That night, Watts informed Ellen they were going home. He sent her a little note, by means of Mary Ryan, advising her to pack her bags at once. Now, with the Irish maid offering her bits of things to decide on – and surreptitiously returning the purloined Herbert hat to its rightful place – Ellen sat amid the debris of her ransacked wardrobe, and felt pretty glum. Perhaps it was time to accept that the marriage was over. The Haydon extravaganza had gone down quite badly. Her satin wedding dress had been ruined in the rain.
Damn this small Caution; damn this big Hope. She felt terribly confused. She wanted Watts to love her; but if she was honest, she wanted Lorenzo Fowler to love her too. If only Watts had set up house with her, the marriage might have been different. If they had taken up an independent life, they would have stood a chance. But Watts was a poor man. Haydon had lived an independent life, and look what happened to him. All that remained of him now was a moral tale, a set of gloomy diaries, and a plaster head in fragments.
‘The Absence of Hope’? It was all Watts really desired, of course; to depict moments of desolation and spiritual defeat. How stupid she had been to think she could turn him into Mister Cheeryble just by effort and example. It was as pointless as re-writing ‘The Two Voices’ as ‘The Three Voices’, or trying to pose for a Julia Margaret Cameron photograph (‘Wait! I come to thee! I die!’) with a grin from ear to ear. It was just no good. It did not accord. Despite all his wife’s best efforts, Old Greybeard’s doomy life force had prevailed. ‘And the moral of that is?’ Watts seemed to whisper in her ear. All too easily, she thought of the apt motto. Let the cobbler stick to his last.
Of course, the considerable shock of Lydia Fowler’s arrival was still negotiating its way through Ellen’s nervous system, and many, many hours would pass before it settled. The great magnetic Fowler kiss was unlike anything previously seen in polite society, and as a spectacle of raw marital desire, it uptipped this little virgin quite. Lorenzo and Lydia had seemed clamped together, locked in place, their bodies humming the same tremendous note in a major key. ‘Goddess,’ Lorenzo said, and Ellen nearly swooned with longing.
She fingered her Herbert costume, and considered putting it on again, but her Herbertian adventure seemed so paltry now. Compared with rowing around the Needles in a night storm to join the man who worshipped you, dressing up as a boy for a bit of strained flirtation with someone else’s husband was very small potatoes. It hadn’t helped, either, that Lydia had handed everyone a copy of Uncle Orson’s explicit pamphlet before bidding goodnight and gathering child and husband back to her omnicompetent skirts. Ellen had read it at once, and a lot of matters of an unmentionable physical nature had finally fallen into place. ‘Full intimacy’, for example, covered all sorts of things between a man and wife, but it had nothing to do with dead pets.
Somewhat feverish at the recollection, Ellen now found herself alone at bed-time letting down her hair, and unbuttoning the top bit of her nightie. Up to now, Ellen’s sexual frustration had been to her a puzzling sensation, something like a faraway itch, or a door opening to the garden but nobody coming in. But after Lorenzo said ‘Goddess’, the world changed; she saw it differently, and she felt the full, bitter force of missing out on the action. At the Albion Hotel, at this very minute, Mr and Mrs Fowler would doubtless be engaging in vigorous marital relations precisely as prescribed by O. S. Fowler. Ellen had the mental picture of a battering ram, flames, cheers, and boiling oil – which was odd, really, because there was nothing alluding to medieval siegecraft in the book. Watts, by contrast, would be lolling in the next bedroom by himself, feebly wiping his dribbling brushes on a linseed rag.
Ellen made up her mind. Five months was long enough to wait for marital love, whatever the quality. What would she lose now by forcing the issue? Nothing. She undid another button and stepped into the corridor. It was time to take the bull by the horns. It was time to forget Westminster.
‘George?’
She rapped lightly on his door.
‘George?’
‘Mm?’
There was a scrabbling noise in the room, but before her husband could say, ‘Wait!’ Ellen entered on exaggerated tiptoe, getting ready to pull her nightie over her head. But it was a mistake. Oh dear, this was a mistake. As the door swung open, Watts leapt to his feet in embarrassment –
‘George! But –’
‘No!’
‘How could you?’
‘Leave this room at once!’
– and Ellen had returned to the corridor pole-axed with astonishment within thirty seconds.
It was the last body-blow of her visit to Freshwater, and it was conclusive. Her marriage was now definitely over. George Frederic Watts had deceived and betrayed his wife in the worst possible way. For no, she had not surprised him molesting a chambermaid, or a child, or her best friend, or even the St Bernard, as other disappointed wives have done throughout history. When she entered her husband’s room on that black night in Freshwater Bay, she had surprised him counting an enormous pile of money.
Cameron sat up in bed and persuaded his wife that a further mercy dash to Farringford was out of the question. The hour was too late.
‘But they must be told of Ada Wilson,’ she exclaimed. ‘Alfred has often mentioned an anonymous letter, but think how brave he has been, if the wicked missives have continued. Perhaps he did not wish to alarm Emily. Think of that, Charles. There is some good in the man, you must not deny it. I would give anything for this not to have happened to my dear, dear friends.’
‘I know you would. You would give anything to anybody. It is to the infinite glory of God that each time I wake up I find my bed still under my body. But you can inform them of this silly Ada business in the morning, Julia. Tell me, how many times have you visited Farringford today already?’
Julia nodded that he was right, as always. She had been there twice, and both times without benefit of wheeled propulsion. She was nearly fifty, and her legs were feeling the strain. She recollected this morning’s first visit, when she tripped over the Elgin Marbles wallpaper in Tennyson’s staircase. How much could happen in a single day.
‘I found the wallpaper, incidentally,’ she told Cameron, absent-mindedly rubbing her shin at the memory of its discovery. ‘I brought a roll back with me, in fact.’
‘Did you?’ He was amused. ‘Was that quite proper, do you think?’
‘Well, they don’t want it. They have made that clear enough. Besides, I’m afraid I was hurt and angry, Charles; I believe I vowed to burn the stuff in the fireplace. But now that I look at it, it is so very fine I think I might give it to Mrs Fowler as a present. I would so like to have that lady’s good opinion.’
‘My dear, as you know, I admire you in all things save your impulsively charitable first impressions.’
Julia said nothing.
‘But Julia, you surprise me. How can you take back a gift you have given? It is no longer yours. Aside from the propriety of the thing, if you don’t return it, they will suspect the servants or the children.’
Julia bit her lip.
‘I was in a passion, Charles.’
‘I know.’
‘This has been a terrible day.’
‘No, no. There I must disagree. From the entertainment point of view, it was more than satisfactory.’
‘But you are right, Charles. I will return the wallpaper tomorrow. You are always right. That’s why I love you.’
Cameron smiled and settled his head. He did not regard this as something requiring an answer, let alone a reciprocation.
Julia differed from him in this opinion, however. ‘I said I love you, Charles,’ she repeated, with meaningful emphasis.
‘Good for you,’ he said, comfortably.
Staggering hatless from Farringford in the direction of the sea, Dodgson decided it was time to make his excuses to Freshwater society and leave before lunch tomorrow. However much people begged him to reconsider, he would just have to disappoint them. His week’s sojourn at this delightful holiday place had been at best a grim race against brain damage, and he considered it wise to quit while he – and his head – were still ahead.
There were just a few details to tidy up in the morning. For example, he would require Daisy Bradley to return his safety pins; and he intended to lend some photographs to Mrs Cameron (to demonstrate how photography should be done). As for Mr Tennyson, his own offences against the great man were still well beyond his power to comprehend, but the evidence of his own ringing ear told him that Tennyson was definitely offended. In retrospect he thanked goodness that at least Lionel had reached for the croquet mallet and not the mock-baronial axe above the mantel.
His other major task before leaving Freshwater was to detach Alice from little Miss Terry, who still unaccountably believed the work to be somehow their joint creation. Having finally accepted that Tennyson’s answer was a No, he would instead dedicate the book with a poem to Alice Liddell, which was only fair – despite that ungrateful little girl’s insistence on growing up and spoiling everything. Hopefully, other little girls would heed the warnings in Alice about getting so big suddenly that you fill the room, and your arm goes out of the window and your foot goes up the chimney. But in Dodgson’s experience, there was no reasoning with the little angels once their grosser hormones kicked in and they stopped wearing the wings. Meanwhile, as the rain finally stopped, he was thinking of a clever poem for Ellen which he might slip into the book somewhere as a way of pretending to say thank you.
So he was just pacing along with his head down, practising rhymes, when he bumped into the rather arresting figure of Mary Ann Hillier, swathed in black, lighting up the dark with her moonglow profile and expression of infinite sadness. Such beauty was truly astonishing, he had to admit it. The Pre-Raphaelites would stripe themselves pink with envy. ‘Mary Ann?’
‘Meester Dadgson?’ she said. Dodgson winced as the vision fled.
‘If you wants to go hooam I shall be gwine outlong in a minute or two,’ she said. Which was nice of her, if not particularly nicely done. Nobody around here, he noticed, seemed to have much grace when they offered you a kindness.
They walked along in silence for a short while, but Mary Ann clearly had something she wanted to discuss.
‘Be you a-minding o that lecture t’other day?’ she asked, as they walked along in the dark.
‘How could I forget it?’ said Dodgson.
‘Waall, I caast eyes on a buoy, swap me bob, that tore my heart all to libbets!’
‘You d—did?’ Dodgson wanted to ask what a libbet was, but he dared not disrupt the flow. Mary Ann seemed to be telling him she was in love, but he didn’t see what he could do about it, and he was hardly in the mood for maids’ confessions. Even at the best of times, in fact, such intimacies made him want to scratch vigorously at the rough skin on his elbows.
‘And the boy?’ he asked. ‘Do you mean young Herbert?’
Her eyes lit up.
‘I do.’
‘Well, if you look down the road there, you’ll see he’s j—just emerging from D-D—’
‘Dimbooala Lodge!’ exclaimed the girl. ‘I knowed it! That Mary Ryan’ll git sich a whistersniff in the chops one day!’ And she scurried off after Herbert, while Dodgson – glad to take his mind off his current problems – couldn’t help speculating how long he would have to stammer ‘W-w-w—’ before anyone guessed he was trying to say whistersniff.
‘Ada has taken some of the pamphlets, Lorry,’ declared Lydia, surveying a sorry mess in the Fowler quarters, which had got quite a lot worse during a rather wild hello-it’s-me-back-from-Boston conjugal intimacy.
‘Mm,’ said Lorenzo, still lazing in his stewy sheets. ‘But we can easily hire another maid, Lydia. Please don’t exercise yourself about it, my Aphrodite. You have, after all, just rowed a very dangerous shipping channel before performing as a fully participant female in a quite exhausting marital act. You must surely deserve a breath or two, or even’ – he looked at her steadily – ‘a drink.’
‘Lorenzo Niles Fowler!’ she exclaimed.
Any other teetotal couple might have laughed at this suggestion. The Fowlers were not light-hearted, however; it was the secret of their marriage. Now each gripped the other’s hand fiercely, as though rescuing somebody from the sea. They looked searchingly into each other’s eyes, and held the pose for two minutes. And when this odd, non-dancing tango was released, they got back to normal again.
‘Besides, the girl seems to have done no other harm,’ said Lorenzo.
‘But when I think what she might have done to Jessie!’
‘All she did to Jessie was offer her ham at breakfast. Oh, but there is something to tell you about our Infant Phrenologist. I meant to mention it earlier.’
‘Apart from the cut to her arm?’
‘Yes, apart from that.’ Lorenzo had still not fully convinced Lydia that the cut was part of a party game that went wrong.
‘No. The fact is, Jessie read Orson’s pamphlet one day when I wasn’t looking.’
Lydia thought about it. He studied her face. Was she shocked? She wasn’t.
‘Jessie is remarkable, isn’t she, Lorry?’
‘She is.’
‘How old is she again?’
‘Eight.’
‘Good heavens.’
Lydia tidied part of a demountable brain into a box. It was the Fowlers’ special delight to employ, in their passions, not only their own Organs of Amativeness, but someone else’s too.
‘Shall we leave tomorrow?’
Lorenzo remembered he had an appointment with Mrs Cameron, to test the applications of phrenology on photographic models. The lady was counting on him, dammit, and he owed her a good turn. Briefly, he wrestled with his conscience.
‘I’m with you, divine one,’ he decided. ‘Let’s go!’
Lydia rose from her bed to draw back a curtain. She had firm views about fresh air at night; she had once written a hundred-page monograph about its benefits that had sold particularly well in the western frontier states, and had led to many readers being attacked in their beds by coyotes.
‘That’s odd,’ she said, as she climbed back into bed. ‘There is a youth outside sitting on the sea wall with a cap on. And beside him is a girl with very long hair. It’s late for romantic trysts, don’t you think? I hope they won’t steal my boat.’
Lorenzo sat up.
‘Shall I go and see?’
She kissed him.
‘God,’ she breathed.
She was not swearing. A Fowler never swore. She was simply doing the ‘goddess’ thing in reverse. She drank a pint of water in a manner that set her husband’s loins aflame. Which was why another half hour elapsed before Lorenzo could investigate the callow couple outside.
Dodgson had been right, you see, that the figure was Herbert. The lad made his last outing that night before being burned, with a horrible smell, in a kitchen stove at Dimbola Lodge the following day.
‘What is that? Is it wool?’ asked Cook, as Mary Ryan wiggled the tweed with a poker.
‘Ah, isn’t it such stuff as dreams are made on?’ said Mary Ryan, significantly. As we mentioned earlier, Mary Ryan had been no slouch in the literature department.
Ellen adopted Herbert once more because she needed time to think, and no longer could she bear to stay indoors. The rain had subsided, and though a wind still blew, it was warm. She walked to the bay, where she watched the waves, and tried to sort out her life, starting with the most important thing, to wit, the astounding news that Watts had money. She kept saying it to herself. Watts has money. Watts has money. Watts – who has made his proud wife behave as little more than a mendicant – actually possesses heaps of the stuff that rents houses and buys food, and secures respectable independence away from interfering, condescending patrons.
Watts had accumulated the money, of course, by taking care of the pence and looking blank and helpless whenever the cost of a ticket to the seaside was mentioned. He was paid for his portraits. He won £300 in the Westminster competition. She could never forgive him. In particular, she could never forgive him for instructing her to live on ninepence a week, and giving her nothing by way of presents except a cut-price proverb book at Waterloo Station. It is normally the case that when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window. But Ellen stopped loving Watts only when she finally found out about his dosh.
It was as she sat there, staring at the sea, that Mary Ann Hillier first watched her from the shadows, tragically retaining her firm hold of the wrong end of the stick. It would be a shame to transcribe the exact words of this lovely girl on this occasion, especially if whistersniff or rantipike were among them. Besides, when Ellen ever after looked back on this tragical-comical scene, she remembered it rather differently:
O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip!
said Mary Ann (aside), her face all blind admiration. (‘Poor lady!’ thought Ellen; ‘She were better love a dream.’)
A murd’rous guilt shows not itself more soon (said Mary Ann)
Than love that would seem hid: love’s night is noon.
O Herbert, by the roses of the spring,
By maidihood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
Mary Ann gasped at the realization of what she was saying.
Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;
But rather reason thus with reason fetter:
Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better.
Mary Ann Hillier did not say any of this, obviously. Her heart was tore in libbets. Was it true, in any case, that love sought was good but given unsought was better? That’s how it felt to the martyred giver, certainly; but to the receiver, love unsought was a pain in the neck. It did not flatter; it was beaten off with a bad grace, or shunned altogether. It was like unwanted wallpaper. Here was the lesson that Julia Margaret Cameron failed to learn every day of her life: simply, that oneway passion scares people off; it doesn’t work. Ellen saw Mary Ann’s hopeless attachment, and felt sorry for it. She suddenly realized how impossible it was to love in return just because someone loves you very much first.
The delicacy of the situation required Shakespeare to help her out. Forever after, when Ellen played Viola to crowds of adoring play-goers, her heart broke for her own dear Olivia, the sweet and beautiful (but very dim) Mary Ann, whom gently she rejected that momentous night in Freshwater.
By innocence I swear, and by my youth,
I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,
And that no woman has; nor never none
Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.
If Julia thought the day had been a long one, for Emily Tennyson it was the worst birthday since Alfred had asked her in the first year of marriage what was in her pocket. Thinking it was a game, she gaily produced a thimble, and was astounded when he solemnly gave it back to her as a present. ‘I beg you to receive this elegant thimble,’ he said. Since then she had largely hidden the fact of her birthday, and enjoyed it more. Alfred had performed one kindness today, however, by removing a roll of that awful wallpaper and disposing of it. No one could find it anywhere. She meant to thank him as soon as she could. It was a thoughtful deed worthy of a great man, and all the better for being utterly uncharacteristic.
In all other respects, however, Emily’s birthday had laid her low completely. The battle with the dozen Westminsters had been so enervating that after the arrival of the late-night guests she could not even struggle up to bed unaided, and required Lionel and Alfred to carry her. In the pocket of her night gown she found this morning’s ‘Yours in aversion’ letter which she was about to slip into her bureau with the others when she realized – with a certain frisson – that it had been delivered by hand.
Was ‘Yours in aversion’ a local, then? If only her husband were like other men, if only he could stand a bit of mild criticism, none of this tiring subterfuge would be necessary. It was true to say that the more you take on, the more you will be taken advantage of. All lay load on the willing horse.
Strangely, it had been quite comforting to see Wilson, the old governess. Emily had no idea Wilson might bear a grudge about not being paid. Was Emily herself paid for her duties in this household? Of course not. What price could be placed on feminine duties? No, she and Wilson had shared almost two happy years, and yes, there had been occasional quarrels over money, but Emily had always forgiven the outbursts. Wilson’s unjust sense of furious grievance would expend itself (she did have quite a temper), and then the two women would get along famously again.
‘Wilson! It is a pleasure to see you, even at this unlikely time of night.’
Emily had thus taken the young woman aside while Alfred and Lionel picked up Dodgson from the carpet and carried him to the door. The whacking of Dodgson did not alarm the old governess. Being accustomed to the Tennysons, she wondered as little as anybody at the croquet mallet forming part of the house’s hospitality.
‘No chance of tea, I suppose?’ Wilson said. Emily laughed and rocked.
‘You and your strange wit, just like old times!’
In the bedroom now, Alfred entered and found her smiling. He decided to take advantage of the good mood.
‘Emily, do you think I should pose for Julia?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘What if I must?’
‘Must?’
‘Must.’
She pursed her lips tight.
‘Must?’ she demanded again.
‘We will discuss it tomorrow, Alfred. Wilson was saying I looked peaky, and I believe she is right. You must take us both with you on your walk tomorrow.’
‘Must?’ Alfred began.
‘Yes, must,’ she barked, and then sank to her pillow, all energies disbursed.
Ellen sat alone again. Mary Ann – or Shakespeare’s Olivia, it was all melting together in her mind – had left her. It was no fun reducing a beautiful woman to tears, Ellen thought; why did Watts admire his own handiwork so much? She wiped her eyes and stood up.
‘Mrs Watts?’
She looked around.
‘Mrs Watts?’
It was Lorenzo. Oh heavens, how thrilling. Whenever she saw this man, she felt acutely self-aware, as though her body were swelled by electricity, and moreover outlined by sparks of blue fire.
‘I thought I saw you from upstairs,’ he explained. ‘We are leaving tomorrow.’
Ellen felt a mortal pang, although she knew she was not entitled to it.
‘As are we,’ she admitted.
‘Were the tableaux a success? Was Mr Watts cured of his problem?’
‘Not entirely. He has forgotten Westminster, but unfortunately remembered something else.’
She smiled at him. She wanted very much to touch his arm, but she held back. She was half afraid the contact might kill him. She lowered her eyes instead.
‘I think my husband and I will soon conclude – oh, that all good things must come to an end.’
‘Ah. I hope there were other reasons to enjoy your stay?’
Ellen’s body sang so loudly she was amazed he couldn’t hear it. Or perhaps he could.
‘Mr Fowler, I would not have missed it. It’s the sea, you know. The sea throws up all manner of things.’ She raised her eyes. ‘Mrs Fowler, for example.’
Lorenzo did not comment. There was no call for an apology. His wife was a fact. He sniffed his fingers in the dark.
‘You seem unhappy,’ he said at last, tenderly.
‘Not unhappy at all, thank you. I just need courage.’
They looked at the black waves together.
‘You have great courage, Mrs Watts.’
‘Do I?’
Oh dear, they were getting personal again. Why did every conversation with Lorenzo Fowler have to scream with the sub-text, Please, please, for pity’s sake, touch my head?
He looked at her. She looked at him.
‘Will you take your hat off this time, Mrs Watts?’
‘I think I will, Mr Fowler.’
And as the moon broke through cloud above the ink-black bay, Ellen shook the hair out of her hat, pouring it like gold into his hands.