I
On September 14, 1852, the Duke of Wellington died in Walmer
Castle on the Channel coast near Dover, a place of residence that he
enjoyed by virtue of his office as Warden of the Cinque Ports. His son and
heir, Arthur Wellesley, Marquis of Douro, was at the time traveling with
his family on the Continent; and until he had been notified no arrangements
for the disposition of the body could be concluded.
[2] Owing to the Duke's austere mode
of
living, both press and populace feared that he might have prohibited a state
funeral. Hence there was general satisfaction over the information provided
on the afternoon of September 17 that there was no such proscription and
that his will placed his remains "at the disposal of his Sovereign."
[3] As the
Illustrated London
News declared, "Throughout the realm of Britain, all questions and
topics of conversation and discussion have temporarily merged into one
— when, where, and with what state and ceremonial the great Duke
of
Wellington shall be buried?" — a concern which Tennyson reflected
in
the opening
line of his second strophe, "Where shall we lay the man whom we
deplore?"
[4] On September 20, in a
letter from Balmoral to the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister, Lord
Derby, hastening, as he said, "to relieve the public anxiety," announced the
Queen's wish that the Duke of Wellington, "with all solemnity due to the
greatness of the occasion," should be buried in St. Paul's cathedral, "there
to rest by the side of Nelson — the greatest military by the side of
the
greatest naval chief who ever reflected lustre upon the annals of England."
In order to honor the Duke with the will of the people, however, the Queen
had determined to await the approval of her decision by both houses of
Parliament, which were not expected to assemble until November 11.
[5] Preparations began for an elaborate
ceremonial, but it was clear that the funeral could not take place until
almost two months had elapsed.
Two months seem ample time in which to prepare a poetical tribute
to the departed hero; but Tennyson's habitually deliberate composition and
his characteristic diffidence lend credence to Thomas Kibble Hervey's
assertion in the Athenaeum, based he said on personal
knowledge, that the poet was hurried in writing the ode and that in
commemorating the occasion he "yielded reluctantly to arguments."[6] At
any rate, he accepted the challenge that circumstances had provided and can
scarcely have found the task uncongenial — mere "Laureate work,"
as
some of the reviewers implied. Doubtless, he was genuinely moved by the
Duke of Wellington's death and by the implications of his life, symbolizing
as it did England's heroic past, public service, devotion to duty, courage,
simplicity, integrity. Alarmed over the possibility of a French invasion,
after Louis Napoleon's
coup d'état of December,
1851,
Tennyson, "in a white heat of emotion," as Sir Charles says, had dashed off
a series of newspaper verses in which, under assumed names, he had
exhorted his countrymen to vigilance and valor.
[7] He had been a fervid proponent of
the
Militia Bill, which augmented the national defenses by 80,000 militiamen
and which the Duke of Wellington had championed in the House of Lords
on June 15, 1852.
[8] From the
beginning of his literary
career in 1830, Tennyson had shown a predilection for the patriotic
strain.
[9] Everyone is familiar
with the conservative liberalism of "You ask me, why," "Of old sat
Freedom," and "Love thou thy land" (1842). "Hail, Briton!" and "The
Queen of the Isles," written in the '30's and until recently unpublished,
further evince his response to public events — a response so fully
developed and consistently maintained that he could appropriate six lines
from "Hail, Briton!" for his ode to Wellington.
[10] The civic muse recurs in "Walking
to the
Mail" and "Locksley Hall" (1842), in "The Golden Year" (1846), in the
"Conclusion" to
The Princess (1847), and in
In
Memoriam (1850). In 1851 the seventh edition of
Poems
had opened with laudatory stanzas "To the Queen."
Yet if, once committed, Tennyson embarked upon the project with
some verve, he must have labored under handicaps. Besides having
undertaken to meet a deadline, he had obligated himself to demonstrate his
qualities as laureate. "To the Queen" had actually been his initial song as
court poet, but the Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington
would be his first separately published venture since In
Memoriam and his acceptance of the bays. Two years of
domesticity,
with its concomitant house-hunting, travel, child-birth, and visitors, had not
been conducive to poetry; and now Hallam Tennyson, born on August 11
and christened October 5, was both a fascination and a distraction.[11] Tennyson, generally acknowledged
to be
the leading poet of England, had a reptutation to maintain; and The
Times' belated review of In Memoriam and George
Gilfillan's recent diatribe in the Critic provided no grounds
for complacency.[12] For the first time in his literary
life Tennyson was truly under pressure.
In the latter half of October a royal proclamation officially scheduled
the Speech from the Throne and the opening of Parliamentary business for
November 11. Approval of Wellington's obsequies presumably would soon
follow, and the burial was projected for the period from November 17
through 19.[13] Meanwhile Tennyson
persevered at
his work. Devising an original prosodic form and a unifying scheme of
monologue, dialogue, and action, he largely surmounted the impediments
to poesy that confronted him. On November 6 the poet's publisher, Edward
Moxon, wrote as follows:
