Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892 -- Friends and associates
was a line that again and again recurred to the memory as one heard him
speak out his mind either on men, or on politics, or on the deepest
mysteries of philosophy or religion. He was pre-eminently one of the
Children of Light. Of light, whether from science, or from literary
criticism, or from the progress of the human conscience, he hailed
thankfully and expectantly every fresh disclosure. There was a deep
reverence in him for the Unseen, the Undiscovered, the as yet Unrevealed.
This on the intellectual side; and on the moral side there was a manly, a
devout, and a tender veneration for purity and innocence and trustfulness,
and, to borrow his own stately words, written early in his life:
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.
I regret that I cannot convey more worthily what I have felt in the
presence of this great and truly noble man. To go to either of his
beautiful homes, to see him as the husband of his wife and the father of
his sons, was to me and mine for many years a true pilgrimage, both of the
mind and of the heart. That I was once able to feel this, and that I am
able to feel it gratefully even now, I count among the richer blessings of
a long and happy life.
TENNYSON AND W. G. WARD AND OTHER FARRINGFORD FRIENDS
By WILFRID WARD
Among Tennyson's friends in his later years was my father--William George
Ward--who was his neighbour at Freshwater from 1870 to 1882. I have been
asked to contribute to the picture of "Tennyson and his Friends" some
account of their intercourse, and at the same time to set down some of the
extremely interesting comments on his own poems which I myself was
privileged yet later to hear from the Poet. I need not say that such an
act of piety in regard of two men for whom I have so deep a reverence is a
work of love, and I only regret that my recollections of what so well
deserves recording should be so imperfect and fragmentary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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