^ ' ..V .A^ .-^ v\^ A^ •% ci". ^'^ V '^v^^^- .^^' ^^. .■-l\^' ^0 O . ^<^^ x> ,^v^' nH -r. 0^ ^''' ''/^^^ nV ,r ri. ^y. S^' THE NEW TENNYSON STATUE, LINCOLN CATHEDRA THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON A PILGRIMAGE TO PLACES ASSOCIATED WITH THE GREAT LAUREATE BY OLIVER HUCKEL ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS 7K5^«4 Copyright, 1913, By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY. Published September, 191S. ©CI.A354738 DEDICATED, BY PERMISSION, TO LORD AND LADY TENNYSON OF FARRINGFORD AND ALDWORTH IN REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR KINDNESS AND GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY PREFACE NOT a motley company, like the Canter- bury 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 spirit- ual atmosphere of the journey; the two pil- grim 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 Par- son, 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 in- terpreter 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 jour- neying 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 an- ticipation of great things, commingled with boyish dreams of plenty of fun in Merrie England. Just how it all worked out, the actual reali- zation exceeding even our expectations, this chronicle is to tell. It is a record of things actually done. It might have been more elab- orately 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, vi PREFACE keeping house for ourselves and getting inti- mate glimpses into the lives of the people. Everywhere we carried our well-thumbed vol- ume of Tennyson with us, and read the poems aloud on the sunny lawns, or by the wind- swept cliffs, where they were composed. Ten- nyson 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: Wer den Dichter will verstehen Muss in Dichters Lande gehen — which I think we may translate, "Would you the poet understand? The secret's in the poet's land." Oliver Huckel. Baltimore, September, 1913. vn CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB I. Lincoln and the Lincolnshire Fens ... 1 IL SoMERSBY, THE PoET's BiRTHPLACE ... 15 in. Louth and the Old Grammar School . . 40 IV. Cambridge, and College Days 51 V. Tennyson's London 62 VI. Shiplake and the Wedding Day . . .76 VII. Clevedon, the Shrine of Arthur Hallam . 89 VIII. Hawarden, the Home of a Lifelong Friend 101 IX. Farringford and the Isle of Wight . .111 X. Aldworth among the Surrey Hills . . 142 XI. TiNTAGEL AND KiNG ArTHUR l63 XII. Amesbury Abbey and Queen Guinevere . . 176 XIII. Camelot and Lyonesse 187 XIV. Winchester and King Arthur's Round Table 200 XV. Glastonbury Abbey and the Isle of Avalon 219 Postscript 241 Index 245 ILLUSTRATIONS The New Tennyson Statue, Lincoln Cathedral Frontispiece OPPOSITE PAGE Map of the Tennyson Country 1' Tennyson's Birthplace, Somersby 20 Somersby Grange 28 The Brook and Bridge, Somersby 28 Somersby Church 36' King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth . . . 46 Eastgate, Louth 46 Master's Court, Trinity College, Cambridge . . . 52" The Backs, Cambridge 58"^ Portrait of Tennyson in 1859, by Watts, owned by Lady Henry Somerset 70 Bolney Court, Shiplake 78*^ Shiplake Church 78"^ Portrait of Mrs. Tennyson, by Watts 84 "^ Clevedon Court 94 Coleridge's Cottage, Clevedon 94 The Old Church, Clevedon 98 Interior of Clevedon Church 98 Hawarden Castle 106' Alum Bay, Isle of Wight 118'^ xi ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITE PAGE Farringford, Tennyson's Home at Freshwater. . 126 Tennyson's Lane, Farringford 132 The Tennyson Beacon 138 Aldworth 146 Portrait of Tennyson by Samuel Laurence . . .150 Latest Portrait of Tennyson, by Watts . . . .154 Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 162 Through the Postern Gate, Tintagel 168' The Castle Arch, Tintagel 172 The Church, Amesbury 178 Land's End, looking off to Lyonesse 188 Perranporth Arch and Chapel Rocks 192' Dozemary Pool 196 Winchester Cathedral 204 Westgate, Winchester 204 Great Hall of the Castle, and the Round Table .210 The Tor, Glastonbury 220' Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey 226 The Abbot's Kitchen, Glastonbury 236 ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITE PAGE Farringford, Tennyson's Home at Freshwater, . 126 Tennyson's Lane, Farringford 132' The Tennyson Beacon 138 Aldworth 146 Portrait of Tennyson by Samuel Laurence . . .150 Latest Portrait of Tennyson, by Watts . . . .154 Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 162 Through the Postern Gate, Tintagel 168' The Castle Arch, Tintagel 172 The Church, Amesbury 178 Land's End, looking off to Lyonesse 188 Perranporth Arch and Chapel Rocks 192' Dozemary Pool ig6 Winchester Cathedral 204 Westgate, Winchester 204 Great Hall of the Castle, and the Round Table . 210' The Tor, Glastonbury 220' Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey 226' The Abbot's Kitchen, Glastonbury 236 -i\ IRISH SEA w Shiplake trievedon Glastonbury Abbey Aldworth Amcsburv Abbey ^p, , . y ' J /Winchester Lyonesse [ r P Through England with Tennyson LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS IT was a glorious afternoon when we came riding into the ancient city of Lincoln, and saw in the sunset light the great cathedral, triple-towered, enthroned upon the heights above the dwarfish houses of the town. Tennyson was always impressed by the grandeur of this cathedral, its vastness and its mystery. He often writes of cathedrals in his poems, — of the "gray cathedral towers," and of the "windy clanging of the minster clock," and doubtless often had in mind his boyhood memory of this majestic fane. So beautiful are its perfect and lofty proportions that it seemed to him as "the towers of Ilion, which rose like a mist of music while Apollo sang." We were delighted to find a noble statue of 1 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Tennyson in the cathedral close at Lincoln, under the very shadow of the mighty minster. We had not known that such a statue was there, and at a distance as we came toward it, it seemed like a monument to Sir Walter Scott and his dog. But we asked ourselves, Why should Sir Walter have a place here? As we drew nearer, we saw that it was Ten- nyson with his hound. "But what is it that he has in his hand?" queried the Lady, "and why is it that he stands in such a meditative attitude with bowed head?" "It is a bird he holds, — a dead bird," said one of the Laddies. But as we approached still nearer, it flashed upon us. What he held in his hand was "the flower from the crannied wall," and he was meditating upon it : "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here root and all in my hand. Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is." It is singularly appropriate that this lofty and profound thought should be thus sym- bolized in the shadow of the great cathedral. For the poem went to the heart of things, and 2 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS is not religion also a getting at the heart of God and of man? This statue, designed by George Frederick Watts, is a noble piece of work. We must remember that the towers of Lin- coln Cathedral seen from Somersby were the far-off vision of grandeur that the boy Tenny- son beheld. It was the first cathedral which he visited, and it left its great memories in his poems. Lincolnshire is the land of the birth and boyhood of Tennyson, and yet strangely enough we find no specific mention of Lin- coln the city or the cathedral among his poems, but for that matter no city seemed to appeal to him. He did not like the rush and roar of life, nor its stress and suffering. No city receives much attention in his poems, and yet he visited Lincoln often, and it was dear to his heart. The towers of Lincoln can be seen for forty miles. I have always felt that the lines in "The Gardener's Daughter" were finely suggestive of Lincoln : "Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage bells, 3 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON And sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock; Although between it and the garden lies A league of grass, washed by a slow, broad stream That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar, Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on. Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge Crowned with the minster towers." This noble pile is the outstanding glory of the Lincolnshire country. Lincoln is a most fascinating cathedral town. It was an ancient British settlement first of all, afterward Ro- man, later it was early English, or Saxon, with its strong infusion of Danes. Lincoln was the "Lindum Colonia" of the Romans, one of their famous strongholds, and its pres- ent name is merely a contraction of the an- cient Latin. It was chosen as a stronghold and chief city in William the Conqueror's day. The base of a Roman portico may still be seen at Lincoln, and the pillars are out- lined in mosaic on the streets. An ancient Roman altar inscribed to the Fates is still pre- served in St. Swithin's Church. Hugh of Avalon, the earliest bishop and builder of Lincoln, came from Grenoble in France and was afterward canonized as St. Hugh of Lincoln. After him came a succession of 4 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS wonderful builders, each doing his part for the great structure. What glorious builders they were! For eight centuries this wonder- ful pile grew, although for the past three hun- dred years it has stood finished and complete, and actually unchanged as it is to-day. We paused and looked at it and let that thought soak in. Before we were born, it had stood thus with its gray towers. Yea, before our grandfather was born, it had stood thus fin- ished, — yea, nine generations ago, finished! Lincoln cathedral sits like a queen on the heights of the city, a glorious vision to be seen for forty miles around from all directions. We were happily ensconced in a pleasant home in the Bail-gate, under the shadow of the cathedral towers. We had a fair garden to ourselves. It was growing in almost trop- ical luxuriance. From our windows we looked up at the great minster in the sunset light. The Laddies enjoyed the old castle near by us, built by William the Conqueror. With great glee they climbed up its narrow, wind- ing stairs and with happy creeping of flesh ventured stealthily into its gruesome dun- geons. We especially rejoiced in the wonder- ful cathedral services, and the reverberation 5 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON of the music through the long aisles and from the groined roof. And we all entered into the medieval spirit of old Lincoln as seen in its merry imp, and its queer and quaint legends. But there is more in Lincolnshire than the cathedral. The whole country is a fascinating region. In extent it is the second largest shire in England; and it is full of most ro- mantic legend and history. Its ancient peo- ple were the Iceni, and their great queen was Boadicea, to whom Tennyson pays tribute in a noble poem. Its most ancient and pictur- esque religious house was Crowland Abbey, of which a stately ruin still stands, now re- modeled into a parish church. We reread the great story of it in Kingsley's famous "Here- ward the Wake." Aiid also reading back into antiquity, we find the name "Tennyson" is the same as "Dennison," which means the son of Dennis, the latter being a favorite name in Latin countries, a contraction of St. Di- onysius the Areopagite, the early Christian saint of Athens. In the North Wold of Lincolnshire is Tealby, which was the home of the poet's grandfather, Mr. George Tennj^son. The old house is gone, but the present one, still 6 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS called Bayons Manor, is a grand old baronial hall. Here Bulwer Lytton wrote his "Har- old," and the park and grounds are so beautiful that they might well have been the scene of Tennyson's poem of "The Princess," although we have fuller evidence for ascrib- ing that poem's scenery to the estate of Sir John Simeon at Swainston in the Isle of Wight. Spalding is a most ancient town of Lincoln- shire, with memories of John of Gaunt and Geoffrey Chaucer, predecessor of Tennyson in the gentle craft. Stamford, anciently a ford of stone, is said to date to the founding of Rome or beyond, and once was the seat of Brasenose College, now at Oxford. Among the Lincolnshire worthies, besides Tennyson, are Jolm and Charles Wesley, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir John Franklin, the latter born at Louth. Near Grantham it was that Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1642, where his father was lord of the manor at Woolsthorpe. And not far away is Epworth, where, in the rectory, the Wesleys were born. Gainsborough boasts that it was in its pre- cincts on the river Trent that Alfred the Great married the daughter of the chief of 7 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON the Ganii. Tattersall with its castle and church was an old Roman station. We shall visit Louth, Spilsby, Horncastle, and Som- ersby a little later. But here we must remem- ber that another glory of Lincolnshire is old Boston on the Witham. Its beautiful church with a lofty tower, three hundred feet high, is a landmark and a beacon for the seacoast. But what interests us most is that from this city of old Lincolnshire, men of the type of Tenny- son and his ancestors went forth in 1620; and later, Dr. Cotton the vicar, Atherton Hough the mayor, and other sturdy citizens, unable to bear the injustice of the Uniformity Act, set sail for New England, to found another and greater Boston in America. They were a strong, liberty-loving, intellectual and spiritual people, these Lincolnshire folk. Much of Lincolnshire is dull and flat, like Holland. Henry the Eighth called this region of Lincolnshire "one of the most brute and beestilie of the whole realm." George the Third said it was "all flats, fogs, and fens." Hawthorne and Ruskin speak unkindly of it. But Lincolnshire is not all fen. Only one third of the country, the southern part where it is very flat, is fen land, and that is now 8 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS practically reclaimed. The Romans began to drain the fens by canals, and they built sea- banks. The fen region is now a vast cultivated garden, with "wide stretches of wheat, tender in its green under the soft spring skies, and a golden glory in autumn days." And the other two-thirds of Lincolnshire has much of in- terest. A large part of the region is beautiful with wooded hills, deep valleys, and wonderful pasture meadows. Charles Kingsley knew this fen country well, and wrote of it with charm and enthusiasm. And Tennyson has immor- talized it by a thousand references in his poems. All through Tennyson's poetry are Lincoln- shire silhouettes, — the rooks, that rise in a black mass with much clamor; the haunts of "hern and crake"; the windy tall elm trees, favorites of Tennyson ; the large limes haunted by bees; the "pillared dusk of sounding syca- mores" ; and a hundred others which those who know well the Lincolnshire scenery instantly identify. Even the "Break, break, break," sug- gested undoubtedly by the sea at Salthouse Beach near Clevedon Church where Hallam lies buried, was written, as Tennyson himself tells, in a Lincolnshire lane at five o'clock in the morning. THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Monotonous and uninteresting in a sense is this Lincolnshire coast, and yet the lonely stretches of the shore are not without a cer- tain wild fascination. There is the yellow of the sands, the blue green of the sea hollows, and the fresh breezes of the roaring winds. Sometimes, as Tennyson says, "The hollow ocean ridges roaring into cataracts." The sea-coast town in Lincolnshire especially associated with the poet is, of course, Mable- thorpe, which in Tennyson's day was a little seaside village with sand as smooth as marble, with scarcely a rock or even a ridge of shingle for the waves to dash against, — only, as Ten- nyson wrote, "The low moan of leaden-colored seas." When he was a boy, he once ran bareheaded all the way from Somersby to Mablethorpe to get the salt breeze and a glimpse of the sea. Ma- blethorpe is now a popular watering-place, along with Skegness and Sutton-on-the-Sea. At Mablethorpe there is a house still shown as having been occupied by the Tennysons during the summers long ago. It was this 10 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS region that doubtless the poet described in his lines : "The drain-cut levels of the marshy lea — Gray sand banks and pale sunsets, — dreary wind. Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-colored sea." It was only the later life of Tennyson that was associated with Farringford and Aldworth. His earlier life, childhood and early manhood, — "the tall, melancholy-looking youth, with long, dark hair; the youth full of strange fan- cies and dreams," may be thoroughly claimed by Lincolnshire. His poems up to "In Memo- riam" were saturated with Lincolnshire, and even "In Memoriam" is full of loving remi- niscences of his youth. Some have said that no one but a Lincolnshire man could have written "Mariana" of the moated grange, with its weariness and desolation in the very spirit of the fen country. Here is so much of the dreary landscape over which the love-lorn Mariana strained her doleful eyes. "The May Queen" is all Lincolnshire. His intimate friend, Edward Fitzgerald, the poet-translator of Omar Khayyam, said more than once that Tennyson should never have transferred his residence to any other part of England, for 11 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON there was no better place than Lincolnshire, "where there were not only such good seas, but also such fine hill and dale among the wolds." So we were interested in every feature of this Tennyson country where the poet's heart was nurtured. We had a justifiable curiosity to see the very places, and to have their aid in interpreting the poems and his life. You re- member that "literary history," as Professor Edmund Gosse says, "is a very different thing from personal history, and there are certain facts about the development of a poet's intel- lect and the direction which it took, that in- spires a curiosity perfectly legitimate." But I confess that our interest was rather more than literary. It was also personal, for some- how we loved Tennyson. We have dwelt thus on Lincoln and its cathedral and the Lincolnshire fens and the medieval atmosphere, because it was into these associations that Tennyson came as a boy, and the great memories never left him, but had their inevitable effects on all his life and work. Lincoln is the heart of this beautiful land of Lincolnshire. The Lincolnshire people are liberty-loving. Norse traditions linger here. 12 LINCOLN AND THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS It is wonderful scenery, quiet but fascinating, marshes and meads, fens and meres. It has a long and heroic chronicle of struggles and con- quests, here in East Anglia. There is poetry everywhere in Lincolnshire, and Tennyson imbibed it in his childhood days. His poetic soul grew rich in this free and bountiful region. His work is full of these early impressions. He became a nature lover, sturdy and strong, and he came to see that all things were beautiful and sublime. We were convinced again on visiting Lin- colnshire that the poet is a product of his land and times, and especially is the home of chil- hood the fountain of his fancy. Memory is the great artist which is constantly weaving into new pictures the idealizations of the past. Tennyson is altogether English in feeling and speech. He has a Homeric breadth and grandeur; his language is often as splendid as that of Shakespeare or Milton, but whereas Shakespeare is cosmopolitan and universal, and Milton largely classical; while Browning is predominantly Italian in his themes and treatment, Tennyson is English to the core. He is almost entirely confined, and willingly so, to English song, English stories, English 13 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON heroes, English landscapes, English ideals, both patriotic and religious. Tennyson is an artist. He paints radiant pictures, and within them is a mystic glow and awe, shadows and gleams and a haunting beauty, but behind all is a spiritual reality, of which the substance is the strong faith, the love of law, and the moral idealism of English thought and life. His work rises with a music and a majesty almost like the great English cathedral of Lincoln itself. He is a seer as well as a bard, a mighty prophet as well as a consummate artist. He seems to have something of the supernatural wisdom and the mystical magic of his own great Merlin. 14 II SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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 Lincoln- shire. But we can bear testimony to the con- trary. 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 rail- road to Somersby. Either Spilsby or Horn- castle 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 15 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 vil- lage within whose aisles we lingered a long time. The beauty spot of the village, how- ever, is a magnificent road called "the Ave- nue," a long colonnade of great trees, form- erly 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 pub- lic 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 North- ern 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 16 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE successful, putting them among the best Eng- lish dialect studies of our times. There is also in these poems some touches of Tenny- son's humor, — for instance, where the North- ern 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: "Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheere munny is!" And that modern bit of satire in "The Vil- lage 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 com- ing and going and leisurely sauntering. It was a day of alternate sunshine and showers. We set forth in a wagonette early one morn- ing for our ride through the Lincolnshire lanes. The Lady and the Laddies were first of all delighted by the skylarks. It was their 17 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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: "Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate." The bright-colored poppies which dotted 18 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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 Daugh- ter," although we knew that it was Stock- worth Mill, some distance from this place, which was the one probably described by Ten- nyson. The entire ride is a charming jour- ney. 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 wind- ing 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 Som- ersby: "Halfway between Horncastle and Spilsby, in a land of quiet villages, large fields, gray hillsides, and noble, tall-towered 19 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 some- thing 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 20 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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, ap- pointed 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 pres- 21 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON ent 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 cur- 22 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE tains, sofas, and chairs, and looking out on the lawn." And surely, this dining-room is one of the most interesting places in the house. Tenny- son'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 en- tered it. And sure enough it has a real eccle- siastical 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 hang- ings. 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 charm- ingly 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 even- ings, 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 Me- moriam": 23 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON "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 splen- did 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 in- timate acquaintance. 24 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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 hun- dred 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 after- 25 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON noons. It was here that the quiet love-mak- ing 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 Tenny- son 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 rec- tory is this from the south, where, as Napier says, "the creepers clamber up the yellow- washed walls, and it looks so sweet one does not wonder at the regrets the poet had in leav- ing 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, 26 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE or the cooing in the distant woods of the day- long murmuring wood-pigeon." The orchard on the right of the lawn forms a sunny spot that always awoke in Tenny- son'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 sand- stone 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, deli- cately 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 27 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 at- tempt to identify are of course more or less idealizations when the poet describes them. Even this brook does not fully answer Ten- nyson'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. 28 SOMERSBY GRANGE. THE BROOK AND BRIDGE, SOMERSBY. SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE "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." 29 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 even- ings it was their custom to tell long stories to each other around the crackling oaken fire. These stories continued from evening to even- ing. One story, called "the Old Horse," Ten- nyson 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 80 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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, mar- ried 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 31 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 sug- gested 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 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE where Tennyson was baptized, is just a pic- turesque 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 Vir- gin. 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 holi- ness," 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 begin- ning 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 beauti- ful old church at Somersby. 33 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 ex- cept 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 par- sonage gained their early knowledge of books, and read widely of Shakespeare, Goldsmith, 34 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Cervantes, and Bunyan. And what of Tennyson's mother? The Lady found that she had been Miss Fytche, the daughter of the vicar of Louth. She be- came 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 deaf- ness, 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 35 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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 pre- cious 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 Tenny- son'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 en- shrined 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 36 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE 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 meadow- land, 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 Som- ersby, not only as the friend of Alfred Ten- nyson, but as the lover of his sister." Poor Hallam! He died the following year, and the awful tragedy overshadowed Tenny- son and his sister for many years. A revela- tion of the depths of the bereavement is in "In Memoriam." Those special stanzas from "In Memoriam" which describe this Somersby 37 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 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. "O joy to him in this retreat, Immantled in ambrosial dark, To drink the cooler air, and mark The landscape winking thro' the heat! "O sound to rout the brood of cares. The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew. And tumbled half the mellowing pears !" "I climb the hill; from end to end Of all the landscape underneath, I find no place that does not breathe Some gracious memory of my friend; "No gray old grange, or lonely fold. Or low morass and whispering reed. Or simple stile from mead to mead. Or sheepwalk up the windy wold; 38 SOMERSBY, THE POET'S BIRTHPLACE "The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well. Thro' four sweet years arose and fell. From flower to flower, from snow to snow: "And we with singing cheer'd the way. And, crown'd with all the season lent, From April on to April went. And glad at heart from May to May." [From "In Memoriam," LXXIX, C. XXII.] 39 Ill LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL LOUTH has the distinction of having given Tennyson much of his schooling in his boyhood days, at the old King Edward VI Grammar School. And hither went our little pilgrimage to see what was left of the environment of the days, — almost a century ago, — when Tennyson was a school- boy here. We had a rare choice of inns in the ancient town. There was The Jolly Sailor, The Fleece, — we resolved instantly not to stop there, — Ye Old Whyte Swanne, The Wheat Sheaf, The Royal Oak, and the Ma- son's Arms. We rather inclined to the latter, not merely because one of our pilgrims was a free and accepted member of the fraternity, but also because the place looked so home-like and delightful. We made friends at once with the landlady. She had a delightful frankness. "It's a dull old town," she said; "I thought I should die when I first came here; but I got used to it after a few years." 40 LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL We found it really a quaint old town, seem- ingly unchanged with the course of the years. It has one noble, ancient church, the parish church of St. James, with a lofty spire. This parish church at Louth is considered one of the finest perpendicular buildings in England. Its spire claims to be the second in England, for height and beauty, only Salisbury Ca- thedral excelling it. The exterior of the church is rather better than the interior. The most picturesque view of the town is from the ancient stone bridge on Bridge Street, where the antiquated mill is now the head- quarters of the very modern Boy Scouts, under the auspices of General Baden-Powell. First of all, we sought out the old house on Westgate Place, where Tennyson lodged as a boy. It was Tennyson's grandmother, Mrs. Fytche, with her daughter Mary Anne, who lived at Westgate Place, and Tennyson's par- ents often came and stayed here while Al- fred was a schoolboy at Louth. The house in Westgate Place was a second home to the young Tennyson. It is now an ordinary dwelling. Doubtless it was much pleasanter in the older days than at present, for there are remains of quaint gardens in front, and 41 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON very near is a purling brook. Over the door of the house are the simple words, "Tenny- son's House." "It is pleasant here in sum- mer," said the maid who lived next door, "and heaps of people come here to see the place." Our next shrine was to be the school where Tennyson began his education. Tennyson and all his brothers were sent to this school at Louth. But we were misdirected and were soon hammering at the knocker of an elegant old school, ensconced amid its lawn and an- cient trees, and were ushered in with much ceremony only to find ourselves amid a bevy of young girls in a great music room where they were playing at the piano and dancing. We wondered whether this could be the place, but on being further ushered into a charm- ing reception room with its beautiful pictures and shelves of fine books, we were soon greeted by Miss Masson, the head mistress of the chief girls' school in Louth. She was exceedingly affable, and explained that the boys' school was at the other end of the same ground, some distance away, and she would herself go over and show us to the master's lodge. Our Lady of the pilgrimage was soon on the best of terms with this delightful Eng- 42 LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL lish schoolmistress, and our mistake ended most happily, for she showed us much atten- tion and insisted on lending us a rare book on the antiquities of Louth, which we felt a most daring way to treat strangers and con- fessed book-lovers. We found the head master of the boys' school living in a most picturesque old house, over which clambered the ivy and the roses. Fine lawns and gardens surrounded the estate. As we walked through the avenue up to the head master's lodge, our Laddies picked up some long feathers that had fallen from the rooks that nested in the old elms, and stuck them in their hats. Mr. Unwinn, the head master, was most courteous and cordial, as was also his good wife. He was a Cambridge University man, as Tennyson had been, and very quick and pleasant in speech. His wife told us that she had formerly been a trained nurse, and she enjoyed being a mother to the boys. "I see that they get plenty of good milk, eggs, and jam," she exclaimed laughingly. Many of the boys at the King Edward VI school are boarding pupils, and live with the head master and his wife at the lodge. They 43 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON have most pleasant and commodious dormi- tories, as well as a gymnasium, a swimming- pool, and tennis courts. As we went through the building, we found that one commodious sleeping section was named the Tennyson Dormitory. It was about seven o'clock in the evening when we made our visit, and the boys were grouped together in one of the study- rooms, conning their evening tasks, under the direction of one of the ushers, as assistant teachers are called in England. All the boys rose and stood, as we entered the room, and remained standing until our exit, bowing to us all pleasantly as we passed out. I can see them yet, and it makes a happy memory. Our little Laddies were much pleased at this ex- hibition of English good manners, and we hope took the lesson to heart. We told Mr. Unwinn that we wanted very much to see a certain bust of Tennj^son which we under- stood was in the schoolroom of the ancient building, and would be glad to come in the morning at any convenient hour for him. "Why not see it to-night?" he asked. "It will be light until nine or ten o'clock." Some- how we had not quite realized what might be done in the long summer twilight of old LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL England, or that he would be willing to jour- ney over to the ancient schoolhouse at this hour of the evening. "But it is perfectly con- venient," he said. "There is a good light, and we do not have supper until half-past eight." So our pilgrimage wended its way to the ancient schoolhouse. It has been somewhat rebuilt since Tennyson's day, but occupies the same site, and the figiu'e of King Edward VI still remains from the old building. It has been an endowed school since Edward VI's day, but the pupils pay for tuition. It is one of the great "public schools," as they call them in England, which means that they are the most private and expensive schools in the kingdom. In the schoolroom we found a fine old painting of Mr. Waite, who was Tennyson's teacher, and also a white marble bust of the great Poet Laureate, by H. Garland, of which we secured a good photograph. It must be a pride and emulation to every scholar in the school to have the schoolboy memory of Tennyson their special possession. At the opposite end of the schoolroom a surprise awaited us. For there was the bust in bronze of Captain John Smith, founder of 45 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Virginia, who we learned was born near Louth, educated at this school, and here is his effigy executed from the most authentic contemporaneous prints by that versatile sol- dier, General Baden-Powell himself, who is a descendant, or connection at least, of the redoubtable Virginia captain. This bust of Captain John Smith seemed a real discovery to us. You remember that Louth is the place where the first poems saw the light, and Jackson the bookseller must be credited with consider- able spirit and liberality in fathering this early volume. As we wandered through the town the next day, we stopped in at Jackson's, the book- seller and printer in the market-place. Ten- nyson's first book of poems was entitled, "Poems by Two Brothers," and was written partly by Alfred and partly by Charles. It was printed in 1827, and Jackson gave them ten pounds for the copyright. The manuscript of the early volume is now worth a thousand pounds. The establishment is still a printing shop and bookshop, kept by Parker, but there are no more Tennyson books published there. One of the members 46 KING EDWARD VI GRAMMAR SCHOOL, LOUTH. EASTGATE, LOUTH. LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL of the firm showed us some ancient posters and some very old and quaint licenses for printing which took us at once into the atmos- phere of the old days. Tennyson's school-days at Louth began at Christmas term of the year of the bat- tle of Waterloo. One incident of his school- days is specially remembered. It was the school-festival at the time of the coronation of George IV. He remembered that all the boys were decked out in rosettes, and that they had processions and much merry-mak- ing. His parents and friends say that he was a boy grave beyond his years, even in these schooldays. He was very reserved and rarely associated with other boys. His school life at Louth ended when he was twelve years old, and he went back to his home at Som- ersby for six years more with his father as his teacher, supplemented by the classics taught by a Roman Catholic priest of the neighborhood, and by music lessons for which he went to Horncastle. During these school-days at Louth and Somersby, he was doubtless learning more than the lessons of the schoolroom in this beau- 47 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON tiful country of Lincolnshire, this land of fens in East Anglia. He was imbibing a sense of poetry in the very air, and nourish- ing a "youth sublime." Many visits he paid to the seacoast in the neighborhood, and espe- cially to Mablethorpe, then a small town in a flat country where the sand slowly shifts into banks and builds up barriers between seas and fields. Here he spent many dreamy days in verse-making, hearing "the Norland winds pipe down the sea." There is some- thing fascinating in the dreary moorland and barren shore of this part of Lincolnshire. It is a land of becks and knolls, of ridged wolds, of crowded farms and lessening towns, of glooming flats and heaving sea. There is a certain inspiration of poetry in the very deso- lateness of the landscape. Even the old Doric language of Lincolnshire, which is fast dying out, is poetic. It is full of such words as Grange, wold, beck, fen, shard, holm, wattled, mere, and copse, and the strain of the old Danish and Viking blood seems to come out at times in the spirit of the people. We may all see that his poems even in later years are redolent of the Lincolnshire scenery and atmosphere. His early schooling in nature 48 LOUTH AND THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL remained with him. "The May Queen," for instance, is a true Lincolnshire picture. It is a lovely homespun drama, and is reminiscent, as all his friends say, of the Maypole danc- ing at Horncastle, which he had known so well. The poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" is probably suggested by Scrivelsby Court in this same region, a seat of the Dymoke fam- ily, where there are famous lions on the gate. "The Gardener's Daughter" is a poem full of the brightness and sweetness of a Lincoln- shire summer. "Locksley Hall" was doubt- less suggested by Langton Hall which Ten- nyson knew well. The author has confessed that there is really no authentic Locksley Hall, and no actual Cousin Amy; no real passion or tragedy that is commemorated. It is all the poet's imagination. But neverthe- less the scenery and the setting are distinc- tively of Lincolnshire. Some items in the description are taken from the lion-guarded gate of Scrivelsby Court; "the warrior with feet crossed" probably from Harrington Church; "the ivied casement" is a description of the old hall at North Somercote; and the "chapel sinking" is probably that at Bayons 49 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Manor. It is thus all largely reminiscent of East Anglia. "Locksley Hall" was an artis- tic and poetical triumph. The whole coun- try rang with its music, and by that triumph, as one aptly said, "another King Alfred was crowned in England." 50 IV CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS IT was at Oxford that Tennyson in 1855, received an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws. The story is related that he appeared before the great assembly in the Sheldonian Theater in rather careless array and somewhat unkempt hair, and the irrepres- sible undergraduates called out with great glee from the gallery, "Did your mother call you early, call you early, Alfred dear?" But it was at the other great University, Cambridge, that he received his college train- ing, although he was compelled by family circumstances, especially his father's sudden death, to leave the University without taking his degree. Our chief interest at Cambridge clustered around Trinity College, Tennyson's own college, but we found other most fascinating features of the beautiful university town; for instance, Christ College, with which the Lad- 51 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON dies were especially pleased because while we sat and read poetry under the trees they had such a good game of ball on the lovely lawn where the poet John Milton had played in the olden days, and where there still stands and flourishes the very mulberry-tree which he planted with his own hands. In these days of its extreme age, the tree has to have sev- eral supports for its ancient limbs. These gardens of Christ College with their beau- tiful walks, and the swimming-pool, with its classic pavilion, are among the most charming things in Cambridge. Sir Philip Sidney and Bishop Hugh Latimer were also students here in their youthful days. Sidney Sussex College pleased us also, because it was the college of the great Oliver Cromwell, and Emmanuel College, because it was a fountain of the old Pilgrim and Puritan spirit and had nourished John Harvard and several of the Pilgrim fathers. King's College Chapel delighted both eyes and heart. It has such glorious stained glass like the Saint Chapelle in Paris. It is the most gorgeous college chapel in the world. But Trinity College was our special ob- ject of interest. We remembered that three 52 CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS of the Tennyson boys had been members of Trinity College. Charles and Alfred joined Frederick Tennyson there in October, 1829. Alfred Tennyson occupied lodgings in Cam- bridge and never lived in the college. His rooms were in the Corpus Buildings in Trumpington Street, the nearest door to Corpus Gate. Dining "in hall"— that is, with the students in the great hall of the college — was a severe trial to him on account of his diffidence. Sometimes he would sacrifice a meal rather than endure the hardship of fa- cing that crowd of students. But he did have the courage after much persuasion to join a society of congenial spirits whose numbers were limited to twelve, and hence called "The Apostles." Among them were several who became his lifelong friends, such as James Spedding, Henry Alford, Richard Monckton Milnes (afterward Lord Houghton), King- lake, author of "Eothen," and historian of the Crimean War, Richard C. Trench, Dean of Westminster and Archbishop of Dublin, Frederick Denison Maurice, Arthur Hallam, and others. Arthur Hallam's rooms were in the New Court of Trinity College. Thack- eray was a contemporary of Tennyson's at 53 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Trinity College, although they were in a different set and did not get acquainted in University days. At Cambridge Tennyson wrote the first two parts of "The Lover's Tale." He also won here the Chancellor's prize for a poem on "Timbuctoo." It seems an odd subject for poetry, but we may remember that at that time the eyes of all the world were on Africa. A series of intrepid explorers had been making their way into the Dark Continent, and had aroused public interest. Timbuctoo, which had re- cently been visited for the first time by civ- ilized man in the person of a young French- man, was the ultima thule of African dis- covery. It is an interesting story which the poet himself tells, of how he took an old poem which he had composed two years before on the theme of the Battle of Armageddon, and putting a new beginning and a new end to it, he sent it in, under the title of "Timbuc- too." It was written in blank verse, although the usual tradition was that the poem should be written in heroic couplets, but such was the vigor and originality of Tennyson's lines that they won the prize in spite of this in- novation. 54. CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS While he was in the University he pub- lished, in 1830, a volume called "Poems; Chiefly Lyrical," containing "Claribel," and several similar poems, "The Dying Swan," "Sea Fancies," "The Owl," "Ode to Mem- ory," and some others. The volume was quite favorably received, and two or three reviewers saw the promise of real genius in it. Near Cambridge is a picturesque mill that claims to have suggested the scene of "The Miller's Daughter." Several other mills, how- ever, have been named as having probably suggested the poem. Stockworth Mill, near Somersby, is usually considered the one, and yet it has been somewhat idealized in the de- scription. But Grantchester Mill, near Cam- bridge, is one that Tennyson was very familiar with in his student days. He was rather averse to having his poems too closely identi- fied, and once when he was asked about the mill he answered, "If it was anywhere, it was Trumpington," meaning Grantchester Mill, near Cambridge, but also implying by those words "if it was anywhere" that it was scarcely more this than the other picturesque old mills that he had in mind. It was in 1831 that Tennyson's father died, 55 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON and the poet left Cambridge without taking his degree, and returned to Somersby. In 1832 Arthur Hallam achieved his degree, and spent part of the summer at Somersby, as the friend of Tennyson and the accepted lover of Tennyson's sister. Almost thirty years later, when Tennyson had risen to fame as the Laureate of England and as one of the great poets of the world, his friends presented a marble bust of him to Trinity College. It was an excellent work, executed by Woolner. But this presentation caused a controversy as to its place, for some of the college author- ities thought that the position of the poet was not yet assured in the world. At first, there- fore, it was located in the vestibule of the college, but finally in later years it was given its rightful place in the library. It was not until February 1, 1868, thirty-seven years after leaving the college, that Tennyson paid his first recorded visit since undergraduate days to old Cambridge. He stayed at Trinity College at the Lodge. He made another visit here in 1886 with his son Hallam, and Hal- lam's wife. Again he stayed at Trinity, with the Master of the College, while the others stayed at the famous inn. The Bull, 56 CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS So we Pilgrims sought out at Cambridge as many of these haunts as we could, espe- cially in and about Trinity College. We went into the splendid dining hall of Trinity Col- lege and saw the portraits of some of the famous men of the college, among them Isaac Newton, Lord Bacon, Macaulay, Dryden, George Herbert, Byron, Thackeray, F. D. Maurice, and a dozen others, and a most notable portrait of Tennyson by George Frederick Watts. In the library we saw the bust of Tennyson by Woolner, and in the showcases were interesting manuscripts by Tennyson, Milton, Byron, and Thackeray. In the ante-chapel was a striking statue of Ten- nyson by Thorneycroft. It represents him seated in scholarly attitude in an armchair. His son Lord Tennyson said to me concerning this statue, "It is fine as a piece of statuary, but not altogether successful as a likeness." We looked into the kitchens of Trinity College, for this part of the curriculum seemed particularly to interest the Lady and the Laddies. Trinity is the largest college in England, and every day this one kitchen cooks dinner for more than seven hundred students. But Trinity College is only one out of the 67 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON twenty or more colleges at Cambridge, and only one group out of the three or four thou- sand students in the university. I went down to the Corpus Buildings, and photographed Tennyson's rooms, while the Laddies were playing around the fountain in the great court of Trinity College, and we also photographed Arthur Hallam's room in the New Court. What a wonderful group of men this was at Trinity College in Tennyson's day! And what a contribution this one group of con- temporaneous students have made to English literature. Think of Macaulay the historian and essayist, Thackeray the novelist, Frederic Denison Maurice the liberal theologian, Rich- ard C. Trench and Henry Alford the com- mentators, and Tennyson the poet as fellow- students together, unconscious of the part that they were to play in the great world's life. But above all, think of what one brief college friendship, the friendship of Arthur Hallam, meant to the poet Tennyson. It became the fountain and inspiration of his noblest life, and brought forth "In Me- moriam," the masterpiece of his spiritual in- terpretation of the struggles and triumphs of Life and Death and Immortality. We 58 CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS thought of it as we wandered around Cam- bridge over the exquisite Bridge of Sighs at St. John's College, one of the most charm- ing vistas in all the world, and along the so-called Cambridge Backs, which are really the parks and gardens of the various colleges, through which the little river flows. They are the special glory of Cambridge, and must always be duly considered in discussing the relative beauty of the rival university towns of Oxford and Cambridge. They make as "pleasant a retreat for the pursuit of knowl- edge" as this old world of ours can offer, — a most congenial place to wander and to medi- tate; and here often Arthur Hallam and Al- fred Tennj^son wandered arm in arm, in per- fect companionship, thinking and talking of high themes, and often rowing on the classic river Cam, — and loving one another "with a love passing the love of women." Do you re- member the reference to these classic days at Cambridge in "In Memoriam," where he de- scribes his visit to the old college? "I past beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown ; I rov'd at random thro' the town. And saw the tumult of the halls; 59 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON "And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organs make. And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophet blazon'd on the panes: . "And caught once more the distant shout. The measured pulse of racing oars Among the willows, paced the shores And many a bridge and all about "The same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same; and last Up that long walk of lines I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt. "Another name was on the door; I linger'd; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys I That crash'd the glass and beat the floor. "Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art And labor and the changing mart And all the framework of the land: "When one would aim an arrow fair. But send it slackly from the string; And one would pierce an outer ring And one an inner, here and there; "And last the master-bowman, he Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free 60 CAMBRIDGE, AND COLLEGE DAYS "From point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law, To those conclusions when we saw The God within him light his face, "And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly-wise; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo." [From "In Memoriam," LXXXVII.] 61 TENNYSON'S LONDON THERE are many who have done Dick- ens' London, hunting out his homes and the places made famous in his writings; but our pilgrimage ventured on a new voyage of discovery. We did not know of a single individual who had made the at- tempt to learn Tennyson's London. Tenny- son did not love cities; he never exulted in them. There is no indication that he ever re- joiced in London, or the swarming multitudes of old London streets, as did Charles Lamb, who was so delighted with the tide of life on Fleet Street. Tennyson loved the country; he was not a city man, but a lover of the fields and woods and sea, and nearly all his life from beginning to end was spent in the country, with only occasional incursions into the crowded ways of men. He used to love, as he says, 62 TENNYSON'S LONDON "His own gray towers, plain life and lettered peace. To read and rhyme in solitary fields, The lark above, the nightingale below. And answer them in song." Few of Tennyson's poems are therefore connected with London, or indeed with any city. These were to him places of fugitive sojourning, or of brief visitation. His themes are mostly pastoral or national themes. More or less often, from the time of his University days at Cambridge, which ended in 1831, until his marriage in 1850, Tenny- son divided his time between Somersby and lodgings in London. These lodgings were in Camden Town, and later in Lincoln's Inn. During this time his volume of 1832 appeared, containing such poems as "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Lotus Eaters." His first real volume, the "Poems; Chiefly Lyrical," having appeared in 1830, there was nothing more for ten years. Finally, early in 1842, "Poems by Alfred Tennyson, in Two Vol- umes," were published by Moxon of Dover Street, and contained such masterpieces as "Locksley Hall," "Godiva," "Sir Galahad," and "Break, Break, Break!" It was these volumes that brought him his real fame. 63 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Edgar Allan Poe cried enthusiastically, "This Tennyson is the noblest poet that has ever lived!" Emerson gave his judgment, "No one has ever shown a finer ear, nor more command of the keys of language." While Dickens exclaimed, "Lord, what a blessed thing to read a man who can really write! What a great creature he is!" And then and there with Dickens commenced an admiration and friendship that was lifelong. Tennyson's finances during these years were very much straitened. But through Milnes' efforts he was granted a pension of £200 a year on the civil list of the government, and things went somewhat easier with him. Bul- wer satirizes him for receiving this pension, calling him "Schoolmiss Alfred." But he was now working on his great poem of "In Memoriam." He was doing this partly in London, partly at the seashore at Beachy Head, and again at Cheltenham, where Ten- nyson's mother now lived, — "a nasty house in Bellevue Place," he said. In 1850 came the most memorable year of his life. In that year "In Memoriam" was published; in that year he was married; in that year he became Poet Laureate of Eng- 64 TENNYSON'S LONDON land. After a brief sojourn in the Lake region on their honeymoon, he settled at Twickenham, in the outskirts of London, and here he spent the first three years of his mar- ried life. It was the corner house in Mont- pelier Row, between the Thames and Rich- mond Road. The house was called Chapel House, and is still unchanged. The poet's study was known as the Green Room, and here he wrote his "Ode on the Duke of Well- ington." Let us recall those stirring lines from the famous Ode: "What know we greater than the soul? On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears; The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears: The black earth yawns; the mortal disappears; Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; He is gone who seem'd so great. — Gone; but nothing can bereave him Of the force he made his own Being here, and we believe him Something far advanced in State, And that he wears a truer crown Than any wreath that man can weave him. Speak no more of his renown. Lay your earthly fancies down. And in the vast cathedral leave him, God accept him, Christ receive him." 65 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Tennyson and his wife went for a short trip to Italy in 1851, and visited Florence, Venice, Milan, and Lake Como. At Twickenham his first child, Hallam, the present Lord Tenny- son, was born in 1852. In 1853, the Tenny- sons left for the Isle of Wight which was thereafter their home, together with Aldworth which was built in 1868. In later years in London, Tennyson lodged in various places; such as Eaton Square, in 1869; in Norfolk Street, Strand, and in Albert Mansions, Vic- toria Street, to be near his friends, the Stan- leys. In 1870 he took a house in town for three months. But most of these visits to London were flitting, and even the three years at Twickenham he felt were only temporary and a makeshift. None of these places very much repay the pilgrim, except as showing him interesting sections of London. It is much more interesting to hunt out some of the places where Tennyson used to visit his friends. For instance, the Brown- ings, who lived in Dorset Street. Here, on one visit of September 27, 1855, he read "Maud" to them. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also there, and made a sketch of him as he read, — a sketch which is still preserved. 66 TENNYSON'S LONDON He used to visit Francis Turner Palgrave at York Gate, Regent's Park, where the com- pany sometimes consisted of Gladstone, Wool- ner, and the Brownings. But the most inter- esting of these friends' houses where he visited was that of the Carlyles at Chelsea. There he spent many evenings. Carlyle and his wife were very enthusiastic over him. Carlyle wrote, "He is a very handsome man, — a noble-hearted one, something of the gypsy in his appearance ; he has a great shock of rough, dusky, dark hair, bright, laughing, hazel eyes, brown complexion, almost Indian looking; smokes infinite tobacco." The most personal relic of Tennyson's life in London is the old Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, at the end of Chancery Lane. Do you remember the stanza in "Will Water- proof's Lyrical Monologue," made at The Cock: "O plump head-waiter at The Cock To which I most resort, How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock. Go fetch a pint of port; But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers. But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers," 67 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSOIN The present Cock Tavern is not the original one, but its legitimate successor, and keeps the old style and the ancient relics, and the pres- ent head-waiter hands out to any guests who are interested a Tennyson souvenir, contain- ing "Will Waterproof's Monologue." The Laddies and I ventured into the Cock Tavern one day and had a long colloquy with the head-waiter. We found that the old grill- room was kept as in the ancient days, that the floor was sanded, that the oak fireplace, the paneling, and the carvings were just the same as had been in the old room. Our American Hopkinson Smith, the head-waiter told us, was at that very time making a series of wa- ter colors of the old tavern, and especially of the interior. We heard the same old order given: "Chump chop! pint of stout!" Tenny- son's perfect dinner, as he once characterized it, was, in such a place as this, "a beefsteak, a potato, a cut of cheese, a pint of port, and afterward a pipe." The Lyceum Theater is also associated with Tennyson's London, because of some of his plays being introduced here, and all of them I think he himself attended. I remember with great pleasure having seen Irving as King 68 TENNYSON'S LONDON Arthur and Ellen Terry as Queen Guinevere on this historic stage in its palmy days, in a play full of the Tennyson spirit and atmos- phere, although not the Tennysonian lines. This one had been written, I think, by Mr. Comyns Carr. Tennyson's greatest play pro- duced here was probably Thomas a Becket, with Irving in the chief role and Miss Terry as Rosamond. The House of Lords has also casual re- minders of Lord Tennyson, although he ap- peared here only a few times, as Baron of Aldworth and Farringford. The National Portrait Gallery has some splendid memorials of Tennyson. There is a portrait of him in middle life, alert, vigorous, and strong, drawn by M. Arnault, and pre- sented by Emily, Lady Tennyson. Here is also the early bust by Thomas Woolner, R.A., 1857, beardless, firm, stern, with set mouth and magnificent head of hair. This bust is an exact copy by Mary Grant of Wool- ner's work at Cambridge, and was presented by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Here is also the famous portrait by George Frederick Watts, with laurel in the background. The lines of the face are tense and hard, the expression is 69 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON introspective, almost painful. It is not nearly so idealistic a portrait as that other one by Watts, now owned by Lady Henrj^^ Somerset. The Watts portrait is among a famous series by the same artist, including Lord Lytton, William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, Cardinal Manning, Max Miiller, Dr. Martineau, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Gladstone, Lecky, the Marquis of Salisbury, and the artist himself. The greatest remembrance of Tennyson in London is Westminster Abbey, which he loved. Tennyson had a profound faith in the living, loving God. It is related that once when he was wandering with his son through Westminster Abbey, and they had climbed up into the chantry, and the sound of the organ and the voices of the choristers rolling through the vast spaces came to their ears, Tennyson exclaimed, with much feeling, "It is beautiful, but what empty and awful mockery if there were no God!" And here in the great Abbey that stands for God, for the higher life, for the great men that God has given to the English people, Tennyson lies buried. His funeral was a simple and a noble one. All the previous night 70 PORTRAIT OF TENNYSON IN 1859, BY WATTS, OWNED BY LADY HENRY SOMERSET, TENNYSON'S LONDON his body lay in St. Faith's Chapel, just off the Poets' Corner, a quiet spot, dimly lighted, and always reserved for devotion and prayer. And here the Lady and the Laddies and I went and sat in the stillness and the darkness and said a little prayer. Tennyson's funeral was impressive, attend- ed by the great men of the realm. Two an- thems were sung from his own words, "Cross- ing the Bar," with music by Dr. Bridge, and "Silent Voices," with music by Lady Tenny- son. As these latter lines are not very famil- iar, we venture to quote them: "When the dumb Hour, clothed in black. Brings the Dreams about my bed. Call me not so often back, Silent Voices of the dead. Toward the lowland ways behind me And the sunlight that is gone! Call me rather, silent voices, Forward to the starry track Glimmering up the heights beyond me On, and always on !" The slab over his grave is plain gray slate, marked simply, "Alfred Lord Tennyson." He died October 6, 1892. He was placed alongside of Robert Browning, who had died 71 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON three years before, on December 12, 1889, and whose resting-place is marked by a slab of reddish marble with a lighter edge in it and the words, "Robert Browning." As we stood there, looking down upon the memorial stones of these two mighty prophets of God in their day and generation, we medi- tated upon the beautiful friendship that ex- isted between Browning and Tennyson. It is a rather unusual thing for two such gifted men in one generation, each with his own dis- tinct individuality and style, to be such cor- dial admirers of each other, and both rise to fame together, without the least tinge of jeal- ousy, each appreciating the other's artistic power, and maintaining not only friendly rela- tions, but cordial friendship. They were can- did with each other, they were even frank to say that they did not always admire all that the other wrote. But concerning much of each other's work they were full of appreciation and enthusiasm. Browning was one of the first to appreciate "Maud," even when the critics were covering it with abuse; and he wrote to Ten- nyson concerning "Enoch Arden," highly de- lighting in it. Among the compliments paid Tennyson, says his son, that which he valued 72 TENNYSON'S LONDON most was his old friend Browning's dedication of a selection of his poems: TO ALFRED TENNYSON IN POETRY ILLUSTRIOUS AND CONSUMMATE, IN FRIENDSHIP NOBLE AND SINCERE Back of these memorials to Tennyson and Browning are the tombs of Chaucer, near by the monuments for Beaumont, Dryden, Pryor, Ben Jonson, Milton, and not far off our own Longfellow. Here, also, are the splendid memorials for many other writers of poesy, Southey, Campbell, and the greatest of them all, Shakespeare. Woolner's bust of Tennyson is placed there not far from the memorial stone in the pave- ment. Tennyson's place in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey and in the Poets' Cor- ner of the literature of the world is well se- cured. He is enshrined in the hearts of all lovers of true beauty and nobleness, as well as in this sacred temple of Westminster Abbey. And so we say of him, as he said of the Duke of Wellington, 73 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON "Here we leave liim, God accept him, Christ receive him." Among Tennyson's good friends were Dean Stanley and Canon Farrar. They were both men of fine scholarship, broad sympa- thies, and large attainments. Canon Farrar of St. Margaret's, Westminster, loved to preach and write on the "larger hope" in which Tennyson also believed. And here at Westminster Abbey, in sympathy with the faith of these great souls, we read again Ten- nyson's own confession of the larger hope: "Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill. To pangs of nature, sins of will. Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; "That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroy 'd. Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete; "That not a worm is cloven in vain; That not a moth with vain desire Is shriveli'd in a fruitless fire, Or but subserves another's gain. "Behold we know not anything: I can but trust that good shall fall At last — far off — at last, to all. And every winter change to spring. 74 TENNYSON'S LONDON "So runs my dream: what, what am I? An infant crying in the night; An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a cry. "The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave. Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? "Are God and Nature then at strife. That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems. So careless of the single life: "That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds. And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear, "I falter where I firmly trod. And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' darkness up to God, "I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope. And gather dust and cliaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all. And faintly trust the larger hope." [From "In Memoriam," LIV and LV.] 75 VI SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY SHIPLAKE is a little village on the Thames, not far from Henley, and it was here that Tennyson was married in the parish church in 1850. We must find that parish church, even though we have to brave the crowds of Henley to reach it. For it was the time of the Henley regatta when our Pil- grims set out for Shiplake, and the cars were crowded on this eve of the greatest day, when the King and the Queen were to honor the event by their gracious presence. There were throngs of students from Oxford and Cam- bridge going to Henley. There were cars full of military and naval men, and the whole world of London seemed to be coming out for the river sports, — a jolly, boisterous crowd, singing songs on the train. But we descended at Lower Shiplake, a few stations this side of Henley. We had a glorious walk of two 76 SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY miles or more through the fields and along country roads, and beside great woods. The skylarks were singing in the meadows, and we stopped and listened. Perhaps, catching the contagion of the student throngs whom we had just left, we sang American college songs, as we tramped along the road. The Laddies are good travelers and lusty singers. The farmers who were haying in the field lis- tened, for they nodded to us pleasantly. We saw many yellow flowers and poppies in the fields. Shiplake is a beautiful region. The post- office village is insignificant, but the country around is a charming rolling country of hill- sides and terraces, where many wealthy peo- ple from London have their beautiful country homes. We had tramped even more than our two miles as it seemed to us, and no tower of a parish church appeared. At last, by per- sistent inquiry, we found our way to a certain meadow road that led through the woods and the fields, meeting a tiny little child, named Lizzie, who was happy to guide us a half mile farther through the park. Little Lizzie was about five years old, and seemed a true Cock- ney in her speech. She chattered unceasingly, 77 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON but all that we could make out from the much conversation of our tiny guide was, "I showed a lidy through the gite, and she gave me a penny for the hihy.''^ Our Laddies were much amazed at such astounding English. But we went on through the Park, by some exquisite views of the silver Thames, glimpsed through the trees, past Shiplake Court, a beautiful Tudor mansion, and finally we came to Shiplake church, where Tennyson was mar- ried. The church itself is not unusual or dis- tinctive. It is simply a beautiful country parish church, built of gray stone, and having a square tower, and there is a churchyard with many gravestones around it. The church porch is pretty but modern; the monuments in the churchyard are seemingly all recent. It is not nearly so attractive as Stoke Pogis. Why Tennyson was married in this church we wondered, and no one of whom we in- quired could give us the information. Indeed, most of the people in the neighborhood did not seem to be conversant with the great event. I recalled, however, that the Rawnsleys were old-time friends of the Tennysons, and the wife of the Rev. Drunmiond Rawnsley, the Vicar of Shiplake, was a cousin of the bride. 78 BOLNEY COURT, SHIPLAKE. SHIPLAKE CHURCH. SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY I also remembered having read somewhere that either the cake or the wedding gar- ments did not arrive from London on time, and yet they had a most satisfactory and de- hghtful wedding. The bride's father, some of the Lushingtons and two or three friends were the only guests. The bride, Miss Emily Sellwood, was a niece of Sir John Franklin and the daughter of a solicitor at Horncastle. She was the eldest of three daughters ; another of the sisters, the youngest, married Tenny- son's brother, Charles. The year following his final departure from dear old Somersby, Tennyson had written in a letter to her: "I saw from the highroad the tops of the elms on the lawn of Somersby be- ginning to kindle into green. Do you remem- ber sitting with me there on the iron garden chair one day when I had just come from London? I have no reason for asking, ex- cept that the morning three years back seems fresh and pleasant; and you were in a silk pelisse, and I think I read some book with you." These were the pleasant memories of love's young dream. For it was in 1830 that the fair Emily Sellwood, a girl of seventeen, 79 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON wearing that unforgettable "silk pelisse," had met this Cambridge student, who was twenty- one. It was Arthur Hallam who brought them together. For one day, "while walking in the Fairy wood, not far from the parsonage, he saw through the trees coming toward him his friend, Arthur Hallam, walking with a young woman, slender, beautiful, dressed in gray. From that moment the poet was no longer fancy free." So, as it has been noted, Arthur Hallam by a strange premonition brought to Tennyson the one heart-friend to fill the va- cant place in his life that his tragic death should shortly make. And what a noble com- radeship was this to be, of loving friendship for twenty years and loving wedded life for forty-five years more. It is beautiful to re- member that Tennyson was true to his own ideal of the happy knight "who loved one only and who clave to her." Some have seen reminiscences of Tenny- son's own courting days in these lines from "The Letters," beginning: "We parted; sweetly gleam'd the stars, , And sweet the vapor-braided blue. Low breezes fann'd the belfry bars. As homeward by the church I drew. 80 SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY The very graves appear'd to smile. So fresh they rose in shadow'd swells; 'Dark, porch/ I said, 'and silent aisle, There comes a sound of marriage bells.' " And these lines from "The Gardener's Daughter": "So home I went, but could not sleep for joy, Reading her perfect features in the gloom. Kissing the rose she gave me, o'er and o'er. And shaping faithful record of the glance That graced the giving — such a noise of life Swarm'd in the golden present, such a voice Call'd to me from the years to come, and such A length of bright horizon rimm'd the dark." It was several years before there was an open avowal of love, and it was many more years before the poet's income was suffi- cient to warrant marriage. But at last the happy time came in this memorable year, 1850, — the year of "In Memoriam" and the laureateship. Tennyson was at this time forty-one years old, and had already come into fame as a poet. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife met the Tennj^sons, and ]Mrs. Hawthorne ^vrote home a full account of the occasion. "Tennyson," she said, "was satisfactorily picturesque, very 81 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON handsome, and careless-looking, with a wide- awake hat, a black beard, round shoulders, and slouching gait. His voice was deep and musical and his hair was wild and stormy. He is clearly the love of love and hate of hate, and in a golden time was born. He is the Morte d'Arthur, In Memoriam, and Maud; he is Mariana in the Moated Grange; he is the Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and rare pale Margaret." This is Mrs. Haw- thorne's jubilant and fantastic description. She also gave a description of Mrs. Tenny- son. "Mrs. Tennyson had a sweet face, and the very sweetest smile I ever saw, and when she spoke to her husband, or listened to him, her face showed a tender happy rain of light. She was graceful, too, and gentle." Tennyson's own words concerning his wife, uttered long afterward, bear eloquent testi- mony to the beauty and harmony of this wed- ding. He said, "The peace of God came into my life when I married her." She was in delicate health for years, but was a most sweet and gracious influence on his life. She was a kind and appreciative critic, and a great lover of music. She set many of his songs to music. Mrs. James T. Fields describes her as she saw 82 SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY her once, in her home at Farringford in the prime of life, standing in her hospitable door- way, "In her habitual and simple costume of a long gray dress, and a lace kerchief over her head. Something in her bearing and trail- ing dress perhaps gave her a medieval aspect, which suited with the house. Again she lay on the couch, a slender, fair-haired lady, and sat at dinner in her soft white muslin dress, tied with blue — at that time hardly whiter than her face or bluer than her eyes." The portraits by Watts, especially one in exquisite outline, give something of the im- pression of her singular charm. Hallam Ten- nyson in the Memoir writes very modestly but very delightfully of this beautiful mother, whom his father "loved as perfect mother, and very woman of very woman." In the charm- ing home life and companionship begun at this wedding at Shiplake, Tennyson lived and worked for more than forty years, paying to her many tributes of honor and affection, and prophesying of her, in the dedication to "Enoch Arden": "Dear, near, and true, no truer Time himself. Can prove you, though he make you evermore Dearer and nearer." 83 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Miss Mitford gives this picturesque descrip- tion of the Shiplake church: "The tower, half clothed with ivy, stands with its charming vicarage and pretty garden on a high emi- nence, overhanging one of the finest bends of the great river. A woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk cliff, one side of which stands out from the road below like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges and flowery arbors of the vicarage garden and crested by a noble cedar of Lebanon." The church itself on the day of our visit was locked, so that we could not see the in- terior, and on our calling at the vicarage near by where Tennyson and his bride stayed on the days irmnediately j)receding the marriage, we found the vicar was absent, and no keys to be had. So we contented ourselves with taking photographs of the church and the churchyard, wondering just how the little wedding procession looked as it entered the church, and the Lady was even wondering, as she confessed, just how the bride might have been dressed. The day of the wedding was the 13th of June, 1850. It was, as Tennyson said, in a 84 PORTRAIT OF MRS. TENNYSON BY WATTS. SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY naive way, "the nicest wedding he'd ever been at." They went for the honeymoon to Tent Lodge on Lake Coniston in the Enghsh Lake district. His diary gives some pleas- ant ghmpses of these days : "We have a beau- tiful view from our dining-room windows, — crag, mountain, woods, and lake, which look especially fine as the sun is dropping behind the hills." They drove, walked over the moun- tains, boated on the lake "among the water lilies, by the islands where the herons built," — he rowing, she steering. In this diary he says of her: "I have known many women who were excellent, one in one way, another in another way, but this woman is the noblest woman I have ever known." Carlyle met them there in September of the same year, and wrote home to his wife, "Al- fred looks really improved; cheerful in what he talks, and Mrs. Tennyson lights up bright, glittering blue eyes; has wit, has sense; and were it not that she seems so very delicate in health, I should augur really well of Tenny- son's adventure." It is entertaining to find that Elizabeth Barrett Browning doubted at first the perfect fitness of Mrs. Tennyson to her husband's needs. She thought that Ten- 85 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON nyson ought to have more of a critic and less an acquiescent admirer. But the shining testi- mony of Tennyson's beautiful home life, and the plenitude and magnitude of his great work show that Mrs. Browning's apprehen- sion was baseless, and that this wedding at Shiplake was to prove the greatest blessing of his life. Of their wondrously beautiful life their son Hallam writes: "For five and forty years they lived together in the peace of God. When- ever he was away, he wrote a letter-diary to her; whenever he was at home she was his home. From that happy day at Shiplake, he was like a mariner who had entered port, like the traveler of his own brilliant imagination, who had found the Happy Isles." We spent the evening at Windsor, after this pilgrimage to Shiplake. We were quar- tered in a quaint hotel at the bridge on the river, just under the shadow of the royal castle, and for an hour or more we rowed on the river with the Eton College students. How the Laddies were delighted with the quaint Eton boys, and this hotel on the bridge of the river under the shadow of the castle was the dearest place they had ever known. It was a 86 SHIPLAKE AND THE WEDDING DAY most charming summer evening, and as we floated up and down the stream, and had the varying views of the mighty castle from many points of vantage, it loomed up more superbly than I had ever seen it. As the sunset light shone upon it, and bathed it with refulgent glory, I could think of nothing finer than this great castle with its many towers and turrets for the splendid stronghold of the mystical Camelot of King Arthur. That evening gave a vision finer than anything ever drawn by Dore's gorgeous and magical pencil. Here were the witchery and majesty of Camelot be- fore us, and we floated down the river in our picturesque craft like the Lady of Shalott floating down to many-tower'd Camelot. Somehow Tennyson seems to us just such an one as his own ideal knight, King Arthur, and his great poetical structures are as mar- velous as any Castle of Camelot, and his own true and fair and faithful wife crowning him with her transfiguring love is truly the most royal Queen of royal romance. It was in his final volume that Tennyson, the devoted husband-lover, paid a last tribute to his beloved wife in the dedicatory lines: 87 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON 'There on the top of the down. The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue. When I looked at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown, I thought to myself I would offer this book to you. This, and my love together. To you that are seventy-seven. With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven. And a fancy as summer-new As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather." 88 VII CLEVEDON, THE SHRINE OF ARTHUR HALLAM IT is wonderful what a deep impression Arthur Hallam made on his generation. "He was as near perfection as mortal man can be," was the judgment of Alfred Tennyson ; his father, Henry Hallam, the his- torian, wrote that "he seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world"; Henry Alford, dean of Canterbury, himself a scholar and poet, said of him: "His was such a lovely nature that life seemed to have noth- ing more to teach him"; and Gladstone, who was also a great admirer, said, quoting from Aubrey de Vere: "I marked him As a far Alp, and loved to watch the sunrise. Dawn on his ample brow," He wrote, when the news of Hallam's death came to him, "I walked upon the hills to muse upon this very mournful event, which cuts me to the heart." 89 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON The friendship of Arthur Hallam and Ten- nyson is one of those rare and beautiful friendships which seem altogether ideal. They became inseparable friends at Trinity College, Cambridge. They went together on a roman- tic journey to the Pyrenees in 1830, and in the summer of 1831 they had traveled in com- pany to the Rhine. They were both members of the little college society called "The Apos- tles." They were often friendly rivals in their studies. Arthur Hallam was also a poet, and was a fellow-contestant with Tennyson for the Chancellor's Medal for the prize poem at Cambridge, — the prize that the future Lau- reate won with his poem of "Timbuctoo." Hallam had not suj)reme gifts in a poetical line; his talent lay in other ways. Tennyson once said of him: "If he had lived, Arthur Hallam would have been known as a great man, but not as a great poet." Hallam's own particular literary bent was toward literary criticism. Indeed, it was his sane and friendly criticism which encouraged Tennyson to pub- lish his early poems. Hallam was sure of Tennyson's genius from the very start. He told his close friend, Gladstone, in 1829, that 90 CLEVEDON Alfred Tennyson was bound to become one of the greatest poets of his time. It was in the summer of 1830 that Hallam visited Tennyson at Somersby. Together they read the Tuscan poets on the lawn. Later Hallam became engaged to Tennyson's sister. He had taken his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1832. He spent an- other summer with the Tennysons at the old rectory at Somersby. In October of that year he was in London, living at 67 Wimpole Street. "Always at sixes and sevens," he used to say. Hallam had never been very strong in health, and it was thought that European travel might benefit him. He went on a trip to Germany and Austria. Traveling on a wet day between Vienna and Pesth, he caught a severe cold which developed into intermittent fever and influenza. After a few days' ill- ness, he died at Vienna, on September 15, 1833. His body was brought back to Eng- land, and in January, 1834, he was buried in the old parish church at Clevedon, which be- longed to his mother's father, Sir Abraham Elton, who owned the Clevedon estate and lived at Clevedon Court. 91 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON The death of Hallam was a terrible blow to Tennyson and to the sister to whom Hal- lam was engaged to be married. Tennyson was too overwhelmed by this sorrow to do any literary work for a long time, but gradually he found solace in putting something of his tribute of affection into verse, and of making it also a chronicle of his faith and doubt concerning immortality, and in the end, after many years, these poetical fragments and confessions were gathered together and pub- lished under the title, "In Memoriam." The beauty, the dignity, the heroic struggle and the deep pathos of "In Memoriam" make it one of the noblest epitaphs ever written upon mortal man. The tribute of that dis- tinguished English preacher, Frederick W. Robertson, was: "To my mind and heart the most satisfactory things that have been ever said on the future state are contained in this poem." The poem is so noble in diction, so deep and high in thought, and so voicing the universal sorrow of humanity and its most exultant faith, that it is worthy to be set side by side, if not above, either Milton's "Lyci- das" or Shelley's "Adonais." We found the modern Clevedon a charming 92 CLEVEDON little watering-place, somewhat fashionable but still refined and quiet, looking out on the Bristol Channel. There is an iron pier run- ning out into the water, a beautiful stone parade and promenade along the shore, con- cert halls and fine hotels, and pleasant resi- dences. One of the humbler homes at Cleve- don is Coleridge's cottage, where he lived for a time after his marriage. He had discovered Clevedon in the summer of 1795, when he was living at Bristol, which is only fifteen miles away. Here the two poets, Southey and Coleridge, were forming their Utopian plans to go . to America and form an ideal settle- ment on the banks of the Susquehanna. But suddenly the plans were dashed to pieces by Coleridge getting married and renting this cottage at Clevedon. Two days after the mar- riage he sent back to Bristol for some for- gotten necessities in an amusing note which ran, "Send at once a teakettle, a candle-box, dust-pan, two glasses for the washing stand, two spoons, a cheese-toaster, a pair of slip- pers, a Bible, and a keg of porter." This is an odd glimpse into the temperaments and needs of poets. Some traces of the local color of Clevedon and its vicinity are found in many 93 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON of Coleridge's poems, and even in "The An- cient Mariner." Another hterary man who often came to Clevedon was Thackeray. Portions of "Henry Esmond" were written during one of his visits here. He was present also in Cleve- don at the funeral of Henry Hallam in 1850. Indeed, the "Castlewood" of Thackeray's novel is without doubt suggested by the gables and terraced gardens of Clevedon Court, which he knew so well. Clevedon Court is yet the particular pride of the town, and is still owned and occupied by the Eltons, as lords of the manor. In the more ancient days it was owned by the Wakes, who claimed descent from the great "Hereward the Wake." It has traceried win- dows and Gothic gables and is picturesquely clothed with vines and mellowed by the cen- turies. The great hall of the manor house is oak-wainscoted and has a fine Tudor chim- ney-piece, a minstrels' gallery, and many fam- ily pictures. The library preserves many let- ters and caricature sketches by Thackeray. We walked along the seashore at the part called Salthouse Beach, and there in the shade of the trees we read Tennyson's poem, CLEVEDON COURT. COLERIDGE'S COTTAGE, CLEVEDON. CLEVEDON "Break, Break, Break," for it was at this spot that the poem was suggested to him. "Break, break, break. On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. "O well for the fisherman's boy. That he shouts with his sister at play! . O well for the sailor lad. That he sings in his boat on the bay! "And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill: But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand. And the sound of a voice that is still! "Break, break, break. At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me." Our chief interest, however, in Clevedon, was the old parish church where Arthur Hal- lam lies buried. It was on the day after his marriage at Shiplake that Tennyson had gone to Clevedon as the guest of Sir C. A. Elton, of Clevedon Court, and he wrote con- cerning that visit to the old church, "It seemed a kind of consecration to go there." 95 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON We had always loved those lines from "In Memoriam" (LXVII) : "When on my bed the moonlight falls, I know that in thy place of rest By that broad water of the west. There comes a glory on the walls; "Thy marble bright in dark appears, As slowly steals a silver flame Along the letters of thy name. And o'er the number of thy years. "The mystic glory swims away; From off my bed the moonlight dies; And closing eaves of wearied eyes I I sleep till dusk is dip't in gray: I ( "And then I know the mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast, And in the dark church like a ghost Thy tablet glimmers in the dawn." The "dark church" that enshrines the "glim- mering tablet" is a mile or so from the station, and we walked out along the country road. From the hill near by we could get a good glimpse of the sea. It is a quaint little par- ish church, similar to a thousand that can be seen in rural England, and is dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors. Its 96 CLEVEDON central tower is low and undecorated; it has small Norman belfry windows, and in the in- terior some finely molded arches. In the south transept is the manorial chapel where Arthur Hallam lies buried. There is an "In Memoriam" window here, containing the quo- tation, "Strong son of God, immortal Love," and the pictures in the glass are of David and Jonathan and Mary and St. John, as types of most loving friendship. The famous epitaph on Arthur Hallam was written by Henry Hallam, the historian. Part of it reads as follows : "And now in this obscure and solitary church repose the mortal remains of one too early lost for public fame, but already conspicuous among his contempo- raries for the brightness of his genius, the depths of his understanding, the nobleness of his disposition, the fervor of his piety, and the purity of his life." There are other family memorials in the same chapel, and some of them reveal a singu- lar fatality in the family. One is a mural tablet to Arthur Hallam's cousins, Abraham and Charles Elton, aged fourteen and fifteen, drowned at Burnbeck, and found resting in each other's arms on the Welsh coast op- 97 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON posite. The epitaph reads: "The flood was greater than their strength though not than their love." There is a tablet to Henry Fitz- maurice Hallam, who also died after a short illness in a foreign land, at Sienna, in 1850. The remains of Arthur Hallam are buried in the same vault with those of his sister Eleanor, who died at the age of twenty-one, while he died at the age of twenty-three. We remembered here on the banks of the Severn those lines from "In Memoriam" (XIX), which tell of this "pleasant shore within the hearing of the wave": "The Danube to the Severn gave The darken'd heart that beat no more; They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the wave. "There twice a day the Severn fills; The salt sea-water passes by. And hushes half the babbling Wye, And makes a silence in the hills. "The Wye is hushed nor moves along. And hush'd my deepest grief of all. When fiU'd with tears that cannot fall, I brim with sorrow, drowning song." Clevedon is a quiet place in which to rest. Here by the sea, in the midst of hills, heath, 98 THE OLD CHURCH, CLEVEDON. INTERIOR OF CLEVEDON CHURCH. CLEVEDON and wood, the whole place seemed suffused with peace, beauty, and poetry. One who knows Clevedon well by long residence has written thus of it: "The witchery of the Chan- nel is felt here at its full. The vagaries of the ever-changing distances, the play of sun and moon, of clouds and mist, over the waters with their kaleidoscopic color-effects; the flaming sunsets ; the flashing of the coastwise and Chan- nel lights; the constant coming and going of ships along this great ocean way; most of all, the majesty of the incoming waters of a sea that rises full forty feet at high tide, — all these play a part in the magic of the Channel which can be realized more fully at Cleve- don than at any other place." We sat in the transept of the church under Arthur Hallam's tablet, — the Lady, the Lad- dies, and I, having the church all to our- selves, — and read aloud all the parts of "In Memoriam" which had special reference to Arthur Hall am and this Clevedon church. Do you recall these lines: "Fair ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er. 99 J'HROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON "So draw him home to those that mourn In vain; a favorable speed Ruffle thy mirror'd mast, and lead Thro' prosperous floods his holy urn. "All night no ruder air perplex Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, thro' early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks. "Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love." "I hear the noise about thy keel; I hear the bell struck in the night; I see the cabin window bright; I see the sailor at the wheel. "Thou bring'st the sailor to his wife. And travel'd men from foreign lands; And letters unto trembling hands; And thy dark freight, a vanish'd life. "So bring him; we have idle dreams; This look of quiet flatters thus Our home-bred fancies; O to us, The fools of habit, sweeter seems "To rest beneath the clover sod, That takes the sunshine and the rains. Or where the kneeling hamlet drains The chalice of the grapes of God." [From "In Memoriam," IX, X.^ 100 VIII HAWARDEN, THE HOME OF A LIFELONG FRIEND GLADSTONE was one of Tennyson's earliest and best friends, and the friendship continued for their life- time. They were born in the same year, the memorable year 1809, and together are among the chief ornaments of the Victorian Age. They were often in counsel together, and they made several summer trips in company. Many letters were exchanged between them at crucial political occasions and concerning special literary affairs. It was through Glad- stone's persuasion that Tennyson finally ac- cepted the peerage as a tribute to literature. So we included a visit to Gladstone's home in our Tennysonian pilgrimage. It was almost sunset time as we came to Hawarden, — indeed, it seemed almost dusk, for the sky was overcast. We wondered whether we were to have any sunset at all, although the earlier afternoon had promised 101 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON well. Now the Welsh mountains were dimly blue in the far-off mists, and the night seemed to be gathering early. "Isn't it glorious?" exclaimed the Lady, as after winding along the narrow streets of the little village, at last we had entered the grounds of the castle enclosure. It was a rolling park of hills and dales, of deep glens, and of distant views of wonderful beauty. The ancient trees were magnificent ; the sward was perfect, — the growth of centuries. Suddenly, "There's the castle!" cried the Laddies. It was the old castle on the hill, the ancestral home of Gladstone's wife, that came into view before we reached the new and splendid castle which was Gladstone's home for many years. The venerable ruin on the hill consists, as far as we could see, of one great tower, partly crumbling, but that one tower tells the romantic story of the power and prowess of the ancient days. From the vantage of this height there is a broad out- look on the surrounding country, and from this ancient stronghold we look down upon the modern castle, with its beautiful terraces and exquisite old-fashioned gardens. We had spent the morning at the palatial 102 HAWARDEN home of the great aristocrat, the Duke of Westminster, at Eton Hall on the Dee. It was a significant contrast to us to visit on the afternoon of the same day the less pre- tentious but still stately and dignified home of the great commoner, Mr. Gladstone, — whom many Englishmen contend was the greatest statesman and the greatest man that the world produced in the last century. You will remember that this castle home, the new one as well as the old, came to Glad- stone by marriage, through his wife, the daughter of Sir Stephen Glynn. Its towers, battlements, and bastions are architecturally strong, but not at all warlike. They are de- lightfully softened by the clustering ivy, and one feels that it is essentially not a castle- stronghold, but a home of peace, — a noble yet a cosy mansion, enshrining within its mul- lioned windows and wide casements and beau- tiful terraces every evidence of modest wealth and world-old culture. The Laddies tried to make friends with the Gladstone sheep that were wandering in groups over the glades, but the animals fled precipitously at the kindly approach. They seemed coy, perchance distrustful, of Ameri- 103 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON can lads. But nothing daunted, the Laddies "performed" for the sheep, and repeatedly- rolled down the hillocks of the velvet sward, over and over again to the foot, while the sheep seemed to look on from the distance with silent wonder. I hope the Honorable Herbert Glad- stone, who now occupies the castle, did not observe this performance from his window. But if he did, I am sure it was with a kindly and indulgent eye. For was it not a sign and symbol to him that even American boys felt perfectly at home on the great commoner's lawn? At the Gladstone Memorial Fountain in the public squaxe, the Lady detained a ven- erable woman who was limping slowly along and chatted with her, asking questions about Gladstone. "Aye, I served him his paper every day, and my father before me. Mr. Gladstone was a good man, — a dear good old man," she said, and her face was full of sun- shine at the remembrance. At the church where Gladstone attended, — St. Deiniol's in the Welsh, or as we would call it, St. Daniel's, — we were wonderfully im- pressed with the magnificent memorial to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone which had been recently 104 HAWARDEN placed there. It reminded us of one of the royal tombs at Charlottenburg, where the colored light so strikingly falls upon the mar- bles. This sarcophagus is of white marble in a side chapel, the recumbent figures of the Prime Minister and his wife lie side by side, and over them bends a guardian angel. It is exquisitely sculptured. They are represented in the prime of life. Mrs. Gladstone is very beautiful, and the Premier's countenance is strong and rugged. Was it not a happy thought that the marble presented them to us in the very prime and glory of their fullest maturity, before any of the signs of age had come? It was a symbol, if not of eternal youth, yet of eternal strength and beauty. Around the base of the marble sarcopha- gus are symbolic bronzes showing Mr. Gladstone's favorite heroes and epochs in his- tory. Near by is the reading desk, from which, as was the custom in this church, he was in- vited to read the Scripture lesson; and close at hand is the pew where he always sat. This golden cross in the pew is where Archbishop Benson died while he was Gladstone's guest. That great window to the west is by Sir Ed- 105 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON ward Burne- Jones and is called "the Thanks- giving window," because it was given by Mr. Gladstone's sons and daughter and nephews and nieces as a thanksgiving for the long years that Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone had been spared to them. It was given in his lifetime. Mr. Gladstone saw the design and approved of it, but he never saw the finishing of the window. It was put in its position in the church while he was very ill, just a week be- fore he died, and just two weeks before its artist, Burne-Jones, passed away. Its design shows the Preraphaelite conception of the Nativity, with the multitudes of radiant angels about the mother and the child. As we looked at it, the skies behind, which had been long overcast, suddenly brightened and the sunset light came streaming through, and the window was one effulgent blaze of glory. Across the church, in the new stream of light, we could see the Gladstone tablet on which was carved his own Latin rendering of the great hymn, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me," and beyond that another tablet on which are the significant words, quoted from him, and constituting a splendid confession of his faith: "All that I think and write is based 106 HAWARDEN on the divinity of our Lord, the only hope of this old world." At this moment, the old sexton came shuffling through the church, and nodded pleasantly to us. "Would the lads like to come up into the belfry with me, and help me ring the bells?" he asked. They were only too glad for such a unique opportunity, and up the winding belfry stairs went old age and laughing childhood together, and soon the Lady and I, who waited below and read the inscriptions on the wall-tablets of the church, heard the bells ringing joyously for the evening service of seven o'clock. To us, those ancient church-bells seemed to have a new touch of American exultancy in their chiming. The Laddies came down from the belfry delighted, and reported in whispers that the old sexton had allowed them "really" to ring the bells, sometimes to help him and sometimes "all by themselves." Never will they forget this happy experience in the bel- fry of Gladstone's church. For a while before evening service we walked with the old man through the church- yard and among the tombstones. He pointed out the Gladstone lot, where "our late Squire 107 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Gladstone" lies buried. The great Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, he explained, were buried in Westminster Abbey. For Mr. Gladstone had once said to his wife, "Where would you like to be buried?" and she had answered, 'Tt makes no difference to me, except to be with you." So their places were selected in this family lot on the quiet hillside. But when popular demand after Gladstone's death in- sisted that he be buried among the statesmen, warriors, poets, and kings in Westminster Abbey, it was made conditional by the family, that if he were buried there his wife in due time should also lie by his side. "Now off there," said the old sexton, point- ing with his hand, "are the sands of Dee," and we could see them well from the church- yards. You know the famous story, when "Mary called the cattle home, across the sands of Dee." The old sexton is so interesting, and the Laddies are so delighted with their experi- ences, and the Lady so loved to meditate in these ancient aisles and among the quaint tombstones, that the time slips away more rapidly than we think, and we have missed our tea. But we stop at a pastry shop and buy 108 HAWARDEN a good round raisin loaf, and on the train, where we have a compartment all to ourselves, we make four goodly fellowship portions and munch the frugal cake slowly, with most kindly thought in memory of our delightful visit to Hawarden. As the train slips away from the Welsh mountains, and Hawarden itself is lost to view in the gathering night, our last thought is, "Friend of Tennyson, ap- preciator of him, counselor and real kinsman in spirit, we love to think of you together, — two great Englishmen, two noble specimens of humanity, two great representatives of noble thinking and of Christian faith." As we thought again of Gladstone's strong confession of faith, we remembered also Ten- nyson's confession of faith, in those dedicatory lines of "In Memoriam," which Gladstone so much admired. Indeed, the lines are in the finest spirit of both these great souls: "Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face. By faith and faith alone, embrace. Believing where we cannot prove; "Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull that thou hast made. 109 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why. He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him; thou art just. "Thou seemest human and divine. The highest, holiest manhood, thou; Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them tliine. "Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee. And thou^ O Lord, art more than they." 110 IX FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT ATsT isle of magic, an isle of dreams, is this wonderful little island-kingdom over which the memory of the new King Alfred is still sovereign. It is the island home of Tennyson, which he loved for forty years and by loving he made it all his own as surely as if he had bought it all with gold. One cannot think of the Isle of Wight with- out thinking of the famous poet laureate. Upon all its places of beauty he has entwined the finer beauty of his own mystical music. Every part of its scenery he loved, — its streams and its lanes, its castles and its cliffs, — and something of its rare and wonderful atmosphere has entered into the beauty and majesty of his verse. The Laddies felt that they were in fairy- land from the moment of stepping on the magic shores of the Isle of Wight. We had been brought hither by the royal craft called 111 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON the Princess Beatrice, down through South- ampton waters, getting glimpses of the ex- quisite Netley Abbey on the one side and the frowning Calshot Castle on the other; then across the Solent, through a fleet of great battleships of the British navy, on to Cowes, which is the famous center for the royal yacht regattas. It is a most quaint little village, with some streets running up almost perpendicularly, and very picturesque and delightful houses, and here the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby was born. The Isle of Wight, as we have said, is an island-kingdom, almost a little principality of its own. Its royal governor is the Princess Beatrice of Battenberg; its deputy governor lives at Carisbrooke Castle. We went from one end of the island to the other, through the center and around the circumference, and everywhere it was to us a delight, and almost as enchanting as that land which the Laddies most love, — Alice's Wonderland. The island reminded us of our American Mt. Desert, which has its beautiful cliffs of granite, while these are of chalk. Mt. Desert has higher hills and mountains than the Isle of Wight, and its villages, such as Bar Har- 112 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT bor, Seal Harbor, and Northeast Harbor, are as beautiful in a way as anything in the Isle of Wight, except that they have not that won- derful charm of antiquity and of historic as- sociation. We went by slow approach to Farringford, saving that for the climax of our pilgrimage, and getting glimpses on the way of some of the places that Tennyson loved. We had read how he visited the Queen at Osborne House, particularly of that touching visit after her great sorrow, and when she wanted espe- cially to thank him for the dedication of the "Idylls of the King" to the memory of Prince Albert. Osborne House was the favorite resi- dence of Queen Victoria, and the home from which the gracious Queen passed from this earth. It is beautifully situated, with fine terraces and gardens and wonderful outlooks on the sea. Among the state apartments we enjoyed most the East India or Durbar room, where were gathered and shown all the mag- nificent presents that the Indian princes and principalities had presented Queen Victoria at the time of her Diamond Jubilee. So gorgeously beautiful were these shrines and caskets, and of such marvelous workmanship, 113 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON that they seemed like a vision of the "Arabian Nights." They gave most vivid impression of the beauty and richness of the golden Indies. The Laddies were particularly interested in the Swiss cottage on the palace estate, where the royal children used to play. Each royal child had its own garden, and their garden tools are still kept with their names upon them. Here are the spade and rake that the present King of England used when he was a boy of five; and over yonder is a little fortress perfect in every respect and yet in miniature, with its bastions and battlements and its cannon, and the moat around it, — all constructed by the royal children of forty years ago. Newport is the chief town of the center of the island. It has a fine old church and a market cross. Carisbrooke Castle is the governor's castle of the Isle of Wight. Here King Charles I was imprisoned, and here his daughter the Princess Elizabeth died. It is charmingly situated in a beautiful country, with wonder- ful views from walls, battlements, and towers. The main part of the castle is in excellent repair. It brought to mind very vividly those 114 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT old days of the Puritan Commonwealth, when they made kings do their will, and brought them to the block if they did not. The build- ing is a very fine example of a medieval stronghold ; there are a dozen great structures, I suppose, within the castle enclosure. One most interesting building shows the very room in which Charles I was a prisoner, and another is the little chapel of St. Nicholas in Castro which has been restored in memory of King Charles the Martyr. At one end of it is a striking bust of King Charles the Martyr, and underneath the single cabalistic word: "Remember!" The Isle of Wight has many popular coast villages. Ryde is a modern seaside resort, full of interest and beauty. Sandown has a splendid beach and is another popular modern resort. Ventnor is unique. It is exquisitely beautiful and consists mostly of terraces on the great flowery cliff-side, all the way down to the sea. It has a sparkling cascade that tumbles down the cliff, and fine bathing on its beautiful beach. At the quaint inn called The Crab and Lobster, we enjoyed one of the most toothsome luncheons in all Eng- land, with the finest lobster imaginable. 115 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Strange, what a vivid impression such an ex- perience can make! Shanklin Village and Bonchurch are beau- tiful almost beyond imagination. They seem to have been created just to delight the eye. They have their uses, of course. But they are predominantly things of beauty, and joys for- ever. Bonchurch has a tiny little church, very ancient, embowered in vines and roses, dedi- cated to St. Boniface, — hence the name, — which has been popularly shortened. Here for long years the rector was the Rev. Will- iam Adams, author of the famous poem, "The Shadow of the Cross," and above his grave in the churchyard is an iron cross, so arranged that its shadow is continually cast upon his grave. In this churchyard also lies buried Carlyle's famous friend, John Sterling, whose biography he wrote. In Upper Bonchurch are the graves of Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others of his family, — for they were all identified with this parish of Bonchurch. Few pilgrims come to Swinburne's resting-place. Yet he was a real genius, a wonderful lover of beauty, but he rarely struck a large or virile note; he was not a helper of faith and holiness; and 116 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT therefore, I think, he has not won the general love of mankind as Tennyson did. There are three great bays in the Isle of Wight that we loved to visit in the evening light, and each of them within easy walking distance from Tennyson's home. And Ten- nyson loved them all. One is Freshwater Bay, which he could see from his own win- dows; another is Totland Bay, on the other side of the tip of the island. I shall never forget the exquisite beauty of this inlet, as we sat on the cliff one summer evening, just as dusk was gathering, looking out toward Hurst Castle and the mainland of England. As the darkness deepened, here and there flashed out the lights from the vessels in the harbor, the lights of distant lighthouses, the far-off searchlights of battleships, and above us the many twinkling, lighted stars. But the greatest of these bays is Alum Bay, with its wonderful cliffs, the greatest chalk cliffs in all England; the jagged out- lines of the great rocks called the Needles, which jut up from the water like a line of sentinels, with huge bayonets uplifted, and the lighthouse at the point leading them on, as if a perpetual challenge to their hereditary 117 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON enemies, France and Germany, just across the Channel; and then all around the beau- tiful downs, inclosing the heights of the bay, and covered with soft green bracken, wild flowers, furze, and the greatest quantities of intensely purple heather. It is a fascinating spot. And one wishes at times that he could stay there forever, in that perfumed air, that majestic landscape, and that wonderful stretch of the blue, blue sea. How many hundreds of times Tennyson has stood at this very point on the cliffs and looked out at this view, and refreshed his soul with the wonder of it all! The town of Freshwater is so called be- cause of the fresh springs of the Yar, a little stream which flows into the Channel at the ancient town of Yarmouth. Here the sea- farers, eastern-bound, found their first oppor- tunity of replenishing their empty barrels with fresh water. And the Needles, the most striking feature of the landscape, are the jagged rocks around which the storms of the centuries have broken, and here has been many a tragic shipwreck. The estate of Far- ringford once belonged to the Abbey of Quarr, or Lyra, one of the first Cistercian monasteries 118 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT established in England, about the time of Henry I, and the gi'eat field called Maidens- croft meant the Virgin Mary's Field. But now let us wander along the wonder- ful lanes to Tennyson's own home at Fresh- water, called Farringford. The driving through all these country lanes is most charm- ing, — the scenery is as exquisite as anything we ever saw. The hedges, the flowers, the golden furze, and purple heather, the well- kept trees, the thatched cottages, the ideal little inns here and there with quaint names, such as "The Flower Pot" and "The Horse Shoe." It was a perfect morning, the dew on the grass, and the air fragrant, when our little pilgrimage came up the lane and entered Lord Tennyson's estate, armed with letters to the head gardener from Lord Tennyson himself, giving us the freedom of the place. It was a pleasant walk through the avenues of trees, up to the house itself, which is embowered in foliage. Indeed, Farringford lies hidden among the trees, almost as well concealed as a bird's nest. The old walls have ivy and magnolia clambering over them, and so pic- turesque and beautiful is it that it seems a fitting hearth and home for a great poet. 119 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Farringford is an old name and an old estate. Tennyson had deeds of it from the fourteenth century, signed by Walter de Far- ringford. Tennyson was forty-four years old when he came to settle down in what he called his wilderness of Farringford. He had been made poet laureate three years previously, but he was still a comparative stranger to the general public, and the income from his writ- ings was very slender, but it is interesting to remember that this splendid place was largely paid for from the proceeds of the poem of "Maud." Here at Farringford he was to live and work for forty years, and to build an incomparable palace of art by his poems, as well as win an undying and world-wide fame. The poet's home, we thought, had an eccle- siastical look, especially on the side not often seen in photographs. There were Tudor win- dows on the second floor, where the poet had made an addition to the old house, of a story for children's rooms and schoolroom which had not at all detracted from the picturesqueness of the place The house is quaint and inter- esting, not at all pretentious, yet with a noble dignity about it. 120 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT We peeked into the drawing-room, whose windows gave a fine view of Freshwater Bay, and other windows that look out on the gar- dens with the yew trees and the wonderful cedar of Lebanon. In this drawing-room we saw life-size oil portraits of the present Lord and Lady Tennyson, with a magnificent por- trait of the poet Tennyson between them. There were bookcases built into the walls, with brass wire screen fronts. In the library was a striking bust of Dante, and over the mantel were the statuettes of three great poets, Chaucer, Shakespeare and, if I remem- ber rightly, Spenser. Photogi-aphs of Ten- nyson's friends were grouped around the wall, among whom I recognized Carlyle and Jowett, Watts, and Gladstone. The music-room was full of books and pictures, and a great piano. This music-room, or as it is sometimes called, the ballroom, was used as a playroom in the earlier days. It was a place full of joyful reminiscences for the Tennyson boys. Here oftentimes in the old days the poet played battledore and shut- tlecock with his two boys, built them mighty castles of bricks, read and told stories to them, and repeated many a stirring ballad. Ten- 121 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON nyson was a true child-lover as well as a de- voted father. Tennyson's old study had been a little room at the top of the house in what was prac- tically the third story. The later study or library was on the second floor, the upper room in the west wing, a fine large room with bay windows looking out upon the lawn. The room is much the same as when the poet was living. It has the same furniture, the same pictures on the walls, and a large writing table in the bay window, where he wrote the later "Idylls" and other poems. The whole room is marked by simplicity in its furnishings, for Tennyson disliked luxury of any kind. He himself always chose the chair with the hardest seat and the straightest back. Half a century ago Prince Albert paid his only visit to Farringford. At the time the family was in the throes of moving, and the Memoir describes how the books were being sorted and arranged, all imaginable things strewn over the dining-room floor, and the chairs and tables in wild disarray. There was the same royal kind of welcome when we paid our visit. The house was being dis- mantled for the summer, and was in the hands 122 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT of cleaners and painters, so that it was im- possible to see it as we might have wished. We had merely glimpses of it, but enough to realize something of its charm and some- thing of the beautiful atmosphere of this ideal home of the poet. You may remember Miss Thackeray's description of it. She calls it "a charmed palace with green walls without, and speaking walls within." And so it was. The poets of the past seemed to preside over the home. They were its Lares and Penates. Beautiful scenes from Italy and Greece looked out from the paintings on the walls; friends' faces lined the passages and the rooms; the choicest of books and treas- ures of ancient times filled the bookshelves, — a glow of witchery seemed everywhere. But that little old den at the top of the house was somehow the most sacred room of all. Tennyson used to call it "his little fumi- tory," and here he was wont to play on his sacred pipes, as he smilingly called them, smok- ing them for half an hour after breakfast and half an hour after dinner, when no one was allowed to be with him ; for then, as he always declared, his best thoughts came to him. Here for instance, he worked at "Maud," morning 123 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON and evening, sitting in his hard high-backed wooden chair in this little room at the top of the house. On some rare and unusual occasion a visitor might be invited to this tiny sanctuary, even at the sacred hour. Phillips Brooks vis- ited the poet here in 1883, and he wrote of the place, "The house is a delightful old ram- bling thing whose geography one never learns ; not elegant but very comfortable, covered with pictures inside and ivies outside, with superb ilexes and other trees, and lovely views over the Channel. Tennyson," continues Phillips Brooks, "was inclined to be mis- anthropic at first, but after a time grew cheer- ful. We went up to his study, a big bright crowded room where he wrote his 'Idylls.' After dinner, we went up to the study again, for two or three hours, and smoked and talked. Then he was gentle, reverent, tender, and hopeful. He read aloud to us in the din- ing-room, 'Locksley Hall,' 'Sir Galahad,' and 'Maud.' " It must have been rare converse and rare companionship when these two great souls joined company. To this little study Charles Kingsley was once admitted, and talked on all sorts of topics, "walking up and down for hours, 124 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT smoking furiously, and affirming that tobacco was the only thing which kept his nerves quiet." The walls of this little room still seem to be redolent with the echoes of the talk of scholars and poets, scientists and divines. Such men as the artists Watts and Millet, the divines Dr. Martineau, F. D. Maurice, and Benjamin Jowett; such scientists as Tyndall, Owen and Darwin, and many others who were his great and noble friends. Most of all we can still seem to hear in this little room the deep, resonant tones of the poet himself, when he was reading aloud to his friends some of his own marvelous creations. This old study is now kept as a bedroom. It was not used as a workroom by the poet for some years before his death. Neverthe- less, the little room with its one window look- ing out upon the lawn is the most sacred shrine of the house. Here the spirit of the poet seems to brood in its fullness, and here great memories seem to gather most lovingly. The poem "Maud" that paid for Farring- ford was fiercely and persistently criticised. It was called Mud and Madness. But the power and passion of the poem sold it in spite of the critics, and it ran into edition after 125 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON edition. The first four "Idylls of the King" were also written in this idyllic home, and they met with a large response from the reading public. Ten thousand copies were sold in the first week. A few years later "Enoch Arden" was published, and sixty thousand were sold in a very short time. From this date everything that Tennyson wrote was eagerly sought after, and his fame brought him ample means. It is a pleasant picture that we have of his life. His habits were most regular here in his island home. He lived quietly and mod- estly. Every morning after breakfast he climbed to his attic room and worked, or part of the time he composed in the open air, under the trees or in the meadow. The afternoons he gave to long walks or drives, and every evening after dinner to reading and writing. From his study window and from the draw- ing-room windows could be seen glimpses of the sea, and this meant so much to the poet. He loved the sea. Sometimes he seemed to feel the spirit of the old Norseman within him; perhaps something of this strain of blood had descended to him through the Danes of old Lincolnshire. He had loved 126 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT the sea from his boyhood days in Lineohi- shire. These study windows at Farringford were a great solace to him because they com- manded the sea, and at his later home, the Sur- rey home at Aldworth, one thing that delighted him was that from those inland heights on Blackdown he could still get one gray glimpse of the sea. Remember his sea poems, such as "Enoch Arden," "Ulysses," "The Revenge," "The Sailor Boy," "Sea-dreams," "Break, Break, Break!" and many others, ending with that memorable swan-song, "Crossing the Bar." He was a lover of the sea all his life long. We loitered on the lawn for a long time, imder the favorite trees of the poet. We were especially interested in the old yew trees, recalling his lines in "The Holy Grail," "Oh, brother, I have seen this yew tree smoke Spring after spring for half a hundred years." There were also wonderful specimens of pine trees, elms, chestnuts, ilexes, and cedars of Lebanon on this lawn. Garibaldi planted a tree here in 1864, a Welling tonia gigantea, a tree which is still growing vigorously. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes visited the poet here 127 THROUGH EJTGLAND WITH TENNYSON in June, 1886, and was deeply interested in these trees. "Tennyson was then seventy- seven years old, but he was delighted," writes Dr. Holmes, "in pointing out to me the finest and rarest of his trees, and there were many beauties among them. In the Isle of Wight," continues Dr. Holmes, "there is a lavish ex- travagance of greenery." But he adds with a sigh after his visit: "I am sorry I did not ask Tennyson to read some of his poems to me." We sat down under the great yew tree on this dewy morning, looking out through the trees to Freshwater Bay, and the Lady read aloud, while the little Laddies sat at her feet, parts of "The Holy Grail" and "Maud," and parts of the "In Memoriam," especially the prelude, which had been written in this charm- ing spot. We were all alone except for the poet's mystic presence. We thought much of the dear lady who had for so many years presided in this home at Farringford. Those who know best say that no man ever had a nobler helpmate than Tennyson had in his wife. Delicate in health and for very many years an entire invalid. Lady Tennyson devoted herself entirely to 128 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT her husband and her family; sharing the great responsibilities of his position; laboring early and late for him and for her children, and giving by the grace of her personality so much of peace and happiness to her home. The poet wrought out his poems alone, but when a poem was completed he always brought it to read and discuss with her, for she had a very discerning sympathy and fine judgment. She dealt with her husband's enormous correspondence, and was all her life an active center in the social life of her house, a most gracious hostess even to the humblest visitor. Mrs. Bradley, the wife of the Dean of Westminster, once wrote, "Those evenings when the poet, sitting in his old oak armchair after dinner in the drawing room, talked of what was in his heart, or read some poem aloud with the landscape lying before us, like a beautiful picture, framed in the dark arched bow window, are never to be forgotten." The head gardener of Farringford, Mr. Russell, was very kind to us, in the way of showing us all that he could. Lord Hallam Tennyson was still at Aldworth for the sum- mer. He usually leaves Farringford for three 129 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON months each year and returns about the end of September. But he had sent word to this faithful old man, who had been with the Tennysons for forty-nine years, to do the honors for us. He took us into the beautiful garden, where there grew daffodils, snowdrops, and violets in beautiful profusion. Tenny- son had a great tenderness for all animals and even for all life. He disliked to cut flowers; he never destroyed anything that grew if he could possibly avoid it. He was always encouraging more growths; he loved to plant trees, and as for the animals, he al- lowed no traps or guns on his estate. The rabbits used to overrun the lawn. But he loved all these little wild creatures, and tried to make friends with them. "The present Lord Tennyson was only a boy of ten when I first came here," said the old gardener. "I am seventy-one now." He took us to a sheltered lawn near the house, a lawn inclosed by great trees. "This is where the poet used to work," he said, "with his table set right here. He would recite his lines and then write them down at this table. And then talk them out again, and write them down again. And if any one came near, 130 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT he would withdraw quickly. We use this lawn as a tennis court now." We stood on Tennyson's bridge, a most picturesque rustic bridge across a deep lane that goes underneath. It spans a deep cutting, through which the public has the right of way. The bridge was an ingenious device of Tennyson's to secure privacy for himself in his garden, while at the same time adhering to the letter of the law. This bridge was a favorite spot with the poet. We went to Maiden's Croft, a beautiful meadow on the estate. It was christened with this name by the monks, who owned the place until the fourteenth century. Here in this meadow Tennyson built a summer house within which "Enoch Arden" and "The Holy Grail" came into being. It looks off to the sea at Freshwater Bay, and also toward the downs. He designed and had built and painted him- self this quaint little inn of poesy. He wrote "Enoch Arden" in about a fortnight, pacing up and down in this meadow, looking off to tlie sea and the downs, reciting his lines out loud and then writing them down in his manuscript book on the table in the little summer house. We looked into that quaint 131 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON structure with a great deal of interest. He had stained the windows of it with his own design, painting on them marvelous dragons and sea-serpents. The life of the poet at Farringford was essentially an out-of-door life. The children were in the open air from daylight to dark, and Tennyson sat much in the garden or on the lawn, or went for long drives. The poet himself every day went for solitary tramps along the lanes, or over the downs, or by the seashore, — no matter what the weather might be. It was a life lived much with Nature, although there were the regular hours of or- dered and methodical work, and the hours also given up to intercourse with friends. Tennyson loved to talk with his neighbors, and was greatly liked by them for his kind- ness and sympathy. He loved to talk to old men at work in the fields, about death and the immortality of the soul, and he had many genuine sincere friendships with men of the common people. He was sincerely interested in them, and some of the working people have been among his most appreciative readers. He knew the name of nearly every flower and plant that grew on his land, or in the 132 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT meadows or lanes about the island. If he happened to find any strange plant, it was his habit to look it up immediately in his botany book. In the same careful way he used to study the stars, and read up on the latest discoveries of the astronomers, so that his metaphors drawn from Nature and science are wonderfully accurate. The attitude of the poet toward Nature is admirably told by his son in these words: "Everywhere throughout the universe the poet saw the glory and greatness of God, and the science of Nature was particularly dear to him. Every new fact which came within his range was carefully weighed; as he exulted in the wilder aspects of Nature and reveled in the thunderstorm, so he felt a joy in her orderliness ; he felt a rest in her steadfastness, patient progress, and hopefulness; the same seasons ever returned; the same stars wheeled in their courses; the flowers and trees blos- somed and the birds sang yearly in their ap- pointed months, and he had a triumphant appreciation of her ever new revelation of beauty." He built in the kitchen garden a little sum- merhouse for his wife, which he called "a 133 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON bower of rushes," and he used to love to work in this garden; he swept the lawns, he grav- eled the walks himself, and he loved to think that its fine old walls had stood there since the days when the monks of Lyra Abbey had walked there. It was, as the historian Lecky remarked, as if "Nature had evidently intended Tennyson for the life of the quietest and most secluded of country gentlemen, for a life spent among books and flowers and a few intimate friends, and very remote from the noise and contro- versy of the great world." And yet we all see there was infinitely more in the man and in his life than this. There was in him the old fire of the Viking, and the strength of the passionate lover of life and truth, and even at Farringford he lived a stern and strenuous life, battling for his ideals as valiantly as if his pen were a sword. His work is full of grace and beauty, but also full of strength and power, a simplicity and a sublimity about it which show that it is a man's work, valiant and true. Of one of the poems written here at Farringford, "The Holy Grail," his son says: "It seems to me to express most my 134) FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT father's higher self. Perhaps this is because I saw him in the writing of this poem more than in the writing of any other, with that faraway rapt look on his face, which he had whenever he worked at a story that touched him greatly, or because I vividly recall the inspired way in which he chanted to us the different parts of the poem as they were com- posed." Concerning these "Idylls of the King," I wonder how much may be due, aside from the genius of his intellect, to the beauty and har- mony and ideal surroundings of the poet in his enchanting island-home. Tennyson had many favorite walks and drives in the neighborhood. He loved to go to Calbourne to see the huddling brook. He enjoyed driving by the old-world thatched cot- tages of Thorley and Wellow, and to Newton Creek; and often through the fishing hamlets on the southern coast of the island. He loved to visit Swainton, the home of his good friend Sir John Simeon. It was interesting to learn that the scene of the introduction to the poem of "The Princess" is this garden at Swain- ton, and Sir Arthur Vivian is none other than Sir John Simeon himself. 135 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Tennyson's favorite walk in all the island, however, was along the crest of the mighty down, which is a part of his own estate, the finest chalk cliff in all England, and giving the most glorious view of the Needles. "Ours is the most noteworthy part of the island," Tennyson used to say, "and the air on this down is worth sixpence a pint." Near the foot of the down are some steps which were cut by Tennyson's own hand fifty years ago, to help his wife climb' to the heights and share with him this favorite walk. Those steps have thus become a place of gentle memory. Often when Hallam and Lionel were boys they were harnessed to a wheeled chair in which their mother was seated while the father pushed, and thus many an expedition was taken to the downs or the sea. The poet's favorite time for walking on the downs was in the late afternoon or even- ing, and best time of all in the moonlight. Bayard Taylor, our American poet and trav- eler, took this walk with him along the downs to the Needles on a June afternoon in 1857. Years later our American publisher and author, James T. Fields, visited the poet 136 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT and walked the downs with him in the moon- light. He tells how at one point Tennyson suddenly dropped on his knees in the grass, and on Mr. Fields asking what was the mat- ter, the poet called out, "Violets, man, violets, smell them and you'll sleep the better!" He had a most exquisite sense of smell and a great delight in violets. In all weathers he loved to walk over these wonderful downs and headlands, for he loved to listen to the cease- less pulsing of the sea and the moaning of the great wind. He went forth clad in his great cloak, soft hat, and with his favorite dog by his side. His niece relates that once walking with him on this down he said to her, "If I did not believe that God was with me day by day, just as plainly as you are by my side, I do not see how I could live." So our little pilgrimage party with the spirit of the great poet in our hearts walked with him up his favorite path, along the downs, and up to the heights where stands the lofty beacon now his special memorial on this great cliff which is to be forever called Tennyson's Down and the Tennyson Beacon. The beacon is a fine Celtic cross beautifully 137 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON proportioned, and carved on it is this in- scription; "In memory of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, this cross is raised, a beacon to sailors, by the people of Freshwater and other friends in England and America." The cliffs in places are dazzling white under the gleam of the sun, and sometimes jagged and beautiful, like a row of tiger's teeth. There is a niche in the cliff side which was pointed out as a favorite resting-place of the poet's. Here he was accustomed to sit, sheltered from the cold winds, gazing out sea- ward. Now and then as we were climbing the heights we could almost see before us the tall figure of the poet in his black wideawake hat, and the short blue cape with velvet col- lar, "the face with its noble refinement and power, and the dark, melancholy eyes look- ing far into the distance over the sea." Far down below we could hear what the poet has heard and described in his great vivid way, "The scream of a madden'd beach, dragg'd down by the wave." Here on this beacon height we obtained our finest view of the island, — the great pre- 138 THE TENNYSON BEACON. FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT cipitous chalk cliffs on the ocean side, and on the other side the broad outlook over the whole island, the beautifully wooded island- kingdom, with the towering castle in its very center, and the glimmering sea on all sides, and distant glimpses of the mainland of Eng- land. Here we sat alone, on the grass at the foot of the beacon. No other visitors were even in sight, — no other signs of life, except a few sheep which were grazing here and there on the downs. Occasionally came the harsh calling of the gulls from the cliffs far below, or the muffled booming of the heavy surf on the shingles, a thousand feet below us. Here in the radiant sunshine we read aloud, twice over, "Crossing the Bar," looking out to the sea and up into the open heavens. And here we read, three times over, that wonder- ful poem of "The Higher Pantheism," so that its deep and lofty meaning might sink into our souls. It had been a consecration and a benediction to visit the poet's home. Here we seemed to enter into something of the poet's solitude and grandeur. As Auerbach says in his wonderful story, "On the heights there is repose." We love to think of Tennyson in that green court 139 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON yonder, dreaming his dreams and making his lines portraying in such a wonderful way the great pictures that his soul conjured up, and then coming out here along these majestic cliffs by the illimitable sea, up to this very beacon height, where he found broad expanse, infinite vision, and new strength of soul, where he beheld the whole world, — and God. This was his great vision in "The Higher Pan- theism" : "The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? "Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems ? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? "Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb. Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him? "Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why: For is He not all but that which has power to feel 'I am I'? "Glory about thee, without thee: and thou fulfillest thy doom. Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom. 140 FARRINGFORD AND THE ISLE OF WIGHT "Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — • Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. "God is law, say the wise: O Soul, and let us rejoice. For if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His voice. "Law is God, say some; no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; "And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He?" 141 X ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS TENNYSON'S palatial home in the hills of Surrey is on Blackdown near Haslemere. It is a noble situation for a home, commanding a magnificent view of all the country round, and giving "one gray glimpse of the sea" on a clear day. But the place was selected especially on account of the bracing air, which the poet's wife needed. The fine qualities of the atmosphere of this region were first made known by the scientist John Tyndall, who pronounced it the most salubrious spot in England. In more recent years a colony of artists and literary people, realizing both the beauty and the healthful- ness of the place, have gathered in the neigh- borhood. There is a certain wild and rugged grandeur about Blackdown, "shaggy moorland every- where, with great patches of heather and heath, with masses of gorse growing rich in 142 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS the sandy fertile soil." But it is the whole- someness of the air that is the chief attrac- tion. Here Birket Foster lived for many years, and George Eliot for a while. Here also came Mrs. Humphry Ward, Alma-Ta- dema, Hall Caine, and others. Haslemere village is mostly modern, with only a few survivals of the quaint old days, — some an- cient stone houses embowered in roses. The estate called Aldworth is two miles or more from the station by a most charming drive. We were told that the last portion of the drive would be on very high ground with extensive views, and the final half-mile would lead through a shady lane, called "Tennyson's Lane," with an overhanging colonnade of trees, and the entire length of it exquisitely mossy and sweet. So we climbed the large ascent of Black- down. We came to the height nine hundred feet above the sea. We found the air rare and fragrant with heather. We were delighted with Tennyson's Lane, an avenue of trees meeting overhead and hedged with mossy banks of rhododendrons, bracken, and purple heather. Squirrels and rabbits and other woodland creatures dart across the path. The 143 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON lane twists and turns in most picturesque fashion, and seems to lead nowhere in par- ticular, except out into a moor. But over that moorland one may see a white gate, and this leads to the enchanted land. And here we entered. We need not compare Farringford and Aldworth. Each has its own special charm and delight. Farringford rests in the bosom of the Isle of Wight, with the surging of the sea all around it and a wonderful growth of flowers and plants. Aldworth nestles high in the heart of a rich inland country, five and twenty miles from the coast. Its air, although strong and bracing, has a softness like velvet, and its high moors are knee-deep in a lux- uriance of purple heather. Tennyson was sixty years old when he built Aldworth. He never forsook Farringford, and up to the last the winters were usually spent in the Isle of Wight; but at Aldworth he passed the summers. The poet described this great weald of Sussex in his prologue to "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade," as fol- lows: "Our birches yellowing and from each The light leaves falling fast 144 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS While squirrels from our fiery beech Were bearing off the mast. "You came and look'd and lov'd the view. Long known and loved by me, Green Sussex fading into blue, With one gray glimpse of sea." This "one gray glimpse of sea" is at the point where there is an opening in the South Downs at Arundel. Aldworth is on the southern slope of the downs. It commands a magnificent view of wide open country. The down itself is thickly covered with bracken and gorse, whortleberry and purple heather. The estate stands near the borders of three counties, Hampshire, Surrey, and Sus- sex, and even a good part of Kent can be seen from the height. It was my privilege to be invited to this beautiful home at Aldworth by Lord and Lady Tennyson, and to spend an ideal July day enjoying their gracious hospitality. Lady Tennyson has a very sweet and at- tractive face, and simple, unaffected manners. Lord Tennyson is a fine, portly gentleman of, I should judge, sixty years of age. He has a spare, reddish beard, kindly eyes, and seemed to me to have at times the look of his 145 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON father. He was most pleasant, sympathetic, and affable. One of his good friends who knows him well says, "He is a great, broad- shouldered, genial Englishman, he speaks few words, but pithy, and possesses a personality at once strong, kindly, and winning." This re- minds one of what Francis Turner Palgrave said of the elder Tennyson, "The one impres- sion which above all others those three and forty years of unswerving friendship have left with me as the dominant note of Alfred Ten- nyson, is lovableness." And so I found the son. Lord Tennyson is a quiet, sensible talker, keen and clear. A few bits of the conversa- tion may be of interest. "I remember Oliver Wendell Holmes' visit," said Lord Tennyson. "He was de- lightful. His is a finer humor than that of Mark Twain, who was rather heavy-handed for me. Dr. Holmes is deservedly popular in England." "I heard Phillips Brooks quite by accident at Westminster Abbey. I had never heard or seen him before. I listened in amazement. That's a remarkable man, I said. So I got introduced by the Dean — Stanley, it was, — 146 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS and brought him home with me. He told me he would like to live five hundred years, — he enjoyed life so." He had just been reading Mary Johnston's novel, "The Long Roll." He thought Lee a magnificent man, and greatly admired Stonewall Jackson. I asked about the incident when his father had almost come to America in 1880. "Yes," he answered, "I tried to get berths on several lines, but couldn't. I wish he had gone. The sea voyage would have done him good, and he would have been delighted with some of the great sights of America. "No, I have never been to America myself, but I would love to come over to Canada and the States, and am hoping to, some day." After luncheon, Lord Tennyson took me through the house to see some of his father's special relics. First into the hall, which is lofty and spacious, extending the whole length of the building and looking out at each end on the green lawns and the waving trees, so that the fragrance of the gardens is wafted all summer through the whole house. "Here is a row of my father's friends," he said. On the wall were large photographs 147 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON of the portraits by George Frederick Watts, — Herschel, Benjamin Jowett, Browning, Car- lyle, and others. In the hall, there were statues of Tennyson, such as those in Trinity College at Cambridge and in the National Portrait Gallery in London. In the hall I noticed a picture by Edward Lear of a knight in armor in the desert, an illustration of the lines in Tennyson's poem, "The Palace of Art": "One seem'd all dark and red, — a tract of sand And some one pacing there alone Who paced forever in a glimmering land Lit with a low, large moon." Edward Lear, we learned, was an intimate friend of the poet's. On the wall are also mezzotints by Holbein and others. There were numerous portraits of Tennyson him- self, and these gave a sense of his presence in the house. The middle room has a bay window, where after dinner dessert was spread, and usually the family and guests would here spend a pleasant half hour with the poet before he re- tired to his study to work. In this room were paintings of the two children, Hallam and Lionel, painted by Watts and presented by US ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS him to the family, and also that exquisite painting of Lady Tennyson, so ethereal that it looks like an angel, — full of tenderness and spirituality and yet showing wonderful strength of character. Her son pays a beau- tiful tribute to this ideal mother when he says, writing of what she was to his father, "By her quiet sense of humor, by her selfless devotion, by her faith as clear as the heights of the June blue heavens, she helped him to the utmost in the hours of his depression and of his sorrow." As we went up the stairway to the library. Lord Tennyson pointed out on the walls a great collection of weapons, spears, and shields, swords and axes, covering a whole side of the stairway. "These weapons are still used in Australia. I collected them when I was Governor- General of Australia, a few years ago." Lord Tennyson, like his father, is a devotee of the sacred pipes, and after a meal there is a half hour of coffee and smoke and chat in the library. This library is one of the most interesting rooms in the house. We entered by a Gothic oak door, passing through a screened portion 149 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON of the room, which is ornamented with large medalKons of the Roman emperors, probably ten or fifteen of them. "This is my father's study," said Lord Tennyson, "I keep the room just as he left it. This is his chair and desk; these pictures were his; this is the only new one that I have added." I found pictures and books everywhere; the study wall is almost covered with pictures. The chairs and couch are upholstered with a red-and-white-figured chintz, the ceiling is timbered by light beams and crossed squares. "This ivy wreath," continued Lord Tenny- son, "was sent by Queen Victoria for his fu- neral, and this great pall, hanging over the screen, was the one that was placed over his coffin at Westminster Abbey. It was em- broidered by the Needle Guild of Keswick, and you will notice it has a verse of 'Crossing the Bar' embroidered upon it." Here at this table in the study, Tennyson wrote many of his later works, and especially his dramas, such as "Queen Mary," "Becket," and "Harold," into which he threw such splen- did energy even in his advancing years. It was in his eighty-first year that one of the most perfect of his poems, "Crossing the Bar," 150 PORTRAIT OF TENNYSON BY SAMUEL LAURENCE. ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS was written on one of his journeys from / Aldworth to Farringford, perhaps suggested by the crossing of the narrow channel to his island home. I noticed that in this study was Watts' por- trait of Tennyson, similar to the one in Trinity College, Cambridge, — ''a most excellent like- ness," said Lord Tennyson. Also a replica by Watts of the one in the National Portrait Gallery. "Not so good," said his lordship. In this room is the earliest sketch of him by Mr. Wells, when he was twenty-three years old, and also the latest portrait, one by Watts, the grand and shadowy one in crayon that makes him look like Merlin him- self. Lord Tennyson likes the boyish portrait of his father, painted by Laurence when the poet was twenty-nine. It shows a smooth and beardless face, but it is already marked with lines of thought, and gives the broad, mas- sive forehead, prophetic of the future "dome of thought" which Tennyson's noble head suggested. "The portrait by My ell, the beard- ed portrait," says Lord Tennyson, "is just as my father used to look." But his favorite picture of his father is that of 1859 by Watts, — the portrait now owned 151 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON by Lady Henry Somerset, of Arundel Cas- tle. "This portrait I like very much," he said, "I consider it the best of all. It reveals the poet perfectly." There are magnificent views from the win- dows of this study or library. "It is the finest view in England," exclaimed his lordship. The conversation in the library ran on books and poems. He had just been read- ing the first volume of the new Life of Dis- raeli and wondered when the second volume would be issued. "It is probably rather slow work," he remarked, "getting it out, as so many people are yet alive, who are involved in its pages, that it makes it difficult to write. But it is a splendid sketch of Dizzy," he ex- claimed; "what a romantic career he had! He was hated and despised and yet he reached the heights." I thanked him for his own recent three vol- umes, the two volumes of Memoirs of his father's life and the more recent volume of tributes of his father's friends which he edited, and I ventured the remark, "You write so well in prose, do you ever venture into verse?" "Yes, sometimes," he answered. "And does it get into print?" I questioned further. "Yes, 152 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS but not under my own name." And I won- dered who to-day in England is publishing verse in the Tennysonian style, and perhaps with a touch of the Tennysonian genius, which we have not yet recognized under its nom de plume. We talked much of the Arthurian legends, and especially of the attempts to identify Camelot. "Camelot," he concluded, "better think of it as beneath the sea. The real site, if there ever was a real site, cannot now be determined. But Tintagel is a real place. Go visit that. The sea is so fine there, with its great waves and roaring caves under the cliffs. The ruins are not large; they may disappoint you, but they are real and grand. My father used to enjoy Tintagel so much." As we talked and looked out of these study windows, I thought how the great poet some- times looking out from these same study win- dows to the landscape, said that he had "won- derful thoughts about God and the universe and felt as if looking into the other world." Tennyson was a man of long silences and a lover of solitude. His son says that he was not infrequently abstracted for days while he was composing. This made him seem 153 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON rather brusque to strangers. His very direct- ness and simplicity also caused him sometimes to be misunderstood. He had a gift of self- concentration, which often led him to avoid strangers and to eschew small talk, but to visitors in his own house he showed an ideal hospitality, with a most genial thoughtfulness and cordiality. I was told that Tennyson once read some of his poems into a phonograph which had been a special gift from its inventor, Edison, — such poems as "The Charge of the Heavy Bri- gade," "Maud," and "Break, Break, Break." I wonder if the public will ever be privileged to hear these phonographic records of the poet's voice that is now stilled forever? As we went out into the gardens and the terraces. Lord Tennyson pointed out the spe- cial flowers that his father loved. "Father and I planted all these trees; the tallest tree here represents only forty years. It was just a field when we came here." At the northeast corner of the terrace is a strong young oak tree, planted by Tennyson on Jubilee Day, 1887, when the poet wrote his "Ode on the Jubilee of Queen Victoria." Lord Hallam Tennyson walked through 154 LATEST PORTRAIT OF TENNYSON, BY WATTS. ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS these gardens wearing a great straw hat like a farmer's hat, and two dogs jumped and gamboled at his side. He pointed out the motto that ran in interwoven carvings around the house, "Gloria Deo in excelsis," etc. "My mother and father designed the house," he said, "and Mr. James Knollys, the architect, put it in working shape for them. What style would you call the house? Perhaps French chateau in part and Tudor in part; some say it should have been all Tudor, but it cost enough as it was." The name "Aldworth" is taken from one of the old Sellwood places belonging to Lady Tennyson's family. The residence is not a large house, and the estate consists of about one hundred and fifty acres. There is a for- mal garden and a much larger wild-garden which Tennyson especially loved. Lord Ten- nyson gave me several sprays of the Alexan- drian laurel, the poet's laurel, which was a special favorite of his father, and a wreath of which was laid upon his coffin at the funeral. Several distinct lawns extend around the house, each surrounded by birch, yew, ilex, pines, fir and cypress, making pleasant green parlors of the sward. There is one circle of 155 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON trees around the lawn, that makes a beautiful little open-air theater, and here often the fam- ily have their tea al fresco. "The view from these terraces at sunset," said Lady Tennyson, "is wonderfully grand. And at night, from this point, we can often get a glimpse of the sea when the moon is just right. We can see it glimmering and shim- mering on the water." Aldworth is exquisitely beautiful. As Ar- thur Patterson puts the comparison, "Far- ringford was a place of promise and of great- ness to be, while at Aldworth there is an atmosphere of stately maturity and of the promise that had been fulfilled. Farringford, the old home, was a place that had grown; Aldworth has been built. Each is perfect of its kind, each has an especial charm, and both breathe the personality of the master-spirit that has lived in them." "Farringford he never forsook," writes Aubrey De Vere, "though he added Aldworth to it, and assuredly no poet has ever before called two such residences his own. The sec- ond house was as well chosen as the first. It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that 156 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS English land he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by the inviolate sea. Year after year he trod its two stately terraces, with men the noblest of their time." The guests at Aldworth included some of the best-known names in England, and Ten- nyson, being, as Laureate, a member of the Royal Household, sometimes had several of the Royal Family on special visits to him. The Princess Mary, the Duchess of Teck, and the Duchess of Albany have walked with him on the terraces of his Aldworth home. Gladstone has been here, the Duke of Argyle, Lord Wolseley, Lord Napier, Lord and Lady Duf- ferin, and many others. Tennyson was a devoted walker and an en- thusiastic dog lover. His dear old Don was a constant companion for him in his walks over hill and dale. They would tramp to- gether, not caring if the weather were fair or foul. Near Blackdown House, a fine old Elizabethan mansion where Cromwell once slept, was a favorite resting-place on his walks, called by Tennyson "the Temple of the Winds." It is a clump of fir trees with a great panorama stretching before it. 157 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Tennyson always paused on his walks to hear the trickle of a stream, and sometimes, as his son tells, would stand a long while leaning on his stick thinking. All sounds of running water had an especial charm for him. As he grew older, his walks gradually grew shorter, and he spent more time in the sunset arbor and the eastern arbor of his gardens, sitting in one or the other according to the direction of the wind, but to the very last he kept up one walk daily, and that was along the lane toward Haslemere, that lane now called Tennyson's Lane, to a gate about three quarters of a mile from the house, where he would always strike the gatepost with his stick before he turned back. His regular methods of work and his open-air life kept him hale and hearty to the age of eighty-three. One thing that especially impressed me in Tennyson's home at Aldworth was that fine old Welsh motto that he loved, and which was put into the tiles of his entrance hall, as Lord Tennyson pointed out to me, — the motto: *'Y Gwir yn erbyn y byd," which means in English, "The Truth, against the World." Somehow the heroic challenge in that motto pleased Tennyson greatly, for he felt all his 168 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS life long that he was fighting for the stronger faith and for the larger truth. His poems agree with the latest findings of science, and yet they are full of the worthiest thoughts of God. He felt himself a prophet in his own day and generation, — to proclaim to the world a reconciling word between science and relig- ion, and his message was splendidly uttered and is being increasingly heard as the years go on. We had saved for the last hour a visit to the upper chamber where the great Poet Laureate had breathed his last. It is now Lady Tennyson's own room, and I was taken into it by her who had had such an intimate share in the benediction of those last hours. It is a beautiful room, with its casement win- dows looking out over magnificent hills, and much in it remains as it was. "It was two o'clock in the morning," said Lady Tennyson to me, describing that last scene; "the moonlight was streaming through this casement window. The bed was just as it is now, canopy and all; except that there were not so many trailing vines around the window as now; the view out of the win- dows was of course just the same. We could 159 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON not quite glimpse the sea that night, but the poet's face was bathed in the Hght of the full harvest moon. He had been reading 'Cymbe- line' that last day. I was with him when he passed away. He looked out over that won- derful landscape for the last time, and in the moonlight and with his 'Cymbeline' he was so peaceful, content, and serene." He lay "a figure of breathing marble look- ing out upon the landscape that he loved," and there seemed to come the fulfillment of the lines — "Sunset and evening star And one clear call for me." Surely, I thought, this was a poetic exit to life, — and such a beautiful life, so large and majestic and well rounded. It is a consecra- tion to be in this room where the great poet breathed his last, and where he looked on the beautiful world for the last time. What a wonderful view of life he always had, and what visions of beauty and chivalry he brought to us all. How noble an interpreter! How great was his life, — full of years, honor, and splen- did service and at last to be laid to rest in the beauty of the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, and always to be remembered and 160 ALDWORTH AMONG THE SURREY HILLS loved, — what more glorious career could a man ask? I shall never forget the story of that fu- neral procession from Aldworth down Tenny- son's Lane to Haslemere as his son described it. It was like a beautiful and touching poem in itself: "We placed 'Cymbeline' with him and a laurel wreath from Virgil's tomb, and wreaths of roses, the flower which he loved above all flowers, and some of the Alexandrian laurel, — the poet's laurel. On the evening of that day, the coffin was set upon a wagon- ette, made beautiful with stag's-horn moss, and the scarlet lobelia cardinalis, and draped with a pall woven by working men and women of the North, and embroidered by the cottagers of Keswick, and then we covered him with the wreaths and crosses sent from all parts of Great Britain. The coachman, who had been for more than thirty years my father's faith- ful servant, led the horse; ourselves, the vil- lagers, and the school children followed over the moor, through our lane, toward a glorious sunset, and later through Haslemere under brilliant starlight." And then finally came that wonderful fu- neral service in Westminster Abbey which in 161 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON his son's very words, "was simple and majestic, and the tributes of sympathy which we received from many countries and from all creeds and classes were not only remarkable for their uni- versality, but for their depth of feeling; and for weeks after the funeral, multitudes passed by the new-made grave, in a never-ceasing procession." Surely it was all a most happy realization of the poet's ideal as he had expressed it in his own majestic requiem, his latest confes- sion of faith, his confident trust in the future, his perfect poem, "Crossing the Bar." "Sunset and evening star. And one clear call for me ! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea. "But such a tide as moving seems asleep. Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. "Twilight and evening bell. And after that the dark ! Anid may there be no sadness of farewell. When I embark: "For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar." 162 POETS' CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. XI TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR IN the cloudy evening light we climbed down into Tintagel Cove and looked up at the colossal cliffs where the ancient castle frowned, and listened to the mighty surf thun- dering on the shingly beach and booming its rough way into the depths of Merlin's Cave. The wind was blowing a stiff gale; the stone road and roughly chiseled steps were slippery with the recent rain. So we did not attempt that evening to scale the castle heights to the farthest reaches, — much to the chagrin of the Laddies, who in true American spirit were ready to risk all in the attempt. We did climb half-way up the heights. That seemed perilous enough for enjoyment, and we looked out to the south toward far-away Trevose. It was a magnificent view of the weird and wild Corn- ish coast, lashed by the great waves. The cliffs at Tintagel are among the highest and most impressive in Cornwall. Through their association with these ancient ruins of 163 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON King Arthur's castle and the mystic legends of the past, these seashore precipices have be- come most fascinating and even sublime. Down in Tintagel Cove we talked with a ven- erable dame who was the custodian of the castle keys. She told us she had been born here in Tintagel, as were her mother and her grandmother before her. Her mother had seen the light in the little stone house, now a picturesque ruin a little way up the cove, and had always lived there, even to the green old age of eighty-four. Such romantic associa- tions ought to have brought something of grandeur into her soul. I wonder if it did. The dusk was falling rapidly and the heavy storm clouds were wrapping all things in gloom as we clambered up out of the valley toward the village and wandered on to our hotel. As we gave our last look at the castle, the ruins faded into the darkness and the storm broke. That night in King Arthur's Castle, as the hotel is named, we re-read the "Idylls of the King," especially "The Coming of Arthur" and "The Passing of Arthur," and we felt anew the witchery and the grandeur of the splendid story. In the hotel hall we were 164 TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR delighted to find a round table of King Arthur, made after the ancient one in the Great Hall at Winchester, with the names of Ar- thur's knights engraved upon it, — Sir Gala- had, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percival, and the others, — and the veritable painting of King Arthur himself in his royal robes as part of its decora- tion. This round table interested the Laddies at once, and they made rubbings of the carven names of some of the knights upon its edges. It gave a charming sense of reality to have the Lady seated at King Arthur's Round Table, reading to us those very legends of King Arthur's knights that had made this re- gion of Tintagel, and Camelot near by, and Lyonesse, and Caerleon-on-Usk so memorable in the ancient centuries of Britain. The storm that howled without and the gusts of rain against the window-panes only served to make these old legends more vivid to us, as they themselves had come from a stormy past. Bright and early the next morning, we looked out from our windows and there straight before us, — yes, it was not a mere dream of the night, — there were the immense cliffs and the ruined castle of King Arthur, and beyond the wide stretches of the illimitable 165 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON sea. Again we clambered down the rocks into the Cove, by a zigzag pathway, and begged from the old custodian the key to the postern gate of the castle. We gave the ponderous key into the care of one of the Laddies, who deposited the trust in his safest pocket before we began the upward climb. We had heard that the old lady had several duplicates of the ancient key, so that we felt at ease in ac- cepting its precious custody. Before making the rocky ascent, however, we went down farther to the shingly beach, and visited some of the great caverns in the rocks. Wonderful is the so-called Merlin's Cave, which tunnels under the great cliff of the castle from one side to another. The sea at times of high tide rushes into both entrances. The cavern is colossal in size, perhaps forty feet in height and from ten to twenty feet wide, but in the middle of its course under the cliff it becomes so low that one has to stoop. From the depths of the cavern the outlook is magnificent, — from the darkness out into the light, from the awful stillness of the cave out to the roaring and rushing ocean. As we stood in the cavern's mouth and the mighty waves leaped and tumbled in majesty to our feet, 166 TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR we could easily believe in that wonderful old wizard Merlin, and that this very cavern might have been his hiding-place and the shrine of his magic art, beneath King Arthur's castle. The grandeur of the place, the loneliness and weird- ness of the scenery, give a strange sense of the uncanny and the unearthly, in which we are prepared to accept legend as fact and the weirdest tales as no stranger than the truth itself. Soon the Laddies and the Lady were lead- ing the pilgrim procession up the rocky stair- case to the heights. At the postern gate one Laddie, like another Merlin, produced the magic key, and we unlocked the heavy iron- bound gate, strangely marked with many wrought-iron hob-nails in ancient ornament, and in a moment we were within the castle inclosure. Backward through the postern gate the view of the sea and the cliffs was wonderful, and forward was a most beautiful sward, the castle yard, and broken parapets, and the crumbling walls of the castle chapel, together with other buildings in most picturesque confusion. We sat on Arthur's Seat, and looked out at his win- dow; we traced the ruined chapel and its 167 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON altar stone and stone seats; we discovered the subterranean passage which, according to the traditions in the olden days, was a secret way to the sea. Here and there we went across the splendid heights of the ramparts of rocks overlooking the sea, and here and there the Laddies ran and scrambled, playing leap-frog where in the ancient days King Arthur and his knights held many a joust and tournament. And here, on the topmost heights of King Ar- thur's castle, the Lady and the Laddies, with the deeper bass joining in, sang an old song which we had often sung at home as a nursery rhyme : "King Arthur was a valiant knight. And a great and mighty king, He drove outdoors three scamps and rogues Because they would not sing. "The first he was a miller. The second he was a weaver. And the third he was a little tailor boy; All three rogues together. "The miller was drowned in his dam. The weaver was hung with his yarn, And the de'il ran away with the little tailor boy With his broadcloth under his arm." It was not a very dignified selection for such a somber and glorious height, but it was the 168 THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE, TINTAGEL. TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR only song about King Arthur that we hap- pened to know, and the Laddies enjoyed it. Fortunately we had the whole place to our- selves. No one was disturbed by our jollity, and the winds and the gulls were also singing so loudly that no spirits of the vasty deep or of the misty past were disturbed by our rol- licking voices on the cliff. From this great stronghold with its mighty ruins we looked across a narrow defile to an- other cliff with other ruins. In the ancient days the two portions of the cliff were con- nected by a drawbridge, of which we can still see an ancient pier and support. All these ruins were parts of the one castle and its vari- ous buildings. These ruins at Tintagel are very ancient. Some investigators contend that they can not be quite so ancient as King Arthur's day. However, they may be the ruins of a later stronghold which stood on the site of King Arthur's castle and which incorporated with its buildings some of the earlier castle walls and battlements. As we stand here it is not at all difficult to believe that this traditionary site is the veritable site of King Arthur's own castle. It is such a magnificent situation, so 169 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON rugged and impressive, that we feel it surely ought to have been the stronghold of an early British King. It is perfectly fitting, absolutely satisfactory, as a historic site for the tradi- tions of King Arthur. It is truly "an amazing stronghold" (as some one has called it), with its turreted walls and massive ruins high on this cloven cliff of the sea. There is a romantic grandeur about it which is absolutely entrancing, and from cer- tain angles the sheer precipices of the cliff with their overhanging ruins make a wonderful sil- houette against the sky. After we had gone through the postern gate, — somehow we liked that postern gate, — we were particular to relock it, for so the cus- todian had given us particular direction, and we looked at the postern gate itself with much interest. We had often dreamed of it before coming here, for you remember that Malory describes it in the "Morte d'Arthur," in telling of that first event in the life of King Arthur when he was not a day old. Malory's chronicle, you will remember, differs somewhat from the mystic story of Tennyson. Malory writes: "Then when the lady was delivered, the King commanded two knights and two ladies to take 170 TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR the child, bound in a cloth of gold, and that ye deliver him to what poor man ye meet at the postern gate of the castle. So the child was delivered unto Merlin, and so he bare it forth unto Sir Hector and made an holy man to christen him, and named him Arthur." Tennyson made a first "Arthurian journey" in preparation for his Idylls in May and June, 1848, when he described Tintagel: "Rainy and bad, went and sat in Tintagel ruins, weird- looking. Old castle darkening in the gloom." Again he visited Tintagel in August, 1860, in company with Francis Turner Palgrave, Hol- man Hunt, and two other friends. His letter- diary contains the entry: "August 23. Tin- tagel. Grand coast. Black cliffs and caves, storm and wind." He went a third time in 1887. He loved this ruined castle of King Arthur, where Iseult sat in the last tourna- ment; the rushing of the sea under the great cave; and all the memories and visions of the olden days. The ruins seem fragmentary and scarcely enough to give a clear idea of what the original castle might have been, and yet enough to quicken imagination. We not only sang songs and shouted on the heights of King Arthur's 171 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON castle, but the Lady read again to us some of Tennyson's great lines, especially concerning the "Coming of Arthur," when on the sloping shore of the cove the baby Arthur was miracu- lously flung by the waves to the feet of Merlin. These were some of Tennyson's lines: "And then the two Dropt to the cove and watched the great sea fall Wave after wave, each mightier than the last. Till last, a ninth one gathering half the deep And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged. Roaring, and all the wave was in a flamey And down the wave, and in the wave was borne A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet. Who stoopt and caught the babe and cried, 'The King! Here is an heir for Uther !* " As the Lady read, the Laddies gazed down the sides of the great cliff into the booming waters to see if once again some miracle might happen. But in the surf appeared only a lone bather, tumbling and shouting to a friend on the shingle. Still farther we read aloud upon the heights those words of William Howitt, written many years ago, but seeming still to clothe the weird place with a splendid life : "As the sound of the billows came up from below, and the cliffs stood around in their dark solemn 172 TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR grandeur, I gradually lost sight of the actual place and was gone into the very land and times of old romance. The Palace of Tintagel was no longer a ruin. It stood before me in that barbaric splendor I had only before supposed. There it was, in all its amplitude, with all its bastions and battlements, its towers and massy archways, dark yet glittering in the sun with metallic luster. The porter stood by its gate; the warder paced its highest turret* beholding with watchful glance both sea and land; guards walked to and fro on its great drawbridge, their battle-axes flashing in the morning beams as they turned ; pennons were streaming on every tower, and war-steeds were neighing in their stalls. There was a sound and a stir of life. Where I had seen before the bare green turf, I now saw knights, jousting for pastime in the tiltyard; where the sea had rolled, I beheld a fair garden. Many a young knight and damsel paced the pleasant garden-walks in high discourse or merriment, and other knights in alleys cool were playing at the bowls But the bugle blew. The great portcullis went up with a jar. There was a sound of horns, a clatter of horses' hoofs on the hard pavement, a cry of hounds, and forth issued from the castle court the most glorious pageant that the eye could look upon. It was no other than King Arthur, Queen Guine- vere, and a hundred knights and ladies equipped and mounted for the chase. O for some minstrel to tell us all their names, and place their beauty and bravery before us. There they were, — those famous 173 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON warriors of the Table Round, on their strong steeds ; the fairest dames on earth on their ambling jennets of Spain, with mantles of green and purple and azure fluttering in the breeze and flashing in the sun. There they went, — the noble, stalwart, and magnanimous Arthur at their head, wearing his hel- met crown as he was wont in battle." How vivid it all seems when read there on the very soil, amid the very ruins of the castle called King Arthur's. Yes, from these pin- nacled heights where the massive fragments of the castle still crumble, one could scarcely doubt that King Arthur often walked and talked and gazed out upon the sea. These ancient ruins are dream-compelling, and espe- cially so on a moonlight night when there floats an unutterable grandeur about them in the soft white light and the shimmering of the sea. Then in truth there come also thoughts of that luckless couple who loved not wisely but too well, — the fair Queen and the valiant Lancelot ; then comes the tender pathos of the awful tragedy that brought ruin to the Table Round. We could almost see, as Howitt de- scribed, the mailed host of the great King, his brave cavalcade of armed knights mounted on their prancing charges, their lances flash- 174 TINTAGEL AND KING ARTHUR ing in the moonlight, as they go forth to the last great battle ; and as they wend, in a silent awe, a death-white mist creeps over land and sea, veiling even the fair face of the moon. The mist of Time seemed again to be touched by the old enchanter Merlin's wand, and we lived again with that brave brother- hood of noble knights whose creed and deed were in these words of Arthur: "I made them lay their hands in mine and swear To reverence the King as if he were Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, To ride abroad, redressing human wrongs. To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. To honor his own words as if his God's, To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. To love one maiden only, cleave to her. And worship her by years of noble deeds. Until they won her; for well I knew Of no more subtle master under heaven Than is the maiden passion for a maid. Not only to keep down the base in man. But teach high thought, and amiable words And courtliness, and the desire of fame. And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 175 XII AMESBURY ABBEY AND QUEEN GUINEVERE WHAT took us to Amesbury was to find the ancient abbey wliere Queen Guinevere was given refuge after her pitiful tragedy and where finally she died. The place is about eight miles to the north of Salisbury, in that vast tract to which the gen- eral name is sometimes given of Salisbury Plain. It is a beautiful country. Lady An- trobus, the long-time owner and occupant of the Abbey, thus describes it: "The river Avon on its course to the sea passes through a beautiful valley in Wiltshire in which lies Amesbury, or, to follow the old spelling, Am- bresbury, signifying the land of Ambrosius. This fascinating place and the wild country surrounding it possess a charm and beauty all their own, and those born and bred there ever pine for the breezy downs of this Salisbury Plain as the Swiss for their mountains or North Country people for the moor- land. And no one who has walked or ridden on some glorious summer morning over the fine close grass, clothing the Wiltshire down, can ever forget 176 AMESBURY ABBEY its delicious springing quality underfoot. A tal- ented modem artist once happily christened Ames- bury, 'the golden valley.' He saw it in the spring, at which season of the year the whole country-side seems ablaze with brilliant yellow flowers." Our happy journey to the golden valley of Amesbury Avas part of a delightsome pilgrim- age which included Salisbury with its wonder- ful cathedral, Stonehenge with its vast monu- ment, George Herbert's church at Bemerton, and Wilton House with its great Van Dykes and its gardens. W. E. H. Lecky tells of a visit that he made to this region with Tenny- son in May, 1880, and he remarks that "Such a trip is an experience to abide with one for a lifetime. The remembrance of it rose vividly to my mind again as I stood by Tennyson's coffin in Westminster Abbey." We also re- membered that Carlyle and Emerson once made this same excursion, as the latter tells us in his volume on "English Traits." Tennyson does not often describe religious houses in his poems, but there are occasional glimpses; for instance, the tender sketch of a convent in "St. Agnes' Eve," "Deep on the convent roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon. 177 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON My breath to heaven like vapor goes: May my soul follow soon ! The shadows of the convent towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord." We found the abbey church dedicated to the memories of St. Mary and St. Melorous. It is a fine old parish church. It has a thir- teenth century chapel and a fourteenth-century nave. But archeologists consider that part of it is a much older abbey church founded by Queen Elfreda to expiate the murder of her stepson. The remains of a Saxon pillar, em- bedded in the masonry of the nave wall, seem to prove that the present building stands on the site of Elfreda's church. The most inter- esting thing that we saw inside the church was a window in a rather obscure corner. In it is a portion of very ancient stained glass, and on one part of it a picture very archaic, of a fair-haired, slender-necked woman sup- posed to represent Queen Guinevere. "It is not a very flattering portrait," the Lady re- marked, "I do not see how either King Ar- thur or Lancelot could fall in love with that sad face. But mayhap it was the sorrowful tragedy that saddened her pale face." 178 AMESBURY ABBEY It is the old chronicle of Geoffrey of Mon- mouth which gives Amesbury as the place of Queen Guinevere's penitential retirement and death. Malory, in the "Morte d'Arthur," makes mention of Amesbury in this way: "And thus upon a night there came a vision unto Sir Launcelot, and charged him in remission of all his sins to haste him toward Almesbury, and by that time thou come there thou shalt find Queen Guenever dead. And therefore take thy fellows with thee, and also purvey thee a horse bier, and bring you the corpse of her and bury it by her lord and husband. Then Sir Launcelot took his seven fellows with him, and on foot they went from Glastonbury which is little more than thirty miles. And when Sir Launcelot was come to Almesbury within the nunnery Queen Guenever died but half an hour before." Tennyson follows the ancient legends but makes his own variations. It is an interesting tradition mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth that there was here an ancient British monastery for three hundred monks, founded some say by the famous Prince Ambrosius, who lived at the time of the Saxon invasion, and who was buried there- in. This monastery was prior to Queen El- freda's nunnery. 179 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON We were sorry to find that the ancient abbey itself had been rebuilt or overbuilt into a mod- ern residence, with the old name Amesbury Abbey retained, but with little of the ancient ecclesiastical tradition or simplicity. It is now a stately mansion. Hardly a single stone of the old abbey remains above ground, but many traces of cells were discovered underground when foundations were being dug for the pres- ent building. The old Abbey grounds once covered a space of thirteen acres. Not far from the Abbey we saw an ancient farmhouse of dark gray stone. It consisted of a group of buildings with thatched roofs, — stables, barns and outhouses, — and all so venerable and picturesque amid its hedges and noble trees, that it looked much more like one's ideal of the abbey than the modern manor house. Tradition tells us that Queen Guinevere spent the night at Romsey Abbey, another great nunnery, on the way to Almesbury. We had just visited Romsey, which is admirably preserved, — a wonderfully perfect specimen of Norman work, — and we wondered v/hether Amesbury Abbey had been in its day some- thing like this wonderful creation. Romsey Abbey was spared by the iconoclast and has 180 AMESBURY ABBEY been erected into the parish church. It is singularly chaste and beautiful. Its Norman columns, arches, and ornamentations are per- haps as fine as anything in the kingdom. The famous Romsey crucifix, a very archaic carv- ing, still remains on the outside wall, and there is some quaint humor in the gargoyles, per- haps a sly fling at the nuns themselves, for the faces on the gargoyles are entirely the faces of cats in varying styles of grimace and grotesqueness. If Queen Guinevere spent the night at Romsey Abbey on her way to Amesbury, she also doubtless passed on Salisbury Plain that most ancient monumental glory of Eng- land, the wonderful sun-temple at Stonehenge. Certainly Queen Guinevere looked upward at these weird masses of rock as she came to Amesbury Abbey, for she could not escape them. Doubtless the eyes of King Arthur also gazed upon them and mused in wonder. The little lad who drove us in his pony cart to Amesbury Abbey and Stonehenge talked as incessantly as the little maid who chattered to Queen Guinevere in her sad days in the Ab- bey. As we rode along our pilgrim path to Stonehege, the skylarks were singing, and one 181 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON could see the shepherd and the sheep here and there upon the horizon, reminding us of the Roman Campagna. Far off, we saw the dim, mysterious forms of the mighty monoliths ap- pearing, and then as we draw nearer on the un- dulating road they disappeared again, shut off by an intervening hill. We did not see them again until we got quite near. Then their majesty and grandeur burst upon us suddenly. They are colossal. Some say they were a great temple for the Druids ; others contend that they were a Phoe- nician sun-temple erected before the time of Christ. The archeologist, Dr. Flinders-Petrie, gives his opinion that this temple at Stone- henge was erected between a.d. 500 and 900. But another archeologist, Mr. Edmund Story Maskelyne, puts the date at 900 to 1000 B.C. The outer circle measures 308 feet in circum- ference. Originally there were thirty upright stones, seventeen of which are still standing. There is an inner circle and also a great ellipse. The most interesting feature of Stonehenge is that on the 21st of June, the day of the solar half-year, the sun as it creeps over the horizon sheds its beams exactly on the great altar stone, and then and there the human victim was slain. 182 AMESBURY ABBEY Such mighty stones are nowhere else to be found in this neighborhood. They are what are known as bhie stones, and are native only to Brittany or Normandy. They were prob- ably brought in Greek or Phcenician ships, landed at Pool or Christchurch on the coast, and then transported by rafts or overland to Amesbury. However they were brought or for what religious purpose, there they stand, the most ancient monument of Britain, full of fascinating mystery and unutterable grandeur, looking down on Amesbury Abbey and on the whole history of Britain as the Sphinx and the Pyramids look down on Egypt. Let me quote again from Lady Aritrobus, who loves them: "To my mind the magic of Stonehenge is never more powerfully felt than during the wild, tempestu- ous autumnal gales that usually sweep across Salis- bury Plain in October, — great clouds roll above, enfolding the circle in a shadowy purple mantle, sometimes tipped with gold. Thoughts rise up sud- denly of the many tragedies, feasts, sacrifices, mys terious rites that must have been enacted here in far-off bygone days. One wonders if beautiful golden-haired Guinevere passed this way on her flight to safety at the convent at Almesbury, the land of Ambrosius, or if sad King Arthur tarried 183 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON there on his lonely homeward journey. I prefer to picture to myself Stonehenge in happy, thoughtless pagan days, Druid priests and priestesses forming grand processions, crossing the rushing Avon, and winding up from the valley to Stonehenge, clothed in pure white, and holding gleaming sickles in their hands, chanting hymns on their way to perform the sacred rite of cutting the mistletoe. Perhaps they sang and chanted through the short summer night, waiting for the sun to rise over the pointed out- lying stone on the day which marks the solar half- year, June 21 and which bathes the altar stone in golden light. Probably this was the signal for sacrifice, the death of the victim and the appeasing of the wrathful gods." Stonehenge meant much to our Tennysonian pilgrimage, not merely because King Arthur and Queen Guinevere had looked upon it on their Amesbury journey, but also because it furnished many stories for the Laddies. Some of them were concerning the ancient traditions that this mighty monument was built by the great magician Merlin. The old British King Constantine had two sons, Pendragon and Uther. A great battle was fought on Salis- bury Plain against the Saxons. Pendragon was killed. Uther took his name, and was henceforth called Uther Pendragon. To com- 184 AMESBURY ABBEY memorate the honored Uther, the magician Merhn built this colossal monument on the site of the battle — a monument greater than man had known and destined to last forever. Here also King Uther Pendragon was buried. Now, this Uther Pendragon was the father of King Arthur. But to come back to Tennyson, and the "Idylls." The scene where King Arthur found Queen Guinevere at Amesbury Abbey is full of pathos and power. The Lady read it aloud to us here in charming old Amesbury. A part of it we may venture to recall : "Queen Guinevere had fled the court and sat There in the holy house at Almesbury Weeping, none with her save a little maid, A novice. One low^ light betwixt them burn'd, Blurr'd by the creeping mist, for all abroad. Beneath a white moon unseen albeit at full. The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face. Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still. Then on a sudden cry, 'The King!' She sat Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet Thro' the long gallery from the outer doors. Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell. And grovell'd with her face against the floor: There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair She made her face a darkness from the King; 185 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON And in the darkness heard his armed feet Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice. Monotonous and hollow like a ghost's. Denouncing judgment, but tho' changed, the King's. 'Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee, laying there thy golden head. My pride in happier summers, at my feet. The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law, The doom of treason and the flaming death (When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past. The pang — which while I weighed thy heart with one Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee, Made my tears burn — is also past — ^in part. And all is past, the sin is sinn'd and I Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God Forgives; do for thine own soul the rest. But how to take leave of all I loved.'' golden hair, with which I used to play Not knowing! O imperial molded form. And beauty such as never woman wore. So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. Let no man dream but that I love thee still. Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, And so thou lean on our fair Father Christ, Hereafter in that world where all are pure We two may meet before high God, and thou Wilt spring to me, and claim me thine, and know 1 am thine husband. . . ." 186 XIII CAMELOT AND LYONESSE ONE day we were standing at Land's End, — that extreme point of south- western England, looking over the sea, toward the Scilly Isles, — and meditating on the Arthurian legends. Beneath the ocean at this point, all the way from Land's End to the islands, lies, according to the legends and tra- ditions, the mystic lost land of Lyonesse. Tennyson once wrote of it in prose: "On the latest limit of the West, in the land of Lyonesse, where save the rocky isles of Scilly, all is now wild sea, rose the sacred mount of Camelot. At the top was King Arthur's hall, and the holy minster. The mount was the most beautiful in the world, underneath was hollow; the seas rushed bel- lowing through the porphyry caves." This he had written as a note long before he had essayed the serious task of composing his gi-eat "Idylls." Camelot and the land of Lyonesse seem a dim and shadowy region. But we found some- 187 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON thing in that Cornish coast still existing to re- mind us, especially in the moonlight, of what Camelot might have been. We discovered the beautiful island and picturesque castle of St. Michael's Mount at Marazion a few miles from Penzance in this weird country. The island juts up high from the sea, a perfect mount, and on its summit is perched the picturesque stronghold and church which has had most in- teresting history from the Middle Ages. It is smaller but hardly less picturesque than its more famous counterpart, Mont St. Michel in Brittany on the opposite coast. Do you remember Tennyson's lines in the Morte d' Arthur? "So all day long the noise of battle roU'd Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonesse about their Lord, King Arthur; then, because his wound was deep. The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him. Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights. And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, A broken channel with a broken cross. That stood on a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the Ocean, and on one Lay a great water, and the moon was full." We were reading these lines as we came near 188 CAMELOT AND LYONESSE to that ancient chapel and castle of St. Mi- chael's Mount, and so beautiful it all was that we fell to wondering about those mystic days in ancient Lyonesse. St. Michael's Mount is the "Ictis" of the ancients, as our infallible Baedeker assures us, and its earliest historical occupant, if legend be fact, was the Giant Cor- moran, who was slain by Jack the Giant-killer. The castle in modern times has long belonged to Lord St. Levan, of the St. Aubin family. The lost land of Lyonesse, according to an- cient legend, used to jut far out into the sea for forty miles or more, but it was submerged by some strange catastrophe, an earthquake or some fiery storm and subsidence of the re- gion below the sea, and, according to the old chronicles, about 140 parishes were thus en- gulfed. So it is called "A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again." The only remaining portions of the old lost land of Lyonesse, Sir Tristran's country, are in the fifty or more little spots of land appear- ing above the waves about forty miles from the mainland, the Cassiterides of the ancients, but now called the Scilly Isles. Only five are 189 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON inhabited. The largest is St. Mary's with a castle; Tresco with an old ruined abbey, and a rocky height, and caves, and wonderful sub- tropical gardens where hundreds of thousands of narcissus are growing. These islands I have seen in the early morning, as they lifted from the sea wrapped in a pale mist. But most beautiful, I think, are they at sunset time, as I once saw them, looking like isles of dream in their tintings of rose and violet, and the sur- rounding waters a mass of "tossing and tum- bling gold." And here on the coast of the mystic land of Lyonesse, we also meditated on these dim and shadowy legends of King Ai'thur and his Round Table of valiant knights. How much is myth, how much is history? Who can tell? The legends of King Arthur began among the Welsh bards of the seventh century. These legends were collected by Geoffrej^ of Mon- mouth in the twelfth century. They were first printed by Caxton in 1485, in the chronicles of Sir Thomas Malory, called the "Morte d' Arthur." Modern scholars differ as to the authenticity of the main facts of these legends. There are some historical writers who ac- knowledge Arthur as a Romanized Briton of 190 CAMELOT AND LYONESSE the fifth century, who fought to maintain Christianity against the hordes of Picts and other barbarians of the North. He was prob- ably born at Tintagel and held his court there and at Camelot, and at Caerleon-on-Usk. He fought twelve great battles and was victorious, but in the thirteenth he was defeated and wounded unto death, and was, according to tradition, buried at Glastonbury. This was in 542 A.D. Some on the other hand contend that many of these legends are altogether due to the imagination of Welsh bards, and there is only the slightest of historical foundations for these splendid stories. They contend that Arthur was not known to the Gaels, but only to the Welsh, the British, the Picts, and the Scots; that the Round Table is a still later addition, by bards and chroniclers possibly of the thir- teenth century, and that the burial and shrine at Glastonbury are the pious inventions of the monks. It is a most difficult question to unravel and settle; a whole library of literature is the re- sult of the controversy, and the clear light has not yet come. Tintagel seems a true and in- disputable spot. The persistent legends of 191 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON the centuries pointing to this place must have some truth in them. That noble cliff with its ruins is so nakedly primitive and so grandly gloomy. "Half in sea and high on land, a crown of towers by these crags of Cornwall, water lapped." Whether Tennyson in his later years really believed in the reputed history of King Arthur remains uncertain; but cer- tain it is that he fully accepted the legends as a beautiful and heroic story that could teach lessons for all time. He was engaged on the "Idylls of the King" for thirty years of his life. He began with some single poems such as "The Lady of Shalott," "Sir Galahad," "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," and the "Morte d' Arthur." But these were only preliminary sketches, as the great themes began to take hold of him. The first real "Idylls" were published in 1859, and consisted of four, "Enid," "Vivien," "Elaine," and "Guinevere." In 1862, he wrote the dedication to the Prince Consort. In 1869, he published "The Coming of Arthur," "The Holy Grail," "Pelleas and Etarre," and "The Passing of Arthur." In 1871, he added "The Last Tournament," and in 1885, he completed the "Idylls" by publishing "Balin and Balan," 192 ^^ CAMELOT AND LYONESSE "Geraint and Enid," and "The Marriage of Geraint," which was really the first idyll of "Enid" divided in two and completed. All through the great story of the "Idylls" Camelot stands out in great prominence as the center of the splendid scenes, yet its identifica- tion is still disputed. One claimant is Queen Camel in Somerset, now a little village one mile south of Yeoville Junction, halfway between Salisbury and Exeter. Professor William J. Rolfe, in his edition of the "Idylls of the King," says of Camelot, the capital of King Arthur: "Its situation, like that of many lo- calities in the Arthurian stories, is vaguely in- .dicated. But it was probably at or near the place now called Queen Camel in Somerset- shire." As far as we could learn, however, this place, even in its topography, does not at all fulfill the descriptions. Another claimant is Camelot, near Falkirk, Scotland, and some hold that the last great battle against the Picts was fought here at the Scottish border. Still another claimant is Winchester, the ancient capital of Britain, which is mentioned by some of the first chroni- clers as having in earlier days been the Came- lot of Arthur. It still possesses one serious 193 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON piece of evidence, King Arthur's Round Table, a relic whose authentic history certainly goes back many centuries. The bulk of the traditions seemed to point to Camelford in Cornwall, and thither our pil- grimage wended its way. Camelford is a small and not very interesting little village on the winding river Allen. It has only one good inn; a town hall with a camel for its weather- vane; one long street with shambling houses; and a picturesque stone bridge over the little river. The place looks as if it were rarely visited by travelers, and there is very little to detain them. At once the present contour of the land and the narrowness of the little river, scarcely more than eighteen or twenty feet broad, seemed to dispel from our minds any lingering illusions about this region having been the original Camelot. This sleepy little town of Camelford could never have been the wonderful Camelot, "city of shadowy palaces and stately." It would require astounding imagination to make Camelot this insignifi- cant into Camelot the magnificent. Camelot, to our thought, is a splendid dream city, even finer than what we see to-day in the medieval city of Rothenberg-on-Tauber, 194 CAMELOT AND LYONESSE or the picturesque town of Carcassone in southern France. The French artist, Gustave Dore, has wonderfully portrayed Camelot in his great illustration to the "Idylls." Perhaps after all the nearest that we have in England to-day approaching our ideals of Camelot is Windsor Castle and its nestling town under the glow and glory of the sunset hour. Nevertheless, persistent Arthurian tradition has lingered here at Camelford. We drove out from the town to Slaughter Bridge. The bridge itself gives evidences of being of very ancient construction. It is granite and was apparently once a simple clapper bridge of single stones, like the famous Post Bridge in Dartmoor. The parapets of the bridge have seemingly been a later addition. Around this bridge in the meadow, and upon the hills and along the banks of the river, according to tradi- tion, the great last battle of King Arthur was fought, in which Modred was slain and King Arthur himself was mortally wounded. It was fought in one of those thick sea-fogs which to this day often sweep over this region. As Tennyson says of that battle, "A death-white mist swept over sand and sea, . . . And e'en on Arthur fell Confusion, since he saw not whom he fought." 195 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Not far from the bridge is a place called Arthur's Grave, where close to the river under a little cliff, down which we climbed, lies a great stone sepulcher under some trees, and on it is a Roman inscription. We had called at the neighboring cottage for a guide to lead us to the hidden place of sepulcher, and a little, barefooted girl of twelve years led us to the place. We asked her if she knew the inscrip- tion on the stone, and she recited glibly: "Latinus hie jacet filius Megari." We looked at the stone a little more closely, and although the inscription was somewhat worn and in some places covered by the moss, we could see that she was correct. This was the inscription, and being translated it read: "Hear lieth Latinus, son of Magarus." Now Latinus was a famous British chief, and how it has ever come that his sepulcher stone should be here Qver the reputed grave of King Arthur, is unexplained. It is said, however, and be- lieved by many in Cornwall, that King Ar- thur actually died and was buried here near the place of the last great battle, and that this Roman stone was temporarily placed over his grave. That afterward his body was removed, the stone still remaining to mark the first place 196 CAMELOT AND LYONESSE of his burial, and that he was finally trans- lated to the Abbey tomb of Glastonbury, where he was interred with great pomp under the high altar. The mystic lake of the Tennyson "Idylls," where the sword Excalibur was found and to which it was finally committed, is reputed to be Dozemary Pool, about nine miles from Camelford. We were not able to reach it, but I have the account of one or two travelers who were successful in finding it. One says that a more out-of-the-way spot than Dozemary Pool could hardly be found. In situation and ap- pearance no place could be more appropriate ; the cross-country journey from Camelford over the moors is almost impossible, for there are few paths and the bogs are many. The Cornish people have a dread of the place, and there are some who would not go near it for all the world. Many believe that it is haunted, and they hear the noise of Hellhounds in the night; but some say these are only the noises caused by the flights of wild geese, over the moor and around the pool. Crossing the road, near the center of the moor, a thousand feet above the sea, we follow a lane or rather moorland track, and after pass- 197 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON ing a couple of small homesteads and climbing a low hill, whose surface is much broken by peat borings, we see in front of us the far- famed mere. There is a one-storied home- stead, like an Irish cabin, on its western shore, where a boat is kept. The first sight is rather disappointing. Its circular shores are flat, and in one place a field comes down to the margin of the lake. No rugged hills rise precipitously above it, neither do boulders strew its shore. Nevertheless, it grows upon one; its situation is remarkable, one thousand feet above the sea and a deep valley on each side of it ; no streams run into it, and all around is the wide, silent moor, whose skyline is broken here and there with great bosses of granite or the monoliths and stone circles of the Druids. It is an impressive scene under any circum- stances, but as the gloaming steals over the broad shoulders of the hills, giving to their heathy sides a softness as of velvet, and as the last warm blush in the western sky is reflected in the still bosom of the lake, we realize the glamor of our surroundings, and the arm clothed in white samite, that rose and clutched Excalibur, seems almost possible. As the night wrapped her dark mantle around the 198 CAMELOT AND LYONESSE wilds, and the sweet stars glittered overhead, we fancied we could almost see the dusky- barge steal silently across the lake to bear the dying king to the island valley of Avalon. Recall Tennyson's haunting lines (from The Passing of Arthur) : "The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon . . . So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt and brandish'd him Three times and drew him under in the mere . . . Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern. Beneath them; and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms, Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream — by these Three queens with crowns of gold — and from them rose A cry that shiver 'd to the tingling stars. And, as it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes. Or hath come, since the making of the world." 199 XIV WINCHESTER AND KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE IN Winchester our special interest was first of all the very ancient Round Table, claimed for King Arthur, and still exist- ing in the great Hall of the Castle of Win- chester, and also to study well the evidences for Winchester as the mythical Camelot of the legend. It was on St. Swithin's Day, the day of its patron saint, that we came into Winchester, along with King George and Queen Mary. To be sure they were not a part of our pil- grimage, but they were they to grace the his- toric occasion. It was the time of a royal visit — the first for many years, although kings and queens had been frequent visitors to old Winchester in the days when it was the royal capital of Britain. They had come on this oc- casion to commemorate the restoration of the cathedral, and to hold a special royal thanks- giving service for the saving of the fabric from decay and destruction. 200 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE It seems that the ancient builders of these cathedrals were not always wise in their day and generation, although, forsooth, they build- ed as wisely as they knew. But they did not always get a good foundation, — they had not secured such for Winchester, and the building began to settle in the course of the centuries until it was in great danger. The work of in- serting new foundations under it has been going on for the last six years and has cost about one hundred thousand pounds. It was necessary to dig down through peat and sand below the water-level to the hard clay. The work was done in the dark depths, often under water, by a workman in a diver's suit, and he carefully filled in thousands of tons of cement and concrete, making new foundations which ought to last for thousands of years to come. It is a cathedral well worth saving. For it is surely one of the most historic and glorious monuments in England. The city itself was successively the British, Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman capital of Britain. We agree with Dean Kitchin, that it is *'a very moving thing to be able to look back eight hundred years and think of those who have trodden these selfsame floors. This church of Win- 201 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Chester has been visited by ahnost every prince and noted man in English history. It was built to be to Nonnan England what the temple had been to the Jews, — the central expression of a nation's faith, the place dedicated to the concentrated work of a conquering race. It was the seat of great bishops who advanced their country's welfare in matters of art and learning and religion." The whole early history of England and much of its later history seems bound up with this cathedral. Winchester was in gala attire. The houses were all bravely decorated, festoons of flowers were hanging from side to side along the streets, banners and coats of arms and the royal crown were displayed at various points of vantage, the ancient market cross and the many old-fashioned timbered houses, such as the famous "God-begot House," with the upper gables projecting over the narrow streets, made it seem a veritable bit of Shake- speare's England, — truly so if the good-na- tured crowds had only been attired in costumes a little less modern and a little more pic- turesque. We mingled with the multitude on the streets and waited for the procession. Finally, 202 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE the cannons boomed from the hills, and the bells of all the churches began to ring as the royal procession came into the town. The sounding of the trumpets grew louder. We stood on tiptoe; then one of the Laddies climbed up and perched on my shoulders, and another got up on to the window casement of the Town Hall. First came the carriages with the earls and dukes who were the honorary hosts of the occasion; then the brilliant out- riders of the King; and then the family of royalty itself in a handsome open barouche. King George wore a light beaver high hat, and Queen Mary, beautifully gowned, as my Lady assured me, looked every inch a queen. We formed a bowing acquaintance with them at once, and the Laddies stoutly affirmed that the Queen looked straight at them and smiled. Here was part of the order of procedure,— all printed out in black and white: "The Mayor will tender the city mace to His Majesty. His Majesty will touch the mace. The Lord Lieutenant will then present the Mayoress to His Majesty and to Her Maj- esty. 203 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON The Mayoress will ask Her Majesty's gracious acceptance of a bouquet. The Mayor will come forward from the right of the dais, accompanied by the recorder and the Town Clerk. Recorder reads address. The Mayor receiv- ing address from Recorder, hands same to His Majesty. His Majesty reads his reply and hands it to the Mayor. Their Majesties then sign the Mayor's book. Their Majesties on leaving the dais will be escorted to their carriage, which then pro- ceeds round the King Alfred statue. Car- riage will halt here while children sing the National Anthem. The exact order of the cathedral service was also duly printed, and among the items was the following: "During the singing of the hymn the offertory will be taken and the alms-bag will be offered Their Majesties by the Senior Verger, W. Bond, who has held this office forty years." So not even Majesty escapes the alms-bag. That great statue of King Alfred, referred 204 WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL. WESTGATE, WINCHESTER. WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE to in the royal program, is the most imposing feature of the streets of Winchester. It stands near the Guild Hall, colossal in size. King Alfred is the actual thing in Winchester, with the veritable history all about him, and noth- ing shadowy and mythical like that which gath- ers at times about King Arthur. King Alfred lived and walked these very streets of Win- chester, and here he wrought many of his noble deeds. Of course the Laddies had to listen to the story of King Alfred who once hid from his enemies in the house of a cowherd. The cow- herd's wife was baking some cakes, and King Alfred was sitting by the fire. She asked him to look after them for a moment while she stepped out. The cakes burned, and he was so busy mending his bows and arrows that he didn't know it. The cowherd's wife was very angry and scolded him: "Can't you look at the cakes and not let them burn? You'll be ready to eat them fast enough when the time comes." For she did not know it was the king. And since King Canute had also lived here in Winchester, the Lady reminded them again of the story of him at Southampton water near by, from which we had just come. His 205 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON courtiers had told him that he was the greatest king in the world and that even the sea would obey him. So he had his chair put on the sand at low tide, and he commanded the waves to keep back, but they came up and gave him a good wetting. So he told his courtiers not to flatter him any more. And he came back to Winchester, and brought his crown and hung it upon the cross. Winchester and London were the only places shown on the ancient Anglo-Saxon map of the world. Winchester continued as the capital for many centuries, until the greater commercial importance and increasing popula- tion of London made that city the political capital of the realm and the seat of government was removed to Westminster Palace. King Canute made Winchester his royal seat and lived here many years with Emma, his queen. He and his queen were buried in the cathedral. Here most of the English kings from Egbert to Edward the Confessor were crowned, and although after this date the sovereigns were crowned in Westminster Abbey, it continued to be a custom down to the reign of Edward I for the king to visit Winchester at Eastertide and wear his crown there in solemn state. In 203 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE this cathedral took place the marriage of Queen Mary with King Philip of Spain. The city was long a favorite abode of royal- ty. Parliaments were frequently held here, even down to the latter part of the thirteenth century. Henry VIII entertained the Em- peror Charles V with great pomp at the castle of Winchester in 1522. King Alfred in the earlier times here held his court and wrote the Saxon Chronicles. Bishop Thorold writes of it as a city of memories, saying: "The hills yet stand round our Jerusalem, the hills that have seen so much and said nothing. The hills over which William of Wjkeham students still gaily roam, and up which Waltheof went to die; the hills which have looked down on sieges and con- flagrations, and on the Black Death; on stately buildings slowly rising, and on tragic mockeries of justice; the hills which we may still look on as the psalmist of old looked up at his hills in Judea, as a sort of inspired testimony of the righteous gov- ernment of God and of the indestructibleness of his church." For truly this cathedral of Winchester at which we to-day were assembled for the royal thanksgiving service had already stood "twice as long as the great Jewish temple of old." 207 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON We attended service in the glorious old cathedral in the morning at ten, and heard the special thanksgiving anthem which was also to be given at the royal service in the after- noon for which a seat might be had by a con- tribution of five guineas or more toward the restoration fund. Among the tablets in the cathedral, that which interested most the man of our party was one little side chapel contain- ing a memorial of Izaak Walton, — that gentle and philosophic soul who wrote "The Compleat Angler" and the "Lives of the Poets." But the Lady of our pilgrimage, for her part, was especially interested in a tablet to the novelist, Jane Austen, for this distinguished writer lived some years here at Winchester and died here. The Lady also made a little pil- grimage of her own to seek out Jane Austen's house. But by far the most fascinating and im- pressive thing in the cathedral for us all were the small mortuary chests that were placed high on the canopy round the choir, contain- ing the bones of nearly all those old Saxon kings that we have read about in English his- tory. There are six of these leaden chests, with inscriptions on them. One tells of the 208 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE bones of King Edred; another speaks of King Edmund; in this casket lies the dust of King Canute and Rufus and Queen Emma; in still another repose King Egbert and King Ke- nulf ; in another the remains of King Kinegil and Ethel wulf, the father of King Alfred the Great. King Alfred himself is buried before the high altar, and not far off is Hardicanute, the last Danish monarch, and William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, killed in the New Forest. We were also interested in another feature of this most ancient capital of Britain, — Win- chester College, founded in 1393 under the care of the monks of St. Swithin's Priory. It is one of the finest schools in the kingdom. King Ethelwulf and King Alfred were edu- cated in this school even before it became a college. Its motto is, "Manners makyth man." St. Cross Hospital is another of the medi- eval buildings which are most attractive, both in their architecture and in their old-time cus- toms. Here thirteen poor old men are con- stantly boarded free, and a hundred other poor men are supplied with free dinners daily; and to every comer who asks for it, is still given 209 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON a "wayfarer's dole," consisting of a horn of ale and a slice of white bread. All these things interested us greatly, and yet our special object of pilgrimage was King Arthur's Round Table in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle. The Great Hall is all that is now left of the splendid ancient castle that stood here, even until Henry VIII's time, but was destroyed in the wars of the Puritan Com- monthwealth. It is a magnificent room, once used for parliaments and great assemblies and splendid state banquets. We found, to the Laddies' amusement, one very curious thing here, — a narrow passage through the wall, called the King's "Lug." It is on the west side of this Great Hall, leading to a secret chamber. Tradition says that when Parlia- ments were held here, as they were more or less for four hundred years, — this little passage through the wall was the King's Ear, or Lug, which enabled him to hear what was going on in Parliament without being seen. It was in this hall, we may remember, that Richard Coeur de Lion was received by all his nobles when he returned from captivity, and in this hall also Sir Walter Raleigh was tried and sent to the Tower of London. 210 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE Court is still held in this castle as in the an- cient days, but it is no longer the court of King Arthur, but the courts of justice for the County of Hants. The hall is still grand and impressive, with fine arches, clustered columns, and stained-glass windows. Three windows picture three kings, Arthur, Alfred, and Ca- nute, — a Briton, a Saxon, and a Dane, but all kings of glorious memory. Was Winchester the ancient Camelot ? Who can determine? We can well believe it, if we pin our faith to good old Thomas Malory, who says most surely and distinctly, — "Came- lot, that is in English, Winchester." The gen- eral contour of the land satisfies us better than Camelford in Cornwall, or Queen Camel in Somerset. This castle on the heights, this winding river Itchen leading to the sea, are suggestive. We know that King Alfred lived here, and King Canute, and King William the Conqueror. Why not go back still farther to King Arthur? Yea, on this gala day with a real king and queen here in this Camelot which is in English Winchester, we thought it a good time to recall that exquisite story for the Lad- dies of one of King Arthur's gala days, a tour- nament at Camelot where Lancelot came after 211 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON his singular adventure with Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. Our Lady of the pilgrimage told it most charmingly. But you know the story well — one of the fairest among Tenny- son's "Idylls." Here is Camelot, but where is Astolat we have not yet quite determined. But now, what of this King Arthur's Round Table, which we had especially come to see? We found it was no longer used as a banquet- ing table, but had been lifted and hung up on the venerable walls, and hanging there it looked something like the face of an ancient clock, or an astronomical chart with the signs of the Zodiac. Nevertheless, it is a great table-top, seventeen feet in diameter. It is constructed of large panels of wood, the alter- nate panels being painted white and green, and radiating from the center like the spokes of a wheel. The wood is good old English oak, which lasts forever. At the center is carved and painted a double rose. In the middle of the upper half is a patterned canopy, with King Arthur sitting beneath it crowned and holding an orb and a sword. The painting is somewhat faded and blackened by the years. In an inner circle around the rose is an inscrip- tion in old lettering and spelling, "This is the 212 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE Round Table of King Arthur and his twenty- four Knights." And on the outer edge are the names of these Iviiights, one for each seat. The custodian of the castle told me that he had seen the other side of the table, and had noted its construction. It has distinct places for the table legs. Indeed, he had a photo- graph of the other side, which showed it as a real table and not as a wall ornament. He mentioned that it had been actually used often- times at great banquets in that very hall. Of course there are doubters and scoffers and iconoclasts when it comes to this Round Table of King Arthur. Some say that King Arthur's Table had place for one hundred and fifty knights. This has seats for only twenty- four. Some say that it is merely a wheel of fortune and they refer to an order by the builders of the palace of King Henry III, 1253, for the constructing of a wheel of for- tune ; but no one can prove that the two things are identical. Some think that it was a seat of Justice in the ancient times, at which the King and his knights used to sit when making judicial decisions. Still others contend that it was a round table constructed after the tradi- tions of King Arthur but used merely for the 213 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON banqueting of the Knights and for encourage- ment of tournaments and military pastimes, and that it was the precursor of the Order of the Garter. Michael Drayton in his ancient rhymed history of the sixteenth century men- tions it thus, "And so great Arthur's seat oulde Winchester prefers Whose oulde Round Table yet, she vaunteth to be hers." Caxton's "Morte d'Arthur" (1485) has a mention of this table, and there are various other historical references to it. Those who hold to the probability of its being King Ar- thur's veritable table, adduce such reasons as these. King Henry II rebuilt the palace at Winchester about 1150. He was one who loved the King Arthur legend, and wanted to add a new glory to this castle palace where King Alfred and King Canute had lived. Tra- dition says that he hunted up this relic of King Arthur and had it repaired for the palace ; this was in the twelfth century, when Robin Hood and his Merry Men were flourishing. It was referred to also in the history of Henry VI's time. Henry VII had a son born here, and he named him after the great hero Ar- thur. Henry VIII entertained the Emperor 214 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE Charles V in this great castle, and during his reign there is a bill of repairs to this table still preserved in the royal archives. Sir William Wyndham Portal has carefully investigated all the evidences in the case and holds steadfastly to the belief that this table is a genuine product of the time of King Arthur and his knights and should be most sacredly cherished and guarded. He also is firm in the faith that Winchester was the Camelot of Kins; Arthur's day, the center of English chivalry and legends as well as of English history. Now in order to give you the fullest facts on this singular and important relic of the Arthurian days, the Lady and I made a spe- cial appeal to the present custodian of the Castle and the Great Hall, — the Lady smil- ing persuasively, — and he carefully wrote out for our pilgrimage the following account of this Round Table of King Arthur, from the special historical notes and unprinted chroni- cles of the castle, which he uses. He assures us that they are not yet to be had anywhere else. Do read them carefully, for these are his very words: "Tliis table is made from English oak, constructed 215 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON in wedge-shaped sections, and measures 56^ feet in circumference and 18 feet in diameter. The age of this ancient relic is not given in history, but we know it was spoken of as being old in the thirteenth century. We certainly can associate this table with Sir Thomas Malory's works. Caxton's 'Morte d'Arthur' says it was made at Tintagel in Corn- wall by Merlin the wizard, and that he gave it to Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur. Pendragon gave it to Leodegrance, father of Guinevere, and Leodegrance gave it to Arthur and Guinevere when they were married at Camelot, and he always tells you that Camelot was afterward called Winchester. "There is therefore good grounds for those people who think that Malory had some foundation for writing his works to take the history of this table back 1400 years instead of TOO. It was, however, restored in the Tudor times. Thus you find the cen- tral decoration are the Tudor rose, and the twenty- four rays around are painted in the Tudor livery colors, white and green. "The table was taken down in 1874 while the wall behind it was repaired, and it shows how or on what it used to stand. There are twelve beams radiating from the center like the spokes of a cart wheel, and at the outer end of each beam is a mortice hole into which the legs used to go respectively, and it looks as though there had been a very much larger cen- tral support. The inscription round the roses is as follows : 'Thys is the rounde table of Kyng Ar- thur with XXIIII of hys namyd knyttes.' 216 WINCHESTER AND THE ROUND TABLE "On the top of the table as it now hangs is a painting of King Arthur, and on his left is the 'Seige perilous' occupied by Sir Galahad. This seat was so named because it was reserved for the knight who was destined to achieve the Holy Grail. This was Sir Galahad. "On the King's right was the 'Place de Judas,' occupied by Sir Modred, the most treacherous knight. "The names of knights in order as they appear on the Table, reading from the right as we are look- ing at it, are: Sir Galahad, of the Seige Perilous; Sir Launcelot du Lake, father of Sir Galahad; Sir Gawain, brother of Modred and Gareth; Sir Per- cival; Sir Lyonell; Sir Trystram de Lyonese (the lost land between Tintagel and Scilly Isles) ; Sir Gareth; Sir Bedivere, the knight who threw Excali- bur into the lake ; Sir Bleoberis ; Sir Lacote Male Tayle, who wore the coat of his father who was murdered, — thus he was known, as Male Tayle ; Sir Lucane; Sir Palomides, the Syrian knight; Sir La- morak of Wales ; Sir Bors de Ganys of Wales ; Sir Safir, brother of Palomides ; Sir Pelleas, husband of Nemur; Sir Kay, seneschal and foster-brother of King Arthur; Sir Ector de Marys; Sir Dagonet the Jester ; Sir Degore ; Sir Bruneur ; Sir Lj^byns Dyschoforus, the Disc Bearer; Sir Allynore; Sir Mo- dred the Traitor who slew his uncle King Arthur in the Vale of Avalon in 542 a.d. "John Hardyng, who was born In the year 1378, says of this Table: 'King Arthur's Round Table 217 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON in Winchester began, and there it endeth, and there it hangeth yet.' "The above is a proof that the table was looked upon as being old even then. "In conclusion I must tell you it was shown by Henry VIII to Charles V of Germany in 1522 as one of the most interesting relics of the kingdom, hanging then as it does now on the wall of this Hall." Now whether these matters can ever be defi- nitely proved, it is yet j)leasant to thinlv of the possibility of King Arthur and his knights hav- ing gathered around this very Round Table, with the wise Merlin guiding affairs of state, with Sir Galahad, Sir Percival, Sir Tristram, and the other valiant knights and true at the festive board. It is an inspiring dream of the glory of early British chivalry. 218 XV GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND THE ISLE OF AVALON WHAT a day It was at old Glaston- bury Abbey, with legends that reached back almost to the time of Christ, with relics and remains from the lake village that existed there in prehistoric times, and with actual history that takes Glastonbury Abbey back to the earliest British chronicles, and makes it the oldest monument in England of the faith of the fathers. Tennyson sings of Glastonbury as the "Isle of Avalon," and in the ancient days so it was, — a group of isolated hills around which the river ran with a serpen- tine curve, making almost an island in the valley. The name Avalon is derived from the Welsh plural of "Affel," an apple, indicating an orchard-island. Tradition also gives it an- other Welsh name, indicating that the island lay among the glassy waters of a lake or an inland arm of the sea, where, according to 219 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON strange stories, "ships sailed up from the channel land and the wide world beyond it to the ports that fringed the margin of the estu- ary." Certain it is that in prehistoric times there were lake village communities here dwell- ing in huts built upon piles. In the maps of the seventeenth century the district was marked "Home of the Belg^e," but in the most ancient Saxon times there was here a Saxon family or clan of the Glaestingis," and hence the name that has clung to the ancient site, Glastonbury, the hill fort of the Glastings. It was therefore a pilgrimage into the dawn of British history upon which we ventured at Glastonbury. The ideal way to have approached Glaston- bury would have been as pilgrims on foot. But we took a slow train, which traveled almost in the leisurely fashion of a pilgrim. As we came near, we saw the famous Glastonbury Tor or Tower high on its steep hill. It has a certain sinister and ominous look. It stands forbidding and weird in the midst of the beau- tiful rolling country and rich meadows and flowery gardens of the mystical land of Ava- lon ; and it may well tower up, gaunt upon its desolate hill, for it is the sad sentinel and 220 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON remembrance of a ghastly day in November, 1539, when a dark tragedy was enacted here and the last abbot of Glastonbury was mur- dered, and the wonder and glory of the life of the magnificent abbey was at an end. Careful historians are fairly agreed that the tradition of the founding of the abbey by Jo- seph of Arimathea and other disciples of Philip the Apostle is perfectly unprovable. But to many minds it is at the same time perfectly credible, — its greatest probability being in the uninterrupted tradition. A thousand years long was Glastonbury held in such veneration that it was called a second Rome. The mighty dead were brought here for burial from all parts of England and Europe, and even the soil was considered sacred, being taken away in quantities by the devout, even as the soil of Palestine. Tennyson in the "Idylls" tells of the sacred Glastonbury thorn, and of the Holy Grail that was deposited here as a most precious treasure. Do you recall the lines? "Tlie cup, the cup itself from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with his own. This, from the blessed land of Aromat — After the day of darkness, when the dead. 221 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON Went wandering o'er Moriah — the good saint Arimathean Joseph, journeying brought To Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. And there awhile it bode; and if a man Could touch or see it, he was heal'd at once. By faith, of all his ills. But then the times Grew to such evil that the holy cup Was caught away to heaven, and disappeared. "To whom the monk: 'From our old books I know That Joseph came of old to Glastonbury, And there the heathen prince, Arviragus, Gave him an isle of marsh whereon to build; And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore.' " "What a queer old tree that is!" cried the Laddies, "with stickers all over it." They had discovered the Glastonbury thorn, the most famous tree in all England, the sacred tree that blossoms at Christmas time. This is the story of the tree : Good Joseph of Arimathea had gone forth with the Apostle Philip as a preacher of the new faith. He had first come to Gaul, as France was anciently called, and later was sent across the water to carry the gospel into Britain. He landed in Cornwall with eleven disciples and made his way northward. One 222 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON Christmas morning they reached the isle of Avalon, a smihng group of orchard hills in the midst of the marshes of the river, and being weary they sat themselves down upon what is called to this day "Weary All Hill." The good saint struck his staff into the ground, a thorn staff which he had brought with him from the Holy Land, and lo, it sprouted and flowered, as did the pope's staff in the legend of Tannhauser. And the brethren accepted it as a sign that their wanderings were over. The heathen prince Arviragus gave them per- mission to stay and granted them twelve hides of land to build a church. They built them- selves huts in the side of the great Tor, that one may still see, and erected a wattled church, which was called later St. Mary's Chapel, and afterward St. Joseph's, in honor of the good saint of Arimathea, and still later it became the nucleus for the famous abbey, which now stands there in monumental ruins. Here the missionaries remained, guarding their special treasure which Joseph of Arimathea had brought with him, the chalice that was used at the last supper of our Lord, and was now called the Holy Grail. After the death of Joseph of Arimathea, tradition says it was 223 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON buried with him, and from his grave there gushed forth a stream of healing water on the hill still called Chahce Hill. Its fame was known and its memory revered, and in the year 166, Pope Eleutherius, at the request of King Lucius, helped to restore the wattled chapel and to resuscitate the religious community of the pious brotherhood. In the fifth century, St. Patrick of Glastonbury established the first monks, making the church into an abbey. In 512, Gildas the historian was buried near the church, which had become a shrine for veneration. In 546 St. David built a new church near the old one. In 630 St. Paulinus, Archbishop of York, covered in the wattled wood church and incased it with lead. It had now become a sacred relic. Such are the legends and facts of the oldest eccle- siastical foundation in England, which is so ancient and so sacred that it is often called "the English Jerusalem." As the old gardener showed us around the ruins, he lifted up a trap door at one point in the journey and proudly pointed to the old Roman foundations and the ancient tiles and mosaic pavement. These took us back, not to those earliest days of which we have been 224 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON speaking, but to the great church that was built and endowed as a monastery about 688. Here we are upon sure ground, for the text of the charter, dated 704, still exists. The great church was built in honor of St. Peter and St. Paul. These are the immense foundations that are still partly to be seen, and thenceforward the history of the Abbey becomes a part of the great history of England. In the reign of King Edmund we get a picture of the Abbey that is striking. John Richard Green, the his- torian, writes vividly: "The king had spent the day in the chase. The red deer which he was pursuing dashed over Chedar CHifs, and his horse only checked itself on the brink of the ravine. While King Edmund in the bitter- ness of death was repenting of his injustice to Dun- stan he was at once summoned on the king's return. 'Saddle your horses,' said Edmund, *and ride with me.' The royal train swept over the marshes to Dunstan's home, and greeting him with a kiss of peace the king seated him in the priestly chair, as Abbot of Glastonbury." This Dunstan, afterward called St. Dunstan, introduced the Benedictine rule, and Glaston- bury Abbey entered upon a golden period of political and literary activity. Its school was 225 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON the most famous in England, and its head was the counselor of kings. "Haven't we done enough of the history?" remarked the Lady, as I still delved into the ancient historical tomes; "let us see more of the ruins themselves." They are magnificent ruins, much larger and finer than I had ever imagined. They show the outlines and in many cases the walls and arches of a most stately and noble church. We went down into the crypt of St. Mary's Chapel, and saw the Holy Well. This was discovered only in 1825. It had been choked up with rubbish and entirely forgotten. It is about two feet across and four feet deep, and is overhung and protected by an arch. It has a special flight of steps leading to it. In the same crypt where we saw the Holy Well, there were also discovered in the ancient days eight- een cofiins made of oak, two or three inches thick. On the right side of each skeleton was a rod of thorn. The beautiful Norman doorway of tliis chapel is a perfect delight in its proportions and architectural ornament. "Imagination cannot realize," says one chronicler, "how grand and beautiful must have been the view 226 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON from St. Joseph's Chapel through its long- drawn fretted aisles up to the high altar, with its four corners symbolizing the Gospel to be spread through the four quarters of the world." William of Malmesbury wrote that there were so many saints buried at Glastonbury, "there was no space in the building that is free from their ashes. So much so, that the stone pave- ment and the sides of the altar itself above and below are crammed with the multitude of the relics. Rightly, therefore, it is called the heavenly sanctuary on earth. Of so large a number of saints is it the depository." Glastonbury was not only the earliest Chris- tian church in Great Britain, and one of the most glorious of the Benedictine monasteries, but the structure itself was the largest in the whole country, and in many ways the noblest. One describes it as "princely in its estate, princely in its revenues, with an annual in- come of about $175,000, princely in its benevo- lence and hospitality." There were about "a hundred monks in the monastery, with three hundred lay associates, many of whom were of gentle blood, and probably a thousand men were dependent on it for the maintenance of their families, connected in some way with the 227 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON monastery and its farms." No poor ever came to its door and went away hungiy. It is re- corded that sometimes five hundred knights were entertained at one time. It supported a great number of students at several univer- sities. A large number of its men were con- stantly employed in its cloisters illuminating missals and breviaries, and transcribing not only works of theology and devotion, but of classical and general literature. The library was the greatest in all England, and when Leland visited it in the final days of the last abbot, he bears witness he was so overwhelmed with awe at the sight of such vast treasures of antiquity that for a time he dared not enter. At the time of the suppression of the mon- asteries, more than two hundred and fifty thousand missals, ordinals, antiphonals, and graduals were destroyed, and it is probable that a great many of the beautiful illu- minated manuscripts were those of the library of Glastonbury. An eminent architect, Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, who recently visited Glastonbury, says that parts of the ruins are so faultless in their proportion, so wonderful in style, so marvel- ous in workmanship, that to the architect they 228 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON are maddening almost beyond endurance. He found the carvings of the original doorways of the chapel, now blackened and crumbling, "purely and exquisitely Gothic, fresh, crisp, full of the assurance and insight of perfectly competent artists." He found the workman- ship to be of the highest type of any period in England; that these craftsmen "glorified God not only through the beauty of art, but through faultless workmanship as well." To think that the labor of generations and the proudest records of English Gothic archi- tecture should be in a few weeks utterly shat- tered and destroyed, and the exquisite carv- ings, the tracery of chapel shrines and tombs, the broken statues, and wonderful glass from the colored windows hauled away to make a common road across the marshes! Sad days for old Glastonbury, sad days for other eccle- siastical glories, when the iconoclasts began their work. The destruction is often ascribed to Crom- well, but we remember that this fierce icono- clast was not Oliver Cromwell. In visiting the ruined abbeys and old churches of Eng- land, one is constantly told by the verger that such and such destruction was due to Crom- 229 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON well. We must bear in mind, however, that there were two Cromwells, living about a hun- dred years apart, and we must not saddle the sins of one upon the other. The Puritan captain, Oliver Cromwell, has surely enough to answer for, as one of the iconoclasts of the Puritan Commonwealth, without having him constantly confused with Thomas Cromwell, who was the chief agent of Henry VIII in the destruction of the monasteries. This Thomas Cromwell was the confidential secretary of Cardinal Wolsey. Through his patron's influence he advanced rapidly, and compassed the ruin of bishops and statesmen; he was given the task by King Henry VIII of suppressing and destroying all the monas- teries of the realm. This he did with a great deal of cruelty and wanton destruction, so that to this day his name is mentioned with ex- ecration. The king afterward made him Earl of Essex, with an endowment of seven rich abbeys to support him, but he forfeited the king's favor by saddling him with an ugly wife, and it was not long after that he was brought to the block, with few to pity him. It is this Lord Thomas Cromwell who is so ofteii mentioned merely as Cromwell, 230 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON sometimes Crumwell, who is oftentimes con- fused in the minds of both vergers and vis- itors with the great Oliver Cromwell, who came a hundred years later and was no rela- tion to this detested agent of Henry VIII. The Laddies loved to walk around the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and trace out the outlines of the vast transepts and the im- mense nave of the abbey church of St. Peter and St. Paul. We were amazed at the mas- sive piers of the central tower, the beauty of the pointed windows of the choir, and the fragments of wonderfully rich carving here and there, which tell us of the glory and grandeur that has been. When King Henry II visited the abbey, it was already a pile of architectural wonders and magnificence, gor- geously ornamented and wonderfully finished, to serve as a memorial to Joseph of Arima- thea, the first Christian saint in England. We can well agree with one architectural critic who writes; "What manner of place this must have been when every stone was in its rightful position, when the carving was fresh from the hand of cunning work- men, when the ceihng of the mighty fane was deco- rated with gorgeous paintings, when nave and aisles 231 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON were paved with smooth marble, and were trodden by devout worshipers, when every window was all glorious within with rich stained glass, when every niche held its image and every chapel its shrine; when the great choir was filled with music and when the sanctuary echoed the accents of fervent prayers, — then, — and enough remains to justify the assertion, the Abbey at Glastonbury was in its prime the richest and stateliest in the kingdom." Tennyson uses the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who brings King Arthur into the history of the seventh century, and he men- tions in the "Idylls of the King" the place of King Arthur's burial as the Isle of Avalon. He also says that Queen Guinevere was buried here after her body was brought from Ames- bury, and that here they lie side by side under the great altar. Hundreds of other names of great ones are connected with Glastonbury Abbey, who have lived within its walls or are buried in its sa- cred soil, such as St. Dunstan, St. David, the Venerable Bede, King Coel, the father of St. Helena, King Edmund the Magnificent, King Edgar, King Edmund Ironsides, and other martyrs, confessors, virgins, bishops, abbots, kings, princes, and nobles innumerable. But 232 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON the greatest names of all, — at least for us Pilgrims, — are those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. It was during the abbacy of Henry de Soliano in the year 1191 that the bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere were found and removed to a position before the high altar, so the tradition says. And the tradition is so clear and circumstantial, so full of concise detail, that it seems perfectly vera- cious. "If it is false," says one critic, "it is a masterpiece of circumstantial evidence." The writer, Giraldus Cambrensis, who sets down the facts in the most matter-of-fact way, de- clares that he himself was an eyewitness to it all. He says, that between two mysterious pyramids beside the chapel of the Blessed Vir- gin, seven feet below the surface was found a large flat stone, on the underside of which was set a rude leaden cross, which on being removed revealed on its inner and unexposed surface, the roughly fashioned inscription, "Hie jacet sepultus inclytus Rex Arthurius in Insula Avalonia." Nine feet below this lay a huge coffin of hollowed oak, wherein were found two cavities, the larger containing a man's bones of enormous size, the skull bear- 233 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON ing ten sword wounds; the smaller, the bones of a woman, and a great tress of golden hair that on exposure to the air crumbled into dust. The abbot and convent, receiving these re- mains with great joy, translated them to the great church, placing the king's body by it- self at the upper part of a noble tomb, and the queen at the feet in the choir before the high altar, where they rest in magnificent manner until this day. These relics were visited by King Edward I and Queen Eleanor in the year 1276, and were also seen by Leland in the sixteenth cen- tury. We stood at the high altar itself, or at least the site of the high altar, as it was point- ed out to us by the old gardener, and medi- tated for a moment on the good Joseph of Arimathea. Possibly we also mused, here rests just beneath us the imperial, molded form of Queen Guinevere and the sacred dust of the blameless King. Would that we might even now see on this spot that magnificent shrine before the high altar, which was placed here by King Edward I in 1278, when he personally directed the disposal of the re- mains of these famous personages. 234 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON The abbey grounds cover many acres. The abbot's barn, a cruciform building of the four- teenth century, with symbols of the four evan- gelists in the gables, is still used to-day, hold- ing about one hundred and fifty tons of hay. The abbot's kitchen is a gem of medieval architecture. It stands in pitiful solitude in the middle of a meadow, the only relic re- maining of the great domestic buildings of the abbey. It is a silent witness, so vast and splendid is it, with such wonderful fireplaces and chimneys, that these old monks of the Middle Ages did not give themselves entirely to fasting and prayer. One or two specimens of splendid medieval architecture are also preserved in the near-by village, such as the George Hotel, which was originally the Pilgrim House, built by Abbot S el wood in the fifteenth century, for the use of pilgrims to the abbey; and the ancient Tri- bunal on High Street, probably the Abbey Court Room of the fifteenth century. Not far off is the Tor, the massive tower that re- mains from the ancient chapel of St. Michael. Here it was that the last Abbot of Glaston- bury, Richard Whiting, a scholar of the mon- astery and a doctor of divinity of Cambridge 235 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON was fastened on a hurdle and drawn to the top of the Tor, and there put to death with two of his fellow-monks, John Thorne and Roger James. This brought the history of the abbey to an end. Its dissolution and destruction rapidly followed. This murder on the Tor is rightly considered one of the blackest pages in the English Reformation. Most interesting to us were the relics in the Glastonbury museum. We saw a pilgrim staff and leather bottle, a reliquary with the bone of St. Paulinus, Abbot Whiting's coat and watch and ring, the monk's grace cup, a few books from the abbey library, and the strangely carved Glastonbury chair. But per- haps the most interesting relics in the museum were those older than Glastonbury Abbey, — the archeological finds from the prehistoric British Lake Village of Glastonbury, and espe- cially the famous Glastonbury bronze bowl and the dug-out boat made from ancient Brit- ish oak, which has endured probably three or four thousand years. But the relic in all Glas- tonbury which was cherished most by us is one that the Laddies carried away in a little packet close to their hearts, — one given to us by the old gardener who has charge of the abbey 236 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON grounds, — a slip with the buds upon it of the ancient Glastonbury thorn-tree, brought hither by Joseph of Arimathea and blooming, as they tell, in ancient days at every Christmas time. Over the gravestone of King Arthur at Glastonbury Abbey, according to legend, were found the words : Hie Jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus. This, as we Pilgrims deciphered it, meant: "Here lies Arthur, King that was, and King that is to be." Long did the belief persist among the people that King Arthur would some day come back to England and save and rule the people. Some legends said that he was taken to a happy island to be cured of his wound, and to wait until the world should need him most; some said that he was in a great underground chamber at Caerleon-on-Usk, with all his famous knights; while others held that he was still in an enchanted castle at Camelot. But the legends all agreed that he should come back. Has he not come back? Is not every sign of growing chivalry and nobility in the people the coming of Arthur? Has not the spirit of 237 THROUGH ENGLAND WITH TENNYSON King Arthur come into the hearts of count- less thousands? Is not the world growing wiser and sweeter and more just? Are not his noble and gracious ideals more and more pre- vailing? Slowly but surely the good time is coming for which King Arthur prayed and fought. King Arthur is not dead. He lives to-day in the hearts of the people more won- derfully than he ever did in the ancient days, and he is still "Rexque futurus," for he is still a high and noble ideal for the world. So in Tennyson's final Idyll, "The Passing of Arthur," the noble king speaks his last words from the barge of death : "The old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfills himself in many ways. Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure ! but thou If thou shouldst never see my face again. Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats That nourish a blind life within the brain. If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. But now farewell. I am going a long way 238 GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND AVALON With these thou seest — if indeed I go — For all my mind is clouded with a doubt — To the island-valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea. Where I will heal me of my grievous wound . . . Long stood Sir Bedivere, amazed and groaned: 'The King is gone.' And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme, 'From the great deep to the great deep he goes . . . He passes to be king among the dead And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again — ' Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint As from beyond the limit of the world. Like the last echo born of a great cry. Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice Around a king returning from his wars." 239 POSTSCRIPT THERE are many more poems of Ten- nyson which the preceding Pilgrimage illumined with new light for us, as we carried our well-loved volume of Tennyson with us through England, and read further than the poems, or parts of poems, which we have quoted in our story. Many of them were too long to quote, but you have them in your own volume. Read them again at your leisure, or perchance as you may make a similar jour- ney. Here is a list which I would suggest in connection with the special points of pilgrim- age described in the preceding chapters : I. Lincolnshire : Boadicea, The Northern Farmer (Old Style and New Style), The Village Wife, The May Queen, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Audley Court, Locksley Hall. II. Somershy: Ode to Memory, The Brook, Mariana, The Miller's Daughter, The Owl, Sir John Franklin, O Darling Room. 241 POSTSCRIPT III. Louth: The Poet, The Poet's Song, The Blackbird, The Dying Swan, Oriana. IV. Cambridge: Timbuctoo, On Cambridge University, To Rev. F. D. Maurice. V. London: Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. VI. Shiplake: The Letters, The Gardener's Daughter, The Princess, Dedication to Enoch Arden, Locksley Hall Six- ty Years After. VII. Clevedon: All of In Memoriam. VIII. Hawarden: Compromise (To Mr. Gladstone) , The Ancient Sage, Vast- ness. IX. Farringford: In the Garden at Swain- ton, The Princess, Maud, Sea Dreams, Ulysses, The Revenge. X. Aldworth: The Palace of Art, Charge of the Heavy Brigade, the dramas, especially Harold, Queen Mary, Becket. XL Tintagel: The Coming of Arthur, The Last Tournament. 242 POSTSCRIPT XII. Amesbury Abbey: St. Agnes' Eve, The Victim, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot and Guinevere. XIII. Camelot: Bugle Song, The Lady of Shalott, Morte d' Arthur. XIV. Winchester: The Round Table, Lance- lot and Elaine. XV. Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy Grail, The Passing of Arthur. 243 INDEX AuJWOHTH among the Surrey- Hills, 142; compared with Farringford, 144, 156; guests at, 157. Alum Bay, Isle of Wight, 117. Amesbury Abbey and Queen Guinevere, 176. Amesbury Abbey Church, 178. "Ancient Sage, The," 242. Antrobus, Lady, quoted on Amesbury Alibey, 176; on Stonehenge, 183. "Apostles, The," at Cambridge, 53. Arnold, Dr. Thomas, of Rug- by, 112. Arthur's grave, at Camelford, 196. Arthur, King, the legend of, 190. "Audley Court," 241. Austen, Jane, memorial of, Winchester, 208. Avalon, the Isle of, 219; origin of name, 219. Baden-Powell, General, 41, 45. Bag Enderby, 19. Bayons Manor, 7. Beacon, the Tennyson, Isle of Wight, 137. Blackbird, The, 242. Blackdown, Haslemere, 143. "Boadicea," 6. Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, 116. Boston, old, on the Witham, 8. Boy Scouts, at Louth, 41. Bradley, Mrs., quoted, 129. "Break, break, break," where written, 9; quoted, 95, British lake village at Glaston- bury, 236. Brook, the, at Somersby, 28. "Brook, The," quoted, 29. Brooks, Phillips, visit of, to Farringford, 124. Brothers of Tennyson, 31. Bro\vning, Mrs., apprehension of, concerning Tennyson's bride, 85. Browning, Robert, Tennyson's friendship with, 72. Caerleon-ok-Usk, 165, 237. Cambridge and college days, 51; Backs, 59; quoted, in "In Memoriam," 59 ; Tennyson's, after-visits to, 56; Univer- sity, poem on, 242. Camelford, 194. Camelot, 86, 153, 193, 211, 216; and Lyonesse, 187. Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, 114. Carlyles, tlie, Tennyson's visits to, 67; description of Mrs. Tennyson by, 85. "Charge of the Heavy Bri- gade," quoted, 144. Cheltenham, 64. Clevedon, the shrine of Arthur Hallam, 89; church, 96; Court, 9t, 95; "In Me- moriam," quoted, 96, 98-100. Cock Tavern, Fleet Street, London, 67. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, at Clevedon, 93. "Coming of Arthur, The," quoted, 173. 245 INDEX "Compromise," to Mr. Glad- stone, 242. Coniston, Lake, Tent Lodge at, 85; diary, quoted, 85. Cram, Ralph Adams, the archi- tect, quoted, 228. Cromwell, Oliver, at Cam- bridge, 52; Lord Thomas, 229-231. "Crossing the Bar," 150; quoted, 162. Crowland Abbey, 6. Death of Tennyson, 159. Dickens, Charles, quoted, 64. Dozemary Pool, 197-199. Dramas, the, 150. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quot- ed, 64. "Enoch Arden," 131; dedica- tion to, quoted, 83. Farringford and the Isle of Wight, 111; Tennyson's home at, 119, 120-123. Father of Tennyson, 34. Fen-coiuitry, 8 Fields, James T., at Farring- ford, 136; Mrs. Fields quoted, 82. Fitzgerald, Edward, quoted, 11. "Flower in the Crannied Rock," quoted, 2. Franklin, Sir John, 15, 241. Freshwater, the bay, 117; town of. Isle of Wight, 118. Funeral of Tennyson, 159. "Gardener's Daughter, The," quoted, 3, 81, Gladstone, William E., 101. Glastonbury, ancient history of town of,*220; Abbey and the Isle of Avalon, 219; tradi- tions of, 221 ; thorn, 221, 222; Tor, 220, 235. Gosse, Professor Edmund, quoted, 12. Green, John Richard, quoted on Glastonbury, 225. "Guinevere," idyll of, quoted, 185, 186. Hallam, ArthxtRj at Somersby, 37; epitaph on, 97; tributes to, 89, 90; travels, 91; death, 91. Haslemere village, 142, 143. Hawarden, the home of a life- long friend, 101. Hawthorne, Nathaniel,, and wife, descriptions of Tennyson by, 81. "Higher Pantheism, The," quot- ed, 140. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, at Farringford, 127. "Holy Grail," 131, 134; quoted, 221, 222. Holy Well, at Glastonbury, 226. Horncastle, 15, 47, 49. House of Lords, Tennyson in, London, 69. Howitt, William, quoted on Tintagel, 172-174. Humor of Tennyson, 17. "Idylls of the King," the theme 192. "I Made Them Lay Their Hands in Mine," quoted, 175. "In Memoriam," the poem, 92; dedicatory lines of, quoted, 109, 110; quoted concerning Cambridge, 59 ; concerning Clevedon, 96, 98-100; con- cerning the larger hope, 74, 75; quoted concerning Som- ersby, 38, 39. Inscription on King Arthur's grave-stone, 237. 246 INDEX "Isabel," describing Tennyson's mother, 35. Isle of Wight, 111. Joseph of Arijiathea, 231, 223. KiKG Alfred at Winchester, 204, 205. King Arthur, historical or mythical, 190. King Arthur's Round Table, at Winchester, 200-217. King Canute, 205, 206. King Edward VI School, Louth, 43, 45. King George and Queen Mary, 200-204. Kingsley, Charles, at Farring- ford, 124. Knights of the Round Table, names of, 217. Lady Clara Verb de Vere, 49. "Lady of Shalott, The," 242. Lamb, Charles, quoted, 33. Larger hope, in "In Memo- riam," 74, 75. Laureateship, memorable year of, 81. Leland, the ancient historian, quoted, 228. "Letters, The," poem quoted, 80. Lincoln Cathedral, 4. Lincolnshire and the Lincoln- shire fens, 1; dialect, 16; Doric speech, 48; legend and history of, 6; silhouettes, 9; worthies, 7. "Locksley Hall," 49, 50. "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," 242. London, Tennyson's, 62. Louth and the old Grammar School, 40. Lyceum Theatre, London, 68. Lyonesse, the lost land of, 189, Mablethorpe, 10, 48. Maiden's Croft, at Farringford, 131. Malory, Sir Thomas, quoted, 179. "Mariana," 11, 241; quoted, 32. "Maud," 120, 125. Maurice, Rev. F. D., 57, 58, 242. "May Queen, The," 49, 241. Merlin's Cave at Tintagel, 166. "Miller's Daughter, The," 19, 55. Milton, John, at Cambridge, 52. Mitford, Miss, quoted, 84. Moated Grange, the reputed, 31. More poems of the Pilgrim- age, 241. "Morte d'Arthur," quoted, 188. Mother of Tennyson, 35. Mount Desert, contrasted with Isle of Wight, 112. Natiokal Portrait Gallert, London ; Tennyson memo- rials at, 69. Needles, The, Isle of Wight, 118. "Northern Farmer, New Style," 16, 241. "Northern Farmer, Old Style," 16, 241. "O Darling Room," quoted, 24, 241. "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," quoted, 65. "Oriana," 243. Osborne House, Isle of Wight, 113. "Owl, The," 24, 241. Oxford University, 51. "Palace of Art," 242. "Pantheism, The Higher," quot- ed, 140. 247 INDEX "Passing of Arthur, The," quot- ed, 199, 238, 239. Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 64. "Poems by Two Brothers," 46. "Poems Chiefly Lyrical," 55. "Poet, The," 242. Portal, Sir William Wyndham, investigations concerning the Round Table, 215. Portrait of Tennyson, 151, 152. "Princess, The," 135. Robertson, Rev. Frederick W., quoted, 92. Romsey Abbey, 180. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 66. Round Table at Tintagel, 164, 165. Ryde, Isle of Wight, 115. "St. Agnes' Eve," quoted, 177. St. Deiniel's Church, at Ha- warden, 104. St. Michael's Mount, 188, 189. Schooldays, T e n n y s o n' s, at Louth, 40-49. Sepulchre of King Arthur, at Glastonbury Abbey, 233. Shanklin Village, 116. Shelley's "Skylark," quoted, 18. Shiplake and the Wedding Day, 76; the Church, 77, 78. "Silent Voices," quoted, 71. Smith, Captain John, of Vir- ginia, at Louth, 45. Somersby, the poet's birthplace, 15; the rectory, 20; chur<"h, 33; first study or den at, 24; Gothic dining hall at, 22, 23; in "In Memoriam," 38, 39. "Song, The Poet's," 342. Spalding, in Lincolnshire, 7. Spilsby, in Lincolnshire, 15. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, quoted, 16. Stockworth Mill, 19. Stonehenge, 181-184. Swainton, and the poem of "The Princess," 135. "Swan, The Dying," 242. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 116. Taylor, Bayard, 136. Tealby, 6. "Tears, Idle Tears," 36. Tennyson, altogether English, 13; his attitude toward Na- ture, 133, 134; his boyhood at Somersby, 30; brothers of, 31 ; bust, by Garland, at Louth, 34; bust of, by Wool- ner at Cambridge, 56; his death, 159; his father, 34; favorite trees, 127; favorite walks and drives, 135, 136, 158; his funeral, 159; his humor, 17; love of the sea, 126, 127; his mother, 35; ori- gin of name, 6; portraits of, 151, 152; records in phono- graph, 154; statue of, at Lincoln, 1 ; statue of, by Thorneycroft at Cambridge, 57; tributes to his wife, 82, 83, 85, 87; visits to Tintagel, 171; the artist, 14; the seer, 14; wedding, 76; working habits of, 126, 130, 132. Tennyson, Hallam, the present lord, 145, 146-153. Tennyson, the present Lady, 145. Thackeray, William Makepeace, at Clevedon, 94. "There on the top of the down," quoted, 88. Thorold, Bishop, quoted con- cerning Winchester, 207. Timbuctoo, prize poem at Cam- bridge, 51. Tintagel, 153; and King Ar- thur, 163. 248 INDEX Totland Bay, Isle of Wight, 117. Trinity College, Cambridge, 51, 52, 57, 58. Twickenham, 65. "Two Voices, The," 33. "Vastness," 342. Ventnor, Isle of Wight, 115. "Village Wife, The," 16, 341. Walton, Izaak, memorial of, Winchester, 208. Watts, George Frederick, por- traits of Tennyson by, 69, 70. Weary-aU HiU, at Glastonbury, 225. Wedding, Tennyson's, 78, 79, 84. Welsh motto of Tennyson's, 158. Wesleys, the, 7. Westgate Place, Louth, 41. Westminster Abbey and Tenny- son, 70; funeral, 70, 71, 161. Wight, Isle of, 111. William of Malmesbury, quoted, 227. "Will Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue," quoted, 67. Winchester and King Arthur's Round Table, 200. Winchester Cathedral, 201. Windsor, as Camelot, 86. Working habits of Tennyson, 126, 130, 132. CROWELL'S TRAVEL BOOKS RAMBLES IN SPAIN. By JOHN D. FlTZ- Gerald. Map and 135 illustrations. 8vo, $3.00 net. (Postage, 30 cents.) SWITZERLAND. Its Scenery, History, and Literary Associations. 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