At Cambridge

Abstract

Fanny Kemble,¹ who used to visit her brother John, said of him when at College, ‘Alfred Tennyson was our hero, the great hero of our day.’ Another friend describes him as ‘Six feet high, broad-chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian, with deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised, his hand the admiration of sculptors, long fingers with square tips, soft as a child’s but of great size and strength. What struck one most about him was the union of strength with refinement.’ On seeing him first come into the Hall at Trinity, Thompson² said at once, ‘That man must be a poet.’ Arthur Hallam ‘looked up to him as to a great poet and an elder brother’.

Memoir, pp. 35, 40, 48–9.