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A poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson |
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Lady Clare [Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare] |
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Title: Lady Clare [Lord Ronald courted Lady Clare] Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson [More Titles by Tennyson] This poem was suggested by Miss Ferrier's powerful novel 'The Inheritance'. A comparison with the plot of Miss Ferrier's novel will show with what tact and skill Tennyson has adapted the tale to his ballad. Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, marries a Miss Sarah Black, a girl of humble and obscure birth. He dies, leaving a widow and as is supposed a daughter, Gertrude, who claim the protection of Lord Rossville, as the child is heiress presumptive to the earldom. On Lord Rossville's death she accordingly becomes Countess of Rossville. She has two lovers, both distant connections, Colonel Delmour and Edward Lyndsay. At last it is discovered that she was not the daughter of Thomas St. Clair and her supposed mother, but of one Marion La Motte and Jacob Leviston, and that Mrs. St. Clair had adopted her when a baby and passed her off as her own child, that she might succeed to the title. Meanwhile Delmour by the death of his elder brother succeeds to the title and estates forfeited by the detected foundling, but instead of acting as Tennyson's Lord Ronald does, he repudiates her and marries a duchess. But her other lover Lyndsay is true to her and marries her. Delmour not long afterwards dies without issue, and Lyndsay succeeds to the title, Gertrude then becoming after all Countess of Rossville. In details Tennyson follows the novel sometimes very closely. Thus the "single rose," the poor dress, the bitter exclamation about her being a beggar born, are from the novel. The 1842 and all editions up to and including 1850 begin with the following stanza and omit stanza 2:--
I trow they did not part in scorn: "He does not love me for my birth, In there came old Alice the nurse, "O God be thank'd!" said Alice the nurse, "Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse?" "The old Earl's daughter died at my breast; "Falsely, falsely have ye done, "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "If I'm a beggar born," she said, "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse, "Nay now, what faith?" said Alice the nurse, "Yet give one kiss to your mother dear! "Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear, She clad herself in a russet gown, The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower: "If I come drest like a village maid, "Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, O and proudly stood she up! He laugh'd a laugh of merry scorn: "If you are not the heiress born, [Footnote 1: All up to and including 1850. Brooch.] [Footnote 2: All up to and including 1850. Though.] [Footnote 3: The stanza beginning "The lily-white doe" is omitted in 1842 and 1843, and in the subsequent editions up to and including 1850 begins "A lily-white doe".] [Footnote 4: In a letter addressed to Tennyson the late Mr. Peter Bayne ventured to object to the dramatic propriety of Lady Clare speaking of herself as "a beggar born". Tennyson defended it by saying: "You make no allowance for the shock of the fall from being Lady Clare to finding herself the child of a nurse". But the expression is Miss Ferrier's: "Oh that she had suffered me to remain the beggar I was born"; and again to her lover: "You have loved an impostor and a beggar".] [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |