Chapter XXVI (1)

It fell out on this wise. In the hope of lightening the weight of depression under which I laboured, I took to riding again so many afternoons a week—an indulgence which I could now afford. True, a hack from a livery stable was but a sorry exchange for the horses upon which Warcop had been wont to mount me; but if love of horse-flesh takes you that way—and take me that way it did—the veriest crock is better to bestride than nought.

The day was fine, with sunshine and white fleets of blithely sailing cloud. Hedges and trees thickened with bud, and the rooks were nesting. I had made a long round by Madingley and Trumpington, and was walking my horse back slowly over the cobbles of King’s Parade—admiring, as how many times before, the matchless Chapel, springing from the greensward, its slender towers, pinnacles and lace-work of open parapet rising against spaces of mild blue sky—when, amid groups upon the pavement wearing cap and gown, or less ceremonial boating and football gear, a tall heavily built figure, clothed in a coat with bulging skirt-pockets to it, breeches and gaiters of pepper-and-salt-mixture, attracted my eye. The man halted now and again to stare at the fine buildings; and at last, crossing where the side street runs from King’s Parade to the Market Place, turned into the big bookseller’s at the corner.

I thought I could hardly be mistaken as to his identity; and, calling a down-at-heels idler to hold my horse, I dismounted and followed him into the shop. If I had made a mistake, it would be easy to ask for some book or pamphlet and so cover my discomfiture.

But I had made no mistake. Though older and greyer, his strong intellectual face more deeply lined by thought, and, as I feared, by care, Braithwaite himself confronted me.

‘Thou hast found me, O mine enemy,’ he exclaimed, while the clasp of his hand gave the lie to this doubtful form of greeting. ‘And, to tell the truth, I hoped you might do so; though I was in two minds about seeking you out and calling on you myself.’

I returned the clasp of his hand; but, for the moment, my heart was almost too full for speech.

‘Enemy, neither now nor at any time in our acquaintance,’ I faltered.

‘I know, I know,’ he answered. ‘But until you were your own master, and had finally cut adrift from certain high folks in high places, I reckoned we were best apart.’

‘And you were right. Now, for good or evil, all that is over and done with’—and truly and honestly I believed what I said.

‘So much the better,’ he replied heartily. ‘Then we can start our friendship afresh—that is, of course, if an ornament of this ancient seat of learning, a full-fledged don like yourself, is not too fine and fastidious a person to associate with a plain middle-class man such as me.’

I bade him not be foolish—he had a better opinion of me, I hoped, than that—asked what of ‘the pride which apes humility,’ and so forth; and all the while questions about Nellie, her health, her well-being, her present whereabouts, scorched my tongue. I invited him to my rooms—which I think pleased him—so that we might talk more at our ease; but he told me he had the better part of a twenty-mile drive before him, back to Westrea, a farm which he had lately bought on the Suffolk border. We therefore agreed that, when I had sent my horse back to the stable, I should join him at the inn, just off the Market Place, where his gig was put up.

And in the dingy inn parlour, some quarter of an hour later, I at last found courage and voice to enquire for Nellie. His face clouded, I thought.

‘In answering you frankly, I give you the strongest proof of friendship which I can give,’ he said.

I thanked him.

‘It went hard with her at first, poor lass,’ he continued, ‘brave and dutiful though she is. And that’s what has brought me further south. I judged it best to get her right away from the Yorkshire country and sound of Yorkshire speech. So I threw up my tenancy of the place I had taken on leaving Mere Ban. I may tell you I came into some little money through the death of a relative, last year, which enabled me to buy this Westrea farm. I took Nellie with me to view it, and the house caught her fancy. ’Tis a pretty old red-brick place, and my gift to her. I want her to make a home of it, and interest herself in the development of the property—about nine hundred acres in all. She has an excellent head for business; and, in my opinion, there’s no better medicine than keeping hands and brain occupied in such a case as hers.’

He broke off abruptly, as though unwilling to pursue the subject further, adding:

‘But there, come and see for yourself what our new quarters are like, Brownlow. No purple wind-swept fells piled up to high heaven behind it, truly; still, a pleasant enough spot in its way, and fine corn-land too. I can offer you a comfortable bed and a good plain dinner; and a horse you needn’t be ashamed to ride, notwithstanding your free run of his Lordship’s stud at Hover. Come during the vacation. Easter falls late this year; and the orchard trees should be in blossom, supposing we get a fine spring, as I believe we shall. It’ll do you no harm to drop your classics and mathematics, part company with your scandalous old heathen poets and divinities and take the living world of to-day by the hand for forty-eight hours or so. I’ll be bound your radicalism has deteriorated in this academic dry-as-dust atmosphere too, and will be none the worse for a little wholesome rubbing up.’

So to Westrea I promised to go, his invitation having been given so spontaneously and kindly. A dangerous experiment perhaps, but the temptation was too strong for me. At last I should see Nellie again, and learn how matters really stood with her. That thought threw me into a fever of excitement.

To go in to hall, with the chance of meeting Halidane and having the fellow saddle his unctuous, not to say oily, presence upon me for the rest of the evening, was intolerable. So, after starting Braithwaite upon his homeward journey, I got a scratch meal at the inn, and then made my way to The Backs across bridge, and wandered in the softly deepening twilight under the trees beside the river. I tried—but alas how vainly!—to calm my excitement, and school myself into rejection alike of the wild hopes and dark forebodings which assailed me. I lost count of time, and wandered thus until the lamps were lit and the moonlight touched the stately masses of college buildings, rising pale from their lawns and gardens, on the other side of the placid slow-flowing stream. Hence it was comparatively late when, at length, I climbed the creaking, foot-worn oaken stairs leading to my rooms.

Immediately on entering I saw that a letter lay upon the table. It was in Hartover’s handwriting. Trembling, I tore it open.

Why should he write to me after so long a silence? Had he heard of my visit to St. James’s Palace? Of my visit to Church Lane? About Fédore surely it must be; and when I began to read I found that so indeed it was.

‘Dearest Brownlow,’—it ran—‘I have news to tell you which will
astonish and at first, I am afraid, shock you. But, after a
little, you will see it is right enough; and that, in honour, I
could not do otherwise than I have done. For nearly two months
now I have been married to Fédore.’

My head fairly spun round. Faint and dizzy, I sank into the nearest chair, and read on with staring eyes.

‘My reasons were very simple. I do not ask you to approve them;
but to weigh and judge them fairly. You know the circumstances
under which I came to town and joined my regiment. Parted from
Her whom I loved—and whom I shall never forget, the thought
of Her will always be sweet and sacred to me—I became utterly
reckless. She was gone. You were gone.’

Was that a reproach, and a merited one? Whether or not, it cut me to the quick.

‘There was no one to care what I did, no one for me to
care for. Nothing seemed to matter. I plunged into all the
follies—and worse—of a young man about town. I will not
disgust you by describing them—suffice it that I found plenty
both of men and women to share them with me. I tried to drown
remembrance of Her, of you, of everything noble and good, in
pleasure. And at last, you will hardly be surprised to hear,
I fell into my old madness of drink. I was horribly, quite
horribly, you understand, hopeless and unhappy. About my
own people I say nothing—to their own Master they stand or
fall. I do not want to talk, or even think about them. But
by last autumn I had pretty well ruined my health. I had, so
the doctors told me, delirium tremens. I know my nerves were
shattered, and life seemed a perfect hell. As I lay ill and
mad, Fédore came to me. She nursed me, controlled me, pulled
me through. She was most true to me when others wished her to
be most false. There were those, she has told me since—as I
suspected all along, even in the old days at Hover—who would
be glad enough for me to kill myself with debauchery. She
talked to me, reasoned with me. You yourself could not have
spoken more wisely. But I felt, Brownlow, I felt I could not
stand alone. I must have some one to lean on, to be loved by
and to love. It is a necessity of my nature, and I obeyed it.
Fédore saved me, and I paid her by marrying her. She refused
at first, warned me of my seeming folly, of what the world
would say; told me there were difficulties, that she, too, had
enemies. But I insisted.—Remember she had compromised herself,
endangered her reputation by coming to me.—At last she gave
way, confessing, dear creature, she had loved me all along,
loved me from a boy.

‘You will say, what about the future? I defy it, snap my
fingers at it. It must take care of itself. It can’t, in any
case, be more hateful than the past.

‘And so good-bye, dear old man. Judge me fairly at least; and
keep my secret—for secret our marriage must be as long as my
father is alive. Fédore sends kind remembrances, and bids me
say when you know all—and there is more behind—you will not
think of her too harshly.’

Should I not? The woman had greater faith in my leniency—or stupidity, which?—than I myself had. No harshness was too great, surely, in face of the wrong she had done the boy by marrying him. Yet two things were true. For that she loved him—according to her own conception of love—I did not doubt; and that she had rescued him from the demon of drink—for the time being—I did not doubt either. And this last—let me try to be just—this last must be counted to her, in some degree at all events, for righteousness whatever her ulterior object in so rescuing him might have been.

But admitting that much, I had admitted all that was possible in her favour. She had hunted the boy, trapped him, pinned him down, making his extremity her own opportunity; cleverly laying him under an obligation, moreover, which could not but evoke all his native sensibility and chivalry.

The more I thought of it, the more disastrous, the more abominable did the position appear. So much so that, going back to his letter, I read it over and over to see if I could make it belie itself and find any loop-hole of escape. But what was written was written. In Hartover’s belief he had made Fédore, and done right in making her, his wife.

And there were those, then, who would gladly compass his death! The last scene with Colonel Esdaile flashed across me; and other scenes, words, gestures, both of his and of her ladyship’s. Was the boy really and actually the victim of some shameful conspiracy? Only one life stood between the Colonel and the title, the great estates, the great wealth. Was her ladyship playing some desperate game to secure these for him and—for herself, and for her children as his wife? She was still young enough to bear children.—In this ugly coil that cardinal point must never be forgotten. But how could Fédore’s marrying Hartover forward this? Had the woman been set on as her ladyship’s tool, and then betrayed her employer and intrigued on her own account?

Good Heavens! and Nellie was free now. At that thought I sprang up; but only to sink back into my chair again, broken by the vast perplexity, the vast complexity, of it all. Free? Did I not know better than that? Had not her father’s tone, her father’s words in speaking of her, told me her heart was very far from free? Should I so fall from grace as to trade on her despair, and tempt her to engage herself to me while she still loved Hartover? Would not that be to follow Fédore’s example—almost; and take a leaf out of her very questionably virtuous or high-minded book? Besides, how did I know Nellie would ever be willing to engage herself to me? Vain dream—for, after all, what did the whole thing amount to?—Hartover was not of age. His marriage was null—if he so chose. He could find means to dissolve it himself, surely, when he found out Fédore, and saw her in her true colours.—And he should see. My temper rose. I would expose her. I would appeal to Lord ⸺. I would move heaven and earth till I could prove her complicity in Marsigli’s felony—and her connection with him, her real marriage. I would⸺

But alas! what could I do, with so many persons—powerful, rich, unscrupulous—arrayed against me?—Hartover himself, more than likely, protecting, in a spirit of chivalry, the woman who had nursed and befriended him, and to whom—as he believed—he had given his name in wedlock. I, on the other hand, armed but with light and broken threads of suspicion and of theory. For so far, as the Colonel had reminded me, I possessed no actual evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, against her.

No; it was impossible to break the web in which she and others—to their shame—had entangled him. I would put the whole deplorable business from me, and go quietly to Westrea for the Easter vacation. And Nellie?—I would never tell her. If she hoped still, I would never undeceive her. The dark cloud might blow over, the foul bubble burst—and then!—Meanwhile I would be to her as a brother. I would help her, strengthen her; in a sense, educate her. For what? For whom?—God knew⸺

But, just there, I was startled out of my painful reverie by shouts, confused tumult in the usually silent court below, and rush of feet upon the stair.

(_To be continued._)

_FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND._

BY LADY RITCHIE.

I.

A child who was, I suppose, once myself sat on the stairs in an old house at Twickenham with a thrill of respectful adventure looking up at the carved oaken figure of a Bishop with benedictory hands standing in a niche in the panelled wall. The house was Chapel House in Montpelier Row, inhabited in those days by a Captain Alexander who had fought in the Peninsular War, and who christened his children by the names of the battles, and my sister and I were spending the summer there while my father was in Germany. We enjoyed the old house and garden, and the youthful companionship of Vittoria Alexander, my contemporary. When I read the address on some letters which have been lately shown me by the present Lord Tennyson, one of those wonderful mental cinemas we all carry in our minds flashed me back to the panelled rooms and the dark hall and the oak staircase and the benedictory Bishop. Among those who passed before him treading the broad steps after the Alexanders had left, came the Poet Laureate and his wife, who lived for a time at Chapel House, where their son Hallam was born. But Tennyson wished to live in the country, and they did not stay very long at Twickenham. An early letter written from thence, introduces a whole party of friends living in those days of peace. It is dated June 25, 1852, and was despatched by Mrs. Tennyson to Mrs. Cameron, her neighbour at Sheen.

‘MY DEAR MRS. CAMERON,—Thank you. It was very pleasant being
at Kew Gardens, still we should have liked two pleasant things
instead of one.... We are by every post expecting a letter
about a house which may send us in another direction, but I am
not going to drag you house-hunting even on paper. My husband
would, I am sure, listen with most hearty interest to you. The
East is a great inspiring theme. Would that his brother Horatio
were doing something there ... he would have made a grand
soldier of the old school. You would like him if he were not
too shy to show himself as he is. He is living with his mother,
but we will with all pleasure bring him. I am going to let
Mrs. Henry Taylor know when we can say with any certainty when
we shall be at home.

‘Hoping that you and they will be able to come to us,

‘Very sincerely yours,

‘EMILY TENNYSON.’

This was but the beginning of the long life’s friendship and confidence between the two friends. As one reads on through letter after letter it almost seems as if the writers were actually present.

They were ladies something in looks like those familiar paintings by Watts or by some of the old Italian masters he loved. Watts has painted Mrs. Tennyson more than once and recorded her beautiful spiritual aspect and delicate features, and he has also painted her correspondent Mrs. Cameron, a woman of a noble plainness, carrying herself with dignity and expression, and well able to set off the laces and Indian shawls she wore so carelessly. Mrs. Tennyson was more daintily attired: she wore a quaint little gimp high to her throat; her dresses were of violet and grey and plum colour; a white net coif fell over her brown hair. Her hair never turned grey; she remained to us all, a presence sweet and unchanged in that special and peaceful home shrine to which no votary ever came more warmly true and responsive than Julia Cameron, her neighbour in the Island for so many years. Mrs. Cameron was one of the well-known family of Pattle sisters, beautiful and gifted women who were able to illustrate their own theories. They were unconscious artists with unconventional rules for life which excellently suited themselves.

My own first meeting with Mrs. Cameron was not very long after that youthful stay in Chapel House, one summer’s day when my father took my sister and myself to Sheen to see his old friend. I remember her, a strange apparition in a flowing red velvet dress although it was summer time, cordially welcoming us to a fine house and to some belated meal, where the attendant butler was addressed by her as ‘Man’ and was ordered to do many things for our benefit; to bring back luncheon-dishes and curries for which she and her family had a speciality. When we left she came with us bareheaded, with trailing draperies, part of the way to the station as her kind habit was. A friend of mine told me how on one occasion she accompanied her in the same way, carrying a cup of tea which she stirred as she walked along. My father, who had known her first as a girl in Paris, laughed and said ‘She is quite unchanged,’ and unchanged she remained to the end of her days; generous, unconventional, a more loyal friend never lived.

Alfred Tennyson, writing to his wife in 1855, says ‘I dined with Mrs. Cameron last night, she is more wonderful than ever in her wild beaming benevolence.’

* * * * *

There are several mentions of this most interesting, most emphatic lady in Sir Henry Taylor’s ‘Autobiography.’ Sir Henry, who was her chosen ideal among many, says:

‘In India, in the absence of the Governor-General’s wife, she
has been at the head of the European Society, for Mr. Cameron
was a very high official, succeeding Lord Macaulay as legal
member of Council.

‘Does Alice,’ he writes to a friend, ‘ever tell you, or do I,
how we go on with Mrs. Cameron, how she keeps showering on
us “her barbaric pearls and gold,” Indian shawls, turquoise
bracelets, inlaid portfolios, ivory elephants, &c., and how she
writes us letters six sheets long all about ourselves.... It
was indeed impossible that we should not grow fond of her, and
not less so for the many, whom her genial ardent and generous
nature has captivated since.’

It is very difficult to describe Mrs. Cameron. She played the game of life with such vivid courage and disregard for ordinary rules, she entered into other people’s interests with such warmhearted sympathy and determined devotion, that, though her subjects may have occasionally rebelled, they generally ended by gratefully succumbing to her rule, laughing and protesting all the time.

Sir Henry quotes her saying to someone with whom she had disagreed: ‘before the year is out you will love me as a sister,’ and he adds that she proved the truth of this prophecy. She must have been a trying sister at times, especially when her relations and adopted relations were ill. She longed to cure them on the spot; she would fly in an agony from one great doctor to another, demanding advice and insisting on instant prescription and alleviation. ‘Culpable carelessness, profound ignorance,’ were the least of her criticisms of family physicians whom she had not sent in herself. She would eloquently describe the anxious hours she spent in waiting-rooms, obtaining opinions from great authorities who had not even seen the patient. Sir Henry’s stepmother (Mrs. Cameron had barely known her) says:

I think I might have found good Mrs. Cameron’s loving letter
difficult to answer, and though I have a sort of scruple about
refusing kindness and charitable love, yet I cannot help being
glad you saved me....’

II.

The real neighbours in life do not depend on vicinity only, they have a way of continuing to be neighbours quite irrespective of their different addresses. The Tennysons had ever a very faithful following of old friends wherever they happened to be, none more faithful than Julia Cameron.

As I have said the first letter quoted from Twickenham was followed by a life-long correspondence. Mrs. Tennyson had hurt her wrist in early youth and writing was often difficult to her; though until her son grew up almost the whole of her husband’s correspondence depended upon her.

Mrs. Cameron on the contrary loved her pen. She wrote a large and flowing hand. She allowed herself more space in life and on paper than is usually accorded to other people. I remember her offering to write for my father. ‘Nobody writes as well as I do’ she said.

It was in 1854 that the Tennysons first settled at Farringford. Those must have been happy days for Mrs. Tennyson, though the trial of delicate health was always there. She sends to her friend, describing the sights to be seen from her drawing-room windows:

‘The elms make a golden girdle round us now. The dark purple
bills of England behind are a glorious picture in the morning
when the sun shines on them and the elm trees....’

Again:

‘It is tantalizing to have a big smooth rounded down just in
front of a large window and to be forbidden by bitter winter
blasts to climb it. It is a pity the golden furze is not in
bloom, for when it is, it makes a gorgeous contrast to the blue
Solent.... Alfred has been reading “Hamlet” to me and since
then has been drawn to the bay by the loud voice of the sea....
There is something so wholesome in beauty and it is not for me
to try to tell of all we have here in those delicate tints of
a distant bay and the still more distant headlands. These I
see every day with my own eyes, and so many other things with
_his_, when he comes back from his walk.’

Of her two boys she writes:

‘People say they are winning children, even those who are
neither poets nor mothers. What should I do if I had not a
poet’s heart to share my feelings for the children?’

We get a pretty glimpse of Alfred one Christmas time putting on little Hallam’s coatee, a present from Mrs. Cameron, needless to say.

‘Thanks, thanks, thanks,’ says Mrs. Tennyson. ‘And for my
frill, as Alfred calls it, and for the big beautiful ball
which charms Hallam beyond measure and delights baby too,
only with so much of fear in the delight that he dare not
approach the giant without having Mother’s hand in his. I do
hope that I shall hear you are all well and that things grow
brighter and brighter as Christmas comes on, for I cannot
accept old Herbert’s gloomy version of things. I will admit
most thankfully that griefs are joys in disguise, but not the
converse except as a half truth, and half truths are the most
dangerous of all. God wills us to be happy even here ... only
let us give happiness its most exalted sense. I often think one
is not told of joy as a Christian virtue as one ought to be.
This however is rather by the way, for joy can subsist with
sorrow, and happiness cannot be without happy circumstances.’

Another Christmas brings more acknowledgments for other gifts, and also friendly reproaches. ‘The only drawback is the old complaint that you _will_ rain down precious things upon us, not drop by drop, but in whole Golconda mines at once.’ Mrs. Cameron pays little attention to such warnings, for the next letter from Mrs. Tennyson begins with thanks again. ‘Why will you send us these beautiful things which are so beautiful?’

Mrs. Tennyson was afraid of wounding her friend; she tried reprisals perhaps, which we may guess at as we read Mrs. Cameron’s own reproaches and eulogies combined in a letter concerning an Easter gift:

‘It was really an Easter Day offering to my spirit which seemed
to tell me of “a bride in raiment clean” and “a glittering
star” such as I may through God’s grace be some day, but now
I am a grandmother with every vestige of grace gone, not
preserving, as you do, a youthful figure; and truly I am not
worthy of the lovely jacket and _therefore I shall bring it
back_.... Mr. Jowett has been sitting with Charles and when he
would long for the open air comes to cheer and enliven him.
Truly he has a sweet virtue.’

Her name for Jowett was ‘little Benjamin their ruler.’ Her picture of him in her gallery will be remembered.

Mrs. Cameron the _Martha_ friend loved to work for the _Mary_ friend. We read of a hat with a long feather and broad blue ribbons to be ordered in London—then messages and details about furniture from the mistress of Farringford.

‘I have tried many times to get some violet-coloured cloth,
because Alfred has always admired the violet covering in
your dining-room. Will you do me the kindness to get me some
sufficiently good?’

Then she goes on to give news of her home, of the bay-window being added to the study, ‘that dear little room hallowed by so many associations which should scarcely be touched even in improvement.’

‘Are you afraid of our falling leaves,’ she writes, urging Mrs.
Cameron to come to stay with them. ‘We sweep them up diligently
every day for the good of our own little ones and there would
be an increased diligence for the sake of your poor sick lamb.
I am so glad you returned thanks in Church. I am sure the world
would be better if we claimed our right of brotherly sympathy
with all, for it is only those who give theirs beforehand, who
think of claiming it....’

One letter dated January 1, 1855, might have been written word for word to-day.

‘Many, many happy New Years to you, my dear Mrs. Cameron, and
to all you love. How vain is this wish for thousands on this
particular year! It is difficult to interest oneself in any
common events. Only one’s friends can take off one’s thoughts
from the war....’

Mrs. Tennyson envies someone who has sent out a shipload of help.

‘Ah, well! We may all do our little if we will but do what we
have to do, and not waste our time in vain longings for that
which is given to others to do. _You_ can never have been
guilty of this in all your life....’

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.’

IV.

The Prince Consort came to see the Tennysons when they first arrived at Farringford, and found them in confusion, the departing occupant being still there with some of his furniture.

There is a letter from Mrs. Tennyson to Matilda Tennyson written in the spring of 1862 after the Prince’s death, in which we read:

‘We hear that the poor Queen is better, she begins to take
interest in things out of doors, to ask about the birds that he
loved.’

Then again:

‘The Queen sent for Alfred, she looked calm and pale like a
statue, and spoke very sweetly and sadly. Alfred was touched
even to tears. He does not remember much of what she said, he
remembered himself saying thanks, and expressing his happiness
of being of use.

‘When Alfred said “He would have made a great King,” the Queen
answered “He always used to say to me it was no matter whether
he or I did the right thing, so long as the right thing was
done.”’

When the dedication of the ‘Idylls’ came out the Princess Royal wrote:

‘I cannot separate King Arthur from the image of him I most
revere upon earth—as to the dedication I cannot say what I
feel.’[2]

The following letter was written by Mrs. Tennyson to Tennyson’s mother, describing the first visit from Farringford to the widowed Queen.

1863.

‘Father, Mother and children all went, being shown the pretty
grounds, the dairies, the kitchen where the Princesses amused
themselves, the gardens of the royal children and the fort
Prince Arthur had made. On returning to the Palace the Queen
sent for us all; we heard soon after we had come into the
drawing-room a quiet shy opening of the door and in she came;
she gave me her hand, and I found myself on my knees, but
I don’t exactly know how I got there. Alfred talked most
eloquently; we talked of everything in heaven and on earth
almost, Jowett, the farm, the millennium. Her face is so
beautiful, not a bit like her portraits, small and child-like,
yet so simple, full of thought and feeling—her eyes are full of
love, it does one good to look upon her.’

There is a sentence concerning another ruler then living whose reign is not over.

‘We have just come back from seeing Garibaldi, a noble-looking
man with a grand high square forehead, like the great men of
the Elizabethan days, strong and sweet with kindly simple
manners. He stroked Hallam’s head and said it was a good thing
that the boys lived in the country, his own had grown up strong
in the fine air of Caprera.’

One quaint story is connected with the meeting of Garibaldi and Mrs. Cameron. She longed to add a portrait of the Liberator to those she had already taken of the other great men of the time. Hearing that he was to come again to the Island she begged the Tennysons to invite him to sit to her. Mrs. Tennyson wrote in reply that he was only coming for a few hours. The Seelys were driving him over, and that during his brief visit to Farringford he could not be asked to spend most of the time posing in a dark room; they were sure Mrs. Cameron would understand the impossibility of suggesting such an arrangement. Garibaldi came with cordial interest, spoke in Italian, planted a tree, and was talking quietly to Tennyson, when Mrs. Cameron joined them unannounced, and then quite suddenly went down upon her knees, holding up her two hands in supplication. ‘Who is this poor woman? What does she want?’ asks Garibaldi much puzzled by Mrs. Cameron’s entreaties, not the less when she exclaims to explain her stained finger-tips, ‘General, listen to me! This is honourable Art, not Dirt!’ Alas! the moment was inopportune and we have no portrait of Garibaldi by Mrs. Cameron!

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.’

(Then come many pages of the reasons which prevent her from writing.)

After she came to live near the Tennysons, Mrs. Cameron had no sense of ever having done enough for them or more than enough. She would arrive at Farringford at all hours, convenient and inconvenient, entering by the door, by the drawing-room window, always bringing goodwill and life in her train. She would walk in at night, followed by friends, by sons carrying lanterns, by nieces, by maids bearing parcels and photographs. Hers was certainly a gift for making life and light for others, though at times I have known her spirits sink into deepest depths as do those of impressionable people. Torch-bearers sometimes consume themselves and burn some of their own life and spirit in the torches they carry. When Julia Cameron took to photography, her enthusiasm was infectious and her beautiful pictures seemed a revelation. She was an artist at heart and she had never felt satisfied till she found her own channel of expression in these new developments. Watts greatly encouraged her, and I heard him say of one of her pictures of himself, that he knew no finer portrait among the old Masters.

One of her admirers, F. D. Maurice, wrote:

‘Had we such portraits of Shakespeare and Milton, we should
know more of their own selves. We should have better
commentaries on “Hamlet” and on “Comus” than we now possess,
even as you have secured to us a better commentary on “Maud”
and “In Memoriam” than all our critics ever will give us.’

Browning, Darwin, Carlyle, Lecky, Sir John Herschell, Henry Taylor with his flowing beard were all among her sitters and still reveal themselves to us through her. She photographed without ceasing, in season and out of season, and she summoned everyone round about to watch the process.

‘I turned my coal-house into my dark room,’ she wrote, ‘and a
glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became my glass
house, the society of hens and chickens was soon changed into
that of poets, prophets, painters, children and lovely maidens.
I worked fruitlessly but not hopelessly.... I longed to arrest
all the beauty that came before me, and at length the longing
was satisfied.’

Miss Marie Spartali, a very beautiful young lady who had come over to pose to Mrs. Cameron, described finding her absorbed in another sitter—her own parlourmaid, Mary Hillier, draped and patient, representing some mythological personage. There was a ring at the outer bell (focussing in those days took long and anxious minutes), and as Mary Hillier could not be allowed to move, Miss Spartali went to the door, where the visitor, seeing this stately lovely apparition dressed in wonderful attire, exclaimed ‘Are you then the beautiful parlourmaid?’ This little ancient joke is still quoted against the beautiful lady.

How familiar to all, who were forced by the photographer into the little studio, is the remembrance of the mingled scent of chemicals and sweetbriar already meeting one in the road outside Dimbola! The terrors of the studio itself are still remembered, the long painful waiting, when we would have trembled had we dared to do so, under her impetuous directions to be still.

This is her own description of her art, writing to Mrs. Tennyson: