Tennyson's Gift Read online

  ‘Did you check the boys for signs of madness, Emily?’

  ‘Yes, dear. I did.’

  ‘Is there an apple pie baked for my dinner?’

  ‘Yes. Cook has seen to it.’

  ‘Is anyone after my head?’

  ‘No, dear, nobody. As I have told you before, Alfred, that’s all in your imagination.’

  Back at Dimbola, a clattering of pans and a smell of lobster curry issued from the kitchen, and from Mrs Cameron’s glass house an occasional steam-whistle shriek marked the success or failure of the latest coating of a photographic plate.

  ‘You nudged my elbow!’

  ‘No I didn’t!’

  Dodgson’s curiosity could resist the commotion no longer. Removing the boater, he pushed his head into the briar to see what on earth was happening. And there he saw a beautiful garden, in which maids and boys were slopping white paint onto red roses as fast as they possibly could. To someone who had only recently completed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this scene came as a bit of a shock, obviously.

  Nobody noticed him, with his head poking through the hedge. Of course they didn’t. They were absorbed in their strange work. Even when the door of Mrs Cameron’s studio opened suddenly and a glass plate came skimming out, breaking against the trunk of a tree, the unflappable rose-painters paid no heed.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ piped a small voice near to Dodgson – too near to the hedge for him to see the body it came from. What was this? A little girl? At an educated guess, somewhere between eight years old, and eight and two months? With a dear little fluting voice? Dodgson pushed himself closer, despite tell-tale cracking and snapping.

  ‘Oh dear,’ repeated the little girl, disconsolate, ‘I do believe I’ve quite forgotten.’ Seeing more clearly into the sun-filled garden of Dimbola Lodge, Dodgson discovered a sight so pleasant to his eager spying eye that for a giddy moment he wished he might push his head right through the flowery bank (though of course without his shoulders, his head wouldn’t be much use). A leggy barefoot girl of eight, her thick hair flowing, her skirt pinned up, and heavy angel wings of swan feather attached to her tiny shoulders, stood just two yards before him, staring uncertainly at a rose bush dripping white paint to the earth. And there she pouted, confused – an irresistible image of innocence and poultry cunningly blent.

  ‘Mary Ann!’ she cried, at last. Her wings flapped a bit, which was so nice to see that Dodgson whimpered in the hedge.

  No answer.

  ‘Can you remember? Are we painting red roses white, or white roses red? Mary Ann!’ she shouted. ‘I want Mary Ann!’

  ‘Now what’s all this?’ snapped an older girl, an Irish servant of about sixteen in a dull dress and white apron. She looked quite severe, with her dark hair pinned tight against her head, as if it had deserved punishment by restraint.

  ‘As you well know, Miss Daisy, Mary Ann will be in the mistress’s glass house at this minute – why, isn’t she there all day every day? And like as not she’s pretending to be Mary Madonna, or a Hangel, or anybody else from the blessed Bible who never got their hands dirty doing her fair share of chores around the house.’ Mary Ann’s modelling duties were clearly rather unpopular with the Irish girl.

  ‘But I say good luck to her,’ she continued. ‘Oh yes I do. Her with her moony long white face, not that I’d take that face off her if it was offered, even with the neck and the hair and the arms thrown in –’

  ‘But what about the roses, Mary Ryan?’ interrupted the little girl.

  Mary Ryan smiled.

  ‘Well, you’re a goose, so you are. Is it really so difficult? What colour do you have there in your little pot?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the girl in a small voice, suddenly downcast. (Like all children, she hated to be told off.) ‘White.’

  The girl pouted again and changed the subject. ‘Does Mrs Cameron ask you to be Mary Madonna sometimes, Mary Ryan?’

  Clearly this was not the right thing to ask. Mary Ryan pursed her lips and emptied her paint pot over the honeysuckle. She probably wasn’t supposed to do that, but at least she didn’t dump it over Dodgson.

  ‘Does she?’ urged the child. ‘She took my picture! Can I see pictures of you, Mary Ryan –’

  ‘No you can not!’ spat out Mary Ryan. ‘And you just be careful with those wings, Miss Daisy Bradley, that’s all. The mistress ordered them all the way from Mortlake, and if you’ll not be crushing them feathers all this time, I don’t know what you are doing.’

  At which the little girl, sensing that the fun was over, ran indoors.

  Mary Ryan, left alone, wiped her eyes with her apron and let out a little scream. ‘Mary Ann this! Mary Ann that! How I love thee, Mary Ann!’

  And picking up her pinafore, she turned on her heel. Unabashed at his eavesdropping, Dodgson stepped back from the scene, brushed his clothes for dust and twigs, and reassured himself there was nobody about. He was never embarrassed when people betrayed private emotions in front of him; having no emotions himself (or none to speak of), he was just very, very intrigued. Sometimes he made notes for use later on. He had no idea why one maid should begrudge another maid her chance to star in Mrs Cameron’s photographs – especially when, in his own opinion, the photographs were dreadful, too big, and shockingly out of focus. Glancing up at the windows of Dimbola, he caught the eye of a white-bearded old man smiling from ear to ear – Mr Cameron, presumably. The old man waved in a jolly sort of way, as though deranged. Dodgson studiously ignored him; you never knew where that sort of thing might lead.

  ‘But I must contrive to meet this Daisy,’ he decided, and produced his small notebook again. He wrote down her name. He also wrote it in letters down the page – D-A-I-S-Y-B-R-A-D-L-E-Y – ready for an instant acrostic poem, which he could sometimes complete in five minutes or less. Twelve letters! Excellent! Three stanzas of four! Two stanzas of six! What a charming child, to have such a convenient name, numerologically speaking! With several days planned at Freshwater Bay, there was plenty of time to make friends with the little girls, and get their addresses, and campaign for their photographs, and send them love poems. But he had discovered it was a great advantage to know names in advance, without asking.

  ‘I love my love with a D because she is D-D—Daring,’ he mused. ‘I hate her because she is Demanding. I took her to the sign of the Dr—Dromedary, and treated her with Dumplings, Dis-sss—temper and D-D—Desire. Her name is Daisy and she lives –’

  Indeed, he was just envisaging the scene on the gusty beach – the little girl paddling with a shrimp net; himself nearby pretending not to notice her, but doing fascinating bunny-rabbit tricks with a pocket handkerchief to ensnare her attention (it never failed) – when he heard the approaching trundle of the Yarmouth cart, and looked up to see Tennyson, the great literary lion of the age, dressed as usual in copious cloak and broad hat, holding a book of his own poems directly in front of his face for better reading, but evidently catching a vague myopic passing blur of Dodgson nevertheless.

  There was no time to hide, no time to frame a polite greeting before – ‘Allingham!’ boomed the laureate, as the cart passed Dodgson (pretty closely). Dodgson jumped.

  Allingham? He glanced behind him, but could see nobody.

  ‘Allingham, we dine tomorrow at six! Come afterwards – not before, there’s a good fellow – and I shall read my Enoch Arden, and explain it to you, line by line! We shall confound the critics!’

  And before Dodgson could voice a word of protest, the poet had passed by. The rush of air pulled Dodgson’s boater from his head and left it dusty in the road.

  This was not the welcome Dodgson had anticipated. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How could he make a visit now? He picked up his hat again, and touched his head carefully with each hand in turn. Still there, still there; still Dodgson, not Allingham. He looked up at the old man, who now appeared (no, surely not) to be dancing with glee.

  On the breeze, Dodgson smelled the ozone from the sea, the scent
of roses, fresh lead paint, hot buttered toast and potassium cyanide, all mixed together with the lobster curry. He looked up the lane towards Tennyson’s home, and then back to the blue sizzling bay, where children would soon be packing their shrimp nets. Salty and sandy, and with their hair in pretty rat-tails, they would head home for tea at the nearby hotels.

  Absently, he flicked through his manuscript.

  Dear oh dear, how late it’s getting …

  Mary Ann, Mary Ann, fetch me a pair of gloves …

  I shall sit here, on and off, for days …

  You? Who are you?

  As he pondered Mrs Cameron’s interesting corner of the Isle of Wight, another glass plate whizzed across her garden and broke with a shattering sound like someone falling into a cucumber frame. At Freshwater Bay, he reflected, whichever direction you went in, the people were mad.

  ‘Which way?’ he said quietly to himself. ‘Wh-Wh—Which way?’

  Two

  When Lorenzo Fowler woke on Thursday morning to the sound of waves and seagulls, and the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave, he had trouble initially guessing where he was. He normally woke to the sound of London traffic and coster boys. Freshwater Bay had been an impulsive decision, prompted by little Jessie complaining of the fug of Ludgate Circus (‘Pa, this heat!’) and accomplished with a spirit of ‘What are we waiting for?’ that had ‘yankee’ written all over it.

  Lorenzo as a caring father needed no other incitement than his little daughter’s cry. She was a pale, freckly child with orange ringlets, and he still felt guilty at transplanting her to England – such a backward land in terms of diet, clean water and fresh air. So at her first complaint, he shoved a few heads in boxes, packed his charts and silk blindfold in violet tissue, selected some hot, progressive Fowlers & Wells pamphlets (subjects included anti-lacing, temperance, tobacco, octagonal architecture and hydropathic cholera cures) and took the earliest train to the New Forest.

  Even in a mercy dash, it seemed, a phrenologist did not travel light. For phrenology was Lorenzo Fowler’s lifelong pursuit, and after thirty years he was not so much proud of this highly dodgy profession as still busting the buttons of his fancy satin waistcoat. Some people grow tired of fads, but not Lorenzo Fowler. For him, phrenology was the fad that would not die. Talk to him ignorantly of phrenology as the science of ‘bumps’ and he might throw back his magnificent head to laugh (baring his excellent white teeth) before genially setting you straight for half an hour, dazzling you with his specialist vocabulary, and at the end of it selling you a special new demountable model of the brain for the knock-down rate of two and nine.

  Of course, for practising the craft of head-feeling, all you needed were a pair of hands, a good spatial sense, and a map of the mental organs fixed firmly in your mind. But Lorenzo Niles Fowler was more than a phrenologist. He was also showman and evangelist, whose personal belief was that the market for phrenology had never been so vigorous, not even in its heyday in his native United States. Why, already on this trip to the Isle of Wight he had used a cursory reading to pay the carter from Yarmouth, telling him, ‘Such a large Self Esteem you have! And what Amativeness!’ Gratified by this mysterious, flattering talk from an exotic foreigner, the normally morose carter had gladly waived the fee when he dropped his passengers at the Albion Hotel, right on the edge of the bay. Lorenzo smiled. It worked every time. Tell people they have abnormally large Amativeness (sexuality by a fancier name) and they are well disposed to phrenology – and phrenologists – for ever after. It’s just something they happen to enjoy hearing.

  Jessie was awake and dressed already, playing with heads in the chintzy sitting room. She was eight, and precocious, and though the scene might strike an outsider as altogether gruesome, she was happy enough, having known no other dollies in her life save these big bald plaster ones with nothing below the neck. Poor kid. She had no idea how it looked. Not only were there detached heads all over the floor, but she had on a thick dress of red tartan – a tragically bad choice when you consider the ginger hair.

  ‘Pa?’ said Jessie. ‘Oh there you are, Pa! Ada and I breakfasted already, but we made them save you some brains!’

  ‘My favourite!’

  This was the Fowlers’ daily joke. It was funny because they were vegetarians as well as phrenologists – and looking on the bright side, at least it was generally dispensed with quite early in the day.

  ‘Brains! Ha ha, ho ho!’ laughed Lorenzo, slapping his knees, while the nun-like Ada, their British maid, wordlessly unpacked some pamphlets from a trunk, and tried not to count how many times she’d heard this one before. You have to look at it from Ada’s point of view. A family of American freaks that delighted in brain jokes? No, the gods of domestic employment had not exactly smiled upon Ada.

  ‘Test me on the heads, please, Pa! Ada can’t do it, she’s too silly. She’s too British!’

  ‘Try not to be rude about Ada, dearest,’ said Lorenzo, while he blindfolded his horrid little daughter, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘Tight enough? Not too tight? We are guests in this country, Jessie,’ he continued, as he secured the strings with a dainty bow at the back of the little girl’s well formed head. He was a big man with deft fingers. His hands were always warm.

  ‘We have a duty to behave with the very best of manners. In particular we should lead the way in courtesy to the lower orders.’

  ‘But what if our hosts are all sillies and nincompoops like Ada?’ asked Jessie.

  Ada left the room, and slammed the door.

  ‘Well, I agree, dearest,’ said Lorenzo. ‘That sometimes makes it hard.’

  Lorenzo had brought a selection of plaster heads on holiday, the way another man might bring a selection of neck ties. Spreading them on the rug in a semi-circle, he handed them one by one to the blindfolded Jessie, who sat with her legs out straight, bouncing her calves alternately up and down.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said, as her little hands swarmed over the polished plaster. But his breath was wasted. Time was something Jessie clearly did not need.

  ‘It’s too easy, Pa,’ pouted the little girl.

  ‘No, it is not. Phrenology is a high science.’

  ‘Well, this one’s the Idiot of Amsterdam, aged twenty-five, I know that.’

  ‘Very well. I take away the Idiot of Amsterdam, aged twenty-five. But first tell me about him. How do you ascertain his idiocy, Oh little clever one?’

  ‘But it’s so obvious! The flat, short brow, indicating no reflective or perceptive qualities! A cat could tell you that! I mean, if a cat had the Organ of Language, which of course it doesn’t. A cat has a large Organ of Secretiveness!’

  Jessie never stopped showing off. It was one of the reasons why she had so few friends. (The other reason was that she never minced words about other people’s cranial deficiencies.)

  She picked up another head, felt it quickly, and cast it aloft. ‘You can take away the Manchester Idiot, too, Pa, while you are about it.’

  Lorenzo caught the head before it fell to the floor. Jessie was getting over-excited.

  ‘Now, now, child,’ he said. ‘These things cost money.’ He handed her another. ‘Who’s this?’

  Jessie whooped. ‘It’s the Montrose Calculator! Papa, you brought the Montrose Calculator! With the enormous Organ of Number!’

  ‘What’s the story we tell about the Montrose Calculator, Jessie?’

  ‘That when asked how he could calculate the number of seconds a person had been alive, he’d say’ (and here she assumed a terrible Highlands accent) ‘I dinna ken hoo I do’t. I jest think, and the ainsa comes inta ma heed!’

  He patted her shoulder, partly to congratulate her, partly in the hope of slowing her down.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ he said, but ‘No! One more! One more!’ she pleaded, and blindly reached out her chubby arms. How could he resist his darling? Especially when she looked so lovely – so right – in that violet
blindfold? Lorenzo opened a special, individual box, and handed her a new head.

  ‘Who’s this, Pa?’ she asked in a lowered tone, her face tilted upwards as she eagerly mothered the head in her lap, like something run mad by grief in a Jacobean tragedy. Lorenzo smiled but said nothing. His ruse had worked; the little girl was intrigued. The original owner of this head was no murderer, or idiot, or cunning boy.

  ‘Is he an artist, Papa?’

  ‘He is, you clever child. What makes you say so?’

  ‘He has Constructiveness and Ideality very large. Who is he, Pa?’ She stroked the head, as though smoothing away its cares. ‘He seems to lack Firmness completely, what a shame. I’ve got enormously big Firmness, haven’t I?’

  Lorenzo smiled. It was true. There was no denying it.

  ‘Can we feel my enormously big Firmness later, Pa?’

  Jessie removed her blindfold to look at the name on the base.

  ‘Benjamin Robert Hay-don,’ she read. She stuck out a lip. ‘Haydon. Who’s he?’

  ‘Mr Haydon was an English painter of great historical canvases and murals, Jessie, who killed himself before you were born.’

  ‘Killed himself?’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Oooooh.’

  Lorenzo felt very proud. This kid was such a chip off the old block.

  ‘Was he famous?’ she asked.

  ‘Famous, but poor. Artistically, some might have called him rich – but no, I’m lying. To be honest, even artistically Haydon was very, very poor. In other words, a useful case for lecturing purposes! He was also a phrenologist, Jessie – from the earliest days of our great science, when few people believed.’

  Jessie was intrigued. Her whole life revolved around the heads of dead people, and mostly odd, sad, idiotic or self-slaughtering ones at that. Any other eight-year-old would have changed the subject to Humpty Dumpty or twinkle-twinkle-little-star, but Jessie wanted the full grisly biography. She knew as well as her father did: this stuff would be dynamite on stage. ‘So why did he kill himself?’

  ‘Indebted. Disappointed. Nobody wanted his paintings, except a back view of Napoleon –’