Tennyson's Gift: Stories From the Lynne Truss Omnibus, Book 2

by Lynne Truss

  ‘Do you see this impudence, Julia?’ Tennyson barked, waving his arms.

  Julia rushed to his side. ‘What impudence, my dear Alfred? Show me and I will dispel it. This is a great day for you, Alfred, and I will not have it spoiled.’

  ‘The young man here –’ he pointed at Dodgson, whom he could only vaguely make out – ‘Gets your friend’s little wife to ask me –’ He spluttered. He couldn’t go on.

  ‘I merely asked him on behalf of Mr Dodgson,’ spoke up Ellen, ‘whether Alice might be dedicated to Hallam and Lionel, who are Mr Dodgson’s special friends.’

  Julia now understood why her dinner party was in ruins. How could anyone be so stupid?

  ‘Did you say your name was Dodgson?’ boomed the laureate, peering. ‘You’re not the damn photographer fellow too?’

  Dodgson gripped the back of his chair. ‘I have n—never given cause for s—such treatment,’ he objected, hotly.

  ‘And I have never given cause for this hounding and baiting and confounded cockney cheek!’ shouted the bard, bashing the table as he stood up. ‘I am surprised you would allow such disgraceful fellows into your intimate circle, Julia. I am surprised, and I am disappointed.’

  Julia started to cry. The lovely review! What about the lovely review?

  ‘Now I am going home,’ he continued. ‘I had hoped this would be a pleasant evening among friends at which I could make an announcement. When I came here tonight I wanted you all to share my well-earned happiness, since none of you will ever earn happiness half as good for yourselves. In fact I was willing to read for four hours if necessary. But I find that circumstances have changed all that. So let me just say this. The review I received today confirmed what I and my real friends already knew, that Enoch Arden is the work which will make my fortune. I have therefore decided to thank you all for your kindness – especially Julia – and tell you that I intend to leave Farringford when my lease expires in two months. There is nothing to keep me here. I shall never set foot on this island again. Good night.’

  He swept from the room, and all eyes turned to Dodgson, who stood up.

  ‘I must say,’ he began, but was interrupted by the sound of Julia weeping on her husband’s chest.

  ‘Mr Dodgson, don’t you have some eloping to do, or something?’ asked Lorenzo, pointedly. Dodgson, affronted now beyond endurance, left the room.

  Julia glared at Ellen.

  ‘I don’t see what I’ve done,’ said Ellen. ‘Shall I follow Mr Tennyson? He seems quite fond of me usually.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Julia, so vehemently that her guests jumped. ‘No, I will,’ she added in a more normal voice. ‘May I, Charles?’

  ‘If it makes you happy,’ said her lord, as always.

  ‘You do your tableaux without me,’ she said, gathering her skirts. And she ran off to plead with the man she loved best in the world.

  Ellen and Lorenzo looked at one another, and were just unfortunately swapping loaded glances when Jessie entered, to find out whether the show was ready.

  ‘What the blazes happened here?’ she asked, flatly. Even when mourning for her tragic young life, she couldn’t help noticing that half her audience had split before curtain-up. The ones who remained were an unlikely crowd, too.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ said Lorenzo. ‘But come and meet everybody.’ Jessie curtsied to them all in turn, and gave each a steady look, especially the shaky Mrs Watts. ‘You look as bad as I feel,’ she said generally, which was impudent but accurate.

  ‘Shouldn’t we do this another night?’ said Watts. The strain of the evening ought to be over now, surely. He had the distinctive look of a man who, though he has never had a stiff drink, yet suddenly feels the need of a stiff drink and tragically doesn’t know that a stiff drink is the thing he needs.

  But Ellen was not to be denied her chance. Perhaps she did have low ideas, but surely he would forgive her – if not absolutely adore her – for using them in the cause of love. So she took all the lamps and candles and arranged them at the foot of the curtain, and then made a short speech.

  ‘In this first tableau, I represent Inspiration. I think my husband will guess who the other figure is.’

  Cameron nudged Watts; Watts shrugged back. He wished his wife would be sensible. He wished they could just go to bed. But then Lorenzo drew back the curtain, and what was behind it? It was – oh horrible! – the head of Haydon. ‘No, no!’ whispered Watts. ‘Isn’t this good, George?’ said Ellen. Haydon’s head was set on a clothed dummy, made of rags, with its right arm cunningly raised to hold a paintbrush. The clothes were the ones usually worn by Herbert. Ellen had dressed the plaster head in a wig, and coloured its features with theatrical make-up. It was Haydon to the life! An apparition! Watts nearly choked. In the distance he heard a knocking and clamouring at the front door, but he was transfixed by the horror of this vision. ‘Haydon!’ he gasped.

  Cameron (the only other person left at the table) watched Watts’s face. Little Ellen had certainly captured her husband’s attention, he thought. What a clever girl. And then he drifted off into a pleasant doze.

  Ellen stood just behind the curtain, holding a handkerchief as though waving farewell. The curtain closed, and she stepped forward.

  ‘That was, of course, Inspiration Deserts Benjamin Robert Haydon,’ she explained. ‘You see, George, it was nothing to do with you at all. He just dried up.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Watts croaked.

  Ellen, whose jangling emotions were now heightened by the thrill of the stage, made a solemn answer.

  ‘Because I love you,’ she said. ‘And now –’

  Watts called out to her from the darkness, ‘Ellen, I forbid you –’

  But then the curtain opened again on Haydon, and this time his companion was not Inspiration, but the precocious American child wrapped in a union flag, holding a flashing blade to Haydon’s throat, and snarling.

  The curtain closed again. ‘That was General Tom Thumb, Famous American Midget, Kills Benjamin Robert Haydon.’

  ‘Ellen, please! This is most unseemly! The man is dead!’

  But the curtain swung open for the last time, and Jessie, smiling grimly, held the detached head in her hands, from which bright red blood appeared to be trickling.

  Ellen applauded, but she was the only one. Watts had his hand before his eyes.

  ‘Westminster!’ he whimpered.

  ‘That’s the end,’ Ellen explained to Watts. She turned to the child. ‘Jessie, you clever girl, how ever did you manage the blood? It’s so lifelike.’

  But Jessie was wobbling a bit. Which was not surprising when she had just cut herself rather deeply on purpose.

  She pushed Ellen away.

  ‘Pa,’ yelled Jessie. ‘Get this woman away from me or I’ll cut her too.’

  Ellen fell back in alarm. ‘Mr Fowler, come quickly. She’s done something with this knife!’ ‘Jessie!’ he yelled.

  ‘I hate you, Pa. I love you. How could you do it?’ Jessie’s voice sounded a bit funny. She dropped the knife and it clattered at her feet.

  Outside, in the garden, Julia caught up with Alfred Tennyson, as the wind lashed the trees above their heads, and the rain fell on their faces like – well, you know, God’s angry tears or something. For a man who hotly resisted accusations of the pathetic fallacy, these stormy conditions were just too bad.

  ‘Alfred!’ yelled Julia above the wind.

  ‘It’s no good, Julia. My mind is made up.’

  ‘Alfred!’

  They could have gone on like this, but fortunately Julia thought of sheltering in the glass house, where at least they could hear each other speak. And so they entered Julia’s hallowed place, where Alfred had never stepped before, and the conflicting emotions Julia had demanded from Mr Watts as Ulysses were as nothing to the feelings now fighting in her own breast like cross winds tearing at a sail.

  ‘I can’t believe you would leave me, Alfred,’ she wailed. ‘Just because I have never s
poken to you of my feelings, you must surely know what they are.’

  ‘Julia, I think we should discuss this tomorrow. Or perhaps, even better, we should never discuss it at all. It pains me to see you like this.’

  ‘It pains you!’

  ‘It’s a figure of speech, Julia. It means I don’t want to talk about it. And that such passion in a plain dumpy woman is ugly and absurd.’

  Julia gaped. Alfred on the defensive was clearly a very dangerous man. He was still very angry.

  ‘Correct me, Julia, but you seem to believe that I owe you something. I don’t, and nor does Emily. We did not ask you to move here. We did not ask you for the wallpaper or the ponchos. We don’t even know what a poncho is. We do not need your permission to settle our own affairs and enjoy the success that my talent has earned me, away from constant outrageous requests for photographs and dedications!’

  Julia looked around. There was something about the setting. She never thought she would see Alfred in her glass house. She had wanted it so much that it had nearly broken her heart.

  ‘Sit for me, Alfred,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You do not listen, madam!’

  ‘But I do, Alfred. I do. And each word you speak pains me a great deal more than it pains you. But tell me, will your friends see the review in the Westminster? Will they be pleased and impressed?’

  Alfred tugged his cloak. ‘Yes, they will.’

  ‘And will your enemies choke on their breakfast?’

  ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  ‘I really didn’t want you to know this, Alfred, and I would never have told you for my own sake, but you simply need to know. I wrote that review. Sara used her influence with the editor to print it.’

  Tennyson stood up impatiently. Why was he listening to such silly invention?

  ‘And why would you do that?’ he snapped.

  ‘Because I love you,’ she said. ‘And because I wanted you to have a present from me that did not demand thanks. That way your usual brutal disregard for my feelings could not hurt me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Oh Alfred. Your blindness is such a curse. Why do you think the review disputes with George Gilfillan and John Ruskin? Who else but your closest friends would know your tiresome preoccupation with their trifling passing comments?’

  ‘They were a lot more than passing comments. They were wounds, Julia, wounds.’

  ‘All right then. Look at it another way. How do you think the review got into the apple pie?’

  He heard what she was saying. He sat thinking for a while, and the more he thought, the angrier he got.

  ‘So do you expect thanks now? Is that why you do these stupid extravagant things, for the thanks? Well, you won’t get any. Do you know what you have done, you silly woman?’

  ‘Yes thank you,’ said Julia. ‘I thought I was doing you a favour, when in fact I have done one for myself.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  She drew a deep breath. ‘I could tell the world the review was mine, Alfred. Your reputation would never recover.’ ‘You wouldn’t.’ She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Julia. Julia, you are a nice person. In all the turmoil this evening, you seem to have forgotten.’ ‘Sit for me, Alfred. I love you.’

  They sat in the dark, and the rain lashed the windows. ‘I love you,’ she repeated. ‘Remember the Westminster. Sit for me.’

  Dodgson rushed in to the dining room.

  ‘It’s Daisy Bradley!’ he shouted. ‘They say she’s gone m-m—missing!’

  Jessie dropped Haydon’s head, and it smashed on the edge of the podium. Blood trickled from her fingers’ ends.

  ‘I love you, Pa,’ she said, and Lorenzo screamed as he ran to catch her in his arms.

  It was quite a scene. In fact Mr Cameron woke up at that moment, took a look round the darkened room and – not surprisingly – applauded vigorously. It was quite the best tableau he’d ever seen – Watts with his hand across his eyes, Ellen aghast, Lorenzo with the bleeding child, and Dodgson frozen in the doorway.

  ‘Very fine!’ he called. ‘Mark my words. Put that on in Drury Lane and people would pay good money to see it, I assure you!’

  Part Three

  Hats In The Air

  Thirteen

  Lionel Tennyson sat up in bed and laughed with delight. His beautiful little face was framed by hair curled in papers (at his mother’s insistence), but he didn’t mind. He hardly even noticed the discomfort in his foot, caused by his mother stamping on it so unexpectedly that afternoon. While Hallam slumbered inoffensively in an adjacent bed, Lionel held up a candle and continued to read a parody of his father’s famous poem ‘The Two Voices’. The parody, published anonymously, had been sent to Lionel by Mr Dodgson a couple of years ago. But Lionel, rightly believing Dodgson to be rather infra dig at the time, had never got around to reading it.

  ‘The Two Voices’ is not much read nowadays, but Lionel knew it very well indeed. Even though it was a grave and grown-up poem about the arguments for and against suicide, Lionel had known his father’s poem since his earliest youth. The last-but-one governess had read it compulsively and had made both boys learn sections of it by heart. The children used to wonder, actually, whether she was quite all right in the head. At local children’s parties, therefore, when games took place, other infants might lisp ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall’, while the Tennyson boys were apt to fold their hands and begin,

  A still small voice spake unto me,

  ‘Thou art so full of misery,

  Were it not better not to be?’

  They would conclude their recitals thirty minutes later, among a party of blubbing and demoralized kiddies, and parents in despair.

  So there had been general relief when that gloomy governess had gone, and another had replaced her. Like Tennyson himself, she would have been outraged by Mr Dodgson’s version, ‘The Three Voices’, which concerned a chap determined, not to kill himself, but rather to be extremely cheerful at the seaside. But then a sea breeze carries his hat athwart the glooming flat (good Tennysonian words, ‘glooming’ and ‘athwart’), where it is speared by the umbrella of a female philosopher whose aim is to make him see misery in everything. For someone who himself lived beside the sea, Lionel appreciated, if nothing else, the way Mr Dodgson set so many of his poems on the beach.

  A while like one in dreams he stood,

  Then faltered forth his gratitude

  In words just short of being rude:

  For it [his hat] had lost its shape and shine,

  And it had cost him four-and-nine,

  And he was going out to dine.

  Lionel hugged himself. It wasn’t that the parody was so very funny. It was that his father would be so very mad when he read it that he wouldn’t know which leg to hop on.

  ‘To dine!’ she shrieked in dragon-wrath,

  ‘To swallow wines all foam and froth!

  To simper at a table cloth!

  ‘Say, can thy noble spirit stoop

  To join the gormandizing troop

  Who find a solace in the soup?

  ‘Canst thou desire of pie or puff?

  Thy well-bred manners were enough,

  Without such gross material stuff.’

  ‘Yet well-bred men,’ he faintly said,

  ‘Are not unwilling to be fed:

  Nor are they well without the bread.’

  There was no doubt about it. ‘The Three Voices’ was dynamite. Dodgson had written doggerel stuff about dinner and hats! In fact Lionel was so engrossed in this wonderful fare that when a handful of pebbles rattled at his window, he ignored them. After all, it was a stormy night with sudden gusts. With any luck the Garibaldi tree would fall over, and do them all a favour. (Lionel had already loosened it secretly around the roots, to get it started.)

  Another pebble hit the casement, however, and Lionel went to look. Outside, below, was Daisy Bradley, waving a small bag.

  Lionel opened the window.<
br />
  ‘Daisy! It’s ten o’clock!’

  ‘Lionel! What happened to your head?’

  Lionel squirmed as he remembered the curling papers.

  ‘I’ll come down,’ he said. ‘Stay there.’

  Down on the shore, Dodgson’s boater had blown off, but no lady philosopher speared it. It bowled inland, spinning and scooping, and was never seen by a living soul again.

  ‘Daisy!’ he yelled.

  Behind him, battling with the breeze from the sea, were Mrs Cameron and Tennyson, and Watts and Ellen, all doing their best, though not really knowing where to start. Before Jessie passed out at Dimbola, she whispered to Lorenzo that Daisy might have headed for the bathing machines (Jessie was privy to Daisy’s somewhat flawed domestic intentions), which was why the household’s luminaries had now crowded to the bay in low tide and pitch dark, calling and peering, while Daisy’s other family and friends searched inland.

  Alfred was not much use on a search party. Each time he called, ‘Here she is! I have found the child!’ he was discovered to be pointing at a big rock or a piece of old donkey blanket caught on a bush. But he felt that he needed to be there. He needed to come out and do something rugged and masculine after his frightful encounter with Julia in the chicken-house. Above all, he needed to feel good about himself again. Somehow or other, Julia’s frank words (particularly ‘I love you’) had knocked him quite off balance.

  ‘Daisy!’ ‘Daisy!’ they called.