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Carlyle and Tennyson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Charles Richard Sanders
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Extract

According to Sir Charles Tennyson, Carlyle met Tennyson at the Sterling Club as early as 1839, if not earlier. Previously, Sir Charles says, Carlyle had heard much about him from John Sterling, who had helped to found the Cambridge Apostles' Club, of which Tennyson had also been a member. D. A. Wilson, however, in his multi-volumed life of Carlyle says that the two first met in Carlyle's garden at Chelsea in the autumn of 1840. Sir Charles is more nearly right. Wilson's date is too late, for on 5 September 1840 Carlyle wrote to his brother: “Some weeks ago, one night, the Poet Tennison [sic] and Matthew Allen were discovered here, sitting smoking in the garden. Tennison had been here before, but was still new to Jane,—who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred; dusty, smoky, free-and-easy: who swims, outwardly and inwardly, with great composure in an inarticulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; great now and then where he does emerge: a most restful, brotherly, solidhearted man.” From the very first the friendship seemed to flourish. “He seemed to take a fancy to me,” Tennyson later told a visitor at Farringford in speaking of Carlyle's favorable treatment of him in the early forties. In those years Carlyle's reputation had already been firmly established by his French Revolution and his lectures; but Tennyson had not published the two volumes of 1842 which were to do much to give him fame. Both had found the road to fame a long, steep, and difficult one. Both had lost manuscripts: Carlyle that of the French Revolution, volume one; and Tennyson that of Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. Both had been battered much by hardships and disappointments. Carlyle, who was fourteen years older than the poet, had struggled over a much longer period before being acclaimed by the literary world. But the period of their fame would also be a long one, and in terms of rough chronology they enjoyed their fame during the same years.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 82 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

1 Alfred Tennyson (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 176—177.

2 Carlyle, 6 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1923–34), iii, 121.

3 Fom the original letter in the National Library of Scotland. The passage on Tennyson is quoted in part, without an exact date, by J. A. Froude in Thomas Carlyle, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1882–84), iii, 190.

4 Tennyson and His Friends, ed. Hatlam Lord Tennyson (London: Macmillan, 1911), pp. 131–132.

5 Tennyson later misplaced the manuscript of In Memori-am, not long before publication, and it had to be found and reclaimed for him by Coventry Patmore, with considerable difficulty. See W. F. Rawnsley, “Personal Recollections of Tennyson,” Nineteenth Century and After, xcvn (February 1925), 191.

6 Haïlam Lord Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by Bis Son (New York and London: Macmillan, 1897), i, 213–214. I have not found the original of this letter. In 1869 Tennyson spoke to Frederick Locker-Lampson about it and of how much he valued Carlyle's praise in it. He thought at the time the letter had been lost. Ibid., ii, 73.

7 When Carlyle was told that Tennyson had no ear for music, he said, according to Edward Fitzgerald, “The man must have music dormant in him, revealing itself in verse”; and he spoke of Tennyson's voice as being like “the sound of a pinewood.” Wilson, iii, 122.

8 “Carlyle's Unpublished Letters to Miss Wilson,” Nineteenth Century, lxxxiix (May 1921), 811. For Carlyle, Tennyson, and tobacco, see Wilson, i, 326; W. Gordon McCabe, “Personal Recollections of Alfred Lord Tennyson,” Century Magazine, xli (March 1902), 733–734; Anne Thackeray Ritchie, Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning (New York: Harper, 1893), pp. 59–60.

9 New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London & New York: John Lane, 1904), i, 279–280. “Jack” is Dr. John A. Carlyle, brother of Thomas; “Darwin” is most likely Erasmus Darwin, brother of Charles and great friend of both Carlyles. See Grace J. Calder, “Erasmus A. Darwin, Friend of Thomas and Jane Carlyle,” MLQ, xx (March 1959), 36–48.

10 The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. C. E. Norton (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), ii, 49.

11 The poet's father had been Rector of Somersby Church. But Carlyle's point about the influence of Lincolnshire and Cambridge on Tennyson's poetry still holds pretty well.

12 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ii, 66–67.

13 Fitzgerald's father owned the site of the Battle of Naseby.

14 Some New Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, ed. F. R. Barton (London: Williams and Norgate, 1923), i, 321–322.

15 P. 35.

16 P. 214.

17 Ritchie, p. 36.

18 Sir Charles Tennyson, p. 202.

19 Some New Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, pp. 131–133. The original letter is in the Yale University Library. Part of a letter from Tennyson to Carlyle, 7 Aug. [1844], is preserved in the National Library of Scotland.

20 See also the quotation above from Carlyle's letter to his brother John, S September 1840.

21 Sir Charles Tennyson, pp. 185–186.

22 Wilson, vi, 279; Charles Eliot Norton, Letters, ed. Sara Norton and M. A. De Wolfe Howe (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), i, 464–465.

23 See note 14.

24 Tennyson: A Memoir, i, 225.

25 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

26 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland. Carlyle had rejoiced over the news of Tennyson's pension in a letter to his wife of 8 October 1845. See New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ii, 5–8.

27 Tennyson: A Memoir, i, 188. “Babbie” is another cousin of Mrs. Carlyle, Jeannie Welsh.

28 Leonard Huxley, ed., Jane Welsh Carlyle: Letters lo Her Family, 1839–1863 (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1924), pp. 228–230. Sir Charles Tennyson erroneously dates the passage 1839 or early 1840 (pp. 176–177).

29 Sir Charles G. Duffy, Conversations and Correspondence with Carlyle (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892), p. 5.

30 See the sketches of Jane Welsh Carlyle and Francis Jeffrey in Carlyle's Reminiscences. There is abundant evidence in Carlyle's contemporaneous letters to substantiate the point.

31 Letter of 23 September, in Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. J. A. Froude (London: Longmans, Green, 1883), i, 339–344. “Mrs. Macready” is the wife of the well-known actor W. C. Macready. “John” is Carlyle's brother, Dr. John Aitken Carlyle. “Craik” is Professor G. L. Craik (1798-1866) nicknamed “Creek” by the Carlyles. “Mr. Strachey” is very probably Sir Edward Strachey, uncle of Lytton Strachey. “Lady H—” is probably Lady Harriet Baring, who in 1848 became Lady Ashburton, first wife of the second Lord.

32 30 September 1845. In Huxley, pp. 252–254.

33 New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London and New York; John Lane, 1903), i, 179–181. Lady Harriet is Lady Harriet Baring.

34 8 October 1845. In New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ii, 6.

35 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland. Characteristically, Mrs. Carlyle merely dated it “Saturday.”

36 Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, Sculptor and Poet (London: Chapman and Hall, 1917), p. 12.

37 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

38 Tennyson and His Friends, p. 133.

39 Wilson, iii, 348; Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Memoirs, ed. J. F. Clarke, R. W. Emerson, and W. H. Channing (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1852), ii, 186.

40 Arthur Waugh, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Study of His Life and Work (London: Heineman, 1892), p. 100; Ritchie, p. 35; Tennyson: A Memoir, I, 340.

41 Tennyson and His Friends, p. 379; Wilson, ill, 325–327.

42 Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, Necessary Evil: The Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle (London: Constable, 1952), p. 361. The original letter is in the possession of the Marquess of Northampton.

43 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ii, 189.

44 Francis Espinasse, Literary Recollections and Sketches (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1893), pp. 213–214.

45 Froude, iii, 422.

46 Wilson, v, 11–12. The brother was Frederick, and the subject being meditated upon was King Arthur. But the two brothers did not actually go to Italy at this time. They started but were back in London in two days. Sir Charles Tennyson, p. 232.

47 From the original letter, dated 17 January, in the National Library of Scotland. But Carlyle gives a very unfavorable description of Tennyson just before his marriage, in a letter to Dr. John Carlyle, 29 April 1850, also in the National Library of Scotland.

48 Sir Charles Tennyson, p. 231.

49 We may wonder whether what Brookfield's diary, 7 December 1853, tells us about Lady Ashburton's manner of reading In Memoriam reflects to any degree Carlyle's opinion of the poem: “Lady Ashburton read part of a French Play well, and a bit of In Memoriam hurriedly, and rather as if it bored her.” The Carlyles were at the Grange at the time of the reading. Wilson, v, 66.

50 The original is in the National Library of Scotland. Mrs. Marshall was the sister of Stephen Spring Rice, Tennyson's friend at Cambridge.

51 Tennyson: A Memoir, i, 334.

52 Trudy Bliss, Thomas Carlyle: Letters to His Wife (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953), p. 270.

53 Ibid., pp. 271–272; Wilson, rv, 318. 54 Tennyson and His Friends, p. 133.

55 Ibid., p. 134. Two fragments of the original letter are at Yale University.

56 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

57 Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, p. 405.

58 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ii, 237. Emerson had delivered lectures in England in 1848. Occasionally Carlyle could strike a sour note even in reference to Mrs. Tennyson. See Charles and Frances Brookfield, Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1906), ii, 383 ff.; Wilson, iv, 463.

59 From the original letter at Yale University. I have normalized the punctuation in this and other letters hitherto unpublished. The dating of this letter is uncertain. A long letter to Carlyle from Alan Ker in the West Indies, 10 May 1856, in the National Library of Scotland, discussed the Tennysons.

60 Carlyle's letter of regret to Milman, dated 16 November 1852, is in the National Library of Scotland. In it he says: “On Thursday I am elsewhere engaged for that affair; and indeed could not, in any case, have ventured on St. Paul's, for such a length of time as they predict, and thro' such deluges of hard-elbowed human Stupidity and Irreverance as I see too well there will certainly be.” Wilson, rv, 449–450; Froude, rv, 125–126.

61 Carlyle had written to his mother on 1 December 1834: “In Wellington's shoes I would not willingly be: he thinks to rule Britain like a drill-sergeant; but will find it not answer. As bonny a man I have seen before now lose his head in such a business.” Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 1826–1836, ed. C. E. Norton (London and New York: Macmillan, 1889), pp. 469 fi. On 19 July 1835 he wrote to her after seeing Wellington at a grand review in Hyde Park: “I felt kindly drawn towards the old man. He is honest, I do think, in his fashion; he had fought his way round half the terrestrial Globe, and was got that length; at no great distance (from him and me) lay—Eternity too!” Ibid., pp. 534 ff. After seeing Wellington at a grand ball at Bath House, Carlyle wrote in his journal, 25 June 1850: “I had never seen till now how beautiful, and what an expression of graceful simplicity, veracity, and nobleness there is about the old hero when you see him close at hand. His very size had hitherto deceived me. … He glided slowly along, slightly saluting this and that other, clear, clean, fresh as this June evening itself, till the silver buckle of his stock vanished into the door of the next room, and I saw him no more. Except Dr. Chalmers, I have not for many years seen so beautiful an old man.” Froude, rv, 46. Carlyle heard of Wellington's death when he was in Germany doing research on Frederick II, and he wrote from there to Lady Ashburton on 17 September 1852: “Poor old Wellington, I had heard that evening [on the day before] he was dead! … In all the world there is not left now, that we know of, such a man. . . . Farewell to him, the farewell due to heroes.” From the original letter in possession of the Marquess of Northampton. When Carlyle attended the funeral of Lady Augusta Stanley in Westminster Abbey in 1876 he was annoyed because the congregation were “kept processioning and antheming and chanting hither, thither, through all the parts of the sublime edifice for about two hours long.” He had been told that Queen Victoria herself had planned the ceremony. From the original letter to Lady Ashburton, 21 March 1876, in the possession of the Marquess of Northampton. See also Froude, ii, 295.

62 See Froude, iv, 125–126.

63 Wilson, iii, 399.

64 Pp. 213–214.

65 See Carlyle's letter of 27 April 1852 to J. Llewelyn Davies congratulating him on the translation of Plato's Republic which he and D. J. Vaughan had made. In From a Victorian Post-Bag: Being Letters Addressed to the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies (London: Peter Davies, 1926), pp. 10–11.

66 Wilson, v, 146.

67 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

68 Wilson, v, 93.

69 Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle, ii, 428–429.

70 William Howie Wylie, Thomas Carlyle: The Man and His Books (London: Marshall Japp and Co., 1881), p. 282.

71 Leonard Huxley, ed., “Letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle,” Cornhill Magazine, N.S. lxi (November 1926), 633635.

72 Wilson, v, 201–202.

73 From the original letter in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

74 David Davidson, Memories of a Long Life (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1S90), 299–309; Wilson, v, 151. When Carlyle's Frederick II was published, Tennyson attempted to read it but did not enjoy it. For one thing he found it too long. For another, he told Allingham that he had read in it until he found Carlyle saying, “They did not strive to build the lofty rhyme,” whereupon he flung the book into a corner. Wilson, v, 582. See also Tennyson and His Friends, pp. 378379; and Ritchie, pp. 56, 59.

75 Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson, p. 456. 76 Thomas Woolner, p. 150,

77 From the original letter in the Yale University Library. I cannot identify the photographs or photographer mentioned by Mrs. Carlyle. The photograph of Tennyson is possibly the benign one, dated April 1861, used as a frontispiece in T. J. Wise, A Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred Lord Tennyson, ii (London: Printed for Private Circulation, 1908).

78 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

79 “Personal Memories of Tennyson,” Living Age, cccxin (1922), 477.

80 Tennyson: A Memoir, i, 490.

81 Wilson, vi, 102; Waugh, pp. 199–200.

82 From the original letter in the Yale University Library, published in incomplete form in Tennyson: A Memoir, ii, 237. Hallam Tennyson says that he found the letter in the bottom of a tobacco box which Carlyle had given to his father as a pledge of eternal brotherhood. See also Wilson, vi, 195–196.

83 New Letters of Thomas Carlyle, ii, 265–266.

84 Ibid., 300–301.

85 Tennyson: A Memoir, ii, 152.

86 From the original letter, dated 20 December 1873, in the National Library of Scotland. 87 Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, ii, 339–340.

88 Wilson, vi, 323–324. By “Gigman” Carlyle usually meant a prosperous, conventional-minded, middle-class conformist who was chiefly concerned about respectability.

89 From the original letter in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

90 From the original letter in the National Library of Scotland.

91 From an unpublished part of the original letter in the National Library of Scotland. Disraeli offered Carlyle the title of Grand Cross of the Bath in a letter of 27 December 1874, and in a letter of 29 December Carlyle turned it down. Wilson, vi, 342–347.

92 Letters, i, 457.

93 William Allingham, A Diary, ed. H. Allingham and D. Radford (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 205.

94 Ibid., p. 244.

95 Wilson, vi, 452. Tennyson enjoyed Browning's playful verses on the Carlyles. See Tennyson: A Memoir, u, 230.

96 Wilson, vi, 357–358.

97 Sir Charles Tennyson says that on a visit to Holland in the summer of 1841 the poet spent some time with an American, Dr. Shepherd, from whom he concealed his name. Shepherd for a time thought that he must be Carlyle “because of his unconventionality and the brilliance of his conversation” until on one occasion Tennyson mentioned Carlyle. P. 189.

98 Wilson, iii, 380–381.

99 “Some Personal Recollections of Carlyle,” in Literary Remains (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1885), p. 432. See also Wilson, rv, 7–8.

100 Autobiography: Memories and Experiences (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), ii, 212.

101 “Personal Recollections,” pp. 723, 730–731. See also A. C. Gordon, Memories and Memorials of William Gordon McCabe, 2 vols. (Richmond, Va.: Old Dominion Press, 1925), passim.

102 Tennyson: A Memoir, ii, 233. Tennyson was himself very curious about an earlier man-and-wife relationship which in the public mind was mysterious and controversial, that of Byron and his wife. He told McCabe that he had once said to Thomas Campbell, “I am told that you are, perhaps, the only man in England who really knows why Lord and Lady Byron separated,” and that Campbell did not affirm or deny but replied significantly, after a pause, “You may be sure, Tennyson, of one thing—that Lord Byron was a very bad man.” “Personal Recollections,” p. 727.

103 “Taiks with Tennyson,” New Review, xv (July 1896), 80–81.

104 Rawnsley, p. 194. See also Sir Charles Tennyson, pp. 467–68.

105 From the original letter in the Yale University Library.