'A Flute of Arcady': Autograph Poems of Tennyson's Friend, Arthur Henry Hallam

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'A FLUTE OF ARCADY': AUTOGRAPH POEMS OF TENNYSON'S FRIEND, ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

ROGER EVANS

And all we met was fair and good, And all was good that Time could bring. And all the secret of the Spring Moved in the chambers of the blood: And many an old philosophy On Argive heights divinely sang. And round us all the thicket rang To many a flute of Arcady. Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., Section 23 ALTHOUGH Arthur Henry Hallam (fig. i) is granted a column and a half in the pages of the Dictionary of National Biography, he remains a tenuous shade in the national memory. He achieved no conventional academic distinction or position of political or social prominence, he left little that may be called ground-breaking and he fathered no progeny, worthy or otherwise. This said, his early death at the age of twenty-two so profoundly shook the greatest poet of the Victorian age, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and its greatest prime minister, W. E. Gladstone, he was a living presence in their memory to the end of their long lives. More importantly for us, he is a presence in the canon of English literature to be equated with Lycidas and Adonais, for he was the subject of one of the most sustainedly moving elegies in our language, Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. In March 1998 the British Library acquired one of Hallam's notebooks, the most extensive collection of his poetry in his hand to survive and by far the most personal.^ It is a slim volume of some seventy folios, bound in now fragile calf boards, much of the spine gone but with the stitching intact and showing no evidence of having lost any folios except for one which is a mere stub. There are no blank leaves in the volume. It measures 160 X 100 X II mm. After Hallam's death in 1833 it was passed to his sister, Juha, who in 1852 married Captain John Cator, later Lennard. It then passed to their son and by descent to the present members of the family from whom it was acquired by the British Library. After 22 December 1931 it was kept in an envelope (once containing a Christmas card.^) addressed to Beatrice, Lady Lennard and the envelope remained with it when it was acquired.

212 ' h:

Fig. I. A pencil study of Arthur Henry Hallam by his friend James Spedding, c. 1832. The actress Fanny Kemble said 'There was a gentleness and purity almost virginal in his voice, manner and countenance.' From a photograph in the possession of the Tennyson Research Centre. By permission of Lincolnshire Gounty Council

213 The volume contains in autograph forty-seven of Hallam's own poems and transcriptions in his hand of three other poems, one by Alfred Tennyson, one by Frederick Tennyson^ and one by Richard Chenevix Trench.^ On the inside front board is Hallam's signature and the date May 1830. The first two poems, which are by him, are similarly dated May 1830 and then a series of poems dated chronologically to December 1830 ends abruptly with one dated November 1830, followed by a series serially postdated back to March 1830. This, of course, indicates that he did not write out all the poems in fair copy at the moment of composition. There are similar movements in time throughout the rest of the volume. The earliest date appended to a poem is March 1830, two months before the volume was begun, and the last dated poem has July 1831 given to it. Two of his poems are undated as are the three by other authors. One of his undated poems was probably written in July 1831, the other not much earlier, certainly not later. We can therefore say that the manuscript is dated May 1830 to circa July r83i, that is, when Hallam was aged between nineteen and twenty. He was born in Bedford Place, near the British Museum, on i February 1811, the son of Henry Hallam, the distinguished historian. Educated at Eton, where he was considered their leading poet, he was befriended by his fellow scholar W. E. Gladstone and before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1828, he spent nine months in Italy. There he quickly acquired a fluent grasp of the Italian language and steeped himself in the works of Dante and Petrarch. Already remarkably versed in the literature of his own country, he was quick to seize a copy of Shelley's Adonais (then unknown in England) first published in Pisa^ and introduced it to his Cambridge friends when he arrived. He was one of those involved in the first English edition, published in Cambridge in 1829, and contributed an unsigned textual note in it. There is a symmetry, one of those often thrown up so strangely by history, in this action and in the consequences of his Cambridge career. He entered Cambridge feeling that his destiny was that of a poet; at the end of his first academic year he was able to write to his friend Richard Monckton Milnes: 'My poetical faculty has developed itself marvellously: it burns now in my heart: God grant me if I am to have a Poet's destiny, at least a Poet's power. '^ That he lacked the 'Poet's power' was a reality partly brought in upon him by his contact with Alfred Tennyson who had entered Trinity in 1827 and was a fellow competitor for the Chancellor's Gold Medal for English verse in March 1829. Tennyson won both the medal and Hallam's friendship. A skilful orator, Hallam found his metier in the University Debating Society and in the Cambridge Conversazione Society, a highly articulate gathering of undergraduates who, because of their number, called themselves the 'Apostles'. Tennyson was elected a member on 24 January 1830 but remained one only briefly. The month before, Hallam had made his first visit to Tennyson's home, the rectory at Somersby in Lincolnshire and had met other members of his large family, including Tennyson's sister Emily. He was there again in April 1830 working with Tennyson on what they hoped would be a jointly- produced volume of poems: in the event, however, Hallam's father, who particularly disliked the personal nature of many of his son's poems, forbade the publication and

214 Hallam merely released his share of the work in a privately printed collection of extremely limited circulation in May.** Tennyson released his share in what was his first major volume. Poems, Ghiefly Lyrical, in June. It was during his April visit to Somersby that Hallam fell in love with Emily. In July both he and Tennyson, with more zeal than prudence, set off for Spain to give support to insurrectionists and were back in England in September. By Christmas Tennyson's father was mortally ill and in February 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge for good, never taking his degree, to be by his father's bedside. The Rector died on 16 March 1831. At this point Hallam ventured to offer his hand in marriage to Emily but Henry Hallam curtailed such notions, prohibiting his son from visiting Somersby again until he reached his majority. Nevertheless the lovers continued a lengthy correspondence. In July Hallam himself abandoned the notion of being a poet and turned to philosophy and in the following month his review of Tennyson's poems was published in The Englishman's Magazine.'^ He left Cambridge in January 1832 and became formally engaged to Emily in March, by which time he was twenty-one. That Spring he became a member of the Inner Temple and on 15 September 1833, whrle in Vienna with his father, he suddenly died of a ruptured aneurism in the brain. This necessarily selective outline of his brief life highlights, I hope, the significance of the months covered by the Hallam notebook. We can see that the friends' relationship had become thoroughly established by May 1830 when the notebook was begun. What must be stressed in considering this relationship is the profound effect Hallam had on Tennyson's work. He was then not so much a muse as an agent who, convinced of the monumental promise of his friend's poetry, stinted not at all in spreading his fame. Tennyson was at that time desultory in his attempts to publish; a considerable body of his verse was circulated in manuscript among friends but he was hesitant, even indifferent, when faced with the idea of publication. Hallam it was who took action on his friend's behalf and this was what Tennyson needed. Milnes later recalled that Hallam was not merely a beloved friend, a delightful companion but 'a most wise and influential counsellor in all the serious concerns of existence... an incomparable critic in all our literary efforts'.^ While at Somersby in April 1830, Hallam was moved to declare: 'If I die I hope to be buried here: for never in my life, I think, have I loved a place more... I have floated along a delicious dream of music and poetry and riding and dancing and greenwood dinners and ladies' conversation.'^ He was, of course, in love. Two series of sonnets relating to Somersby in the British Library notebook reveal the depth of his attachment not merely to Emily but to Somersby itself. The first series, containing nine sonnets, is given the general title 'Somersby Sonnets' and all of them are dated April 1830. They provide the setting for what was the first flush of love between Hallam and Emily Tennyson, then aged eighteen and known to him as 'Nem' and, even more variously 'Dolly', 'Miss Dod' or 'Min hertes quene'. The last of the nine presents us with an idyllic but accurate picture of the rectory garden, nestled picturesquely in the southern slope of the Lincolnshire Wolds:

215 SONNETS.

^' • •• .r,- busy \\\\\\ \W si " •!"ii;itfcll tu-iij-{sui' • mcthniks they talk, *-/ i,(nvly aiid swcrMy .xr, h.-J-ifs tlic i;f->-ir, One to another down the grassy walk. Hark the lahunmm from his opening Uower /. "^^"^ clicrry creeper greets in whisper li^ht. While the grim fir, rejoining in (he night, ^ Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore. "WTiat shall I deem their conyerse ? would they hail J '^^*' ^'"'^5' ^^K^'*^ *^^^'- ^'•""*'s y'-"i massive cloud, tlie half liow, rising like pillared tire ? .p ^i^g^. sigliiii-r faintly fur desire --/l/',TJiat with May daMii tlieir leaves nifiy he o'erflowed, And dews ahout their feet nutv never fail.

]S31,

Fig. 2. Hallam's sonnet' The garden trees are busy with the shower' in Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Halkim (1834). This is Tennyson's own copy with his autograph observation in the margin. The Tennyson Research Centre, Lincoln, Campbell I, 1092. By permission of Lincolnshire County Council

216 Elms full with voice of statelywinged rooks. Slim cherry trees wall-propped for lack of power. And you, ye blackthorns with your jubilant flower Silvering for her the green of quiet nooks It is not fanciful to see, prefigured here albeit embedded in a sonnet, the verse form of Tennyson's elegy. The second series, also of nine sonnets, dated May 1830 and given the general title 'Sonnets written after my return from Somersby', presents further express- ions of love in a kind of troubadour spirit ('. -. ye will make my lady glad') recalling Italian sonneteers. Hallam's tender affection for Somersby here extends to other members of the family, in a sonnet to Frederick and in two to the next-born brother, Charles ('True- hearted man and friend ...'), whose own elegantly composed volume of poems Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces had been published the previous March. Most interesting of all, however, is the ninth sonnet in this series, 'The garden trees are busy with the shower'. Tennyson's own copy of Hallam's Remains,^^ published in 1834, where this sonnet makes its first public appearance, contains an autograph marginal note appended to the poem, unfortunately cropped at a later date. It reads, allowing for the losses: 'The commence- ment of a sonnet by me, which I requested my dear friend Arthur to continue to its conclusion' (fig. 2). The closeness of the friends' working methods, the empathy between them, cannot be more dramatically displayed. This is made all the more poignant when one compares the anthropomorphism of lines 5 to 8 with Tennyson's own lines from Maud, published many years later in 1855: The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near'; And the white rose weeps, 'She is late'; The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear'; And the lily whispers, 'I wait'. Hallam's grotesquely titled lyric 'Hesper in a mood of jubilant prophesy [sic] addresseth "his daughters three, / That sing about the golden tree'" is printed here for the first time. Dated July 1830, it was written when he and Tennyson were in France. They had left England on 2 July 1830, having been caught up in a mission to assist insurrectionists in Spain (see fig. 3). When King Ferdinand VII had been restored to the Spanish throne in 1823, he had revoked the constitution and had taken cruel reprisals against his enemies. Many Spanish dissidents had fled to England and their cause was espoused by a number of the 'Apostles'. The task assigned to Hallam and Tennyson was to take money and messages written in invisible ink to the revolutionaries gathering in the Pyrenees. The friends apparently accomplished their mission but they found that the rebels were little more than a bloodthirsty anticlerical rabble. Hallam's poem is likely to have been written on their outward journey for it is resplendent with fiery idealism of a Shelleyan kind, youthful in its cry for liberation and confident in its tone. The opening visual image recalls his description of Cauteretz: 'we recruited our strength with precipitous defiles, jagged mountain tops, forests of solemn pine, travelled by dewy clouds ...'.^^ There is, of course, nothing to indicate that the 217 Fig. J. A pencil and sepia wash sketch, dated io September 1830, by John Harden of Arthur Hallam (lying down with an open book) and Alfred Tennyson (with his back to the viewer), on board the steamer The Leeds between Bordeaux and Dublin. They were returning from the Pyrenees. Trinity College, Cambridge, Add.ms.c.63[3]. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge poem was written at Cauteretz itself, a place later hallowed in Tennyson's memory for its associations, but the poem adds a further dimension to our understanding of thei^ reckless venture. Conceding victory to Tennyson in the competition for the Chancellor's Gold Medal in 1829, Hallam tackled the subject prescribed for the following year's prize, 'Byzantium'. This prize, 'to be conferred upon a resident Undergraduate, who should compose in English the best Ode or best poem in Heroic Verse',^^ was established by the Duke of Gloucester, then Chancellor of the University, in 1813. The subject was announced in December and the poem was to be submitted on or before 31 March the following year. Hallam's poem, printed here for the first time, is dated March 1830. The subject had a double appeal for him: it allowed him to give expression to those ideals which would send him to the Pyrenees the following summer, here embodied in his anti- Turkish sentiments at a time when Greece was throwing off Ottoman oppression; and it also allowed an indulgence in picturesque flights of fancy: the 'graceful shapes of women', the 'soft sinking sofas', the 'Greek damsel' recall the sensualities of Tennyson's ' Anacaona' which, in manuscript, went the rounds of friends agog for more. Hallam had never been to the Bosphorus but he tries to surmount that problem by 218 avoiding the issue, for the poem's first forty-two lines dwell on what he knew of England and of Italy. In it he returns to the rhyming couplet traditionally found in medallists' poems before Tennyson broke the mould with his 'Timbuctoo' written in blank verse. We do not know whether Hallam did in fact submit the poem or, if he did, whether it was a modified form of this text. None of his extant letters refers to it. In the event, the prize was taken by William Chapman Kinglake, also of Trinity College. The three other hitherto unpublished poems in the manuscript may be briefly considered here. Two of them, 'Love's decease' and 'Sulks in verse', are clearly lyrics to be set to music. Declaring itself an imitation of Goethe, the first is in the Tod und das Mddchen tradition and, written the month following Hallam's idyllic stay at Somersby, it no doubt revived for him the delightful domesticity and joys of the family's pursuits. Music was as much a part of the pleasures of the Tennyson household as was poetry. Tennyson's father - not actually at home in April 1830 - was an accomplished harpist and the girls, under the guidance of Miss Tonge and other music teachers, became quite passable singers, Cecilia, the youngest sister, particularly. Songs of Schubertian melancholy, like Hallam's lyric, sweet in their harmonies, must have frequently drifted out of the window of the yellow drawing-room onto the night lawn. Hallam's lyric allows indeed for two voices which would have satisfied competing siblings. The second lyric, the undated 'Sulks in verse', has a similar melancholy quahty but rhythmically evokes a more robust Englishness. The third poem, 'Oh Hesper golden light of loving Aphrodite...', written in December 1830, reads like a metrical exercise in antique form. Sombre though it sounds, it is full of a gentle ironic humour, lines 8 to 10 indicating that it was written when Hallam was en route from Cambridge to Somersby where he stayed for some days just before Christmas. Taking the coach which left the Bull Inn at 2.30 in the morning, he here appeals for a light in the heavens to guide him through the December blackness of an East Anglian landscape to his beloved Emily. Most evident in the volume is the influence of Keats, then not long raised from oblivion by the sympathetic appraisal of Leigh Hunt. It was to Hunt that Hallam sent Tennyson's 1830 volume, together with that by Charles Tennyson published just before it, asking Hunt to review it in his periodical The Tatler.^^ Keats, whose first biographer was Milnes, another 'Apostle', is clearly seen behind lines such as these from 'A scene in Summer', a poem addressed to Tennyson and dated June 1831: ... before me lies A lawn of English verdure, smooth & bright. Mottled with fainter hues of early hay. Whose fragrance blended with the roseperfume From that whiteflowering bush invites my sense To a delicious madness...

By the summer of 1831, however, Hallam was beginning to lose his interest in the writing of poetry: the study of philosophy was of growing importance to him. As one 219 commentator has said, 'Poetry served Hallam in the first chapter of his life as a useful discipline in the forming of his mind and the subjugation of his spirit to the demands of a life overwhelmingly dominated by his father's will.'^^ That need diminished as he approached his majority and we can see the process of renunciation in two poems in the British Library notebook. The first lies in his 'Oh Poetry, oh rarest spirit of all...', dated June 1831, which is an expression of regret but also an expression of loyalty to poetry's worth. The second lies in the last poem in the volume, the undated 'Sonnet to —', addressed to himself. In it he speaks now of leaving 'the wizard places' to seek a home 'Where the meek Son of our Almighty Lover / Stills every pang and bids all fear be over' and here he expresses the religious philosophy that informs the prose pieces written after 1831. These almost entirely supplant poetry in his thinking. Uncertain of his own achievements, he valued the work of poets he esteemed highly. We thus find here a transcript of an ode by Richard Chenevix Trench, a cherished friend among the 'Apostles' and one also engaged on the Spanish adventure of 1830.^^ We also find a sonnet by Tennyson's eldest brother, Frederick,^^ and, most importantly, there is a sonnet by Tennyson himself, 'Check every outfiash...'. Unknown to Tennyson, Hallam sent a transcript of the poem to Edward Moxon, editor of The Englishman's Magazine in a letter postmarked 15 July 1831.^^ It was an act of selfless generosity of spirit and established a writer/publisher relationship which was to stand Tennyson in good stead in the years to come. Arthur Hallam's sudden death on 15 September 1833 came, as one of his friends said, as ' a loud and terrible stroke from the reality of things upon the fairy building of our youth'^^ and Gladstone, stunned by it, immediately expressed the wish that 'Some part of what Hallam has written may be brought together and put into a more durable form, collectively, than it has yet assumed.'^^ Hallam's early verse and prose had been published in the Eton Miscellany but they hardly spoke for the Arthur Hallam his later contemporaries knew. His poems privately printed in 1830 were unknown to the general, pubhc, his prose pamphlets almost equally so. Gladstone, together with Hallam's oldest friends Francis Doyle and James Milnes Gaskell, suggested that Henry Hallam should publish a memorial volume for his son, containing both poems and prose pieces. The matter was pressed more ardently by Hallam's Cambridge friends who were better placed to know about his unpublished work. Henry Hallam agreed, though indicating that he was unwilling to publish 'anything that may too much reveal the secrets of his mind'.^" He asked Tennyson to write a preface but Tennyson, whose own private grief was already finding expression in a different kind of memorial, declined. The result of Henry Hallam's editorial work was Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry Hallam, published in 1834.^^ It contains forty-one of Hallam's poems to most of which Henry Hallam has appended the date of composition, sometimes giving the month and year, sometimes giving the year only. They range from Italian sonnets written in Rome in December 1827 to late experimental pieces written in 1832 when Hallam's poetic forces were all but spent. His 'Timbuctoo' of 1829 appears as do fifteen poems from the British Library manuscript.

220 It is evident that the Library's manuscript was that used by Henry Hallam in his work for there are editorial markings in his and in other hands scattered through the folios. The pencilled letter 'H', signifying 'Henry Hallam' and a marker of his approval, appears above fourteen of the poems in the notebook. The letters 'FD', signifying most probably 'Francis Doyle',^^ appear above eighteen of them. Only nine of the poems approved by 'FD' were eventually chosen and he concurred with 'H' in eight of these. Above three poems appears the letter 'G'. This could be either Gaskell'^^ or Gladstone, the former being the likelier. Two poems of'G"s choice were to be selected and in both he concurs with 'H\ 'FD' making no mark against them. The letter 'P' appearing above poems, sometimes in 'FD"s hand, sometimes in 'H"s, seems, by its relation to the poems ultimately chosen, to mean 'print' or 'publish' but it does also appear above poems ultimately rejected. The prevailing spirit is most notably that of Henry Hallam but it is apparent that he was willing to consider the views of two of his son's closest friends. Doyle was at Eton with Hallam but more importantly he was a close neighbour. The Hallams lived at 67 Wimpole Street at that time and the Doyles at number 10. It was Doyle who, calling at the Hallams' house on 3 October 1833, was the first of Hallam's friends to learn the dreadful news and it was he who broke the news to Gladstone and Gaskell in letters sent that day. His detailed account of Hallam's death is considered the most authoritative of all.^* Doyle was married to Gaskell's sister-in-law and he was also Gladstone's best man. Of some significance is the fact that a poem by Doyle in his Miscellaneous Verses, published in 1834, is entitled 'To the memory of a dear friend'. It fits precisely the circumstances of Hallam's hfe and the opinion of him entertained by his contemporaries and may be seen as the first published poem in memoriam A.H.H. As scrupulous as Henry Hallam was in his editorial principles, he was less so in his editorial mechanics, for he made a number of incorrect transcriptions or allowed errors to stand in Remains. The following discrepancies between the manuscript text and Henry Hallam's text may give some idea of this: Sonnet: 'A melancholy thought had laid me low...' MS: The idle busy stir of daily life Remains: The idle busy star of daily life MS: ...better hope hath grown / Upon my spirit... Remains: ... better hope hath shone / Upon my spirit Lyric: 'Well do your names express ye, sisters dear...' MS: Pale, but true visions on my musing eye... Remains: Pale but true visions of my musing eye... Lyric: 'This was my lay in sad nocturnal hour...' MS: I walk inclosed... Remains: I walk enclosed ...

221 ^5^ p. VIII.

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. Hallam's autograph fair copy of his sonnet 'Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome' in the British Library notebook. BL, Add. MS. 74090 A, f. 44 222 Sonnet: 'Why throbbest amain my heart...' MS: Why throbbest amain my heart... Remains: Why throbbest thou, my heart...

Sonnet: 'Still here - thou hast not faded ...' MS: A time will come... Remains: The time will come ...

Sonnet: 'Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome...' (fig. 4) MS: Old Dante's voice enriches all the air... Remains: Old Dante's voice encircles all the air... MS: ...or make less clear / That element... Remains: ... or make less dear / That element...

Lyric: A scene in summer MS: By unforgotten odours waking now ... Remains: By unforgotten ardours waking now... MS: ... twirling leaves / Over my feet, or busying butterflies... Remains: ... twirling leaves / Over my feet, or hurrying butterflies ...

Lyric: To the loved one

MS: A joy that will not be removed / Broods in me... Remains: A joy that will not be removed / Broods on me... MS: In the dear seat beside the fire... Remains: On the dear seat beside the fire... MS: To fill with worthy thought and deed... Remains: To fill with worthy thoughts and deed ...

Sonnet: To my mother MS: And the sweet birds their loves no more would sing... Remains: And the sweet birds their love no more would sing...

Some errors not included in the above list were corrected in the later edition of 1853 but the examples given here remained uncorrected in that edition. Henry Hallam's pruning of his son's sometimes over-heavy punctuation may be forgiven but in hyphenating or separating in the later edition what in Hallam's original text are compound words he loses a characteristic his son shared with Tennyson at this time: 'broadzoned' 'clearvoiced', 'downlooking', 'latecoming', 'trimranged', 'loveborn', 'deepeyed'

223 'roseperfume', 'whiteflowering', 'elmshadows'. Also - and this is unaccountable - we find two of the sonnets ('When gentle fingers cease to touch...' and 'The garden trees are busy...'), dated May 1830 by Hallam, given the date 1831 in Remains. The first substantial work done on Arthur Hallam was that by T. H. Vail Motter in his The Writings of Arthur Hallam (New York and London, 1943). Motter gathered together one hundred and thirteen poems and ten essays by Hallam. This large collection succeeds in presenting, in the editor's words, a 'full and honest autobiography of a mind and spirit in process of formation'.^^ For manuscript sources Motter used transcriptions written in a notebook (then in the possession of Miss I. Wintour) by Gaskell and transcriptions made by another of Hallam's friends, another 'Apostle', John Moore Heath, into a notebook now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Neither of these notebooks comes under consideration in this study, nor does another notebook used by Motter, of poems (largely by Tennyson) in Hallam's hand, belonging to a fellow undergraduate at Trinity College, John Allen. That notebook is in the library at Trinity College. Motter also used the texts of a few poems sent in letters; three of the poems in the British Library notebook were also sent in letters to Emily, all now at Wellesley College. It is apparent, however, that Motter did not examine the British Library manuscript, then in the possession of Lady Lennard, although she is acknowledged in his preface as having given assistance in his work. Many of Henry Hallam's inaccuracies are repeated in the text and he follows his dating of the poems, allowing two of the sonnets written after Hallam's return from Somersby in May 1830 to stand as 1831. He also assigns a wrong date, 'probably... early Spring of 1831', to one of the sonnets written at Somersby in April 1830 and gives the date July 1831 to 'I see her now an elfin shape ...', dated by Hallam June 1830. The five unpublished poems printed at the end of this paper were evidently unknown to him. Motter similarly did not have access to a notebook then in the possession of the Tennyson family, although he acknowledges four members of the family as having given him assistance. It is now in the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln.^^ Inscribed 'Emily Tennyson Feby. 16**^ 1836', it contains, in her hand, transcriptions of thirty-two of the poems in the British Library notebook. Naturally Emily was one of those most deeply afflicted by her fiance's death and for some time she was ill and unable to leave Somersby. In late 1834, however, she spent four months with the Hallams in London, was happily accepted into their circle and became a very close friend of Hallam's sister Ellen. The notebook was, judging by a label pasted down on the inside front board, bought from 'Hodgsons, 9 Gt. Marylebone St.', so that it was possibly during one of her visits that she transcribed the poems. She evidently did so from the British Library notebook, for she adds Hallam's own note to the sonnet 'Long hast thou wandered ...', written on the verso of the preceding folio. The five unpublished poems printed here do not appear in her notebook, nor do the three poems by other authors. To all but the last of the poems in the volume she adds the letters 'A. H. H.' and appends dates to some of them. In each case she transcribes the month correctly but in

224 eleven cases she is oddly incorrect in her transcription of the year. Did she note the month when she was making her copy in London and then try to remember the year when she had returned to Somersby? In some cases she is two years out. There are occasional sUps in transcription ('wish' for 'circle' in the first of the Somersby sonnets) but, in her bold and fluent hand, the copy is for the most part carefully done. A water drop - it is tempting to consider that it was a tear - blots out the end of the line 'Beyond this vacant world of dreary shadows' as does another in the last of the Somersby sonnets and the date appended to the first of the May 1830 sequence is similarly obliterated. In the summer of 1965 Sir Charles Tennyson and F. T. Baker published the poems in Emily's notebook, including two that are not in the British Library notebook.^^ They were clearly troubled by the dating, as well they might be, and were thrown off track by Motter's misdated poems. Sir Charles would have been better served by his knowledge of the family, which was considerable, but his deference to Motter's academic standing seemingly deflected him. The edition contains quite a number of mistranscriptions (not all listed here), the most notable being a misreading of the lines in the third of the Somersby sonnets 'Far, far into the realm where Agonies keep / Their state...'. In Emily's hand 'Agonies' is indeed a problem and the editors interpreted it as 'legionies'. The opening of the seventh Somersby sonnet' So near thee!...' becomes ' So near then! ...' and they repeat Motter's errors in the eighth sonnet, adding yet another with 'flute- notes' for 'flute tones'. Their guess at the blot-obliterated 'sunrise to every doubt' in the ninth sonnet is brave but incorrect (Hallam wrote 'sunset of every doubt') and the 'dusky blinds' of the third May 1830 sonnet become 'dusty blinds'. The rather surprising 'Thro' the night of vernal day ...' is a misreading of'Thro' the light of vernal day...'. What should be apparent from the above glosses is the value of the British Library manuscript in correcting errors in all the major printed sources. Thorough examination of the Hallam manuscript material - and this includes Ellen Hallam's transcriptions at Yale - should give clarification to what is becoming a somewhat obfuscated area of study. Perhaps it is time to publish a collected edition of all Arthur Hallam's poems and prose pieces worthy to rank beside Kolb's magnificent edition of his letters. Whatever the value of the British Library manuscript in the furtherance of scholarship, it remains an object of considerable iconic value. There is in its slim frailty something which bespeaks its creator and there is in its contents such a powerful evocation of a year, long gone, of concentrated personal experience, the reader may be startled into a fresh understanding of Tennyson's own moving response to the letters of his friend Arthur Hallam: So word by word, and line by line. The dead man touch'd me from the past. And all at once it seem'd at last His living soul was flash'd on mine.

225 UNPUBLISHED POEMS All but the last are dated in the manuscript

BYZANTIUM The prescribed subject for the Chancellor's Gold medal at Cambridge in i8jo was ^Byzantium'. The last date for entry was ji March and the award was made in June. The prize was awarded to William Chapman Kinglake. How glorious are the cities of the South! There no fantastic shews, no shapes uncouth Deform the face of Nature, and abate The solemn, fixed procession of her state. Here we are dull, and our slow chisels ply After laborious patterns slavishly; Born in a happier clime the artist hears Rich music dreaming yet with infant ears. Then leaping up ecstatic, many a form Of beauteous curve or square, or angular arm Takes order in his foredivining soul. And outward things come mute to his control As the white lambs i' th' fold. Far hill & sea Reposing in their blue eternity. Cedars & palms & spiring cypresses. And silver fountainfalls, swayed by no breezes Because they sing to rest the summer air And sport within its languid twinings there ' Mingling with these he schools his shaping hand, Learns it to love all beauty of the land. That when his towers & terraces arise They seem new children in one mother's eyes Living, almighty Nature. I have been Where pleasant slopes, grey olivehills between. The home of Angelo & Donatel Sweetly embosom: I remember well Gazing long summer twilights down the stream From Pontemolle to the rich gold gleam Of sunset-coloured air, parted alway By vast San Pietro's spectral cupola. Ay, and on dread Vesuvius I have stood What time was moaning low that scathed brood, 226 Watching the blush from Orient touch the heights Of the expectant Apennine to lights Unnumbered, and transfigured momently. Till the hushed sea woke in a melody Of morning nightingales, and every mist Was cleared from the fair walls, that Ocean kist. So that methought the City rising there Was born to its dominion, and might hear Sister or spouse from all bright forms around. Since all to her high beauty did respond. And she to all. Yet tho' I dearly love These solemn sights, and nought perhaps may move My nature in the aftertime, as these Had power my boyish temp'rament to please. There are some scenes, of many which I knew In hours of prattle, when my books were few. In the dawn hope of life - rich Eastern scenes Dimly imagined - deep luxuriant screens Of tamarisk or cassia, opening Some seldom glimpses of a turbaned king. Or graceful shapes of women, duskily veiled From eye profane; grand, mooned temples, paled By vacant courts & basins of pure stream, Holy to Moslem rite, yet which might seem The special dwelling of some Peri sweet. Watching for Islam, as is very meet For all the half immortals of God's air. Then the long halls of the Serail, great care Of silent slaves, blackfaced & ready handed. Rustling with slippermotions of the banded Sultanas, or resounding to the tone As on soft sinking sofas languid grown They lay, while some Greek damsel made them mute By tinkling airs of Scio on the lute. Ever the wealth of names Arabian Flung music to my heart, and I was wan With waiting for the sight of Samarcand, Or full Balsara, or the battled land About Damascus; gorgeous domes & vast Towered in me, as of Babylon; the waste Belted with sands old Tadmor, & in thought I watched its pillars crumble into nought. Yet more than all, far above all, one name

227 Grew on my hopes, awing me with the fame That burned around it: on both hemispheres Of Time its bright form lightened, crushing years To moments in its dateless majesty. Byzant, Caesarean Byzant, who could be Equalled to thee of cities.'' Wert thou not Doomed to an ever green, enduring lot. Queen o'er a million tumults, and the swords Of nation after nation - barbarous hordes. Or cultured artists in the skill of death; Some to wild demons ofFering up their breath. Others, more recent, dying to the Cross, And for that glory counting all things loss. Byzant of emperors, methinks I know Thy porticos & churches, and the row Of wealthy gardens sloping to the main. As I had been their inmate; I could feign Even to the life the great triangular bay. Folding the subject wave of Marmora: Could gaze familiar on the neighbouring isles. Exuberant of marble for all piles. Or the Hippodrome, the pillared porphyry. And that colossal splendour, raised to be Justinian's monument; nor less the dome. Sacred to Wisdom, where no voice of Rome Awed their old worship, but at every rite Solemn, & free from stain of Azymite, The patriarch knelt, the earnest chaunting flowed Thro' the sweet dimness of an incense cloud. And twice twelve windows, rich with stones of price. Distinct with imageries of quaint device. Tinged the mysterious light so saintly seeming From the branched lamps around the altar gleaming. Much on that awful day I loved to brood When sank the symbol Nazarene, and blood Of a brave emperor, and some thousand slaves. Yea, most unRoman cowards, rolled its waves Down the spoiled city. Lo ye, how comes on. Voluptuously stern, as having won. The Chosroes; he leans along the mane Of his spent charger, and a laugh is plain. Grimly uprising to his fiery eye. Because he sees the hoof look martially.

228 Dripping with foeman's gore: that very hour. Beautiful Byzant, drooped thy vital power. And in the baleful trance thou liest yet Witched by a dominant star of Mahomet. Yet shall the spell be broken; even now Smiles of new life dawn on thy pallid brow. And the warm veins beat freely: see they come. The Northern princes, messengers of Doom, And the free Greek looks proudly for the fight Which shall redeem thee from the oppressor's might, Thou captive Istambol. Oh thou shalt have Worship & love, as one long in the grave. And now alive again! Days shall be bright Over thy being, and inborn delight Shall be thine own in Beauty's endless sight. Thou art a perfect vision in my thought, A form of Art's Idea: one who caught The meaning of all natural shapes that be Down the near coasts, and o'er the mighty sea. Wrought in the harmony of that high tone. And married thee his child to Nature's own: Therefore shall Loveliness, and calm of Art Ever keep watch around this city's heart! March 18^0

LOVE S DECEASE Imitated from Goethe Maiden & Stranger Hallam, staying with the Tennyson family at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fell in love with Tennyson's sister, Emily, in April i8jo. S. Oh maiden, maiden, pause awhile. And dim with tears that happy smile: For Love is dead, your darling dead: Here lies he buried: He is nothing now, a dream evanished! M. Oh stranger, you must swear an oath. And plight to this your knightly troth. S. Nay, nay, I dare nor plight, nor swear; Full oft, when Love lies buried there; A nothing wakes him up, a dream of lightest air! May i8jo 229 Dripping with foeman's gore: that very hour. Beautiful Byzant, drooped thy vital power. And in the baleful trance thou liest yet Witched by a dominant star of Mahomet. Yet shall the spell be broken; even now Smiles of new life dawn on thy pallid brow. And the warm veins beat freely: see they come. The Northern princes, messengers of Doom, And the free Greek looks proudly for the fight Which shall redeem thee from the oppressor's might, Thou captive Istambol. Oh thou shalt have Worship & love, as one long in the grave. And now alive again! Days shall be bright Over thy being, and inborn delight Shall be thine own in Beauty's endless sight. Thou art a perfect vision in my thought, A form of Art's Idea: one who caught The meaning of all natural shapes that be Down the near coasts, and o'er the mighty sea. Wrought in the harmony of that high tone. And married thee his child to Nature's own: Therefore shall Loveliness, and calm of Art Ever keep watch around this city's heart! March 18^0

I Now the darkness slow unrolleth down the mountain. Let the song go up to meet yon golden fountain Wherewithal the West is brightning brightlier than with summer lightning. Not in fiashes comes & goes it, but in gold light pure & deep. Promising no lengthened sleep. But a waking glad & roseate. Yea, another birth That forehallowed birth. When the Sabbath year shall dawn upon the earth.

II Long enough from Orient the parching breezes came; Long enough the mighty temple builded from of old By the Thought, the Element, the lifecreating Beam, Which Unknown Abyss produced, and immemorial Mould, Hath been crumbling, wall & pillar; only in the shrine Lives a longing high & holy for a doom divine. And the wings of sunset fan it, till a Western morning shine.

Ill Let the song go up, my children: sunny gleams are few O'er the Jumna's heavy fountains, and the consecrate Meru: Very sad is looming Rordro Himala the high. For the mystic heaven hath wailed, and a victor arm is nigh. Sounds are on the deafened ear; appearance on the blind: Shapes of worlds are seen arising from the ancient sea: Mist is yet their garment, but a brightness comes behind. And the solemn Western star up burneth o'er them silently. 'Tis the last & lightened hour of sleep: Soon shall forth Hesperian sunrise leap: Let the song go up, my children: aged earth is nearly free!

July 1830 230 FROM MOSCHUS. 'ESPEGE KUANEAS ETC' The eighth line of the following poem suggests that it was written on or about i6 December 1830, the end of the Michaelmas term at Cambridge, when Hallam was on his way to Somersby. He was there until 22 December. Oh Hesper golden light of loving Aphrodite, Oh Hesper, holy & bright up in the dark midnight. Than the moon paler far. As far more bright thou art Than any other star. Be welcome to my heart: And be thou ever near To guide me tow^ard the home Of him to whom I come To share his rural cheer. Oh yield me light of thine; Selana is not here. For she was born today And she hath passed away Full soon; to thee divine, Thee gentle-eyed I pray. To thee for kind relief I go not like a thief; I go not hence to stay The traveller on his way: I love: and well I heed That they who love should meet with love And comfort in their need. December 1830

SULKS IN VERSE This undated poem comes late in the manuscript between poems dated May 1831 and June 1831. Alas for the heart, when fears depart For a little while with cruel art! When the shadows of night pass out of sight. And the birds chaunt low to the rosy light. Sad is the day. Narrow the way. The earth lies thick on the mouldering clay. 231 FROM MOSCHUS. 'ESPEGE KUANEAS ETC' The eighth line of the following poem suggests that it was written on or about i6 December 1830, the end of the Michaelmas term at Cambridge, when Hallam was on his way to Somersby. He was there until 22 December. Oh Hesper golden light of loving Aphrodite, Oh Hesper, holy & bright up in the dark midnight. Than the moon paler far. As far more bright thou art Than any other star. Be welcome to my heart: And be thou ever near To guide me tow^ard the home Of him to whom I come To share his rural cheer. Oh yield me light of thine; Selana is not here. For she was born today And she hath passed away Full soon; to thee divine, Thee gentle-eyed I pray. To thee for kind relief I go not like a thief; I go not hence to stay The traveller on his way: I love: and well I heed That they who love should meet with love And comfort in their need. December 1830

Alas for the heart, when fears depart For a little while with cruel art! When imagined truth the mind endueth With grandeur of knowledge, or softness of ruth. Sad is the day. Barren the way. The grass waves fresh on the mouldering clay.

Alas for the heart, that from all must part. And busily flutters from joy to smart! But Death stands calm, and hath never a qualm. And he stills all waves with his bitter balm. Sad is the day. Gloomy the way. The new things live in the dead thing's clay.

Undated

1 BL, Add. MS. 74090 A. Gooch in his play 'Dark Glory' (BL, Modern 2 Frederick Tennyson (1807-98), also at Trinity Playscript 6565), first performed at the Nuffield College, had been rusticated from December Theatre, Southampton, on 2 Feb. 1995. 1828 to February 1830 for non-attendance at 10 This copy is in the Tennyson Research Centre, chapel. Lincoln, Campbell I, 1092. See Richard Adicks, 3 Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-86), theologian, '"The Garden Trees": a collaboration between scholar and poet. President of the Cambridge Tennyson and Hallam', The Tennyson Research Union, 1828; Professor of Divinity, King's Bulletin, i/5 (Nov. 1971), p. 147. College, London, 1847-58; Archbishop of 11 Letter to Charles Tennyson, [12 Sept. 1830]: Dublin, 1864-84. Kolb, p. 375. 4 Shelley's Adonais was pubhshed in Pisa in 1821. 12 A Complete Collection of the English Poems which 5 Letter to Richard Monckton Milnes, postmarked have obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal in the 15 Aug. 1829. See Jack Kolb (ed.). The Letters of University of Cambridge, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Arthur Henry Hallam (Columbus, 1981), p. 306. 1859), vol. i, p. [vii]. 6 About fifteen copies have heen traced. 13 The Tatler, nos. 149, 151, 153 and 155 (24 Feb.- 7 The Englishman's Magazine (Aug. 1831). 3 Mar. 1831). 8 Dedication to Henry Hallam in Richard 14 T. H. Vail Motter, The Writings of Arthur Monckton Milnes's Memorials of a Tour in Some Hallam (New York and London, 1943), p- vii. Parts of Greece (London, 1834), p. iv. 15 Trench's ode was first published under the title 9 Letter to Joseph Williams Blakesley, [13 Apr. 'Ode to Sleep' in his The Story of Justin Martyr, 1830]: Kolb, p. 360. Hallam's relationship with and Other Poems (London, 1835). the Tennyson household is dramatized by Steve 16 Frederick Tennyson's sonnet was published

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