Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1874-11-04
#iseella
TENNYSON AND MS MOODS.

I remember distinctly the first time
saw Tennyson-he was about. 81 then.
Having been pointed out to me in a draw.
ing-room, could not believe him to be
the laureate. His hight was hidden by
stoop; his once luxurious locks were
scant; his face was thin his eyes infiamed
and partially concealed by blue glasses.
His manners were nervous. uneasy, awk-
ward in the extreme; his voice querulous
and disagreeable in spite of its depth.
He was almost burlesque Of the bard /
had imagined. If his nose had been paint
ed vermilion, and he had had cotton um-
brella under his arm, he might have ap-
peared in opera bouffe as a satire upon
what he had been. / believe he was then
suffering from i'll health as as we'll a. from
one Of the unamiable moods to which he
is at times subject. l have met him since
under more favorable circumstances !; but /
shall never forget my first impression of
him. The thin hair, the blue glasses. the
bent form, the querulous tone will stick to
my memory like importantly to book
agent.
The author of "Locksley Hall" has al
ways been more than q worker, he has
been a tireless toiler over his manuscript,
spending hoars. sometimes days, 1t is said,
upon single lines. Many of his poems,
have been entirely rewritten; his first
copy being entirely unlike that which he
sent to the printer. His apparently easy,
natural flow of language has been pur-
chased with the utmost pains. He has
confessed sometimes that it is an agony to
write. and yet he takes pleasure in the
agony which gives him added fame. He
never surrenders any intellectual task un.
til he has satisfied the last degree of bis
fastidiousness. He occasionally makes his
first draft with facility. afterward chang
ing. pruning, filing line after line. wcrd
after word
Like all the irritable kind, he is variable
and moody, especially in composition.
One day he will do five times as much as
he will another; sometimes he finds it i'm
possible to write. Generally, however, he
works steadily and regularly while he is
at Farringtord; leaving his literary labors
behind him, wheE, as they say here, be
comes up 10 London. His habit is to shut
himself up in his library; never permit
ting himself to be disturbed under any cir
cumstances. Nevertheless, he is interrupt
ed, and he grows wild with nervous irri.
liability. The slightest interruption is suf-
ficent TO expel the demon Of inspiration
for the day, and to introduce the demon of
discord in his stead.
The poets general mode Of writing is
extremely slow. He builds his poems
word by word, just as brick maker makes
wall, brick by brick, except that the
poet takes hundred times the trouble
that the mechanic does to arrange and
cement his words together. The song,
Come into the Garden, Maud, n gis
reported to have cost him more thought
and labor than any poem of the same
length he has ever composed. / have
been told that he wrote It fifty times be-
fore him, and that he spent nearly
month at it. "Locksley Hall'' is another
marvel Of effort. He wrote it in two days,
and occupied the better part of six weeks.
for eight hours day, in altering and pol
ishing it. He used frequently to work as
long as that of late years he rarely spends
more than four hours out of the twenty
four in composition. One of the authors
favorite poems is 1.-The Princess which
he considers his best production, after
"Idyls of the King."-From letter from
England