TENNYSON AS A MONEY MAKER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1687, 16 May 1884, Page 2

TENNYSON AS A MONEY MAKER.

9 I have heard repeatedly of late that Tennyson would have no means to support his new rank. He should not find it difficult. If he be as unsociable and inhospitable as a baron as he has been as plain Alfred Tennyson, his sustainment of the titlo need not bo expensive, The common opinion that he is only well-to-do is erroneous. For a literary man he is very rich. No author in America has ever begun to make so'much money as he. His poetry has brought him, it is estimated, £BO,OOO or 400,000d01s at least, and the sum has been put as high even as £IOO,OOO and £IIO,OOO. .Being a careful, not to say close, manager, he has so invested his earnings as to have a property worth at present £220,000 or 1,000,000d015. He owns, or did own recently, a house in town, whero ho spends very little time; he has a beautiful place at Farringford, Isle of Wight, and another country seat at Alpworth, in Surrey. For a poet he is very practical, driving, it is said, very sharp bargains with his publishers —holding out for the last shilling.

, No banker or broker in Lombard -st conducts bis affairs more shrewdly. Ho has frequently.changed his publishers, who, to secure him, arc obliged to give hint the most generous terms, The firm with which lie now deals pays, •him extraordinary prices for the exclusive right to issue bis complete works; but he would demand more if he hud any chance of getting it. A publisher who has in (he past done much business with him says he ought to be called Moses Tennyson, and "that, if he had not turned poet, he would have made a brilliant pawnbroker. , It is not strange that he attaches great value to his writings, for he takes unwearied and. endless pains' in {heir production. His is the toil of composition produced by brain sweat. It is anagony of labor which nothing but suppressed self-love or superlative literary ambition would enablo him to endure. Ho often spends hours on a single line, and has been known to spend a whole week on one short poem, It is morathan fifty-four years since he won the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge.for "Timbucto," a piece of blank verse, and'he has been wreaking himself ever since on expression. In that time he has; done enough work to wear out a score Of ordinary men j but he has ever i been sustained by a robust constitution, abundant exercise, and;a degree of vanity that passes all understanding. If genius be, as some declare, unlimited capacity for work, Tennyson is a'genius of the highest order;. For a generation he has''been- stimulated by a great reputation, which has not been eclipsed for more than forty years. To this wo may add his love of gain; for-he is sure of reaping a large recompense, on .every bit of writing, whatever its quality.—London Correspondent Philadelphift Fress. '