V.
The gaiety and youth of Freshwater in the ’seventies still reaches one as one thinks back. The place was full of young people. Two of Mrs. Cameron’s five sons lived at home and Hardinge, her special friend and adviser, used to come over from Ceylon from time to time to gladden his mother’s warm heart, to add up her bills, to admonish her, to cheer and enliven the home.
The two Tennyson boys were at Farringford. The Prinseps were at the Briary with a following of nephews and charming girls belonging to the family; neighbours joined in, such as Simeons from Swainston, Croziers from Yarmouth; officers appeared from the forts, and as one remembers it all, a succession of romantic figures come to one’s mind, still to be seen in the pictures of Mrs. Cameron’s devising. In those days she seemed to be omnipresent—organising happy things, calling out, summoning one person and another, ordering all the day, and long into the night, for of an evening came impromptu plays and waltzes in the wooden ball-room, and young partners dancing out under the stars. One warm moonlight night I remember the whole company of lads and lasses streaming away across fields and downs, past silvery sheepfolds to the very cliffs overhanging the sea. Farringford, too, gave its balls, more stately and orderly in their ways. The rhythmical old-fashioned progress of the poet’s waltz delighted us all. An impression remains of brightest colour and animation, of romantic graceful figures, a little fanciful—perfectly natural, even when under Mrs. Cameron’s rule.
She was a masterful woman, a friend with enough of the foe in her generous composition to make any of us hesitate who ventured to cross her decree. The same people returned to the little bay again and again. Some members of my own family, christened by her with names out of Tennyson and Wordsworth, or from her favourite Italian poets—Madonna this, Madonna that—used to join us Easter after Easter—and the friendly parties went roaming the Downs to the Beacon or towards the Briary.
The Briary, where the Prinseps from Little Holland House were living, belonged to Watts the painter, for whom Philip Webb had built it. They were interesting people, all living there, and curiously picturesque in their looks and habits, to which the influence of the Signor, as we called Mr. Watts, contributed unconsciously.
He and Mr. Prinsep wore broad hats and cloaks, and so did Tennyson himself and his brothers. People walking in the lanes would stand to see them all go by.
Meanwhile Mrs. Cameron’s correspondence never ceased, however interesting her visitors were and whatever the attractions of the moment might be. She would sit at her desk until the last moment of the despatch. Then, when the postman had hurried off, she would send the gardener running after him with some extra packet labelled ‘immediate.’ Then, soon after, the gardener’s boy would follow pursuing the gardener with an important postscript, and, finally, I can remember the donkey being harnessed and driven galloping all the way to Yarmouth, arriving as the post-bags were being closed. Even when she was away from Freshwater, Mrs. Cameron still chose to rule time and circumstance.
She sends word to Tennyson:
‘Dear Alfred,—I wrote to you from the Wandsworth Station yesterday on the way to Bromley. As I was folding your letter came the scream of the train, and then the yells of the porters with threats that the train would not wait for me, so that although I got as far in the direction as your name, I was obliged to run down the steps, and trust the directing and despatch of the whole to strange hands. I would rather have kept back my letter than have thus risked it, had it not been for my extreme desire to hear of your wife. Day after day I get more anxious to hear and then I write again, and thus I write, not to bore you by satisfying my own heart’s wish, but to know if I can be any help or comfort. I have been writing one of my longest letters to Sir John Herschell to-day, but won’t inflict the like upon you.’