by Lynne Truss
But in other ways her adventure in male disguise had backfired horribly. For one thing, Lorenzo had guessed at once the game she was playing (the young Herbert’s hat stuffed with luxuriant hair); and for another, she had felt terribly discouraged by Lorenzo’s other pronouncement, about her tendency to love blind. ‘Do not expect to reform your spouse’s character after marriage,’ Lorenzo had said. Too late, too late for that.
Reappearing at Dimbola – having used the commotion of Dodgson’s collapse as a cover for flight – she found she had not been missed, least of all by her husband. A cup of tea had been poured for her, in fact. So she drank it cold, and listened to Mrs Cameron announcing her latest plan for a theatrical evening in the garden, a selection of tableaux vivants, possibly from Twelfth Night. It was curious how Mrs Cameron did not seek Ellen’s professional advice on theatrical matters. A less resilient person might suspect that Mrs Cameron didn’t like her.
‘Oh, there is nothing like Twelfth Night for tableaux vivants,’ sighed Julia, leaning back in her chair.
‘I would have thought A Midsummer Night’s Dream more apt,’ said Ellen.
‘I didn’t say there was nothing more apt,’ snapped Julia, ‘I said there was nothing like it.’
Watts snoozed over a volume of verse, and when he woke to find his wife sitting beside him, he said happily, ‘Ellen. Oh yes. Do you know, I was just telling Julia. When I resided with Lord and Lady Holland in Italy, you know they refused to allow me the merest personal expense? “You are our guest, Il Signor,” they insisted, “Take some more soup, you eat like a little bird,” they said. “And no more talk of such nonsense. Your purse is nothing to the matter here.” Julia agreed with me, such generous sentiments are very fine. Between friends, especially where one is very poor, there should never be talk of money.’
Ellen rolled her eyes. She noticed that Watts was wearing a new velvet skullcap – a present, no doubt, from Julia, who had noticed that George was balding, his Organ of Veneration quite naked to the elements.
‘Sixpence a pint!’ boomed Alfred, unexpectedly.
Ellen turned to find him smiling. Amazingly, his clifftop reverie had finished before hers.
‘This air,’ he explained, gesticulating with his cloak. ‘Worth sixpence a pint!’ And playfully he scooped armfuls of it towards her, as though he would knock her flat with the force. Ellen laughed. A game at last! She pretended to gather the sixpenny pints in her skirt, weighing the material in her hands, as though loaded with heavy logs. ‘That’s at least five shillings’ worth! Ten shillings! A guinea!’ she said gaily, staggering.
But Alfred stopped when she said that.
‘Oh,’ he frowned, suddenly serious. He bit his lip. ‘In that case, my dear, I think I’ll ask for some of it back.’
News of the sensational phrenology lecture had been quick to disseminate, especially since the bewildered and whimpering Dodgson had been wheeled through the village on a grocer’s hand-cart and left at Dimbola for Mrs Cameron to deal with. No sooner had Ellen set down her teacup, in fact, and recovered her breath from the quick change, than the whole household was in uproar, with Dodgson dropped on a sofa in the drawing room, and Lorenzo Fowler presenting calling-cards to everybody in the mêlée, and Mrs Cameron flapping the prone logician with an Indian shawl.
‘Tempt him with a dry biscuit!’ she told her girls, who ran off efficiently for bandages and camphor and everything else the crisis suggested.
Privately, in a whisper behind the drawing room door, Mary Ann apologized for bringing him. She knew Mrs Cameron’s feelings towards the Reverend Dodgson.
‘No, child, you were quite right,’ Mrs Cameron declared. ‘He is a rival, as you know; and also a very pompous man, and I believe an opponent of my good friend Jowett in Oxford. But a rival and bore in distress is another matter. Poor fellow, what can we do for him?’ She ran back into the room and shook her hands as though drying them. ‘I would give anything. How did it happen, Mr Fowler? Tell us that.’
Lorenzo shook his head. The room waited. ‘Speak, speak,’ urged Julia. He looked very grave.
‘I believe he was overcome by the size of his own organs, ma’am.’
Dodgson’s eyes opened and he saw Mrs Cameron quite normally, surrounded by her friends in the drawing room of Dimbola. But then something rather odd happened. With her face horribly enlarged, she leaned towards him and said directly in his ear, ‘I dare say you’re wondering why I don’t put my arm around your waist?’
He stiffened with alarm, but she continued, ‘I’m doubtful about the temper of your flamingo.’
Dodgson squealed and pressed his body into the sofa. Mrs Cameron gripped Lorenzo’s wrist. ‘What have you done to him? He seems to be out of his wits.’
Indeed he did. Inside his head, Dodgson was currently attending a game of croquet organized by the Queen of Hearts; and an ugly Duchess was stealing her arm around his middle towards the flamingo he was using as a croquet mallet. Not surprisingly, Mrs Cameron had not the faintest notion that this was going on.
‘My dear man,’ she said, and patted his hand. ‘He might bite!’ warned Dodgson, and flashed his eye-whites. (He meant the flamingo.)
Without a trace of annoyance, Mrs Cameron told the girls to make a bed for Mr Dodgson and send at once for his belongings at Plumbley’s Hotel. This man needed nursing, nourishment, and battering with gifts, so much was clear.
‘Mustard isn’t a bird,’ said Dodgson, rather feebly, as he was lifted from the sofa and helped upstairs. ‘It’s a mineral, I think.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Cameron, following behind.
‘There’s a large mustard mine near here,’ he continued. ‘And the moral of that is – The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.’
‘I quite agree with you.’
Watts and Ellen heard him continue until he was out of sight.
‘Never appear to be otherwise,’ he said, ‘than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise –’
Watts and Ellen stood in the Dimbola hallway watching Dodgson’s progress upstairs. Ellen felt very sorry for him; but she couldn’t help noticing how the shock had cured his stammer.
‘Well, it’s an ill wind, George –’ she began, but stopped. She never got Watts started on a wall if she could help it.
She took Watts’s hand and turned to him, her eyes still blazing from the thrill of the escapade. Should she tell him about her Organ of Hope? His happy Italian reminiscences seemed to have lifted his spirits so much. For once, he was looking positively animated.
Taking his hand to the top of her head, she began, ‘Did you know, George –’, but he pulled it away and interrupted. He put his arm around her shoulder instead. It was the most intimate thing that had happened in weeks.
‘Oh George,’ she said. ‘Are you concerned for Mr Dodgson?’ He put his lips to her ear. She thrilled. This holiday was already doing them both such good.
‘Ellen,’ he confided in an excited whisper. ‘In all the commotion –’
‘Yes, George?’
‘– Somebody dropped a florin. Look.’
She looked down and saw the coin in his hand. Nudging her in the ribs, he slipped the coin in his pocket and patted it there.
From the commercial point of view, Lorenzo’s phrenological evening had been a fiasco.
‘But you were magnificent, Pa,’ Jessie was still saying after the weekend, ‘everybody said it.’
She hated it when he was unhappy. She had already fed him some breakfast (‘No brains for you, Pa! Ha ha!’) and soothed his brow with a damp handkerchief; now she volunteered to polish the heads as well, even though they didn’t need it.
‘Ada did them yesterday,’ he objected.
‘Then I’ll do them again. She doesn’t know how to do them anyhow. Ada said I had red hair, Pa. Red hair! When all the world can see I am strawberry blonde!’
Lorenzo looked beyond his child to Ada, whose air of cond
escension was beginning to get on his nerves. Behind Jessie’s back, this difficult maid was now working some scissors in thin air – as though practising for cutting something thick – and all the while frowning menacingly at the back of Jessie’s head.
Jessie was oblivious. She shook her horrid curls. She was dressed today in orange.
‘Look how shiny I’m getting Mr Haydon. I bet nobody ever did this to him in real life. That’s probably why he killed himself. Oh, cheer up, Pa! Think of your Organ of Firmness.’
But Lorenzo refused to be comforted. He ran his powerful fingers through his own iron-grey locks. ‘I had them in the palm of my hand,’ he kept repeating. ‘The palm of my hand.’
It was no wonder Lorenzo was downhearted, however. Generating mass hysteria takes a lot of effort, and Lorenzo had reached the time in life when he only expended in energy what he bargained to recoup in cash. Freshwater on Friday had been a three-guinea crowd. But with Dodgson’s dramatic collapse, the guineas had all dispersed, skipping over the usual rush for merchandise; and if Lorenzo now had a considerable succès d’estime on his hands, he also had two hundred pamphlets he had expected to sell at the door.
He kicked a demountable brain which Jessie had just cleaned and assembled on the carpet.
‘Pa!’ she objected, as the labelled bits of grey plaster cerebrum exploded across the room. Secretiveness skittered under a bureau; Amativeness flew high in the air; only Inhabitiveness stayed put. Ada was commissioned to gather them up. She whistled between her teeth.
‘Look,’ Jessie said, ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but has it ever occurred to you that there is an organ missing from this model?’
‘More organs are discovered every day, Jessie. The year alone saw the location of Graveness, Gayness and Awe.’
She patted him encouragingly. ‘And where would we be without them?’ she agreed.
They were on their hands and knees, fitting the pieces together with automatic efficiency – it was a job they could do with their eyes closed. Jessie had never seen a conventional child’s puzzle; her earliest memories were of assembling bits of brain.
Should she tell Lorenzo about Gratitude? What if he didn’t say thanks? Part of her still wanted to keep her discovery to herself, but she had gone too far to turn back now: she knew she would have to share it.
‘But what about Gratitude, Pa?’ she blurted. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Gratitude?’ He had replaced the final piece in the demountable brain, and sat back on his heels to look at it. Gratitude? Just as Jessie had done before, he considered where Gratitude ought to come in the scheme of human feelings. Was it a fine emotion or a base one? Didn’t the lion feel grateful to Androclus? On the other hand, didn’t children have to be trained to thank?
‘I think we should look for it, Pa,’ said Jessie, firmly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. And I believe it says more about a person than anything.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘But you remember the Irish one on Friday night? She said she was indebted, not grateful, and you were shocked.’ ‘Mm.’ Lorenzo stroked his beard. She tried another angle.
‘Even if it doesn’t really mean anything – if nobody ever feels it – people would want to know they had a big organ of it, wouldn’t they? And what’s the point of Benevolence without it?’
Lorenzo said nothing. He was not convinced. So the child chose another tactic.
‘I just thought you’d be pleased to beat Uncle Orson to something. But don’t worry, Pa. I’ll write to him in Boston, he’s sure to do it.’
‘No, don’t do that!’ said her pa. ‘No, Uncle Orson will polish it off in no time –’ ‘Give me a minute, Jessie, please.’
He thought quickly. He pictured the pamphlet. A Million Thank Yous. How Lorenzo Niles Fowler discovered the Organ of Gratitude, Unaided by his Know-all Brother Orson. It sounded good.
Also, he had to admit he was rather stuck at the moment. Thanks to Dodgson’s spectacular breakdown, the Phrenological Fowlers would need to stay in Freshwater for a few more days in any case, organizing some other kind of event to pay for the expense of the first one. Why not conduct a little research at the same time?
‘Jessie, would you care for a stroll on the shore?’ She folded her arms. She hated it when he changed the subject. Was this a yes or a no?
‘What would you say if I preferred to stay here?’ she said distrustfully, her eyes like slits. ‘With Ada,’ she added. ‘Huh,’ said Ada, and left the room.
‘I’d say your Organ of Gratitude is probably very, very small.’
Jessie jumped into his arms and kissed him.
‘Oh, Pa!’
At the bay, Daisy sat alone in the lee of a bathing machine and unfolded a dog-eared paper. It was Mr Dodgson’s ‘I love my love with a D’, and it filled her with pleasure. She had known this man – this genius – less than a week, but already he was desperately in love with her. He had asked her to pose for a photograph called ‘The Elopement’, standing on the sill of an upstairs casement, with a packed bag in her hand. It could mean only one thing.
The stupid Jessie Fowler had told her to refuse the safety pins, so nah-nah to Jessie Fowler now. Mr Dodgson did not love his love with a J, because she was Jealous. When Daisy ran away with Mr Dodgson and got married, she would send Jessie Know-All Fowler a whole cartload of safety pins along with a copy of Mr Dodgson’s delightful book, illustrated with photographs of herself.
‘Daisy’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ she said to herself.
Daisy was a very determined little girl. A man did not meddle with her precocious femininity without reaping the consequences.
Back on the cliff, Ellen had just finished telling the laureate about the new guest at Dimbola, careful not to mention his name. She remembered what Lionel told her, that Tennyson loathed Dodgson; if she spoiled this pleasant walk by making her companion angry, she was bound to get into trouble later on. Tennyson would not inquire for details, anyway. He was notorious for his lack of interest in other people. But on this occasion he enjoyed Ellen’s spirited account of the story so much (she did all the voices, and acted bits out) that he actually wanted more.
‘Does he have a profession, this fellow?’
‘Oh.’ Ellen thought quickly. Better not to mention the Euclid or the photography. ‘Well, he is a gentleman and a cleric, of course, sir. And he has written a book for children, which he has been telling the little girls on the beach.’
‘A book of morals?’
‘No, something quite different. Little Daisy Bradley told Mrs Cameron that his story was very funny and dreamlike – with songs and mad people and animals who take offence. Daisy seems quite taken with Mr Do –’ She stopped herself.
‘Actually, I saw his manuscript when it was brought from his hotel. I read it.’
Tennyson frowned.
‘I hope you did not read it without the author’s permission.’
Ellen was obliged to confess. ‘Well, to be honest, I did.’ ‘Without the author’s permission or knowledge, Mrs Watts?’
‘Er, yes.’
She could tell he was shocked. Another telling-off was coming.
‘I cannot begin to condone –’ he began. She made a quick decision. ‘His name is Lewis Carroll,’ she added. ‘His book is very good.’
Tennyson snorted. He hated to hear about other people’s writing. Especially when it was described as very good.
‘What’s good about it? What do you mean about animals taking offence?’
‘I think you have to read it, sir. It’s hard to explain. Alice is always in the wrong, because the rules of behaviour in Wonderland are mad and topsy-turvy. It’s supposed to be a fantasy; but personally, I find it extraordinarily true to life.’ ‘And is he in his right mind now, this Mr Carroll?’ ‘It’s hard to say. This morning he sat up in bed and said, “Mary Ann, what are you doing here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and a fan!” But when she brought him what he asked for, he seemed
to have forgotten all about it. He looked her in the eye and said “You? Who are you?” He seems to be quoting his own book. We are thinking of asking Mr Fowler to treat his brain.’
‘Mr Fowler was the phrenologizer?’
‘Yes, and he was spectacular. Not that I was present, of course.’ ‘Of course.’
Tennyson fell silent again. They had reached the lower part of his cliff walk, near to the bay and the military fort. He would be taking her down to his special cove, she hoped.
‘What about madness?’ he said, stopping.
‘Oh, I don’t think he’s mad.’
‘No, I meant, can a phrenologizer detect signs of madness – say, in the head of a young boy? Oh, we check Lionel and Hallam every day, we make a point of it. What with the, you know –’
‘Black blood of the Tennysons?’
‘That’s right. But the trouble is –’ he lowered his voice ‘– we are not exactly sure what we are looking for.’ Ellen didn’t know what to say.
‘I think I will approach the fellow – although Emily must not know. She thinks I worry too much about the boys’ melancholic inheritance. “You’re just being morbid like the rest of your family, Alfred!” she says. Which, as I tell her, is precisely the point I’m making!’
And he strode off into the wind again, while Ellen skipped along to keep up, her hand still gripping tight the little blue orchids – a dozen or so – that Alfred Tennyson had not given her.
Below stairs at Dimbola, Mary Ann was having a bad time wringing clothes. Her hair kept getting caught in the mangle. It was a funny life, being the Mother of God yet fated to such humble pastimes. She wondered how the original Mary, mother of Jesus, had managed to bring herself down to earth when it came to cleaning out the stable and such. Education had not been the main focus of Mary Ann Hillier’s upbringing.
