Chapter 6 - Page 2

later days for encouragement and consolation. To
his Laureateship we owe, among other good things, the stately and
moving Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, a splendid heroic
piece, unappreciated at the moment. But Tennyson was, of course, no
Birthday poet. Since the exile of the House of Stuart our kings in
England have not maintained the old familiarity with many classes of
their subjects. Literature has not been fashionable at Court, and
Tennyson could in no age have been a courtier. We hear the
complaint, every now and then, that official honours are not
conferred (except the Laureateship) on men of letters. But most of
them probably think it rather distinguished not to be decorated, or
to carry titles borne by many deserving persons unvisited by the
Muses. Even the appointment to the bays usually provokes a great
deal of jealous and spiteful feeling, which would only be multiplied
if official honours were distributed among men of the pen. Perhaps
Tennyson's laurels were not for nothing in the chorus of dispraise
which greeted the Ode on the Duke of Wellington, and Maud.

The year 1851 was chiefly notable for a tour to Italy, made immortal
in the beautiful poem of The Daisy, in a measure of the poet's own
invention. The next year, following on the Coup d'etat and the rise
of the new French empire, produced patriotic appeals to Britons to
"guard their own," which to a great extent former alien owners had
been unsuccessful in guarding from Britons. The Tennysons had lost
their first child at his birth: perhaps he is remembered in The
Grandmother, "the babe had fought for his life." In August 1852 the
present Lord Tennyson was born, and Mr Maurice was asked to be
godfather. The Wellington Ode was of November, and was met by "the
almost universal depreciation of the press,"--why, except because, as
I have just suggested, Tennyson was Laureate, it is impossible to
imagine. The verses were worthy of the occasion: more they could
not be.

In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of
Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the
earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his holidays there
just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had left--"Mr Tinsmith and Mr
Pancake," as Robert the boatman, a very black Celt, called them.
Being then nine years of age, I heard of a poet's visit, and asked,
"A real poet, like Sir Walter Scott?" with whom I then supposed that
"the Muse had gone away." "Oh, not like Sir Walter Scott, of
course," my mother told me, with loyalty unashamed. One can think of
the poet as Mrs Sellar, his hostess, describes him, beneath the limes
of the avenue at Acharn, planted, Mrs Sellar says, by a cousin of
Flora Macdonald. I have been