Tennyson's Gift: Stories From the Lynne Truss Omnibus, Book 2

  ‘Mmm?’ said Alfred, noticing a sudden movement.

  Emily nearly burst into tears. What could she do? A review! a review! Help! Help! She couldn’t eat this one, it was too big. And besides, the minerals in the ink of Punch had actually done her frail digestion no good whatsoever. She decided to divert his attention.

  ‘Oh look,’ she said, pointing a bony finger at the window. ‘Alfred, who’s that? Who’s that – at the Garibaldi tree? Can it be – er, who’s the other one? Not Garibaldi – you know. Count Cavour!’

  It was a wild invention – but it worked. While Alfred leapt to the window, squinting for more uninvited Italians of the Risorgimento invading the tranquillity of his house and garden, she tore out the review, and looked round frantically for a hiding place. It wasn’t easy. She didn’t have a cleavage, and her pockets were already full of anonymous letters. In desperation – and just as Alfred looked round – she took the lid off the teapot and stuffed the pages inside.

  Breakfast at Dimbola on this Tuesday morning was an altogether more jolly affair. Ellen in particular was in excellent spirits. For some reason she kept patting her husband on the back of the head, and then feeling the back of her own.

  ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy, With a hey, ho the wind and the rain,’ she trilled, happily contemplating another day of fine blue skies and seagulls over white cliffs. ‘Does it ever rain in Freshwater?’ she asked, not expecting an answer. ‘Jove knows I love, but who?’ she continued, tweaking her husband’s nose in an unseemly manner. ‘Lips, do not move! No man must know! Ha! I really can’t think why I objected to Twelfth Night, you know, George, it is a capital play. Wonderful speeches. What is your parentage?’

  Watts was taken aback by the question. He exchanged glances with Mrs Cameron. Both of them knew that George’s sire was a piano tuner. It was not something to be mentioned over breakfast.

  ‘Don’t you know anything, George? If I say “What is your parentage?” you say “Above my fortunes but my state is well.” It’s very appropriate. You know, in your case.’

  ‘Have you spoken with Mr Dodgson today, Mrs Watts?’ asked Julia, trying to slacken the pace.

  ‘I did see him yesterday but he was still Lewis Carroll. He said persons over a mile high should leave the court, so I made an exit, no applause. But I’m sure Mr Fowler will set us all straight. I have such a firm belief in phrenology. It’s a science, you know, yet it’s about people. Isn’t that a marvellous combination? I learned – um, somewhere – that Mr Fowler was the man who discovered Human Nature. And guess where it is located? Above Comparison! Isn’t that tidy? Human Nature is above Comparison! There’s one for your canvases, George. I’m surprised you never thought of it.’

  Only the arrival of devilled kidneys slowed Ellen down. She attacked them as though her last proper meal had been at Christmas.

  Julia looked at her and wondered at the unfairness of life. How could Lewis Carroll write a book about this silly girl? How could Watts think of marrying her? And worst of all, how could Alfred prefer her company? What would this girl ever do for Alfred Tennyson? What could she do that would compare with the magnificent gesture of the Westminster review? She hugged herself to think of Alfred reading it at this very minute.

  ‘I hope your walk with Alfred yesterday was not too tedious, my dear?’ asked Julia. (Naturally, she hoped the opposite.)

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘I expect he drifted off a great deal? He sometimes forgets his companion, I find. Those of us who love him – and know him very, very, very well – learn to forgive him. Much as I admire the man, I must admit that when there is a masterpiece stirring in his brain, he takes no account of the special claims of female company.’

  Ellen struggled to understand the tenor of these questions. Surely Julia didn’t want to know that Alfred had been boorish? She was his friend, wasn’t she?

  ‘Not at all, he was most attentive,’ she reassured the older woman.

  ‘Really?’

  Ellen took a swig of tea.

  ‘Oh yes, most attentive. No drifting off at all. He pointed out cormorants and such, named the flowers, explained geology. Oh, and he took particular pains to teach me to say “luncheon” instead of “lunch”.’

  ‘That was well done,’ observed Watts.

  ‘And he gave me these,’ she added, pointing at the tiny blue orchids. Proud of her booty, she had attached them to her collar with a cunning little silver brooch in the shape of a rose.

  Julia peered at the flowers with her mouth open, and then – rather alarmingly – clutched her chest and flailed her legs in the air. Thank goodness she was sitting down at the time. She seemed to be suffering a kind of seizure.

  ‘He gave them to you?’ she squeaked, ‘Alfred? Gave them to you as a present?’

  Ellen realized she was stretching things a bit here, but it was too late to admit she’d picked them herself.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Don’t you think they go with my eyes?’

  Dodgson still sat in his upstairs room, staring out of the window. He hated to admit it, but much of his post-traumatic stress had now passed. In a very boring life, this Freshwater episode was, by far, the most interesting thing that ever happened to him. To slip into his own book! A lucky man. But now he was recovered, and the occasional glimpse of a rabbit darting down a hole made him a bit dizzy, nothing more. He could now behold the Dimbola cat without thinking it hailed from Cheshire.

  ‘It has p-p-p—passed,’ he said, as if to prove it.

  It felt rather a shame. While he’d been mad, everyone had been so nice to him. Mrs Cameron had been quite wonderful, bringing him nice drinks and sheets of paper and small oriental ornaments to cheer him up. These knick-knacks he had now packed carefully in his portmanteau, in case she changed her mind. A lacquer box of considerable value was among them; it would stand as a useful prop at home, when he posed little Oxford girls in mandarin pyjamas with parasols and chinoiserie screens.

  He sighed. He really ought to get back to his art, even if the unaccustomed hospitality of Dimbola Lodge tempted him to stay. Mrs Watts, too, had been an angel, though he was uncomfortable about her awkward insistence that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland bore some immediate relationship to herself.

  People will believe anything if it’s flattering enough, he concluded. And he was just about to get dressed and announce himself cured (possibly in time to catch a morning ferry from Yarmouth), when he heard the sound of Tennyson arriving downstairs. Muffled greetings and questionings reached his ears, but he couldn’t make out much.

  ‘Any news, Alfred?’ asked Julia, happily, only to be bewildered when Alfred rejoined, ‘None at all, praise God!’ and hurried past her to talk to little Mrs Watts outside the front door.

  Upstairs, the arrival of Tennyson set Dodgson in a quandary. It was the nearest he had come to the laureate all week. ‘Should I consider remaining an extra day?’ he thought. ‘If Mr Tennyson felt sorry for me, perhaps he would not only allow the dedication, but offer it himself?’ And so Dodgson finished his breakfast tea in his high-backed chair and gazed at the view again, thinking of his next best move as though puzzling a strategy in chess.

  His window stood open, however, which was how he came to hear Tennyson and Mrs Watts conferring in whispers outside, on the sheltered path below. They were discussing the anticipated arrival of Lorenzo and the madness of Tennyson’s boys, but Dodgson did not know that. To an outsider, their conversation sounded suspiciously like a tryst.

  ‘My dear! You must pardon me for speaking to you yesterday on such an intimate matter.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Ellen assured the great man. ‘Your passion commends you.’

  There was a significant pause, while Dodgson wondered whether to take notes, but decided to sit very still instead.

  At last, Tennyson sighed.

  ‘Should I live in hope?’ he asked.

  ‘You must!’ said Ellen, rather thrillingly. ‘I know I always do!’
r />   ‘This is such a delicate matter. I would confide in Julia, but she loves Emily so dearly! And Emily must never know about this, Mrs Watts. She already believes I am irrationally obsessed on the subject, simply because –’

  He stopped.

  ‘Why?’ asked Ellen. Alfred lowered his voice even further. Dodgson craned to hear.

  ‘–

  Because I ask her every morning.’

  Dodgson held his breath. But at this moment Mary Ryan entered to clear away his breakfast tray, and heard the same exclamation – ‘Julia might tell Emily!’ – and the gape-mouthed ‘Swap me bob’ look from the previous night appeared on her features once more.

  ‘What can be done?’ Tennyson continued, breathlessly. ‘If an organ is to blame for the disorder, perhaps it can be beaten down and vanquished?’

  Dodgson winced, but Ellen merely replied, ‘Well, possibly. But I wouldn’t know. Obviously it’s not an organ I’ve got.’

  ‘I should never have had children, Mrs Watts! I have been selfish!’

  At which point Mary Ryan made a decision. She was a very proper girl who did not eavesdrop deliberately. So she closed the window, quite noisily, making Alfred and Ellen look up; and Dodgson subsided in his chair. As the Irish maid left the room with his breakfast tray, Dodgson thought he heard her say to herself, ‘Mr Fowler and Mr Tennyson in love with Mrs Watts, well swap me bob twice!’ but it wasn’t very likely. What was certain, however, was that the morning ferry would sail without Dodgson today. He realized, as he relaxed his muscles, that he had been sitting in his chair fully six inches above the actual seat.

  While Alfred and Ellen made a pleasant walk in the garden, Julia arrived at Farringford breathless. A mad dash has rarely been madder, but Julia was confused, worried; she had to do something. She had less than half an hour in hand before the phrenologist’s arrival, but after dreaming all night of Alfred’s wonderful review, her perfect gift seemed to have gone wrong. ‘None at all, praise God!’ Alfred had said. Yet Julia had sent the Westminster by hand this morning, her only copy. And then what did he do? He went into a huddle with the Terry girl, the young pretty woman to whom he had given his first ever recorded present. No wonder Julia felt the need to be up and doing. But what, in fact, could be done?

  In the gloom and chill at Farringford, she discovered Emily sitting alone in the drawing room, writing. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Stepping in from the warm, bright morning, it was like entering the British Museum; the birdsong stopped, and the house smelled of stone. Perhaps, unconsciously, this was why Julia had bought them the Elgin Marbles wallpaper. In her journal Emily mentioned that it was her birthday today, but that ‘A’ did not concern himself with such anniversaries, so she had not mentioned it to her husband or the boys. She was jolly brave about it, actually. Emily was one of those tough, wiry invalids who outlive their fitter spouses, and give rise to the wise old saying ‘A creaking gate hangs longest’.

  ‘My dear!’ called Julia.

  ‘My dear!’ echoed Emily, with slightly less enthusiasm.

  ‘I’m afraid I come empty-handed,’ confessed Julia. ‘Oh,’ said Emily, and shrugged. Her feelings were mixed. ‘But I sent the silks.’

  ‘Of course. Thank you, Julia, I always say that you are kindness itself.’

  ‘Did you like the blue?’

  ‘I have already begun a sampler with it.’

  Julia looked around, vaguely hoping for signs of classical Athenian bas-relief on the walls. There was none.

  ‘But there must be something else?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Oh yes. I forget myself. Did Alfred receive any good news today?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What sort of good news?’

  ‘Oh, you know. About the new poem.’

  Emily looked shifty. What did Julia know?

  She decided to stand her ground.

  ‘No, none at all, praise God!’

  There was nothing Julia could add without giving herself away. The two women looked at one another. Emily closed her journal, as though to say her inspiration had fled; her thoughts would not re-compose themselves now.

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  ‘Goodbye Julia. It is always a pleasure to see you, for however short a time.’

  Julia looked brave, kissed the invalid, and scurried through the house. But as she approached the front door, she saw a pile of torn paper and recognized amid the scraps the cover of the Westminster. So the Tennysons had received it, but not even looked at it! She almost collapsed in her dismay. All that effort for nothing? Those Tennysons were the living end. She felt a sudden terrifying urge to torch the house.

  But luckily another wild scheme occurred to her at the same time, and before she knew quite what she was doing, she darted up the main staircase. In her pocket she still carried the proof sheet of the Enoch Arden review. She could save the day by placing it on Alfred’s desk, where he couldn’t help but see it!

  But two minutes later, she stood indecisive at his library window, the sheet trembling in her hand. It wasn’t working. She put the review down on some papers; she picked it up again; she tried tossing it carelessly on the floor, and poking it in his pen holder, screwed up like a shuttlecock. Nothing looked right.

  Even in her heightened emotional state, she retained enough good sense to see that. For this most perfect of gifts to find its mark, Alfred must see the review in the Westminster Quarterly or nowhere. Resignedly, she folded the sheet and put it back in her pocket. She must return to Dimbola at once! She had a quick, hopeful scan of the walls – what had they done with it? – and made for the door.

  ‘Julia! is that you?’ The call startled her. Help! Emily must be coming up! Julia looked round in panic and made a quick decision. Alfred’s emergency staircase! The spiral one he used for escaping Americans! She flung open the door and plunged down into the darkness.

  And Emily, having struggled half-way up the main stairs, heard the scurry, screwed up her face and said ‘Ouch!’ in anticipation. Seconds later, a muffled crash and scream confirmed the awful, the inevitable, the fitting end. Julia had located the Elgin Marbles wallpaper.

  Meanwhile Lorenzo had arrived early at Dimbola, and his first sight was Ellen apparently canoodling with Tennyson in the garden. With her hair visible for once, and those orchids on her collar like sapphires, Ellen looked more beautiful as a female than he had dared to imagine. He looked at her; she blushed. She put her hands behind her back. He made her feel terribly self-conscious. Alfred peered into the blur and saw only a large figure in a bright dandy waistcoat, bearing down on him with a big right hand outstretched. But he felt self-conscious too. For once, in fact, he was actually nervous. Nothing touched him more deeply than the mental health of his sons.

  So instead of the usual careless greeting, Alfred took some care with his introduction.

  ‘Alfred Tennyson,’ he said. ‘Poet Laureate.’

  Lorenzo shook his hand.

  ‘Lorenzo Niles Fowler,’ he announced. He smiled at Alfred and Ellen warmly. ‘No head too big!’

  ‘Mr Dodgson?’

  Dodgson heard a small voice behind him, and turned round. It was Daisy. He said nothing.

  ‘Mr Dodgson, I have brought you a present, and I hope you will soon be well enough to travel.’

  Dodgson watched her suspiciously. How had she got in? More importantly, how could he get out? Was there any escape from her, save through the window to a ten-foot drop?

  ‘I have been thinking about the photograph you want to do. The one where I stand on the windowsill with the packed bag. I think I understand what you mean by it.’

  She moved towards him, and reached out her little hand.

  ‘Don’t touch my head!’ he shrieked.

  ‘I’ll leave it here,’ she said, placing a slim package on Dodgson’s trunk.

  ‘I hope you like it.’

  Dodgson shuddered as he watched her go. Less than a week ago, he had
thought Daisy an ungraspable vision of loveliness. Now she was like the Eumenides in the Oresteia.

  He unwrapped the paper. Inside was a photograph of Daisy, which Dodgson guessed (by the novice murk and bad focus) to be the work of Mrs Cameron. It was, however, an extraordinary picture, which quite disarmed him. This was not the usual Victorian photograph of a demure prepubescent. Confidence and determination were the main qualities of this little face with its quizzical stare. Daisy held her right hand dramatically to her throat, as if to say, ‘Moi?’ And underneath, she had written, ‘I am ready for The Elopement whenever you are,’ and signed it ‘D’.

  Dodgson heaved an unusually racking sigh, and dropped to his bed.

  Lorenzo, meanwhile, was wilfully neglecting his mission to Dodgson. In fact, when Mary Ryan entered the drawing room with some cups and plates, she heard Lorenzo in full flow, addressing Tennyson and the other luminaries in a kind of makeshift circle. ‘What I tell my paying audiences is this,’ he said, slapping his knees. ‘Go home now, I say, and write on a slip of paper your own obituary. Make it grand, I say; make it flattering. But then live the rest of your lives making it come true.’

  He beamed at them all, gauging the appreciation. They were all impressed. They reflected on their own lives. In fact Mrs Cameron – who had already had quite a bad morning running to Farringford and back (and falling down stairs) – gulped and rubbed her shin. ‘Oh Alfred,’ she said wistfully. ‘It is true that we have but one chance to get things right.’

  ‘I know I can’t offer you much,’ continued Lorenzo, ‘except free analysis and advice in absolute privacy and confidence, but I have every hope you will allow me the honour.’

  Tennyson coughed. ‘Free, did you say?’ Things were turning out better than he hoped. To get the children checked over by an expert, who wanted nothing in return! He need only string the fellow along, which was easy enough.

  ‘I did, sir,’ said Lorenzo. ‘And a Fowler is a man of his word. To examine your heads will be the pinnacle of my professional life. And if I could take a plaster moulding for my own personal use – not for public display, of course, nothing like that –’ He noticed a certain amount of dissent and shuffle here ‘– Well, we will talk of that at another time.’