Remembering the Death of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Looking at the Last Days of Queen Victoria’s Poet Laureate
Oct 6, 2009
October 6th 2009 is the 117th anniversary of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s death. While his life is and should be celebrated, his death is something that also deserves to be examined. For Tennyson is seen as immortal, thanks to his verse that still inspires people today, nearly two hundred years later. From In Memoriam to “The Lady of Shalott” to “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, many readers find solace and joy in Tennyson’s works.
Tennyson’s Obsession With Arthur Henry Hallam’s Death
At twenty-four Alfred lost his best friend Arthur Hallam to a brain hemorrhage when Arthur was only twenty-two. Alfred’s obsession with death heightened greatly. Though he had always been morbid, the loss of the friend he dearly loved sent Tennyson into a downward spiral that took him many years to pull out of.
He confessed that after Hallam’s death he wished to die more than he wished to live. His sonnets of In Memoriam show that he thought of death often, in personification and abstractly. Tennyson was also apt to be a hypochondriac, convinced that he would go blind and have an early death.
The Illness and Death of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tennyson lived to a ripe old age, however, as did most of his siblings. His oldest brother Frederick lived to be 90, his sister Cecilia lived to be 91, and his sister Matilda lasted the longest, living to be 97. Alfred, as noted, lived to be 83, dying two months after his birthday.
Shortly after his 83rd birthday, Alfred began experiencing symptoms of gout and neuralgia. He had had health problems a few years before, which had nearly ended his life then, and although he eventually recovered he was never the same for the last few years of his life. The last few weeks of his life were dim.
Tennyson’s Last Words and Moments
His last words have been reported as being different things: some say that it was “Bless you, my joy” to his wife. Others report it as “Hallam, Hallam,” presumably to his elder son Hallam Tennyson, although it could have been a cry to his deceased friend Arthur Hallam. Audrey Tennyson, Alfred’s daughter-in-law, recorded that his last words were incoherent. His last several hours of life were spent in a coma
Alfred Lord Tennyson died at 1:35 a.m. on October 6, 1892. He went in complete peace, according to his family and doctor. He was buried at Westminster Abbey in Poets’ Corner and given an enormous yet reportedly dull funeral that had many famous attendees, though the Queen did not attend. No other Poet Laureate was appointed until 1896 when Alfred Austin took the title.
Tennyson’s Popularity Today
Two hundred years after his birth, and more than a hundred years after his death, Alfred Lord Tennyson is still widely read across the campuses of secondary schools, universities, and amongst people who simply love poetry. Although Tennyson himself would not have appreciated it since he was paranoid about people discovering things about his life, he would surely appreciate the love people have for his poetry today.
Sources:
Levi, Peter, Tennyson, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993).
Martin, Robert Bernard, Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
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