Tennyson and His Friends Part 2

Many characteristics of Lincolnshire scenery and of Somersby in particular are introduced in "In Memoriam."

In Canto Lx.x.xIX. the poet speaks of the hills which shut in the Somersby Valley on the north:

Nor less it pleased in l.u.s.tier moods Beyond the bounding hill to stray.

In XCV. he speaks of the knolls, elsewhere described as "The h.o.a.ry knolls of ash and haw," where the cattle lie on a summer night:

Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field:

and in Canto C. he calls to mind:

The sheepwalk up the windy wold,

and many other features seen in his walks with Arthur Hallam at Somersby.

In "Mariana" we have:

From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn, About the lonely moated grange.

But no picture is more complete and accurate and remarkable than that of a wet day in the Marsh and on the sands of Mablethorpe:

Here often when a child I lay reclined: I took delight in this fair strand and free: Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, And here the Grecian ships all seem'd to be.

And here again I come, and only find The drain-cut level of the marshy lea, Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind, Dim sh.o.r.es, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea.

From what we have said it will be clear to the reader that while it is the _fen_ land only that the railway traveller sees, it is the _Marsh_ and the _Wolds_--and particularly in Lord Tennyson's mind the Wolds--that make the characteristic charm of the county, a charm of which so many ill.u.s.trations are to be found throughout his poems. Certainly in her wide extended views, in the open wolds with the villages and their gray church towers nestling in the sheltered nooks at the wold foot, and also (to quote again from the "Lincolnshire Rector") "in her glorious parish churches and gigantic steeples, Lincolnshire has charms and beauties of her own. And as to fostering genius, has she not proved herself to be the 'meet nurse of a poetic child'? for here, be it remembered, here in the heart of the land, in Mid-Lincolnshire, Alfred Tennyson was born, here he spent all his earliest and freshest days; here he first felt the divine afflatus, and found fit material for his muse:

The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the Camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol."

II

THE SOMERSBY FRIENDS

We leave the well-beloved place Where first we gazed upon the sky; The roofs, that heard our earliest cry, Will shelter one of stranger race.

I turn to go: my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms; They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret.

It is no wonder that the Tennysons loved Somersby. They were a large family, and here they grew up together, making their own world and growing ever more fond of the place for its a.s.sociations. "How often have I longed to be with you at Somersby!" writes Alfred Tennyson's sister, Mary,[7] thirteen years after leaving the old home. "How delightful that name sounds to me! Visions of sweet past days rise up before my eyes, when life itself was new,

And the heart promised what the fancy drew."

Here, when childhood's happy days were over, the Tennyson girls rejoiced in the society of their brothers' Cambridge friends, and, though the village was so remote that they only got a post two or three times a week,[8] here they not only drank in contentedly the beauty of the country, but also pa.s.sed delightful days with talk and books, with music and poetry, and dance and song, when, on the lawn at Somersby, one of the sisters

brought the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon.

Here, as Arthur Hallam said, "Alfred's mind was moulded in silent sympathy with the everlasting forms of Nature."

I have said that they made their own world; and they were well able to do it, for they were a very remarkable family. The Doctor was a very tall, dark man, very strict with his boys, to whom he was schoolmaster as well as parent. He was a scholar, and unusually well read, and possessed a good library. Clever, too, he was with his hands, and carved the stone chimney-piece in the dining-room, which his man Horlins built under his direction. He and his wife were a great contrast, for she was very small and gentle and highly sensitive.

Edward FitzGerald speaks of her as "one of the most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever saw"; and the Poet depicts her in "Isabel,"

where he speaks of her gentle voice, her keen intellect and her

Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity.

Mary was the letter-writer of the family, and a very clever woman, and her letters show that she knew her Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge as well as her brother's poems.

They were a united family, but Charles and Alfred were nearest to her in age. She writes to one of her great friends: "O my beloved, what creatures men are! my brothers are the exception to this general rule." Accordingly, of Charles she writes: "If ever there was a sweet delightful character it is that dear Charley," and of Alfred: "A. is one of the n.o.blest of his kind. You know my opinion of men in general is much like your own; they are not like us, they are naturally _more_ selfish and _not so affectionate_." She adds:

Alfred is universally beloved by all his friends, and was long so before he came to any fame....

We look upon him as the stay of the family; you know it is to him we go when anything is to be done. Something lately occurred here which was painful; we wrote to Alfred and he came immediately, after, I am told, not speaking three days scarcely to any one from distress of mind, and that _not_ for himself, mind, but for others. Did this look like selfishness?

After leaving Somersby she felt the loss of these brothers sorely.

Alfred's devotion to his mother was always perfect. In October 1850 Mary writes from Cheltenham:

Yesterday, Mamma, I, and f.a.n.n.y went to look for houses, as Alfred has written to say that he should like to live by his Mother or in the same house with us, if we could get one large enough, and he would share the rent, which would be a great deal better. He wishes us to take a house in the neighbourhood of London, if we can give up ours, with him, or to take a small house for him and Emily[9] on the outskirts of Cheltenham till we can move; so what will be done I know not, but this I know that Alfred must come here and choose for himself, so we have written to him to come immediately, and we are daily expecting him.

But though life at Cheltenham when the brothers were all away was dull for Mary, it had not been so at Somersby; for there they had home interests sufficient to keep them always occupied, and they were not without neighbours. Ormsby was close at hand, to the north, where lived as Rector, Frank Ma.s.singberd, afterwards Chancellor of Lincoln, a man of cultivation and old-world courtesy. His wife f.a.n.n.y was one of the charming Miss Barings of Harrington, which was but a couple of miles off to the east.

Her sister Rosa was that "sole rose of beauty, loveliness complete," to whom the Poet wrote such charming little birthday verses; and sixty-five years afterwards Rosa, then Mrs. Duncombe Shafto, still spoke with enthusiasm of those happy days. Mrs. Baring had married for her second husband, Admiral Eden, a man of great conversational powers, and with a very large circle of interesting friends. He took the old Hall of Harrington, with its fine brick front, from the Cracrofts, who moved to Hackthorn near Lincoln, and thus the families at Harrington and Somersby saw a great deal of one another.

There were two Eden daughters, the strikingly handsome Dulcibella and her sister, who looked after the house and its guests. Hence their nicknames of "Dulce" and "Utile."

A mile or two beyond Harrington was Langton, where Dr. Johnson came to visit his friend Bennet Langton, who died only seven years before Dr.

Tennyson came to Somersby. But, though the Langtons were friends of the Doctor's, this was not a house the young people much frequented. Mary, having come back to the old neighbourhood, writes from Scremby: "I am going to Langton to-morrow to spend a few days with the Langtons, don't you pity me? I hope I shall get something more out of Mrs. Langton than Indeed, Yes, No!"

Adjoining Langton the Tennysons had friends in the Swans of Saucethorpe, and a little farther eastwards was Partney, where George Maddison and his mother lived. He was a hero, of whom tales were told of many courageous deeds, such as his going single-handed and taking a desperate criminal who, being armed, had barricaded himself in an old building and set all the police at defiance. It was a question whether people most admired the courage of the man or the beauty of his charming wife, f.a.n.n.y, one of the three good-looking daughters of Sir Alan Bellingham, who all found husbands in that neighbourhood. In the Lincolnshire poem, "The Spinster's Sweet-Arts," the Poet has immortalized their name:

Goa to the laane at the back, and look thruf Maddison's gaate!

From Partney the hill rises to Dalby, where lived John Bourne, whose wife was an aunt of the young Tennysons, and here they would meet the handsome Miss Bournes of Alford; one, Margaret, was dark, the other was Alice, a beautiful fair girl. They married brothers, Marcus and John Huish. Mrs.

John Bourne was the Doctor's sister Mary, and the young Tennysons would have been oftener at Dalby had it been their Aunt Elizabeth Russell[10]

who lived there, of whom they always spoke in terms of the strongest affection.

The old house at Dalby was burnt down in 1841. About this Mr. Marcus Huish tells me that his mother wrote in a diary at the time:

_Jan. 5, 1841._--On this day Dalby House, the seat of the Bournes, and round whose simple Church, standing embosomed in trees, my family, including my dear sister Mary Hannah, lie buried, was burnt to the ground;

and on the 7th Mrs. Huish wrote:

I have this morning received intelligence that the dear House at Dalby was on Tuesday night burnt down, and is now a wreck. I feel very deeply this disastrous circ.u.mstance, endeared as it was to me by ties of time and a.s.sociation. Mr. Tennyson has written to me as follows on this catastrophe.

The letter was a long one, two pages being left for it in the diary, but unfortunately it was never copied in.

The villages here are very close together, and going from Partney, two miles eastward, you come to Skendleby, where Sir Edward Brackenbury lived, whose elder brother Sir John was Consul at Cadiz, and used to send over some good pictures and some strong sherry, known by the diners-out as "the Consul's sherry." The Rector of the next village of Scremby was also a Brackenbury, and here Mary Tennyson most loved to visit. Mrs. Brackenbury, whom she always calls "Gloriana," was adored by all who knew her. Mary says, "She is so sweet a character, and she has always been so kind and so anxious for our family ... I look upon her as already a saint." Two of the Rectors of Halton had also been Brackenburys--a father and son in succession, and they were followed by two generations of Rawnsleys--Thomas Hardwicke and his son Drummond.

Adjoining Scremby is Candlesby, where Tennyson's genial friend, John Alington, who had married another of the beautiful Miss Bellinghams, was Rector; and within half a mile is Gunby, the delightful old home of the Ma.s.singberds. In Dr. Tennyson's time Peregrine Langton, who had married the heiress of the Ma.s.singberds and taken her name, was living there.