69. THE APPLE ORCHARD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Dobson.
Painted about 1877.
Originally, no doubt, a study of one of those subjects which artists like to attack, a misshapen tree presenting every imaginable contortion of foreshortened curvature to harass and worry the draughtsman,—a tree, specimens of which are too often to be found in old orchards of this size, whose bearing time has long departed, and who now only cumber the ground, and with their many fellows have had much to do with the gradual decay of the English apple industry.
CHAPTER IX
TENNYSON’S HOMES
Few poets have been so fortunate in their residences as was the great Poet Laureate of the Victorian era in the two which he for many years called his own. Selected in the first instance for their beauty and their seclusion, they had other advantages which fitted them admirably to a poet’s temperament.
Farringford, at the western end of the Isle of Wight, was the first to be acquired, being purchased in 1853; it was Tennyson’s home for forty years, and the house wherein most of his best-known works were written. At the time when it came into his hands communication with the mainland was of the most primitive description, and the poet and his wife had to cross the Solent in a rowing-boat. So far removed was he from intrusion there that he could indulge in what to him were favourite pastimes—sweeping up the leaves, mowing the grass, gravelling the walks, and digging the beds—without interruption. Many of the visitors which railway and steamship facilities brought to the neighbourhood in later years felt that he set the boundary within which no foot other than his own and that of his friends should tread at an extreme limit. Golfers over the Needles Links—persons who, perhaps, are prone to consider that whatever is capable of being made into a course should be so utilised—were wont to look with covetous eyes over a portion of the downs that would have formed a much-needed addition to their course, but over which no ball was allowed to be played. But the pertinacity of the crowd, in endeavouring to get a sight of the Laureate, necessitated an inexorable rule if the retreat was to be what it was intended, namely, a place for work and for rest.
Mrs. Tennyson thus described “her wild house amongst the pine trees”:—
The golden green of the trees, the burning splendour of Blackgang Chine, and the red bank of the primeval river contrasted with the turkis blue of the sea (that is our view from the drawing-room) make altogether a miracle of beauty at sunset. We are glad that Farringford is ours.
Although at times the weather can be cold and bleak enough in this sheltered corner of the Isle of Wight, and
The scream of a madden’d beach
Dragged down by the wave
must oftentimes have “shocked the ear” in the Farringford house, the climate is too relaxing an one for continued residence, and Tennyson’s second house, Aldworth, was well chosen as a contrast. Aubrey Vere thus describes it:—