Born in 1809 of a Lincolnshire family, long
connected with the soil but inconspicuous in history, Tennyson had
nothing Celtic in his blood, as far as pedigrees prove. This is
unfortunate for one school of theorists. His mother (genius is
presumed to be derived from mothers) had a genius merely for moral
excellence and for religion. She is described in the poem of Isabel,
and was "a remarkable and saintly woman." In the male line, the
family was not (as the families of genius ought to be) brief of life
and unhealthy. "The Tennysons never die," said the sister who was
betrothed to Arthur Hallam. The father, a clergyman, was, says his
grandson, "a man of great ability," and his "excellent library" was
an element in the education of his family. "My father was a poet,"
Tennyson said, "and could write regular verse very skilfully." In
physical type the sons were tall, strong, and unusually dark:
Tennyson, when abroad, was not taken for an Englishman; at home,
strangers thought him "foreign." Most of the children had the
temperament, and several of the sons had some of the accomplishments,
of genius: whence derived by way of heredity is a question beyond
conjecture, for the father's accomplishment was not unusual. As
Walton says of the poet and the angler, they "were born to be so":
we know no more.
The region in which the paternal hamlet of Somersby lies, "a land of
quiet villages, large fields, grey hillsides, and noble tall-towered
churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold," does not appear
to have been rich in romantic legend and tradition.
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