Tennyson’s Gift. Lynne Truss

Tennyson’s Gift

‘Yes.’

‘You mean it doesn’t cost them anything, yet it profits you?’

‘W-W—Well, I w—wouldn’t–.’

‘Best of luck,’ they had laughed, interrupting.

‘I’ll have you know, I am a gr—great friend of L—Lionel T-T—,’ he began. But nobody was listening. They all knew Dodgson’s Lionel Tennyson story, and thought it a lot less flattering than Dodgson did. Evidently the poet’s glamorous ten-year-old younger son once agreed to correspond with Dodgson, but imposed an interesting condition: that he could first strike Dodgson’s head with a croquet mallet.

‘More paint here!’

‘Slap it on, jump to it!’

Back in Freshwater, outside Mrs Cameron’s house, Dodgson wonders what on earth is going on. After weeks of drought, the hedgerow is singed brown; it crackles as he presses his body close to hear. Perhaps Mrs Cameron has ordered her grass to be painted green, so that it will look fresh and emerald from an upstairs window. Knowing of his fellow photographer’s boundless and misguided devotion to aesthetics, such lunatic set-dressing is certainly possible. Mrs Cameron is forever making extravagant gestures in the cause of Art and Friendship, both with capital letters. She is a bohemian (at the very word Dodgson shudders), with sisters of exceptional beauty and rich husbands. She hails from Calcutta, and burns incense. While Dodgson takes pictures only of gentlemen (and gentlemen’s children), Mrs Cameron poses shop-boys and servants for her dreamy Pre-Raphaelite conceits. In short, in terms of exotic personality, she is quite off Dodgson’s map. He has heard that she will sometimes run out of the house, Indian shawls trailing, stirring a cup of tea on its saucer! Out of doors! If in London, she will do this in the street! And sometimes, she gives away the photographs she takes, the act of a madwoman!

‘You will be visiting Mrs Cameron, sir?’ the carter at Yarmouth asked Dodgson that morning, recognizing photographic gear as he loaded it aboard, straight from the mainland ferry.

‘Oh no,’ replied Dodgson. He glanced around nervously, to check that this terrifying woman was not in sight; was not actually bearing down on him with a cup of tea and a spoon.

‘Not for w-w-w—’

The word refused to come.

‘Watering cans?’ suggested the carter.

Dodgson shook his head, and made circular gestures with his hands.

‘Weather-vanes?’

A strangling noise came from Dodgson’s throat. This was always happening.

‘Windmills?’

‘Worlds,’ Dodgson managed, at last.

‘Very wise, sir,’ said the carter, and said no more.

At Farringford, Emily Tennyson sorted her husband’s post. Thin and beady-eyed in her shiny black dress, she had the look of a blackbird picking through worms. She spotted immediately the handwriting of Tennyson’s most insistent anonymous detractor (known to the poet as ‘Yours in aversion’) and swiftly tucked it into her pocket. Alfred was absurdly sensitive to criticism, and she had discovered that the secret of the quiet life was to let him believe what he wanted to believe – viz, that the world adored him without the faintest reservation or quibble. To this comfortable illusion of her husband’s, in fact, she was steadily sacrificing her life.

Take ‘Yours in aversion’. Since this correspondent first wrote to him, he had become one of Tennyson’s favourite self-referential stories (‘The skulking fellow actually signed himself Yours in aversion!’), but Alfred didn’t know the half of it; he had no idea the skulker had continued to write. Emily had a large drawer of unopened ‘Yours in aversion’ letters in her bureau upstairs. She would never let Alfred know of their existence – not while there was breath in her body, anyway. Afterwards, very well, he could find out then. It was only fitting that after her death he would discover the lengths to which she had gone in the wifely defence of his equanimity.

In general, however, the illusion that everybody loved Alfred Tennyson and found no fault in his poetry was quite easy to sustain day by day. It just meant narrowing one’s circle of friends to a small, scarcely visible dot, cancelling the literary reviews, and living in a neo-Gothic bunker in the farthest corner of the Isle of Wight. If people still insisted on visiting (and they did; it was astonishing), Emily’s terrible hospitality soon put a stop to that. One of her favourite ruses was to make a note of all who fidgeted during the two-and-a-half-hour readings of Alfred’s beloved Maud, and then deliberately tell them the wrong time for breakfast. When that gallant hero of the Risorgimento, Garibaldi, had visited Farringford in the spring, he obligingly planted a tree in the garden while the household sheltered indoors; but was he asked to stay for tea or dinner afterwards? He was not. Ironically in the circumstances, he was not offered so much as a biscuit.

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.’