Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/74

 Tennyson  sister Emily as early as 1829. Two years later this ripened into an engagement. The happy period during the courtship when Hallam 'read the Tuscan poets on the lawn' and Tennyson's sister Mary brought her harp and flung 'a ballad to the listening moon,' will be familiar to readers of 'In Memoriam.'

The living of Somersby being now vacant, an anxious question arose as to the future home of the Tennyson family; but the incoming rector (possibly non-resident) not intending to occupy the rectory, they continued to reside there until 1837. Not long after his father's death Tennyson was troubled about his eyesight; but a change of diet corrected whatever was amiss, and he continued to read and write as before. The sonnet beginning 'Check every outflash' was sent by Hallam (who apologises for so doing) to Moxon for his new magazine, and a few other trifles found their way into 'Keepsakes.' Tennyson visited the Hallams in Wimpole Street, where social problems as well as literary matters were ardently discussed. Tennyson was now, moreover, preparing to publish a new volume, and Hallam was full of enthusiasm about the 'Dream of Fair Women,' which was already written, and about the 'Lover's Tale,' as to which its author himself had misgivings. In these young days his poems, like Shakespeare's 'sugared sonnets,' were handed freely about among his private friends before being committed to print. In July 1832 Tennyson and Hallam went touring on the Rhine. On their return Hallam acknowledges the receipt of the lines to J. S. (James Spedding) on the death of his brother, and announces that Moxon (who was to publish the forthcoming volume) was in ecstasies about the 'May Queen.' The volume 'Poems, by Alfred Tennyson,' appeared at the close of the year (though dated 1833). It comprised poems still recognised as among the noblest and most imaginative of his works, although some of them afterwards underwent revision, amounting in some cases to reconstruction. Among them were 'The Lady of Shalott,' 'The Miller's Daughter,' 'Œnone,' 'The Palace of Art,' 'The Lotos-Eaters,' and 'A Dream of Fair Women.'

Three hundred copies of the book were promptly sold (11l. had been thus far his profit on the former volume), but the reviewers did not coincide with this more generous recognition by the public. The 'Quarterly' had an article (April 1833) silly and brutal, after the usual fashion in those days of treating new poets of any individuality; and it is generally admitted that it was mainly the tone of this review which checked the publication of any fresh verse by the poet for nearly ten years. A great sorrow, moreover, was now to fall upon the poet, colouring and directing all his thoughts during that period and for long afterwards. On 15 Sept. 1833 Arthur Hallam died suddenly at Vienna, while travelling in company with his father. His remains were brought to England and interred in a transept of the old parish church of Clevedon, Somerset, overlooking the Bristol Channel. Arthur Hallam was the dearest friend of Tennyson, and was engaged to his sister Emily, and the whole family were plunged in deep distress by his death. From the first Tennyson's whole thoughts appear absorbed in memories of his friend, and fragmentary verses on the theme were continually written, some of them to form, seventeen years later, sections of a completed 'In Memoriam.' Another poem, 'The Two Voices,' or 'Thoughts of a Suicide,' was also an immediate outcome of this sorrow, which, as the poet in later life told his son, for a while 'blotted out all joy from his life, and made him long for death.' It is noticeable that when this poem was first published in the second volume of the 1842 edition, to it alone of all the poems was appended the significant date—'1833.'

During the next few years Tennyson remained chiefly at home with his family at Somersby, reading widely in all literatures, polishing old poems and writing new ones, corresponding with Spedding, Kemble, Milnes, Tennant, and others, and all the while acting (his two elder brothers being away) as father and adviser to the family at home. In 1836, however, the calm current of home life was interrupted by an event fraught with important consequences to the future life and happiness of Tennyson. His brother Charles, by this time a clergyman, and curate of Tealby in Lincolnshire, married, in 1836, Louisa, the youngest daughter of Henry Sellwood, a solicitor in Horncastle. The elder sister, Emily, was on this occasion taken into church as a bridesmaid by Alfred. They had met some years before, but the idea of marriage seems first to have entered Tennyson's mind on this occasion. No formal engagement, however, was recognised until four or five years later, and the fortunes of the poet necessitated a still further delay of many years. The marriage did not take place until 1850. Meantime, in 1837, the family had to leave the rectory at Somersby, and they removed to High Beech in Epping Forest, where they remained until