Unluckily for her friends, Mrs Cameron never stopped to consider why she gave presents all the time; why she flattered, helped, donated and worshipped to such an embarrassing degree. Perhaps she spent her whole life compensating for being the only unattractive sister in a family of beauties. While Tennyson’s family were all mad, and Ellen’s all flighty, and Dodgson’s all boring, Julia’s were all knockdown dazzlers who caused breaches of the peace in London shopping districts. It wasn’t easy being nicknamed ‘Talent’ in these circumstances. To be called ‘Talent’ when your sisters include ‘Beauty’, ‘Dash’ and ‘Eyebrows’ sounds a bit like a codeword for ‘Ugly’.
Whatever the cause, however, Julia might reasonably have asked, ‘What’s so wrong with giving presents?’ In fact, she asked it repeatedly, because her benevolence was treated like an impediment or a club foot. Why weren’t people just grateful? But when anyone said ‘You shouldn’t have!’ to Julia Margaret Cameron, they usually meant it. On receiving a prayer book from her, Thomas Carlyle is supposed to have said, ‘Either the devil or Julia Cameron has sent this!’ Such bad grace bewildered and hurt her, but did not put her off. When she met with rebuff, she deduced that the present was at fault, and conceived a better one. Thus was she caught in an ever-tightening spiral, requiring more and more profligate ingenuity.
For Julia would not learn. She had Benevolence so enormous that her lace cap wouldn’t fit her head properly and was always falling off. Items were returned with polite demurrals; high-quality wallpaper was not hung; she was rhetorically lumped together with the father of lies; and worst of all, those inferior persons who were objects of her charity simply forgot their debt and took their luck for granted. She just couldn’t understand it. If an allegorical picture of Mrs Cameron were attempted, she often thought it would have to depict ‘More Kicks than Ha’pence’.
Look at the ungrateful Mary Ryan, snatched from poverty (and a dirty gypsy mother) on Putney Heath, and reared by Mrs Cameron at her own personal expense. ‘You are too good, Julia,’ friends said. ‘The girl is inexpressibly fortunate.’ Yet the girl herself was blind to the claims of charity. She was sullen, she refused to be beautiful in any useful photographic way, and she whined about her position in the household – was she a maid or a daughter? Why had she been educated if she was meant only for housework? Why was that dullard Mary Ann given all the nice jobs? Mrs Cameron was exasperated by such ungrateful talk. Mary Ryan was now joking about cutting off Mary Ann’s lovely hair!
‘Doesn’t she realize that without my intervention, she might be dead of neglect?’ Mrs Cameron railed bad-temperedly at Mary Ann, in her quiet time. Mary Ann, instead of speaking, tilted her very best ‘Eve Repentant’ profile, knowing how well a picture of feminine humility broke Mrs Cameron’s heart. She was looking particularly soulful these days, because she was in love. Ever since the lecture, she had dreamed of young Herbert – such an exotic young creature, with such an unusual figure!
Julia’s old white-beard husband kept aloof from such upsets, although he pitied her when she stormed into his bedroom, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘Thrown back in my face,’ she would cry, pacing up and down. ‘Thrown back in my face.’ Generally supportive in a wry, ironic, bedridden kind of way, he would nevertheless gently warn her when he thought she expected too much from Mary Ryan, or when her grand, unlikely presents overstepped the mark. The Elgin Marbles wallpaper for Farringford was a case in point.
‘Perhaps you went too far, my dear, although acting as always from the best intentions?’ her husband suggested. ‘And the mutton was a lovely idea, Julia, except that the Farringford estate is over-run with sheep. See the white fluffy things on the downs?’
She sat on his bed, and slumped, helpless.
‘I shall knit you a muffler, Charles,’ she said.
‘If it gives you pleasure, Julia.’
This was non-committal without being rude, and was his usual, well-practised response. As Julia had complained to Mr Watts, it avoided saying thank you and thereby implying an obligation.
‘See, Charles, I have converted the vegetable plot into a lawn overnight! You said you wished we had more grass!’ Julia would declare.
Or, ‘While you were asleep I redecorated your bedroom! You said you preferred a darker shade!’
And rather than discouraging her by saying, ‘You’re mad, Julia,’ he would smile. ‘If it makes you happy, my dear.’
But what was the problem with this Elgin Marbles wallpaper, you ask? Well, obviously, it had the Elgin Marbles on it. As with so many of Julia’s presents, the wallpaper was a gift inadequately thought through. Where would it hang at Farringford? Did it accord with the Tennysons’ usual taste? What did it say about how Julia perceived her friends?
‘She thinks we belong in the British Museum,’ said Emily.
Yet Julia had such a powerful vision of Alfred’s pleasure on receiving this imaginative gift (‘Julia, what a kind person you are’) that she had been unable to resist it. She had little idea what discord it would sow between Alfred and Emily, who were now scarcely on speaking terms. Lord Elgin and his wallpaper were now touchy subjects at Farringford. Lionel Tennyson had noticed (with delight) that even if you dropped the words ‘Parthenon’ or ‘Great Russell Street’ fairly innocently into a conversation, you would get some very sour looks.
‘Let’s burn the damn stuff,’ Alfred had said.
‘But how would Julia feel? She is such a good friend, Alfred.’
‘Would you rather we hung it on the walls and let it look at us?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then.’
Emily was glad that Julia could not ensnare Alfred’s better nature by the gift of a few baubles; but at the same time horrified by the possibility that he simply had no better nature to ensnare.
‘It must be frustrating for Julia,’ she sympathized, but only half-heartedly. It was quite comical, actually, from Emily’s point of view. That Julia openly adored Alfred did not impress him; he regarded it as only natural. That her unreturned attentions made her unhappy was nothing to him. The stream of votive presents were an amusement (‘What’s it today? A teapot!’); now that Emily had started sending things back, he was puzzled, nothing more.
Emily ordered that the wallpaper be piled at the base of Alfred’s little spiral staircase – the special escape route built on the corner of his library so that he could avoid meeting invaders and invited guests. Emily felt he had been passing her the problem and forcing her to solve it; this seemed like a good passive way of handing it back. Every time he ran down his stairs, he would have to vault six rolls of wallpaper.
This was only fair. Emily protected her husband from so much that was unpleasant, she refused to protect him from well-meant gifts as well. Another letter from ‘Yours in aversion’ had arrived this morning, and she put it in her pocket unopened, as always. She was glad now, anyway, that she never warned Alfred about the imminent arrival of Mr Dodgson. By some unknowable stroke of good fortune, the dreadful fellow had not shown up.
The great delight at Dimbola Lodge was the discovery that they had a new genius in their midst. To add to the greatest living poet and the greatest living painter, Julia could now lay claim to the greatest living nonsense writer (Edward Lear always gave her the cold shoulder anyhow). So while Dodgson took beef tea in sips and continued to mislay his reason, the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was read by everybody, even old Mr Cameron, who particularly approved the Cheshire Cat, and the philosophical discussion between the King, Queen and executioner about whether a head can be beheaded when it is not connected to a neck.
‘I could quite happily think about this logical point for a week or more, Julia, if I were not excited with unexpected presents.’
All Mrs Cameron’s former dislike of Dodgson – based only on reputation – was now swept away by her enthusiasm for Lewis Carroll. ‘I refuse to believe Mr Dodgson was overcome by the size of his own organs,’ she said. ‘The sheer imaginative effort of writing this book could break the constitution of any man. But I do wish the poor fellow would recover himself,’ she added. ‘I want to know why a raven is like a writing desk.’
Watts grew cross and grumpy, but Julia barely noticed. All weekend, everything was Alice this, and Alice that. Il Signor got almost no attention. Julia’s behaviour was quite insensitive, and her noisy trilling about Alice was causing him a headache. On Sunday he had set up his easel and begun work on the recolouring of Ellen’s portrait (‘Choosing’), but nobody asked him why the rosy cheeks were turning pale. Every time he sat down to instruct Julia on the Italian masters, too, she would think of some other mad coincidence that brought the world of Alice closer to her own existence.
‘How extraordinary, George, that I painted my roses on Wednesday! You see, that is the sort of thing that may have set him off. As we both know, George, genius must always be treated with delicacy.’
Watts winced.
‘In that case, could you call me Il Signor?’
‘Of course, George. Just say the word. But I feel sure the way to jolt him out of this state is to bring Alice alive for him in some way – perhaps little Daisy. What do you think? We could do tableaux! Ellen says that before his breakdown, he always stammered, people supplied his words for him. Now he speaks fluently, but nonsense. The human mind is fascinating, hm?’
Watts shrugged and stared out of the window toward the bay, where he saw Ellen approaching with Tennyson, just in time for tea. Ellen really was very beautiful. It was such a shame he couldn’t do anything about it.
‘Haydon came to me again in the night,’ Watts confided.
Julia said, ‘Did he, dear?’ but she had followed his gaze to Alfred and the pretty girl, and was not really listening. It was truly irritating that Mrs Watts was the living Maud. Julia loved Alfred better than anybody, and he was always rotten to her because she was not young or pretty.
‘Yes. The poor dead fellow was shaking his fist at me and pointing to the place where he cut his throat.’
‘Don’t take it to heart,’ she said, still preoccupied. ‘It was really not your fault. It was the yankee midget, as I told you before. Live for the present, George.’
‘But Julia –’
Ellen and Tennyson arrived at the front door, and Julia recovered herself with a great effort.
‘And what a coincidence that we have a Mary Ann in the house when there is one in Alice, too!’
Watts gave in. Was there any profit in pointing out that half the maids in England were called Mary Ann? Probably not.
‘Fancy,’ he clucked.
‘What’s that, George?’
‘Mary Ann, fancy that. What an uncanny coincidence. Ellen’s first name is Alice, too, did you know? Another accident which isn’t one really.’
‘No?’
‘No, she tells me that Dodgson met her and admired her when she was only eight. She has concluded that the child in the book is her.’
‘Little Alice is Mrs Watts!’ Julia exclaimed in disbelief, as she watched Ellen arrive at the front door and remove her bonnet.
‘Oh I don’t think so, not Mr Dodgson too,’ she muttered. ‘That silly girl can’t inspire everybody.’
After tea, Ellen was commissioned to sit upstairs with Dodgson for an hour, to see if there was anything she could do. Mary Ann came with her. They found him sitting morose in a high-backed chair beside an open sashed window, dressed in a heavily embroidered Indian shirt and a purple fez, evidently some inappropriate gifts from Julia. His gaze was far out to sea, and he hardly looked around when the others entered. His demeanour reminded Ellen of the mad scenes she had seen in Shakespeare – people are always mad when there is a crashing shore nearby, it seemed. If she dared, she would put her orchids in Dodgson’s hair and tousle it a little.
But what really impressed her was that Dodgson, in this big shell of a chair, reminded her of the Mock Turtle on the sand in Alice, which she had read again that morning. So she sat on a low stool, quietly, and listened to the distant breaking waves, wondering who would play the Gryphon to complete the picture.
Mary Ann spoke up, with a big effort to sound normal.
‘This here young lady,’ she said, ‘she wants to know your history, she do.’
Dodgson looked at Ellen, and then at the sea again, and then turned back. Demented or not, he certainly looked unhappy – as you would, too, if you were remembering that you were a real turtle once.
‘I’ll tell it to you,’ he said. ‘Sit down both of you, and don’t speak a word until I’ve finished.’
Since they were already both sitting down, they did not move. They glanced at each other, and Ellen put her finger to her lips. She had a plan to remind him of his normal self.
‘Once,’ he said, with a deep sigh, ‘I was a real t—’
‘Turtle?’ Ellen prompted.
Dodgson bit his lip, and looked back out of the window. Biding for time, he wiped a tear with the back of his hand.
‘When we were little, we went to school in the sea,’ he continued. ‘The master was an old turtle. We used to call him T—’
‘Tortoise?’ she interrupted.
Dodgson sobbed, as though a bone was in his throat, and tried again.
‘You may not have lived much under the sea, and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster –’
‘No, but I would love to see a Lobster Quadrille!’ said Ellen.
Dodgson put his hands to his head and closed his eyes. This wasn’t supposed to happen. When he opened them again, the little girl was still sitting at his feet, with her chin in her hands, her big childish eyes gazing up at him. ‘Alice?’ he said. ‘Is it you, Alice?’
‘Yes, I’m Alice,’ she said, quite truthfully. (Well, she was.)
‘Alice, a terrible thing has happened. I hardly know how to tell you, my dear. But somehow or other, you have got inside my head.’
As night fell across the bay, Lorenzo and Jessie finally gave up testing each other for the Organ of Gratitude. After hours of hypnotic tests, expert manipulation, and some fairly brutal heart-searching, they were forced to admit the possibility that neither of them had one.
‘Perhaps one of these characters had it, though, Pa,’ said Jessie, indicating the heads, piled like a Golgotha in the corner of the room. ‘That Haydon was always glad of help, wasn’t he?’ She went and got Haydon, and set him on the table.
Lorenzo frowned. ‘He was always asking for help, certainly, but –’
‘Now it seems to me,’ she said, ‘That the key to Gratitude is Self Esteem.’
Lorenzo leaned back in his chair and whistled. ‘Jessie, how old are you again?’
‘I’m eight and you know it.’
‘Where in damnation did you learn to be so worldly?’
‘Ah, cheese it, Pa,’ she declared, but she blushed nevertheless. She loved it when Lorenzo told her she was a brat prodigy.
‘But come on, Pa, apply yourself. Say Uncle Orson gave you –’
‘Jessie. I am tired of hypotheticals. It keeps turning out that I’m the most ornery ingrate that ever lived. Shouldn’t you be in bed? Let me call for Ada.’
‘But this is just getting interesting.’
‘Well, I honestly think –’
He was just about to tell her what he honestly thought when Ada interrupted.
‘There is a young man to see you, sir.’ She pulled a face.
‘Go on.’
‘He says he attended the Freshwater lecture, and would like to purchase a pamphlet. Should I send him away, sir? It’s very late. If I were you I’d send him away, but then nobody listens to me of course, because everyone here is so much cleverer than I am.’
Lorenzo ignored the uppity sarcasm. He smiled. It was a visit he had been expecting.
‘Jessie, you must go to bed at once. Ada, bring the young man, and ask for some lamps to be brought. Why, we should have had lamps half an hour ago. What were you thinking?’
It was true. While he and Jessie sat talking, they hardly noticed how the room had darkened, until the only light came reflected from the sea in the moonshine. When the boy came in, the room was still thus dark, even darker, and Lorenzo could hardly see him, but he knew at once who it was.
‘Hello, young man. Is it Herbert, am I right?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ came Ellen’s disguised gruff voice. ‘Herbert it is.’
She edged into the room, where all she could clearly make out was the shape of Lorenzo standing at the window. She began to wish she had not come. Compared to the weedy aesthetes she had grown accustomed to, Lorenzo seemed such a large and manly man; a sixteen-year-old cross-dressed woman alone with such a man was the sort of situation she knew only too well from the stage. It led to all sorts of embarrassing mix-ups. Lorenzo would be suggesting they wrestle soon, and take their tops off.
‘I am sorry to disturb you in the evening, sir,’ began Herbert. ‘But I wondered if I could have the benefit of your advice.’
Lorenzo did not reply at once. Perhaps he was waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. She heard him sniff the air.
Ellen wished the lamps would be lit, but she thought it was going pretty well until Lorenzo took a step closer and she smelled the sandalwood on his hands.
‘May I take your hat?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Come now.’
‘No. Really.’
‘Herbert, would you really want me to kiss you with it on?’
‘Oh no, sir,’ she squeaked.
‘So we should take it off, then.’
‘Oh, sir, I never meant –’
‘You see, I feel attracted to you, Herbert,’ he laughed, as he moved towards her again, and reached out to touch the brim of the hat. ‘You have the biggest Organ of Hope – But ah, the lamps are come,’ he said good-naturedly, as the servants appeared at the door with oil-lamps, apologizing, curtsying, lighting more fixtures with spills. Ellen felt she had never been so glad to see anybody, but when the room brightened, and she could see Lorenzo plainly, smiling at her and indicating a seat at the table, the thrill of danger did not pass. In fact, she felt a jolt of desire.
‘So tell me why you’ve come,’ said Lorenzo, not waiting for the room to clear. Ellen coughed and thought. Was it really true she had come here for a pamphlet?
Back at Dimbola, over coffee and muffins, Julia decided it was time to confide in Mr Watts. She had conceived the ultimate present for Alfred, a magnificent present which he would appreciate all his life.
‘What sort of present?’ asked Il Signor, vaguely interested, picking a buttery muffin from a platter. ‘Can you eat it?’
‘No, you can’t eat it,’ Julia said. She seemed to find the question amusing. ‘You can’t hang it on walls, either.’
Watts had not the energy to guess.
‘What is it?’
‘George! It’s what he wants more than anything in the world. It’s something that dear Emily could never give him, either. It is the gift of a true friend.’ Her eyes flashed with happy tears. ‘You still can’t guess?’
Watts shrugged.
‘It’s a review, George.’
And she poked him in the ribs.
‘A review? But where? You can’t just write him one, you know.’
‘I know that, George. It’s in the Westminster Quarterly! Alfred will receive it tomorrow. Sister Sara has used her influence with the greatest critic and editor of the age, and Enoch Arden is to be accounted Alfred’s most accomplished work to date. A proof-sheet arrived yesterday from town. It is a wonderful review. I wrote it myself. Listen to this –!’
She removed a folded sheet of paper from beneath her shawl, and opened it.
‘It says there never was such a perfect depiction of absence of hope, George! Enoch Arden’s story is relentless in its poignant tragedy. The reviewer says the poem made him feel utterly despondent from beginning to end! Imagine how such words will comfort Alfred. The reviewer quotes thus:
And Enoch bore his weakness cheerfully.
For sure no gladlier does the stranded wreck
See through the gray skirts of a lifting squall
The boat that bears the hope of life approach
To save the life despaired of, than he saw
Death dawning on him, and the close of all.
Despite himself, Watts was impressed. It was the most miserable thing he’d ever heard. ‘There’s glory for you,’ he said.
‘But Alfred will be so happy!’ exclaimed Julia. ‘You and I both know the wicked sting of the critic, George; but as for the critic’s fine words, we take them straight to our bosoms as balm!’
Watts masticated his muffin.
‘How will he know it’s from you?’ he said, with his mouth full.
‘George?’
‘How will Alfred know this is a present?’
‘Oh but he won’t! He never will! That’s the beauty of it!’
‘That’s very selfless of you, Julia.’
‘I know,’ she said, thoughtfully. She still wasn’t sure she could cope with this aspect of the thing.
‘But now where’s your little wife got to?’ she asked brightly, changing the mood. ‘Shall we ask her to entertain us with a little dance?’
At this precise moment Ellen scurried back up the lane to Dimbola Lodge, her heart pounding. She ran fast and removed her bothersome hat, so that her golden hair swung loose on her shoulders. She laughed for pleasure. All in all, she was far too preoccupied to notice Mary Ryan standing hooded in the shadows near the hotel, watching her as she passed.
‘He will love me!’ Ellen said to herself in Mary Ryan’s hearing. ‘He will be unable to resist me.’
Ellen was supremely happy. She flicked her hair in the moonlight as she ran. She had solved the problems of everybody. Lorenzo would visit Mr Dodgson in the morning; he would consider Alfred’s requirements about the mad children, too. And as for her marital problems with George! Well, Lorenzo had promised some practical help in a theatrical extravaganza. No longer would George yell ‘Remember Westminster!’ at the precise moment any intimacy threatened.
For the first time since her marriage, she had been able to discuss this peculiar marital plight with another person, and the depth of Lorenzo’s compassion had overwhelmed her. Not once had he suggested that the failure was hers. He said she was brave to come. The relief was as though someone had drilled a hole in her head and let out the accumulated pressure of sixteen years.
‘Perhaps small Caution is a benefit sometimes,’ she had said to him, meaning to make a light joke.
‘Oh, it is useful, of course, if you are a hero in a tight spot. But in matters of love it is the source of more trouble than you can imagine,’ said Lorenzo. ‘I too have small Caution. And I have Amativeness so massive and bulging that I must rest it on the back of my chair, look, just to obtain relief.’
Ellen gulped. She pictured the back of her husband’s head. It was flat, like a wall.
‘I am very grateful for your kindness this evening,’ she said. ‘If you will help me with George, help make him love me, help him get over this Westminster thing, I will think well of you for ever.’
Lorenzo shook her hand.
‘But do you think gratitude exists, Mrs Watts? Or is it just a name for obligation? If we are truly grateful to somebody, perhaps we must love them, too? Is that what defines real gratitude, a love of the giver for himself and not the gift?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Ellen, worried. She feared his Organ of Amativeness was nudging into the discussion again. ‘But in my experience it is always a good idea to say “That’s kind” or “Would you really?”, because people set such store by it. It doesn’t take long to say. It doesn’t mean anything. But it makes people help you again, or give you more things.’
‘Well, that’s certainly a practical attitude, Mrs Watts,’ Lorenzo admitted, as he walked her to the door. ‘Perhaps you can show your gratitude to me, by helping me with a little research. If you are truly grateful, Mrs Watts, I fear you are going to have to take your hat off to me, sooner or later.’ Outside in the shadows Mary Ryan considered what to do. Perhaps the hour was too late for a visit to Mr Fowler now, although she still burned to know her marital fate. She looked upstairs to the rooms, for sign of a light. ‘He will love me,’ Mrs Watts had said. She must have meant Mr Fowler.
As Mary Ryan watched the building, Lorenzo opened a window and leaned out. At moments like these he wished he smoked cigars. Watching Ellen run back to Dimbola Lodge, he blew a kiss towards her.
‘Ah, Mrs Watts!’ he sighed happily. ‘God bless my Organ of Marvellousness, but I’m enjoying this.’
Mary Ryan looked up the road at Mrs Watts, and back to the hotel window, where Lorenzo still watched, with a look of enchantment.
Mr Fowler and Mrs Watts? She shook her head and whistled. For once, only the local exclamation would do.
‘Swap me bob,’ she whispered.