‘Hands so often clasp’d in mine’

Alfred Garth Jones

1901

Wood engraving

5¼ x 3¼ inches

Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam, facing p. 14.

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This image is from the trade edition of Tennyson’s poem, and represents the poet’s imagining of Hallam’s death in metaphorical terms as the tumult of the sea – a recurring image both here and throughout his verse. Jones’s design is a rich piece of Art Nouveau, with the tossing ship acting as a symbol of Tennyson’s grief and the sinuous waves as a sign of Hallam’s destruction. The broken mast, protruding from the spirals and swirls, connects the circumstances of the narrator and his subject: both, we might say, are wrecked. In part ornamental and in part an expressive illustration, Jones’s designs have considerable visual impact.