He smiled rather shyly and said, “I’m happy to—that is, pleased to make your—to meet you.”

“Arthur Hughes,” Lady Trevelyan went on, pulling forward a dark-complexioned individual who had very long black hair. “A talented artist and illustrator. My husband, Sir Walter. And this—” she added, as the swimmer, now fully dressed, joined them, “is Algernon Charles Swinburne, who recently toured the continent having fled Oxford University where he achieved precisely nothing, and who, apparently, is destined to be a notable poet, if he manages to stay alive long enough.”

“Pah!” Swinburne screeched in a high-pitched voice. “You exaggerate wildly! About my risk-taking, I mean; not about the notability of my poetry!”

Burton looked in amazement at the little man. In aspect, the fledgling poet was extraordinary. He was in his early twenties, but tiny and childlike—barely five feet tall—with sloping shoulders that appeared far too weak to carry his huge head, the size of which was magnified by the tousled mass of red hair standing almost at right angles to it, despite being sopping wet.

Swinburne’s bright green eyes met his, and he yelled, “By my ailing Aunt Agatha’s blue feather hat! What a grand old time you’ve had of it, Burton! The riddle of the Nile solved at last! Hurrah! Hurrah! And you, Monckton Milnes! Aren’t you the man with the absolutely whopping collection of erotica? I say, have you any of de Sade’s work? Bound in human skin, no doubt! I hear he’s de rigueur among the Whippinghams, Bendovers, and Lashworthies! I must indulge! I simply must!”

“Really, Carrots,” Lady Pauline protested. “Do control yourself.”

“Incidentally,” the poet said. “Cognac. I was promised it and I demand it.”

Sir Walter handed over a silver hip flask, which the little man put to his lips and upended.

“Ah! Much better!” He passed it back. Sir Walter looked at it, shook it, found it to be empty, gave a rueful sigh, and said, “You were only meant to take a sip. What!”

“My whistle required a wetting,” Swinburne answered, “for I intend to recite my latest while we walk to the headland and back.”

The party continued along the beach, the men holding their hats as the breeze stiffened. Swinburne skipped along, his movements jerky, his gestures excessive. “Laus Veneris!” he announced, and began:

Asleep or waking is it? for her neck,

Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck

Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;

Soft, and stung softly—fairer for a fleck.

But though my lips shut sucking on the place,

There is no vein at work upon her face;

Her eyelids are so peaceable, no doubt

Deep sleep has warmed her blood through all its ways.

“Gad!” Monckton Milnes whispered to Burton. “Remarkable! Remarkable!”

It was. Swinburne, though shrill-voiced, was so eloquent and evocative in his performance that his poetry became almost mesmeric, raising such an emotive response in the listeners that every other thing they sensed appeared to fuse with his strange lilting intonation, and the crashing waves sounded as if they were eulogising the words and rhythms with far-off acclamations.

Burton strolled and listened and absolutely marvelled.

The poet’s praise of Venus continued until they reached the headland where the outlying cottages of Cullercoats overlooked the beach. He finished:

I seal myself upon thee with my might,

Abiding alway out of all men’s sight

Until God loosen over sea and land

The thunder of the trumpets of the night.

He stopped, took a deep breath, turned to face the group, and said, “Shall we convene in the local tavern before we head back?”

“That was breathtaking, Algy!” Sir Walter said.

“A masterpiece!” his wife agreed.

“Bravo!” Levi cheered.

“A work of genius!” Rossetti declared.

“I found it incred—that is, utterly extraordinary, and, um—” Dodgson added.

Monckton Milnes stepped forward. “Mr. Swinburne, I should very much like to see about getting your work into print.”

Swinburne hopped up and down and waved his arms. “Never mind that now! The tavern awaits! Come along! Come along!”

He scampered up a slope and they followed him into the village.

Eliphas Levi leaned close to Burton and murmured, “Il est un jeune homme très doué, non? But also very strange!”

A few minutes later, they found The Copper Kettle—which overlooked Cullercoats Bay—and settled in its lounge bar. The introductions made on the beach were now supplemented as—in conversations expertly guided by Lady Trevelyan—the men discussed their work and interests.

It was an exceptional gathering of singular personalities: Burton, magnetic, forceful, but somewhat troubled; Monckton Milnes, stylish, charming, and eclectic; Levi, perceptive and inquisitive; Rossetti, complex and a little pensive; Charles Dodgson, quiet, dreamy, and self-conscious; Arthur Hughes, brooding but penetrative in his comments; Sir Walter, passive but jocular; and Swinburne, whose enthusiasms and excitability increased in proportion to his consumption of alcohol, for which he displayed such an inordinate predilection that, three hours later, when the party departed the establishment, he required Rossetti and Hughes to hold him upright.

As they proceeded southward along the Grand Parade, Dodgson’s hat was snatched from his head by the wind and flung far out to sea. “My goodness!” he exclaimed. “Where’s my topper off to? It looks like—it appears that the weather is change—is taking a turn for the worse!”

Burton looked to the west and saw the dark clouds Monckton Milnes had noted earlier, now expanded dramatically and piled high into the upper atmosphere.

“Le jour tombe,” Levi observed.

“Straight back to Wallington, I think, gentlemen,” Lady Pauline announced. “There is a storm coming.”

Burton shivered at the ominous words.

At Tynemouth’s coach house, Sir Walter hired the same two steam-driven landaus his group had arrived in. He, his wife, Rossetti, Hughes, and the barely conscious Swinburne squeezed into one, while Burton, Monckton Milnes, and Levi were joined by Dodgson in the other.

The carriage lurched into motion and Dodgson, who was leaning out of the window and looking at the sky, received a faceful of steam. He dropped back into his seat, coughing. “By golly, I shall never learn my lesson. These steam transports are forever puffing—that is, blowing their fumes into my face!”

“But they make the world more small, non?” Eliphas Levi said. “We travel so much fast de nos jours!”

“I am afraid—I fear they make literature smaller, too, Monsieur Levi.”

“Oui? How is that?”

“If steam has done nothing else, it has at least contrib—added a whole new species to English literature. The booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the—the—the murder comes at page fifteen, and the wedding at page forty—surely they are due to steam?”

“Bien sûr, you speak of the publications for sale at the train stations, non?”

“I do, sir—er—monsieur. And if the Department of Guided Science succeeds in its intentions—its plans, and one day we travel by electricity, then we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the murder and the wedding will be—will come on the same page!”

Burton and Monckton Milnes laughed, and the latter said, “Have you read any of Sir Richard’s accounts, Mr. Dodgson?”