University of Virginia Library

The Hallam-Tennyson POEMS (1830)
Mary Virginia Bowman

Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) was originally intended as part of a joint publication to include the poems of his college friend, Arthur Hallam, but when Hallam's father objected to the project it was abandoned and Tennyson published separately his section of the proposed collection. Parental objection to the publication of Hallam's poems had not been made, however, until type-setting had been completed. Hence Hallam ordered some copies of his own section to be run off for private distribution among his family and friends.[1]

The obscurity of Hallam's book of poems in this privately issued form has given rise to two major misconceptions. The first—that only two copies have survived—was clarified in 1941 when T. H. Vail Motter made a census listing the details of fifteen known copies.[2]

A second misconception—that at least one copy of the originally intended joint collection actually survives—still remains to be considered. This error was given credence by Hugh I'Anson Fausset in his biography of Tennyson (1923). After commenting that Hallam's idea of a public collaboration with Tennyson was abandoned only when the volume had actually been put into type, Fausset made the flat statement, "A copy of it exists today."[3]

This odd statement seems to go back to an unsigned report in The Bookworm, a London publication in January, 1894 (VII, 48) which describes the sale at Sotheby's of a copy of the two sections bound together. After explaining the original intention of a joint production, the article continues, "and no copy of the complete book has hitherto occurred for sale. In the copy in question, however, Hallam's poems are included." Such a statement could be read to mean a surviving copy of the originally intended publication, or The Bookworm may have meant only that this copy is in the form originally planned. The first reading seems more probable, however, in the light of the statement further on: "Some partially erased pencil notes . . . render it probable that the volume is a unique proof copy belonging to Hallam himself." There is nothing in the context of this passage to indicate The Bookworm remarks are directed at Hallam's section alone.

The confusion seems to be based on the assumption (now known to be false) that no copies of Hallam's Poems had survived the non imprimatur. Therefore, since this volume was in existence, it was explained as a proof copy of the originally intended publication. The ghost raised by Fausset from this shadowy evidence remains to be laid.

The copy described in The Bookworm (no. 8 in Motter's census which refers to the 1925 sale, the volume having eluded him thereafter) was auctioned at Sotheby's in December, 1893, where—according to Book Prices Current 1894—it was bought by the bookseller Pearson.[4] It appeared on the market again in a sale at the Anderson Galleries, New York, in December, 1925 (Sale Catalogue no. 2007, item 291), and once more in December, 1933, at the Ritter-Hopson sale of the James M. Kennedy collection, where it was purchased by Tracy W. McGregor of Detroit. After his death in 1936, the book was bequeathed as a part of his collection to the University of Virginia, where it is now preserved in the McGregor Library. That this is the volume referred to by The Bookworm writer is sufficiently demonstrated by its exact correspondence to his description, including the partially erased pencil notes.

This book is bound in calf (as described in 1894), with "TENNYSON'S POEMS" lettered on the spine. It begins with Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), 154 pages, page 91 misnumbered 19, with "carcanet" on p. 72. The final leaf of advertisements has been removed. Hallam's Poems, 174 pages, follow directly, without the preliminary two-leaf fold containing a blank and the half-title, and without the final blank. At the top of page 1 is inked in a printing hand "Poems | by | Arthur Hallam Esqr." Presumably the

same hand (although in the nature of things this cannot be certain) has also printed on Tennyson's title-page beneath Tennyson's name "& | ARTHUR HALLAM." At the top right hand corner of Tennyson's title in a different hand is written "E.H.F. from Aunt Julia | March 1859."

Throughout the book, both in the Tennyson and in the Hallam sections, are found pencil annotations (most of them partially or completely erased). These are written in what seem to be three hands, all of which are different from the Aunt Julia inscription. The first hand is confined to the written identifications under the titles of three poems in Hallam's section, as "Sir F. A. Doyle", which have not been erased. On the errata page of Tennyson's part is inscribed in what is probably a different hand "To | Edith Hamilton Forsyth", which has been erased but can be read in an infra-red photograph. This writing is somewhat similar to the hand that wrote the identifications, but the inscription is much smaller. Owing to the small amount of the writing it is impossible to make a positive decision, but the two are probably unlike. It is certain, however, that a still different hand has made a number of pencil comments on various poems in both sections, all of them more or less thoroughly erased although some are still readable either by infra-red photographs or by an occasional convenient offset. A sample is the remark on p. 157 of Hallam's section, "I think this would be pleasing if it were intelligible." On p. 5 of Tennyson's Poems the writer has copied in quotation marks the next to the last line of the poem "Like a roseleaf I will crush thee" and has drawn two sets of roseleaves.

Unique interest is given to these annotations by the tradition which has grown up that this is a Hallam family copy. The Bookworm writer insinuates that these notes are by Arthur Hallam ("Some partially erased pencil notes . . . render it probable that the volume is a unique proof copy belonging to Hallam himself."). Later sales catalogue descriptions of the book ascribe the pencil notes as well as the additions on the title-page to Henry Hallam and identify Aunt Julia in the inscription "E.H.F. from Aunt Julia" as Hallam's sister, Julia, who, according to the fiction, passed the book on to a descendent after Henry Hallam's death in 1859.[5]

The source of this belief is unknown. It is probably based mostly on wishful thinking, although possibly it is also related to the erroneous concept that this was the only copy of the Hallam Poems in existence, which

made it seem very probable that the book was Arthur Hallam's own copy, kept by his father after Arthur's death in 1833.[6]

However, the identification of the inscription handwriting as that of Julia Hallam seems most unlikely in the face of the evidence of the bookplate, within the front cover, of John Edwardes Lyall (born 1811 and died 1845), who is apparently the son of George Lyall and Margaret Ann Edwardes. The evidence of his name is corroborated by the fact that he married a Julia Davis, with his sister marrying in 1843 a William Forsyth. Moreover, it is possible to establish the fact that Lyall and Arthur Hallam were acquainted, and presumably friends. The two attended Eton together and were fellow members in the small Eton Society, where they must have become intimate.[7] Thus it is perfectly natural for Lyall to have been the recipient of a copy of his poems from Hallam, or just possibly from his father.

This book, in its present form except for the binding, must have come into the possession of John Edwardes Lyall early in its history, for he died in 1845 after having been made Advocate General of Bengal in 1842. It is improbable that his bookplate would have been inserted in a book after his death, and since the plate is pasted in the present binding, this makes the combination of the Hallam and Tennyson poems prior to 1845, and almost certainly prior to 1842. The binding, although preserved in a slip-case since 1894, is somewhat loose and shows signs of considerable wear.

In connection with this question of the date at which the Hallam and Tennyson parts were brought together, one group of the pencil annotations has a very considerable significance. These are the partially erased annotations in the same hand commenting on the poems in both sections. In the process of binding the present volume, some of the final letters of this set

have been shaved off, thus establishing the writing of these particular annotations, at least, as prior to the present calf binding, which itself is to be dated as prior to 1842.[8] So far as can be determined from the relatively small amount of writing preserved, the hand that wrote these pencil comments on various Tennyson and Hallam poems bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Arthur Hallam.[9] In these circumstances, there is nothing to prevent the hypothesis that Arthur wrote in these two parts already sewn together and then presented them to an Eton (and perhaps Inner Temple) classmate; or else, just possibly, after his son's death Henry Hallam may have sent the volume to a friend, Lyall. Moreover, the comments themselves show such a close interest in the poems as to be more likely those of the author than those of a friend.

Thus, there seem to be two alternatives. If the handwriting is authentically Arthur Hallam's, then this is a presentation copy of the two associated sections made by him, or by his father, to a friend. Or, if the handwriting is that of an unknown person, the book is a made up combination such as could have been done by any individual at any time by combining the two first editions.

There is no justification for the statement that this is a proof copy, for it is not on the paper that would have been used for a proof (the paper seems to be the same as that used in the other first edition of Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical in the McGregor Library). Moreover the pencil annotations which can be deciphered are not the sort of notes made when reading proof.

Nor is there any justification for assuming that this is a copy of a published book in collected form. Those who believed in an actually published copy of the two sections can have had in mind only one of three possible

forms: (1) A collection in which the original plan was to sign and page the sheets of the two sections consecutively, not separately as found at present. (2) A "publisher's" title-page replacing either Tennyson's present title-page or Hallam's half-title. (3) A collection which simply binds the two parts as we know them now; in other words, a replica of the McGregor volume but possibly containing the Hallam half-title and very likely cancelling the Tennyson advertisement leaf.

The first is based on what is probably a false assumption.[10] A collection such as the two young men were contemplating would quite naturally be separately signed and paged in its two parts in order that separate issue of some copies could be made if required. To believe that any other form existed, impressed on paper, than is known from the present separate examples of each part is to believe that some sheets of Hallam's part were actually printed consecutively signed and paged with Tennyson's, and then the type-pages were altered for Hallam's private printing. This is an absurdity.

The writer of The Bookworm account seems to waver between the second or third possibilities, although he is not overly clear in the matter. The second would require the present Tennyson title-leaf, and possibly the Hallam half-title, to be a cancellans, for which there is no evidence.[11] As for the third possibility, any binding of the two parts together in their present form is by no means—as Fausset hastily took it—proof of collected publication. Any private person could perform this operation, and indeed there is a

record that one did.[12] In fact, however, no bound-together copies, except for the McGregor volume, are known to exist today.

To conclude, the tracing of the history of the McGregor volume back to the Sotheby sale in 1893 and its establishment as the collected volume described by the writer of The Bookworm article demonstrates that, whatever interpretation is placed on his comments in 1894, there is nothing in this book which under any circumstances could lead to a belief, as with Fausett, that a copy of the originally intended collection was ever in existence. The McGregor collection is the unique example of what seems to be a fairly well authenticated joint binding; yet, at best, it can be shown only to have been put together from two separate parts, either by Hallam himself or by Lyall, in what we may suppose is substantially the form the proposed joint publication would have taken with the exception of a general title naming the two authors (never printed) and the doubtful matter of whether the half-title is missing here by design or by accident.