Evolution of a daffodil
Roy Fuller
TENNYSON'S 'MAUD': A DEFINITIVE EDITION edited by Susan Shatto
The Athlone Press, 125
This may seem a curious book to be recommending to the general reader. The text (itself meandering through forests of varying readings) is flanked by editorial essays on the history of its composition and its literary and biographical influences, and by an ample 'commentary'. There follow several appendices, two of which are awe- inspiringly scholarly. Certainly the blurb does not exaggerate in claiming that this is a volume 'all scholars and students will henceforth need to consult'.
But the general reader? I believe the present work has a number of claims on his interest and attention. Of all the indisput- ably giant English poets, Tennyson is nearest to us in temper as well as time. Because of his alertness to the history, science and thought of his day, much of his verse needs explication, though (for many people still) what is being explicated may well be half known, half remembered, and, above all, germane to contemporary life. Dr Shatto reminds us that Thackeray remarked of Tennyson, 'he reads all sorts of things, swallows them and digests them like a great poetical boa-constrictor as he is.' In this respect he is Auden-like. When the hero of Maud contemplates murder and he reflects that arsenic 'would do it' except 'it is all used up' in poisoning 'our babes', one is glad to learn from Dr Shatto that supporting the rhetoric are several authorities for the deleterious use in the mid-century of arsenite of copper as a colouring for cheap confectionery.
There is no doubt in my mind that many readers of verse are uninterested in or gloss over such points. Yet surely the poet himself wants all his references to be picked up, believing rightly that part of the effect of the 'poetry' depends on that. Moreover, though Maud is now not so puzzling a poem as its first readers found, it is far from straightforward, and Dr Shat- to's delineation of the plot, allied with her account of the amazing accretions to the original lyrical germ of the poem, are not in the least superfluous to our under- standing.
But perhaps above all the book is valu- able for giving an insight into the poetic processes. Yeats, as Jon Stallworthy's stu- dies of the manuscripts have shown, was not afraid, when revising, even of changing the rhyme scheme of a complex stanza: Tenny- son displays similar bravery. It is often well worth the effort to follow through, from Dr Shatto's painstaking detail (a complete collation of the MSS has, because of restrictions, only been possible since 1969), the evolution of Tennyson's final text. Of course, there are a number of revisions (and omissions) of a simpler but equally startling kind. The famous line 'The shin- ing daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave' was first `sweet narcissus was dead', then 'golden aconite dead', then 'sweet narcissus dead'. How many of us would have been well satisfied with the inspired substitution of `golden aconite dead' for `sweet narcissus was dead'! And how few could have resisted including in the finished poem this description of the hated rival's moustache? 'His three / Straw col- our'd hairs upon either side / Of a baby mouth.'
Though Maud is a fictional poem it does, as is well known, embody some of the deepest themes of Tennyson's personal life — the poor boy / rich girl frustration; the familial craziness; financial fraud and dis- aster. Dr Shatto does not neglect this aspect of the poem, but perhaps in view of Ralph Wilson Rader's exhaustive work, Tennyson's 'Maud': The Biographical Genesis, her treatment is concise. Un- doubtedly the personal involvement adds to the force of the poem, which has retained, over the 130 years since its publication, quite a deal of its controversial character. I think, for instance, we still feel the hero is a bit much, despite knowing now of the excessive 'bit muchness' of the Tennysons. And the ending is still lame, despite the final section added after first publication. The hero welcoming the chance to fight in a war is as little to our present taste as Rupert Brooke's senti- ments in 1914 (and, curiously, Brooke's 'as swimmers into cleanness leaping' is an echo of Tennyson's hero's 'and many a darkness into the light shall leap' in a similar situation).
It might be added, apropos of the poem's original mixed reception, that it nevertheless soon sold 8,000 copies (at five shillings each), the proceeds enabling Ten- nyson to buy the freehold of Farringford, an option for which had thoughtfully been included in his short lease. Happy days for poets!
One omission: Dr Shatto could have said something about Maud's metrics, essential- ly at least one hiccup per (usually) iambic line. The variations on this are quite extraordinary and might have been, illumi- natingly anatomised by so thorough an editor.
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