This is the opening paragraph of the Introduction to a school edition of “The Two Voices” and “A Dream of Fair Women,” by Dr. Hiram Corson. Here are several inaccuracies as to the Tennyson family and the poet’s birthday, and the same mistakes and others are found in nearly all the sketches of the Laureate in periodicals and works of reference.
It is generally supposed that cyclopedia articles are prepared by specialists who know what they are writing about. This is the popular conception, but this is evidently not the case in regard to Tennyson, who has fared sadly at the hands of his biographers. The brief accounts of his life given in Appleton’s, the Americanized Britannica, and other cyclopedias fairly bristle with blunders and objectionable features. As they stand, most of these articles are utterly untrustworthy. Their assertions are often misleading, or so vague as to be practically valueless. As a result, most people are more or less at sea in regard to Tennyson chronology.
Dr. Tennyson and Family.
A multitude of errors have been perpetrated about Dr. Tennyson and family. We are told that Bayons Manor was his native place,[19] and that he was “rector of Somersby and vicar of Bennington and Grimsby.”[20] One writer uncritically imagines him a doctor of divinity.[21] According to some questionable authorities, he died “about 1830;”[22] “in 1830;”[23] “about 1831;”[24] “on the 18th of March, 1831;”[25] and in 1832.[26] Mrs. Tennyson is said to have died “in her eighty-first year;”[27] also “in her eighty-fourth year.”[28]
The number of sons and daughters in the Tennyson household is rarely given correctly. Alfred is called, in a hit-or-miss fashion, one of three, four, six, seven and eight brothers. His sisters are variously reckoned as one, three, four and five.
The Rev. George Clayton Tennyson was born at Market Rasen, December 10, 1778. He graduated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1801; he received the degree of M. A. in 1805, and of LL.D. in 1813. He married (August 6, 1805) Miss Elizabeth Fytche of Louth. He moved to Somersby in 1808, where he was rector till his death. If the inscription on his tomb is to be trusted, Dr. Tennyson was rector of two neighboring parishes—Benniworth and Bag Enderby—and was vicar of Great Grimsby;[29] and died March 16, 1831. The poet’s mother died February 21, 1865, in her eighty-fifth year.
Alfred Tennyson was the fourth of eight sons—George (who died in infancy), Frederick, Charles, Alfred, Edward, Arthur, Septimus, and Horatio. The sisters were Mary, Emily, Matilda, and Cecilia. Excepting George and Frederick, all of the children were born at Somersby.
Alfred’s Birthday.
The discussion as to the poet’s birthday is now practically at rest—his lordship himself having authoritatively settled the matter. Would that he would enlighten us on some other perplexing points in his history! Mrs. Tennyson kept August 6 as Alfred’s birthday. Tourists who have hastily examined the parish registers of Somersby have mistaken the figure 6 for a 5, owing to the fading of the ink “at the back, or left, of the loop.”[30] But careless hackwriters, depending upon the compilations published decades ago, continue to assert that the Laureate was born August 5;[31] April 9,[32] or April 6.[33]