Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892 -- Friends and associates
Another time he told me with keen enjoyment of Tennyson's discovering a
likeness to him in some drawing on the cover of the old _Cornhill_--I
think it was the figure of a lad ploughing--pointing to it like a child
and saying, "Little Dakyns." He would speak with delight of Tennyson's
humour, far deeper and wilder, he said, than most people would have
guessed, Rabelaisian even in the noble sense of the word, and always fresh
and pure.
"I remember an instance of my own audacity," he said, "at which I almost
shudder now. We were riding into a French town, it was the evening of a
fête, and the whole population seemed to be capering about with the most
preposterous antics. It struck a jarring note, and the Poet said to me, 'I
can't understand them, it's enough to make one weep.' Somehow I couldn't
help answering--but can you imagine the audacity? I assure you I trembled
myself as I did so--'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.' And he
took it, he took it! He did indeed!"
The memories of Clough also were very dear to Mr. Dakyns, and he said he
could never help regretting that he had not heard him read his last long
work, "In Mari Magno," to the Poet. "Tennyson said to me afterwards,
'Clough's Muse has lost none of her power,' and I couldn't help feeling a
little hurt that I had not been asked to hear the reading: perhaps it was
vanity on my part."
Clough always came down to see them bathe. He was very fond of bathing
himself, but could not take part in it then on account of his health. "I
never feel the water go down my back now," Mr. Dakyns said, "without
thinking of Clough."
But the sweetest of all the memories was, I think, the memory of the
valley at Cauteretz, sacred to Tennyson because of Arthur Hallam. I heard
Mr. Dakyns speak of that the first time he was at our house. My mother
chanced to ask him what he did after taking his degree, and he said, "I
was with the Tennysons as tutor to their boys, and we went to the
Pyrenees." The name and something in his tone made me start. "Oh," I said,
"were you with them at Cauteretz?" He turned to me with his smile, "Yes, I
was, and if I had not already a family motto of which I am very proud, I
should take for my legend 'Dakyns isn't a fool'" (the last phrase in a
gruffly tender voice). And then he told us: "There was a fairly large
party of us, the Tennysons, Clough, and myself, some walking and some
driving. Tennyson walked, and I being the young man of the company, was
the great man's walking-stick. When we came to the valley--I knew it was a
sacred place--I dropped behind to let him go through it alone. Clough told
me afterwards I had done well. He had noticed it, and the Poet said--and
it was quite enough--'Dakyns isn't a fool!'"
It was that evening that Tennyson wrote "All along the Valley."
RECOLLECTIONS OF TENNYSON
By the Rev. H. MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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