Text: Eugene L. Didier, “Tennyson Seen at Home,” The Post Express (Rochester, NY), vol. V, no. 19, January 23, 1886, p. 3, col. 3

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Tennyson is the undisputed monarch of the realm of poetry. There is really no great poet now living except the poet laureat [[laureate]] of England. Yet not one in ten thousand of his admirers knows anything about his habits, his personal appearance, his home life. The king of poets, like the king of gods, sits enveloped in clouds, secluded from the sight of men, and living in a world of poetic dreams and tobacco smoke. Whether he is a liberal or conservative, high church, low church or no church, very few are aware. He has kept aloof from politics, parties and the literary quarrels of his day. He once wrote a complaint against exposing the faults and foibles of men of letters:

Tennyson has two homes in the country. He lives on the Isle of Wight in the spring and at Haslemere, in Sussex, during the summer. It is at the latter place that we shall see him at the best advantage, for when in his island home he gives strict orders to his servants to admit no strangers into the house. The story goes that upon one occasion the Prince of Wales called at the cottage to pay his respects to the post and was denied admittance, the servant not recognizing the future king of England in the portly gentleman wearing a very neglige morning suit, The prince retired good-humoredly from the door of the churlish poet.

Haslemere is a modern gothic house, with “many-angled oriels in wide deep windows, shadowy recesses, and dormers whose gables and pinnacles break the sky-line picturesquely. Within everything is ordered with a quiet, refined elegance. The hall, in spite of its richly-tesselated pavement, has a delightful sense of coolness in its soft half-light. The lofty rooms have broad, high windows, the light from which is tempered by delicately colored hangings; walls of the negative tints in which modern decorators delight, diapered with dull gold, and paneled ceilings of darkly-stained wood, with mouldered ribs and beams. Nowhere is the spirit vexed by garish ornament, or the eye by glaring color. A few good etchings and paintings hang on the walls, among them an excellent copy of the Peter Martyr, which is doubly valuable since the destruction of the original.”

The poet's den is at the top of the house, and as the visitor passes along the corridor leading to it, he finds the atmosphere heavy with an odor which comes not from Arabia, but from a white clay pipe well charged with American tobacco. The poet removes the pipe while greeting the visitor, but replaces it in his mouth immediately afterwards. Tennyson is a very irascible man and hates to be disturbed during the morning hours when engaged in study, but I do not know whether he ever tears his hair or throws his books at his servant, as Voltaire did. We have timed our visit in the afternoon, when the poet is at leisure and enjoys the visit of a stranger who comes from a distant land to pay his respects to the first post of the age. But Tennyson is not a sociable man and he takes no special pleasure in communion with his fellows. His happiest hours are spent alone, in his secluded study, engaged in poetical meditation or wrapt in elysian dreams, his pipe always in his month and a great tobacco jar on the floor beside him. The poet is tall and slightly bent by the seventy-five winters that have also left their mark upon his whitened hair and beard, both of which are long and flowing. His eyes are large, dark and dreamy. His manners are shy and awkward, the result of long seclusion from the world. He wore a suit of badly-fitting gray clothes, a loose turn-down collar, a carelessly tied cravat, and low, wide shoes, made more for comfort than beauty. He speaks slowly and with great deliberation, in a dull, rolling Saxon accent which might be called provincial, but his words are well chosen and his language refined, plainly showing that he is a college man and the student Of many languages.

“At one time I thought of visiting America,” said the poet, “but I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what? Certainly you would have been received most cordially.”

“Yes, and that's what I was afraid of. I recollect Dickens’ first visit — the receptions, dinners, hand-shakings, and I concluded that I would not venture to show myself in the great republic. There is one spot in your country which I should like to visit, a spot which, as your poet Fitz-Greene Halleck expressed it, is ‘hallowed ground, a pilgrim shrine, a Mecca of the mind.’”

“You mean Mount Vernon, where Washington is entombed?”

“No; I mean a long neglected spot in the provincial town of Baltimore, where the greatest American genius lies buried. I mean the grave of Edgar A. Poe.”

“I believe you have a great admiration for Poe?”

“Indeed I have. In my opinion, your Bryant, Whittier, etc., are pigmies compared with Poe. He is the literary glory of America, and yet his grave was left unhonored for more than twenty six years.”

“More than thirty five years have elapsed since his death and his fame is constantly increasing. That's a true test of genius.”

“No poet, certainly no modern poet, was so susceptible to the impression of beauty as Poe,” said Tennyson, “ He had all the Greek's appreciation of beauty and much of their power of expressing it in poetry.”

This enthusiastic admiration of Tennyson for Poe reminded me that, more than forty years ago, when the English poet was struggling for the recognition which he at that time failed to receive from his own countrymen, Poe pronounced him « the noblest poet” that ever Tennyson has been a most fortunate poet; be is suited to his time, he has had a long life, which Keats, Shelley, Byron, Burns and Poe were denied; be has had easy circumstances, which Coleridge, Hood and Leigh Hunt He has made full use of all his gifts of nature and fortune, and has also won his way to the highest social rank ever attained by an English poet.

Tennyson's early verses did not give promise of the rich and abundant harvest that bis later muse has given to the world. He sang of “Dying Swans,” of “Mermaids,” of “Owls,” etc. Christopher North said, “Alfred is greatest as an owl. All he wants is to be shot, stuffed and stuck in a glass case to be made im mortal in a museum.” From the writer of verses, the world did not pretty drawing room expect poems like “The Princess,” and “In Memoriam,” and when they appeared the public was very much astonished. The “Idyls of the King “ is Tennyson's favorite work, and he devoted more time and study to it than to all the others combined. The poet has made the mistake in this poem of introducing a mediaeval civilization of France and England in the barbarous period of those countries in the fifth century. King Arthur and the knights of the round table form a beautiful and attractive group, but they are only an ideal and poetical conception. They never existed as painted by the poet. As a piece of rhetorical composition the poem is exquisite. In delicate word painting, in grace, elegance of language and in dainty rhythm, the “Idyls of the King “ is unsurpassed by any other work of the poet laureate.

Tennyson is pathetic, sentimental, sad; never witty, humorous or sublime. He has not yet written a really good poem — great in the sense that “Paradise Lost “ is great. He is exquisite, sweet, graceful, but grand and sublime never. The ambition of all great poets has been a great theme, greatly executed. Tennyson has never conceived a great theme, and we are forced to conclude that he never will. After the age of 70 poets rarely become what they have not been. With all of Tennyson's tenderness as a poet, it must be confessed that he is a cold, unlovable man. He repels rather than seeks friendship, wraps himself in a mantle of self-sufficiency and despises the world which he will not enter. He is the least conventional of men; indeed, he impresses a stranger very unfavorably at first by his brusque and almost rude manners. His careless dress is not an affectation but a genuine eccentricity, resulting from an almost entire ab- sense from city life for many years Byron dressed with the fastidious elegance of a man whose life was passed in the fashionable drawing-rooms in London. He did everything for effect, as though posing for his picture, or conscious that the eyes of the world were upon him. Tennyson is sublimely indifferent to the effect that he produces in the eyes of the world so far as his personal appearance goes. But careless as he is in the latter respect, he is the most fastidious of writers, and when he gives a poem to the world it is as finished and as perfect as the poet can make it. What could be more exquisitely dainty and graceful than these lines from the “Princess:”

Tennyson has been spoiled by too much praise, and is peevish under adverse criticism. This was shown in his little poem, “A Flower,” which, when new, was neglected, but after- words grew into a superb flower of art, which was universally admired, but was afterwards pronounced a weed because the seed became common and the world grew tired of a beauty too familiar. The poet's secluded life in the country has made him sensitive to the censure of the world, and prevented him from enjoying the proper study of mankind — men. His creations are highly ideal, and as perfect as art can make them, but they are not real flesh and blood. Tennyson has not made the reputation on the continent that Byron did. He is more national, and takes his subjects principally from English country life, and they breathe an ardent love for country. The post is very fond of out-door exercise, and when not dreaming poetic dreams or working at his desk by the window that overlooks the pine glen, he may a [column 4:] be found wondering through the bright glades and mossy dells that beautify the grounds of Haslemere, or strolling in a garden laiden in the summer time with the odors of new-blossoming flowers. His love of seclusion keeps him within his own grounds, and they are lovely enough to satisfy the most poetical soul. It is English country life that has inspired his muse, and not the bustling, busy life of London, Liverpool and Birmingham. His youth was passed amid the fens of Lincolnshire, and his earliest poems marshes are full of allusions to vales, marshes and other peculiarities of that part of England.

The poems which Tennyson has written during the last ten years have not added to his fame. On the contrary they have lost him many of the admirers whom he won by the beautiful poems produced between his thirtieth and sixtieth years. His English dramas have been acted without success and read without admiration, except, of course, by people and newspapers who praise everything written by an author of established reputation, especially when he is a lord, for a nod from a lord is breakfast to a snob. It is said that Tennyson was induced to accept the title of lord because of his great affection for his eldest son. The rank of baron will give the young man & consideration in the English world which he would fail to receive as plain Mr. Tennyson, possesses none of the talents of father. The poet knew full well that no title could add anything to the glory acquired by the divine gift of genius. Tennyson is the most methodical of men, differing widely in this respect from other poets. He rises early — 6 in summer and 7 in winter, and breakfasts an hour later. At all meals he likes to have his no poet title to the glory family around him, for although he is so cold and indifferent to the world in general, he is tenderly devoted to his wife and children. The fond partner of his life, whose sweet faith in his genius is said to have inspired him to renewed labor and greater aspirations, has been an invalid for years, and she can no longer sit by his side in his study or accompany him in his walks. After breakfast the poet devotes an hour or two to his large correspondence. He then retires to his study, where he passes the morning meditating, writing, dreaming, but smoking eternally, except when eating and sleeping.