In matter-moulded forms of speech
Thro' memory that which I became.
There are many allusions in the Idylls of the King and elsewhere in his work to these same visions of the night or of the day, but all confirming the belief in his own immortality, which he sets forth finally in superb verse: … And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who lov'd, who suffer'd countless ills, Who battled for the True, the Just, Be blown about the desert dust, Or seal'd within the iron hills?
Curiously enough, Hugo, as we learn from his Journal de l'Exile, was even more superstitious than Tennyson: he believed in table-turning and rappings, and in a spirit he called "The White Lady," who made her presence known in the most trivial ways. This superstition seems to belong to the time. In mature manhood, Hugo declares that he never lies down "without a certain terror," and "When I awake in the night, I awake with a shudder! I hear rapping spirits in my room"; and the "White Lady" he calls "an accursed horror." Yet he writes of all this much more reasonably than Tennyson: he says, "The world is still in its infancy: we require ruts and religions; it is doubtful if the average human being has arrived at even a moderate degree of reason: man still has need of written revelation"; and then we get the true reason of his superstition. "All great men have had revelations-all superior minds.
Socrates had his familiar genius. Zoroaster, too, and Shakespeare saw phantoms"; and, as if to atone for this nonsense, he adds finely: "In this century I am the first who has spoken not only of the souls of animals, but also of the soul of things. All my life I have constantly said when I saw a tree branch broken or a leaf torn off-'Leave that branch or leaf. Do not disturb the harmony of nature!' "
Another interesting fact about Hugo is that he always refused to publish as his own the poetry he believed was dictated to him by some table-rapping spirit. Here are two verses which Moliere is supposed to have dictated to him, though I think them curiously characteristic of Hugo himself:
Quand Moliere te dit: Femme, prends tes aiguilles, Fiere pensee, apprends que je te fais honneur, Toute main qui recoud, dans l'ombre, des guenilles Erode le manteau du Seigneur.
Ton autre fonction, pensee, est la science, Pour elle, rien n'est vil et rien n'est importun, L'homme materiel est le vase; elle est 1'anse, La poesie est le parfum.
The great social movement in favor of the poor and disinherited, which is the glory of the nineteenth century, never touched Tennyson; in this, as indeed in every domain of thought, he was far inferior to Victor Hugo, though in the Frenchman, too, the gift of musical speech could not mask the poverty of new ideas and lack of creative power.
When we think of Victor Hugo's constant appeals to reason and justice in all international disputes, and contrast them with Tennyson's wild ravings against Russia or France or Ireland, we are almost compelled to admit that the French habit of mind is higher than the English.
Anecdotes of Victor Hugo are legion, and some of them are very interesting.
During the worst days of the siege of Paris, the poet gave away a great deal of money, making use of Madame Paul Meurice-who did not long survive that terrible time-as his almoner. She told him one day of a poor woman without clothes, food or fuel, whom she thought very deserving. Victor Hugo gave her a hundred francs, which were gratefully accepted. Two days afterwards, Madame Meurice found the woman in the same state of destitution and asked where the hundred francs had gone. She said she had distributed them among famishing mothers and children of her acquaintance; and, as inquiry proved that this was perfectly true, Victor Hugo sent her another hundred francs, on condition that she spend it on her own necessities. This she absolutely refused to do, saying that she would rather not have it at all, so Madame Meurice gave her carte blanche to do as she pleased with it. This obstinate woman was no other than Louise Michel, the Communist, who had already suffered imprisonment and expatriation for her unselfish creed.
I have said nothing about the sex life of either Hugo or Tennyson. That of Hugo is fairly well known, whereas Tennyson's is unknown, even his intimate friends asserting that they knew nothing certainly. I should not think he had ever gone deeply into life anywhere. He was put upon a pedestal too early; he was too fortunate in every way, too highly rewarded. The sacred guides are never so well received; they get prison and hemlock, or the cross, as their reward.
Whenever I recall Tennyson's death and the unmeasured glorification of him in the English press, I am compelled to think of poor James Thomson and his end.
The poet of The City of Dreadful Night died ten years before Tennyson, died in miserable poverty and almost unappreciated; yet, in my opinion, he was as gifted a poet as Tennyson, and far wiser; intellectually, indeed, one of the greatest, a master of prose as well as verse. His life and fate throw a sinister light on English conditions.
In every respect he comes nearer to ideal wisdom than any other modern English poet.
While Tennyson lauds the Crimean War, Thomson condemns it as "a mere selfish haggle, badly begun and meanly finished." He refers to the more recent exploits of English jingoism as "purely iniquitous, battue-wars against tribes of ill-armed savages." He showed sympathy for all the struggling nationalism of his time, for Italy and Poland and even for the Basques, who had supported the Carlist cause in '73. Here are his words:
"Such was the loyalty of these people, far more noble than ours; for they were giving freely of their substance and their lives, whereas we give chiefly snobbish cringing and insincere adulation, and our rich give the money of the nation in large part wrung from the poor."
Unlike Tennyson, he was devoted to the cause of the people, and fought against every form of privilege and capitalism.
Every Englishman should read his satirical essay on Bumbledom. He points out that though there is more liberty in England than on the continent in matters affecting political discussion, "the reverse is true as regards questions of morals and sociology, for here the power of Bumble's purse rules our socalled free press and free institutions with a hand heavier than that of any Continental despot."
Thomson knew that there were worse faults of democracy than "political inequalities." "Bumble," he says, "imposes death by starvation."
He tells us in a letter that he used to read and "hugely admired Byron when about fifteen, but when I was sixteen I fell under the domination of Shelley, to whom I have been loyal ever since"-from Byron to Shelley in a year!
Thomson is really the only Englishman who stands with Heine and Leopardi as a great modern master, and his translations of their poems are the best in English. And Thomson was kindlier and sweeter in all his personal relations than either of them. Even Heine at times distresses one by the contempt he shows for the greatest, such as Goethe. We have no such apology to make for Thomson. He was the most gifted of all his English contemporaries, and he praises the wisest of them enthusiastically. He almost reached perfection, but alas, he sometimes drank too much, is the accusation brought against him, and by Englishmen.
There is the famous reply to a similar accusation brought against General Grant in the Civil War by his detractors. "Tell me what drink he uses," said Lincoln, "and I will send it to the rest of our generals, and then perhaps they, too, will win victories like Grant."
No wonder Thomson let himself drink too much; he could find no market for his work in England, nothing but poverty and neglect. He told me, with that rare power of laughing at himself, which only high genius possesses, that he failed in spite of good resolutions. "You see," he said, "the resolutions were made when I was sober, but after the first glass one is not quite the same who made the resolution, and after the second glass one is still more unlike. If you have been badly nourished, it needs a drink or two, or three, to bring you to your full vigor, and then one glass more for good fellowship and you're lost!"