Tennyson's Gift (20 page)

Lorenzo, meanwhile, was wilfully neglecting his mission to Dodgson. In fact, when Mary Ryan entered the drawing room with some cups and plates, she heard Lorenzo in full flow, addressing Tennyson and the other luminaries in a kind of makeshift circle. ‘What I tell my paying audiences is this,' he said, slapping his knees. ‘Go home now, I say, and write on a slip of paper your own obituary. Make it grand, I say; make it flattering. But then live the rest of your lives making it come true.'

He beamed at them all, gauging the appreciation. They were all impressed. They reflected on their own lives. In fact Mrs Cameron – who had already had quite a bad morning running to Farringford and back (and falling down stairs) – gulped and rubbed her shin. ‘Oh Alfred,' she said wistfully. ‘It is true that we have but one chance to get things right.'

‘I know I can't offer you much,' continued Lorenzo, ‘except free analysis and advice in absolute privacy and confidence, but I have every hope you will allow me the honour.'

Tennyson coughed. ‘Free, did you say?' Things were turning out better than he hoped. To get the children checked over by an expert, who wanted nothing in return! He need only string the fellow along, which was easy enough.

‘I did, sir,' said Lorenzo. ‘And a Fowler is a man of his word. To examine your heads will be the pinnacle of my professional life. And if I could take a plaster moulding for my own personal use – not for public display, of course, nothing like that –' He noticed a certain amount of dissent and shuffle here ‘– Well, we will talk of that at another time.'

Tennyson leaned toward Julia and whispered (loudly enough for everyone to hear), ‘Perhaps the boot's on the wrong foot here, Julia. Perhaps
he
should be paying
us!
Eh?'

She smiled nervously, and offered Lorenzo more tea.

Sensing his audience slipping a little, Lorenzo regathered it expertly. ‘Imagine my position. I have before me the greatest names of the age,' he said, ‘and I myself am nothing, nothing. The greatest living poet, sir; the greatest painter, photographer and actress. Such heads. I tell you frankly, my fingers itch to find the secret of that greatness. Science begs on its knees.'

Mrs Cameron interjected. She hated to see a nice man wasting his time. ‘I think I can speak for Mr Tennyson here, Mr Fowler. He refuses consistently to sit for me, and I am one of his oldest friends. The simple fact is, he will not allow such an intrusion, it is anathema to his –'

But Alfred interrupted.

‘Julia, you are too hasty,' he said.

Julia blinked hard. What?

‘But Alfred –'

‘I think I may be allowed to do what I like with my own head?'

‘But Alfred, my dear –'

‘It is quite a different matter from your damned silly photographs, Julia!' he snapped. Agitated, he jumped to his feet and walked up and down, while Julia stared at him. Mr Fowler and the Wattses, suddenly wishing they were invisible, all studied the pattern on the carpet.

‘You must come to Farringford this afternoon, Fowler, and meet my boys too,' declared Alfred. And then, deliberately avoiding Julia's hurt expression, he fidgeted for a handkerchief in his pocket, making one of Emily's new embroidery silks fall out. Julia, with a little gasp, saw it fall.

It was the blue one.

She sniffed.

Why was this always happening?

But worse was to come. As he stooped to pick it up, Alfred peered closely at Mrs Watts for the first time and saw the orchids on her collar. Julia watched his face and Ellen's, as he recognized the flowers. Ellen coloured.

‘You look remarkably well this morning, Mrs Watts,' he said with a big smile. ‘Does she not, gentlemen? Is she not a very beautiful young woman?' The other men agreed loudly. Ellen, glad of the attention, beamed at them all.

All plain women will know how Julia felt at this moment. It is a bit like being hit in the face with a sack of wet sand.

‘Alfred!' Julia called to him. He was heading for the door.

‘Oh, I meant to mention it, Julia,' he said. ‘When I came through my gate this morning, I noticed that your garden has an infernal smell of paint.'

Julia stood up, too, although her legs were shaky. Suddenly, she felt very old. ‘I must consult my husband, I do hope you'll excuse me,' she said, and vacated the room before the first sob of anguish escaped her. What a terrible morning! She burst through the back door and ran to her glass house, her heart thumping. In the space of a couple of hours, she had been rejected by Alfred in every way conceivable – as a friend, as a benefactor, as a photographer, as a woman, and lastly (most cruel blow of all)
as an aesthete.

‘What I wouldn't give!' she cried. ‘Alfred, I would give anything, but I don't know what you want!'

She sat completely still for ten minutes, her face a perfect picture of misery. In fact, had she only prepared a photographic plate in advance, she could have got her ‘Absence of Hope' picture right there, on the spot.

While her guests ate warm biscuits in her drawing room, she trailed back to the house, and was met in the hall by Mary Ryan.

‘A parcel has come from Mrs Prinsep, madam.' The maid indicated a small box, which had been opened.

‘A dozen copies of the
Westminster Quarterly,'
she reported, puzzled.

Mrs Cameron dried her eyes with a corner of shawl. She blew her nose on it too. Such a robust spirit this woman had. Her Hope was not as big as Ellen's, but her Benevolence was prodigious.

‘A dozen copies, my dear Mary? Twelve? Then all is not lost, Mary. All is not lost, after all!'

No phrenology was done that morning, but Lorenzo felt invigorated nevertheless by his meeting with the Dimbolans: as if he had just done the blindfold test and successfully untangled the history of a really tricky head – a wife murderer turned archbishop, say, with a strong aptitude for woodwork and gaming. What he failed to notice, however, was that while he grew sticky with excitement about getting his hands on the heads of these Freshwater people, most of these Freshwater people were pretty keen to get their hands on
him.

‘He is Lancelot!' exclaimed Mrs Cameron to her husband, later. ‘I shall pose him with Mary Ann as the Lady of Shalott! Such human passion! Can't you imagine him singing “Tirra Lirra” on the river?'

‘I believe I have found a model for Physical Energy, my dear,' confided Watts to his wife. ‘Mr Fowler is a magnificent specimen. How do you think he would look with no clothes on?'

‘I can't quite define it,' said Ellen less elevatedly (and to herself). ‘But I would just like to get my hands on him, that's all.'

Only Tennyson saw no practical application for the phrenologist in his own work. But then he never was a head-hunter; he was always the head hunted. Many years ago, his miserable brother Charles had written a derisive poem about phrenology, which began,

After such a strikingly bathetic start to the genre of the Phrenology Poem, most Victorian poets agreed the wisdom of conserving their candle for something else.

Once outside in the garden, Lorenzo had run straight into Tennyson.

‘I meant it, come to tea with us, Fowler,' he boomed. ‘Bring your charming daughter. I suppose she is charming? I mean to say, if she isn't, don't bring her. However, I will insist the boys are present, so that you may conduct your examinations in full view of everybody, as though in a spirit of – well, teatime fun!'

Teatime fun was not something Tennyson had ever experienced; in fact the word ‘fun' was so new to his vocabulary that he paused for a moment to repeat it to himself, fun-fun-fun, weighing its poetic value (which was short).

Lorenzo bowed. ‘It will be a pleasure. And will we have the delight of meeting your wife?'

Tennyson frowned. ‘Emily? Why ever not?' He paused. Here was a point, actually. How was he to break the news to Emily? She had been so nervy in the past few days. A few random memories suddenly converged in his mind. Count Cavour in the shrubbery. Her hand guiltily in the teapot. Eating bits of paper torn from Punch.

‘But
she's
not mad, you know,' he said.

‘I didn't say she was.'

‘As sane as anyone in this house.' ‘Good.'

‘It's the boys I'm worried about.'

‘Understood.'

‘Well, as long as that's clear to you, Mr Fowler. Emily is
not
mad,
not
mad,
not
mad. I can't tell you how often I have to reassure her on the subject.'

Julia knew nothing of this fresh arrangement, otherwise she would have insisted on organizing it and providing some food. No, at the termination of Lorenzo's informal lecture, she had wiped her eyes again and hurried to Farringford for the second time that day, possibly wishing (as she ran along, panting and sweating, with her shawls a-flap) that some clever engineer would soon get around to inventing the safety bicycle. A dozen copies of the perfect-gift periodical lay in a basket across her arm. There was also a hammer and some nails, and some paste made from flour and water. Myopic pompous ingrate though Alfred was, he would certainly find his review before the day was out. He would rejoice in the
Westminster
's good opinion, if the effort killed her.

Arriving at the house, she first established that Alfred had not returned, and that Emily was lying down upstairs. Then she made twelve quick decisions, distributing the copies in cunning places and completing the task in as many minutes. She paused for breath on the lawn, adjusted her lace cap (which was always getting askew), and departed for Dimbola Lodge again. Today she would photograph Mary Ann in the pose of Friendship, which oddly she now knew to be a small organ of the brain positioned just back from the ear. Perhaps Mr Fowler could stimulate that organ in some of Julia's acquaintance, she thought. ‘Then we might be getting somewhere.' Dodgson meanwhile kept to his room at Dimbola, dreaming of the quiet life in Oxford. This morning he had seen Lorenzo Fowler enter the house, but no sign of the red-headed daughter, thank goodness. Dodgson was relieved. The last thing he needed was to be separated from his wits again by that demon in infant form.

Detached observers might assume that where Dodgson was concerned, the Fowlers owed an apology. After all, their antics had deranged a complete stranger – and while he was on his holidays, too. But the Fowlers saw it quite the other way about. Dodgson had many reasons to apologize to
them.
For one, he was a pervert. For another, he had ruined their show. Most important of all, however, he had interfered with their takings. Lorenzo was therefore not the ideal person to minister to Dodgson in his current fragile state.

‘Sir!' shouted Lorenzo, catching the invalid logician weakly buffing his lens with a cloth. Dodgson dropped the lens on his bedroom carpet, and gaped. Such violence of manner in a gentleman's bedroom went well beyond decent practice. But worse was to come. With a flourish, Lorenzo shut the door behind him, and locked it.

‘Mr F-F—! I must pr—protest.'

Dodgson looked round in panic. The room seemed a lot smaller with Lorenzo in it.

‘Have you come to ap-p—pologize? I'm much b—better now.'

Lorenzo laughed.

‘Apologize? No, I have come to tell you that I know exactly what you're up to.'

Dodgson thought quickly. What
was
he up to? Only failing to get Tennyson's blessing for his book, as far as he could see. At worst, he was pilfering a few bits of bric-à-brac. There was nothing deserving this kind of beastliness.

‘I don't think it's any of y—your business,' he declared.

‘It's the business of any decent man,' said Lorenzo. ‘Every American has a God-given duty to defend the weak!'

Dodgson was completely baffled. He sat down and pushed a lock of hair behind his ear. Not for the first time, he wished he had a big bushy Moses beard like every other Victorian man of consequence. He was sure it was his smooth chops that did for him.

‘And what's this?' said Lorenzo, lighting on the picture of Daisy.

‘A present,' explained Dodgson, lamely.

Lorenzo read the inscription and his jaw dropped to his chest. It appeared to concern a proposed elopement between Dodgson and little Daisy Bradley.

‘You are a fiend, sir!' said Lorenzo. ‘I can tell you at once that you will go nowhere with this child!'

And Dodgson blinked in amazement as the phrenologist left the room and locked the door behind him.