THE TENNYSON COLLECTION IN THE WRENN LIBRARY BY FANNIE E. RATCHFORD That the Wrenn Library, now in the University of Texas, possesses the best collection of Tennyson in this country, is a statement several times reiterated by Mr. Thomas J. Wise of London in his correspondence with Mr. Wrenn, the collector of the library. In reporting one noteworthy purchase made for Mr. Wrenn he wrote on December 1, 1905— Adding these to what you already possess I am convinced that you and I now possess the two finest, most complete collections of Tennyson in the world, you on your side of the Atlantic and I on my side. I do not forget that Mr. Spoor has the Lover's Tale and that Mr. Harris Arnold has The True and The False, but you have now so many pieces of which no other copy is owned in America, that neither Mr. Spoor nor Mr. Harris Arnold can approach you. A few weeks later he repeats, There is not the slightest doubt T. J. W. [Mr. Wise] and J. H. W. [Mr. Wrenn] are the two proud possessors of the two finest collections of Tennyson extant. You unquestionably rank ahead of both Mr. Harris Arnold and Pierpont Morgan. I am going to make fresh effort to fill up the few gaps that still remain in both our sets. This magnificent collection of approximately one hundred items may best be described under three divisions: the various collections of poems valuable because of their association with the author rather than for their rarity; the separate pieces, most of them extremely rare by reason of either the small editions or the ephemeral form in which they were issued; and the "trial books," so rare as to rank among the "impossibles" of book collecting. There is nothing remarkable in the statement that the Library contains a copy of every collection of poems issued during the poet's lifetime, from the Poems by Two Brothers, 1827, to the Death of OEnowe and Other Poems, 1892; for these collections were issued in editions varying from 500 to 60,000 copies, as Tennyson's popularity with the reading public grew to phenomenal proportions, and such copies are, consequently, fairly common. The student or the casual visitor to the library would find little more than passing interest, on turning the leaves of the modest copy of Poems Chiefly Lyrical, 1830, in its original drab boards, to find the page 91 misnumbered 19; in tracing the textual changes of The Princess through the various editions; in looking upon the cancelled title page of Idylls of the Hearth, which gave place to Enoch Arden; or in hunting out the well-known misprints of In Memoriam, for all these misprints and changes have been described in high-school texts often enough to be familiar to all. But the most blasé could hardly suppress an amateurish thrill of pure delight in following the trail of the author's association over and through them all. Here is the poet's own copy of Poems of 1842, each volume bearing on the fly page a holograph manuscript of a poem in Tennyson's characteristic script. In Volume I is a poem headed Elegies; in Volume II is a sonnet beginning, "When night hath climbed her peak of highest noon." Both of these were included in Poems of 1830, but neither was ever reprinted in any authorized edition of Tennyson's poems. In his Bibliography of Tennyson, Mr. Wise reproduced both of these manuscripts. Even more interesting are the three association copies of the Idylls of the King. The first edition of 1859 bears upon the title page the presentation inscription in the author's own hand, "Joseph Wolff from A. Tennyson;" the fourth edition of 1862, the poet's personal copy, is without inscription except for his autograph on the title page, with the curious monograming of the A and T that characterizes Tennyson's signature; the ninth edition of 1869, freely marked with the author's corrections, is of especial interest as illustrating Tennyson's habit of continued revision of his work through each successive edition. Throughout the poem of Geraint and Enid, you is changed to ye, and the modern form of the verb is changed to the old to give the medieval atmosphere. In a copy of the Holy Grail, 1870, also corrected in the author's handwriting, are inserted fragments of still earlier corrected proof and portions of manuscript differing materially from the printed text. The first published edition of Gareth and Lynette, 1872, has inserted at the commencement a manuscript draft, in prose, in Tennyson's handwriting, of a dialogue betwen Gareth and King Arthur, the first form in which the dialogue was imagined by the author. The last three books mentioned, together with three others yet to be described, came to Mr. Wrenn from the famous Rowfant Library of Frederick Locker-Lampson, "poet, philosopher, and man of the world," beloved of Tennyson and the other singers of his day. Their association with this library and its owner, about which gathers a whole literature, would render them almost priceless to a collector, even if they were not "Tennyson association books." From this celebrated library came some of the choicest volumes in the Wrenn collection, among them six of the Tennyson association books. One of the most interesting items of the first group mentioned is the author's proof copy of Selections from Tennyson, 1864, which shows his careful trying and balancing of words and phrases. The familiar line Locksley Hall that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, has been changed to Locksley Hall that half in ruins overlooks the sandy tracts. In The Vision of Sin, the passage Another said: "The crime of sense became is changed to read: Another answer'd, "But a crime of sense? Give him new nerves with old experience." In the selection from Maud beginning, "Go not, happy day," four lines have been struck out: Till the red man dance Of the second of the three groups mentioned, the scarcer separate poems published by Tennyson, the Wrenn collection contains all but five mentioned by Mr. Wise in his bibliography, and one that is not mentioned in that work. Only one of the five lacking is of great rarity, Stanzas on the Marriage of the Princess Royal, 1858. These wedding verses, consisting of two stanzas of seven lines each, were sung to the tune of the National Anthem at a concert given by the Queen at Buckingham Palace on the evening of January 25, the day on which the Princess Royal was married to Prince Frederick William of Prussia. The poem, printed on one side of a single quarter sheet, was distributed to the guests at the concert, and suffered the usual fate of such ephemeral trifles. At the time that Mr. Wise wrote (1908), his own copy, the one given by Tennyson to his niece, Miss Lushington, was the only one known to be in existence. The other missing poems, all fairly common, are The Charge of the Light Brigade, of which a thousand copies were printed by Tennyson for the soldiers before Sebastapol, when he was told that they had a liking for the ballad, which had appeared in the Examiner for Saturday, December 9th, 1854; The Widow, set to music by Arthur Sullivan, 1871; The Gordon Boy's Hymn, set to music by Lady Tennyson, 1885; and Rifle Clubs, which was the earliest form of the poem The War, published after the poet's death from the original manuscript. This manuscript was sent to Coventry Patmore, who initiated the movement for the formation of the Volunteer Corps of 1851, when England was a good deal excited by the threatening ambitions of Louis Napoleon. The piece not mentioned by Mr. Wise is Helen's Tower, probably printed in 1850 or 1851. The verses were written for the dedication of a tower erected by Lord Dufferin in honor of his mother, on the top of a high hill in his park at Clandeboye, near Belfast, Ireland. Lord Dufferin had begged Tennyson for a stanza to be engraved on a tablet in the tower, and Tennyson replied with the twelve-line stanza, which begins, "Helen's Tower, here I stand." This poem together with one written by Lord Dufferin's mother for her son on his twenty-first birthday, was privately printed by Lord Dufferin in a very limited edition. The Wrenn list of rare separately published pieces includes Timbuctoo, the poem, which won the Chancellor's Medal at the Cambridge Commencement, 1829, the title page of which contains the first public mention of Alfred Tennyson's name in connection with poetry; the Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 1859, with holograph signed letter from the Iron Duke inserted; two association copies of the Ode on the Opening of the International Exhibition, one of them containing five lines of manuscript in Tennyson's writing, the other containing the poet's signature; both the small pamphlet edition of the Welcome to Alexandra, 1863, and the elaborately illustrated one; a presentation copy of the first authorized edition of The Lover's Tale, 1879; the 1882 edition of Hands All Round, with music arranged by Villiers Stanford; one of the fifty copies of To H. R. H. Princess Beatrice, 1885, printed for private distribution only; three rare copies of Carmen Saeculare, the ode written for the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, the first edition issued, of which not more than fifty copies were printed, a copy of the author's private edition, and a copy of the edition set to music by Mr. Stanford; the extraordinarily rare poem |