TENNYSON'S ALDWORTH
By DEREK HUDSON
AN artist once drew for the Graphic an impression of Tennyson in his old age sitting in his handsome study at Aldworth, near Haslemere. He has a book in one hand, and tne other hand lies on the head of a dog—perhaps his favourite " Old Don." The desk in front of him is covered with papers ; a table behind is piled with books. In the background there are two large terrestrial globes, while a low couch stands in front of the long window, through which there is a glimpse of a magnificent view-
" Green Sussex fading into blue With one gray glimpse of sea."
Recently I stood in the same room—now utterly bare, for Aldworth is on the market and has not yet found a purchaser. It is rather depressing to see the study in its present state, because the room meant much to Tennyson in the last twenty years of his life. Already in December, 1871, Mrs. Tennyson noted: "His new study was not quite finished, and he wandered about drying the wet places on the walls with a hot poker." Even in its emptiness there are signs that the study was intended for a serious purpose. It has a special concrete floor to ensure quiet, and the roof is a good deal higher here than in any other of the first-floor rooms, a fact which becomes obvious when you go up to the room above and find a disproportionately small apartment which could hardly be used for anything but a boxroom. There are carved stone fireplaces throughout the house, and most of them once bore ornamental shields ; the stonework of the study fireplace, however, is specially distinguished by two swallows—one of which, alas, has now lost its head.
The study saw the writing of Queen Mary, Becket and Harold. A great many pipes of tobacco must have been smoked there. During his severe illness of 1888 Tennyson lay on the couch in this room ; and the Duke of Argyll, in a letter written to Hallam Tennyson after his father's death, once described an occasion when Mrs. Tennyson did the same:
"I was to return to London next morning after a visit to Aldworth. Your mother had been at dinner and had bidden us good-night as usual. When, about an hour later, your father took me up to his smoking-room, as was also usual with him, we were surprised to find your mother lying on the sofa there. Your father expressed his astonishment and said, My dear, you ought to have gone to bed long ago.' Her kind reply was, 'Oh, I wished to say good-bye to the Duke again as he leaves us tomorrow morning.' At that moment you entered the room and at once carried your mother off. Your father, somewhat moved as I thought, occupied himself with putting fresh coals on the fire. Then, turning to me, he said in a deep and solemn voice, without mentioning your mother's name, It is a tender, spiritual face— is it not ? ' " Watts's portrait of Mrs. Tennyson, which formerly used to hang at Aldworth, confirms her husband's description.
Close to the study, on the first floor at Aldworth, is the bedroom
in which Tennyson died, holding a Shakespeare in his hand, "flooded and bathed in the light of the full moon streaming through the oriel window." Like the other first-floor windows on this east side of the house, the bedroom has the same wide view, bounded by Leith Hill on the north and by the Downs on the south. The only complaint that Tennyson had of the Aldworth view was that it needed " a full-fed river winding through the landscape."
It was as he approached his sixtieth birthday that Tennyson first thought of building a house in the neighbourhood of Haslemere where he could spend the summer and autumn months. Farringford was beginning to be spoiled by trippers ; besides he wished to have a home nearer London. " My wife has always had a fancy for the sandy soil and heather-scented air of this part of England," he wrote from Stoatley Farm, Haslemere, in 1867, " and we are intend-. ing to buy a few acres, and build a little home here, whither we may escape when the cockneys are running over my lawns at Freshwater." The site chosen for the house had the essential qualification of remoteness. It was built at a height of nine hundred feet on a small natural terrace just below the summit of the wild, heather-covered moor of Blackdown, two and a half miles from Haslemere. A long drive ensures its privacy, and the trees around the house hide it from view until the visitor is right on top of it. The land was originally known as Black-horse Copse ; Tennyson called the house Aldworth because some of his wife's family came from a Berkshire village of that name.
Tennyson and his wife roughly planned the house themselves ; then engaged Sir James Knowles, the founder of the Nineteenth Century, as their architect. One feature of Aldworth is certainly their own—a long hall extending the length of the house, with glass doors at either end. Knowles skilfully interpreted their wishes and provided a house that was not exactly the " little home " Tennyson had originally envisaged, but which combined spaciousness with comfort. Local sandstone was used, and turf for the lawns was brought from Farringford Down. Mrs. Tennyson's journal recorded the laying of the foundation-stone with poetic solemnity :
" April 23 [1868]. Shakespeare's birthday. A. laid the foundation stone of Aldworth. . . . A. in excellent spirits ; he was pleased with the inscription on the stone—' Prosper thou the work of our hands, 0 prosper thou our handiwork.' "
The house shows in more than one place the Victorian passion for improving texts. Gwrn yn Erbyn y Byd—" Truth against the World "—proclaims the mosaic in the floor at the entrance. And a stone cornice running along the south and east fronts announces spasmodically Gloria in Excelsis Deo et in Terra Pax Hominibus. ... The visitor rounds the north-east corner murmuring hopefully to himself, and duly finds Bonae in its frame on one side of the front door with Voluntatis in its niche on the other side.
Aldworth is rich in its associations with the great of the Victorian age. Several members of the Royal Family visited the house. There the glimpses of Turgenev playing the Laureate at German back- gammon ; Fanny Kemble reading Shakespeare " with tears streaming down her cheeks " ; long discussions with George Eliot ; and much talk with Huxley—" chivalrous, wide and earnest," said Mrs. Tennyson. The phonograph presented by Edison was a continual joy, and Tennyson made many recordings at Aldworth. Once his little grandson laughed at him as he shouted into the tube. " Tennyson thereupon laughed into the phonograph after the words `Blow, bugle, blow,' " says Palgrave, " and this laugh has a most weird effect on the reproduction." Walks over Blackdown were the favourite recreation. In 1871 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone " frisked about like boy and girl in the heather." Tennyson, in his broad- brimmed wideawake and short blue cape with velvet collar, invited attention but fled at the approach of tourists.
Aldworth has passed through the hands of several owners and tenants since the Tennyson family left. Part of the estate has been sold and some of the timber felled. The building has dignity and is a favourable example of Victorian architecture ; like other Victorian things it was made to last, and should have a useful life still before it. Everyone would be pleased—not least the shade of Alfred Lord Tennyson—if it could be adapted to some educational or artistic purpose that would draw inspiration from its history.
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