Julian Tennyson, at 23, walked and cycled around Suffolk.
It was 1938, and the great-grandson of the famous poet was hoping to write a guidebook about rural county that was not overrun by tourists. He had a strong sense of place and looked at all aspects of it: the natural history, of course, but also the towns, farms, churches, language and fairs.
His Suffolk Scenes was published in 1939, the year the war broke out, breaking off his literary career.
Capt. Tennyson eventually was shipped to the Far East, where he had a wonderful argument with his younger brother Hallam. Here’s Ronald Blythe’s account:
When he (Julian) was stationed in India he was urged by his brother Hallam to try and drop is English attitudes and ‘to read Kalidasa, to study the Vedanta, and to do anything that might help him to understand the soul of the country he was in,” but, says Hallam, ‘He replied very briefly … saying that he was fully taken up with thinking and reading about the things he loved at home, that he had no interest whatever in the East and did not want to go any further East than East Anglia in the future.
One brother wanted to understand the world and the other wanted to understand the shire.
They seem to me to be kindred spirits. Both were concerned with a sense of place. They differed on whether the broad view or the deep view of place is best.
Both are essential, so I don’t think one view could be best. Whichever you choose, it would be deficient in a way.
But over a long life, I have wanted to see the world and have wanted to know the county. I’d have loved to have heard that argument.
• Ronald Blythe’s essay “Julian Tennyson and Suffolk Scene” was collected in Field Work; Norwich: Black Dog Books, 2007, pp. 140-3. The quotation is on p. 141.
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