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‘A Life Lived Quickly’
Tennyson’s Friend Arthur Hallam
and His Legend
| Martin Blocksidge |
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| Martin Blocksidge was Head of English at the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and Director of Studies at St. Dunstan's College, London. He is a former President of The English Association. Martin Blocksidge is the author of The Sacred Weapon: An Introduction to Pope's Satire, and editor and contributor to Teaching Literature and Shakespeare in Education (Continuum), as well as various articles on Shakespeare, nineteenth-century poetry, and the teaching of English literature.
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Arthur Hallam’s
early death was the subject of Tennyson’s celebrated poem
In Memoriam. As a result of its popularity, Hallam became a legendary
figure, very much accepted on Tennyson’s terms as being almost
divinely gifted and of immense promise. While this representation
of Hallam has remained generally accepted, A Life Lived Quickly
seeks both to supplement and challenge it, offering a more detailed
and objective portrait of the man. That Hallam has a difficult relationship
with his father (himself a famous literary figure), suffered a mental
breakdown during his first year at Cambridge, and pursued an extremely
fraught love affair with Tennyson’s sister in the face of
opposition from both families, are important but largely unknown
aspects of his life. The author also repudiates the often-made suggestion
that Hallam and Tennyson may have had a homosexual relationship.
… As well as examining Hallam’s published writings,
the book makes liberal use of his letters, of which a collected
edition has been in existence since 1981, and includes treatments
of hitherto unpublished poems and more recently discovered letters.
Apart from presenting Arthur Hallam as a complex and interesting
character in his own right, the book offers insight into the literary
culture of early nineteenth-century England. In devoting attention
to Hallam’s time at Eton and Cambridge, the book also deals
in detail with the experience of being educated in those unreformed
institutions.
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List of Illustrations, Preface & Acknowledgements
chapter one
Naturally Disputatious: Father and Son, 1811–1822
chapter two
An Unreformed Education: Eton College, 1822–1827
chapter three
A Farewell to the South: Italy, 1827–1828
chapter four
‘Cambridge I hate intensely’: Trinity College, 1828–1829
chapter five
Living Awfully Fast: The Apostles and Somersby, 1830–1831
chapter six
A Young Man of Letters, 1831–1833
The Last of Cambridge
Mainly in London
chapter seven
A Creature of Great Promise: Death and Transfiguration
Notes, Bibliography & Index
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“In the penultimate paragraph
of his biography, Martin Blocksidge writes:
‘It is as a phenomenon just beyond the reach of physical reality
that Hallam has largely been perceived since his death. It
has served so many to grant him his own special status: superhuman,
almost supernatural, iconic, but bearing only a glancing reference
to the man of flesh and blood.’
… It is quickly apparent that Blocksidge’s purpose in
this fine survey of Hallam’s 22 years of life is to restore
flesh and blood to these fugitive remains. Nowhere is this
more potently successful than in his account of the idyllic
Somersby episodes of 1830 when Hallam fell in love with Emily
Tennyson and produced what are easily his best poems, called
in the manuscript notebook in which they are inscribed ‘Somersby
Sonnets’ and ‘Sonnets written after my return from Somersby’.
Because, as Blocksidge says, these poems look outwards
to the loveliness of the settings and to the tenderness of
the beloved, they are paradoxically more revealing about Hallam’s
personality than most of his other poems. Importantly he says
that from this moment Hallam’s involvement with the Tennyson
family increasingly centred on Emily rather than on Alfred.
This jolts one into a redefining of our picture of the Alfred/Arthur
relationship and it is like a breath of fresh air blowing
over perceptions, assumptions and judgments figuring in many
biographical presentations of Tennyson.
… It means of course that we must see Tennyson’s In
Memoriam not only as a memory of Arthur Hallam but also
as a memory of Arthur’s courtship of Emily. This is why the
setting of Somersby is so important. Blocksidge opens this
vein and prompts these further speculations though he does
not develop them. It must be remembered that Hallam’s intent
was to marry Emily – the whole movement of these, his last
years, was moulded by this driving desire. There is thus a
striking resonance in Tennyson’s having chosen to end his
great elegy with a marriage, so bringing Hallam’s quest for
marital fulfilment into a correspondingly powerful imaginative
poetic conclusion.
… While Hallam’s relationship with Emily may be a central
issue in the book, other issues are treated with equal dexterity.
For example, Hallam’s distress on having to leave schoolfriends
highlights the essentially lonely side of his nature and explains
to a great degree his pull to the gregarious world of debating
which he relished both at Eton and at Cambridge. Also the
problem of Gladstone and Hallam’s acquaintance is succinctly
and sensitively dealt with, as in this extract:
… In 1829, two years after his departure from Eton,
Gladstone’s feelings about Hallam were still peculiarly intense,
as an entry in his diary for the 14th of September that year
shows. […] Gladstone sounds wounded and betrayed. The entry
is embarrassed and oblique, its subject remaining anonymous
throughout, though easily identifiable. Gladstone seems to
be confronting a series of emotions which he would otherwise
prefer to evade. Other potentially problematic aspects of
the life are treated with similar delicacy; while Henry Hallam
figures large in the outline of Arthur’s upbringing and provokes
dislike in the reader, as he did his own contemporaries, here
Blocksidge softens the effect with a sympathy and compassion
that enriches the portrayal.
… The book is graced with choice expressions (Tennyson’s
‘fleet but flimsy’ poems addressed to young ladies, ‘real
or imagined’, for example), the research is rigorous and the
judgements are fair and rounded. This is an extremely worthy
tribute to its subject and it is pleasing to have it appear
in the bicentennial year.” Roger Evans, Tennyson
Research Bulletin
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Publication Details
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Hardback ISBN: |
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978-1-84519-418-5 |
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Page Extent / Format: |
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272 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
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Release Date: |
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October 2010 |
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Illustrated: |
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Yes |
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Hardback Price: |
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£49.95 / $79.95 |
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| This book can be ordered online or by telephone. |
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For the UK and Rest of the World:
Gazelle Book Services
tel. 44 (0)1524-68765 |
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For the United States:
International Specialized Book Services
tel. (1) 503 287-3093 or (800) 944-6190 |
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For Canada:
University of Toronto Distribution
tel. (1) 800-565-9523 |
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