ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby, a small hamlet among the
Lincolnshire wolds, on August 6th, 1809. His father, the Rev. George
Clayton Tennyson, the vicar of Somersby, was a man of large and
cultivated intellect, interested in poetry, mathematics, painting, music,
and architecture, but somewhat harsh and austere in manner, and subject
to fits of gloomy depression, during which his presence was avoided by
his family; he was sincerely devoted to them, however, and himself
supervised their education. His mother, Elizabeth Fytche, the daughter
of the Rev Stephen Fytche of Louth, was a kind-hearted, gentle, refined
woman, beloved by her family and friends. Her influence over her sons
and daughters was unbounded, and over none more so than Alfred, who in
after life recognized to the full what he owed to his mother.

The family was large, consisting of twelve sons and daughters, of whom
the eldest died in infancy. Alfred was the fourth child, his brothers
Frederick and Charles being older than he. The home life was a very
happy one. The boys and girls were all fond of books, and their games
partook of the nature of the books they had been reading. They were
given to writing, and in this they were encouraged by their father, who
proved himself a wise and discriminating critic. Alfred early showed
signs of his poetic bent; at the age of twelve he had written an epic of
four thousand lines, and even before this a tragedy and innumerable poems