Dear, near and true—no truer Time himself
Can prove you, tho’ he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
Shoots to the fall—take this and pray that he
Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith to him,
May trust himself;—and after praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
And after autumn past—if left to pass
His autumn into seeming leafless days—
Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.
Others dwell on the unique way in which those wistful blue eyes of hers and that beautiful face expressed the “tender spiritual nature” described by the poet—expressed it, indeed, more and more eloquently with the passage of years, and the bereavements the years had brought. The present writer saw her within a few days of her death. She did not seem to him then more fragile than ordinary. For many years she whose fragile frame seemed to be kept alive by the love and sweet movements of the soul within had seemed as she lay upon her couch the same as she seemed when death was so near—intensely pale, save when a flush as slight as the pink on a wild rose told her watchful son that the subject of conversation was interesting her more than was well for her. As a matter of fact, however, Lady Tennyson was no less remarkable as an intelligence than as the central heart of love and light that illumined one of the most beautiful households of our time.
Though her special gift was no doubt music, she had, as Tennyson would say with affectionate pride, a “real insight into poetical effects”; and those who knew her best shared his opinion in this matter. Whether, had her life not been devoted so entirely to others, she would have been a noticeable artistic producer it is hard to guess. But there is no doubt that she was born to hold a high place as a conversationalist,
brilliant and stimulating. Notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness of her family lest the dinner talk should draw too heavily upon her small stock of physical power, the fascination of her conversation, both as to subject-matter and manner, was so irresistible that her friends were apt to forget how fragile she really was until warned by a sign from her son or, daughter-in-law, who adored her, that the conversation should be brought to a close.
Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain biographical portions of his book shows how keen and how persistent was her interest in the poetry of her husband; it also shows how thorough was her insight into its principles. As a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give portraitures of eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless. The points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic, and even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character he professes to limn, the picture can only be partially true, inasmuch as it can never be toned down by other aspects of the character unseen by the diarist and unknown to him.
Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady Tennyson. As an instance of her power of selecting really luminous points for preservation in her diary, let me instance this. Many a student of the ‘Idylls of the King’ has been struck by a certain difference in the style
between ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ and the other idylls. Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing Tennyson’s inability to fuse the different portions of a long poem. This fact had not escaped the eye of the loving wife and critic, and two days before her death she said to her son, “He said ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ are purposely simpler in style than the other idylls as dealing with the awfulness of birth and death,” and wished this remark of the poet’s to be put on record in the book.
It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and the light they shed upon Tennyson’s method.
Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced age, and were struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no painter could ever render, will not find it difficult to imagine what she was at seventeen, when Tennyson suddenly came upon her in the “Fairy Wood,” and exclaimed, “Are you an Oread or a Dryad wandering here?” And yet her beauty was only a small part of a charm that was indescribable. An important event for English literature was that meeting in the “Fairy Wood.” For, from the moment of his engagement, “the current of his mind was no longer and constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy forebodings,”
says his son. And speaking of the year, 1838, the son tells us that, on the whole, he was happy in his life. “When I wrote ‘The Two Voices,’” he used to say, “I was so utterly miserable, a burden to myself and my family, that I said, ‘Is life worth anything?’ and now that I am old, I fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have work still to do.”