Author: Kenyon, John
Biography:
KENYON, John (1784-1856: ODNB)
He was born in Jamaica, one of the three sons of a wealthy sugar-plantation owner, John Kenyon or Kennion, and his wife Milborough Simpson (1765-89) whose father was a joint owner with Kenyon of the plantation known as Chester Estate. After the death of his wife, their father brought the boys to England; when he too died in 1792, they became wards of their uncle Samuel Kenyon. John was educated at Charterhouse. He matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1802 but left without a degree. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1804 but does not appear ever to have practised as a lawyer. From 1802 to 1812 he lived in Somerset, where he met Wordsworth and Coleridge (qq.v.), the first of what became eventually a vast circle of literary friends. In 1812 he married Susanna Wright in London, but she died in 1818 at Naples while they were touring Europe. In 1822 he married Caroline Curteis of Lewisham, herself a writer of verses. (Her family also owned property in Jamaica.) They made their base at first in Bath and then, after 1831, in London. After she died in 1835 Kenyon lived a sociable bachelor life, much engaged in practical philanthropy and in patronage of the arts. He published two further volumes of poetry, Poems: for the Most Part Occasional (1838) and A Day at Tivoli (1849), identifying himself on the title-pages as "formerly of St. Peter's College, Cambridge." He died at his holiday home at Cowes on 3 Dec. 1856 and was buried in the Curteis family vault at St. Mary, Lewisham. Kenyon had divested himself of the Jamaica estates in the early 1830s and the author of the obituary in GM, who claims to have known him for sixty years, affirms that he had seen to it that the slaves were emancipated before the estates were sold. (ODNB 25 May 2021; LBS 25 May 2021; GM Mar. 1857, 309-15; ancestry.com 25 May 2021)