The Two Voices - An...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6th, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the fourth of twelve children.
Most of Tennyson's early education was under the direction of his father, although he did spend four unhappy years at a nearby grammar school. He also showed an early and burgeoning talent for writing; by the age of twelve he had written a 6,000-line epic poem.
In the 1820s, however, Tennyson’s father began to suffer frequent mental breakdowns exacerbated by his alcoholism. One brother had frequent violent quarrels with his father, a second would be confined to an insane asylum, and another was later an opium addict.
Tennyson left home in 1827 to join his brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge and with it escape from Somersby. At Trinity he was those who knew little of the problems that clouded his life. Although shy he was keen to make new friends; he was handsome, intelligent, humorous, and a gifted impersonator.
That same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. It attracted the attention of the “Apostles," a select undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Hallam. They provided friendship and confidence. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends.
The pair, in the summer of 1830, were involved in a ridiculous jaunt to take money and secret messages to revolutionaries plotting to overthrow the Spanish king. Tennyson's political enthusiasm was marginal compared to Hallam's, but he was glad to make his first trip abroad.
The landscape and atmosphere of the Pyrenees generated such wonderful poems as "Oenone," "The Lotus-Eaters;" inspired by a waterfall in the mountains; and "The Eagle;" invoked from the sight of the great hunters circling above them. The small village of Cauteretz and the surrounding valley became a location Tennyson would return to many times over the next sixty years.
In 1830, he published Poems, ‘Chiefly Lyrical’ and in 1832 a volume entitled ‘Poems’. Tennyson, stung by the harshness of several reviews, would not publish again for nine years.
In the autumn of 1833, in what was meant as a gesture of gratitude and reconciliation to his father, Hallam accompanied him to the Continent. In Vienna Hallam died suddenly of apoplexy as a result of a congenital malformation of the brain.
Hallam’s death, together with that of his father and a myriad of anxieties, stem-ming mainly from the belief that his family were grimly attached to poverty, and fears that he might become a victim of epilepsy, madness, alcohol, and drugs, as others in his family had, or that he might die like Hallam, conspired to upset the delicate balance of Tennyson's emotions.
In 1836, he became engaged to Emily Sellwood. From their correspondence it is clear that she was very much in love with him. He seems to excessively worry about not having the financial means to marry. He was also falling into trances, which he thought were connected with the epilepsy from which other family members suffered. To marry, he thought, would mean passing on the disease to any children he might father. He broke off the engagement.
During these years he used the dark feelings and events to write many of his finest works; "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur," "Tithonus," "Tiresias," and "Break, break, break."
In 1842 Tennyson’s Poems (in two volumes) was a tremendous critical and popular success.
In 1845 he was granted a government pension of £200 a year in recognition of his poetic achievements and his financial need. Despite this financial support his doubts persisted.
Life for Tennyson was becoming increasingly productive and more lucrative. By 1849 ‘The Princess’ had been published. He was now offered a large advance if he would assemble his elegies on Hallam into one complete poem.
Tennyson had now also resumed his relationship with Emily Sellwood and by the following year was talking again of marrying her.
In the Spring of 1850 the Poet Laureate William Wordsworth died and a new Laureate was
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