Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1892 — A Description of Tennyson. [ARTICLE]

A Description of Tennyson.

Sir Edwin Arnold giVfes us this striking pen portrait of the poet laureate in the Forum: Everybody knows by photograph the manner of man Lord Tennysonis—surely a beautiful face, if ever the adjective could be applied to masculine features, and never more beautiful in any stage of life than now, when age has fixed all the finer features and lent them a new dignity and majesty. Everybody is familiar with the broad forehead, the clear, deep eyes, the strongly cut nose, and finely chiseled lips, the long hair fringing those temples—shrines of high thought—and the genial, massive and commanding aspect of the poet. Albeit past his eightysecond birthday, Lord Tennyson’s figure is only weakened, not broken, by age. His hair preserves much of its old, dark color, and, excepting in places, is hardly more than “sable-sil-vered.” His spirit is as alert, his glance as keen and alight as ever. Though he does not rise upon our entrance, making no ceremony with friends, he leads at Once an animated conversation. It is a summer day, or rather early autumn, but the weather /has been chilly, and the winds are blowing from that dreadful quarter, the east, so that the poet is wearing a loose wrapper, and around his neck a white silk handkerchief loosely knotted. By the way, on the left side of his neck there lodges a small brown birthmark, very characteristic, as if a drop of dark wine had dropped there and had stained the skin. His hands are manly and powerful in outline, but delicate and finely formed, as those of a poet should be. On his head, as an additional protection from the caprices of the English weather, he wears a small black velvet cap. These precautions are the more necessary, because not long ago he was suffering sadly from rheumatism and bronchitis, which at one time, indeed, filled all his friends with anxiety, and became for weeks together a national concern. And a pertain shadow overhangs the hospitable abode, moreover, from the illness of Lady Tennyson (always a great invalid, but recently and to-day in positive danger), so that our first inquiries are made in an anxious and subdued tone; nor does the conversation fairly commence till we have been a little reassured by the last report of the Doctor. We shall not see the gentle face of the poet’s wife today, she is hopelessly imprisoned in hep room; but upon the wall hangs a charming portrait of her in oils, by Watts, and she is known far and wide in the neighborhood for her kindness of heart and graceful charities.