Tennyson's Gift (19 page)

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!'

‘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.