Tennyson's Gift (2 page)

Thus was Alfred, the greatest, touchiest and dirtiest living poet, protected from the unnecessary hurt of point-raisers, and family life sealed off from interruption. Luckily, Alfred's eyesight was so execrable that he missed all sorts of nuances in everyday intercourse, including the yawning and snoozing of his Farringford guests. In fact, he could read
Maud
to a library full of empty sofas. It made little difference to him, actually.

Emily tore up some review magazines helpfully forwarded by Tennyson's old Cambridge chums, and made a neat pile of the pieces. A maid would dispose of them later. But talking of maids, what had become of Sophia? Emily frowned. Sophia had been sent to Dimbola Lodge three hours ago. Had she never returned? Emily was just reaching to ring the bell when she saw the maid run through the garden, worriedly plucking flowers from her hair and followed by a small boy carrying a dark wooden box, clearly of Indian origin. Emily signalled to her through the window, and the maid – still pinning her hair into place – raced indoors.

‘Oh, Sophia, Sophia, I am disappointed.'

‘I do apologize, madam.'

‘Did Mrs Cameron make you pose again? What was it this time? Flora? Ophelia?'

‘Titania, madam.'

‘Titania!'

‘We tried to do the ass head with some dusters and wire, but we gave up in the end, although the butcher's lad seemed happy enough to wear them.'

‘The butcher's lad!'

‘He came by with some chops, and Mrs Cameron said –' ‘Don't tell me.'

Emily sighed. Sophia looked wretched. The boy rubbed his ear.

‘Are you the butcher's lad?' Emily asked the question quite kindly.

‘I am.' The boy looked hopeful, suspecting a tip.

‘Well, what am I supposed to do with you?' she snapped. ‘Isn't life complicated enough?'

Emily needed some good news, but she had a feeling she wasn't going to get any. She sat down in preparation.

‘Did Mrs Cameron accept my gift of the writing paper?'

‘No, madam,' said Sophia. ‘She said it was far too good, and that you must keep it.'

‘And this box, Sophia? Dare I ask?'

‘It is for you, madam –'

Emily groaned.

‘– She had it only yesterday, shipped all the way from Mr Cameron's estates in Ceylon. She said it would look perfection on the new sideboard.'

‘What new sideboard?'

Sophia bit her lip.

‘The one which will follow shortly,' she admitted.

Emily slumped back in her chair, and dismissed the maid. She was not a well woman, and the bombardment of presents from Mrs Cameron made her weaker than ever. Last week
Julia had sent – admittedly on different days – a leg of Welsh mutton, an embroidered jacket, a child's violet poncho, and six rolls of bright blue wallpaper decorated with a frieze of the Elgin Marbles. This level of generosity was intolerable, more than her frame could stand. Emily reached for the box and sniffed it. Just a day it had spent at Dimbola, and already it smelled so strongly of photographic chemicals that it might have been blown up the road by an explosion.

Inside the box was a long and unnecessary missive from Julia, written in her usual breathless style – full of praise for poetry and beauty and exclamation marks – and ending with her regular plea that Alfred should sit for a photograph. Emily sighed at this. Alfred would refuse, of course; it was a point of principle never to give anything of himself away.

Every day brought requests of some sort, and Emily shook her head at the stupidity of them all, especially the ones requesting money. Did these people know nothing of the world? And what was this? The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had written from Oxford, in his usual tiresomely pompous prose, mentioning a ‘small favour' he wished to ask. Emily laughed rather nastily at his letter, and put it in her pocket with ‘Yours in aversion'. She would deal with it later. But a ‘small favour'? Dodgson was not a man to trust with a favour of any dimensions; experience had taught her that.

She must keep him away from Alfred, she resolved. Alfred's new volume
Enoch Arden
had just been published, and it would make or break his reputation. And sadly, it was not one of Alfred's best. Parodies were bound to ensue. Mr Dodgson was a gifted parodist, albeit an anonymous one, like the rest of the vile cowardly breed. Just two weeks ago,
Punch
had shockingly included a parody of Alfred's
In Memoriam,
and Emily was so surprised by its appearance that she tore out the page at the breakfast table, panicked what to do next, then stuffed it into her mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it.

Alfred had seemed perplexed, as well he might.

‘Why did you do that, my dear?' he asked. ‘Why are you masticating a page from
Punch?'

‘I don't know,' she said lamely. She thought quickly. ‘Perhaps my anaemia craves the minerals in the ink!'

So to sum up, Emily was jumpy. The last thing she needed was this treacherous Oxford stammerer hanging about. The only favour the Tennysons had ever asked of Dodgson – that he keep to himself a photograph of Alfred taken in the Lake District – he had ignored. The photograph subsequently appeared as a popular
carte de visite,
published by a studio in Regent Street. Alfred was outraged. ‘Whose picture was it?' he barked at everybody. And when they didn't know what to say, ‘It was mine,' he answered. ‘Quite obviously, it was mine.'

Today was Wednesday. Alfred would return this afternoon from London, and Emily was glad. She was very proud of Alfred, despite his touchiness, insensitivity and meanness, and despite even his tragic standards of personal hygiene, which were remarked by almost everyone they met. Truly Alfred Tennyson was the dirtiest laureate that ever lived. But there was more to a man than a washed neck or clean fingernails. That her lord was unacquainted with the soap and flannel did not make him a lesser poet or a lesser husband. As he once cleverly blurted to a fellow who had impudently criticized a dirty collar, ‘I dare say yours would not be as clean as mine if
you
had worn it a fortnight!'

Emily folded her hands and smiled. ‘There's glory for you,' she thought. She was pleased to reflect that she was well prepared for Alfred. As a matter of routine, he would ask three questions as he whirled dramatically through the door in his black cloak and sombrero, to which his wife's dutiful answers must always be the same.

‘Did you check the boys for signs of madness, Emily?'

‘Yes, dear. I did.'

‘Is there an apple pie baked for my dinner?'

‘Yes. Cook has seen to it.'

‘Is anyone after my head?'

‘No,
dear, nobody. As I have told you before, Alfred, that's all in your imagination.'

Back at Dimbola, a clattering of pans and a smell of lobster curry issued from the kitchen, and from Mrs Cameron's glass house an occasional steam-whistle shriek marked the success or failure of the latest coating of a photographic plate.

‘You nudged my elbow!'

‘No I didn't!'

Dodgson's curiosity could resist the commotion no longer. Removing the boater, he pushed his head into the briar to see what on earth was happening. And there he saw a beautiful garden, in which maids and boys were slopping white paint onto red roses as fast as they possibly could. To someone who had only recently completed
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
this scene came as a bit of a shock, obviously.

Nobody noticed him, with his head poking through the hedge. Of course they didn't. They were absorbed in their strange work. Even when the door of Mrs Cameron's studio opened suddenly and a glass plate came skimming out, breaking against the trunk of a tree, the unflappable rose-painters paid no heed.

‘Oh, dear,' piped a small voice near to Dodgson – too near to the hedge for him to see the body it came from. What was this? A little girl? At an educated guess, somewhere between eight years old, and eight and two months? With a dear little fluting voice? Dodgson pushed himself closer, despite tell-tale cracking and snapping.

‘Oh dear,' repeated the little girl, disconsolate, ‘I do believe
I've quite forgotten.' Seeing more clearly into the sun-filled garden of Dimbola Lodge, Dodgson discovered a sight so pleasant to his eager spying eye that for a giddy moment he wished he might push his head right through the flowery bank (though of course without his shoulders, his head wouldn't be much use). A leggy barefoot girl of eight, her thick hair flowing, her skirt pinned up, and heavy angel wings of swan feather attached to her tiny shoulders, stood just two yards before him, staring uncertainly at a rose bush dripping white paint to the earth. And there she pouted, confused – an irresistible image of innocence and poultry cunningly blent.

‘Mary Ann!' she cried, at last. Her wings flapped a bit, which was so nice to see that Dodgson whimpered in the hedge.

No answer.

‘Can you remember? Are we painting red roses white, or white roses red? Mary Ann!' she shouted. ‘I want Mary Ann!'

‘Now what's all this?' snapped an older girl, an Irish servant of about sixteen in a dull dress and white apron. She looked quite severe, with her dark hair pinned tight against her head, as if it had deserved punishment by restraint.

‘As you well know, Miss Daisy, Mary Ann will be in the mistress's glass house at this minute – why, isn't she there all day every day? And like as not she's pretending to be Mary Madonna, or a Hangel, or anybody else from the blessed Bible who never got their hands dirty doing her fair share of chores around the house.' Mary Ann's modelling duties were clearly rather unpopular with the Irish girl.

‘But I say good luck to her,' she continued. ‘Oh yes I do. Her with her moony long white face, not that I'd take that face off her if it was offered, even with the neck and the hair and the arms thrown in –'

‘But what about the
roses,
Mary Ryan?' interrupted the little girl.

Mary Ryan smiled.

‘Well, you're a goose, so you are. Is it really so difficult? What colour do you have there in your little pot?'

‘Oh,' said the girl in a small voice, suddenly downcast. (Like all children, she hated to be told off.) ‘White.'

The girl pouted again and changed the subject. ‘Does Mrs Cameron ask
you
to be Mary Madonna sometimes, Mary Ryan?'

Clearly this was not the right thing to ask. Mary Ryan pursed her lips and emptied her paint pot over the honeysuckle. She probably wasn't supposed to do that, but at least she didn't dump it over Dodgson.

‘Does she?' urged the child. ‘She took
my
picture! Can I see pictures of you, Mary Ryan –'

‘No you can not!' spat out Mary Ryan. ‘And you just be careful with those wings, Miss Daisy Bradley, that's all. The mistress ordered them all the way from Mortlake, and if you'll not be crushing them feathers all this time, I don't know what you
are
doing.'

At which the little girl, sensing that the fun was over, ran indoors.

Mary Ryan, left alone, wiped her eyes with her apron and let out a little scream. ‘Mary Ann this! Mary Ann that! How I
love
thee, Mary Ann!'

And picking up her pinafore, she turned on her heel. Unabashed at his eavesdropping, Dodgson stepped back from the scene, brushed his clothes for dust and twigs, and reassured himself there was nobody about. He was never embarrassed when people betrayed private emotions in front of him; having no emotions himself (or none to speak of), he was just very, very intrigued. Sometimes he made notes for use later on. He had no idea why one maid should begrudge another maid her chance to star in Mrs Cameron's photographs – especially when, in his own opinion, the photographs were dreadful, too big, and shockingly out of focus. Glancing up at
the windows of Dimbola, he caught the eye of a white-bearded old man smiling from ear to ear – Mr Cameron, presumably. The old man waved in a jolly sort of way, as though deranged. Dodgson studiously ignored him; you never knew where that sort of thing might lead.

‘But I must contrive to meet this Daisy,' he decided, and produced his small notebook again. He wrote down her name. He also wrote it in letters down the page – D-A-I-S-Y-B-R-A-D-L-E-Y – ready for an instant acrostic poem, which he could sometimes complete in five minutes or less. Twelve letters! Excellent! Three stanzas of four! Two stanzas of six! What a charming child, to have such a convenient name, numerologically speaking! With several days planned at Freshwater Bay,
there was plenty of time to make friends with the little girls, and get their addresses, and campaign for their photographs, and send them love poems. But he had discovered it was a great advantage to know names in advance, without asking.

‘I love my love with a D because she is D-D—Daring,' he mused. ‘I hate her because she is Demanding. I took her to the sign of the Dr—Dromedary, and treated her with Dumplings, Dis-sss—temper and D-D—Desire. Her name is Daisy and she lives –'