Tennyson’s “Queen Mary” was published in 1875, and on receiving a copy from the author Browning wrote expressing thanks for the gift, and even more for “Queen Mary the poem.” He found it “astonishingly fine”; and he adds: “What a joy that such a poem should be, and be yours.” The relations between the two great poets of the Victorian age were always ideally beautiful, in their cordial friendship and their warm mutual appreciation.
In a note dated in the Christmas days of 1876 Browning writes:
My Dear Tennyson,—True thanks again, this time for the best of Christmas presents, another great work, wise, good, and beautiful. The scene where Harold is overborne to take the oath is perfect, for one instance. What a fine new ray of light you are entwining with your many-colored wreath!...
All happiness befall you and yours this good season and ever.[15]
The present Lord Tennyson, in his biography of his father, makes many interesting allusions to the friendship and the pleasant intercourse between the poets. “Browning frequently dined with us,” he says, “and the tête-à-tête conversations between him and my father on every imaginable topic were the best talk I have ever heard, so full of repartee, epigram, anecdote, depth, and wisdom, too brilliant to be possible to reproduce. These brother poets were two of the most widely read men of their time, absolutely without a touch of jealousy, and reveling, as it were, in each other’s power.... Browning had a faculty for absurd and abstruse rhymes, and I recall a dinner where Jebb, Miss Thackeray, and Browning were all present, and Browning said he could make a rhyme for every word in the language. We proposed rhinoceros, and without pause he said,
‘O, if you should see a rhinoceros
And a tree be in sight,
Climb quick, for his might
Is a match for the gods,—he can toss Eros.’”
A London friend relates that on one occasion Browning chanced upon a literal translation some one had made from the Norwegian:
“The soul where love abideth not resembles
A house by night, without a fire or torch,”
and remarked how easy it would be to put this into rhyme; and immediately transmuted it into the couplet,
“What seems the soul when love’s outside the porch?
A house by night, without a fire or torch.”