Chapter 5

Lincoln is a surreal sort of town. Everybody knows it’s there, but no one seems too bothered about going to have a look. Perhaps because it’s in Lincolnshire, where else, and Lincolnshire is not everyone’s first holiday destination. Most people, by which I mean me, picture Lincolnshire as a flat, barren landscape devoid of interest. Much like a miniature version of Kansas, though without a yellow brick road leading to Oz. Vast acres of corn fields dominating the countryside. Quite a dull place all in all.

 

The town itself seems, if viewed from the south, to be a raised land-locked island, compared by some to an inland St. Michael’s Mount, the cathedral standing proud over the vast empty plain of Lincolnshire. Unfortunately we entered from the north travelling along expecting the land to rise anytime until we suddenly found ourselves looking at the cathedral as we passed it by on our way through town. Lincoln is a delightful find, akin to discovering a Van Gogh in a dusty attic. Narrow medieval streets darted here and there, up and down, lined with lavish Tudor buildings. The cobbled precinct of Castle Hill, with the castle facing the cathedral leaving the tourist in something of an excitable dilemma. It would have been even more enjoyable if the icy blasts of winter not met us around each corner.

 

Outside the once golden cathedral, which was receiving a much needed sandblasting from workmen scaffolded to its walls, we came across a large statue of Lincolnshire’s own Alfred Tennyson outside the chapter house. It is a bleak and foreboding statue of the local poet in his trademark long, flowing cloak and carrying his wide brimmed hat by his side. He is holding a flower in his upturned hand and examining it closely with his Siberian wolfhound, Karenina, looking on possibly thinking, ‘How long is he going to stare at that bloody flower? I want to wee up a lamppost’.

 

We gingerly made our way down the most aptly named street in England, Steep Hill, to the Usher Gallery to find we didn’t have to pay to gain entrance. Having shelled out four pounds a piece for the cathedral I was more than happy to keep my wallet where it was. I had learned the gallery held a room of Tennyson artefacts at which I was now eager to have a look. The gallery loomed rather large and finding anything would have taken time. We had half an hour before the gallery closed for the night, so I decided to ask the lady behind the counter where the artefacts were kept.

 

     "The Tennyson exhibition isn’t out on general display at present." I was regrettably informed. This was something of a set back. I knew I would not find much inspiration from the city of Lincoln and we were only killing time before visiting Somersby on the morrow, but I had hoped to see at least a few of his earthly possessions. It wasn’t much to ask and it was all Lincoln owned. It surprised me at just how nonchalant Lincoln’s attitude was to the great poet. There was no great exhibition, no museum and the statue outside the cathedral was not even mentioned in the ‘Alfresco Art & Sculpture’ section of the Visit Lincolnshire Things To Do brochure. I was beginning to think Lincoln did not particularly want Tennyson to be remembered. Maybe he had upset someone in one of his poems, or maybe it was because as soon as he was old enough he buggered off down south. I should point out here that Tennyson does not have any specific connection with Lincoln as such. He lived in Somersby; he was schooled for a time in Louth; he holidayed at Mablethorpe; and his wife came from Horncastle; all of which are several miles to the east of Lincoln, so I don’t know what I was expecting. It surprises some people to learn that Tennyson was a native of Lincolnshire. Most imagine he was born on the Isle of Wight and would regularly pop round for afternoon tea with his neighbour, Queen Victoria.

 

Happily, as things were beginning to look grim, another lady stepped forward and offered to take my girlfriend and I through to the tiny back room where the Tennyson exhibit was being stored. Our faces lit up and we followed the lovely woman whose name was Polly, according to her name badge, and to whom I am indebted.

     "Take as long as you like," said the delightful Polly fiddling with a set of keys. "I’ll just be out here if you need me."

 

The room was tiny and windowless, but in it lay a treasure trove of Tennyson artefacts. This felt more personal than a real museum exhibition, as if someone was showing us their private collection of Tennyson memorabilia. I liked that very much. Most of what was on offer were pictures, photographs and busts of Tennyson and his family, which I poured over. I already knew what he looked like; long, straggly hair and bald pate, a bushy goatee and thoughtful eyes that seemed to pierce into anyone who held his glare. A glare which to me seemed to be full of wisdom and sadness. Along with these were his hat, cloak and knobbly walking stick and the chair he would sit in on occasions when he was tired of standing up.

 

We looked around the many precious things till closing time. I was surprised to find at least two pairs of his spectacles in the glass display cases. They were so tiny and round, barely big enough to cover his pupils. Tennyson was notoriously short-sighted. His writing contains detailed pictures of leaves, flecks of sea foam and even caterpillars, but it also muses vaguely over horizons and blurs over landscapes in a way I would if someone came along and pinched my glasses. At least it is something we have in common. Personally I cannot find my way out of an unfamiliar room without my glasses. Tennyson’s eyes were so bad he couldn’t even see what he was eating in later life and in some restaurants that is no bad thing. Even if you have perfect vision it takes you a while to discover the microscopic blob in the centre of the plate is your dinner.

 

The only other detail Tennyson and I share is our forgetfulness. I often leave the house with that nagging ‘Did I leave the gas on?’ feeling. However his lackadaisical mind nearly cost him his poetic immortality. Not only did he lose the manuscript for Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, which contained some of his great early works, and had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch and scraps of paper, but he also misplaced the lone copy of In Memoriam, his heartbroken eulogy to his young, dead friend, Arthur Hallam, in lodgings and only good fortune saved them. Still at least he knew where he was most of the time, which is more than can be said of GK Chesterton, author of the Father Brown stories, who I always think looks like current London Mayor, Boris Johnson, who one day sent a telegram to his wife asking: ‘Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?’

 

A frame on the wall caught my eye. It contained a piece of paper which turned out to be a Warrant of Admission from Queen Victoria to Alfred Tennyson to succeed William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850 after Wordsworth relinquished the post by dying. I turned to Polly who had wandered in, probably wondering when we were thinking of leaving.

     "Is this genuine?" I asked her pointing at the paper in a glass frame.

     "Oh, yes. It’s all genuine." Then she thought for a minute or two before asking, "Are you a big fan of Tennyson?"

 

I was hoping to avoid a question like this during the entire tour, but here we were having barely begun and already I was confronted with the question. What could I say; yes? Would she then counter with "Have you read this obscure piece of his? I found it delightfully intricate in its demeanour and style and it says so much about the fragile social fabric of the time, don’t you agree?" and I would have to come clean, "I haven’t read that much of his work, but I mean to just as soon as I’ve got through Dickens, Shakespeare and about a hundred others."

 

Who I should visit was a question I had thought long and hard about as I drew up my plan of attack before beginning my daunting task of travelling around England looking for my muse. There were writers I could not have written this book without mentioning: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hardy, Wordsworth and Tennyson seemed to be the most well known and well loved of all the English writers throughout history. Since this book was about my inspiration it should contain writers I admired, although some: Stephen King, Louis de Bernieres and Fyodor Dostoevsky among them had written nothing on English soil. So I couldn’t include them. It was a hard decision who to put in and who to leave out. I thought long and hard about where to visit each writer and how to arrange the book. Obviously not long or hard enough because I found myself in Lincoln on the trail of Alfred Tennyson whose work I had barely glanced at and knowing very little about the man. No it was time to tell the truth. I told her about the idea for writing the book, about places in England that inspired the great writers, and she seemed happy with that. It is not that I didn’t want to tell anyone, it’s just that I didn’t like answering awkward questions of which even I have yet to work out the answers.

 

Next morning we travelled twenty miles or so east to the hamlet of Somersby at the base of the Lincolnshire Wolds where Tennyson was born and raised. The closer we got to the tiny backwater the narrower the roads became until a muddy, high-banked trickle of broken tarmac, barely wide enough for our car to squeeze past a couple of hikers with a dog, brought us into the pulsating heart of the arse-end of nowhere.

 

Somersby is quite a pleasant little place if you like to find yourself with nothing to do, tucked into a little corner of the county like a neatly folded pair of pants in a drawer. Quiet, leafy tracks run off at jaunty angles and there are very few houses to spoil the lush, open views capturing the impressive calm of the undulating wolds. The sky favoured our visit, dressed in cerulean blue and speckled at irregular intervals with soft balls of mascara stained cotton wool. The one thing you soon notice about Lincolnshire’s flatlands is the sky and just how much of it there is to see. Normally the sky is that grey mass hovering menacingly low overhead, but around the wolds the sky is a vast dome dominating the view. If I were Tennyson I would probably be tempted to write an inordinately long poem about this wonderful countryside, but I’m not, so I won’t. I’ll let him do it:

 

‘On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And through the field the road runs by

To many-towered Camelot.’

 

We parked opposite the little stone church in front of a house which resembled a crenulated fort. In my fervoured naivety I took this house as being the old rectory where the Tennyson family once lived. There was not much competition for the role. My auditions had found this fort to be the nearest candidate for the part. Plus I had read that the rectory was opposite the church. It had to be this one. It didn’t seem quite fitting for a rectors family to be living in a small castle in the middle of nowhere, but we are going back nearly two hundred years. Perhaps everyone lived in castles back then. They always seemed to in my history class at school. It was only later that I found out that the rectory was in fact next door to the fort and was a white building with oddly shaped box topiary in the front garden. Oh, well you live and learn. It was a nice little fort, though.

 

All was serene and peaceful about the hamlet and only the twittering of sparrows in the hedges and the occasional rook cawing in the defrocked trees breached the blissful silence. The locals, whether they had been born and raised here, or had come from the south attracted by the cheaper house prices and succulent surroundings, must work elsewhere since there were neither shops, nor businesses of any description save the church and a handful of farms. The only other people we came across in our time in Somersby were the three grey-haired old hikers, all nylon and walking boots, we had passed coming in, who were sat outside the church with a retired greyhound as we went to have a look around.

 

The church itself was a squat little number; the smallest I had ever squeezed myself into. The grounds bore tilting headstones and tidy lawns surrounded by a tangled thicket of trees. It looked as though it had been saved from rack and ruin at some point as the dumpy stone bell tower was topped off with brickwork. Inside stood a dozen pews at most, along with a display case holding a few more Tennyson goodie’s: a bust and a plaque of his on wall, a well trotted-out family history on one of those fold-out display hoardings and some odd souvenirs including bookmarks, leaflets and tea towels.

 

What is it with tourist destinations that make them think that putting an image of the person or place folk are visiting on a tea towel would make a good souvenir? Also why are they always those tea-towels that never absorb water? Their only function seems to be as a wall-hanging in your granny’s front-room. I can just imagine her saying: "I remember the day we went to Somersby church. I have a tea-towel here somewhere. Arthur, what are you doing? You know you shouldn’t be using that. Stop drying those pots and come and show Mildred that tea-towel." I have never walked into a church, or anywhere else for that matter, and felt the overwhelming desire to buy a tea towel to commemorate my visit and I resisted the temptation on this occasion.

 

Instead I picked up a booklet entitled The Tennyson Family and their Villages written by John Large and had a quick flick through. It revealed that the Tennyson family in fact originated from Yorkshire which was something of a surprise. I had always thought of Tennyson with a deep southern growl rather than any sort of northern accent.

     "Good morning Mr. Tennyson."

     "Nah then, lad, how’s tha’ fettlin’?"

It just does not seem right. Having said that he did write Northern Farmer in something approximating a northern accent:

 

Do’ant be stunt: taäke time:

I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad.

Warn’t I craäzed fur the lasses mysén

when I wur a lad?

 

We had a quick look around and left as soon as was decent. I have no idea why I walk into churches. The second I go in I want to leave, but find I should at least politely walk around looking interested, all the time wondering when I can extricate myself without causing offence. I have found about three minutes is more than adequate. Before we took our leave I picked up a couple of leaflets and a ‘Lady of Shalott’ bookmark, popped a pound in the honesty box and left. Outside the pale February sun still hung low in the clear sky. The old walkers and their greyhound had carried on along the gentle lanes leaving us alone deep in the Lincolnshire countryside.

 

I have a failing when it comes to picturing famous people since I see them as they have been most famously portrayed. So the Tennyson I could see walking these tranquil wolds muttering to himself as he went was the Lincoln Cathedral statue one in wide brimmed black hat with the breeze billowing out his long flowing cloak and furtively searching his grizzled, goatee beard; a walking stick tapping out a slow, monotonous tattoo on the ground, percussion to his brogue shoes on the coarse terrain. Of course none of this is true. Tennyson would have only been, at the most, twenty-eight, since the family left Somersby then to go and live in more opulent surroundings down south. I have only ever seen one picture of a young Alfred Tennyson and I didn’t recognise him as the old, black clad gentleman we see so often in images on tea towels. He was as unremarkable as he was talented. Which sort of encapsulates Somersby if you think about it long enough.

 

Further along these lanes towards Bag Enderby, where young Alfred’s father was also rector, lies Harrington Hall. The hall was mostly hidden behind a grove of holly and pines and so it was difficult to discern much of the place. Living here in Tennyson’s day was Rosa Baring and her family with whom a young Alfred fell in love. The Baring’s were the rich landowners and the Tennyson’s, deemed by Alfred, poor and lowly. His poem Maud is said to be influenced by the beautiful Rosa and the garden and countryside around Harrington Hall.

 

‘Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,

And the musk of the rose is blown.’

 

Maud is an extraordinarily long poem weighing in at some forty-seven pages. Even so it doesn’t even come close to In Memoriam which is a whopping ninety-four pages long. He was not kidding when he wrote ‘Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever.’ He certainly did. Queen Victoria was on the throne for less time that it took to read a Tennyson epic. I was always led to believe Maud was simply a love poem to his beloved Rosa, but it is so much more. It is in fact a cleverly woven tale of a man who fears madness and who, paradoxically, seeks a cure for the evils of peace in the horrors of war. He is being drawn increasingly into insanity by his fathers death and his unrequited love for Maud, the daughter of the Lord of the Hall. Gripping stuff.

 

Madness was one thing Tennyson feared above all throughout his life. Several men in his family suffered with epilepsy, which was then thought of as a shameful disease, since breakdancing hadn’t been invented then. Any form of mental illness was regarded as a stigma and a disgrace on the family. His father and two of his brothers suffered various bouts of mental illness. Around the time Alfred left for university life in Cambridge his fathers mental condition had worsened to a degree that he became abusive, paranoid and violent. His sermons must have been an interesting spectacle, especially with nowhere to hide in such a small congregation.

 

Had we walked these leafy lanes and untilled wilderness of the wolds nearly two hundred years before, we would have witnessed a young Alfred Tennyson wandering aimlessly lost in thought; mentally wrangling with a complex verse or battling with a round rhyming couplet that would not fit into its square stanza. He would probably have been muttering to himself as he walked. This is a mental disorder of all poets. Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats; they all muttered to themselves. Betjeman took a notebook and pen with him to ensure people thought he was a poet in case they came to the conclusion that he was an escaped mental patient. Wordsworth even took a dog in his early days who would bark if it saw anyone approaching. So if you are out walking the fields and lanes near your home and you come across someone talking to themselves they are not mad, it is just a poet. Though keep a respectable distance all the same.

So when it comes to writing one of poetry’s finest " and longest " masterpieces all you need is a combination of family mental illness and the love of the lord of the manors daughter. No small amount of poetic skill also helps. Not that I was planning to write poetry.

 

A Tennyson in Lincolnshire brochure I picked up in the church attempts to place many more of his poems around the area, but it is also said that Tennyson made up most of the locations in his head; or that they are so vague they can be found in any number of places from the flatlands of Lincolnshire to the grand luxury of the Isle of Wight. The blind romantic in me; as well as the desperate author of this book, wishes to believe that real locations inspired Tennyson. I can hardly visit Tennyson’s mind, now can I?