My first personal acquaintance with him was in the autumn of 1866, when I was staying at Freshwater. I felt that I must call upon him and offer him my respects and thanks before I left, but put it off through shyness until the day before my holiday was to end. Then I took my courage in both hands and went to Farringford. “Mr. Tennyson was out walking, but Mrs. Tennyson was at home and would be happy to see me.” It was a disappointment, but Mrs. Tennyson received me most kindly and graciously, and begged me to return later in the evening if I could, and see her husband who would like to meet me. When I did return I was shown upstairs to the top of the house and into an attic which was the Poet’s own study, and presently, with my heart in my mouth, I heard his great steps as he climbed up the little wooden stairs. His bodily presence seemed as kingly as I felt it ought to be, though a little grim and awful at first; but he made me very welcome, and then groped about for and lighted a pipe, and sat down and began to speak of King Arthur as being a subject of common interest and sympathy.
This soon thawed the chill of my spirits and I began to feel more at home, until I felt I could make the request I was longing to do—would he read to me one of his Poems, as I desired earnestly to hear from his own lips what I already knew and loved? Then came a great surprise and delight, for it was not reading as usually understood, but intoning on a note, almost chanting, which I heard, and which brought the instant conviction that this was the proper vehicle for poetry as distinguished from prose. I was so enchanted that I begged for more and more; and then I suppose may have begun a personal sympathy which grew and lasted always afterwards till his death. For when I made to go he took me all about the house, showing me the pictures and drawings with which his walls were lined, peering into them so closely with a lighted candle that I thought he would set them or himself on fire. This was, perhaps, another common ground,—I having been all my life interested in art and in a small way a collector of drawings and pictures.
Before I left he told me to come and claim acquaintance if ever we met before I came to Farringford again, for if not his short sight would prevent his knowing me. On this friendly request I acted in the spring of the following year, 1867, when my wife and I were going to pay a visit at Haslemere. At Haslemere station, to my surprise, I saw him standing on the platform, and went up and spoke to him, reminding him of his desire that I should do so. I then introduced my wife to him, and he explained how he came to be there—namely, because he was in search of a site where he might build a cottage to take refuge in from the tourists who made his life a burden to him in the Isle of Wight. He added, “You are an architect, why should you not make the plans of it for me?” I said, “With the greatest possible pleasure, upon one condition that I may act professionally without making any professional charge; for I cannot be paid twice over, and you, Mr. Tennyson, have over-paid me already long ago—in the pleasure and delight your works have given me—for any little work I could do for you.” He protested, but in the end accepted my terms.
The cottage, as he first proposed it, was to be a small square, four-roomed house, with a door in the middle, like one in which he was then staying near Haslemere. I went there to see him and to describe plans and the question of a site. After inspecting several with him, he took me secretly to one which a friend had found out as being possibly procurable, and on which Aldworth was finally built. It was a natural terrace, formed just below the summit of Black Down, and was known as Green Hill. There was a potato-patch where the house now stands,—a little flat clearance in the midst of sloping coppices that covered all the southern side of the hill; and it was a spot of ideal seclusion, just wide enough and no more for a moderately sized house, quite perfect for his objects,—almost too perfect in the way of inaccessibility, for it took years of negotiation and trouble to obtain a practicable road to it. The view from it was simply perfect, extending over the whole of woody Sussex to the South Downs and the sea. “It wants nothing,” he said as he gazed at it, “but a great river looping along through the midst of it.” “Gloriously crimson flowers set along the edge of the terrace would burn like lamps against the purple distance”—as presently was realized.
The plans for a four-roomed cottage gave way somewhat as I talked the matter over with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, the latter giving me certain rough ideas which she could not quite express by drawing, but which I understood enough to put into shape; and presently I went to Farringford with designs for a less unimportant dwelling. It grew and grew as it was talked over and considered, the details being all discussed with Mrs. Tennyson, while he contented himself by pretending to protest against any addition and improvement.
At last, one day, when I brought sketches for an arcaded porch to complete the design, he put his foot down and said he would have nothing to do with it—that he would have no more additions—that it would ruin him and could not be entertained for a moment. He walked to and fro, coming back from time to time to the table where the drawing lay and looking at it. He admitted that he liked it more and more the more he looked at it, but presently cried out with simulated fury, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” and ran out of the room. Then I knew that the porch was won. When it was built he got to be very fond of it, and used to call attention to the way in which the landscape was framed by the arches of it. He even had a picture of it made by a friend to show this effect.
He laid the foundation-stone of it on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, 1868, few being there besides his great friend, Sir John Simeon, myself, and my wife, whom he dragged up the steep hillside in the blazing sunshine. He interfered very little about the progress of the work, except as to various little accidental things which moved his fancy. For instance, a stone shield in the gable of one of the dormer windows had remained blank when all the rest were carved—simply because of a hesitation how best to fill it up. But when the time came at which it must be finished, if done at all, he stood spying up at it through his eyeglass for a long while, and then decided to leave it blank,—so that the last touch to the work might be decided hereafter by Fate, accident having kept it open so long.
He was reminded by it of the blank shield in his own Idylls, of which Merlin asks, “Who shall blazon it?—when and how?” and adds, “Perchance when all our wars are done the brand Excalibur will be cast away.” In a similar way he would not let the figure of a stone Falcon be removed which had been set up as a model for approval at one corner of the parapet, but was never intended to stay there. He looked at it long and curiously, and laughed and said it seemed to grow queerer, that it was a pity to take it down; and there it remained ever after in its original solitariness, to his great content and amusement, which had a touch of seriousness in it.
He made a great point of his favourite motto, Gwyr yn erbyn y byd (“Truth against the world”), being prominently emblazoned in tile mosaic at the threshold of the front door and in the pavement of the Hall. The text, “Gloria Deo in Excelsis,” in the carved band which surrounds the house was the selection of Mrs. Tennyson. The formation of the terrace lawn in front of the house, with its boundary balustrade, interested him extremely; and when the vases were filled with splendid blossoms, standing out against the blue landscape, the vision he had foreseen from the potato-patch was realized to his full satisfaction. The invariable and tormenting delays in finishing the house, however, annoyed him greatly; for he longed to get into it away from the tourists, and used to say he should never live to enjoy it long enough. When he did move in, he said he wanted to have each room for his own, and at first adopted for sleeping in, the central top attic on the south front, which opened on to the lead flat of the large bay window on the first floor. He called it his balcony-room, and loved to stand out on the flat and watch the changes in the great prospect spread out before him. He ultimately gave this up for a guest’s room, and took to the finer room below, which was always flooded with light, and was filled with bright moonshine when he died in it. On one occasion, when I was sleeping in the balcony-room, I was suddenly waked up by a thundering at the door and his great voice calling out, “Get up and look out of the window.” I jumped out of bed accordingly, and saw the whole wide aspect turned into a flat white billowy ocean, with no trace of land at all, but with waves beginning to move and roll in it. The sun was just rising, and I stood to watch the gradual creation of a world as it were. From moment to moment the vast ocean broke up and rose away into clouds, uncovering the landscape bit by bit—the hills first and the valleys last, until the whole great prospect came together again into its normal picture. It was delightful to see his enjoyment of everything in the new house, from the hot-water bathroom downwards, for at first the hot bath seemed to attract him out of measure. He would take it four or five times a day, and told me he thought it the height of luxury “to sit in a hot bath and read about little birds.”
The following notes of a visit paid to him at Aldworth show the usual manner of his daily life there.