ABSTRACT
Published 1842, dated ‘1833’. H.T. describes it as ‘begun under the cloud of his overwhelming sorrow after the death of Arthur Hallam’, news of which was sent to T. on 1 October 1833. This statement has not hitherto been disputed, but that T. had begun it before Hallam’s death is clear from a letter by J. M. Kemble to W. B. Donne (which came down to Mary Barham Johnson). The letter is postmarked 22 June 1833: ‘Next Sir are some superb meditations on Self destruction called Thoughts of a Suicide wherein he argues the point with his soul and is thoroughly floored. These are amazingly fine and deep, and show a mighty stride in intellect since the Second-Rate Sensitive Mind.’ Clearly a version of The Two Voices was already in existence. Spedding wrote to T., 19 Sept. 1834: ‘Last and greatest (though not most perfect in its kind), I have received [from Douglas and John Heath] The thoughts of a suicide. The design is so grand and the moral, if there is one, so important that I trust you will not spare any elaboration of execution. At all events let me have the rest of it and I will tell you at large what I think’ (Letters i 118). In its origin, as Kemble points out, it is a poem like Supposed Confessions (1830,p. 7), and the earlier Remorse (1827, I 98). But T.’s writing of it may well have been affected by the death of Hallam. Both Heath MS (all variants are below) and H.Lpr 254 (virtually identical with Heath MS) stop after l. 309 with three lines added. This would be a feasible ending, and conceivably a better one. The published ending was developed later; Edmund Lushington says that T. ‘left it for some time unfinished…. The termination … I first heard him read’ in 1837 or early 1838 (Mat. i 246). Miss M. J. Donahue quotes FitzGerald’s note on l. 453: ‘Composed as he walked about the Dulwich meadows’; she remarks that T. was there in 1835 (Studies in the 10 Years’ Silence, Yale thesis, 1946,p. 142). T.Nbk 15 includes two drafts (T.MS A); the first ends with l. 96, and the second runs from l. 229–321. (But sheets are missing from this notebook.) T.Nbk 26 (T.MS B) has a fragment beginning at l. 298, and breaking off with l. 393. T.Nbk 22 also has a draft (T.MS C). The Hn MS (HM 1320) ends with l. 174; all its variants that differ from Heath MS are given below.
