SOME LETTERS FROM ARTHUR HALLAM.

RATHER more than two years ago my father's only surviving sister died at Sheffield, and when I went there in connection with that event, Mr. Thomas Gould—a relation of the family-told me of a certain old chest that had lain in his office for some sixty years, and contained, inter alia, several letters from Tennyson and Arthur Hallam to my father. These letters he proposed to hand over to me, and I gratefully accepted his offer. Meanwhile the rumour that they had come to light excited a certain amount of interest in the literary world, and when I had leisure to examine them I had received invitations and suggestions from more than one quarter to publish the whole collection. This I soon saw it would be impossible to do, and for various reasons, among which the most obvious was a due regard for the feelings and rights of certain members of the families concerned. It is emphatically true to say of either Tennyson or Arthur Hallam, what could truly be said of very few other great men, that the minutest information we could derive about their private opinions and personal habits would only increase the high esteem in which their memories are already held; but, on the other hand, it would be unfair to them to reveal indiscriminately every passing opinion they may have expressed in the supposed freedom of an intimate correspondence, and most unfair to persons whose character and conduct may, in the same way, have been discussed and possibly criticised. But the few Hallam letters here presented are not open to these objections. I think they contain nothing that the writer would have disliked the present generation to know, and nothing that can give pain or annoyance to any people who are now alive, or whose lives are still remembered. The publication is, moreover, made with the consent of those who now represent the Hallam family.

I hesitated at first as to the extent to which I should accompany the letters with explanatory comments and notes of my own. Here and there something of that kind seemed to be required, but I trust I have rightly judged the public taste in these matters by my own. I have always resented the stock kind of intrusions made by the commentator-such as superfluous or misleading suggestions as to what some phrase "probably referred to," or irritating repetitions of the word “sic,” in brackets, after every

small eccentricity of grammar or spelling. On the other hand I thought myself justified in inserting, as a kind of prelude to the series, one letter to Hallam from my father, written seventy years ago, when they were both Cambridge undergraduates.

(From WILLIAM HENRY BROOKFIELD1 to ARTHUR HALLAM.)

MY DEAR HALLAM,

SHEFFIELD, 15th Jan., 1831.

That I have had great inclination to write to you sooner, I profess :that I have not been without sufficient leisure, I am free to acknowledge : but that my brain has been dry as the remainder biscuit I am not at liberty to deny. At length, however, I tax my energies for three sides entirely in the hope of provoking, rather than deserving to myself, the pleasure of a reply. You have long ago discovered that (to convert Addison's bumptious metaphor) I carry most of my money loose in my pocket, and that any draughts upon my bank stand a marvellous chance of being dishonoured. I premise this in order to disarm you if I be dull. You must not, in catalogueing me as a correspondent, look for many Birdisms; my feathers, if I have any, moult when I would pluck them for quills; and when seated in the deliberate solemnity of a letter, your paraquito droops into a penguin. Our house, too, is no aviary, and in the stupid fog of a "serious and well-regulated family," the lint-white and the throstlecock get as hoarse as ravens. This mewing, however, will soon have an end in a fresh plumage, and in a fortnight we will all up and crow once more in Trinity :

Blow up the fire Gyp' Haggis,
Bring brandywine for three :

Bard Alfred, Bird William, and Clerk Arthur,
This night shall merry be.

I just discover that I might have saved you and myself much trouble by inscribing on the last side nothing more than a very large I. I will now, however, try a few variations on U. I and U parted last at the Ball. I am particularly anxious to learn how many things you fancied yourself besides a Swan, a shower of gold, a Dragon, a Bull, and a flash of lightening, according to Jupiter :-a finger and thumb going to crush a rose leaf, according to Alfred :-a shepherd seeking a pet lamb according to Shenstone :a quart or so of dew dropping upon a Violet, according to Waller a melody falling upon an ear that loves to hear it, according to (very probably) Mrs. Hemans:-a mountaineer chasing a Gazelle, according to Mirza Djami :—and a dove hastening home according to all the world.-I am aware that you would, like Grumio, "knock me here soundly," if you were here; but a tender-boned thing like myself feels that face to face and sheet to sheet are very different modes of intercourse. Standing, therefore, like Æsop's goat on the house top, I beseech you, most valourous lion,

(1) Afterwards the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, Chaplain to Queen Victoria, Rector of Somerby, Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral, and one of H.M.'s Inspectors of Schools. The best biographical account of him is to be found in the Dictionary of National Biography.-ED.

(2)

"As dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voyage."

As You Like It.-Act II., Sc. 7.

(3) "Gyp" is the Cambridge name for a college servant, like "Scout" at Oxford.-ED.

to make a merit of necessity and tell me all that I know. Indite me a few sighs; they will reach me in very good appetite, as I am myself once more sobbing and floundering in that Fount of Love I told you of, having again encountered the bright, romantic, harp-playing Sonnettee of last summer. By the way, it just occurs to me that a mind more apt than your own at malconstruction might think the allusions I have made to Jove more jovial than delicate, but I am sure you will credit me when I say that I meant the nonsense to be quite free from sense, i.c., to be altogether spiritual. I do not make this apology for the sake of the pun.

I Constitutional Historo1 for the last few days, and find it would have been advisable to have Moddle Ogen1 first. I began the former by reason that I had heard you pronounce it the moister book. I enjoy it very much, but will not commit myself by vague criticism.

I was delighted to find that Tennyson had been reviewed in the Westminster. I was about preparing a sort of Newspaper notice of the poems, with extracts, for the Sheffield Courant: but in the meantime the Editor had extracted, rather injudiciously, a part from the Westminster, so that I can not now well do what I purposed. I don't know whether this will find you in London or at Trinity; if the latter remember me to them all. I think of leaving this place on Monday week, and going by Town, where I shall be on Tuesday. You may, perhaps, know that a requisition was getting up for me to stand for the Presidency of the Union next term. But if chance will have me King, chance may crown me, for I will not move in the matter. I shall hope to hear from you in a day or two. Direct W.H.B., Sheffield.

Lest you should think from the sublimities about moulting feathers, in the first side, that you are corresponding with Warburton, I beg to add myself,

It is my misfortune, and that of any reader whom these letters may interest, that they are each of them isolated, that they are unaccompanied, that is, by the complemental letters which either preceded or followed them. However, the first Hallam letter that I am able to publish bears the date “March 4th, Saturday,” and this would appear to have been in 1831, and therefore should come next in chronological order to the one written by my father a few weeks before in the same year. It chiefly deals with Hallam's attachment to Emily Tennyson, the main facts of which have already been given to the world:

(1) See in the preceding paragraph the writer's own explanation of his allusions to Jove. I am prepared with a commentator's comment about the Middle Ages, but prefer not to hazard it.-ED.

(2) He was in due course elected, and I have his rough draft of the speech in which he returned thanks for that distinction. It commences with: "Gentlemen, it would be affectation to deny that I foresaw to some extent the result of this evening's ballotting.”—ED,

I.1

(From ARTHUR HALLAM to WILLIAM HENRY BROOKFIELD.)

MY DEAR BROOKS,

March 4th, Saturday.

Although you hinted, when I was last with you, that you had an objection to short letters, you can hardly expect me to reform my conduct in this respect at present. Indeed, I find no sort of time as yet for anything the interest of which is not strictly confined within the walls of Somersby. How I am to read Blackestone here is one of those mysteries which I consider insoluble by human reason: even Dante, even Alfred's poetry, is at a discount.

Dear Brooks, you encouraged me to write personal twaddle, and I have need of telling you how happy I have been, am, and seem likely to be. I would you were happy too-for, however I trust your friendship, and know besides that the mind takes a strange delight sometimes in the contemplation of moods more joyous than its own, I cannot but feel that there must mingle some pain with your knowledge of my joy. All things hitherto I have found as well, better than I could have expected. Emily is not apparently in a state of health that need much disquiet me, and her spirits are, as I hoped, more animated by confidence and hope. Every shadow of-not doubt, but uneasiness, or what else may be a truer name for the feeling that Alfred's language sometimes cast over my hopes, is destroyed in the full blaze of conscious delight with which I perceive that she loves me. And I—I love her madly; I feel as though I had never known love till now. The love of absence I had known, and searched its depths with patient care, but the love of presence methinks I knew not, for heretofore I was always timid and oppressed by the uncertain vision of futurity, and the warning narrowing form of the present. (I am writing arrant nonsense -never mind.) Now I feel above consequence, freed from destiny, at home with happiness. Never before have I known at one moment the luxury of actual delight, the reasonable assurance of its prolongation through a happy life, and the peace, which arises out of a tranquil conscience to sanctify and establish all the rest. Not without the blessing of God has this matter been brought thus far I humbly hope this is a sign of its continuance but I believe I speak my heart, when I say, that eagerly as I love her, I truly desire to submit all my hopes and desires to the love of God-and that it would cost me little to lose the highest blessings of this life, would God but grant me

"Soul to soul to grow deathless hers."

Do you want details of what I do? I know not where to begin yet, to be a little more sober, I will try to bethink me of what has occurred. I found no great fear of Cholera; thanks to shortsightedness or something, nobody found out the Marylebone case in the paper, tho' there it was, large as life, or death I should say. Alfred is, as I expected, not apparently ill nor can I persuade myself anything real is the matter. His spirits are better: his habits more regular, his condition altogether healthier. He is fully wound up to publication, and having got £100 from Mrs. Russell' talks of going abroad. C. and F. well: the former has

(1) Written from Somersby, with postmark "Spilsby" (without date). I may here perhaps be allowed to say that the living given to my father many years afterwards, by Lady Willoughby de Eresby, was Somerby-also in Lincolnshire-and not Somersby. The two names, and the circumstance, have sometimes been confused.-ED.

(2) Alfred Tennyson's aunt.

(3) Alfred Tennyson's brothers, Charles and Frederick.

written two sonnets: all three have taken to digging-one more resemblance of Somersby to Paradise. Several things are changed here since my former visits; some for the worse, e.g., Emily and Mary have shamefully neglected their singing. I marvel at your indulgent mention; on the faith of a lover, they sang six times as well two years ago. Part of my mind is cut away by it. There are no horses rideable, which is a bore: on the other hand, there are curtains in the Dining-room, which is a lounge. Charles sleeps much less than he did, but never reads. I have been endeavouring to find time to teach Horatio his Latin, but since the strange revolution in the course of nature by which the number of hours in the day has become so much smaller it is difficult, you know, to find time and leisure for anything. Much Italian lesson goes on after breakfast : amo ami," etc. We expect that . . . here soon. I wonder why Tennant never told me that Miss. pulled his hair. Mary seems well, and learns Italian prettily; nevertheless, I think her somewhat diminished in beauty since my former sojourn. I am an impartial judge certainly, for I looked much less at her face then, than now. The whole state of the music is sadly inferior to what it used to be: I must try to reform things. Write home, will you? Tell me about all things, specially yourself. I believe M. and G. must come here; Fred. seems to have changed his mind, and I am not sure that I have not. More of this. Love to Trench, and the few.

Very affect yours,

66

A. H. H.

The next letter is one written nearly a year afterwards, from Tunbridge Wells. The first part of this communication is a comic rhyming lament on the unattractiveness of this admired watering-place, which Tennyson, in the Tennyson Memoirs by his son, speaks of as his "abomination." It is but fair to Tunbridge Wells to point out that, whatever opinions the Tennyson and Hallam set may have expressed about the place, they always seem to have gone there again, and to have sent their friends and relations there also.

II.

(From ARTHUR HALLAM to WILLIAM HENRY BROOKFIELD.)
Rose Hill, Tunbridge Wells. Saturday Evening.1

DEAR BROOKS,

I'm sure you will compassionate

The sad condition I've been in of late,

Doomed to a series of most awful dinners

With coteries of ancient Tunbridge sinners,

And cards, where all, save I, are always winners;

Then every morning forced to play the lion

Along the dusty summits of Mount Zion,

Or, niched 'tween first and second maidens prim,
To do the honours of Mount Ephraim.

I' faith, but that I bear you better will

Than to inflict such penance, honest Bill,

I half could bribe you with some shag and beer
To share my troublesome quandary here,
Cut in at whist, or help me at a pinch
When tête à tête with hideous Mistress

(1) The date on one of the postmarks is Feb. 6th, 1832.