TENNYSON’S CHARACTER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue V, 29 January 1898, Page 138

TENNYSON’S CHARACTER.

In the ’Contemporary Review’ for November there is a contribution about Tennyson from his niece, Agnes Grace Weld, daughter of Anne Sellwood. It has been made, she states, without the knowledge of her cousin, the present Lord Tennyson, or any of the poet’s relatives. The writer says: ‘No poet, perhaps, has ever come so close to the type of the Seer prophet of the Old Testament as Tennyson, for I think none was ever so penetrated through and through as he was with the sense of the divine source of the gift of poetry imparted to him. He told me that the sense was almost awful to him in its intensity, because it made him feel as a priest who can never leave the sanctuary, and whose every word must be consecrated to the service of Him who had touched his lips with the fire of heaven which was to enable him to speak in God’s name to his age. And so, he went on to say, nothing he had ever written seemed to him to have reached the standard of perfection short of which he must never rest; all he could hope was that he had brought men a little nearer to God. And it is just because, all through his life as a poet, Tennyson felt that he had a divine purpose to further, that the inner springs of that life, now revealed more fully than ever before in his son’s biography of him, are of such surpassing interest.’ Writing of Tennyson as guest and host, she says:—‘When my uncle stayed in our house in London I well remember the almost Spartan simplicity of the fare he insisted on our giving him. We knew he liked plain boiled salt beef, but were scarcely prepared for his begging to be allowed to have it (instead of the fresh roasts we had eooked for him) three days running, cold, for his dinner. No guest ever -gave so little trouble or was so full of consideration for our servants; but this was because he was always full of thought for others, a little instance of which comes into my mind, the occasion being a visit my mother and I paid to Farringford when my aunt happened to be away for a few hours. Tennyson came into our room to see if it was all comfortable, and, disagreeing with the housemaid, who had thought the weather too warm to light the fire, said, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look half a welcome,’ and, dropping on his knees, lighted it and fanned it into a bright flame.’ The article concludes: —‘Nothing that others ever spoke to me, and nothing I ever read, even in the pages of the Bible, ever made the impression upon me that his words and manner did when he would say to me, in exactly the same natural way as a child would express his delight at his father making him his companion: “God is with us now on this down as we two are walking together just as truly as Christ was with the two Disciples on the way to Emmaus: we cannot see Him, but He, the Father and the Saviour and the Spirit, is nearer, perhaps, now than then to those who are not afraid to believe the words of the. Apostles about the actual and real presence of God and His Christ with all who yearn for it.” I said I thought such a near actual presence would be awful to most people. “Surely the love of God takes away and makes us forget all our fear,” he answered. “I should be sorely afraid to live my life without God’s presence; but to feel that He is by my side now just as much as you are. that is the very joy of my heart.” And I looked on Tennyson as he spoke, and the glory of God rested upon his face, and I felt that the presence of the Most High had, indeed, overshadowed him.’