Chapter 6

--AFTER IN MEMORIAM.

On June 13 Tennyson married, at Shiplake, the object of his old,
long-tried, and constant affection. The marriage was still
"imprudent,"--eight years of then uncontested supremacy in English
poetry had not brought a golden harvest. Mr Moxon appears to have
supplied 300 pounds "in advance of royalties." The sum, so
contemptible in the eyes of first-rate modern novelists, was a
competence to Tennyson, added to his little pension and the epaves of
his patrimony. "The peace of God came into my life when I married
her," he said in later days. The poet made a charming copy of verses
to his friend, the Rev. Mr Rawnsley, who tied the knot, as he and his
bride drove to the beautiful village of Pangbourne. Thence they went
to the stately Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Abraham Elton, hard by
the church where Arthur Hallam sleeps. The place is very ancient and
beautiful, and was a favourite haunt of Thackeray. They passed on to
Lynton, and to Glastonbury, where a collateral ancestor of Mrs
Tennyson's is buried beside King Arthur's grave, in that green valley
of Avilion, among the apple-blossoms. They settled for a while at
Tent Lodge on Coniston Water, in a land of hospitable Marshalls.

After their return to London, on the night of November 18, Tennyson
dreamed that Prince Albert came and kissed him, and that he himself
said, "Very kind, but very German," which was very like him. Next
day he received from Windsor the offer of the Laureateship. He
doubted, and hesitated, but accepted. Since Wordsworth's death there
had, as usual, been a good deal of banter about the probable new
Laureate: examples of competitive odes exist in Bon Gaultier. That
by Tennyson is Anacreontic, but he was not really set on kissing the
Maids of Honour, as he is made to sing. Rogers had declined, on the
plea of extreme old age; but it was worthy of the great and good
Queen not to overlook the Nestor of English poets. For the rest, the
Queen looked for "a name bearing such distinction in the literary
world as to do credit to the appointment." In the previous century
the great poets had rarely been Laureates. But since Sir Walter
Scott declined the bays in favour of Southey, for whom, again, the
tale of bricks in the way of Odes was lightened, and when Wordsworth
succeeded Southey, the office became honourable. Tennyson gave it an
increase of renown, while, though in itself of merely nominal value,
it served his poems, to speak profanely, as an advertisement. New
editions of his books were at once in demand; while few readers had
ever heard of Mr Browning, already his friend, and already author of
Men and Women.

The Laureateship brought the poet acquainted with the Queen, who was
to be his debtor in