The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-11-22
How TennysOn Looks and Works.

| Lfrom Letter from England to the st. LOui
Democrat
remember distinctly the first time 1 saw
! TennysOn-he was about fifty-seven then. Hav
| ing been pointed out to me in a drawing. ROOM
could not believe him to be the laureate. His
height was hidden by cop; his once luxu
rant locks were scant his face was thin his
eyes inhamed and partially concealed by blue
| glasses. His manner was nervous uneasy, awk-
ward in the extreme his voice queruloils and
disagreeable in spite of its depth. He was
almost burlesque of the bard l had imagined.
| Ii his nose had been painted vermilon, and he
had cotton umbrella under his arm, be might
have appeared in opera bouffe as a satire upon
what he had been. believe he was hen suffer-
| ing from il-health as well as from one of the
unamiable moods to which he is at times sub
ject. l have met him since under more favora-
bic circumstances; but l 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 always
been more than worker he has been tireess
toller over his manuscript. spending hours,
sometimes days, it is SAID, upon single lines.
Many OF his poems, and parts of his poems have
been entirely rewritten his first copy being en-
tirely unlike that which he sent to the printer
His apparently easy, natural flow OF language
has been purchased with the utmost pains. He
has co Messed sometimes that it is an agony to
write, and yet he takes pleasure in the agony
which gives him added fame. He never surren-
ders any intellectual task until he has satisfied
the last degree OF his fastidiousness. He occa-
slonally makes his first draft with facility, after
ward changing, pruni-g, filing line after line,
word after word.
Like all the irritable kind, he is variable and
moody, especially in competition. One day he
Will do five times as much as he will another;
sometimes he finds it impossible to wrlte Gen
orally, however, he works steadily and regularly
while he is at Farringford; leaving his literary
labors behind him when, as they say there he
comes up to London. His habit is to shut him.
sell up IN hrs library; never permitting himself to
be disturbed under any circumstances. Never.
theless, he is Interrupt ed and he grows wild with
nervous irritabillity. The slightest interruption
is sufficient to expei the demon Of inspiration f,
the day, and to introduce the demon of discord in
his stead.
The poets general mode Of writing is extreme
ly slow. He builds his poems word BY word, just
as brlckmaker makes q wall, brick by brick,
except that the poet makes hundred times the
trouble that the mechanic does to arrange and
his words together. The song, ssCome
into the Garden, Maud" Is reported to have cost
him more thought and labor than any poem of
the same length he has ever composed. l have
been told that he wrote it fifty times before it
pleased him, and then he spen; nearly a month
at it. Lock ley 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
al, ering and polishing it He used fl equenty to
work as long as that; Of late years he rarely
spends more than four hours out OF twenty four
in composition. One of his favorite poems is
he Princess" which he considers his best pro-
duclion, after 'ldyls of the King"