Page:Tennysoniana (1879).djvu/12

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
2
TENNYSONIANA.

remarkable for his great strength and stature, and of very various talents—something of a poet, painter, architect, and musician, and also a considerable linguist and mathematician.[1] He died in 1830. The poet's mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Fytche, and who was herself the daughter of a clergyman, lived to see her son famous, and died in 1865 at an advanced age.[2]

Those who care to study pedigrees will find, on referring to Burke's "Dictionary of the Landed Gentry," that our Poet can claim descent from a very ancient family—the D'Eyncourts of the Norman times, whose name has, by royal licence, been resumed by an elder branch of the house.

  1. William Howitt: "Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets" (London, 1847), ii. 48, where there is a view of the house in which Alfred Tennyson was born; "A New Spirit of the Age," edited by R. H. Horne (London, 1844), ii. 31.
  2. Mrs. Elizabeth Tennyson, died 21st February, 1865, aged eighty-four years; her sister, Miss Mary Anne Fytche, died March 10th, 1865, aged eighty-three years. These ladies were the mother and aunt of Alfred Tennyson. They both resided for many years in one house near Well Walk, at Hampstead, and they were both buried in one grave at Highgate Cemetery. The Poet Laureate attended as chief mourner on each occasion.