracy and gave a tremendous impetus to his popularity. After the death of Wordsworth in 1850, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate. Since then he has been highly esteemed by the royal family, and has produced in their honor some spirited odes and stately dedications.
The poet married (June 13, 1850) Miss Emily Sellwood, of Horncastle, whom he had known from childhood. Her mother was a sister of Sir John Franklin, and her youngest sister was the wife of Charles Tennyson Turner. Two or three years they lived at Twickenham, where Hallam Tennyson was born in 1852. Together they visited Italy in 1851, and vivid memories of their travels are recalled in “The Daisy,” addressed to his wife. This interesting poem, written at Edinburgh, was suggested by the finding of a daisy in a book—the flower having been plucked on the Splugen and placed by Mrs. Tennyson between the leaves of a little volume as a memento of their Italian journey. The poet’s fancy was stirred and revived the delicious hours—
In lands of palm and southern pine;
In lands of palm, of orange blossom,
Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine.