Complete Works of Bram Stoker (655 page)

“Won’t you tell me  —  explain to me. I really want to understand? “ He spoke the last line, and further explanation was unnecessary. The whole gist was in his pronunciation of the word “ bluff “ twice repeated. He spoke the word with a sort of quick propulsive effort as though throwing the word from his mouth.

“I thought any one would understand that! “ he added.

It was the exact muffled sound which the exploding charge makes in the curves of the steep valleys.

This is a good instance of Tennyson’s wonderful power of onomatopceia. To him the sound had a sense of its own. I had another instance of it before the day was over.

That talk was full of very interesting memories. Perhaps it was apropos of the peas grown from the seed in the mummy hand, but Lazarus in his tomb came on the tapis. This stanza of In Memoriam had always been a favourite of mine, and when I said so, he said:

“Repeat it! “ I did so, again feeling as if I were being weighed up. When I had finished “He told it not; or something seal’d The lips of that Evangelist:” he turned to me and said:

“Do you know that when that was published they said I was scoffing. But “  —  here both face and voice grew very very grave  —  ” I did not mean to scoff!”

When I told him of my wonder as to how any sane person could have taken such an idea from such a faithful, tender, understanding poem he went on to speak of faith and the need of faith. There was nothing strange or original to rest in my mind. But his finishing sentence I shall never forget. Indeed had I forgotten for the time I should have remembered it from what he said the last interview I had with him just before his death:

“You know I don’t believe in an eternal hell, with an All-merciful God. I believe in the All-merciful God! It would be better otherwise that men should believe they are only ephemera!”

When we returned to the house we lunched, Lady Tennyson and Mrs. Hallam Tennyson having joined us. Then we went up again to the study, and Tennyson, taking from the table the book in which he had been writing, read us the last poem, The Churchwarden and the Curate. He read it in the Lincolnshire dialect, which is much simpler when heard than read. The broadness of the vowels and their rustic prolongation rather than drawl adds force and also humour. I shall never forget the intense effect of the last lines of the tenth stanza. The shrewd worldly wisdom  —  which was plain sincerity of understanding without cynicism:

“But niver not speak plaain out, if tha wants to git forrards a bit, But creeap along the hedge-bottoms, an’ thou’ll be a Bishop yit.”

Tennyson was a strangely good reader. His voice was powerful and vibrant, and had that quality of individualism which is so convincing. You could not possibly mistake it for the voice of any one else. It was a potent part of the man’s identity. In his reading there was a wonderful sense of time. The lines seemed to swing with an elastic step  —  like a regiment marching.

In a little time after came his hour for midday rest; so we said good-bye and left him. Irving and I went for a smoke to Hallam’s study, where he produced his phonograph and adjusted a cylinder containing a reading of his father’s. Colonel Gouraud had taken special pains to have for the reception of Tennyson’s voice the most perfect appliance possible, and the phonograph was one of peculiar excellence, without any of that tinny sharpness which so often changes the intentioned sound.

The reading was that of Tennyson’s own poem, The Charge of the Heavy Brigade. It was strange to hear the mechanical repetition whilst the sound of the real voice, which we had so lately heard, was still ringing in our ears. It was hard to believe that we were not listening to the poet once again. The poem of Scarlett’s charge is one of special excellence for both phonographic recital and as an illustration of Tennyson’s remarkable sense of time. One seems to hear the rhythmic thunder of the horses’ hoofs as they ride to the attack. The ground seems to shake, and the virile voice of the reader conveys in added volume the desperate valour of the charge.

With Hallam we sat awhile and talked. Then we came away and drove to Godalming, there to catch our train for London. The afternoon sun was bright and warm, though the air was bracing; and even as we drove through the beautiful scene Irving’s eyes closed and he took his afternoon doze after his usual fashion.

I think this visit fanned afresh Irving’s wish to play Becket. I do not know what he and Tennyson spoke of  —  he never happened to mention it to me; but he began from fthence to speak again of the play at odd times.

III

That season was a busy one, as we had taken off Ravenswood and played repertoire. That autumn there was a provincial tour. The 1891 season saw Henry VIII. run from the beginning of the year. The long run, with only six performances a week, gave some leisure for study; and Irving once more took Becket in hand. I think that again the character he was playing had its influence on him. He was tuned to sacerdotalism; and the robes of a churchman sat easy on him. There was a sufficient difference between Wolsey  —  the chancellor who happened to be a cleric  —  and Becket  —  who was cleric before all things  —  to obviate the danger of too exact a repetition of character and situation. At all events Irving reasoned it out in his usual quiet way, and did not speak till he was ready. It was during the customary holiday at Holy Week in 1892 that he finally made up his mind. I had been spending the vacation in Cornwall at Boscastle, a lovely spot which I had hit upon by accident. Incidentally I so fell in love with the place and gave such a glowing account of it that Irving; later on, spent two vacations at it. I came up to London on the night of Good Friday in a blinding snowstorm, the ground white from the Cornish sea to London. Irving had evidently been waiting, for as soon as we met in the theatre about noon on Saturday he asked me if I could stop and take supper in the theatre. I said I could, and he made the same request to Loveday. After the play we had supper in the Beefsteak Room; and when we had lit our cigars, he opened a great packet of foolscap and took out Becket as he had arranged it. He had taken two copies’ of the book, and when he had marked the cuts in duplicate he had cut out neatly all the deleted scenes and passages. He had used two copies as he had to paste down the leaves on the sheets of foolscap. He had cut the play in this way so that any one reading it would not see as he went along what had been cut out. Thus such a reader would be better able to follow the action as it had been arranged, unprejudiced by obvious alteration, and with a mind single of thought  —  for it would not be following the deleted matter as well as that remaining. He knew also that it would be more pleasant to Tennyson to read what he had written without seeing a great mass cut out. Becket as written is enormously long; the adapted play is only five-sevenths of the original length. Before he began to read he said:

“I think I have got it at last!”

His reading was of its usual fine and enlightening quality; as he read it the story became a fascination. There was no doubting how the part of Becket appealed to him. He was greatly moved at some of the passages, especially in the last act.

Loveday and I were delighted with the play. And when the reading was finished, we, then and there, agreed that it should be the next play produced after King Lear, which was then in hand, and which had been arranged to come on in the autumn of that year.

We sat that night until four o’clock, talking over the play and the music for it. Irving thought that Charles Villiers Stanford would be the best man to do it. We quite agreed with him. When he saw that we were taken with it, equally as himself, he became more expansive regarding the play. He said it was a true “ miracle “ play  —  a holy theme; and that he had felt already in studying it that it made him feel a better man.

Before we parted I had by his wish written to Hallam Tennyson at Freshwater asking him if he could see me on business if I came down to the Isle of Wight. I mentioned also Irving’s wish that it might be as soon as possible.

Hallam Tennyson telegraphed up on Monday, after he had received my letter, saying that I would be expected the next day, April 19  —  Easter Tuesday, 1892.

In the meantime, I had read both the original play and the acting version, and was fairly familiar with the latter.

CHAPTER XX

TENNYSON AND HIS PLAYS  —  III

“Becket” for the stage  —  My visit to Farringford  —  ” In the Roar of the Sea”  —  Tennyson on “interviewers”  —  Relic hunters  —  “God the Virgin”  —  The hundred best stories  —  Message to John Fiske  —  Walter Map  —  Last Visit to Tennyson  —  Tennyson on Homer and Shakespeare  —  His own reminiscences  —  Good-bye

I

I WENT down by the 10.3o train from Victoria and got to Freshwater about four o’clock. Hallam was attending a meeting of the County Council but came in about five. He and I went carefully over the suggested changes, in whose wisdom he seemed to acquiesce. We arranged provisionally royalties and such matters, as Irving had wished to acquire for a term of years the whole rights of the play for both Britain and America. We were absolutely at one on all points.

At a little before six he took me to see his father, who was lying on a sofa in his study. The study was a fine room with big windows. Tennyson was a little fretful at first, as he was ill with a really bad cold; but he was very interested in my message and cheered up at once. At the beginning I asked if he would allow Irving to alter Becket, so far as cutting it as he thought necessary. He answered at once:

“Irving may do whatever he pleases with it! “ “ In that case, Lord Tennyson,” said I, “ Irving will do the play within a year!”

He seemed greatly gratified, and for a long time we sat chatting over the suggested changes, he turning the manuscript over and making a running commentary as he went along. He knew well where the cuts were; he knew every word of the play, and needed no reference to the fuller text.

When he came to the end of the scene in Northampton Castle, I put before him Irving’s suggestion that he should, if he thought well of it, introduce a speech  —  or rather amplify the idea conveyed in the shout of the kneeling crowd: “ Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! “ In our discussion of the play on the night of the reading we had all agreed that something was here wanting. Something which would, from a dramatic point of view, strengthen Becket’s position. If he could have the heart of the people behind him it would manifestly give him a firmer foothold in his struggle with the King. Naturally there was an opening for an impassioned voicing of the old cry, “ Vox popu/i, vox Dei.” When I ventured to suggest this he said in a doubting way: “ But where am I to get such a speech? “ As we sat we were sheltered by the Downs from the sea which thunders night and day under one of the highest cliffs in England. I pointed out towards the Downs and said:

“There it is! In the roar of the sea!” The idea was evidently already in his mind, and when he sent up to Irving a few days later the new material the mighty sound of the surge and the blast were in his words:

“Hubert. The voice of the people blesses thee.

“Becket. And I bless The people, love them, live for them  —  and yet Not me, not me! they bless the Church in me. The Voice of the people goes against the King, The Voice of the Lord is in the Voice of the People 1 The Voice of the Lord is in the warring floods, And He will lead his people into Peace! The Voice of the Lord will shake the wilderness The barren wilderness of unbelief! The Voice of the Lord will break the cedar-trees-The Kings and Rulers that have dosed their ears Against the Voice  —  and at their hour of doom The Voice of the Lord will hush the hounds of Hell That ever yelp and snarl at Holy Church In everlasting silence!”

Any one who studies this fine passage in connection with the difference between the play as written and as adapted can see the extraordinary mental subtlety with which the dramatist reconciled two ideas of opposing purpose. In Becket, Tennyson takes as his main purpose  —  as the dramatic “ tug “ of the play  —  the opposition of Church and State as spoken of in Henry’s speech:

“Sceptre and crozier dashing, and the mitre Grappling the Crown.”

Becket was, except in the prologue, all churchman when interests clashed. When, however, the dramatist knew that stage exigency required the appearance of opposition between King and people, he did it in such a way, whilst fulfilling all requirements both of the character and the drama, that Becket used the very circumstance to the advantage of his own cause. This is real dramatic instinct, and may be taken as a good illustration of Tennyson’s natural capacity for the drama. It is all the more illustrative in that he was not only creating, but creating within very narrow bounds.

II

When Tennyson had run roughly through the altered play, he seemed much better and brighter. He put the play aside and talked of other things. In the course of conversation he mentioned the subject of anoynmous letters from which he had suffered. He said that one man had been writing such to him for forty-two years. He also spoke of the unscrupulous or careless way in which some writers for the press had treated him. That even Sir Edwin Arnold had written an interview without his knowledge or consent, and that it was full of lies  —  Tennyson never hesitated to use the word when he felt it  —  such as: “ ‘ Here I parted from General Gordon! ‘ And that I had sent a man on horseback after him.’ General Gordon was never in the place! “ This subject both in general and special he alluded to at our last meeting; it seemed to have taken a hold on his memory.

He also said:

“Irving paid me a great compliment when he said that I would have made a fine actor!”

That evening the younger members of the family went to a political meeting, at which the local member, Sir Richard Webster, then Attorney-

General, was addressing his constituents, and I went with them.

In the morning, Hallam and I walked in the garden before breakfast. Farringford is an old Feudal farm, and some of the trees are magnificent  —  ilex, pine, cedar. Primrose and wild parsley everywhere, and underneath a great cedar a wilderness of trailing ivy. The garden gave me the idea that all the wild growth had been protected by a loving hand.