Where is the Frenchman who says Monsieur Victor Hugo in speaking of our immortal poet? And yet imagine, if you can, something still more unseemly, fancy he had to be called Monsieur le baron Victor Hugo, and you will be able to form an idea of the public feeling here, when it was known that Tennyson was going, of his own free will, to stick the title of Lord in front of his name.
No one ever thought of reproaching Lord Byron for being titled: it was an accident; he was but eleven years old when he inherited the title and property of his great uncle. It is said that he wept for joy on learning the honour that the accident of birth had conferred upon him. What bitter tears Tennyson must have shed upon seeing himself, at the close of his brilliant career, the noble lord the Poet Laureate! It is a perfect suicide.
There was, too, in the genealogy of Alfred Tennyson wherewith to satisfy the most ardent craving for distinction: among his ancestors are to be found princes, kings, and even saints.
The Laureate’s descent from John Savage, Earl Rivers, implies descent from the first three Edwards, Henry III., John, the first two Henrys, William the Conqueror, Edmund Ironsides, Ethelred, Edgar, Edmund I., Edward the Elder, Alfred, Ethelwulf, and Egbert: then Edward III., being the son of Isabelle, daughter of Philip the Fair, one may count Saint Louis, Philip-Augustus, and Hugh Capet, among the Laureate’s ancestors. And these are not all. The St. James’s Gazette, which a short while ago gave the entire genealogy, showed that to the above names might be added those of Ferdinand III., King of Castile and Leon, canonised by Pope Clement X., the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and several Scottish kings.
This is a grand array of noble names, or I am no judge. What can have demoralised the descendant of such men?
Was it the voyage to Denmark?
Could it be a visit to the Court of Copenhagen, at a time when the Czar of all the Russias, the Czarina, and the Princess of Wales were there? Surely, even that was not enough to turn the head of the most illustrious son of Albion.
What is Lord Tennyson going to do in the House of Lords? Will he vote, he who has never mixed in politics, except perhaps when he was about twenty (a long time ago), and the tone of his writings was decidedly Radical? His presence in this august and venerable assembly will prove once more that it is of no use looking upon the House of Lords as a serious legislative body.
But, alas! England has no National Academy. Almost the only rewards she has to offer a man of genius are a pension, a seat in the House of Lords, or a corner at Madame Tussaud’s.