Lionel Tennyson

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Victorian Snapshot: Son Of Empire, Honorable Lionel Tennyson

This deeply reflective portrait shows the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson's youngest son, Lionel, who later joined the India Office. In 1885, he contracted malaria at Assam and died at sea on the journey home in 1886. A boyhood friend reminisced about Lionel: " I hear again the voice of my best loved friend, Lionel Tennyson, and gaze once more into those fine eyes of his through which his steadfast noble soul looked out so kindly and lovingly on this world." In 1885 at the invitation of Lord Dufferin he went with his wife on a tour to India, in order to see as much of the country as he could for himself. The part of his tour which he seemed to enjoy most was that in the old-world Rajputana. While shooting in Assam he caught jungle fever. The poison was in his system when he attended the camp of exercise at Delhi, where during the military manoeuvres he was exposed to very inclement weather. On his return to Calcutta he fell dangerously ill, and never recovered, but hung between life and death for three months and a half, bearing his sufferings with the utmost fortitude and with uncomplaining resignation. In the words of Lord Dufferin, "Nothing could exceed his courage and his patience, and his goodness to us all." Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson & Brother Then came the last days on the Red Sea. He spoke little and did not suffer much pain. He passed away peacefully at three in the afternoon of April 20th. The burial service was at nine that same evening, under a great silver moon. The ship stopped: "and the coffin was lowered into a phosphorescent sea." The loss to us is indeed unspeakable but infinite Love and Wisdom have ordained it. Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Lord Tennyson & Brother Before his death, Lionel and his wife Eleanor Locker (the daughter of poet Frederick Locker-Lampson) had two sons who survived to old age, one of them being the influential mid-century Tennyson commentator Sir Charles Tennyson.

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