sort which burns easily, and delicate features. But the impression of frailty was misleading, as I realised on our first day inScotland when he went scampering up a steep incline with the agility of a goat while I followed, panting, in his wake. He spoke a great deal of Orchard House – a perfect Arcadia, as he made it sound – near Aylesbury, where his father, a clergyman, had a living, and especially of his sister Phoebe, who was plainly very dear to him: he grew anxious if more than a day or two had passed without a letter from her. By the end of our tour, it was settled that instead of returning to Aldeburgh, I should accompany him home and stay at least a fortnight. I had neither brothers nor sisters – my mother had been very ill after my birth – and I knew that my father had been looking forward to having me at home again. But I did not want to disappoint Arthur; or so I told myself in justification.
Orchard House was everything he had promised, and more: a rambling place of thatch and dazzling whitewash, set as its name implied amidst groves of apple and pear trees. Arthur’s father, white-haired, genial, rubicund, might have stepped straight from a canvas by Birket Foster (though I did not see that at the time), as might his mother, a serene, slender, fine-boned woman – one could see where Arthur had got his looks – always to be found somewhere in her garden when there was nothing else to attend to. And then there was Phoebe herself. She was beautiful, yes, with her mother’s classical profile and slender figure; she had thick lustrous hair the colour of dark honey, and her eyes were hazel, the eyelids always slightly lowered, though there was nothing coquettish about her. But it was her voice that first enchanted me: low and vibrant, with a singing undertone which made the most commonplace remark seem charged with emotion.
My love for Phoebe was returned; I had her promise soon enough, though consent to our engagement was much longer in coming. I put aside all thought of starving in garrets and applied myself to the law, knowing that the sooner I had secured my articles, the sooner we would be married. Aside from the torments of longing I endured away from her, swinging between bouts of wild elation and terror lest she should change her mind, the one cloud on our horizon was the question of where wewere to live. I was serving my articles with my father in Aldeburgh; to turn my back upon the firm would break his heart, and lead perhaps to a permanent breach between us. But to keep my place with him would mean separating Phoebe from all that she loved best in the world. She and my father had tried to like each other for my sake, but did not quite know how to go about it. I knew, too, that she found our house, a plainly furnished bungalow overlooking the strand, windswept and bleak.
In the end we reached an uneasy compromise: we would live in Aldeburgh, but in a house of our own, somewhere away from the sound of the waves which, as Phoebe reluctantly admitted, seemed to her melancholy and oppressive: I would more than once catch her murmuring, half-unconsciously, ‘Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O sea ...’ And we were to spend as much time at Orchard House as the demands of the office would allow.
After three long years we were married, in the spring of 1859; I was just twenty-three years old, and Phoebe a year younger. We spent part of our honeymoon in Devon; I had wished to take her to Rome, but her family were anxious about the journey, and the dangers of disease. Those days and nights alone with her seemed, at the time, the happiest of my life; but by the end of a fortnight she was pining for Orchard House, and thence we returned, with much rejoicing on the part of her family, until the time came for us to begin our life in Aldeburgh.
I had taken a cottage in a picturesque spot by the Aldringham road, about a mile from my father’s house and certainly well away from the sound of
Orchard House was everything he had promised, and more: a rambling place of thatch and dazzling whitewash, set as its name implied amidst groves of apple and pear trees. Arthur’s father, white-haired, genial, rubicund, might have stepped straight from a canvas by Birket Foster (though I did not see that at the time), as might his mother, a serene, slender, fine-boned woman – one could see where Arthur had got his looks – always to be found somewhere in her garden when there was nothing else to attend to. And then there was Phoebe herself. She was beautiful, yes, with her mother’s classical profile and slender figure; she had thick lustrous hair the colour of dark honey, and her eyes were hazel, the eyelids always slightly lowered, though there was nothing coquettish about her. But it was her voice that first enchanted me: low and vibrant, with a singing undertone which made the most commonplace remark seem charged with emotion.
My love for Phoebe was returned; I had her promise soon enough, though consent to our engagement was much longer in coming. I put aside all thought of starving in garrets and applied myself to the law, knowing that the sooner I had secured my articles, the sooner we would be married. Aside from the torments of longing I endured away from her, swinging between bouts of wild elation and terror lest she should change her mind, the one cloud on our horizon was the question of where wewere to live. I was serving my articles with my father in Aldeburgh; to turn my back upon the firm would break his heart, and lead perhaps to a permanent breach between us. But to keep my place with him would mean separating Phoebe from all that she loved best in the world. She and my father had tried to like each other for my sake, but did not quite know how to go about it. I knew, too, that she found our house, a plainly furnished bungalow overlooking the strand, windswept and bleak.
In the end we reached an uneasy compromise: we would live in Aldeburgh, but in a house of our own, somewhere away from the sound of the waves which, as Phoebe reluctantly admitted, seemed to her melancholy and oppressive: I would more than once catch her murmuring, half-unconsciously, ‘Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O sea ...’ And we were to spend as much time at Orchard House as the demands of the office would allow.
After three long years we were married, in the spring of 1859; I was just twenty-three years old, and Phoebe a year younger. We spent part of our honeymoon in Devon; I had wished to take her to Rome, but her family were anxious about the journey, and the dangers of disease. Those days and nights alone with her seemed, at the time, the happiest of my life; but by the end of a fortnight she was pining for Orchard House, and thence we returned, with much rejoicing on the part of her family, until the time came for us to begin our life in Aldeburgh.
I had taken a cottage in a picturesque spot by the Aldringham road, about a mile from my father’s house and certainly well away from the sound of
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