Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/365

 CHAPTER XXXI

SOMERSBY AND THE TENNYSONS

Tennyson's Poetry descriptive of his home—Bronze Bust of the Poet—Dedication Festival—A Long-lived Family—Dialect poems.

This little quiet village, tucked away in a fold of the hills, with the eastern ridge of the Wolds at its back and the broad meadow valley stretching away in front of it and disappearing eastwards in the direction of the sea, had no history till now. It was only in 1808 that Dr. George Clayton Tennyson came to Somersby as rector of Somersby and Bag Enderby, incumbent of Beniworth and Vicar of Great Grimsby. He came as a disappointed man, for his father, not approving, it is said, of his marriage with Miss ffytche of Louth (a reason most unreasonable if it was so) had disinherited him in favour of his younger brother Charles, who became accordingly Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt of Bayons Manor near Tealby.

Dr. Tennyson's eldest son George was born in the parsonage at Tealby, in 1806, but died an infant. Frederick was born at Louth in 1807, and the other ten children at Somersby. Of these, the first two were Charles (1808) and Alfred (1809).

They were a family of poets; their father wrote good verse, and their grandmother, once Mary Turner of Caister, always claimed that Alfred got all his poetry through her. Her husband George was a member of Parliament and lived in the old house at Bayons Manor.

From the fourteenth century the Tennysons, like their neighbours the Rawnsleys, had lived in Yorkshire; but Dr. Tennyson's great-grandfather, Ralph, had come south of the Humber about 1700 to Barton and Wrawby near Brigg, and