Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892 -- Friends and associates
am with thee night and day, body and soul!' Think of this! But for
God's sake do not attribute these statements of mine, which are
comprehended in a period of many years, to self-delusion or
self-righteousness. God knows, from whom nothing is hid, that I have
never approached Him except in the spirit of profound humility and
self-condemnation, and the answer has always been, 'Thou hast nothing
to fear. I am with thee.'"
As age settled upon him the violence of many of his views abated. His
faith in Spiritualism and Swedenborgianism lost their hold on him and gave
way to a more philosophic condition of mind. His activity, however,
continued unabated. In 1890, after a silence of thirty-six years, he
published his _Isles of Greece_, and the success of the volume encouraged
him to give to the world two others, _Daphne and other Poems_ in 1891, and
_Poems of the Day and Year_ (in which were included some of the verses
contained in the volume of 1854) in 1898. In 1896 he left Jersey to join
his eldest son, Captain Julius Tennyson, in whose house in Kensington he
died on February 26, 1898.
It would be difficult to imagine two persons more strongly contrasted in
life and character than Frederick and Charles. Charles (who was always
Alfred's favourite brother) had nothing of the powerful, erratic,
tempestuous mind of his elder brother. One does not think of him, as
FitzGerald did of Frederick, as a being born for the warmth and glow of
the South, yet in appearance he was (like Alfred) far more Southern than
the eldest brother. So Spanish were his swarthy complexion, brown eyes,
and curly, dark hair, that Thackeray, meeting him in middle age, called
him a "Velasquez _tout craché_." Like Alfred, too, he had a magnificent
deep bass voice; and even in dress the two brothers seem to have
maintained their affinity, for Charles used to wear a soft felt hat and
flowing black cloak much like those which the Millais portrait has
identified with his brother, and these garments, with the addition of
white cuffs, which he wore turned back over his coat sleeves, intensified
the strangely foreign effect of his appearance. But the kinship of the
two brothers extended beyond purely physical resemblance. They remained
inseparable companions till Charles was ordained, and there was hardly a
taste possessed by either which the other did not share. They read,
played, and rambled together; both were extremely fond of dancing (one of
Charles's last Sonnets was "On a County Ball") and were much sought after
as partners at the balls of their countryside. The _Poems by Two
Brothers_, which were almost entirely the work of Alfred and Charles,
while displaying the differing qualities of each, were a joint production,
the fruit of common reading and common enthusiasm. Both the brothers were
regarded by their contemporaries at Cambridge as destined to achieve
poetical greatness. Both possessed the unwearying patience of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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