CHAPTER XXVI.

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:

‘I send you dear Louie Simeon’s letter to show how they all

value the likeness of the father of that house and home. It is

a sacred blessing which has attended my photography. It gives a

pleasure to millions and a deeper happiness to very many....

While the spirit is in me I must praise those I love.’

The coffee crop had failed in Ceylon several years and the money

difficulties became very serious for the Camerons. Photography might have

paid better if the photographer had been less lavish in her gifts and

ways. She was a true artist in her attitude towards money.

She, the most recklessly generous of women, was able to write:

‘I myself have never felt humiliated at the idea of receiving

charities, for I always feel about friendship and love that

what it is good to give it is also good to take.’

‘I do not mean to let you ruin yourself by giving the

photographs away,’ Mrs. Tennyson wrote: ‘I cannot pretend

to say that I do not prize a kindness done to mine, more

than if it were done to myself, still I feel bound to point

with a solemn finger to those stalwart boys of yours, saying

“Remember.” I see that I shall have to set up a shop for the

sale of photographs myself all for your benefit.’

To these remonstrances the photographer would answer: ‘I have always

tried to get my husband to share my feelings—so long as illness and

death are mercifully spared us. _Death_ is as to deeper wounds—only a

grain.’ Julia Cameron was not a woman of to-day. She seemed to belong

to some heroic past. She has told me how as a girl she and her sister,

the dearest of them all, used to wander forth and kneel to pray on the

country-roadsides.

Once when her eldest son went through a painful operation, which lasted

some time, she had held his hand in hers through it all, and he said he

could not have endured it if she had not been present. ‘As to my bearing

it,’ she said simply, ‘what is there one cannot bear if one can give one

grain of helpful support to any sufferer?’

* * * * *

Of a friend in great trouble she writes:

‘I am not sure that time with him will soften the calamity. God

grant it may, but with some

“Time but the impression stronger makes,

As streams their channels deeper wear.”

In the case of my absence from my boys, the more it is

prolonged, the more the wound seems to widen.’

It was during her husband’s absence that she wrote:

‘I found when I was with you the tears were too near my eyes

to venture to read out aloud Charles’s letters. I am in very

truth very unhappy. I assume vivacity of manner for my own sake

as well as for others, but the only real vivacity now at this

moment in me, is one to conjure up every form of peril and my

heart is more busy when sleeping than when waking. When waking

I fag myself to the uttermost by any manner of occupation

hoping thus to keep the wheels of time working till I hear

again.’

VII.

The legends are endless of Mrs. Cameron’s doings at Freshwater, and

to this day the older villagers tell of them—of the window she built

and equipped in the room destined for Sir Henry Taylor. It was an east

room; she thought it looked dark in the afternoon and she determined

that a western window should be there when her guest arrived next day.

The village carpenter and his assistant builder sawed and worked late

into the night, in the early morning the glazier was summoned; when the

passengers arrived from the three o’clock boat the window was there, the

western light was pouring in into the spare room through the panes, and

Mrs. Cameron’s faithful maid was putting the last stitches to the muslin

blind. Another inspiration of hers was a lawn, also spread in a single

night, for Mr. Cameron to stroll along when he went for his morning walk

next day.

She used to bring wayfarers of every sort in from the roads outside. We

still may recognise some of the models living at Freshwater—the beautiful

parlourmaid, King Arthur who in robes and armoured dignity appears so

often in her camera, and who still meets travellers from the little

steamer that runs from Lymington to Yarmouth Pier. Indeed wayfarers of

every sort were made welcome by her. After my father’s death she welcomed

us to her cottage, where fires of hospitality and sympathy were lighted

and endless kindness and helping affection surrounded us from her and

from Farringford through that cold and icy winter. When spring had

passed and when at last summer was over, we gratefully returned to the

sheltering bay where such good friends were to be found.

The Camerons’ departure for Ceylon in 1875 will long be remembered—the

farewells, the piles of luggage. Mrs. Cameron grave and valiant, with

a thousand cares and preoccupations. Mr. Cameron with long white locks

falling over his shoulders and dark eyes gleaming through spectacles,

holding his carved, ivory cane in his hand and looking quietly at the

preparations. There were animals—a cow I have been told among them,

bales and boxes without number, their faithful maid Ellen and their

son Hardinge, that spirited prop and adviser, ordering and arranging

everything. He travelled with them, for he was on his way back to his

post in the Civil Service at Colombo. Many of us came down to Southampton

to see them off in the vast ship manned by Lascars, crowded with

passengers and heaving from confusion into order.

I can still see Mr. Cameron in his travelling dress looking quietly up

and down the quay at the piles of luggage, at the assembled friends; he

held a beautiful pink rose which Mrs. Tennyson had given him when he

stopped at Farringford to take leave of her. A member of Mr. Cameron’s

family whom I had never seen before, for he had lived in India, had come

from London with his wife and was standing taking leave with the rest of

us. He was strangely like Mr. Cameron, with white hair and bright fixed

eyes; and even then, starting though they were for the great venture,

Mrs. Cameron came forward and said to me that I must go back to town with

her step-son and he would look after me.... I remember presently finding

myself sitting in the railway carriage sadly flying home, away from the

good friends of many a year, and vaguely wondering at the likeness of Mr.

Cameron sitting on the opposite seat. Then at Waterloo, after putting me

into a hansom, even the likeness departed and I never saw either of the

two again.

VIII.

It is pleasant to read of the happy progress of the travellers.

_From Julia Margaret Cameron to Alfred and Emily Tennyson._

1875.

‘... I now continue my letter in revived spirits, having left

the month of partings behind, and having entered to-day the

month of meetings. I think Ewen will send forth my Benjamin

to greet me. My Har, endowed with double my prudence, has

hitherto prevented me from telegraphing to tell my boys that

we had actually started. I resisted at Freshwater. Resisted

at Southampton. Hardinge prevented me at Gibraltar, prevented

me at Malta. He says Aden is the best spot, for we can then

announce we have got over the Red Sea.

‘I need not say how often and often I am with you both in

thought. I need not tell you that amidst all this bustling

world of 380 people, my husband sits in majesty like a being

from another sphere, his white hair shining like the foam of

the sea and his white hands holding on each side his golden

chain.’

(_They travel on to Malta._)

‘A real gem of the ocean; everything glittered like a fairy

world, the sapphire sea, the pearl-white houses, the emerald

and ruby boats, the shining steps, 132 in number, from the

Quai to the town, all was delicious. As Har observed, I was

the most childlike and exuberant of the party—only one thing

disappointed me, that I did not telegraph to my Ceylon boys. We

visited the Cathedral of St. John. How delicious the silence

was after the life on board! What a holy joy to kneel down in

that solemn silent temple and feel oneself alone with one’s

God!’

Her sympathy for the ship’s captain must not be omitted:

‘We have daily prayers and the Sunday evening service is

specially imposing, with the dark ocean around, “The lamps

filled with everlasting oil” above and the ship lamps hanging

on the deck and the one voice, like St. John in the Wilderness,

crying to everyone to repent.’

She raises subscriptions for a harmonium on board as a token of gratitude

to the captain—‘one in a thousand.’

Mr. Cameron would not land at Malta; it had painful memories for him,

he had been there as a child with his beautiful mother, Lady Margaret,

and his father who was Governor of the Island. ‘Our voyage is fabulously

beautiful,’ she says, and she dwells on the pleasure it gives them

to make it easier for an invalid on board by bestowing their most

comfortable chair upon the suffering lady.

As they glide through the Suez Canal Mrs. Cameron writes:

‘It is an honour to the French nation that in the face of all

assertions of impossibility from men of all countries, Lesseps

persevered and achieved this mighty enterprise. Whilst I write

we pass a pier and at the end of it is a whole flock of camels,

with camel drivers waiting to see if any one cares to cross the

Desert; no one does care, so we glide on.

‘The only time I crossed, my Har was a baby in my arms whom I

never for one instant put down. We crossed through a beautiful

starlight night. I have never forgotten the rising of the

morning star nor the utter silence, one seemed to lose the idea

of time and to feel in a land that could have had no beginning

and still less could have no end.’

As she finishes her letter the young moon is hanging over the vessel.

‘O what good it does to one’s soul to go forth. How it heals

all the little frets and insect stings of life, to feel the

pulse of the large world and to count all men as one’s brethren

and to merge one’s individual self in the thoughts of the

mighty whole!’

Here is another letter written a year later to Mrs. Tennyson:

Easter, 1876.

‘MY OWN BELOVED AND SWEETEST FRIEND,—This day’s post brought

me your letter, so strong in love, so feeble in calligraphy,

in the wielding of that pen which is meant to say so much but

which now trembles in the hand which used never to tire. Its

very trembling is expressive of all that you have it in your

heart to say. How glad I am that your sons, that Alfred’s sons,

should be what they are! How truly does an answer seem to be

given in them to your life of holy prayer! I do so devoutly

wish that you could spend next winter here, the air is so

uplifting and so life-giving. I think my illness on arrival

was the result of all that I suffered mentally and bodily, the

hurry of that decision, the worry of all minutiæ, the anguish

of some partings, the solemnity of all, the yielding to my

husband’s absorbing desire, and the yearning need to live with

my absent children, all this is satisfied and beyond all this,

beyond the inward content, there is certainly a strength given

by the aspect of nature in this Island.’

After describing Ceylon and its beauties, the mother returns to the theme

she loves best of all, that of her son Hardinge, who had just paid her a

visit.

‘He wore for my sake his very brightest looks and you know

there is no cheer like his. His spirits dance with intellectual

freshness and buoyancy, all his talk is mirth and wide

pleasantry and his voice is full of song.

‘He has to travel in districts, sleeping in the open and my

imagination represents the invasion of beasts and reptiles. He

walks through long grass where I fear snakes for his beloved

feet. He says alligators on the river-side are the only beasts

he sees, alligators ten or twelve feet long.’ (_Here many pages

follow partly concerning Ceylon and the people who then lived

there, partly concerning Freshwater and its politics._)—‘And

how is your dear Alfred, dearest of all and greatest ever in

your heart beyond all; above all, I hope not bothered about

anything.’ ‘Worries, for him, are as if these vast sublime

mountains, instead of standing steady as they do, rearing their

eternal heads to the sky, were to be swayed by the perishable

chances of the little coffee estates at their feet.

‘What is time in the eyes of Him to whom a thousand years are

but as yesterday and who pities us when we vex our immortal

souls with fears of more or less gold, and good crops, one year

or another?

‘Think of us in a little hut with only mud walls, four thousand

four hundred feet above the level of the sea.’

It was in her youngest son’s bungalow on the Glencairn estate that Mrs.

Cameron died, early in 1879, only a short time after her second return

to Ceylon. She had been warned not to return, but she longed to be near

‘her boys.’ The illness only lasted ten days. When she lay dying, her

bed faced the wide-open window; it was a glorious evening and some big

stars were shining. She looked out and just said ‘_Beautiful_’ and died,

her last word, a fitting end to her reverent soul on earth. Her body was

taken in a low open cart, drawn by two great white bullocks, and all

covered with white cloth, over two ridges of mountains, and buried in the

little churchyard at the bottom of the valley, between Galle and Colombo,

where Hardinge was living. After this Hardinge took his father and his

mother’s maid, the faithful Ellen Ottingnon, ‘old E,’ to live with him

there. It was in May of the following year that Mr. Cameron died, and he

too was carried over the mountains and buried in the same churchyard.

‘I can’t describe to you the beauty of that valley entered by

a narrow pass,’ writes Mrs. Bowden Smith who sent this record.

‘High mountains surround it and the rolling green grass lands

and a great river runs all along it. The little church stands

on a knoll not far above the river, which flows into a lower

river, also a dream of beauty. They could not have found a more

beautiful resting-place.’

Lady Tennyson survived her friend seventeen years:

‘Such wert thou, half a Saint and half a Queen,

Close in thy poet’s mighty soul enshrined,

Lady of Farringford,’

wrote Edith Sichel at the time.

And some one who loved her, speaking lately, said to me:

‘Though her vocation was to be a poet’s wife she reminded me of

a holy Abbess of old, and there was something almost cloistral

about her.’

She had a gift we all felt, of harmonising and quieting by her _presence_

alone; often too tired to say much, she could contribute the right word

to the talk for which Farringford was always notable. I have a special

memory of once dining with the Tennysons in the company of George Eliot

and Lord Acton, but it was Mrs. Tennyson’s gentle voice which seemed to

take the lead.

Tennyson had said: ‘I felt the peace of God come into my life at the

altar before which I married her.’ And after more than forty years of

marriage he dedicated his last book to her.

‘I thought to myself I would offer this work to you,

This, and my love together,

To you that are seventy-seven,

With a faith as clear as the height of the June-blue heaven

And a fancy as summer-new

As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.’

The following paper left by Lady Tennyson concerning her husband might

seem almost too intimate to quote here, if it did not give so truly the

atmosphere at Farringford that one does not venture to omit it.

‘... He felt intensely the sin and all the evils of the world

and all its mystery, and still kept an unshaken faith in the

God of perfect love, perfect wisdom and infinite power, with

that confident assurance of man’s immortality which pointed

to a hereafter where all would be reconciled. “Be ye perfect

as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” In the _life_ of

Christ he found his Christianity; undisturbed by the jarring

of sects and creeds. Politics were to him patriotism, and

passionately did he feel for all that concerned the welfare of

the Empire. Party, as far as his own personal opinion went,

was unintelligible. That all should work conscientiously and

harmoniously for the common good, each with such differing

powers as God has given to each, recognising the value of the

difference, this was his highest idea of Empire. He honoured

all honest work.’

FOOTNOTES

[1] He did most of his work for the Colonial Office from his sick bed,

and few Secretaries of State have done more important work than he.

[2] Tennyson would say, ‘some of those stupid critics say that King

Arthur is meant for Prince Albert. I never thought of him.’

_DUBLIN DAYS: THE RISING._

LETTERS FROM MRS. HAMILTON NORWAY.

_April 25, Tuesday._—On Saturday we were going to tea with friends at

Bray when just as we were starting H. (my husband) got an ‘official’ from

the Castle, so I went alone and he went to the Castle. News had come that

a boat had been taken off the Kerry coast, landing ammunition, and a very

important arrest had been made. Easter Sunday passed off in absolute

calm, and yesterday (Easter Monday) morning H. said he had a lot of

letters to write and he would go and write them at his Club, almost next

door to the Sackville Street General Post Office. He found he wanted to

answer some letters that were in his desk at the G.P.O. so he walked over

to his room and was just sitting down when his ’phone went, an urgent

message to go at once to the Castle.

He had only just arrived there and was in consultation with Sir M. N.

when suddenly a volley of shots rang out at the Castle Gate, and it

was found armed bodies of men were in possession of the City Hall and

other houses that commanded the other gates to the Castle, and anyone

attempting to leave the Castle was shot. All the officials in the Castle

were prisoners.

When N. (my son) came in about 12.30 I said we would walk down to the

Club and meet H. The streets were quiet and deserted till we crossed

O’Connell Bridge, when N. remarked there was a dense crowd round Nelson’s

Pillar, but we supposed it was a bank-holiday crowd waiting for trams.

We were close to the General Post Office, when two or three shots were

fired, followed by a volley, and the crowd began rushing down towards the

bridge, the people calling out ‘Go back, go back, the Sinn Feiners are

firing.’ N. said ‘You’d better go back, mother; there’s going to be a

row; I’ll go on to the Club and find Dad.’ So I turned and fled with the

crowd and got back safely to the hotel.

About 1.30 N. returned, having failed to find H., and we had an anxious

lunch. During lunch a telephone message came through saying H. was at the

Castle but could not leave.

At 3 P.M. N. told me all was quiet in Sackville Street and begged me to

go out and see the G.P.O.

I quaked rather, but we set off and reached Sackville Street safely.

Over the fine building of the G.P.O. floated a great green flag with

‘Irish Republic’ on it. Every window on the ground floor was smashed and

barricaded with furniture, and a big placard announced ‘The Headquarters

of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.’ At every window

were two men with rifles, and on the roof the parapet was lined with men.

H.’s room appeared not to have been touched and there were no men at his

windows.

We stood opposite and were gazing when suddenly two shots were fired,

and, seeing there was likely to be an ugly rush, I fled again.

At 11.30 P.M. H. walked in, to my immense relief. The troops had arrived,

2000 of them from the Curragh, at about 5 P.M., and had promptly stormed

the City Hall, which commanded the main gate of the Castle, and had taken

it after fierce fighting.

_Tuesday._—This morning we hear the military are pouring into the city.

All our valuables were stored in H.’s safe and cupboards when we gave up

our house, and all our dear F.’s books, sword, and all his possessions,

which we value more than anything else in the world; we would not trust

them with the stored furniture.

Yesterday afternoon the mob broke all the windows in various streets,

and looted all the shops. The streets were strewn with clothes, boots,

furniture, tram cushions, and everything you can imagine.

While I am writing now there is incessant firing in St. Stephen’s Green,

and we fear there may be street fighting in this street.

_Tuesday Evening._—H. and N. have just come in, having seen Dr. (now

Major) W., Surgeon to the Forces in Ireland. He told them that so far we

had had about 500 casualties, two-thirds of them being civilians shot in

the streets.

The first thing Dr. W. heard of the outbreak was a ’phone message

telling him to go at once to the Shelbourne, as a man had been shot. He

supposed it was a case of suicide, so jumped into his car and went off,

fortunately in mufti. In Nassau Street his car was stopped and he was

ordered by rebels to get out; he attempted to argue, and was told if he

did not obey instantly he would be shot. Had he been in uniform he would

have been shot at sight; as a civilian doctor they allowed him to go, and

he took his bag and ran. He found three men shot in the Shelbourne, and a

boy was shot as he reached the door.

After we got into bed a ’phone came that H. was to go at once to the

Viceregal Lodge in the Phœnix Park, so he dressed and tried every way to

get a motor; but of course no motor would go out. After some delay he got

the Field Ambulance of the Fire Brigade, at Dr. W.’s suggestion, but when

it came the men told H. they had been carrying wounded all day, and that

they had been constantly stopped by pickets, and the car searched, and if

they went, and the car was stopped and found to contain H., they would

undoubtedly all be shot. So H. considered it too risky and it had to be

abandoned, and eventually his Excellency gave his instructions over the

’phone, first in French, but that particular ’phone did not speak French!

So eventually he took the risk of the ’phone being tapped and gave them

in English.

While we were dressing a terrific bombardment with field guns began, the

first we had heard, and gave me cold shivers. It went on for a quarter

of an hour—awful! big guns and machine guns—and then ceased, but we hear

they were bombarding Liberty Hall, the headquarters of Larkin and the

strikers two years ago. The guns were on H.M.S. _Hecla_, that came up

the river and smashed it from within about fifty yards. It made one feel

quite sick.

H. has just been summoned to the Castle, and there is no knowing when he

will be back. All who go out carry their lives in their hands.

N. did a fine thing yesterday. After the Green had been raked by our

machine guns’ fire, he strolled up, in his casual way, to see the result.

In front of one of the side gates in the railings, which are seven feet

high and spiked three ways, he saw a small group of men peering into

the Green; he went to see what they were looking at. The rebels had

barricaded the gate, which opened inwards, by putting one of the heavy

garden seats against it upside down and on the top of it another right

side up, and lying full length on the seat, face downwards, was a man, a

civilian, with all his lower jaw blown away, and bleeding profusely! N.

immediately climbed the railings and dropped down on the Sinn Fein side,

and found that the man was still alive; he then turned and fairly cursed

the men who were looking on, and asked if there was not one man enough

to come over the railings and help him. Whereupon three men climbed over

and together they lifted down the seat with the poor creature on it,

and dragged away the other seat, when they were able to open the gate,

and they brought out the seat and the man on it, and carried him to the

nearest hospital, where he died in about five minutes.

N.’s theory is that he was probably one of the civilians taken prisoner

by the Sinn Fein the previous day, and was trying to escape from the

awful machine-gun fire when he was shot down and fell back on to the

seat. It was a terrible case.

_Friday_, 10 A.M.—N. is of course safer attached to the Red Cross than

roaming the streets making rescues on his own, and if he was killed one

should at least hear of it; but the risks are many and great, as in

street fighting the ambulances are constantly under fire.

Among other things they enter houses where there are known to be wounded

Sinn Feiners, and bring them out and take them to the hospitals.

This N. was doing yesterday. One of the most awful things in this

terrible time is that there must be scores of dead and dying Sinn

Feiners, many of them mere lads, that no one can get at in the houses,

where they will remain till after the rebellion; and in some cases the

houses take fire and they are burnt. However, whatever is possible is

being done.

All the afternoon an awful battle raged in the neighbourhood of the river

and quays, and the din of the great guns and machine guns was tremendous.

We now have 30,000 troops and plenty of artillery and machine guns, so

the result cannot be uncertain, though there is desperate work to be done

before the end is in sight.

I cannot give you any idea of what it was like when I went to bed; I

sent for Mrs. B., the manager’s wife, and together we watched it from my

window.

It was the most awe-inspiring sight I have ever seen. It seemed as if

the whole city was on fire, the glow extending right across the heavens

and the red glare hundreds of feet high, while above the roar of the

fires the whole air seemed vibrating with the noise of the great guns and

machine guns. It was an inferno! We remained spellbound.

Yesterday Lord S. had a narrow escape from a sniper who has been worrying

this street for two days and could not be located. He was picking off

soldiers during the fighting in Grafton Street, but later turned his

attention to the cross streets between this and Grafton Street and there

as nearly as possible got Lord S., who was coming back to us from the

Castle.

The military thought the man was on _our_ roof, which made us all whistle

with indignation—the mere idea of the wretch being on our hotel; but a

thorough search proved he was not here, though he evidently had access to

some roof.

Yesterday afternoon, when the firing in Grafton Street was over, the mob

appeared and looted the shops, clearing the great provision shops and

others.

From the windows we watched the proceedings, and I never saw anything so

brazen! The mob were chiefly women and children, with a sprinkling of

men; they swarmed in and out of the side door, bearing huge consignments

of bananas, the great bunches on the stalk, to which the children

attached a cord and ran away dragging it along; other boys had big orange

boxes, which they filled with tinned and bottled fruits. Women with their

skirts held up received showers of apples and oranges and all kinds of

fruit which were thrown from the upper windows by their pals; and ankle

deep on the ground was all the pink and white and silver paper and paper

shavings used for packing choice fruits. It was an amazing sight! And

nothing daunted these people. Higher up, at another shop, we were told a

woman was hanging out of a window dropping down loot to a friend, when

she was shot through the head by a sniper, probably _our_ man. The body

dropped into the street and the mob cleared. In a few minutes a cart

appeared and gathered up the body, and instantly all the mob swarmed back

to continue the joyful proceedings!

H. and Lord S. were sitting at the window for a few minutes yesterday

when the fruit shop was being looted and saw one of the funniest sights

they had ever seen. A very fat, very blowsy old woman emerged from the

side street and staggered on to the pavement, laden with far more loot

than she could carry; in her arms she had an orange box full of fruit,

and under her shawl she had a great bundle tied up, which kept slipping

down; having reached the pavement, she put her box down and sat on it!

And from her bundle rolled forth many tins of fruit; these she surveyed

ruefully, calling on the Almighty and all the Saints to help her! From

these she solemnly made her selection, which she bound up in her bundle

and hoisted, with many groans and lamentations, on her back and made off

with, casting back many longing looks at the pile of things left on the

pavement, which were speedily disposed of by small boys!

Humour and tragedy are so intermixed in this catastrophe! A very delicate

elderly lady who is staying here said to me this morning, in answer to my

inquiry as to how she had slept:

‘I could not sleep at all; when the guns ceased the _awful silence_ made

me so nervous!’

I know exactly what she meant; when the roar of the guns ceases you can

_feel_ the silence.

_5 p.m._—Colonel C. has just come in, having been in the thick of it for

48 hours. He tells us the Post Office has been set on fire by the Sinn

Feiners who have left it. If this is true, and it probably is, I fear

we have lost all our valuable possessions, including my diamond pendant

which was in my jewel-case in H.’s safe.

To-day, about lunch-time, a horrid machine gun gave voice very near us,

also the sniper reappeared on the roofs and this afternoon was opposite

my bedroom window, judging from the sound. A man might be for weeks on

the roofs of these houses among the chimney-stacks and never be found as

long as he had access to some house for food. When we were working in my

room this afternoon he fired some shots which could not have been more

than twenty yards away.

I was almost forgetting to tell you how splendidly one of H.’s men

behaved when the G.P.O. was taken. When the rebels took possession they

demanded the keys from the man who had them in charge. He quietly handed

over the keys, having first abstracted the keys of H.’s room! Imagine

such self-possession at such a terrible moment.

_6.30 p.m._—A party of soldiers and a young officer have just arrived to

search the roof for the sniper. They say he is on the roof of the annexe,

which is connected with the main building by covered-in bridges. They are

now on the roof and shots are being fired, so I expect they have spotted

him.

When N. was out last night another ambulance had a bad experience. They

had fetched three wounded Sinn Feiners out of a house and were taking

them to hospital, when they came under heavy fire; the driver was killed,

so the man beside him took the wheel and was promptly wounded in both

legs; the car then ran away and wrecked itself on a lamp-post. Another

ambulance had to run the gauntlet and go to the rescue! On the whole,

as far as possible the rebels have respected the Red Cross, but not the

white flag.

Guinness’s brewery have made three splendid armoured cars by putting

great long boilers, six feet in diameter, on to their great motor

lorries. Holes are bored down the sides to let in air, and they are

painted grey; the driver sits inside too; they each carry twenty-two

men or a ton of food in absolute security. N. saw them at the Castle

being packed with men; nineteen got in, packed like herrings, and three

remained outside; up came the sergeant.

‘Now then, gentlemen, move up, move up; the car held twenty-two

yesterday, it must hold twenty-two to-day,’ and in the unfortunate three

were stuffed. It must have been suffocating, but they were taken to their

positions in absolute safety!

_29th, Saturday, 4 p.m._—Sir M. N. has just rung up to say the rebels

have surrendered unconditionally. We have no details, and the firing

continues in various parts of the town; but if the leaders have

surrendered it can only be a question of a few hours before peace is

restored and we can go forth and look on the wreck and desolation of

this great city. So ends, we hope, this appalling chapter in the history

of Ireland, days of horror and slaughter comparable only to the Indian

Mutiny.

_April 30, Sunday, 10 a.m._—This morning we hear the reports of the

burning of the whole of Sackville Street were exaggerated. The Imperial

Hotel, Clery’s great shop, and one or two others were burnt, but the

street as a whole escaped, and the Accountant’s Office and the Sackville

Street Club were not touched.