Tennyson and his friends

by Unknown

JAMES SPEDDING

By W. Aldis Wright, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

“Spedding was the Pope among us young men—the wisest man I know.”—Tennyson: a Memoir, by his Son, p. 32.

James Spedding, of whom FitzGerald wrote, “He was the wisest man I have known,” was born June 20, 1808, at Mirehouse, Keswick, and was the third son of John Spedding. He was educated at the Grammar School, Bury St. Edmunds, where his father, leaving his Cumberland home, went to live for the purpose of putting his sons under the care of Dr. Malkin. Among his school-fellows were W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble (the Anglo-Saxon scholar), the three brothers FitzGerald, and his own brother Edward, who with himself was at the head of the school when they left. From Bury he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he was contemporary with Frederick, Charles, and Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), and W. H. Thompson (afterwards Master of Trinity), and was very early admitted into the fellowship of the Apostles. On Commemoration Day, 1830, he was called upon to deliver an oration in the College Chapel, the subject being “An Apology for the Moral and Literary Character of the Nineteenth Century,” which was afterwards printed. Another of his early productions was a speech against Political Unions, written for a debating society in the University of Cambridge, which, although anonymous, attracted the notice of the author of Philip van Artevelde, afterwards his colleague in the Colonial Office, who quoted some passages from it in the notes to his poem, with the remark: “It is a singular trait of the times that a speech containing so much of sagacity and mature reflection as is to be found in this exercitation, should have been delivered in an academical debating club, and should have passed away in a pamphlet, which, as far as I am aware, attracted no notice. Time and place consenting, a brilliant Parliamentary reputation might be built upon a tithe of the merit.” In 1831 he won the Members’ Prize with a Latin essay on “Utrum boni plus an mali hominibus et civitatibus attulerit dicendi copia,” and in 1832 he was again a candidate, and wrote to Thompson on the 4th of May about it:

Tennant and I both got in our Essays, both in a very imperfect state, and both the last minute but one.... I find that Alford also wrote. So the Apostles have three chances. What Alford’s may be I do not know. But Tennant’s and mine are neither of them worth much: Tennant’s from dryness, mine from impertinence: for of all the impertinent things I ever wrote (and this is a bold word) my “Dissertatio Latina” was the most impertinent. It was in the form of a letter from Son Marcus to Father Cicero; cutting up the Offices in the most reverential way possible. The merit of it is, that if no prize is given at all I may fairly put it down to the novelty of the experiment and the nature of the Judges, whom to my horror I found out the day after to be the Heads of Colleges! Marry, God forbid! I rather calculated on Graham’s[103] being one of the chief voters, who is fond of fun in general, and of my Latin in particular. However, it is no matter. I spent an amusing fortnight and improved my composition: and my mind is easy anyhow, which you will not easily believe.

On June 21 he writes again:

You will be glad to know that scoffing and utilizing march (like humanity according to the St. Simonians), and that Cicero the son has justified his parentage by getting the first prize for Latin composition. You will be sorry to hear that not Alford nor Tennant, but Hildyard Pet. hath obtained the second. Whether their labour has been lost I know not, but mine has been fairly paid, being at the rate of a guinea a day, and therefore 365 guineas a year, a very tolerable income, and I shall increase my establishment accordingly.... I wish you would decide, with your character, to come to Cambridge in the vacation and not stay by that dismal sea. There will be George Farish, and Edm. Lushington, and God knows whether Tennant, and do but add yourself to myself, and ourselves to the aforesaid: and lo you a select company as ever smoked under the shadow of a horse chesnut. If you do not come, you will simply be behind the world of the wise (which you know is as much like a goad as like a nail fastened by the master of an assembly) in the understanding of things spoken. For we talk out of the “Palace of Art” and the “Legend of Fair Women.” The great Alfred is here, i.e. in Southampton Row, smoking all the day, and we went from this house [14 Queen Square, Westminster] on a pilgrimage to see him; to wit, Two Heaths, my brother and myself, and, meeting Allen on the way, we took him along with us, and when we arrived at the place appointed we found A. T. and A. H. H. and J. M. K. So we made a goodly company, and did as we do at Cambridge, and, but that you were not among us, we should have been happy.

Again, on the 18th of July: