Below, Alfred Lord Tennyson, then the Poet Laureate of Great Britain, writes to his friend and contemporary Edward Fitzgerald. Tennyson felt he was having a creative dry spell. Ever a harsh critic of his own material, Tennyson laments the quality of his recently published poem, The Princess, which tells the story of a blue stocking university founder who gives up her intellectual pursuits after falling in love.
To Edward Fitzgerald
MS. Yale.
[Late December 1847]
My dear Fitz
Aint I a beast for not answering you before? not that I’m going to write now—only to tell you that I have seen Carlyle more than once and that I have been sojourning at 42 Ebury Street for some 20 days or so and that I am going to bolt as soon as ever I can and that I would go to Italy if I could get anybody to go with me which I can’t and so I suppose I shant go which makes me hate myself and all the world: for the rest have been bedined usque ad nauseam. A pint of pale ale and a chop are things yearned after, not achievable except by way of lunch: however this night I have sent an excuse to Mrs. Procter and here I am alone and wish you were with me: how are you getting on? Don’t grow quite into glebe before I see you again. My Book is out and I hate it and so no doubt will you. Never mind you will like me none the worse and now goodnight I am knocked up and going to Bed.
Ever yours
A.Tennyson
From The Letters of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1821-1850. Edited by Cecil Y. Lang and Edgar F. Shannon Jr. Library of Congress, 1981.
FURTHER READING
Tennyson’s “lost ten years.”
An excerpt from Tennyson’s “Tiresias,” dedicated to Fitzgerald.
Edward Fitzgerald was best known for his translation of the Persian poetry collection, “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.”