FOOTNOTES

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 worldof 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.’

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 worldof 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 andto feel in a land that could have had no beginning and still less could have no end.’

‘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 andto 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.’

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.’

‘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,’

‘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 herpresencealone; 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 heavenAnd a fancy as summer-newAs the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.’

‘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 thelifeof 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.’

[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.’

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