The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1874-12-13
How Tennyson Looks and Works.

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Louis Democrat.
remember distinctly the first TIM
l saw Tennyson-he was about fifty
seven then. Having been pointed on
to me in drawing room, | could no
believe him to be the laureate. Iii
height was hidden by stoop; his one,
luXuriant locks were scant; his fact
was THU; his eyes inflamed and par
italy concealed by blue glasses. Hi!
manner was nervous, uneasy, awkward
In the extreme; his voice querulous ant
disagreeable in spite of its depth. He
was almost u burlesque OF the bard
had imagined. If his nose had beer
painted vermillion andh had had u cot
ton um brella under bis arm, he might
have appeared in opera bouffe as
satire upon what he had been. l be-
lieve he was then suffering from i'll
health as well as from one of the una
amiable moods to which he Is at times
subject. / have met him since unde
more favorable circumstances, but
shall never forget my first impression
of him. The thin hair, the blu'
glasses, the bent form, the queruloui
tone will stick to my memory like i'm
sportunity to book agent.
The author of "Locksley Hall" has
always been more than worker he
has been a tireless toilerover his manu-
script, spending hours, sometimes
days, it is said, upon single lines. Many
ofhis poems, and parts 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
purchased with the utmost pains. He
has confessed sometimes that it Is al
agony to write, and yet he takes pleas
ure in the agony which gives him adj
ded fame. He never surrenders any
intellectual task until he has satisfied
the last degree of his fastidiousness,
He occasionally makes his first draft
with facility, afterward changing,
pruning, filing line after line, word
after word.
Like all the irritable kind, he is
variable and moody, especially In COM
position. One day he will do five
times as much as he will another !;
sometimes he finds it impossible to
write. Generally, however, he works
steadily and regularly while he Is at
Farringford, leaving hisliterary la6ors
behind him when, rs they say there,
he comes up to London. His habit Is
to shut himself up in his library, never
permitting himself to be disturbed I'M
dor any circumstances. Nevertheless,
he is interrupted, and he grows wild
with nervous irritahility. The slight.
est interruption is sufficient 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 extremity slow. He builds bis poems
word by word, just as brickmaker
makes wall, brick by brick, except
that the poet takes hundred times
the trouble that the mechanic does to
cement his words together. The song,
"Come into the Garden, Maud" is re-
ported 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 1t fifty times
before it pleased him, and then he
spent nearly month atit. "Locksley
Halln Is another marvel of effort He
wrote it In two days, and occupied the
better part Of ak weeks, for eight
hours a day, In altering and polishing
Il. He used frequently to work as long
as that; Of late years he rarely spends
more than four hours out Of twenty
four in composition. One ofhis favor
ite poems IL 1.-THE Princess" which ne
considers his best production, after
"Idyls Of the King"