The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-05-10
A TENNYSON LETTER.
An Interesting Account of His Habits of
Competition.

The subioined letter. addressed bv Lord Ten
nyson to Mr.. :. h. Dawson, of Montreal who
published Study of Lord Tennysons Poem,
The Princess. has recently been printed. 1t is
interesting as one of the few bits of prose we
have from the poet and from tile light 1t throws
on his habits of composition:
'ALDwoRTH Haslemere, Surrey, November2l,
lsS2.-Dear Sir-I thank you for your able and
thoughtful essay on the The Princess You
have seen, among other things, that if women
ever were to play such freaks, the tragic and
burlesque might go hand in hand.
81 may tell you that the songs were not an
afterthought Before the first edition came out
| deiberated with myself whether should put
songs i'll between the separate divisions Of the
pOem-again, | thought, the poem will explain
itself, but the public did not see that the child
as you say, was the heroine of the piece and at
last conquered my laziness and inserted them.
You would be still more certain that the child
was the true heroine if, instead of the first song
as it now stands
"'As thro' the land at went
l had printed the firS. song which wrote, The
Losing of the Child The child 1s slt,iiis on the
bank of a river and playing with howers-a flood
comes down-a dam has been broken through
the child is borne down by tho hood-the whole
village Observation-Disclosures time the flood has
subsided-the child is thrown safe and sound
again upon the bank, and all the women are in
raptures. / quite forget the words of the ballad,
but think may have it somewhere
~ our explanatory notes are very much to the
purpose, and | do not object to your finding
parallesms. They must always recur. A man
IA Chinese scholarl some time ago wrote to me,
saying that in an unknown, untranslated CHI
nese poem there were two whole lines OF mine,
almost word for word Why notl Are not
human eyes all over the world looking at the
same objects, and must there not consequently
be coincideuces of thought and impressions and
expressionsi Its scarcely possible for any one to
say or write anything in this late time of the
world to which, in the rest of the literature of
the world parallel could not somewhere be
found But when you say that this passage or
that was suggested by Wordsworth or Shelley or
another | demur, and more, l wholly disagree.
There was period in my life when, artist,
Turner for instance, takes rough sketches of
landscapes, etc, in order to work them eVentu-
ally into some great picture, so was in the
habit of chroncling, in four or five words
more, whatever might strike me as picturesque
in nature. l never put these down, and many
and many line has gone away on the north
wind, but some remain, e. G.:
"a full glazed with mufied moonlight
Suggestion: The sea one night at Torquay,
when Torquay was the most lovely seaviage i'll
England though now a smoky town. The sky
was covered with thin vapor, and the moon
was behind it
ga great black cloud
Drags inward from the deep
Suggestions coming storm seen from the
top of Snowdon.
I'm the Idyls of the King
"'With all
It's stormy crests that smote against the skies.
Suggestions "a storm that came upon us in
the middle of the North sea
AS the water-ly starts aud slides
Suggestion: Water-lilies in my own pond,
seen on a gusty day with my own eyes. They
did start and slide in the sudden puffs Of wind
till caught and stayed by the tether of their own
stalks-quite as true as Wordsworth's simile and
more in detail
"A wild wind shook
Follow, follow, thou shalt win.
Suggestion: I was walking in the New For
est A wind did arise and
"'Shake the songs the whispers and the shrieks
Of the wild wood together
''The wind, believe, was a west wind; but be-
cause wished the prince to go south, turned
the wind to the SOUTH and, naturally, the wind
said Follow l believe the resemblance which
you note is just chance one. Shelleys lines
not familiar to me. though, Of course, if
they occur in the Prometheus, | must have read
them
ooKwoRMs-CRITIcs.
81 could multiply instances but l will not bore
you, and far indeed am | from asserting that
books, as well as nature are not, and ought not
to be, suggestive to the poet am sure that |,
myself, and many others. find a peculiar charm
in those passages of such great masters as Virgil
or Milton, where they adopt the creation of by
gone poet and reclothe it, more less. accord
ing to their own fancy But there is. l fear a
booklets book-worms, index hunters or men
of great memories and no imagination, who
impute themselves to the poet, and so believe
that he, too, has no imagination, but is forever
poking his nose between tn pages of some old
volume in order to see what he can appropriate.
They will not allow one to say Ring the bells
without finding that we have taken it from Sir
p. Sydney-or even to use such simple
preston as the ocean 'roars' without finding out
the precise verse in Homer or Horace from
which have plagariZed it. tEactD
II have known an old fish-wife, who had lost
two sons at sea, clench her fist at the advancing
tide on stormy day and cry out: 'Ay, roar: do!
How hates to see thee show thy white teethr
Now, if ! had adopted her exclamation and put
it into the mouth of some old woman in one of
my poems, dare say the critics would have
thought it original enough, but would most
likely have advised me to go to nature for my
old woman, and not to my imagination and in
deed it is a strong figure.
Here is another little anecdote about sug
gestion. When was about 20 or N went on a
tour to the Pyrenees. Lying 1.44Vng these
mountains before waterfall that comes down
1000 or 200 feet, sletched it according to my
custom them in these words: Slow dropping
wells of thinnest lawn
when printed this a critic informed me
that lawn was the material used in theaters to
initiate a waterfall and graciously added; Mr.
T. should not 60 to the boards of a theater. but
to nature herself for his suggestions Aud l
had gone to nature herself.
II think it is a moot point whether-if had
known how that effect was produced on the
stage-I should have ventured to publish the
line.
81 find that l have written, quite contrary to
my custom a letter, when had merely intended
to thank you for your interesting commentary
Thanking you again for it, L beg you to be-
ieve me, very faithfully yours,
IA TENNYsoN"
'P. S.-By-the-by you are wrong about the
tremulous isles of light they are isles of light
spots of sunshine coming through the caves, and
seeming to slide from one to the other as the
procession of girls moves under the shade
'And surely the beard blown goat involves
sense of the wind blowing the board on the
height of the ruined pillar"
How u Woman Has Made Her Fortune.
Washington Correspondence Rochester Herald.