TW: Domestic violence, threats of violence and abuse
Frederick Tennyson was the eldest living brother of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was born on 5th June 1807 in Louth, Lincolnshire to George Clayton Tennyson and Elizabeth Tennyson (née Fytche). His father was a clergyman and was Reverend for Somersby and Bag Enderby, and they lived in relative wealth given his wealthy ancestry. Frederick was the Tennyson’s second child, however their first son, George, died in 1806. He was the second of the Tennyson’s twelve children, one of eight sons and four daughters, including Alfred Tennyson who was born two years later in 1809.
The Tennyson’s were renowned for their noble and distinguished appearances and bearing. Many remarked on the familial dark hair and eyes which were inherited by most of the Tennyson children, including Alfred, however Frederick did not inherit the signature family colouring. Instead, as H.D. Rawnsley describes, Frederick had fair hair and blue eyes that ‘boast[ed] the blood of the Plantagenets’. Frederick was a tall, handsome man who shared the distinct nobility that many recalled about the Tennyson children. Sir Francis Doyle said that Frederick was a ‘rather silent, solitary boy’. Into adulthood, Frederick apparently wore his hair uncommonly long and had a ‘fine presence and frank, tempestuous independent nature’.
Childhood and Eton
Frederick also inherited his father’s great intellect. George Tennyson schooled all his children on all manner of subjects, particularly the Classics and ancient classical languages. Elizabeth encouraged and fostered her children’s creativity and Frederick commented that whilst his mother had no skill with poetry herself, she inspired the children’s love for the subject through her reading. Frederick would continue his education at Eton where he became Captain of the Oppidans, a collection of boys who had distinguished themselves academically.
In sixth form, Frederick got into trouble with the headmaster for being four days late from ‘Long Vacation’. The headmaster shouted and raged, but Frederick apparently remained cynically calm. When the headmaster demanded a letter of apology from his father, Frederick leisurely produced a folded letter from his pocket which held that requested apology. This apparently only antagonised the headmaster further, who continued to insult Frederick, including cursing out Frederick’s ‘temper’.
Relationship with Father
Frederick’s childhood was one shaped by his father’s mental health and growing aggression. George Tennyson’s struggles with epilepsy and mental illness meant that life at The Rectory, Somersby was not always peaceful. This was particularly true for Frederick, who seemingly bore the brunt of his father’s abuse as he sought to protect his mother and sisters.
The tensions between Frederick and both George’s came to a head seemingly in 1829, following his acceptance into Cambridge University in 1826 and Charles and Alfred’s joining his College in 1827. The tone of some the letters collected from the family suggests that Frederick was despaired of, and often accused of having no respect for authority or sense of familial responsibility. Frederick’s grandfather, George Sr expressed concerns to all three of the eldest Tennyson boys at Cambridge that they were wasting the family inheritance, and pressured them to choose a vocation and graduate or leave university entirely. However, Frederick did not respond to his grandfather’s summons, unlike Charles and Alfred. Frederick’s father, George Jr. wrote to his own father than he felt that:
‘[Charles and Alfred] have certainly been egregiously misled by Frederick, who I am sorry to say does not conduct himself properly here and who supposes himself authorised to prescribe laws <both> for the management of the family <and myself>. In short he is so impracticable and wayward that I don’t know what to do with him. […] I regret the day I ever sent Frederick to Eton.’
George Tennyson Jr. to George Tennyson Sr.
George Sr.’s letters also indicate he was not fond of Frederick for his disrespectfulness and it is suggested that Frederick avoided responding to letters from his grandfather, unlike Charles and Alfred. Less than month since this last letter between George Jr. and Sr., Frederick ‘s apparent disrespect for his father resulted in George Jr. summoning the Constable to arrest Frederick and George intended to banish him entirely from the family house. However, Elizabeth Tennyson protested and George snidely remarks that Frederick’s ‘Mother as usual has taken his part’.
It is the Elizabeth who provides the clearest indication of how severe the situation had become in February of 1829. She wrote to George Sr. desperately seeking to clarify the situation between her son and his father, and expressed that George Jr’s ‘ungovernable violence’ meant that she felt herself and the children were unsafe in the home and that she intended to separate herself from her husband. She writes:
‘Your judgement has been most grossly abused in the representations which we now have been made to you. They are all together unfounded in truth and therefore in the last degree cruel and insulting. I believe that you have been informed that Frederick said he would murder his Father. The words that Frederick made use of with these – ‘We may thank God that we do not live in a barbarous Country, or we should have murdered each other before this.’
Elizabeth Tennyson to George Tennyson Sr.
The letter continues to describe how Frederick was cast from the house again, but she says that she is more concerned that George Jr. had taken to carrying a large knife and loaded gun around the house, and had threatened to stab Frederick in ‘the jugular vein and in the heart’. The escalation of these threats alongside George Jr’s poor opinion of Frederick in comparison to Elizabeth provide an insight into the dynamics of the Tennyson family in the years before George Jr’s death.
The responses of the family to the crisis are often unclear or underwhelming. Frederick’s cousin George Tennyson d’Eyncourt stated that ‘I think the Tennyson’s are naturally rather hot’ after hearing of Frederick’s argument with his father and George Jr’s ‘violent measures’. Since Elizabeth could only reach out to George Sr. for assistance, who had a low opinion of Frederick already, it doesn’t seem much help was offered. Elizabeth remained with her husband , although the letters indicate that the family spent more time apart from him until his death in 1831.
Cambridge
After finishing his studies at Eton, he was accepted into Cambridge University in 1826, following in his father’s footsteps. A year later, Frederick migrated to Trinity College where all the Tennyson sons would attend. Whilst there, Frederick cemented himself as a distinguished scholar by winning the University’s Browne medal for Greek verse composition with his Sapphic ode on the Pyramids in 1828. Frederick also contributed four poems to Charles and Alfred’s first poetry collection, Poems by Two Brothers (1827), although his work was attributed to Charles.
Despite this success, Frederick, Charles and Alfred all received letters from their grandfather urging them to either finish their degrees or leave to find respectable work. This pressure increased after their father died, as George Tennyson left many debts behind him as a result of gambling and alcohol addiction, and the family needed to retain what funds they could to support particularly the unmarried women in the family. In 1828, Frederick had been rusticated (a term used for a temporary expulsion or suspension at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham) for three terms as he refused to accept punishment for not attending chapel. However, he was re-admitted in 1830 and stayed on to finish his degree at Cambridge in 1832 at the age of 25.
Travels and Friendships
After leaving Cambridge, Frederick spent little of his time in England. He had inherited a property in Grimsby in 1833 and then travelled extensively across the Greek islands, including Corfu. During this time, he pursued several fruitless affairs and almost lost the entirety of his inheritance in poor investments. Eventually he settled in Florence, Italy, where he found some uneasy stability.
One of Frederick’s closest friends was Edward Fitzgerald, who he met in the 1830s when Fitzgerald was a member of the Cambridge Apostles alongside Alfred Tennyson. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Fitz” was a renowned poet and lifelong friend of Frederick and they exchanged letters often. Whilst Frederick travelled around Italy, he often relayed his adventures to Fitzgerald. In the 1840s, Fitzgerald wrote to the eldest Tennyson:
‘[Y]ou used to irritate my vegetable blood. […] I constantly think of you, and as I have often sincerely told you, with a kind of love I feel towards but two or three friends … you, Spedding, Thackeray, and only one or two more. […] “It is because there are so few F. Tennysons in the world that I do not like to be wholly out of hearing of the one I know…. I see so many little natures that I must draw to the large.’
Edward Fitzgerald to Frederick Tennyson
Fitzgerald wasn’t Frederick’s only close and well-respected friend who was also engaged in the literary world. In 1853, whilst travelling around Italy, Frederick befriended the Brownings. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were also famed in nineteenth century literary circles and Elizabeth was considered for Poet Laureate alongside his brother, Alfred in 1850. Frederick was exceptionally fond of the couple, writing that ‘They really are the very best people in the world’. Despite his friendship and high opinion of both Brownings, Frederick hated Robert’s poetry, and explained that he was able to ‘separate the man from the butcher [of verse]’.
Marriage and Later Life
In Florence, Frederick met Maria Carolina Giuliotti, the daughter of the Chief Magistrate of Sienna, Italy. Maria was born in Sienna in around 1816 and was travelling with her father. The couple married on 5 July 1839 in Florence when Frederick was 32 and Maria was around 23 years old. Together they had five children: Captain Julius George Tennyson (1840-1904), Elizabeth Tennyson (1848-1903), Emilia Tennyson (1850-unknown), Mathilda Tennyson (1853-1892) and Alfred Tennyson (1854-1928).
In 1857, Frederick and his family left Florence and then spent some time in Pisa and Genoa before finally settling in St. Ewolds, Jersey. Many people were concerned about Frederick as he had been such a lover of travelling and he lived for a ‘life of colour, warmth and excitement’. However, Frederick seemed to find peace and rarely left home for the remainder of his life. He reported to his family that his health remained tolerably good ‘in spite of nervous irritability and reactions of melancholy’ which seemed to affect the entire Tennyson family.
During these years, Frederick became a follower of Spiritualism, which became a popular ideology in the 1850s. He took to reading the Swedish theologian and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg and his teachings. Frederick was convinced that ‘living men were able to communicate with the spirits of the departed’. Alongside these spiritual values, Frederick was openly anti-Toryism and believed that ‘a proper democratic spirit which aims at a reconstruction of society on the principle of ‘each for all and all for each”. Whilst he wasn’t a revolutionary, Frederick despised most existing monarchies, although he thought monarchies of the past romantic.
Death
Frederick remained in St. Ewolds, Jersey until 1896. During this time, Maria died in January 1884 and was buried at St Heliers in St Ewolds. Her death was a devastating blow and Frederick wrote on her death that:
‘Sorrow such as mine when it falls upon the aged is virtual paralysis, mental and bodily.’
Frederick Tennyson
In 1891, at the age of 84, Frederick also started to lose his eyesight. Despite this, Frederick continued to write poetry throughout his life, particularly through the 1890s, including: The Isles of Greece: Sappho and Alcæus (1890), Daphne and other poems (1891) and Poems of the Day and Year (1895). Frederick became an ‘Anglo-Israelite’ and joined the Church of the New Jerusalem.
His brother Alfred, the famed Poet Laureate, died in 1892 and H.D. Ranswley reports that Frederick did not attend the funeral. After 1896, likely due to declining health, Frederick moved in with his son Julius and his wife at 14 Holland Villas Road, Kensington. Frederick died on 26th Feb 1898 at his son’s house in Kensington, and was buried in grounds as his mother, Highgate Cemetery in London.
Conclusion
Frederick Tennyson lived a long and exciting life outside of his relationship to his famous brother. His troubled relationship with his father defined his early life and meant he experienced a lot of conflict in his life until he left England. Despite the disregard of his father and grandfather for his character, Frederick formed several meaningful and lifelong friendships that challenged the assumptions of his father. In Italy, he finally found freedom to form his own relationship and experience life as he wished it. When he finally settled in Jersey, Frederick seemed to have found some peace until his death.
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