As a result there was bad blood between the penurious Tennysons of Somersby, where George Clayton Tennyson had the living until he succumbed to drink and depression, and the opulent Tennysons of Beacons, who fancied themselves not only the wealthy but the socially superior side of the family.
As a young man he thoroughly embodied his family’s social pretensions and their snobbish behaviour towards their poor relations, the Tennysons of Somersby; but in later years the mutual dislike between him and his famous cousin thawed, and he gave Alfred advice on the law of propriety of accepting the peerage offered to him in 1883.