Mistake No. 1: Tennyson received the Laureateship in 1850, the year of
Wordsworth's death. Mistake No. 2: he was married June 13, 1850. Mistake
No. 3: Farringford is misspelled. Mistake No. 4: Tennyson lived at
Twickenham three years after his marriage. Mistake No. 5: in 1853, he
first took possession of Farringford, which is still his winter residence.
Mistake No. 6: in 1867, the poet built a house near Haslemere in
Surrey--not at Petersfield, Hampshire--where he spends the summer months.
According to Prof. Church, the Laureate bought the Aldworth estate in
1872. The latter date is manifestly wrong.[42]
The story of Tennyson's Petersfield establishment may be classed as a
myth, though supported by several monuments of research called
cyclopedias.[43]
Nothing is said of a Hampshire home in Jennings' _Life of Tennyson_, in
Church's _Laureate's Country_, or in Van Dyke's admirable book on the
_Poetry of Tennyson_; no reference to it is found in the essays on
Tennyson by Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie. Nor is Lord
Tennyson's name found in the list of land owners of Hampshire, in
Walford's _County Families of the United Kingdom_. One is puzzled to
understand how such a report started.