Chapter 8

--ENOCH ARDEN. THE DRAMAS.

The success of the first volume of the Idylls recompensed the poet
for the slings and arrows that gave Maud a hostile welcome. His next
publication was the beautiful Tithonus, a fit pendant to the Ulysses,
and composed about the same date (1833-35). "A quarter of a century
ago," Tennyson dates it, writing in 1860 to the Duke of Argyll. He
had found it when "ferreting among my old books," he said, in search
of something for Thackeray, who was establishing the Cornhill
Magazine. What must the wealth of the poet have been, who,
possessing Tithonus in his portfolio, did not take the trouble to
insert it in the volumes of 1842! Nobody knows how many poems of
Tennyson's never even saw pen and ink, being composed unwritten, and
forgotten. At this time we find him recommending Mr Browning's Men
and Women to the Duke, who, like many Tennysonians, does not seem to
have been a ready convert to his great contemporary. The Duke and
Duchess urged the Laureate to attempt the topic of the Holy Grail,
but he was not in the mood. Indeed the vision of the Grail in the
early Sir Galahad is doubtless happier than the allegorical handling
of a theme so obscure, remote, and difficult, in the Idylls. He
wrote his Boadicea, a piece magnificent in itself, but of difficult
popular access, owing to the metrical experiment.

In the autumn of 1860 he revisited Cornwall with F. T. Palgrave, Mr
Val Prinsep, and Mr Holman Hunt. They walked in the rain, saw
Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were feted by an enthusiastic
captain of a little river steamer, who was more interested in "Mr
Tinman and Mr Pancake" than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The
winter was passed at Farringford, and the Northern Farmer was written
there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of 1861. In
autumn the Pyrenees were visited by Tennyson in company with Arthur
Clough and Mr Dakyns of Clifton College. At Cauteretz in August, and
among memories of the old tour with Arthur Hallam, was written All
along the Valley. The ways, however, in Auvergne were "foul," and
the diet "unhappy." The dedication of the Idylls was written on the
death of the Prince Consort in December, and in January 1862 the Ode
for the opening of an exhibition. The poet was busy with his
"Fisherman," Enoch Arden. The volume was published in 1864, and Lord
Tennyson says it has been, next to In Memoriam, the most popular of
his father's works. One would have expected the one volume
containing the poems up to 1842 to hold that place. The new book,
however, mainly dealt with English, contemporary, and domestic
themes--"the poetry of the affections." An old woman, a district
visitor reported, regarded Enoch Arden as "more beautiful" than the
other