'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'

“I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of these poems were to me greatly increased by the voice which rather intoned than recited them, and which, as was obvious, could not possibly have given them utterance in any manner not thus musical.” 

Hallam, Lord Tennyson is writing about his father, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in the period when he was composing “In Memoriam A.H.H.” The elegy was inspired by the death of the elder Tennyson’s friend, Arthur Henry Hallam (1811-33), at the age of twenty-two. Hallam had been engaged to marry Tennyson’s sister, Emilia. Hallam, Lord Tennyson is writing in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son (1897). He writes after the passage quoted above:

 

“As I walked home alone in the early mornings, the noises had ceased in each ‘long unlovely street’; and the deep voice which had so long charmed me followed me still, and seemed to waft me along as if I had glided onward half-asleep in a gondola. I have ever regarded ‘In Memoriam’ as the finest of the Poet’s works. As in the case of Dante, a great sorrow had been the harbinger of a song greater still: Dante had vowed to celebrate Beatrice as no other woman had ever been celebrated; and he kept that vow.”

 

The phrase “long unlovely street” is drawn from the seventh section of “In Memoriam”:

 

“Dark house, by which once more I stand

         Here in the long unlovely street,

         Doors, where my heart was used to beat

So quickly, waiting for a hand,

 

“A hand that can be clasp’d no more—

         Behold me, for I cannot sleep,

         And like a guilty thing I creep

At earliest morning to the door.

 

“He is not here; but far away

         The noise of life begins again,

         And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.”

 

Go here to see Max Beerbohm’s drawing of “Mr Tennyson, Reading In Memoriam to his Sovereign” (1904). My oldest son turns thirty-six today. Happy birthday, Josh. He shares a birthday with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, born August 6, 1809.