He little knew that, when I was in my early ’teens and had the most absurdly exaggerated notions of my song-writing powers, I had had the presumption to ask my cousin, Mr. Stephen Spring Rice, if he would induce his old friend to send me a MS. poem to set. Happily, I only got a kindly but necessary rap over the knuckles for my impertinence; the request was consigned to the waste-paper basket and mercifully never reached Farringford. I tremble now to recall the incident, although I verily believe that if Mr. Spring Rice had been cruel enough to send my letter on, the smile which it must have provoked would in no wise have been a contemptuous one. I can imagine his saying then, what I have often heard him say in later days, “Maxima debetur pueris reverentia.” I had seen so much of Aubrey de Vere all through my boyhood that I almost felt as if I knew Tennyson too, so vivid were his accounts of him, and his descriptions of his ways and surroundings.
Joachim also, who all through the British part of his international career was in close touch with the Tennyson circle, used often to speak of him with the deep reverence and whole-hearted enthusiasm which he reserved for a very few. On the staircase at Farringford hangs Mrs. Cameron’s early (and still unsurpassed) photograph of the great violinist. My host pointed at it one day as he passed upstairs: “That’s Joachim. He’s a fine fellow. Why did he cover up that fine jowl with a beard?”—quite forgetful of the possible retort that he had committed the same wickedness himself. On the comparatively rare occasions when he came up to London, and was surrounded by all the stars in the literary and political firmament, Joachim and his Stradivarius were as brilliant a centre of attraction as any of his guests. Joachim’s setting of Merlin’s song in “The Coming of Arthur” was an especial favourite of his, as both in atmosphere and in declamation it exactly fulfilled the intention of his verse. Joachim once told me that he always had great hankerings after setting “The Revenge,” but that he repressed them because he felt that it could only be tackled in the true English spirit by a Britisher.
The clue to Tennyson’s great critical power in declamation was obvious to any one who heard him recite his own work. His manner of reading poetry has often been described. It was a chant rather than a declamation. A voice of deep and penetrating power, varied only by alteration of note and by intensity of quality. The notes were few, and he rarely read on more than two, except at the cadence of a passage, when the voice would slightly fall. He often accompanied his reading by gentle rippling gestures with his fingers. As a rule he adhered more to the quantity of a line than the ordinary reciter, for he had the rare gift of making the accent felt, without perceptibly altering the prosody. Without being a musician, he had a great appreciation of the fitness of music to its subjects, and was an unfailing judge of musical declamation. As he expressed it himself, he disliked music which went up when it ought to go down, and went down when it ought to go up. I never knew him wrong in his suggestions on this point. The most vivid instance I can recall was about a line in “The Revenge”:
Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew.
When I played him my setting, the word “devil” was set to a higher note in the question than it was in the answer, and the penultimate word “they” was unaccented. He at once corrected me, saying that the second word “devil” must be higher and stronger than the first, and the “they” must be marked. He was perfectly right, and I altered it accordingly. It was apparently a small point, but it was this insisting on perfection of detail which made him the most valuable teacher of accurate declamation that it was possible for a composer to learn from. Of all his poems which I heard him read, those he made most impressive were “The Revenge” and the “Ode on the Duke of Wellington.” It may be interesting to record a point in the latter which, he said, was often misread. The line
Let the bell be toll’d,
he read with strong emphasis upon the first as well as the third and fifth words:
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not
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