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. e° ij. ee go) ae eee INTRODUCTION “A gaunt, black, touzled man, rough in speech.” SoMr. Gosse described the author of “Idylls of the King.”“A man solitary and sad,” said Carlyle, ‘‘as certain menare, dwelling in an element of gloom, carrying a bit of Chaosabout him, in short, which he is manufacturing into Cosmos. A great shock of rough, dusky dark hair; bright,laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massiveyet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almostIndian looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokesinfinite tobacco.” “The unconventionality of his man-ners,” wrote Jowett, ‘““was in keeping with the originalityof his figure. He would sometimes say nothing, or a wordor two only, to the stranger who approached him, out ofshyness. ... At other times, especially to ladies, he wassingularly gracious and benevolent.”’ And Theodore Watts-Dunton: “Tennyson knew of but one justification for thething he said, viz., that it was the thing he thought. Be-hind his uncompromising directness was apparent a nobleand a splendid courtesy of the grand old type.’ And Pal-grave sums up his estimate of the poet’s character in the oneword, ‘‘Lovableness.”’ The gentler side of his nature came probably from hismother. The gauntness and blackness he inherited fromhis father’s family. There was perhaps Danish ancestry,possibly Huguenot. His father, the Reverend GeorgeClayton Tennyson, was a man of powerful physique, andall the family, with one exception, had the dark coloringthat made them look like foreigners. They inherited from 1x x Introduction him not only their complexions but also a love of poetryand the arts. Alfred Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, was bornin the Somersby Rectory, in Lincolnshire, on August 6,1809. In the isolation of the little town of Somersby, whichin 1821 had sixty-two inhabitants, the Tennysons grewup. Perhaps that isolation fostered in the poct some ofthose strange habits which persisted into later life, the care-lessness of appearances and the self-absorption. But hewas fortunate in the beauty of the country through whichhe took his walks, in the nearness of the sea, which he alwaysloved, and in the quality of his father’s library. Here hegained his first acquaintance with poetry, worshipping inturn at the shrines of Thomson, Pope, Scott and Byron. After four years of suffering at the Louth Grammar School,Tennyson returned to Somersby to continue his educationunder the direction of his father. In 1828 he and _ hisbrother Charles matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge.In 1830, he published his first independent volume of verse,“Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.” The book was given a largeshare of notice in the periodicals, much of it favorable,some of it fulsome in its praise. In spite of Tennysons’ almost invincible shyness, he madefirm and lasting friendships at Cambridge. He became amember of the Conversazione Society, an organization thepurpose of which was to discuss every sort of modern ques-tion and to lead the world in matters spiritual and intel-lectual. The members, in derision for their superior attitude,were given the name “Apostles.” They adopted it seriouslyand delightedly, for it expressed their consciousness of theirmission in life. It was a group of very modern, evenradical, young men, whose idols in literature were Coleridge,Wordswerth, Shelley, and Keats, and they supported withenthusiasm the work of their new member, Tennyson.
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