Tennyson's Gift (6 page)

Meanwhile, on the train to Brockenhurst, a single lion was on its way. G. F. Watts had fallen asleep over his old pocket edition of Tennyson's poetry and was warmly dreaming, his great domed forehead resting lightly against the window glass and his tired eyelids pressed gently on tired eyes. All around (interestingly) the languid air did swoon. Ellen studied him from the seat opposite, and folded her arms. She found it odd to be married to a man so attached to the horizontal, when her own body sang with energy, vigour and bounce. She had heard many times that Julia and Sara's father was ‘the biggest liar in India'. How peculiar, she reflected, that these women
were now so fond of the biggest lie-er-down in England.

On his lap, the Tennyson lay open at
The Lotos-Eaters,
a poem that endlessly delighted Watts and infuriated Mrs Cameron – concerned as it was with becalmed sailors succumbing to a lifetime of postprandial snooze, ‘propt on beds of amaranth and moly' (whatever that was).

It was the line about ever climbing up the climbing wave that particularly appealed to Il Signor. He felt he knew the sensation, and that he had learned to ride waves not fight them. Also, ‘There is no joy but calm' had always been his personal motto until Little Miss Act Five Scene Two Terry had kicked the ottoman from under him.
The Lotos-Eaters
was a great poem, all right. Besides which, on train journeys it always helped lull him to sleep.

In his dream, however, things were less reassuring. He was still in a railway carriage, but
Ellen was dressed prettily in a red coat and feathered hat like the child in John Everett Millais's painting ‘My First Sermon'. This seemed perfectly natural. Outside the window, the landscape (which should have been Hampshire) was all cliffs and wind and wild flowers, alternating with long stretches of blue coastal sea. Another of the passengers was the dead painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who studied Watts through the wrong end of a telescope and whispered ‘Remember Westminster'. It was very unsettling. Meanwhile the sound of the carriage wheels was saying, over and over, a passage from
Maud:

Ellen watched him as he twitched in his seat, merely remarking to herself that it was the most animated she had seen him in a considerable time. She returned to her own reading matter, but could not concentrate. Watts had given her a book of proverbs to digest on the journey, bought at Waterloo for the knockdown price of threepence. Watts did not notice that a knockdown present gave his wife very little gratification; he always loved to tell her how little his presents had cost. It was another area in which they would never see entirely eye to eye.

She flicked through the book of proverbs idly.

‘It is a silly fish that is caught twice by the same bait.'

‘Northamptonshire stands on other men's legs.'

‘Cheese digests everything but itself.'

So many picture opportunities for her dear husband! How
would
he manage Northamptonshire's borrowed legs, she wondered. The section on Gratitude included the interesting commandment, ‘Throw no gift again at the giver's head' – which was a precept which came just in time for Ellen, since the ungrateful young woman was just about to hurl this ghastly book straight at her nodding spouse.

What is the point of a book without pictures or conversation? Ellen tried to read Tennyson's latest poem
Enoch Arden
(Watts knew better than to turn up at Freshwater without it). But she had trouble with that as well. Its story was the usual cheerless Tennyson stuff, but with slightly more event than one had learned to expect. It concerned a fisherman who undertakes a voyage, leaving his family, and stays away for umpteen years because shipwrecked on a desert island. Back at home,
his wife waits and waits (years pass), and keeps putting off another suitor, but finally concedes that Arden will not return. And then, what do you know? Arden is rescued! He comes home, learns that his wife has remarried, and dies in grief alone. But he makes a friendly landlady promise to tell the whole story after his death, so that everybody can feel really guilty and morbid, including the kiddies.

Ellen huffed, and put the book back in her bag. The whole thing seemed bizarre to her. If she were shipwrecked abroad and returned to find George remarried, she would dance the sailor's hornpipe and set up house with a parrot. Ellen was the least morbid person who ever lived. Those pink tights, for instance. She thought Watts had found her verve attractive; she hoped that was why he had asked her to marry him. But then as his first act as a married man he had asked her to pose for ‘Choosing' and she was forced to realize the extent of his self-deception. Given the choice between the big showy camellia and the humble scented violet, Ellen had a decided floral preference, and the violets were in the bin. ‘Choosing' was a blatant case of authorial wish-fulfilment. It was so funny it was almost sad.

She looked at Watts. In his dream, he was trying to talk to Haydon as though there was nothing between them, but Haydon was pale and accusing, with a long white finger and a jagged crimson slash at his neck. Ellen kicked him lightly on the shin. Her husband only frowned. Haydon was talking about gouache costing a thousand pounds a pint. Ellen decided on the ungrateful course proscribed by proverb, and with some force threw the book again at the giver's head. Nothing.

In his dream, the railway carriage bucked in the air as though jumping a river. And at that point, Watts felt a terrible wrench to his face, as though someone were trying to pull his head off. He jerked, he saw an ungraspable vision of the
absence of hope; and woke to discover that for some reason Ellen had fallen against him and grabbed his beard to steady herself.

Half an hour to go, and still no Alfred. Julia's daily letters had been written (a servant chased the post-boy up the road), so the rest of the time was hers. But it went against the grain, this quiet time. She had promised her dear husband that she would sometimes take things easy, but temperamentally it was quite beyond her. Besides – as she often pointed out to him, as he lay in his bed with his beard spread across the counterpane, a volume of Greek verse under his hand – dear old Cameron took things quite easily enough for both of them.

‘Why do you write so many letters, Julia?' Alfred had once inquired. ‘I would as soon kill a pig as write a letter. You write to your sisters every day. Do they reciprocate? I can't believe they do.'

‘I write to my sisters because they are beautiful; ever since our childhood, I felt I owed it to them.' ‘Nonsense,' said Alfred. Emily had intervened at this point.

‘All Alfred's family are mad or morbid, or morbidly mad; isn't that right, Alfred?'

‘Barking, the lot of them,' boomed her lord. ‘That's why we lost our inheritance, and I'm so beastly poor.'

Nobody said anything. Tennyson's belief in his own crushing poverty was a sacrosanct delusion. ‘So we feel it better to remove ourselves as much as possible,' continued Emily sweetly. ‘For the boys' sake.'

Alfred had a thought.

‘Did you check the boys for signs of madness this morning

Emily?'

‘I did, my dear.'

‘Any signs of black blood at all? Gloom, or anything?'

‘None, dear. Nobody's mad in our house. As I will never tire of saying.'

‘Well,
you're
not mad, Emily.'

‘I never said I was.'

There was a pause.

‘Will you pose for me, Alfred?' asked Julia.

‘No, I won't,' he replied.

Just then, Mary Ryan knocked and came in. Mary Ann tried to put down her knitting, but unfortunately she was more tangled up in it than ever. When she let go of it, it still hung in the air in front of her face.

‘Mrs Tennyson has sent back the Indian box, madam,' said Mary Ryan. ‘She says she cannot accept it.'

Julia was astounded. ‘Cannot? But it's a very beautiful box. I felt sure she would treasure it.'

‘There is a letter, too.'

Julia jumped to her feet, took the letter, and shooed Mary Ryan out of the room.

‘Do you know what this letter says, Mary Ann?' she said at last, with passion in her voice.

Mary Ann said nothing.

‘It says that the box is too good for them. Well, I shall not give up. Too good, indeed.' She continued to read.

‘Gracious!' she exclaimed, and sat down. ‘Mrs Tennyson also informs me that C. L. Dodgson of Christ Church will be visiting Freshwater this week, that he may even have arrived already. Do you know what this means?'

Mary Ann looked blank. Admittedly, it was her forte. Shrugging mutely, she gave up the tussle with the knitting, and with a pair of shears, cut herself free.

‘What do it mean then, ma'am?' she said at last.

‘It means that he will get Alfred's photograph again, Mary! And why not? He's got everybody else! The man has already photographed Faraday, Rossetti, he's even got the Archbishop
of Canterbury!
So he'll get my Alfred. How does he do it? He has no connections, no reputation, no sisters in useful houses, and his pictures are flat, small and boring, and have no Art.'

Julia paced. ‘I can't bear to think of it. I wait here, day after day, week after week, year after year, hoping that Alfred will give me something, anything! He does not even come to see the roses! I would give anything! And now they are sending back my presents! Oh, Mary! If he would only pose for me, Mary –' She sobbed and sat down. With the letter crumpled in her hand, she looked like a woman in a Victorian melodrama with sobering news from the landlord. ‘Oh Mary, if he would only pose for
me!'

‘And how was your morning on the beach, my dear? Did you make any little child friends?' asked Lorenzo, trimming his beard at a mirror.

Jessie took off her pink bonnet (pink! for a red-head!), plonked it on the Manchester Idiot, and burst out laughing.

‘What would I want with little child friends?' she asked. ‘They're all such sillies.'

‘As you like, dear,' said Lorenzo. He was an easy-going chap. He had recently located the Organ of Human Nature, and discovered – by happy accident – that on his own head it was massive.

‘Well, except a girl called Daisy, she was all right, quite clever. Quite arresting to look at, and good fun. She said she could borrow some wings for me, if I wanted, but I can't see the point. Perhaps I'll ask her to tea. Her father is a clever man, but do you know, she'd never heard of phrenology or vegetarianism or the perfectibility of the human brain through the exercise of memory. So I told her, if he hasn't taught you any of
that,
he obviously hasn't taught you much.'

‘Not everyone's as clever as you, Jessie. Actually, I sometimes think I'm not as clever as you. How old are you again?'

‘I'm eight.'

‘Good heavens.'

Jessie poured some tea, and handed it to him. ‘Would you like me to help you with your grooming, Pa? That's your best suit, isn't it? Where are we going?'

‘I must visit the hall I have booked for tonight. You remember the carter from Yarmouth?' ‘Pa! It was only two days ago!'

‘Well, he has already told everyone arriving from the mainland that I'm here. Interest is growing. News travels fast. I may have to send to Ludgate Hill for more merchandise. You can return to the beach with Ada this afternoon.'

Jessie pouted. While Lorenzo went scouting the venue, the Infant Phrenologist would be left at home again, to re-read
Hereditary Descent: its Laws and Facts Applied to Human Improvement, Familiar Lessons on Phrenology for the Use of Children in Schools and Families
by Lydia F. Fowler (her mother). Jessie sighed. She hated it when Lorenzo left her alone with Ada. Ada was quiet and broody, and unnaturally sensitive to childish insult. Also, Jessie hadn't even the consolation of other Victorian children, that if her father wasn't at home, at least he would be indulging gross unnatural vices, such as smoking and drinking, or tightening himself in a lady's corset.