In Memoriam, A. H. H. (Tennyson)

"In Memoriam, A. H. H." is a masterpiece of Victorian poetry written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson between the years of 1833 and 1850. It is an elegiac piece that commemorates the loss of Tennyson's dearest friend and fellow poet, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died suddenly in 1833 at the age of 22. Tennyson began writing immediately, recording, primarily for himself, the process and progress of his grief for the death of a person he richly admired and dearly loved. Tennyson and Hallam met at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1829 and became fast friends, willing and able to share insights and even debate topics of mutual interest, of which there were evidently many.

So deep was their friendship that, in the poem, Tennyson frequently compares their common affection to that of a married couple, even while, in other parts of the poem, Tennyson fondly discusses Hallam's romantic attraction for one of Tennyson's sisters, a notion that had clearly pleased Tennyson, giving him high hopes of becoming an uncle to Hallam's child. The poem is weighted with heart-felt love, trauma, loss and grief, and, since its quality is found in its craftsmanship and its deep emotional honesty and openness, what makes this masterpiece of verse so highly vital is that, for the first time in literary history, the long, rough, lonely road of grief and recovery is recorded step-by-step, with all its contradictory sensations and progress-and-regress repetition, with eloquence, finesse, thoughtfulness, thoroughness and sensitivity from its conception to whatever frail finality might be afforded a person on this side of eternity.

So effective is Tennyson's record that, after its publication in 1850 and after the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's beloved consort, Victoria herself was able to receive a modicum of solace from the wisdom of the poetry Tennyson had expressed. Therefore, it is not just Tennyson's life and era that demand his poetry to be classified as Victorian, nor is it his 42-year posting as Poet Laureate during Victoria's reign. What makes Tennyson's work so undeniably Victorian is the rare praise from the very person whose name marks that literary era.