III.
Mrs. Cameron sometimes writes to Tennyson as well as to his wife. Here is a quotation from a long letter written in 1855.
‘Dear Alfred,—It is so tantalising to be in your neighbourhood without being able to get to dear Farringford that I must write to you from this. If we stayed longer I am sure I should slide away and make a run for your coast, but we go home to-morrow when our week will be completed. Where are we if we are your neighbours? Not near eno’ and yet not far. In one of the loveliest homes in England, where from the Tower you can see the dear Isle of Wight, the Parnassian Needles, and the silver thread of the outline of Alum Bay. Where are we then?...
‘Well, Canford is our dwelling-place during this Holiday week. This Manor, this Hall and this cricket ground have witnessed nothing but sunshine Holiday and midnight revelry all the twenty-four hours round.
‘The youthful host, Sir Ivor Guest, has had perfect success in his entertainment. Everybody has been charming and everybody has been charmed.
‘There has been great beauty here amongst the young Wives and young Maidens.
‘Amongst the young Wives “the Queen of Beauty” is Mrs. Hambro (one month younger than my Juley), frolicsome and graceful as a kitten and having the form and eye of an antelope. She is tall and slender, not stately, and not seventeen—but quite able to make all daisies rosy and the ground she treads seem proud of her.
‘Then her complexion (or rather skin) is faultless—it is like the leaf of “that consummate flower” the Magnolia—a flower which is, I think, so mysterious in its beauty as if it were the only thing left unsoiled and unspoiled from the garden of Eden. A flower a blind man would mistake for a fruit too rich, too good for Human Nature’s daily food. We had a standard Magnolia tree in our garden at Sheen, and on a still summer night the moon would beam down upon these ripe rich vases, and they used to send forth a scent that made the soul faint with a sense of the luxury of the world of flowers. I always think that flowers tell as much of the bounty of God’s love as the Firmament shows of His handiwork.’
(After this digression the writer returns to Mrs. Hambro.)
‘Very dark hair and eyes contrasting with the magnolia skin, diamonds that dazzle and seem laughing when she laughs, and a costume that offers new varieties every third hour,’ completes the sketch of the heroine.
The letter also goes on to describe at length each of the ten members of the Guest family and many more visitors and relations, and is too long to quote in its entirety; but I cannot omit the description of:
‘all the young men and maidens standing in a circle in the High Hall and singing.
‘They all have splendid voices. All the boys play on flutes, violins and flageolet, singing every manner of Yankee chorus, glee and song, they dance and toss india-rubber balls, the grand hall seems almost too noble for this with its
Storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light,
and its measureless roof, it seems fitted for the organ’s pealing sound, for the delight of anthem, and the joy of praise and prayer, and for reading of great and good Poems. I did once persuade them to reading in that Hall. I read your Ode on the Duke, and it sounded solemn and sweet there. You know how dear Henry Taylor valued it, and I treasured in my heart your answer to his praise of it. I enclose you his little note to me about “Maud” because you said you would like to see it. I read also your lines to James Spedding. I read “St. Agnes,” too, in that Hall. Those chants are worthy of that edifice.
‘The Hall and staircase are both as beautiful in their way as anything I have ever seen anywhere. The whole was built by Sir Charles Barry, the architect.
‘The house has immense capacities. Last Sunday we slept ninety people here, Lady Charlotte told me, tho’ nothing extraordinary was going on.
‘We dine every evening twenty-six in number. Conversation is not fertile, but the young hearts don’t need it.’
This was the year in which ‘Maud’ was published.
Poets always feel criticism, and the reviews of the poem stung Tennyson cruelly, with their misunderstanding of his personal attitude towards war.
‘Is it not well,’ writes his wife, ‘that he should speak anger against the base things of the world, against that war which calls itself peace slandering the war whence there is the truer peace? Surely it was well, for he has not spoken in anger only; if he has spoken against baseness and evil in the world he has also sung what every loving and noble heart can understand of its love and blessedness. But you are right, I do hope that in more unmixed and fuller tones, he will one day sing his song....’
Mrs. Cameron’s daughter Julia was engaged to Charles Norman in 1858.
‘It is like a book,’ says Emily Tennyson, ‘all so perfectly happy and yet I feel ungrateful when I say so, for so long as one believes in truth and love, so long must one believe in the possibility of happiness, and I myself, having so much of the reality, should most of all dare to believe in the possibility for others. Let them be married soon—I may be pardoned for a horror of long engagements.’
In 1859 the Camerons were still on Putney Heath, but Mr. Cameron was preparing to visit his estates in Ceylon, of which disquieting news had reached him.
‘Charles speaks to me of the flower of the coffee plant. I tell him that the eyes of the first grandchild should be more beautiful than any flower could ever seem,’ so Mrs. Cameron used to exclaim pathetically, and she wrote to her friend:
‘As for me I have been fairly drowned in troubles and cares, and the waters seem to pass over one’s soul. The 20th November is now fast approaching and whilst it approaches I am not at all more prepared in heart or in deed. I have not had courage to make the necessary preparation. To-day the portmanteaux have been dragged out, and they stand to me threatening, to Charles promising departure.’
Mr. Cameron was seized with illness about this time.
‘I tell him this should be a warning to him not to leave home and home care and comforts. He assures me that the sea voyage is the best thing for him and Ceylon is the cure for all things. I look upon this illness as the tender rebuke of a friend. He requires home and its comforts. He has been having strong beef-tea thickened with arrowroot six times a day!...’
Here is Mrs. Cameron’s menu when the invalid, her husband, was recovering. What would nurses of to-day say to it?
‘The patient has poached eggs at eight, gets up at eleven, has his dinner; gravy soup and curry, at one, mulligatawny soup and meat at five, a free allowance of port wine, averaging a bottle a day. Ten drops of Jeremie’s opiate every morning, a dose of creosote zinc and gum arabic before his meals, and a dose of quinine after each meal.’
Notwithstanding home comforts and his wife’s remonstrance, the invalid started with one of his sons while she remained with the younger children. To add to her troubles Sir Henry Taylor was also very ill at this time and suffering terribly from the complications of asthma.
Mrs. Cameron says:
‘He bears what he calls a hedgehog in his chest with a most divine patience, even as a good husband would bear with a bad wife, and I fear he will have his hedgehog in his chest till death do them part.’[1]
Julia Cameron’s chief comfort seems to have come from her correspondence with Mrs. Tennyson.
This was an eventful year for the Camerons. The first grandchild, their daughter’s child, was born.
‘May she ever be the delight of your lives,’ wrote Mrs. Tennyson; ‘I can fancy the proud happiness of the little Uncles. After all this excitement, sorrowful and joyful, after the anxious watching of so many hours you need care yourself I am sure, so now take a little thought for yourself and so best thought for those who love you.’
Already in 1859, not burglars on the lawn such as those Horace Walpole describes, but Cockneys were beginning to wander across the Farringford grounds. We read of two who are sitting on one of the gates in the garden, watching Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson under the cedars. Alfred is actually speaking of moving, so averse is he to these incursions. Later on he went for a change to Staffa and Iona. Mrs. Tennyson stayed at home with her young children, urging him to prolong his tour.
Her nerves were not able to bear much strain nor the fatigue of journeys—we read of great surges of pain when she tries to write, of sleepless nights and weakness. Hospitable as she was by nature and by a sense of duty also, the entertaining of guests was very tiring at times.
We hear of many visitors, familiar names—Lushingtons, Frank Palgrave, Simeons, Edward Lear (who called his house at San Remo Villa Emily after the most ideal woman he had ever known), Woolner the sculptor, who stays for some time, and we read of the portraits he was taking of his hosts.
‘Alfred is charmed with the medallion of me and I think myself, if such a picture can be made of my worn face, that, if Lady Somers and the Queens and Princesses of Pattledom were successfully done, it would set the fashion.’
She goes on to say:
‘Words fail Mr. Woolner, all eloquent as he is, when he speaks of the Pattle sisters, especially of beautiful Mrs. Jackson and her three beautiful daughters.’
Among her guests Mrs. Tennyson specially enjoyed Jowett’s visits. She says:
‘He stays this week on condition of being allowed solitary mornings for work. You know this suits me well who also have work, not a little, to do. In the evening Alfred or he read aloud, and we are very happy.’
One year there is a mention of a very important personage departing from Farringford to London—‘“Tithonus,” the companion poem of “Ulysses,” going to-day to Thackeray for the Cornhill.’
There had been a plan for buying a house at Freshwater for the Camerons, and the Tennysons are helping in the negotiation for securing the land before Mr. Cameron’s return. Lawyers, business agents, purchases, furnishings take up much of the correspondence. Some people look upon business as a bore, Mrs. Cameron took it as the battle of life.
‘The garden is being laid out,’ Mrs. Tennyson writes; ‘Merwood proposes that you should have a hedge of black bay and copper beach which his wise man Pike tells him make an evergreen hedge almost impenetrable, but it is too hard a frost for planting. The ice is so thick that Hallam announces an iceberg.’
Then Mrs. Cameron writes:
‘C. is indeed well pleased to hear that all seems to prosper at Freshwater Bay for us. Yes, how dear it will be for our children to grow and live happy together playing mad pranks along the healthy lea.’
Then she continues:
‘Two days ago, in one of those rare bright days which sometimes make autumn delicious, Henry Taylor walked about his own garden for an hour with Lord John Russell discoursing politics, and suffered in no way.’
It is a pretty account of Mrs. Cameron going to meet the postman through the pouring rain to get news of her husband: ‘It was as if heaven’s blessing descended on me when I read of his well-being.’
She adds:
‘Last night I dreamt he had returned and was delighted to be at Freshwater and that you, dear Alfred, in the emotion of joy at seeing him, walked round him three times, and I said “Why don’t you then embrace each other?” And Charles answered, “I can’t trust myself at my age to give way to my emotion,” but when Mrs. Tennyson entered he kissed her hand.
‘Now I feel full of gratitude, and the soft sweet feeling of returning spring on the earth is scarcely softer than the sensation in my heart of returning peace.’