Arthur Hallam
Hallam has been described as the jeune homme fatal (French for "deadly [seductive] young man") of his generation.
He attended school at Eton, where he met the future prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone.
(Hallam read a paper on 'whether the poems of Shelley have an immoral tendency'; Tennyson was to speak on 'Ghosts', but was, according to his son's Memoir, 'too shy to deliver it' – only the Preface to the essay survives).
[2] In the summer holidays, Tennyson and Hallam travelled to the Pyrenees (on a secret mission to take money and instructions written in invisible ink to General Torrijos who was planning a revolution against the tyranny of King Ferdinand VII of Spain).
In August, Hallam wrote an enthusiastic article 'On Some of the Characteristics of Modern Poetry, and on the Lyrical Poems of Alfred Tennyson' for the Englishman's Magazine.
In October Hallam entered the office of a conveyancer, Mr Walters, of Lincoln's Inn Fields.
It was apparently a recurrence of the "ague" he had suffered earlier that year, and, although it would delay their departure to Prague, there seemed to be little cause for alarm.
Your friend, Sir, and my much-loved Nephew, Arthur Hallam, is no more – it has pleased God to remove him from this his first scene of Existence, to that better world for which he was Created.
May that Being in whose hands are all the Destinies of Man – and who has promised to comfort all that Mourn – pour the Balm of Consolation on all the Families who are bowed down by this unexpected dispensation!
Poor Arthur had a slight attack of Ague – which he had often had – Order'd his fire to be lighted – and talked with as much cheerfulness as usual – He suddenly became insensible, and his Spirit departed without Pain – The Physician endeavour'd to get any Blood from him – and on Examination it was the General Opinion that he could not have lived long – This was also Dr Holland's opinion – The account I have endeavour'd to give you, is merely what I have been able to gather, but the family of course are in too great distress to enter into details —
"[8] To his friends, Hallam's death came as "a loud and terrible stroke from the reality of things upon the faery building of our youth".
[8] They remembered him in vivid elegy: he had been "the most charming and the most promising' of his contemporaries; "his mind was more original & powerful than the minds of us his contemporaries"; "he had a genius for metaphysical analysis", "a peculiar clearness of perception", and an "always active mind"; an "angelic spirit", "he seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world*; "his mighty spirit (beautiful and powerful as it had already grown), yet bore all the marks of youth, and growth, and ripening promise.
"[10] Gladstone hoped "that some part of what Hallam has written may be ... put into a more durable form ... his letters I think are worthy of permanent preservation".
On being asked by Henry Hallam to contribute to an introduction, Tennyson replied: "I attempted to draw a memoir of his life and character, but I failed to do him justice.
Emilia Tennyson also named her elder son, Arthur Henry Hallam, in his honour.
Francis Turner Palgrave dedicated to Tennyson his Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics (MacMillan 1861), declaring in the Preface that 'It would have been hence a peculiar pleasure and pride to dedicate what I have endeavoured to make a true national Anthology of three centuries to Henry Hallam'.
