Illuminated manuscript by Arthur Granville Smith (1880-1950), 'Crossing the Bar' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, ca.1900-1920

Two illuminated manuscript sheets mounted inside a hinged leather binding. The tooled binding is decorated with an inset roundel in varnished watercolour on the front. The manuscript pages show the text of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Crossing the Bar' with marginal decorations depicting figures, foliage and ships at sea.

Given by Ron Smith

Presented by Mr Ron Smith, September 2008

Historical significance: Tennyson wrote this poem three years before he died, leading some historians to speculate that he wrote it as his own elegy. At the author’s own request, expressed to his son Hallam shortly before he died, it is traditionally the last to appear in anthologies of his work. He wrote the poem after a severe illness while at sea, crossing the Solent from Aldworth to Farringford on the Isle of Wight. The text of the poem reads:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Tennyson uses the metaphor of a ‘sandbar’ (a ridge of sand built up by currents along the shore) to describe the barrier between life and death. His use of the image of ‘crossing’ refers to passing from one world into the next and has Christian connotations, with the act of ‘crossing’ oneself as a Catholic gesture of religious faith and devotion. Appropriately, in the case of this object, a red cross with gold tooling decorate the cover of the leather binding in which Smith’s two manuscript pages are mounted.

Arthur Granville Smith (born ca.1880) does not appear in any artists' dictionaries or listings. According to information from his nephew, he lived in Manchester, and received art training from his father (also Granville Smith). He grew up in Old Trafford and for a short while before the Great War his family lived in Southwark, London, before settling in Heald Green, a small suburb south of Manchester. Smith married Charlotte Wood from Sheppard in 1923 and they had one son.

This early 20th-century illuminated manuscript is a beautiful example of the renaissance of illustration which occurred in the late 19th century as a result of the Aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts Movements. In style and composition, it looks back to medieval manuscripts, while illustrating one of the most important and best loved poems of the Victorian era, Alfred Lord Tennyson's sacred elegiac poem 'Crossing the Bar' (1889).

Tennyson wrote this poem three years before he died, leading some historians to speculate that he wrote it as his own elegy. At the author's own request, expressed to his son Hallam shortly before he died, it is traditionally the last to appear in anthologies of his work. He wrote the poem after a severe illness while at sea, crossing the Solent from Aldworth to Farringford on the Isle of Wight. The text of the poem reads:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Tennyson uses the metaphor of a 'sandbar' (a ridge of sand built up by currents along the shore) to describe the barrier between life and death. His use of the image of 'crossing' refers to passing from one world into the next and has Christian connotations, with the act of 'crossing' oneself as a Catholic gesture of religious faith and devotion. Appropriately, in the case of this object, a red cross with gold tooling decorate the cover of the leather binding in which Smith's two manuscript pages are mounted.

E.763-2008