Tennyson’s Gift

Tennyson took a quick look at the brown cover of the Orson pamphlet. Actually, in appearance it was not unlike the Westminster, a coincidence which might later come in handy – if he wanted, say, to read it again in bed.

‘I am indeed, Emily. Fine words, fine words, and correct in every particular.’

Tennyson hesitated. He doubted his wife would ever have strength enough for the contents of the matter he was reading – which was a shame, but there you go. Thinking quickly, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew the true Westminster.

‘Another copy,’ he announced ingeniously, and continued to read feverishly about the abomination of women who don’t want to take part.

How had Orson Fowler’s curious document found its way into his home? Alfred had no idea that Wilson had brought it. All he knew was that, ambling vaguely down the main stairs this morning, he had discovered it hanging by a thread, exactly placed so that it bumped into his forehead as he made his way to breakfast. What with the apple pie yesterday, and today the contraption with string, people were finally finding ways of drawing things to his attention.

‘This appears to be a periodical called The Train,’ pronounced Emily at last, ‘And it contains Mr Dodgson’s scandalous version of “The Two Voices”.’

Tennyson snatched it back, searched his pocket again, and found the Westminster. These papers all looked too similar. He wondered how librarians managed things at all. Impatiently he took all three pamphlets into one bundle, and cast them on the piano.

‘Do you think we should all go out at once, Emily?’ He wanted to walk alone this morning. He had lots of things on his mind.

‘Well, must Wilson accompany us, then?’ he demanded. ‘She is not pleasant company, you must confess. I firmly believe she did not deserve the wages you did not pay her.’

There was an awkward silence, broken by Wilson humming ‘Rock of Ages’, just behind his ear.

‘Oh good.’ He thought quickly again. ‘I thought you were a sideboard, my dear!’

He waved an arm of explanation. ‘You admit yourself that you are thick set? Broad of beam? Hm? Shall we be off?’

And so it was that half an hour later three small black figures could be seen on the down – approaching the high point of the seven-hundred foot cliffs – when Julia set out uphill from Dimbola Lodge with her wretched roll of wallpaper. Cameron had refused to let her spoil the Tennysons’ breakfast with the news of Ada, but she broke out of the house as early as she could.

There was an air of finality about the day, for Mr Watts had announced his imminent departure, as had Mr Dodgson, who pored over a piece of paper at breakfast while mysteriously holding a yellow cushion to the side of his head. She had also received a note from Mr Fowler saying that his family must return to London, so bang went the science-meets-art Absence of Hope enterprise as well. Julia hated endings, yet also loved them. She doted on the high-minded melancholy they produced. ‘He is gone, he is gone!’ was the sort of picture she loved above all to produce – a long face in profile, bereft of love. Luckily, Mary Ann had been looking positively hangdog recently. A period of excellent droopy-servant Art was therefore on the cards.

Dodgson spent his morning trading in safety pins and pictures, and bits of ornament, and writing a tortured letter to Ellen. It was conceived in kindness, as a present, but luckily Mrs Watts had become accustomed to presents of a cheap, disappointing nature. For here was yet another.

My dear Mrs Watts [he wrote]

I hope you will indulge an author’s wish, and allow me to include this little poem in my Alice, so that you may then justly claim to have inspired my book in some small, private way (if not in any big one). You will recognize at once its close allusions to the proceedings of this strange week at Freshwater, but at the same time appreciate my efforts to cloak them in terms that will make the poem a private matter between us. The system for decoding the below is a simple one, and I shall never disclose it to a living soul.

(Here followed a highly complicated system of ‘him’ for ‘her’ in lines of even number, and so on. It was obvious to anybody that this was not a system at all, but an excuse for an insulting and empty gift.)

The matter of the safety pins in stanza three [he concluded] can be readily comprehended when I tell you that Mr Bradley will send them to you this morning. He has sent me a most polite note telling me I need not call for them myself.

Ellen had no idea what Mr Dodgson’s instructions meant. She also had no idea why he would write her a poem about safety pins. He seemed to be telling her, in certain terms, that Alice was not written for her, but at least this poem was. So she tossed the instructions aside and read the attached.

They told me you had been to her

And mentioned me to him:

She gave me a good character,

But said I could not swim.

(‘Well, that last bit is true at least,’ thought Ellen. ‘Come, this is not too difficult.’)

He sent them word I had not gone

(We know it to be true):

If she should push the matter on,

What would become of you?

I gave her one, they gave him two,

You gave us three or more;

They all returned from him to you

Though they were mine before.

If I or she should chance to be

Involved in this affair,

He trusts to you to set them free

Exactly as they were.

Ellen stopped reading. She had reached the bottom of the sheet. She turned over. There was more.

My notion was that you had been

(Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don’t let him know she liked them best,

For this must ever be

A secret kept from all the rest

Between yourself and me.

Ellen put it down. She felt her age had doubled since last night, and with the new-found authority of sadness (which suited her), she tore Mr Dodgson’s poem in pieces. ‘A secret kept from all the rest between yourself and me,’ she recited. ‘It will certainly be that, Mr Dodgson. It will certainly be that.’

‘I am,’ said his little wife, in a grown-up voice. As she looked at him now, she could never imagine being in awe of him again.

‘Come back!’ she cried, using a professional diaphragm technique which would soon come in handy again. ‘Come back, I have something important to say.’

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. It was lucky she knew Mr Dodgson’s book by heart.

It was a fine day; the effect of last night’s storm had been to break the hot weather, and today small clouds scudded inland over the Needles and across the chalk. At the bay, seaweed in ugly heaps had appeared on the sand, stirred up by last night’s waves, and was now stinking like sulphur, making little girls run squealing, holding their noses. Julia loved the seaweed smell, for it was similar to her photographic chemicals, which betokened freedom and happiness, and a chance to do something beautiful in an otherwise humdrum life. In the confusions of the last few days she had taken few photographs; when her guests had all departed she would again have the leisure but not the subjects. It was annoying how things always worked out that way.

But she must hurry to Alfred. There were so many things to say. He would be walking on the down this fine morning, and she must tell him she was sorry for the review, and that of course he must sit for her only if he wished it in his heart. Second, that Ada Wilson was a threat to Emily (though she still did not believe it). Also, she would take the opportunity of returning the wallpaper – and let him toss it from the cliff if he wanted. So with the wallpaper in her arms, she toiled up the steep path to Tennyson’s favourite walk, and was only half-way when she spied the tiny black figures and counted them. They were three. The upright one with the hat – a bit like a chimney-stack – was certainly Alfred; her heart leapt at that. The little box-shaped one was Emily (her heart subsided again). But who – dear God – was the third?

Back at Farringford, Lionel roamed the garden. He examined the Garibaldi tree, which alas, had not budged overnight; and though he pushed it hard with his good foot, it stood firm. Still pinned to it was a copy of the Westminster Quarterly, but it was drenched and ruined. Not for the first time, Lionel wished he could be sent away to school like other boys. At Freshwater, it was not much fun being a child, when all the interesting imaginative games were played exclusively by the grown-ups.

‘Lionel!’ He turned to see Jessie and a strange woman approaching the house.

He was well aware that Jessie thought him handsome. He expected to work his charm on the woman too.

‘Remember, Jessie,’ Lydia whispered. ‘We must not alarm Lionel by asking too directly about Ada. He is only a child.’

Jessie nodded in a grown-up fashion. How awful it must be, she thought, to have people regard you as only a child.

‘I’m afraid my Father and Mother are on the cliff,’ he explained, showing a good profile as he turned to point.

‘Oh,’ said Lydia. This was all a bit delicate. How do you ask a ten-year-old boy whether a maniac has called, without alarming him?

‘We wondered whether anyone strange has been here,’ Lydia continued. But again Lionel was obtuse. ‘Define strange,’ he said, wistfully.

At this point Jessie interceded. She couldn’t see the point of all this pussyfoot.

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ said Lionel. ‘She’s gone with my parents on their walk.’

Lionel pursed his lips, and shrugged his assent. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, without much enthusiasm, and led his little guest indoors. Tennyson’s second son may or may not have inherited the black blood of the family, but he was certainly a splinter off the old door-post in other ways.

‘I’ll show you a parody Mr Dodgson wrote of father’s poetry,’ said Lionel, as they walked indoors.

‘A poem by Mr Dodgson?’ remarked the little girl, sardonically. ‘That will be fun. Perhaps we could give each other smallpox as well.’

And where was Lorenzo? Lydia’s husband was at Dimbola, to take his apologetic leave of Mrs Cameron (who was not there) and offer Ada’s old job to Mary Ryan (who was). The house was otherwise deserted: the Wattses had left, and Mr Dodgson was on board a coach to Shanklin (unbelievably) for another seaside holiday, and another batch of little girls.

But what a bombshell for Mary Ryan. She was astonished at Mr Fowler’s offer, and blushed a vivid pink. She shut the drawing room door behind her, and begged him to lower his voice. It would be terrible if Mary Ann heard anything of this – so it was unfortunate that when she shut the door, Mary Ann was lurking outside, and got her hair caught in the jamb.

They stood in the drawing room looking at each other, Mary Ryan and Mr Fowler. Mary Ryan didn’t know what to say. Lorenzo, on the other hand, could think of plenty.

‘You have such well developed Individuality, Mary,’ explained Lorenzo. ‘How can you stay here, away from the world? You have such spirit, it should not be squandered. And you have a desire for a good marriage, too. But whom will you meet if you stay here? We, the Phrenological Fowlers, can offer you travel and glamour, even trips to the United States of America. Really, Mary, you must leave Mrs Cameron and come with us. We could take you this very day!’

Mary hesitated. It was true she loved the sound of travel and glamour. And it was true that she felt frustrated at Dimbola Lodge. There comes a point when ministering to gloomy high-brows gets a bit samey. Also, her photographic modelling career was rubbish.

But it was then that Lorenzo Fowler – for all his experience in flattery, and for all his enormous Human Nature – made a bad move.

‘We could take you away with us today,’ he repeated. ‘Mrs Cameron is a delightful employer, no doubt, but how can I forget what you said at my lecture – that you stay here only for indebtedness, not gratitude.’

‘In your trance you said it, Mary. And anything said when mesmerized comes from the heart of hearts.’

Mary coloured up. She felt ashamed. Was she really not grateful to Mrs Cameron? Was she really such a bad, unchristian girl?

‘Please don’t condemn yourself for your lack of gratitude, Mary. It is the most natural thing in the world. We phrenologists have discovered scientific evidence that gratitude scarcely exists. See these earlobes of mine, for example?’ And he thrust his face towards her.

Mary struggled, she bit her lip, she looked quizzically at his earlobes. Finally, she spoke. Her mind was made up.

‘Thank you for your offer, Mr Fowler. I will always remember it. And I am sure I will never have another to match it. But perhaps my Individuality is too strongly developed for my own good. For, if only to prove to you that gratitude is not an accident of the earlobe, but a proper Christian virtue, I will remain with Mrs Cameron, who has been so kind to me. Without her kindness, I would probably be dead. Matrimonially, I shall take my chances here. Travel and glamour I hereby renounce.’

She sank in a chair. Such a big articulate speech was rarely required of the maids at Dimbola Lodge, but she always had it in her, and it came out very well indeed.

Lorenzo, who should really have applauded, was disgruntled, and left the room. Opening the door, he released Mary Ann, who sprang back, and then rushed in. Her mouth was agape like a big ‘O’.

‘Mary Ryan! Harken to you! Lor a massey!’ she laughed in amazement, with her hands on her hips.

‘Just wait till Mrs Caameron hear this, buoy!’ exclaimed the stupid girl. ‘Mary Ryan, if you doan’t need your head examined!’

Up on the windy cliff, with no idea of the interest they were causing, the Tennysons proceeded in their usual manner.

‘With blackest moss the flower-plots

Were thickly crusted, one and all:

The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the pear to the gable wall.’

‘What of it?’ asked Emily, leaning over to pick an orchid. ‘It’s Mariana again. You changed peach to pear, I know that.’

‘I am considering further emendations, my dear. “Garden wall” to “gable wall”. It is a great improvement?’ Emily shrugged. ‘What do you think, Wilson?’

‘I think I’d like to take you for a little walk by ourselves,’ she said. ‘Poetry and fresh air never did mix.’

‘Good idea!’ boomed Tennyson, and turned to survey the blue of sea and sky, while Wilson, with a mad laugh, kicked off the brake of Emily’s carriage, and pushed it fast in the direction of the cliff edge.

The carriage had been built for this clifftop terrain, but it was murder nevertheless. Its big wheels bucked and slithered at the best of times, and now Wilson was pushing it much too fast.

‘Hold on, Wilson,’ commanded Emily. The bumping was making her teeth dance, and her brain bounce in her head. ‘No, you hold on,’ sneered Wilson. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, it’s not respectable to beg. I’m sure you told me that, Mrs Tennyson. I’m sure you mentioned it many times.’

The invalid carriage came to a halt in a little hollow, and Emily caught her breath. Something was wrong here. Wilson was much weirder than she remembered.

‘Alfred!’ she called. But either the wind was too loud, or her voice was too soft, because he could not hear. And as for seeing her, there never was a man to whom ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ more aptly applied. Currently, he was whispering ‘garden-gable-garden-gable’ to himself, oblivious.

Emily turned to look at her. ‘I wish you’d stop laughing in that sinister way, and start explaining yourself. Look, Mrs Cameron is coming towards us. We will discuss any grievance you have when we return to the house, but at present, I wish to speak with my friend, even though – oh no, how can I bear it? – she is bringing me another roll of that infernal wallpaper.’

‘Are you telling me you did not receive my letters?’ said Wilson, nastily. ‘Letters?’

‘I wrote them twice a week for a year, Mrs Tennyson. A hard thing not to notice.’

Letters? Instinctively, Emily felt in her pocket, and produced the latest ‘Yours in aversion’.

Emily could scarcely believe it. She had always pictured ‘Yours in aversion’ as a failed, impoverished poet expiring from the strength of his own body odour somewhere near Hungerford Stairs, with dandruff and no coals.

Emily looked at the letter and shook her head in disbelief. ‘I have read none of these letters since the first,’ she told Wilson, in firm tones. ‘Anonymous letters are vile and cowardly, Wilson. I have – I have thrown them all away.’

‘What?’ Though Wilson stood behind her, Emily could tell she had struck home.

‘And now,’ said Emily, ‘I will dispose of this one also.’ Wilson reached forward to grab it from her hand, but Emily cast it in the air.

Emily laughed and slapped her knees. How stupid Wilson was. Alfred was right: the girl had not deserved the wages she had not been paid.

At which point, with Mrs Cameron toiling towards her just fifty yards off, Emily’s invalid carriage started trundling downhill, brakeless and without a rudder.

But the carriage was travelling quite fast now, downward and seaward, straight towards Julia, across the grass and chalk (‘Alfred!’), gathering speed and bumping from wheel to wheel.

Julia, who heard the cry downwind, looked up and saw a sight which filled her with a mixture of panic and euphoria, guilt and elation. She stopped and put her hand to her mouth. For this was exactly the picture she had conjured jealously for herself a hundred times, Emily freewheeling towards a certain doom – except that sprinting over the hill behind came Lydia Fowler, waving and yelling.

‘I’m coming,’ shouted Lydia, pushing past Tennyson, who still gazed out to sea, impervious. ‘Stop that carriage! Let me through, I’m a professor!’

Emily’s carriage was bouncing and veering now like india rubber as it gathered speed, and it was hard to guess exactly the path it would take, but as it closed on Julia it swerved to the right, directly towards the cliff edge. Julia froze. Her heart drummed in her chest. What could she do? Well, she could get rid of this wallpaper for a start. And so it was that with fantastic presence of mind, Julia heaved the wallpaper into the air. It flew, it arced, and time stopped. And then it landed in front of the lady’s wheels, just ten feet from the edge. The runaway carriage stopped with a jerk, its black-clad passenger shot out with a scream, and the rest was a blank, because Julia – understandably in the circumstances – collapsed in a dead faint.

When Alfred was finally roused to the situation, it was mostly under control. Lydia, with typical efficiency, had restored Emily to her carriage, revived Julia’s unconscious form with a practised slap, and restrained the would-be murderess by wrapping her in wallpaper, which was the only material to hand.

Alfred was nonplussed by the presence of so many people on his cliff at once, but considering that two of them had helped save the life of his dearest Emily, decided to be big about it. He produced some embroidery silks from his pocket which helped tie the wallpaper more securely around the prisoner. And then, having decided definitely in favour of ‘gable’, he suggested they all walk home.

As they walked back across the down from their adventure, they little knew how they were spotted from afar by a lady in a fine carriage, bowling away from Farringford. It is always a nuisance to call on the off-chance and find the whole family from home, but it is even more of a nuisance if you are Queen Victoria and have popped in for an edifying recital of In Memoriam, to remind you of your poor dear dead Albert. It is worth remembering here that the Tennysons had lived in hopes of such a visit for ten years. As has been mentioned before, they even kept a plum-cake on the off-chance (or they thought they did – Lionel and Hallam had eaten it).

‘The Queen came, father,’ said Lionel, as the solemn bedraggled party made their way indoors. Lydia laughed.

‘No, it’s true, Ma,’ said Jessie. ‘She was here ten minutes ago, you just missed her. Why is Ada done up like the Elgin Marbles? Is it a game?’

‘I gave her a copy of Enoch Arden, father, and she seemed very pleased to have it. And I also suggested that you would be glad to read it to her.’

Alfred was torn between a desire to hug the boy, and to hack his own head off with a ceremonial axe.

‘But there was a strange thing,’ Lionel added, in that handsome nonchalant way of his. ‘When I left the room to get the book for her, there were three copies of that brown review thing over there on the piano. And when I came back, there were only two.’

Alfred and Julia exchanged glances. On the walk back from the cliff, she had explained about not expecting thanks for the review. She had explained that she was sorry. But now that Queen Victoria would read Julia’s handiwork, and be terribly impressed, she felt prouder than ever of her perfect gift.

‘Ah yes, a copy of the Westminster Quarterly,’ she said, picking it up. ‘And The Train. I don’t know this, is it good? You are fortunate, Mr Tennyson, that the Queen did not pick up the wrong thing here! They are so alike!’

Alfred was still so mentally enfeebled by his terrible luck at missing the monarch that he didn’t at first appreciate the full force of Mrs Fowler’s news.

‘You seem pale, Alfred,’ said Emily. ‘Yet I am safe and sound! I think this is a special occasion. Come, we shall have some tea.’

But meanwhile Tennyson remained silent. He knew there was horror lurking in Mrs Fowler’s innocent words. He just had to pin it down. Slowly he made a calculation. After the Queen left the room, the Westminster was still there; and The Train. Which meant – which meant –

As he finally fell in, the sound that escaped him was a suitable combination of gasping and drowning. The Queen, at this minute, rattling towards East Cowes, held the sexual ravings of Orson S. Fowler in her commodious black silk lap. Had Alfred been asked that morning the worst potential mishap that could befall Orson’s time bomb, he might have pictured Lionel reading it, or Emily. Now, however, Queen Victoria would hop into her four-poster tonight at Osborne House, and scream the place down. He was ruined. It was all up.

‘Almighty God,’ he began. ‘Save me from this and I will –’ He paused. What bargain could he strike with the almighty? After all, he was already such a Christian man. He opened his eyes for a clue, and spied his dear friend Julia being brave about the Elgin Marbles wallpaper, while adjusting her bothersome lace cap. He closed his eyes again. In his heart of hearts, he knew what he had to do.

Two days later, Julia Margaret Cameron sat at her window in her quiet time, while Mary Ryan read to her from Maud. She had heard about Mary Ryan’s stout and loyal speech to Lorenzo Fowler, and was so heartened by it that she promised the girl more starring parts in the photographs from now on, and also less water-carrying, which was a relief. Mary Ann, who had thought herself rather clever to pass on the story to her mistress, now cleaned silver in the exile of the kitchen, and couldn’t quite work out what had happened.

Mary Ryan always read beautifully. She had a poetic soul. Julia listened to her now while watching Tennyson’s gate, with tears rolling from her eyes.

‘Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,

And the musk of the rose is blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of Love is on high,

Beginning to faint in the light that she loves

On a bed of daffodil sky,

To faint in the light of the sun she loves,

To faint in his light, and to die.’

The air had taken a chill this morning. Julia shivered. Ah, yes. To faint in the light of the sun she loves; to faint in his light and to die. She wiped her cheeks with her shawl.

Julia was so taken with this thought that she didn’t straight away notice the Tennyson gate swing open, and her darling Alfred appear, waving his hat at her window. Just like the vision of Emily on the cliff, it would be like a dream coming true.

‘Come into the garden,’ he called again. And then she properly saw him, stark and black amongst her white roses, and her heart filled with joy.

‘I have a note from the Queen, my dear. All is well! All is very well indeed!’

‘She says she was never more happily diverted than by the reading matter she obtained from my house – that it made her think more than ever of her poor dear Albert!’

‘Alfred, I am so glad she loved Enoch Arden. It is a great poem, full of loss.’

Alfred frowned. Enoch Arden? Who mentioned Enoch Arden? He scanned the note again, puzzled.

Julia had never seen him so playful or so handsome. She scurried from her bedroom and ran downstairs, reaching the garden just as he plucked a white rose – at last, a white rose! – and held it to his face. Her heart broke.

‘I’m so glad you came to tell me,’ she said. ‘And I hope you have forgiven me, Alfred. It’s just that, well, I would give anything, and when –’

Julia caught her breath and adjusted a shawl. She looked around at her lovely roses. The day was so very beautiful. The soul of the rose went into her blood.

‘I will sit for you –’ and here he made a special, enormous effort, so difficult that you could almost hear his soul creak – ‘with pleasure.’

Fifteen