That issue, as all the world knows, was a separation of the husband and wife, and a life-long quarrel of almost unimagined bitterness. No wonder that Bulwer's hand faltered when be tried to write of it, and that, having brought his autobiography up to this point, he laid it by, not daring to go on. He always cherished the intention of resuming it, but could never bring himself to the point of doing so. He could not tell the story; but Lady Lytton could, and did, continuing to do so till her dying day. The picture of her which her son has given does not seem like that of a woman who would do all the things which she notoriously did. But doubtless she had her amiable and engaging side, and was half maddened by her wrongs. Justin McCarthy says:—
"I do not know whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can that be called a quarrel, piteously asks the man in 'Juvenal,' where my enemy only beats and I am beaten? Can that be called a quarrel in which, so far as the public could judge, the wife did all the denunciation, and the husband made no reply? Lady Lytton wrote novels for the purpose of satirizing her husband and his friends,—his parasites, she called them. Lady Lytton attributed to her husband the most odious meannesses, vices, and cruelties; but the public, with all its love of scandal, seems to have steadfastly refused to take her ladyship's word for these accusations. Dickens she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite and sycophant of her husband. Disraeli she caricatured under the title of Jericho Jabber. This sort of thing she kept always going on. Sometimes she issued pamphlets to the women of England, calling on them to take up her quarrel, which, somehow, they never did. Once, when Sir Edward was on the hustings addressing his constituents at a county election, her ladyship suddenly appeared, mounted the platform, and 'went' for him. I do not know anything of the merits of the quarrel, but have always thought that something like insanity must have been the explanation of much of her conduct. But it is beyond doubt that her husband's conduct was remarkable for its quiet, indomitable patience and dignity."
Let the veil drop over the blighted lives, knowing as we do that the human heart is so dark and intricate a labyrinth that we cannot claim to understand it by half knowledge, and that however we might judge these two with any light which we can possibly have in our day, we should be in danger of doing each a grievous wrong.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
It is related by Miss Thackeray that the grandfather of Alfred Tennyson, when that poet was young, asked him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died, and when it was written gave him ten shillings, with the remark, "There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." How little he foresaw at that time the fame and fortune which the youth's poetry was to bring him, and the lasting honor he was to bestow upon the family name! That name was already an honorable one, for the Tennysons were an old family, and had good blood in their veins. The home was the old rectory of Somersby, where George Clayton Tennyson, LL.D., held sway in the old-time priestly fashion for a lifetime. He is described as a man of strong character and high principle, full of accomplishments, and gifted withal; a strikingly handsome man, with impressive manners. Twelve children were given to his hands, of whom Alfred was the third. The eldest, Frederick, and the second, Charles, were both poets, and not without merit,—especially Charles, who published a volume of sonnets, which gave great pleasure to so good a judge as Coleridge; and the Laureate is himself very fond of his brother's work.
The children led a very free and unconstrained life in that beautiful part of Lincolnshire, and had a few friends to whom they attached themselves for life. Arthur Hallam was Alfred's intimate, and later on he became engaged to one of his sisters. Young Hallam's early death was the first shadow upon their lives. But who would not willingly die at twenty-three to be immortalized in such a poem as "In Memoriam"?