“In reading Tennyson the other day, I came across a little poem in blank verse dedicated to the Princess Beatrice, in which he speaks of her marriage as ‘that white funeral of the single life.’ A Poet Laureate is worthwhile when he says things like that.”
The poem
Edwin Arlington Robinson refers to is “To H.R.H. Princess Beatrice”(Tiresias, and Other Poems, 1885),
dedicated to Queen Victoria’s youngest child at the time of her marriage to Prince
Henry of Battenberg. Robinson quotes the poem’s best-known phrase, “white
funeral,” which came to mean a benign transition in life as opposed to the “black
funeral’ of death. Robinson is writing to his friend Harry de Forest Smith on
this date, June 10, in 1894. He continues:
“And,
speaking of Tennyson, how would it do to read him some this summer? His greatest
charm lies in the fact that one can read him over and over again without tiring
of him. I have read ‘Maud’ aloud three times, and am quite ready to do so again
-- or listen to you. Perhaps the best way to read a long poem like that is alternately.
The metre, like the poem, is hard (in a certain sense) and strange. And there are always the Idyls [sic].”
Tennyson was
the first “grownup” poet who grabbed my interest as a boy, beginning with Idylls of the King (which shares the Arthurian
theme with Robinson’s Lancelot, Merlin and Tristram). Like Keats, Tennyson
is made for intoning – think “Break, Break, Break” and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Robinson was fond of quoting this line from “Locksley Hall” -- “But
the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels” – and this from “The Death of the Old Year”: “He was full of joke and jest, / But all his merry
quips are o’er.” I was surprised some years ago when the late Helen Pinkerton
told me how much she admired Tennyson whom she called a “musician.”
After the
death of Prince Albert, Victoria was reluctant to let go of Beatrice. Only
after more than a year of persuasion did the queen consent to her daughter’s
marriage. That bit of gloss helps explain the conclusion of “To H.R.H. Princess
Beatrice”:
“But moving
thro’ the Mother’s home, between
The two that
love thee, lead a summer life,
Sway’d by
each Love, and swaying to each Love,
Like some
conjectured planet in mid heaven
Between two
suns, and drawing down from both
The light
and genial warmth of double day.”
1 comment:
If Victoria had been alive on her 95th birthday, she would have regretted having been persuaded... a bad mix of genes. The task of publishing good (and long (enjoyably long) essays on a daily basis... incredible.
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