How the Red Ring Became the Bronze Horse and the Horse Became the Ring: Tennyson’s “Boädicea”

Abstract

Tennyson’s poem “Boadicea”, published in 1864 but at least conceived in 1858, has never been very highly regarded. It is usually omitted from editions of the complete poetical works. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, written in an approximation of Catullan/Callimachan galliambics, it is no easy read. Secondly and more importantly, however, it sits most awkwardly within a huge body of contemporary art -paintings, sculptures, and novels as well as poems which present the (properly) Queen Regent of the Iceni as the spiritual ancestor of Victoria (the Gaelic word boudicca does, after all, men “victory”). Far from portraying Boadicea (as the name was then commonly spelt from the 18th to themed 20th centuries) as the harbinger of British imperial glory, Tennyson presents her as the half-mad victim of Roman oppression, brutalized by her own experiences into a personal vendetta. I argue that this poem is a riposte to Sir William Thornycroft’s bronze statue of Boadicea, a symbol of patriotic pride. It was begun at roughly the same time as the poem, both at the behest of Prince Albert; Tennyson would have seen Thornycroft’s models. In the poem, Tennyson envisions Boadicea reducing Colchester and Londonto a red-black stain infested with carrion eaters, and he seems to be asking whether this colour, ironically reflected in the finished statue of the Regent, chariot and horses (she used cavalry and chariots to attack Londinium, after all) is anything like a becoming tribute to Victoria. As for the dating of composition, Tennyson’s the most likely model for Boadicea is Lakshmibai, Queen Regent of Jhansi, who, during the Indian Mutiny of late 1857, is reputed to have ordered a massacre of English civilians who were tortured and dismembered in much the same as Boudicca’s victims. The poem is thus a meditation on the evils inherent in empire building and its effect upon native peoples.