Through England with Tennyson; a pilgrimage to places associated with the great laureate

Preface

NOT a motley company, like the Canterbury pilgrims of old, — the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, the Nun, the Monk and the others, but merely the pilgrim Lady, who was to be the finer interpreter and spiritual atmosphere of the journey; the two pilgrim Laddies, — the Tall Laddie and the Wee Laddie, — through whose eyes we are to see the eternal childlike in England (perchance by the Lady we are to see the eternal feminine in all things ) : and last, and least, the pilgrim Parson, who writes the chronicle of the high quest upon which we have set out.

And 'tis not, like the Canterbury Pilgrims, a quest to the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, but merely a devout visitation to the shrines of Alfred Tennyson the poet. He had meant so much to us personally for years, — even the Laddies love his poems and sing some of them, — and he is so universally beloved in all America, and such a noble

PREFACE

representative of English literature at its worthiest, that it is a pilgrimage of love that we make. Yea, such a splendid spiritual interpreter is he in "In Memoriam," "The Two Voices," "The Higher Pantheism," and the glorious legends of the "Idylls of the King," that we feel that it is also a pilgrimage of grace upon which we have set out, a sort of quest of the Holy Grail. This summer journeying to the haunts and homes of the royal laureate we hoped would be a benediction and a consecration. The Lady prophesied it ; even the Laddies were glowing with the glad anticipation of great things, commingled with boyish dreams of plenty of fun in Merrie England.

Just how it all worked out, the actual realization exceeding even our expectations, this chronicle is to tell. It is a record of things actually done. It might have been more elaborately wrought out, each place might have been more exhaustively treated. But such as it is, it is the story of three months among Lincolnshire hedgerows, Devonshire lanes, Cornish cliffs, with an incursion now and then into the more populous places of men in cities. At many points we lived in a leisurely way,

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PREFACE

keeping house for ourselves and getting intimate glimpses into the lives of the people. Everywhere we carried our well-thumbed volume of Tennyson with us, and read the poems aloud on the sunny lawns, or by the windswept cliffs, where they were composed. Tennyson was our one constant comrade, during the whole summer, and we can testify that life and nature and England grew more great and beautiful under the mystic spell of his verse. We also think that we learned much concerning the man and his moods, and the inner meaning of some of his great lines, by the new interpretation that the places lent to the poems. Clearer than ever became the great Goethe's words:

which I think we may translate,

"Would you the poet understand? The secret's in the poet's land."

Oliver Huckel.

Baltimore,

September, 1913.

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGB

I. Lincoln and the Lincolnshire Fens ... 1

IL SoMERSBY, THE PoET's BiRTHPLACE ... 15

II

SOMERSBY is in Lincolnshire in the east of England, within sound of the German Ocean, and it is in a rainy country. Dickens says that it always rains in Lincolnshire. But we can bear testimony to the contrary. In the ten days or more that we spent in the shire we had a speck of sunshine every day. It does rain on the slightest provocation, and often from clear skies. There is no railroad to Somersby. Either Spilsby or Horncastle is the point of departure by carriage for the village of the poet's birth, which lies about midway of the ten or fifteen miles between these towns. We chose Spilsby in order to be nearer the coast, and especially to the coast village of Mablethorpe which Tennyson loved. We found Spilsby a quaint little village. Its chief point of historic interest is a statue of Sir John Franklin which stands in the market square. He was the most distinguished citizen of the town, this fine old Arctic explorer, and we had an especial interest in him because he was an ancestor of Tennyson's mother.

There is an old parish church in the village within whose aisles we lingered a long time. The beauty spot of the village, however, is a magnificent road called "the Avenue," a long colonnade of great trees, formerly the entrance to the estate of the Earl of Ancaster. But since the burning of the old mansion the estate is no longer used by the Earl, and this Avenue has become a public park.

It was in the taproom of our little inn at Spilsby that we heard from many farmers who dropped in, some racy specimens of the strong Lincolnshire dialect. After listening attentively, and becoming somewhat familiar with this mode of speech, which at first was almost unintelligible, we read aloud one rainy afternoon, several of Tennyson's poems in the Lincolnshire dialect, — such as "The Northern Farmer, Old Style," and "The Northern Farmer, New Style," and "The Village Wife," and at last could really appreciate them. Edmund Clarence Stedman considers these Lincolnshire vernacular sketches most successful, putting them among the best English dialect studies of our times. There is also in these poems some touches of Tennyson's humor, — for instance, where the Northern Farmer says,

"Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they canters awaay? Proputty, proputty, proputty, — that's what I 'ears 'em saay."

And those other shrewd lines:

And that modern bit of satire in "The Village Wife" where the causes of disease and death are hit off in 'the lines,

"An' I thowt 'twur the will o' the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it wur draains."

It was an all-day trip from Spilsby, — at least so our pilgrimage made it, with the coming and going and leisurely sauntering. It was a day of alternate sunshine and showers. We set forth in a wagonette early one morning for our ride through the Lincolnshire lanes. The Lady and the Laddies were first of all delighted by the skylarks. It was their initial experience in seeing and hearing these wonderful songsters of the meadows. And surely most fascinating it was to watch the dainty birds in their upward circling flight, pouring forth joyous song until they were a mere speck in the heavens, and finally were out of sight altogether; but still the "first fine rapture" of their song continued, dropping like exultant benediction from the sky. The Lady could not resist quoting some of those exquisite stanzas of Shelley's "Skylark," as we drove along:

"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert, That from heaven or near it,

Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

"Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest. Like a cloud of fire

The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest" —

until at last as we looked and listened, we saw no more, but cried with Shakespeare:

The bright-colored poppies which dotted 18 so many of the fields delighted the Laddies. They wanted to get out and gather an armful. Several pretty villages showed quaint houses and picturesque church towers as we passed, and at one point we came to an old mill on the road, with its water-wheel, pond, and ducks, which might well have been the scene of Tennyson's poem "The Miller's Daughter," although we knew that it was Stockworth Mill, some distance from this place, which was the one probably described by Tennyson. The entire ride is a charming journey. It is through well-wooded country of soft green meadows, with many a thatched roof cottage along the way, and some fine old halls and manor-houses peering out among the distant trees, and here and there a winding stream.

We passed through Bag Enderby, a tiny village where still exists an old church partly in ruins, which was once served by Tennyson's father. Soon we drew near to Somersby itself. Do you remember the present Lord Tennyson's word about this country and Somersby: "Halfway between Horncastle and Spilsby, in a land of quiet villages, large fields, gray hillsides, and noble, tall-towered churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold, the pastoral hamlet of Somersby nestles embowered in trees." It is a tiny village. Tennyson describes it in the line :

"Huts at random scattered, each a nest in bloom."

The old cottages and buildings have something of exquisite charm and picturesqueness about them. Most of them show climbing roses at the door. What is known as the "Woodman's Cottage" on the road, is one of the most charming thatched-roof houses in England. We gave a glance at the ancient church, Tennyson's father's church, as we drove through the village, resolving to come back to it later, and another glance at the so-called moated grange on Somersby road, but stopped at nothing until we reached the quaint rectory which was our special object of visitation, the birthplace of Tennyson.

It is such an old-fashioned rectory! One may see many such in rural England, but none has the association and interest for us as this rectory at Somersby. The house is not occupied now, except by a care-taker. We found as we went through the house that it was in poor condition. It was damp in some rooms, the paper loosely hanging on the walls ; most of the rooms were bare and empty and desolate, the roof evidently needed repair, if leaks here and there tell anything. Once when Hallam Tennyson had visited this old rectory, he brought the news to his father that the house was beginning to look forlorn and desolate, and with memories of the old days of his boyhood's home, the poet sadly answered, "Poor little place!"

The house stands back somewhat from the road. The side of the house looking to the road is the less interesting view. The best side is that of the picturesque Gothic windows looking out on the gardens. The room in which the poet first saw the light opens out also upon these pleasant gardens. It was in this rectory on Sunday, August 6, 1809, that Alfred Tennyson was born. His father was the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson, appointed as rector here in 1807, in connection with the near-by parishes of Grimsby and Bag Enderby. His mother was the daughter of Rev. Stephen Fytche, the Vicar of Louth, a town not very far away. Somersby at that time was the tiniest of villages. In 1821 it had only sixty-two inhabitants, and at present it is still smaller, — a hamlet of about fifty souls and six hundred acres. It is quaint and quiet, sleepy and serene. But in this little village was nurtured, and in this old-fashioned parsonage was born, one of the greatest souls of modern times.

We entered the rectory by what Tennyson calls "my father's door." In the old days, the ivy grew around the door. The square hall in Tennyson's day was adorned with many tokens of the chase. Next we came to the drawing-room, which we were told once had many pictures and a wealth of china and bric-a-brac. It was sunny, with two large windows level with the lawn. But the chief room was the grand Gothic dining hall, used also for festive occasions, and oft its old walls "with harp and carol rang."

Tennyson in after years, as his son bears witness, "always spoke of Somersby with an affectionate remembrance; of the woodbine that climbed into the bay windows of his nursery; of the Gothic-vaulted dining-room with stained-glass walls; of the beautiful stone chimney-piece carved by his father; of the pleasant little drawing-room, lined with bookshelves and furnished with yellow curtains, sofas, and chairs, and looking out on the lawn."

And surely, this dining-room is one of the most interesting places in the house. Tennyson's father designed and himself built it as an addition to the rectory. "Why, it looks like a little church!" cried the Laddies as we entered it. And sure enough it has a real ecclesiastical look. The door, the fireplace, mantel, the windows, all are Gothic, with churchly stained-glass still remaining in the windows. It is rather bare and desolate in this dining-room now, without furniture, rugs, or hangings. But in the old days it was full of life and beauty. I have a picture of it when it was the living room of the family, and charmingly furnished it was with its old paintings, books, and tapestry. Tennyson used to tell of the happy times that were spent in this medieval Gothic room during winter evenings, and of the games, the music, and the readings. We must remember that Alfred was one of twelve children, of whom eight were sons, and with such a family there must have been many festive occasions, referred to in those reminiscent lines of "In Memoriam":

"As in the winters left behind,

Again our ancient games had place,

The mimic picture's breathing grace.

And dance and song and hoodman-blind."

We were also interested in a little attic room to which a dark and difficult stairway climbs, — a room which was a real sanctuary of the boyhood muse. To it he addressed the lines:

"O darling room, my heart's delight. Dear room, the apple of my sight — A little room so warm and bright Wherein to read, wherein to write."

It is a gable room with one window. Here young Tennyson had his first study or den. It was the birthplace of his youthful poems and the earliest of the poet's workshops, of which the greater ones were the attic room and later study at Farringford, and the splendid library at Aldworth. It is related that one night, sitting in this little attic room, he heard the cry of an owl. He answered its hoot, and the bird flew in through the open window. He captured it, and after a time it became so tame that it would sit by him and rub its beak affectionately against his face. His poem "The Owl" portrays his intimate acquaintance.

But of course the most interesting room in the house is that in which the poet was born. It is directly over the drawing-room. An iron balcony is in front of its window, overlooking the lawn. This birth-room, we were glad to find, is kept in fairly good condition. It is most simply furnished, although not quite the furniture of a hundred years ago. Here on "an all-day day" in August, when summer is falling into the lap of autumn and "gilding the globe of England," was heard the poet's "earliest cry," and on that memorable day was born an "heir of endless fame." As we stood in the birth-room of the poet, with the kindly old dame who was the custodian of the house, — I meditated upon how much the opening of the eyes of that baby in 1809 had meant to the English-speaking world, and what visions of majesty and beauty those eyes had made all the whole world to see.

We were also glad to wander over the lawn and the gardens on the south side of the house, for they had a special interest for us. It was here on this beautiful sward under the trees that Arthur Hallam used to lie and read aloud the Tuscan poets on summer afternoons. It was here that the quiet love-making took place between Arthur Hallam and Tennyson's sister, which seemed to promise such an ideal future. It was here also on the lawn that one day Arthur Hallam was so elated with some of the poems that Tennyson had just composed and read to him, that he exclaimed, "Fifty years from now, Alfred, people will be making pilgrimages to this spot." How fully the prophecy has come true!

The most charming view of the old rectory is this from the south, where, as Napier says, "the creepers clamber up the yellowwashed walls, and it looks so sweet one does not wonder at the regrets the poet had in leaving such a picturesque home. The classic lawn, the scene of so many gatherings, sloped gently away to a little garden, quaint and old-fashioned, intersected with walks of turf and girt with high evergreen hedges. In this secluded spot no sounds fall on the ear but those which belong essentially to the pure country, — the ripple of the brook murmuring in its summer sleep, the lowing of the white kine, the bleating of the thick-fleeced sheep, or the cooing in the distant woods of the daylong murmuring wood-pigeon."

The orchard on the right of the lawn forms a sunny spot that always awoke in Tennyson's mind most pleasant memories. "How often," the poet said, "have I risen in the early dawn to see the golden globes lying in the dewy grass among those apple trees." He delighted also to recall, as his son told us, "the rare richness of the bowery lanes; the ancient Norman cross standing in the churchyard, close to the door of the quaint little church; the wooded hollow of Holywell; the cold springs flowing from under the sandstone rocks; the flowers, the mosses, and the ferns." The Somersby scenery, the Somersby memories, and the Somersby atmosphere are felt in all the poems of his later years, delicately sweetening the pictures.

We looked for

"The seven elms, the poplars four, That stand beside my father's door."

There are still many trees, mostly elms and beeches, but the poplars and sycamores now, as one says, "only whisper in the Laureate's song." The stately elms, however, are still there, guarding the approach. And here on this beautiful lawn under the trees the Lady read aloud to us the special parts from "In Memoriam" descriptive of the old days.

At the edge of the garden a pebbly brook babbles along, — the brook that Tennyson has immortalized. We enjoyed standing beside it, as it curves through the meadow around to the road, under the picturesque arch of the stone bridge. The poet used to recall vividly how he and his brother Charles often defended this bridge against the other village boys. All the Tennyson places which we attempt to identify are of course more or less idealizations when the poet describes them. Even this brook does not fully answer Tennyson's description in several particulars. His brook is largely a brook of imagination, and yet no one can doubt that this Somersby stream of his childhood had a large part in creating the poem. And here to its own music, as to-day it gurgles and splashes along as in the olden days, we recited as much as we could remember of the poem. Even the Laddies knew some of it by heart, and could sing it to a pleasant tune that they had learned in school in America.

SOMERSBY GRANGE.

THE BROOK AND BRIDGE, SOMERSBY.

"I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally.

And sparkle out among the fern. To bicker down a valley.

"I chatter over stony ways.

In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.

"I chatter, chatter, as I flow. To join the brimming river.

For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever.

"I wind about, and in and out. With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout. And here and there a grayling.

"I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers.

"I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses;

"And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river.

For men may come and men may go. But I go on for ever."

As we listened to the Laddies, there came thoughts of Tennyson's own boyhood days, around this pebbly brook. He was only five years old when one day he cried, "I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind!" and made his first poetic line. It was prophetic of his whole career, — he was always hearing voices and seeing visions.

On Sundays as a boy, he and his brother Charles sometimes wrote poems about the flowers of the rectory garden. In the evenings it was their custom to tell long stories to each other around the crackling oaken fire. These stories continued from evening to evening. One story, called "the Old Horse," Tennyson remembered to have lengthened out for a month. The boys went every day to the village school in Somersby, which was held in a secluded place called Holywell Glen. Alfred, it is related, was not very good at arithmetic. He was a reserved child, solitary and shy.

He was only a boy when the news came to the village of the death of Byron, whose poetry he had already begun to love. The announcement had a strange effect upon him. He crept off alone, and into a ledge of soft sandstone he carved with his knife, "Byron is dead!" Somehow it seemed to him as if the bottom of his world had dropped out. Was it not a prophecy of the sensibility and deep emotions of the later years?

We were loth to leave the charmed spot. We listened to the birds in the trees. What a nest of human nightingales it was in the old days. Several of the family were gifted in song. Frederick and Charles each published books of poems, as well as the Laureate, and their verse received much recognition and praise. Of all the boys of this old rectory, Horatio stayed longest in the old home; Arthur traveled much, for he was often in bad health; of Edward we have little record; Charles became a clergyman, and was famous as a sonneteer ; the other poet, Frederick, married an Italian lady and lived in the Isle of Jersey. Alfred was the one son from this old rectory who went forth to become the nation's pride and to conquer world-fame.

Adjoining the rectory on the Somersby road, on the side toward the church, is the reputed Moated Grange, an old-fashioned building that always interests visitors. About this queer structure ever lingered an air of mystery and romance. Tennyson is thought to describe it minutely in his poem of "Mariana." Here on the spot we recalled a stanza:

"With blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all: The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable-wall. The broken sheds look'd sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, 'My life is dreary.

He Cometh not,' she said; She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead ! ' "

This heavy, gloomy, moated grange by its somber aspect may have quite naturally suggested the poem; but the greater part of the poem is probably an idealization, not to be too closely identified, for the place does not altogether follow out the description. "They will not allow that one has any imagination," said Lord Tennyson once, in reference to an attempted close identification of some of the places of his poems. We must remember that places were to him only suggestions which his imagination wrought to larger issues. The old Somersby church across the road, 32 where Tennyson was baptized, is just a picturesque old-fashioned parish church, little different from a hundred other parish churches throughout rural England, except that one or two pre-Reformation relics have been left in the church undisturbed by the zeal of iconoclasts. There is a Norman cross in the churchyard with an image of the Virgin. There is also a flat basin for holy water. The sun-dial over the porch seems to have words on it in seventeenth-century letters: "Time Passeth."

In Tennyson's time this church was roofed with thatch, and around it were witch-elms and towering sycamores.

"Wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness," says Charles Lamb, "go alone, traverse the cool aisles of some country church." So thought we in the pleasant shadows of this ancient house of God. Tennyson's own faith was nurtured here in his boyhood days, and many of his noblest thoughts had their beginning in this place. His greatest poem, "In Memoriam," is saturated with remembrances of Somersby. In "The Two Voices" the church described is supposed to be this beautiful old church at Somersby.

In the churchyard, a place of ideal beauty and of refreshing stillness, Tennyson's father lies buried. The poet's loving thoughts go back to it in those lines of "In Memoriam";

"Our father's dust is left alone And silent under other snows; Then in due time the woodbine blows. The violet comes, but we are gone."

The village of Somersby has no fame except as the birthplace of Tennyson. He did for it what the Roman poet Virgil did for Mantua, — he made it a sacred shrine and a place of pilgrimage.

The Lady of our pilgrimage was very much interested in learning what she could of the parents of the poet. She discovered that the father, old Dr. Tennyson, was six feet two, and very strong and energetic. He was a versatile man of great ability, a scholar, knew well Hebrew and Syriac, and later learned Greek that he might teach his sons. He had a splendid library, and amid the quiet of his study, with long shelves of books looking down upon them, the children of the parsonage gained their early knowledge of books, and read widely of Shakespeare, Goldsmith,

And what of Tennyson's mother? The Lady found that she had been Miss Fytche, the daughter of the vicar of Louth. She became the mother of twelve children — eight sons and four daughters — all born in this rectory. She was of great tenderness of heart. It is said that the boys of a neighborhood village used to bring their dogs and beat them near the rectory in order to be bribed to leave off, or to induce her to buy them. She was a beautiful woman. It was related of her by Hallam Tennyson that "when she was almost eighty, a daughter, under cover of her deafness, ventured to mention the number of offers of marriage which had been made to her mother, naming twenty-four. Suddenly, to the amusement of all present, the old lady said emphatically, and quite simply, as for truth's sake, 'No, my dear, twenty-five.' " The early poem "Isabel" gives her portraiture. Her children loved and revered her greatly. She died in 1865, at the good old age of eighty-four.

Tennyson always loved the memories of Somersby. Once in later years a little girl of

Somersby sent him some violets, and he was deeply touched and wrote in reply: "I shall keep them as a sacred treasure. The violets of one's own native place gathered by the hands of a pure innocent child, must needs be precious to me." A letter received in 1874 from a Somersby lad, the son of an old bricklayer of his native village, now an American of Missouri, delighted Lord Tennyson. It was so full of his childhood reminiscences, for he was of the poet's ovni age. It told of the apple trees that bore such fine golden apples, the old fir trees where the rooks used to build, and ended, "Oh, sir! Perhaps no man in America knows as well as I where you first heard the wrens twitter, the blackbirds, the thrushes, the robins sing." It was Tennyson's own brother who once remarked that the man who wrote "Tears, Idle Tears" could never forget Somersby. And it is true, the memory of dear old days is wonderfully enshrined in that poem of the heart.

Yes, this old Somersby village is a sacred spot, and this old Somersby church enshrines holy memories. We felt as if a benediction had come to us here. We loved the hedges of sweetbrier around the churchyard. They are as fragrant as loving thoughts. Outside the hedges we clambered into our wagonette, and through snatches of sunshine and frequent showers, during which the Laddies curled up under the rubber blankets, we traversed again the seven miles of Lincolnshire lanes along the flowery hollows and the tangled meadowland, over hills and through pleasant valleys, singing "The Brook" to a lively tune and a showery accompaniment, and now and then, during an interval of sunshine, the melody of "Sweet and Low."

The visits of Arthur Hallam to Somersby in the summer of 1832 and possibly 1833 are commemorated in "In Memoriam." It was a fair companionship that lasted for four years. Do you remember that letter of Arthur Hallam which he wrote to an intimate friend in the spring of 1832: "I am now at Somersby, not only as the friend of Alfred Tennyson, but as the lover of his sister."

Poor Hallam! He died the following year, and the awful tragedy overshadowed Tennyson and his sister for many years. A revelation of the depths of the bereavement is in "In Memoriam." Those special stanzas from "In Memoriam" which describe this Somersby scenery and Arthur Hallam's part in it, the Lady of the pilgrimage had been reading to me under the trees at the old Rectory as we loitered there, and among them were these :

"How often, hither wandering down. My Arthur found your shadows fair. And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town;

"He brought an eye for all he saw; He mix'd in all our simple sports; This pleased him, fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law.