by Lynne Truss
Dodgson felt wretched, and not just about the loss of his hat. Everyone knew Daisy’s disappearance was his fault. Jessie had told everybody about the safety pins before she fainted away; and they had all shaken their heads and said ‘Shame’. What could he do to redeem himself? Not take a picture, or write a parody, or sing a comic song. All his usual repertoire for ingratiation was useless in this company. So he must find Daisy. At all costs, he must find her before anyone else.
Ellen jumped from rock to rock like – oh Puck or Ariel, or something; while Watts poked at the ground with his stick, as though Daisy might be a shell fish burrowed there. Perhaps he was looking for dropped florins. He held up a large handkerchief and wiped a tear. This had been an emotional evening for him; it felt curiously final, as though nothing would ever be the same. Ellen had paraded his Haydon obsession for all to see! If a child was lost tonight – especially a child called Daisy – the metaphorical implications were simply too enormous to ignore.
‘We’ll find her,’ Julia reassured him, loudly, directly in his ear. ‘She is a very level-headed little girl normally.’
‘But people do mad things when they love, Julia. Look at me. I married Ellen. That was mad, was it not? Tonight Ellen broke my heart with her little entertainment, apparently thinking to win my affection. That too was quite insane.’
But Julia couldn’t hear him for the waves crashing and the wind pushing the tide up the shingly beach. Besides, this was hardly the time or place for introspection. Much as she loved him, sometimes Watts was enough to try the patience of an oyster. So she left him to his bemoanings and banged on the side of a bathing machine with a big stick.
Alfred was suddenly struck by a thought. ‘The scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave,’ he said, mainly to himself. ‘I wrote that, you know. It’s very fine, very fine. I doubt anyone else could have done it.’ He tried substituting different words –
The scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the tide;
The shriek of a maddened beach pulled down to the deep;
The sound of some pebbly rocks sucked back by a tow
– and decided he had probably got it right the first time, and that he was, despite all his other failings as a human being, a genius of a poet.
‘Julia!’ he called.
She ran to his side. ‘Yes Alfred.’
She thought he had found the child. But of course he was thinking about himself again.
‘I just wanted to remind you, Julia, that I have a very great gift.’
Julia’s eyes filled with tears. Perhaps it was the wind.
‘Oh you do have a gift, Alfred,’ she shouted directly in his ear. She had to stand so close, she could feel his beard touch her face. ‘A great gift. If only you could learn to appreciate it.’
Alfred was nonplussed. A man cannot bear so many home truths in one night.
‘I will return to Emily,’ he boomed. And before Julia could say anything, he had gathered his cloak and gone.
It was Dodgson who first noticed the light on the boat, thirty yards out in the black water. ‘A light,’ he shouted, pointing. ‘C—Can anyone swim?’
Of course they couldn’t. Nor could he. But he was actually ready to strip off and dive in when Mrs Cameron held his arm.
‘It’s not Daisy,’ she shouted.
It was true. The boat, with its lantern swinging, which tossed against the choppy water, was not stationary and helpless, but moved quite quickly towards the beach. And if their eyes did not deceive them, it was rowed by a woman.
Who could this be? They watched in a line (and amazement) as this woman rower deftly caught the wave to ram her boat ashore, then jumped out quickly and dragged it up the beach. Rather too late, Mrs Cameron ran to help.
‘Why, hello!’ shouted the woman, in a friendly fashion. They looked at her. She held her lantern closer to her face. She was a complete stranger.
‘Hello again,’ she yelled, with an American accent. ‘My, this wind.’
It was as though she had dropped out of the sky. In fact it would hardly have been more remarkable if she had. Who was this extraordinary woman? She wore a large tweed cape, sodden with rain and sea-water, which she flung back carelessly as though it were the lightest shawl. If she had worn thigh-boots, and slapped them, it would hardly have looked much out of place.
‘I really didn’t expect to see anybody, arriving so late,’ she shouted, shaking hands with each of them, and ignoring their rude gaping. ‘Out for a walk in the storm? A fine idea. Feel the electricity in these elements. Those nincompoops at Lymington refused to sail, so I hired this boat and travelled under some steam of my own.’
‘You didn’t row around the Needles?’ asked Julia, aghast.
‘The tall chalk stacks? I did, yes. That was the very best part.’
She removed some thick waterproof boots and tucked them under her arm.
‘But now, what’s this? Great luck. It is the Albion Hotel and my journey’s goal.’
‘Excuse my rudeness,’ said Julia, ‘but what are you doing here?’
‘I have come to meet my husband and daughter. What a surprise I will give them both. They think I am in Boston. How do you do? My name is Lydia Fowler.’
The others stared.
‘But tell you what,’ she added, ‘seeing as we’re friends already, you can call me Professor.’
‘So what happened, Daisy?’
Lionel sat with Daisy in a large armchair. Sophia had brought some drinks, and Daisy had changed from her wet clothes. In her little bag was found a very nice floor-length cotton nightie, so she now wore that, and flicked her hair back over her shoulders.
‘I was mad,’ she said.
‘To fancy Mr Dodo? I’ll say.’
‘It was just that he said he loved me.’
‘Hmm. But Daisy, he says that to all the girls.’
Daisy shrugged.
‘I expect so.’
‘Come on, Daisy, I know so. Someone told Hallam that Alice Liddell’s mother stopped letting him write to her.’ ‘Who’s Alice Liddell?’
‘Don’t you know anything? She’s the girl he wrote Alice’s Adventures for.’
Daisy whimpered. She couldn’t help it. Nobody told her there was a real Alice. Mr Dodgson had kept that very quiet.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
She pretended she didn’t care, but it was a bit of a shock. Alice Liddell, eh? Alice Liddell. She blinked a lot, but did not cry.
‘The Liddells sometimes holiday in Freshwater,’ Lionel explained.
‘You mean he even sees her here?’
‘And at Oxford, of course.’
She shook her head. Mr Dodgson’s character got worse and worse.
‘Does he love her?’
‘Daisy, forget it. He’s thirty-two and she’s twelve.’
Daisy twiddled with a bit of her hair. It was all a bit much to take in.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ urged Lionel.
She nodded, and tried to think about something else.
‘What does she look like?’
‘Daisy!’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’
‘Won’t anyone be looking for you, Daisy?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I left very quietly.’
‘Oh good.’
Back at Dimbola, Jessie languished in her father’s arms, while the maids looked grim and mopped the blood off the dining room floor.
‘What have I done?’ Lorenzo moaned. His darling child! His prodigy! He caressed her ghastly ringlets with his big hands, and hugged her closely to him, careful not to touch her bandaged arm. For yes, Jessie had really cut herself with the sharp knife from the kitchen, and it was a madder act than anything a black-blooded Tennyson had ever done, despite the imperatives of heredity.
‘What have I done?’ he repeated. ‘Jessie, just tell me, what did I do?’
She opened an eye. ‘You lashed up your sense
s with Mrs Watts, didn’t you Pa?’ It was the thought in her head, but she did not speak it aloud. She was enjoying the attention far too much to jeopardize the mood. So she snuggled nearer and let out a faraway moan.
‘I will send for Ada,’ he declared. But as he said it, his heart broke and he began to sob over the actually not-at-all lifeless body of his little girl.
‘Jessie, you are everything to me. Don’t take yourself away.’
‘Oh really, Lorry,’ said Lydia, standing at the door. ‘Can’t you see the child is acting?’
Lorenzo looked around. ‘What?’
His wife? Lydia? Leaning on oars in Mrs Cameron’s drawing room?
Jessie sprang into life. ‘Mama!’ she yelled, and sat up straight.
‘What?’ said Lorenzo again, releasing his hold. Was Jessie all right? Or was Lydia a phantasm?
‘Oops,’ said Jessie, looking up at him. ‘Sorry, Pa.’
‘Jessie,’ called Lydia. ‘My own brat prodigy.’
‘Mama! Or should I say Professor!’
Finding Lydia was certainly a bonus, but as far as Dodgson was concerned, it didn’t quite compensate for losing Daisy. Alone, therefore, he set off into the darkness. For someone with a logical mind, it was tragic the way he had lost all power of consecutive thought this evening. He sat down for a moment on a little post, and tried to pull himself together. Perhaps he could deduce Daisy’s whereabouts by means of his intellectual training. So he had a go at it, out there in the dark, setting his mighty syllogistic brain to work in a practical cause, using all the available data. Through force of habit, however, the propositions came out something like this:
1. No one takes The Times unless he is well educated.
2. Daisy Bradley is missing.
3. No birds, except ostriches, are nine feet high.
4. Guinea pigs are hopelessly ignorant of music.
5. Rainbows are not worth writing odes to.
6. A fish that cannot dance a minuet is contemptible.
Even a cursory perusal told him there was not much to be deduced here, so he tried to focus more narrowly on the matter in hand.
1. Daisy Bradley loves me.
2. Daisy Bradley is eight years old.
3. Eight-year-old girls sometimes cut themselves deeply with sharp knives.
4. If you drink from a bottle marked poison, it is bound to disagree with you, sooner or later.
Dodgson put back his head and screamed. Then he chose the logical course again, and argued thus.
1. Daisy has friends at Dimbola and Farringford.
2. She is not at Dimbola.
The word ‘ergo’ had certainly been invented for such moments.
Jessie, jumping into her mother’s arms, found that she could administer a little kick in Mrs Watts’s pretty little face, which cheered her up immensely, and also brought a smile to Mrs Cameron. No bothersome questions of how, why, or what interfered with her infant joy. Mama was home!
Lorenzo, however, was overwhelmed – a sensation he recognized, and adored. Lydia had overwhelmed Lorenzo from their earliest days as phrenologists together, and had thereafter never left off. Readers of this story may have assumed Lorenzo was a widower; certainly his new friends in Freshwater had jumped to that mistake. But Lydia was not dead, she was merely in the United States, which is not the same. She had travelled home with a few tidying-up missions: to re-organize the national practice of obstetrics, for example.
Lorenzo, who up to now looked pretty energetic in the context of Freshwater Bay, dwindled beside Lydia like a candle set before a furnace. It was Lydia the child took after, not Lorenzo. The song about Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclo-piddia was not actually written about Lydia Fowler, for she had no tattoos. But in her family, she was nevertheless known as Piddia, for her obvious know-all tendencies.
‘Greet me, Lorry,’ she said.
He jumped to his feet, quickly adjusted his beard, and ran to her side. It pained him to do this in front of sweet little Mrs Watts, but it couldn’t be helped.
‘Goddess,’ he breathed. And taking her by the back of the neck, he kissed her, for a not inconsiderable period, full on the lips, while Jessie looked on proudly.
The others, still damp from the elements, coughed and shuffled disapprovingly, a bit like Wonderland creatures waiting for a Caucus race.
‘Mrs Fowler rowed across the Solent in a rainstorm,’ said Julia conversationally, as though the kiss had finished (it hadn’t).
‘She has won medals for rowing,’ said Jessie, proudly. ‘She is Marblehead champion.’
‘Oh, what’s Marblehead?’ asked Julia, hoping to fill time while the kiss continued.
‘It’s a place,’ said Jessie. ‘Near where Uncle Orson lives. We thought he ought to live in Marblehead, really. Because of the name being so apt.’
The kiss shifted a little; it stopped for air. But it did not conclude.
‘We didn’t actually know there was a Mrs Fowler,’ said Ellen, with an attempted gay laugh.
‘Oh no?’
But the kiss did not stop. Jessie piped up. ‘Did you find Daisy?’ The grown-ups hung their heads. In the excitement of Lydia, they had forgotten.
‘Oh, she’ll be all right,’ Jessie assured them. ‘But if she isn’t, she has only herself to blame. I mean, fancy falling for Mr Dodo. Give me typhoid any day.’
The Fowler clinch had now broken, much to the relief of the host nation, but the couple were still not ready for general chat.
Lorenzo went down on one knee. ‘Diana! Juno! Explain!’
‘I found you had left London, and here I am. I have brought five hundred copies of Orson’s latest pamphlet. We start lecturing tomorrow.’
‘Oh Ma,’ squealed Jessie, ‘we’ve missed you so much.’
A few minutes later, a message arrived from Farringford, to say that Alfred had returned home to find Daisy safe in her nightie. The worried Bradley family had been calmed. The hunt was off. The only person who did not know this, of course, was Mr Dodgson, who could now not be found himself.
‘Let’s ask Ada to find him,’ said Jessie. ‘She would love to be out on a night like this. It’s exactly her kind of thing. She’s awful gloomy, Ma.’
‘Ada?’ queried Lydia. She seemed surprised.
‘We engaged Ada Wilson four months ago, just before you left for America, my dear. You surely remember?’
‘But Lorry, I left instructions for the girl to be dismissed.’
‘Why?’
‘I found her writing anonymous letters. I considered her dangerous.’
Lorenzo and Jessie looked at each other, nonplussed.
‘But Ada’s a real silly, Ma. She’s a misery, but also what you call a nincompoop. Pa says her brain has been fogged by pig and cow.’
‘Let us send for the girl at once,’ said Lydia. ‘But let us also consider the evidence. I left you a letter about the wickedness of the girl, secreting it carefully in your dressing table. You did not receive it. So the girl must be wicked. Did you not read her head, Lorry? She has Destructiveness so big that her ears stick out at an angle, unable to support the arms of spectacles. Her Organ of Gratitude is the size of a wizened pea.’
Lorenzo and Jessie looked at one another. ‘Ada?’ ‘Organ of Gratitude?’ was the astounded look on both their faces.
‘What sort of anonymous letters?’ asked Julia, intrigued.
‘Very threatening, to judge by the one I read. The girl was mad, I think. Mad with a grudge. She actually mentioned pushing some mean old lady in an invalid carriage off a cliff!’
Julia stopped breathing.
‘To whom did she send these anonymous letters?’ she asked.
‘To Alfred Tennyson, the Poet Laureate,’ said Lydia, almost laughing. ‘So preposterous.’
Dodgson trudged up the lane toward Farringford, unaware that deep within that lifeless house, Alfred was reading ‘The Three Voices’, and hopping on both legs at once. Which was ironic really, because Dodgson was currently reciting
to himself the Tennyson original, and recognizing for the first time the full force of the argument for self-slaughter.
Alfred, on the other hand, could hardly believe his eyes. All the deep philosophy of the poem was mocked here, transformed into nonsensical bantering. He had never been so insulted – not by George Gilfillan, not by anybody. The hero in the Dodgson poem doesn’t even know what the Voice is talking about!
Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
As though unconscious of his speech,
She said ‘Each gives to more than each.’
He could not answer yea or nay:
He faltered ‘Gifts may pass away.’
Yet knew not what he meant to say.
Gifts may pass away? Well, this gift certainly would. Alfred thundered so loud when he read this sacrilege that Emily was forced to come downstairs to investigate. She found two giggling children (one of them not her own), and her lord in apoplexy, holding a brown magazine which looked, at first glance, similar to the Westminster.
‘Is the review less good than you first imagined, Alfred? I knew you would find cause to hate it before long.’
Alfred folded the magazine and pushed it inside his coat pocket. He would not allow anyone else to see this monstrous thing; Lionel should certainly not keep it; the child would delight too much in learning the poem by rote.
‘Dodgson is in Freshwater, my love,’ he blurted. ‘Damn the man.’
‘The Oxford photographist?’ ‘The very same.’
‘Oh.’ Emily had never told Alfred of the letter from Dodgson. She had thereby saved a week of relative peace.
‘He’s been here for several days,’ said Lionel, helpfully. ‘In fact, he’s been here long enough for Daisy to fall in love with him, plan an elopement, and then think better of it.’
‘Lionel!’ said everybody together – including Daisy, who kicked him.
‘He ruined the dinner at Julia’s this evening,’ said Alfred. ‘I didn’t get my apple pie – twice!’
‘Poor Alfred.’
‘Scoundrel,’ spat Alfred.
‘Scoundrel,’ agreed his dear, weary wife.
