HOW TENNYSON TALKS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1795, 21 March 1888, Page 3

HOW TENNYSON TALKS

Tennyson (says the St Louia " Republican ") (b now m hla 78th year, his locks •re thinning fast, and there are fewer dark ones than there were even three years ago, but his wonderful noble eye has not loHt Its lustre. Most likely he shifts a clay pipe into his left band that he may gilp you with hi 3 right, This pipe Is his calumet of paace, hie secret charm for abstraction, his incense to gods. At morn, at noon, at night, alone or accompanied, the pipe Is hla half-way house between meals and the sure precursor of a night's repose. The Tennysonian costume is seen ' at Its best m here and does not seem so ' much an affectation. Ho thaws but slowly even In his own room, but tha magic of a third pipeful sets wagging that masculine tongue and nether jawbones, and if the topic stirs him he will pour forth fine tolling periods lv the sturdy old English accents which modern Buperfiae cockney schooling la polishing out of existence. A.S the conyereation warms his puffa pome fast and thick, and the Bounds of the pipe waxes more and more warlike. Not the bagpipes nor the pipes of Pan, but the " churchwardens," as we call the long clays, for Tennyson hats a lordly whim never to emoke the same pipe twice. When the charge is exhausted he breaks the shank, drops it into a cistern-lika vase and fills a clean one from the box supplied by his wholesa'e dealer.