John Tenniel

“ The political history not of England only, but to some extent of the world, of half a century appears in Sir John Tenniel's weekly cartoons, which are dignified by a number of types invented by the artist, the classic beauty of which may be looked for in vain in kindred work by any previous cartoonist. ”

“ Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, beginning as they do with "Undine" (1845) , already mentioned, include others in volumes for young people that need not be quoted. But with his designs for "Alice in Wonderland" (Macmillan, 1866) , and "Through the Looking Glass" (1872) , we touch the two most notable children's books of the century. To say less would be inadequate and to say more needless. For every one knows the incomparable inventions which "Lewis Carroll" imagined and Sir John Tenniel depicted. They are veritable classics, of which, as it is too late to praise them, no more need be said. ”

“ THE present collection of Sir John Tenniel’s Cartoons is intended to be a selection comprising the more memorable of those which have appeared in “Punch” during the last 50 years. The first in the collection bears the date of 1851, and the last is Sir John Tenniel’s final Cartoon in January, 1901. Short explanatory notes have been provided, but as most of them will, perhaps, be unnecessary to those to whom the Cartoons themselves are familiar, they have been grouped together and combined with the Table of Contents at the commencement of the volume, where they can readily be referred to. ”

“ Sir John Tenniel
2
May Day, Eighteen hundred and Fifty-one.
4
July, 1853.
The Bear and the Bees.—A New Version of an Old Story.
5
June, 1854.
What Nicholas heard in the Shell.
6
August, 1857.
The British Lion’s Vengeance on the Bengal Tiger.
8
February, 1859.
The Quaker and the Bauble. “It is the Land which the territorial party represents in Parliament.... That is the theory of the Constitution: Blackstone says so. But it is a thing which is not likely to be respected much longer, and it must go, even if involving the destruction of the Constitution.”—Mr. Bright. ”

“ In spite of his tendency towards “high art,” he was already known and appreciated as a humorist, and his early companionship with Charles Keene fostered and developed his talent for scholarly caricature. ”

“ It is difficult to the present generation to understand the Tennysonian enthusiasm which then prevailed both in Oxford and the world. All reading men were Tennysonians: all sets of reading men talked poetry. Poetry was the thing: and it was felt with justice that this was due to Tennyson. Tennyson had invented a new poetry, a new poetic English: his use of words was new, and every piece that he wrote was a conquest of a new region. This lasted till 'Maud,' in 1855; which was his last poem that mattered. I am told that in this generation no University man cares for poetry. ”

“ Mr. Joe Chamberlain (to himself) . “‘In short, Gentlemen—if you are only true to your principles, any one of you may become—as I have done—a Minister in a Liber—I should say in a Conserv—I beg pardon—I should say in an Unionist Government.’ H’m rather confusing—I don’t think that’ll quite do!” ”

“ Attractive also, if at times somewhat commonplace, is the quiet domestic sphere which Tennyson has hallowed in the many modern idylls which depict the joys and sorrows of humble life. No trait in the poet's many-sided character is more beautiful than the sympathy he has manifested in these poems with the world's toilers; while nothing could well be more touching than the pathos with which he invests their simple annals. ”

“ What our formative, high-wrought English literature has suffered in Tennyson's passing from the age on which he has shed so much glory those can best say who are of his era, and have been intimate, as each appeared, with every successive issue of his works. ”

“ Tennyson is said to have very poor eyes, but there seems to be no defect in the vision with which he sees nature, while he often hits the nail on the head in a way that would indicate the surest sight. ”

“ Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister purity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson’s verse. No man ever mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is not heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real massiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or Shelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous philosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty edifice like Milton. ”

“ The state of utter indigence to which Tennyson was reduced greatly exercised his friends, and in September 1845, at the suggestion of Henry Hallam, Sir Robert Peel was induced to bestow on the poet a pension of £200 a year. Never was public money expended in a more patriotic fashion. Tennyson's health slowly became restored, and in 1846 he was hard at work on The Princess; in the autumn of this year he took a tour in Switzerland, and saw great mountains and such "stateliest bits of landskip" for the first time. ”

“ Especially influential has Tennyson been in carrying forward, with new impulses and inspiration, the poetic traditions of that grand old motherland of English song to which our own poets in the New World, as well as the younger bards of the British Isles, owe so much. If we except the Laureate, there have been few who have worn the singing robe of the poet who, in these later years at least, have spoken so impressively to cultured minds on either side of the ocean, or have more effectively expressed to his age the high and hallowing spirit of modern poetry. ”

“ It is with such themes and speculations that Tennyson has powerfully and impressively influenced his age. Beyond and above the mere artistry of the poet, we recognize his interest in man's higher, spiritual being, his love for nature, and awe in contemplating the heights and depths of infinite time and space, ever looking upward and inward at the mysteries of the world behind the phenomena of sense. ”

“ Tenniel was never carried away by private feeling. His aim was to treat all public men with equality and fairness, and to be severe without being vindictive. Thus, he was always careful to make the politician, not the man, appear ridiculous, and the laugh raised is almost invariably good-natured. It is a remarkable fact that Tenniel never used models or nature for any of his drawings. In his portraits he was an idealist rather than a realist, since they were never taken from the life. ”

“ In private life Tenniel was genial and of an equable temper. Through an exceptionally long life, in which he came into contact with all sorts and conditions of men, it is safe to say that he never made an enemy, while few men have had more friends. ”

“ After five years at school at Louth, Tennyson returned to Somersby Rectory to be trained by his father. The rectory possessed a good library, and here the poet obtained his extensive knowledge of the English classics. When only twelve years old he wrote an epic of 6000 lines, and two years later a drama in blank verse. Tennyson's early knowledge of the sea was obtained at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, where the family spent their summer holidays. ”

“ It is a personality such as consorts with the opinions which most thoughtful readers of Tennyson's writings must have had of one of the greatest and serenest minds of the age,--a poet who, aside from the splendor of his workmanship and the beauty and melody of his verse, has greatly enriched the poetic literature of the century, and has, we feel, given profound thought to the intellectual problems and spiritual aspirations of his era. ”

“ It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular—to say that he is merely "the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less. World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe man—none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were outcasts.
Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe—his lines breathe purity and excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law. ”

“ Tennyson kept visiting London, where he saw Thackeray and the despair of Carlyle, and at Bath House he was too modest to be introduced to the great Duke whose requiem he was to sing so nobly. Oddly enough Douglas Jerrold enthusiastically assured Tennyson, at a dinner of a Society of Authors, that “you are the one who will live.” ”

“ It was at Trinity College that Tennyson first made the acquaintance of Arthur Hallam, youngest son of the historian, whose friendship so profoundly influenced the poet’s character and genius. “He would have been known if he had lived,” wrote Tennyson, “as a great man, but not as a great poet; he was as near perfection as mortal man could be.”
The Lady of Shalott
see page 10
In February 1831 Tennyson left Cambridge without taking a degree, and returned to Somersby, his father dying within a month of his arrival. ”

“ One morning when my father was on the way to his studio, he met his landlord who had a big grocer’s shop and they had this conversation: “will you tell me, sir, if you think Tennyson should have been given that peerage?” “one’s only doubt is if he should have accepted it: it was a finer thing to be Alfred Tennyson.” ”

“ During the next few years Tennyson remained chiefly at home with his family at Somersby, reading widely in all literatures, polishing old poems and writing new ones, corresponding with Spedding, Kemble, Milnes, Tennant, and others, and all the while acting (his two elder brothers being away) as father and adviser to the family at home. In 1836, however, the calm current of home life was interrupted by an event fraught with important consequences to the future life and happiness of Tennyson. ”

“ Tennyson brings into exercise not only his far-seeing powers, which were greatly in advance of his time, but his gifts of raillery and humor, especially in the early divisions of the poem, as well as his high, serious motives in the moral lessons to which he points in the later cantos, where he aims at the elevation of women in correspondence with the diversity of their natures, for, as he himself says, "Woman is not undeveloped man, but diverse." ”

“ What Tennyson has written of a different union may be applied to that of mind with mind:
“Yet it shall be, thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.” Allow me, in this connection, to [pg 206] say a word of periodical literature.
A book can wait for success; the best books have not been understood by the generation for which they were written ”

“ I wish you would decide, with your character, to come to Cambridge in the vacation and not stay by that dismal sea. There will be George Farish, and Edm. Lushington, and God knows whether Tennant, and do but add yourself to myself, and ourselves to the aforesaid: and lo you a select company as ever smoked under the shadow of a horse chesnut. If you do not come, you will simply be behind the world of the wise (which you know is as much like a goad as like a nail fastened by the master of an assembly) in the understanding of things spoken. ”

“ The culture, the refinement, the precision of a correct and mechanical age have sunk too deeply into his soul. He has not the courage or the spring to let himself go as Shakespeare did. Tennyson, too, speaks the language of poets, and not of men; he savors of the flower-garden, and not of the forest. Tennyson knows that he is an artist. Shakespeare, apparently, never had such a thought; he is intent solely upon holding the mirror up to nature. ”

“ He never visited us at Oxford, but when my father succeeded Dean Stanley at Westminster, my parents once more enjoyed some delightful visits from him. He was there in company with his eldest son and his daughter-in-law, on the occasion of his taking his seat in the House of Peers. Then and at other times there were memorable meetings of great men—Gladstone and others—with the Poet, in the fitting frame of the ancient Deanery.
My mother writes of Tennyson in 1888, after thirty-three years of friendship, “he grows more and more unselfish and thoughtful for others.” ”

“ For fifty years Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.
It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam—Arthur Hallam, immortal and remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson. ”

“ Edward Bowen of Harrow—are better known. Then there were the Poet’s two remarkable brothers, Horatio and Arthur Tennyson, and two fine old admirals, Sir [Pg 230] Graham Hamond and Admiral Crozier. Then again from 1874 onwards we had at the Briary G. F. Watts, and Mrs. Cameron’s sister, Mrs. Prinsep and her husband, with Mr. Val Prinsep as an occasional guest. A little earlier Sir John Simeon was still living at Swainston, and was one of Tennyson’s most intimate friends. Again, Mrs. Grosvenor Hood and Mrs. Brotherton were both people for whom literature and art counted for much. ”

“ Out of the mass of material which was gathered by Sir Thomas Malory for his prose history of Arthur and his Knights, Tennyson takes the chief incidents and noblest heroic traits of character in the legends and blends them in a fashion of his own, steeping them in an atmosphere which his imagination creates, and lighting up all with a passion and glory of knightly adventure, as well as with a chasteness, purity, and high fervor of ethical thought, that must perpetuate the romance, as he has given it us, unto all time. ”