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<h2>
<a href="#startoftext">Fifty Bab Ballads, by William S. Gilbert</a>
</h2>
<pre>
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Title: Fifty Bab Ballads
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<p>
<a name="startoftext"></a>
Transcribed from the 1884 and 1891 George Routledge and Sons editions
by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
FIFTY “BAB” BALLADS - MUCH SOUND AND LITTLE SENSE<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
PREFACE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
The “BAB BALLADS” appeared originally in the columns of
“FUN,” when that periodical was under the editorship of
the late TOM HOOD. They were subsequently republished in two volumes,
one called “THE BAB BALLADS,” the other “MORE BAB
BALLADS.” The period during which they were written extended
over some three or four years; many, however, were composed hastily,
and under the discomforting necessity of having to turn out a quantity
of lively verse by a certain day in every week. As it seemed to
me (and to others) that the volumes were disfigured by the presence
of these hastily written impostors, I thought it better to withdraw
from both volumes such Ballads as seemed to show evidence of carelessness
or undue haste, and to publish the remainder in the compact form under
which they are now presented to the reader.<br>
<br>
It may interest some to know that the first of the series, “The
Yarn of the <i>Nancy Bell</i>,” was originally offered to “PUNCH,”
- to which I was, at that time, an occasional contributor. It
was, however, declined by the then Editor, on the ground that it was
“too cannibalistic for his readers’ tastes.”<br>
<br>
W. S. GILBERT.<br>
<br>
24 <i>The Boltons, South Kensington</i>,<br>
<i>August</i>, 1876<i>.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</i>Ballad: CAPTAIN REECE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Of all the ships upon the blue,<br>
No ship contained a better crew<br>
Than that of worthy CAPTAIN REECE,<br>
Commanding of <i>The Mantelpiece</i>.<br>
<br>
He was adored by all his men,<br>
For worthy CAPTAIN REECE, R.N.,<br>
Did all that lay within him to<br>
Promote the comfort of his crew.<br>
<br>
If ever they were dull or sad,<br>
Their captain danced to them like mad,<br>
Or told, to make the time pass by,<br>
Droll legends of his infancy.<br>
<br>
A feather bed had every man,<br>
Warm slippers and hot-water can,<br>
Brown windsor from the captain’s store,<br>
A valet, too, to every four.<br>
<br>
Did they with thirst in summer burn,<br>
Lo, seltzogenes at every turn,<br>
And on all very sultry days<br>
Cream ices handed round on trays.<br>
<br>
Then currant wine and ginger pops<br>
Stood handily on all the “tops;”<br>
And also, with amusement rife,<br>
A “Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life.”<br>
<br>
New volumes came across the sea<br>
From MISTER MUDIE’S libraree;<br>
<i>The Times</i> and<i> Saturday Review<br>
</i>Beguiled the leisure of the crew.<br>
<br>
Kind-hearted CAPTAIN REECE, R.N.,<br>
Was quite devoted to his men;<br>
In point of fact, good CAPTAIN REECE<br>
Beatified <i>The Mantelpiece.<br>
<br>
</i>One summer eve, at half-past ten,<br>
He said (addressing all his men):<br>
“Come, tell me, please, what I can do<br>
To please and gratify my crew.<br>
<br>
“By any reasonable plan<br>
I’ll make you happy if I can;<br>
My own convenience count as <i>nil</i>:<br>
It is my duty, and I will.”<br>
<br>
Then up and answered WILLIAM LEE<br>
(The kindly captain’s coxswain he,<br>
A nervous, shy, low-spoken man),<br>
He cleared his throat and thus began:<br>
<br>
“You have a daughter, CAPTAIN REECE,<br>
Ten female cousins and a niece,<br>
A Ma, if what I’m told is true,<br>
Six sisters, and an aunt or two.<br>
<br>
“Now, somehow, sir, it seems to me,<br>
More friendly-like we all should be,<br>
If you united of ’em to<br>
Unmarried members of the crew.<br>
<br>
“If you’d ameliorate our life,<br>
Let each select from them a wife;<br>
And as for nervous me, old pal,<br>
Give me your own enchanting gal!”<br>
<br>
Good CAPTAIN REECE, that worthy man,<br>
Debated on his coxswain’s plan:<br>
“I quite agree,” he said, “O BILL;<br>
It is my duty, and I will.<br>
<br>
“My daughter, that enchanting gurl,<br>
Has just been promised to an Earl,<br>
And all my other familee<br>
To peers of various degree.<br>
<br>
“But what are dukes and viscounts to<br>
The happiness of all my crew?<br>
The word I gave you I’ll fulfil;<br>
It is my duty, and I will.<br>
<br>
“As you desire it shall befall,<br>
I’ll settle thousands on you all,<br>
And I shall be, despite my hoard,<br>
The only bachelor on board.”<br>
<br>
The boatswain of <i>The Mantelpiece,<br>
</i>He blushed and spoke to CAPTAIN REECE:<br>
“I beg your honour’s leave,” he said;<br>
“If you would wish to go and wed,<br>
<br>
“I have a widowed mother who<br>
Would be the very thing for you -<br>
She long has loved you from afar:<br>
She washes for you, CAPTAIN R.”<br>
<br>
The Captain saw the dame that day -<br>
Addressed her in his playful way -<br>
“And did it want a wedding ring?<br>
It was a tempting ickle sing!<br>
<br>
“Well, well, the chaplain I will seek,<br>
We’ll all be married this day week<br>
At yonder church upon the hill;<br>
It is my duty, and I will!”<br>
<br>
The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece,<br>
And widowed Ma of CAPTAIN REECE,<br>
Attended there as they were bid;<br>
It was their duty, and they did.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE RIVAL CURATES.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
List while the poet trolls<br>
Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER,<br>
Who had a cure of souls<br>
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.<br>
<br>
He lived on curds and whey,<br>
And daily sang their praises,<br>
And then he’d go and play<br>
With buttercups and daisies.<br>
<br>
Wild croquêt HOOPER banned,<br>
And all the sports of Mammon,<br>
He warred with cribbage, and<br>
He exorcised backgammon.<br>
<br>
His helmet was a glance<br>
That spoke of holy gladness;<br>
A saintly smile his lance;<br>
His shield a tear of sadness.<br>
<br>
His Vicar smiled to see<br>
This armour on him buckled:<br>
With pardonable glee<br>
He blessed himself and chuckled.<br>
<br>
“In mildness to abound<br>
My curate’s sole design is;<br>
In all the country round<br>
There’s none so mild as mine is!”<br>
<br>
And HOOPER, disinclined<br>
His trumpet to be blowing,<br>
Yet didn’t think you’d find<br>
A milder curate going.<br>
<br>
A friend arrived one day<br>
At Spiffton-extra-Sooper,<br>
And in this shameful way<br>
He spoke to Mr. HOOPER:<br>
<br>
“You think your famous name<br>
For mildness can’t be shaken,<br>
That none can blot your fame -<br>
But, HOOPER, you’re mistaken!<br>
<br>
“Your mind is not as blank<br>
As that of HOPLEY PORTER,<br>
Who holds a curate’s rank<br>
At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.<br>
<br>
“<i>He</i> plays the airy flute,<br>
And looks depressed and blighted,<br>
Doves round about him ‘toot,’<br>
And lambkins dance delighted.<br>
<br>
“<i>He</i> labours more than you<br>
At worsted work, and frames it;<br>
In old maids’ albums, too,<br>
Sticks seaweed - yes, and names it!”<br>
<br>
The tempter said his say,<br>
Which pierced him like a needle -<br>
He summoned straight away<br>
His sexton and his beadle.<br>
<br>
(These men were men who could<br>
Hold liberal opinions:<br>
On Sundays they were good -<br>
On week-days they were minions.)<br>
<br>
“To HOPLEY PORTER go,<br>
Your fare I will afford you -<br>
Deal him a deadly blow,<br>
And blessings shall reward you.<br>
<br>
“But stay - I do not like<br>
Undue assassination,<br>
And so before you strike,<br>
Make this communication:<br>
<br>
“I’ll give him this one chance -<br>
If he’ll more gaily bear him,<br>
Play croquêt, smoke, and dance,<br>
I willingly will spare him.”<br>
<br>
They went, those minions true,<br>
To Assesmilk-cum-Worter,<br>
And told their errand to<br>
The REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER.<br>
<br>
“What?” said that reverend gent,<br>
“Dance through my hours of leisure?<br>
Smoke? - bathe myself with scent? -<br>
Play croquêt? Oh, with pleasure!<br>
<br>
“Wear all my hair in curl?<br>
Stand at my door and wink - so -<br>
At every passing girl?<br>
My brothers, I should think so!<br>
<br>
“For years I’ve longed for some<br>
Excuse for this revulsion:<br>
Now that excuse has come -<br>
I do it on compulsion!!!”<br>
<br>
He smoked and winked away -<br>
This REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER -<br>
The deuce there was to pay<br>
At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.<br>
<br>
And HOOPER holds his ground,<br>
In mildness daily growing -<br>
They think him, all around,<br>
The mildest curate going.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: ONLY A DANCING GIRL.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Only a dancing girl,<br>
With an unromantic style,<br>
With borrowed colour and curl,<br>
With fixed mechanical smile,<br>
With many a hackneyed wile,<br>
With ungrammatical lips,<br>
And corns that mar her trips.<br>
<br>
Hung from the “flies” in air,<br>
She acts a palpable lie,<br>
She’s as little a fairy there<br>
As unpoetical I!<br>
I hear you asking, Why -<br>
Why in the world I sing<br>
This tawdry, tinselled thing?<br>
<br>
No airy fairy she,<br>
As she hangs in arsenic green<br>
From a highly impossible tree<br>
In a highly impossible scene<br>
(Herself not over-clean).<br>
For fays don’t suffer, I’m told,<br>
From bunions, coughs, or cold.<br>
<br>
And stately dames that bring<br>
Their daughters there to see,<br>
Pronounce the “dancing thing”<br>
No better than she should be,<br>
With her skirt at her shameful knee,<br>
And her painted, tainted phiz:<br>
Ah, matron, which of us is?<br>
<br>
(And, in sooth, it oft occurs<br>
That while these matrons sigh,<br>
Their dresses are lower than hers,<br>
And sometimes half as high;<br>
And their hair is hair they buy,<br>
And they use their glasses, too,<br>
In a way she’d blush to do.)<br>
<br>
But change her gold and green<br>
For a coarse merino gown,<br>
And see her upon the scene<br>
Of her home, when coaxing down<br>
Her drunken father’s frown,<br>
In his squalid cheerless den:<br>
She’s a fairy truly, then!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: TO A LITTLE MAID - BY A POLICEMAN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Come with me, little maid,<br>
Nay, shrink not, thus afraid -<br>
I’ll harm thee not!<br>
Fly not, my love, from me -<br>
I have a home for thee -<br>
A fairy grot,<br>
Where mortal eye<br>
Can rarely pry,<br>
There shall thy dwelling be!<br>
<br>
List to me, while I tell<br>
The pleasures of that cell,<br>
Oh, little maid!<br>
What though its couch be rude,<br>
Homely the only food<br>
Within its shade?<br>
No thought of care<br>
Can enter there,<br>
No vulgar swain intrude!<br>
<br>
Come with me, little maid,<br>
Come to the rocky shade<br>
I love to sing;<br>
Live with us, maiden rare -<br>
Come, for we “want” thee there,<br>
Thou elfin thing,<br>
To work thy spell,<br>
In some cool cell<br>
In stately Pentonville!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE TROUBADOUR.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A troubadour he played<br>
Without a castle wall,<br>
Within, a hapless maid<br>
Responded to his call.<br>
<br>
“Oh, willow, woe is me!<br>
Alack and well-a-day!<br>
If I were only free<br>
I’d hie me far away!”<br>
<br>
Unknown her face and name,<br>
But this he knew right well,<br>
The maiden’s wailing came<br>
From out a dungeon cell.<br>
<br>
A hapless woman lay<br>
Within that dungeon grim -<br>
That fact, I’ve heard him say,<br>
Was quite enough for him.<br>
<br>
“I will not sit or lie,<br>
Or eat or drink, I vow,<br>
Till thou art free as I,<br>
Or I as pent as thou.”<br>
<br>
Her tears then ceased to flow,<br>
Her wails no longer rang,<br>
And tuneful in her woe<br>
The prisoned maiden sang:<br>
<br>
“Oh, stranger, as you play,<br>
I recognize your touch;<br>
And all that I can say<br>
Is, thank you very much.”<br>
<br>
He seized his clarion straight,<br>
And blew thereat, until<br>
A warden oped the gate.<br>
“Oh, what might be your will?”<br>
<br>
“I’ve come, Sir Knave, to see<br>
The master of these halls:<br>
A maid unwillingly<br>
Lies prisoned in their walls.”’<br>
<br>
With barely stifled sigh<br>
That porter drooped his head,<br>
With teardrops in his eye,<br>
“A many, sir,” he said.<br>
<br>
He stayed to hear no more,<br>
But pushed that porter by,<br>
And shortly stood before<br>
SIR HUGH DE PECKHAM RYE.<br>
<br>
SIR HUGH he darkly frowned,<br>
“What would you, sir, with me?”<br>
The troubadour he downed<br>
Upon his bended knee.<br>
<br>
“I’ve come, DE PECKHAM RYE,<br>
To do a Christian task;<br>
You ask me what would I?<br>
It is not much I ask.<br>
<br>
“Release these maidens, sir,<br>
Whom you dominion o’er -<br>
Particularly her<br>
Upon the second floor.<br>
<br>
“And if you don’t, my lord” -<br>
He here stood bolt upright,<br>
And tapped a tailor’s sword -<br>
“Come out, you cad, and fight!”<br>
<br>
SIR HUGH he called - and ran<br>
The warden from the gate:<br>
“Go, show this gentleman<br>
The maid in Forty-eight.”<br>
<br>
By many a cell they past,<br>
And stopped at length before<br>
A portal, bolted fast:<br>
The man unlocked the door.<br>
<br>
He called inside the gate<br>
With coarse and brutal shout,<br>
“Come, step it, Forty-eight!”<br>
And Forty-eight stepped out.<br>
<br>
“They gets it pretty hot,<br>
The maidens what we cotch -<br>
Two years this lady’s got<br>
For collaring a wotch.”<br>
<br>
“Oh, ah! - indeed - I see,”<br>
The troubadour exclaimed -<br>
“If I may make so free,<br>
How is this castle named?<br>
<br>
The warden’s eyelids fill,<br>
And sighing, he replied,<br>
“Of gloomy Pentonville<br>
This is the female side!”<br>
<br>
The minstrel did not wait<br>
The Warden stout to thank,<br>
But recollected straight<br>
He’d business at the Bank.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA; OR, THE GENTLE PIEMAN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
PART I.<br>
<br>
<br>
At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to supper<br>
One whom I will call ELVIRA, and we talked of love and TUPPER,<br>
<br>
MR. TUPPER and the Poets, very lightly with them dealing,<br>
For I’ve always been distinguished for a strong poetic feeling.<br>
<br>
Then we let off paper crackers, each of which contained a motto,<br>
And she listened while I read them, till her mother told her not to.<br>
<br>
Then she whispered, “To the ball-room we had better, dear, be
walking;<br>
If we stop down here much longer, really people will be talking.”<br>
<br>
There were noblemen in coronets, and military cousins,<br>
There were captains by the hundred, there were baronets by dozens.<br>
<br>
Yet she heeded not their offers, but dismissed them with a blessing,<br>
Then she let down all her back hair, which had taken long in dressing.<br>
<br>
Then she had convulsive sobbings in her agitated throttle,<br>
Then she wiped her pretty eyes and smelt her pretty smelling-bottle.<br>
<br>
So I whispered, “Dear ELVIRA, say, - what can the matter
be with you?<br>
Does anything you’ve eaten, darling POPSY, disagree with you?”<br>
<br>
But spite of all I said, her sobs grew more and more distressing,<br>
And she tore her pretty back hair, which had taken long in dressing.<br>
<br>
Then she gazed upon the carpet, at the ceiling, then above me,<br>
And she whispered, “FERDINANDO, do you really, <i>really</i> love
me?”<br>
<br>
“Love you?” said I, then I sighed, and then I gazed upon
her sweetly -<br>
For I think I do this sort of thing particularly neatly.<br>
<br>
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure,<br>
On a scientific goose-chase, with my COXWELL or my GLAISHER!<br>
<br>
“Tell me whither I may hie me - tell me, dear one, that I may
know -<br>
Is it up the highest Andes? down a horrible volcano?”<br>
<br>
But she said, “It isn’t polar bears, or hot volcanic grottoes:<br>
Only find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!”<br>
<br>
<br>
PART II.<br>
<br>
<br>
“Tell me, HENRY WADSWORTH, ALFRED POET CLOSE, or MISTER TUPPER,<br>
Do you write the bon bon mottoes my ELVIRA pulls at supper?”<br>
<br>
But HENRY WADSWORTH smiled, and said he had not had that honour;<br>
And ALFRED, too, disclaimed the words that told so much upon her.<br>
<br>
“MISTER MARTIN TUPPER, POET CLOSE, I beg of you inform us;”<br>
But my question seemed to throw them both into a rage enormous.<br>
<br>
MISTER CLOSE expressed a wish that he could only get anigh to me;<br>
And MISTER MARTIN TUPPER sent the following reply to me:<br>
<br>
“A fool is bent upon a twig, but wise men dread a bandit,”
-<br>
Which I know was very clever; but I didn’t understand it.<br>
<br>
Seven weary years I wandered - Patagonia, China, Norway,<br>
Till at last I sank exhausted at a pastrycook his doorway.<br>
<br>
There were fuchsias and geraniums, and daffodils and myrtle,<br>
So I entered, and I ordered half a basin of mock turtle.<br>
<br>
He was plump and he was chubby, he was smooth and he was rosy,<br>
And his little wife was pretty and particularly cosy.<br>
<br>
And he chirped and sang, and skipped about, and laughed with laughter
hearty -<br>
He was wonderfully active for so very stout a party.<br>
<br>
And I said, “O gentle pieman, why so very, very merry?<br>
Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?”<br>
<br>
But he answered, “I’m so happy - no profession could be
dearer -<br>
If I am not humming ‘Tra! la! la!’ I’m singing ‘Tirer,
lirer!’<br>
<br>
“First I go and make the patties, and the puddings, and the jellies,<br>
Then I make a sugar bird-cage, which upon a table swell is;<br>
<br>
“Then I polish all the silver, which a supper-table lacquers;<br>
Then I write the pretty mottoes which you find inside the crackers.”
-<br>
<br>
“Found at last!” I madly shouted. “Gentle pieman,
you astound me!”<br>
Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me.<br>
<br>
And I shouted and I danced until he’d quite a crowd around him
-<br>
And I rushed away exclaiming, “I have found him! I have
found him!”<br>
<br>
And I heard the gentle pieman in the road behind me trilling,<br>
“‘Tira, lira!’ stop him, stop him! ‘Tra!
la! la!’ the soup’s a shilling!”<br>
<br>
But until I reached ELVIRA’S home, I never, never waited,<br>
And ELVIRA to her FERDINAND’S irrevocably mated!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: TO MY BRIDE - (WHOEVER SHE MAY BE.)<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Oh! little maid! - (I do not know your name<br>
Or who you are, so, as a safe precaution<br>
I’ll add) - Oh, buxom widow! married dame!<br>
(As one of these must be your present portion)<br>
Listen, while I unveil prophetic lore for you,<br>
And sing the fate that Fortune has in store for you.<br>
<br>
You’ll marry soon - within a year or twain -<br>
A bachelor of <i>circa</i> two and thirty:<br>
Tall, gentlemanly, but extremely plain,<br>
And when you’re intimate, you’ll call him “BERTIE.”<br>
Neat - dresses well; his temper has been classified<br>
As hasty; but he’s very quickly pacified.<br>
<br>
You’ll find him working mildly at the Bar,<br>
After a touch at two or three professions,<br>
From easy affluence extremely far,<br>
A brief or two on Circuit - “soup” at Sessions;<br>
A pound or two from whist and backing horses,<br>
And, say three hundred from his own resources.<br>
<br>
Quiet in harness; free from serious vice,<br>
His faults are not particularly shady,<br>
You’ll never find him “<i>shy</i>” - for, once or
twice<br>
Already, he’s been driven by a lady,<br>
Who parts with him - perhaps a poor excuse for him -<br>
Because she hasn’t any further use for him.<br>
<br>
Oh! bride of mine - tall, dumpy, dark, or fair!<br>
Oh! widow - wife, maybe, or blushing maiden,<br>
I’ve told <i>your</i> fortune; solved the gravest care<br>
With which your mind has hitherto been laden.<br>
I’ve prophesied correctly, never doubt it;<br>
Now tell me mine - and please be quick about it!<br>
<br>
You - only you - can tell me, an’ you will,<br>
To whom I’m destined shortly to be mated,<br>
Will she run up a heavy <i>modiste’s</i> bill?<br>
If so, I want to hear her income stated<br>
(This is a point which interests me greatly).<br>
To quote the bard, “Oh! have I seen her lately?”<br>
<br>
Say, must I wait till husband number one<br>
Is comfortably stowed away at Woking?<br>
How is her hair most usually done?<br>
And tell me, please, will she object to smoking?<br>
The colour of her eyes, too, you may mention:<br>
Come, Sibyl, prophesy - I’m all attention.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: SIR MACKLIN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Of all the youths I ever saw<br>
None were so wicked, vain, or silly,<br>
So lost to shame and Sabbath law,<br>
As worldly TOM, and BOB, and BILLY.<br>
<br>
For every Sabbath day they walked<br>
(Such was their gay and thoughtless natur)<br>
In parks or gardens, where they talked<br>
From three to six, or even later.<br>
<br>
SIR MACKLIN was a priest severe<br>
In conduct and in conversation,<br>
It did a sinner good to hear<br>
Him deal in ratiocination.<br>
<br>
He could in every action show<br>
Some sin, and nobody could doubt him.<br>
He argued high, he argued low,<br>
He also argued round about him.<br>
<br>
He wept to think each thoughtless youth<br>
Contained of wickedness a skinful,<br>
And burnt to teach the awful truth,<br>
That walking out on Sunday’s sinful.<br>
<br>
“Oh, youths,” said he, “I grieve to find<br>
The course of life you’ve been and hit on -<br>
Sit down,” said he, “and never mind<br>
The pennies for the chairs you sit on.<br>
<br>
“My opening head is ‘Kensington,’<br>
How walking there the sinner hardens,<br>
Which when I have enlarged upon,<br>
I go to ‘Secondly’ - its ‘Gardens.’<br>
<br>
“My ‘Thirdly’ comprehendeth ‘Hyde,’<br>
Of Secresy the guilts and shameses;<br>
My ‘Fourthly’ - ‘Park’ - its verdure wide -<br>
My ‘Fifthly’ comprehends ‘St. James’s.’<br>
<br>
“That matter settled, I shall reach<br>
The ‘Sixthly’ in my solemn tether,<br>
And show that what is true of each,<br>
Is also true of all, together.<br>
<br>
“Then I shall demonstrate to you,<br>
According to the rules of WHATELY,<br>
That what is true of all, is true<br>
Of each, considered separately.”<br>
<br>
In lavish stream his accents flow,<br>
TOM, BOB, and BILLY dare not flout him;<br>
He argued high, he argued low,<br>
He also argued round about him.<br>
<br>
“Ha, ha!” he said, “you loathe your ways,<br>
You writhe at these my words of warning,<br>
In agony your hands you raise.”<br>
(And so they did, for they were yawning.)<br>
<br>
To “Twenty-firstly” on they go,<br>
The lads do not attempt to scout him;<br>
He argued high, he argued low,<br>
He also argued round about him.<br>
<br>
“Ho, ho!” he cries, “you bow your crests -<br>
My eloquence has set you weeping;<br>
In shame you bend upon your breasts!”<br>
(And so they did, for they were sleeping.)<br>
<br>
He proved them this - he proved them that -<br>
This good but wearisome ascetic;<br>
He jumped and thumped upon his hat,<br>
He was so very energetic.<br>
<br>
His Bishop at this moment chanced<br>
To pass, and found the road encumbered;<br>
He noticed how the Churchman danced,<br>
And how his congregation slumbered.<br>
<br>
The hundred and eleventh head<br>
The priest completed of his stricture;<br>
“Oh, bosh!” the worthy Bishop said,<br>
And walked him off as in the picture.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE YARN OF THE “NANCY BELL.” <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
’Twas on the shores that round our coast<br>
From Deal to Ramsgate span,<br>
That I found alone on a piece of stone<br>
An elderly naval man.<br>
<br>
His hair was weedy, his beard was long,<br>
And weedy and long was he,<br>
And I heard this wight on the shore recite,<br>
In a singular minor key:<br>
<br>
“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,<br>
And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br>
And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br>
And the crew of the captain’s gig.”<br>
<br>
And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,<br>
Till I really felt afraid,<br>
For I couldn’t help thinking the man had been drinking,<br>
And so I simply said:<br>
<br>
“Oh, elderly man, it’s little I know<br>
Of the duties of men of the sea,<br>
And I’ll eat my hand if I understand<br>
However you can be<br>
<br>
“At once a cook, and a captain bold,<br>
And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br>
And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br>
And the crew of the captain’s gig.”<br>
<br>
Then he gave a hitch to his trousers, which<br>
Is a trick all seamen larn,<br>
And having got rid of a thumping quid,<br>
He spun this painful yarn:<br>
<br>
“’Twas in the good ship <i>Nancy Bell<br>
</i>That we sailed to the Indian Sea,<br>
And there on a reef we come to grief,<br>
Which has often occurred to me.<br>
<br>
“And pretty nigh all the crew was drowned<br>
(There was seventy-seven o’ soul),<br>
And only ten of the <i>Nancy’s</i> men<br>
Said ‘Here!’ to the muster-roll.<br>
<br>
“There was me and the cook and the captain bold,<br>
And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br>
And the bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br>
And the crew of the captain’s gig.<br>
<br>
“For a month we’d neither wittles nor drink,<br>
Till a-hungry we did feel,<br>
So we drawed a lot, and, accordin’ shot<br>
The captain for our meal.<br>
<br>
“The next lot fell to the <i>Nancy’s</i> mate,<br>
And a delicate dish he made;<br>
Then our appetite with the midshipmite<br>
We seven survivors stayed.<br>
<br>
“And then we murdered the bo’sun tight,<br>
And he much resembled pig;<br>
Then we wittled free, did the cook and me,<br>
On the crew of the captain’s gig.<br>
<br>
“Then only the cook and me was left,<br>
And the delicate question, ‘Which<br>
Of us two goes to the kettle?’ arose,<br>
And we argued it out as sich.<br>
<br>
“For I loved that cook as a brother, I did,<br>
And the cook he worshipped me;<br>
But we’d both be blowed if we’d either be stowed<br>
In the other chap’s hold, you see.<br>
<br>
“‘I’ll be eat if you dines off me,’ says TOM;<br>
‘Yes, that,’ says I, ‘you’ll be, -<br>
‘I’m boiled if I die, my friend,’ quoth I;<br>
And ‘Exactly so,’ quoth he.<br>
<br>
“Says he, ‘Dear JAMES, to murder me<br>
Were a foolish thing to do,<br>
For don’t you see that you can’t cook <i>me</i>,<br>
While I can - and will - cook <i>you</i>!’<br>
<br>
“So he boils the water, and takes the salt<br>
And the pepper in portions true<br>
(Which he never forgot), and some chopped shalot.<br>
And some sage and parsley too.<br>
<br>
“‘Come here,’ says he, with a proper pride,<br>
Which his smiling features tell,<br>
‘’T will soothing be if I let you see<br>
How extremely nice you’ll smell.’<br>
<br>
“And he stirred it round and round and round,<br>
And he sniffed at the foaming froth;<br>
When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals<br>
In the scum of the boiling broth.<br>
<br>
“And I eat that cook in a week or less,<br>
And - as I eating be<br>
The last of his chops, why, I almost drops,<br>
For a wessel in sight I see!<br>
<br>
* * * *<br>
<br>
“And I never larf, and I never smile,<br>
And I never lark nor play,<br>
But sit and croak, and a single joke<br>
I have - which is to say:<br>
<br>
“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,<br>
And the mate of the <i>Nancy</i> brig,<br>
And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,<br>
And the crew of the captain’s gig!’”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
From east and south the holy clan<br>
Of Bishops gathered to a man;<br>
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican,<br>
In flocking crowds they came.<br>
Among them was a Bishop, who<br>
Had lately been appointed to<br>
The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo,<br>
And PETER was his name.<br>
<br>
His people - twenty-three in sum -<br>
They played the eloquent tum-tum,<br>
And lived on scalps served up, in rum -<br>
The only sauce they knew.<br>
When first good BISHOP PETER came<br>
(For PETER was that Bishop’s name),<br>
To humour them, he did the same<br>
As they of Rum-ti-Foo.<br>
<br>
His flock, I’ve often heard him tell,<br>
(His name was PETER) loved him well,<br>
And, summoned by the sound of bell,<br>
In crowds together came.<br>
“Oh, massa, why you go away?<br>
Oh, MASSA PETER, please to stay.”<br>
(They called him PETER, people say,<br>
Because it was his name.)<br>
<br>
He told them all good boys to be,<br>
And sailed away across the sea,<br>
At London Bridge that Bishop he<br>
Arrived one Tuesday night;<br>
And as that night he homeward strode<br>
To his Pan-Anglican abode,<br>
He passed along the Borough Road,<br>
And saw a gruesome sight.<br>
<br>
He saw a crowd assembled round<br>
A person dancing on the ground,<br>
Who straight began to leap and bound<br>
With all his might and main.<br>
To see that dancing man he stopped,<br>
Who twirled and wriggled, skipped and hopped,<br>
Then down incontinently dropped,<br>
And then sprang up again.<br>
<br>
The Bishop chuckled at the sight.<br>
“This style of dancing would delight<br>
A simple Rum-ti-Foozleite.<br>
I’ll learn it if I can,<br>
To please the tribe when I get back.”<br>
He begged the man to teach his knack.<br>
“Right Reverend Sir, in half a crack!<br>
Replied that dancing man.<br>
<br>
The dancing man he worked away,<br>
And taught the Bishop every day -<br>
The dancer skipped like any fay -<br>
Good PETER did the same.<br>
The Bishop buckled to his task,<br>
With <i>battements</i>, and <i>pas de basque.<br>
</i>(I’ll tell you, if you care to ask,<br>
That PETER was his name.)<br>
<br>
“Come, walk like this,” the dancer said,<br>
“Stick out your toes - stick in your head,<br>
Stalk on with quick, galvanic tread -<br>
Your fingers thus extend;<br>
The attitude’s considered quaint.”<br>
The weary Bishop, feeling faint,<br>
Replied, “I do not say it ain’t,<br>
But ‘Time!’ my Christian friend!”<br>
<br>
“We now proceed to something new -<br>
Dance as the PAYNES and LAURIS do,<br>
Like this - one, two - one, two - one, two.”<br>
The Bishop, never proud,<br>
But in an overwhelming heat<br>
(His name was PETER, I repeat)<br>
Performed the PAYNE and LAURI feat,<br>
And puffed his thanks aloud.<br>
<br>
Another game the dancer planned -<br>
“Just take your ankle in your hand,<br>
And try, my lord, if you can stand -<br>
Your body stiff and stark.<br>
If, when revisiting your see,<br>
You learnt to hop on shore - like me -<br>
The novelty would striking be,<br>
And must attract remark.”<br>
<br>
“No,” said the worthy Bishop, “no;<br>
That is a length to which, I trow,<br>
Colonial Bishops cannot go.<br>
You may express surprise<br>
At finding Bishops deal in pride -<br>
But if that trick I ever tried,<br>
I should appear undignified<br>
In Rum-ti-Foozle’s eyes.<br>
<br>
“The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo<br>
Are well-conducted persons, who<br>
Approve a joke as much as you,<br>
And laugh at it as such;<br>
But if they saw their Bishop land,<br>
His leg supported in his hand,<br>
The joke they wouldn’t understand -<br>
’T would pain them very much!”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE PRECOCIOUS BABY. A VERY TRUE TALE.<br>
(<i>To be sung to the Air of the “Whistling Oyster</i>.”)<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
An elderly person - a prophet by trade -<br>
With his quips and tips<br>
On withered old lips,<br>
He married a young and a beautiful maid;<br>
The cunning old blade!<br>
Though rather decayed,<br>
He married a beautiful, beautiful maid.<br>
<br>
She was only eighteen, and as fair as could be,<br>
With her tempting smiles<br>
And maidenly wiles,<br>
And he was a trifle past seventy-three:<br>
Now what she could see<br>
Is a puzzle to me,<br>
In a prophet of seventy - seventy-three!<br>
<br>
Of all their acquaintances bidden (or bad)<br>
With their loud high jinks<br>
And underbred winks,<br>
None thought they’d a family have - but they had;<br>
A dear little lad<br>
Who drove ’em half mad,<br>
For he turned out a horribly fast little cad.<br>
<br>
For when he was born he astonished all by,<br>
With their “Law, dear me!”<br>
“Did ever you see?”<br>
He’d a pipe in his mouth and a glass in his eye,<br>
A hat all awry -<br>
An octagon tie -<br>
And a miniature - miniature glass in his eye.<br>
<br>
He grumbled at wearing a frock and a cap,<br>
With his “Oh, dear, oh!”<br>
And his “Hang it! ’oo know!”<br>
And he turned up his nose at his excellent pap -<br>
“My friends, it’s a tap<br>
Dat is not worf a rap.”<br>
(Now this was remarkably excellent pap.)<br>
<br>
He’d chuck his nurse under the chin, and he’d say,<br>
With his “Fal, lal, lal” -<br>
“’Oo doosed fine gal!”<br>
This shocking precocity drove ’em away:<br>
“A month from to-day<br>
Is as long as I’ll stay -<br>
Then I’d wish, if you please, for to toddle away.”<br>
<br>
His father, a simple old gentleman, he<br>
With nursery rhyme<br>
And “Once on a time,”<br>
Would tell him the story of “Little Bo-P,”<br>
“So pretty was she,<br>
So pretty and wee,<br>
As pretty, as pretty, as pretty could be.”<br>
<br>
But the babe, with a dig that would startle an ox,<br>
With his “C’ck! Oh, my! -<br>
Go along wiz ’oo, fie!”<br>
Would exclaim, “I’m afraid ’oo a socking ole fox.”<br>
Now a father it shocks,<br>
And it whitens his locks,<br>
When his little babe calls him a shocking old fox.<br>
<br>
The name of his father he’d couple and pair<br>
(With his ill-bred laugh,<br>
And insolent chaff)<br>
With those of the nursery heroines rare -<br>
Virginia the Fair,<br>
Or Good Goldenhair,<br>
Till the nuisance was more than a prophet could bear.<br>
<br>
“There’s Jill and White Cat” (said the bold little
brat,<br>
With his loud, “Ha, ha!”)<br>
“’Oo sly ickle Pa!<br>
Wiz ’oo Beauty, Bo-Peep, and ’oo Mrs. Jack Sprat!<br>
I’ve noticed ’oo pat<br>
<i>My</i> pretty White Cat -<br>
I sink dear mamma ought to know about dat!”<br>
<br>
He early determined to marry and wive,<br>
For better or worse<br>
With his elderly nurse -<br>
Which the poor little boy didn’t live to contrive:<br>
His hearth didn’t thrive -<br>
No longer alive,<br>
He died an enfeebled old dotard at five!<br>
<br>
MORAL.<br>
<br>
Now, elderly men of the bachelor crew,<br>
With wrinkled hose<br>
And spectacled nose,<br>
Don’t marry at all - you may take it as true<br>
If ever you do<br>
The step you will rue,<br>
For your babes will be elderly - elderly too.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: TO PHOEBE. <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
“Gentle, modest little flower,<br>
Sweet epitome of May,<br>
Love me but for half an hour,<br>
Love me, love me, little fay.”<br>
Sentences so fiercely flaming<br>
In your tiny shell-like ear,<br>
I should always be exclaiming<br>
If I loved you, PHOEBE dear.<br>
<br>
“Smiles that thrill from any distance<br>
Shed upon me while I sing!<br>
Please ecstaticize existence,<br>
Love me, oh, thou fairy thing!”<br>
Words like these, outpouring sadly<br>
You’d perpetually hear,<br>
If I loved you fondly, madly; -<br>
But I do not, PHOEBE dear.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: BAINES CAREW, GENTLEMAN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Of all the good attorneys who<br>
Have placed their names upon the roll,<br>
But few could equal BAINES CAREW<br>
For tender-heartedness and soul.<br>
<br>
Whene’er he heard a tale of woe<br>
From client A or client B,<br>
His grief would overcome him so<br>
He’d scarce have strength to take his fee.<br>
<br>
It laid him up for many days,<br>
When duty led him to distrain,<br>
And serving writs, although it pays,<br>
Gave him excruciating pain.<br>
<br>
He made out costs, distrained for rent,<br>
Foreclosed and sued, with moistened eye -<br>
No bill of costs could represent<br>
The value of such sympathy.<br>
<br>
No charges can approximate<br>
The worth of sympathy with woe; -<br>
Although I think I ought to state<br>
He did his best to make them so.<br>
<br>
Of all the many clients who<br>
Had mustered round his legal flag,<br>
No single client of the crew<br>
Was half so dear as CAPTAIN BAGG.<br>
<br>
Now, CAPTAIN BAGG had bowed him to<br>
A heavy matrimonial yoke -<br>
His wifey had of faults a few -<br>
She never could resist a joke.<br>
<br>
Her chaff at first he meekly bore,<br>
Till unendurable it grew.<br>
“To stop this persecution sore<br>
I will consult my friend CAREW.<br>
<br>
“And when CAREW’S advice I’ve got,<br>
Divorce <i>a mensâ</i> I shall try.”<br>
(A legal separation - not<br>
<i>A vinculo conjugii</i>.)<br>
<br>
“Oh, BAINES CAREW, my woe I’ve kept<br>
A secret hitherto, you know;” -<br>
(And BAINES CAREW, ESQUIRE, he wept<br>
To hear that BAGG <i>had</i> any woe.)<br>
<br>
“My case, indeed, is passing sad.<br>
My wife - whom I considered true -<br>
With brutal conduct drives me mad.”<br>
“I am appalled,” said BAINES CAREW.<br>
<br>
“What! sound the matrimonial knell<br>
Of worthy people such as these!<br>
Why was I an attorney? Well -<br>
Go on to the <i>saevitia</i>, please.”<br>
<br>
“Domestic bliss has proved my bane, -<br>
A harder case you never heard,<br>
My wife (in other matters sane)<br>
Pretends that I’m a Dicky bird!<br>
<br>
“She makes me sing, ‘Too-whit, too-wee!’<br>
And stand upon a rounded stick,<br>
And always introduces me<br>
To every one as ‘Pretty Dick’!”<br>
<br>
“Oh, dear,” said weeping BAINES CAREW,<br>
“This is the direst case I know.”<br>
“I’m grieved,” said BAGG, “at paining you -<br>
“To COBB and POLTHERTHWAITE I’ll go -<br>
<br>
“To COBB’S cold, calculating ear,<br>
My gruesome sorrows I’ll impart” -<br>
“No; stop,” said BAINES, “I’ll dry my tear,<br>
And steel my sympathetic heart.”<br>
<br>
“She makes me perch upon a tree,<br>
Rewarding me with ‘Sweety - nice!’<br>
And threatens to exhibit me<br>
With four or five performing mice.”<br>
<br>
“Restrain my tears I wish I could”<br>
(Said BAINES), “I don’t know what to do.”<br>
Said CAPTAIN BAGG, “You’re very good.”<br>
“Oh, not at all,” said BAINES CAREW.<br>
<br>
“She makes me fire a gun,” said BAGG;<br>
“And, at a preconcerted word,<br>
Climb up a ladder with a flag,<br>
Like any street performing bird.<br>
<br>
“She places sugar in my way -<br>
In public places calls me ‘Sweet!’<br>
She gives me groundsel every day,<br>
And hard canary-seed to eat.”<br>
<br>
“Oh, woe! oh, sad! oh, dire to tell!”<br>
(Said BAINES). “Be good enough to stop.”<br>
And senseless on the floor he fell,<br>
With unpremeditated flop!<br>
<br>
Said CAPTAIN BAGG, “Well, really I<br>
Am grieved to think it pains you so.<br>
I thank you for your sympathy;<br>
But, hang it! - come - I say, you know!”<br>
<br>
But BAINES lay flat upon the floor,<br>
Convulsed with sympathetic sob; -<br>
The Captain toddled off next door,<br>
And gave the case to MR. COBB.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
In all the towns and cities fair<br>
On Merry England’s broad expanse,<br>
No swordsman ever could compare<br>
With THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.<br>
<br>
The dauntless lad could fairly hew<br>
A silken handkerchief in twain,<br>
Divide a leg of mutton too -<br>
And this without unwholesome strain.<br>
<br>
On whole half-sheep, with cunning trick,<br>
His sabre sometimes he’d employ -<br>
No bar of lead, however thick,<br>
Had terrors for the stalwart boy.<br>
<br>
At Dover daily he’d prepare<br>
To hew and slash, behind, before -<br>
Which aggravated MONSIEUR PIERRE,<br>
Who watched him from the Calais shore.<br>
<br>
It caused good PIERRE to swear and dance,<br>
The sight annoyed and vexed him so;<br>
He was the bravest man in France -<br>
He said so, and he ought to know.<br>
<br>
“Regardez donc, ce cochon gros -<br>
Ce polisson! Oh, sacré bleu!<br>
Son sabre, son plomb, et ses gigots<br>
Comme cela m’ennuye, enfin, mon Dieu!<br>
<br>
“Il sait que les foulards de soie<br>
Give no retaliating whack -<br>
Les gigots morts n’ont pas de quoi -<br>
Le plomb don’t ever hit you back.”<br>
<br>
But every day the headstrong lad<br>
Cut lead and mutton more and more;<br>
And every day poor PIERRE, half mad,<br>
Shrieked loud defiance from his shore.<br>
<br>
HANCE had a mother, poor and old,<br>
A simple, harmless village dame,<br>
Who crowed and clapped as people told<br>
Of WINTERBOTTOM’S rising fame.<br>
<br>
She said, “I’ll be upon the spot<br>
To see my TOMMY’S sabre-play;”<br>
And so she left her leafy cot,<br>
And walked to Dover in a day.<br>
<br>
PIERRE had a doating mother, who<br>
Had heard of his defiant rage;<br>
<i>His</i> Ma was nearly ninety-two,<br>
And rather dressy for her age.<br>
<br>
At HANCE’S doings every morn,<br>
With sheer delight <i>his</i> mother cried;<br>
And MONSIEUR PIERRE’S contemptuous scorn<br>
Filled <i>his</i> mamma with proper pride.<br>
<br>
But HANCE’S powers began to fail -<br>
His constitution was not strong -<br>
And PIERRE, who once was stout and hale,<br>
Grew thin from shouting all day long.<br>
<br>
Their mothers saw them pale and wan,<br>
Maternal anguish tore each breast,<br>
And so they met to find a plan<br>
To set their offsprings’ minds at rest.<br>
<br>
Said MRS. HANCE, “Of course I shrinks<br>
From bloodshed, ma’am, as you’re aware,<br>
But still they’d better meet, I thinks.”<br>
“Assurément!” said MADAME PIERRE.<br>
<br>
A sunny spot in sunny France<br>
Was hit upon for this affair;<br>
The ground was picked by MRS. HANCE,<br>
The stakes were pitched by MADAME PIERRE.<br>
<br>
Said MRS. H., “Your work you see -<br>
Go in, my noble boy, and win.”<br>
“En garde, mon fils!” said MADAME P.<br>
“Allons!” “Go on!” “En garde!”
“Begin!”<br>
<br>
(The mothers were of decent size,<br>
Though not particularly tall;<br>
But in the sketch that meets your eyes<br>
I’ve been obliged to draw them small.)<br>
<br>
Loud sneered the doughty man of France,<br>
“Ho! ho! Ho! ho! Ha! ha! Ha! ha!<br>
“The French for ‘Pish’” said THOMAS HANCE.<br>
Said PIERRE, “L’Anglais, Monsieur, pour ‘Bah.’”<br>
<br>
Said MRS. H., “Come, one! two! three! -<br>
We’re sittin’ here to see all fair.”<br>
“C’est magnifique!” said MADAME P.,<br>
“Mais, parbleu! ce n’est pas la guerre!”<br>
<br>
“Je scorn un foe si lache que vous,”<br>
Said PIERRE, the doughty son of France.<br>
“I fight not coward foe like you!”<br>
Said our undaunted TOMMY HANCE.<br>
<br>
“The French for ‘Pooh!’” our TOMMY cried.<br>
“L’Anglais pour ‘Va!’” the Frenchman crowed.<br>
And so, with undiminished pride,<br>
Each went on his respective road.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: A DISCONTENTED SUGAR BROKER.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A gentleman of City fame<br>
Now claims your kind attention;<br>
East India broking was his game,<br>
His name I shall not mention:<br>
No one of finely-pointed sense<br>
Would violate a confidence,<br>
And shall <i>I</i> go<br>
And do it? No!<br>
His name I shall not mention.<br>
<br>
He had a trusty wife and true,<br>
And very cosy quarters,<br>
A manager, a boy or two,<br>
Six clerks, and seven porters.<br>
A broker must be doing well<br>
(As any lunatic can tell)<br>
Who can employ<br>
An active boy,<br>
Six clerks, and seven porters.<br>
<br>
His knocker advertised no dun,<br>
No losses made him sulky,<br>
He had one sorrow - only one -<br>
He was extremely bulky.<br>
A man must be, I beg to state,<br>
Exceptionally fortunate<br>
Who owns his chief<br>
And only grief<br>
Is - being very bulky.<br>
<br>
“This load,” he’d say, “I cannot bear;<br>
I’m nineteen stone or twenty!<br>
Henceforward I’ll go in for air<br>
And exercise in plenty.”<br>
Most people think that, should it come,<br>
They can reduce a bulging tum<br>
To measures fair<br>
By taking air<br>
And exercise in plenty.<br>
<br>
In every weather, every day,<br>
Dry, muddy, wet, or gritty,<br>
He took to dancing all the way<br>
From Brompton to the City.<br>
You do not often get the chance<br>
Of seeing sugar brokers dance<br>
From their abode<br>
In Fulham Road<br>
Through Brompton to the City.<br>
<br>
He braved the gay and guileless laugh<br>
Of children with their nusses,<br>
The loud uneducated chaff<br>
Of clerks on omnibuses.<br>
Against all minor things that rack<br>
A nicely-balanced mind, I’ll back<br>
The noisy chaff<br>
And ill-bred laugh<br>
Of clerks on omnibuses.<br>
<br>
His friends, who heard his money chink,<br>
And saw the house he rented,<br>
And knew his wife, could never think<br>
What made him discontented.<br>
It never entered their pure minds<br>
That fads are of eccentric kinds,<br>
Nor would they own<br>
That fat alone<br>
Could make one discontented.<br>
<br>
“Your riches know no kind of pause,<br>
Your trade is fast advancing;<br>
You dance - but not for joy, because<br>
You weep as you are dancing.<br>
To dance implies that man is glad,<br>
To weep implies that man is sad;<br>
But here are you<br>
Who do the two -<br>
You weep as you are dancing!”<br>
<br>
His mania soon got noised about<br>
And into all the papers;<br>
His size increased beyond a doubt<br>
For all his reckless capers:<br>
It may seem singular to you,<br>
But all his friends admit it true -<br>
The more he found<br>
His figure round,<br>
The more he cut his capers.<br>
<br>
His bulk increased - no matter that -<br>
He tried the more to toss it -<br>
He never spoke of it as “fat,”<br>
But “adipose deposit.”<br>
Upon my word, it seems to me<br>
Unpardonable vanity<br>
(And worse than that)<br>
To call your fat<br>
An “adipose deposit.”<br>
<br>
At length his brawny knees gave way,<br>
And on the carpet sinking,<br>
Upon his shapeless back he lay<br>
And kicked away like winking.<br>
Instead of seeing in his state<br>
The finger of unswerving Fate,<br>
He laboured still<br>
To work his will,<br>
And kicked away like winking.<br>
<br>
His friends, disgusted with him now,<br>
Away in silence wended -<br>
I hardly like to tell you how<br>
This dreadful story ended.<br>
The shocking sequel to impart,<br>
I must employ the limner’s art -<br>
If you would know,<br>
This sketch will show<br>
How his exertions ended.<br>
<br>
MORAL.<br>
<br>
I hate to preach - I hate to prate -<br>
- I’m no fanatic croaker,<br>
But learn contentment from the fate<br>
Of this East India broker.<br>
He’d everything a man of taste<br>
Could ever want, except a waist;<br>
And discontent<br>
His size anent,<br>
And bootless perseverance blind,<br>
Completely wrecked the peace of mind<br>
Of this East India broker.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE PANTOMIME “SUPER” TO HIS MASK.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Vast empty shell!<br>
Impertinent, preposterous abortion!<br>
With vacant stare,<br>
And ragged hair,<br>
And every feature out of all proportion!<br>
Embodiment of echoing inanity!<br>
Excellent type of simpering insanity!<br>
Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity!<br>
I ring thy knell!<br>
<br>
To-night thou diest,<br>
Beast that destroy’st my heaven-born identity!<br>
Nine weeks of nights,<br>
Before the lights,<br>
Swamped in thine own preposterous nonentity,<br>
I’ve been ill-treated, cursed, and thrashed diurnally,<br>
Credited for the smile you wear externally -<br>
I feel disposed to smash thy face, infernally,<br>
As there thou liest!<br>
<br>
I’ve been thy brain:<br>
<i>I’ve</i> been the brain that lit thy dull concavity!<br>
The human race<br>
Invest <i>my</i> face<br>
With thine expression of unchecked depravity,<br>
Invested with a ghastly reciprocity,<br>
<i>I’ve</i> been responsible for thy monstrosity,<br>
I, for thy wanton, blundering ferocity -<br>
But not again!<br>
<br>
’T is time to toll<br>
Thy knell, and that of follies pantomimical:<br>
A nine weeks’ run,<br>
And thou hast done<br>
All thou canst do to make thyself inimical.<br>
Adieu, embodiment of all inanity!<br>
Excellent type of simpering insanity!<br>
Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity!<br>
Freed is thy soul!<br>
<br>
(<i>The Mask respondeth</i>.)<br>
<br>
Oh! master mine,<br>
Look thou within thee, ere again ill-using me.<br>
Art thou aware<br>
Of nothing there<br>
Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me?<br>
A brain that mourns <i>thine</i> unredeemed rascality?<br>
A soul that weeps at <i>thy</i> threadbare morality?<br>
Both grieving that <i>their</i> individuality<br>
Is merged in thine?<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE GHOST, THE GALLANT, THE GAEL, AND THE GOBLIN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
O’er unreclaimed suburban clays<br>
Some years ago were hobblin’<br>
An elderly ghost of easy ways,<br>
And an influential goblin.<br>
The ghost was a sombre spectral shape,<br>
A fine old five-act fogy,<br>
The goblin imp, a lithe young ape,<br>
A fine low-comedy bogy.<br>
<br>
And as they exercised their joints,<br>
Promoting quick digestion,<br>
They talked on several curious points,<br>
And raised this delicate question:<br>
“Which of us two is Number One -<br>
The ghostie, or the goblin?”<br>
And o’er the point they raised in fun<br>
They fairly fell a-squabblin’.<br>
<br>
They’d barely speak, and each, in fine,<br>
Grew more and more reflective:<br>
Each thought his own particular line<br>
By chalks the more effective.<br>
At length they settled some one should<br>
By each of them be haunted,<br>
And so arrange that either could<br>
Exert his prowess vaunted.<br>
<br>
“The Quaint against the Statuesque” -<br>
By competition lawful -<br>
The goblin backed the Quaint Grotesque,<br>
The ghost the Grandly Awful.<br>
“Now,” said the goblin, “here’s my plan -<br>
In attitude commanding,<br>
I see a stalwart Englishman<br>
By yonder tailor’s standing.<br>
<br>
“The very fittest man on earth<br>
My influence to try on -<br>
Of gentle, p’r’aps of noble birth,<br>
And dauntless as a lion!<br>
Now wrap yourself within your shroud -<br>
Remain in easy hearing -<br>
Observe - you’ll hear him scream aloud<br>
When I begin appearing!<br>
<br>
The imp with yell unearthly - wild -<br>
Threw off his dark enclosure:<br>
His dauntless victim looked and smiled<br>
With singular composure.<br>
For hours he tried to daunt the youth,<br>
For days, indeed, but vainly -<br>
The stripling smiled! - to tell the truth,<br>
The stripling smiled inanely.<br>
<br>
For weeks the goblin weird and wild,<br>
That noble stripling haunted;<br>
For weeks the stripling stood and smiled,<br>
Unmoved and all undaunted.<br>
The sombre ghost exclaimed, “Your plan<br>
Has failed you, goblin, plainly:<br>
Now watch yon hardy Hieland man,<br>
So stalwart and ungainly.<br>
<br>
“These are the men who chase the roe,<br>
Whose footsteps never falter,<br>
Who bring with them, where’er they go,<br>
A smack of old SIR WALTER.<br>
Of such as he, the men sublime<br>
Who lead their troops victorious,<br>
Whose deeds go down to after-time,<br>
Enshrined in annals glorious!<br>
<br>
“Of such as he the bard has said<br>
‘Hech thrawfu’ raltie rorkie!<br>
Wi’ thecht ta’ croonie clapperhead<br>
And fash’ wi’ unco pawkie!’<br>
He’ll faint away when I appear,<br>
Upon his native heather;<br>
Or p’r’aps he’ll only scream with fear,<br>
Or p’r’aps the two together.”<br>
<br>
The spectre showed himself, alone,<br>
To do his ghostly battling,<br>
With curdling groan and dismal moan,<br>
And lots of chains a-rattling!<br>
But no - the chiel’s stout Gaelic stuff<br>
Withstood all ghostly harrying;<br>
His fingers closed upon the snuff<br>
Which upwards he was carrying.<br>
<br>
For days that ghost declined to stir,<br>
A foggy shapeless giant -<br>
For weeks that splendid officer<br>
Stared back again defiant.<br>
Just as the Englishman returned<br>
The goblin’s vulgar staring,<br>
Just so the Scotchman boldly spurned<br>
The ghost’s unmannered scaring.<br>
<br>
For several years the ghostly twain<br>
These Britons bold have haunted,<br>
But all their efforts are in vain -<br>
Their victims stand undaunted.<br>
This very day the imp, and ghost,<br>
Whose powers the imp derided,<br>
Stand each at his allotted post -<br>
The bet is undecided.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE PHANTOM CURATE. A FABLE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A Bishop once - I will not name his see -<br>
Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional;<br>
From pulpit shackles never set them free,<br>
And found a sin where sin was unintentional.<br>
All pleasures ended in abuse auricular -<br>
The Bishop was so terribly particular.<br>
<br>
Though, on the whole, a wise and upright man,<br>
He sought to make of human pleasures clearances;<br>
And form his priests on that much-lauded plan<br>
Which pays undue attention to appearances.<br>
He couldn’t do good deeds without a psalm in ’em,<br>
Although, in truth, he bore away the palm in ’em.<br>
<br>
Enraged to find a deacon at a dance,<br>
Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity,<br>
He sought by open censure to enhance<br>
Their dread of joining harmless social jollity.<br>
Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety)<br>
The ordinary pleasures of society.<br>
<br>
One evening, sitting at a pantomime<br>
(Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him),<br>
Roaring at jokes, <i>sans</i> metre, sense, or rhyme,<br>
He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him,<br>
His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it,<br>
A curate, also heartily enjoying it.<br>
<br>
Again, ’t was Christmas Eve, and to enhance<br>
His children’s pleasure in their harmless rollicking,<br>
He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance;<br>
When something checked the current of his frolicking:<br>
That curate, with a maid he treated lover-ly,<br>
Stood up and figured with him in the “Coverley!”<br>
<br>
Once, yielding to an universal choice<br>
(The company’s demand was an emphatic one,<br>
For the old Bishop had a glorious voice),<br>
In a quartet he joined - an operatic one.<br>
Harmless enough, though ne’er a word of grace in it,<br>
When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it!<br>
<br>
One day, when passing through a quiet street,<br>
He stopped awhile and joined a Punch’s gathering;<br>
And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet,<br>
To see that gentleman his Judy lathering;<br>
And heard, as Punch was being treated penalty,<br>
That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.<br>
<br>
Now at a picnic, ’mid fair golden curls,<br>
Bright eyes, straw hats, <i>bottines</i> that fit amazingly,<br>
A croquêt-bout is planned by all the girls;<br>
And he, consenting, speaks of croquêt praisingly;<br>
But suddenly declines to play at all in it -<br>
The curate fiend has come to take a ball in it!<br>
<br>
Next, when at quiet sea-side village, freed<br>
From cares episcopal and ties monarchical,<br>
He grows his beard, and smokes his fragrant weed,<br>
In manner anything but hierarchical -<br>
He sees - and fixes an unearthly stare on it -<br>
That curate’s face, with half a yard of hair on it!<br>
<br>
At length he gave a charge, and spake this word:<br>
“Vicars, your curates to enjoyment urge ye may;<br>
To check their harmless pleasuring’s absurd;<br>
What laymen do without reproach, my clergy may.”<br>
He spake, and lo! at this concluding word of him,<br>
The curate vanished - no one since has heard of him.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO<br>
Was a man-eating African swell;<br>
His sigh was a hullaballoo,<br>
His whisper a horrible yell -<br>
A horrible, horrible yell!<br>
<br>
Four subjects, and all of them male,<br>
To BORRIA doubled the knee,<br>
They were once on a far larger scale,<br>
But he’d eaten the balance, you see<br>
(“Scale” and “balance” is punning, you see).<br>
<br>
There was haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH,<br>
There was lumbering DOODLE-DUM-DEY,<br>
Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH,<br>
And good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH -<br>
Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH.<br>
<br>
One day there was grief in the crew,<br>
For they hadn’t a morsel of meat,<br>
And BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO<br>
Was dying for something to eat -<br>
“Come, provide me with something to eat!<br>
<br>
“ALACK-A-DEY, famished I feel;<br>
Oh, good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH,<br>
Where on earth shall I look for a meal?<br>
For I haven’t no dinner to-day! -<br>
Not a morsel of dinner to-day!<br>
<br>
“Dear TOOTLE-TUM, what shall we do?<br>
Come, get us a meal, or, in truth,<br>
If you don’t, we shall have to eat you,<br>
Oh, adorable friend of our youth!<br>
Thou beloved little friend of our youth!”<br>
<br>
And he answered, “Oh, BUNGALEE BOO,<br>
For a moment I hope you will wait, -<br>
TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO<br>
Is the Queen of a neighbouring state -<br>
A remarkably neighbouring state.<br>
<br>
“TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO,<br>
She would pickle deliciously cold -<br>
And her four pretty Amazons, too,<br>
Are enticing, and not very old -<br>
Twenty-seven is not very old.<br>
<br>
“There is neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH,<br>
There is rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH,<br>
There is jocular WAGGETY-WEH,<br>
There is musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH -<br>
There’s the nightingale DOH-REH-MI-FAH!”<br>
<br>
So the forces of BUNGALEE BOO<br>
Marched forth in a terrible row,<br>
And the ladies who fought for QUEEN LOO<br>
Prepared to encounter the foe -<br>
This dreadful, insatiate foe!<br>
<br>
But they sharpened no weapons at all,<br>
And they poisoned no arrows - not they!<br>
They made ready to conquer or fall<br>
In a totally different way -<br>
An entirely different way.<br>
<br>
With a crimson and pearly-white dye<br>
They endeavoured to make themselves fair,<br>
With black they encircled each eye,<br>
And with yellow they painted their hair<br>
(It was wool, but they thought it was hair).<br>
<br>
And the forces they met in the field:-<br>
And the men of KING BORRIA said,<br>
“Amazonians, immediately yield!”<br>
And their arrows they drew to the head -<br>
Yes, drew them right up to the head.<br>
<br>
But jocular WAGGETY-WEH<br>
Ogled DOODLE-DUM-DEY (which was wrong),<br>
And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH<br>
Said, “TOOTLE-TUM, you go along!<br>
You naughty old dear, go along!”<br>
<br>
And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH<br>
Tapped ALACK-A-DEY-AH with her fan;<br>
And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH<br>
Said, “PISH, go away, you bad man!<br>
Go away, you delightful young man!”<br>
<br>
And the Amazons simpered and sighed,<br>
And they ogled, and giggled, and flushed,<br>
And they opened their pretty eyes wide,<br>
And they chuckled, and flirted, and blushed<br>
(At least, if they could, they’d have blushed).<br>
<br>
But haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH<br>
Said, “ALACK-A-DEY, what does this mean?”<br>
And despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH<br>
Said, “They think us uncommonly green!<br>
Ha! ha! most uncommonly green!”<br>
<br>
Even blundering DOODLE-DUM-DEY<br>
Was insensible quite to their leers,<br>
And said good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH,<br>
“It’s your blood we desire, pretty dears -<br>
We have come for our dinners, my dears!”<br>
<br>
And the Queen of the Amazons fell<br>
To BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO, -<br>
In a mouthful he gulped, with a yell,<br>
TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO -<br>
The pretty QUEEN TOL-THE-ROL-LOO.<br>
<br>
And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH<br>
Was eaten by PISH-POOH-BAH,<br>
And light-hearted WAGGETY-WEH<br>
By dismal ALACK-A-DEY-AH -<br>
Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH.<br>
<br>
And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH<br>
Was eaten by DOODLE-DUM-DEY,<br>
And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH<br>
By good little TOOTLE-DUM-TEH -<br>
Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: BOB POLTER.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
BOB POLTER was a navvy, and<br>
His hands were coarse, and dirty too,<br>
His homely face was rough and tanned,<br>
His time of life was thirty-two.<br>
<br>
He lived among a working clan<br>
(A wife he hadn’t got at all),<br>
A decent, steady, sober man -<br>
No saint, however - not at all.<br>
<br>
He smoked, but in a modest way,<br>
Because he thought he needed it;<br>
He drank a pot of beer a day,<br>
And sometimes he exceeded it.<br>
<br>
At times he’d pass with other men<br>
A loud convivial night or two,<br>
With, very likely, now and then,<br>
On Saturdays, a fight or two.<br>
<br>
But still he was a sober soul,<br>
A labour-never-shirking man,<br>
Who paid his way - upon the whole<br>
A decent English working man.<br>
<br>
One day, when at the Nelson’s Head<br>
(For which he may be blamed of you),<br>
A holy man appeared, and said,<br>
“Oh, ROBERT, I’m ashamed of you.”<br>
<br>
He laid his hand on ROBERT’S beer<br>
Before he could drink up any,<br>
And on the floor, with sigh and tear,<br>
He poured the pot of “thruppenny.”<br>
<br>
“Oh, ROBERT, at this very bar<br>
A truth you’ll be discovering,<br>
A good and evil genius are<br>
Around your noddle hovering.<br>
<br>
“They both are here to bid you shun<br>
The other one’s society,<br>
For Total Abstinence is one,<br>
The other, Inebriety.”<br>
<br>
He waved his hand - a vapour came -<br>
A wizard POLTER reckoned him;<br>
A bogy rose and called his name,<br>
And with his finger beckoned him.<br>
<br>
The monster’s salient points to sum, -<br>
His heavy breath was portery:<br>
His glowing nose suggested rum:<br>
His eyes were gin-and-<i>wor</i>tery.<br>
<br>
His dress was torn - for dregs of ale<br>
And slops of gin had rusted it;<br>
His pimpled face was wan and pale,<br>
Where filth had not encrusted it.<br>
<br>
“Come, POLTER,” said the fiend, “begin,<br>
And keep the bowl a-flowing on -<br>
A working man needs pints of gin<br>
To keep his clockwork going on.”<br>
<br>
BOB shuddered: “Ah, you’ve made a miss<br>
If you take me for one of you:<br>
You filthy beast, get out of this -<br>
BOB POLTER don’t wan’t none of you.”<br>
<br>
The demon gave a drunken shriek,<br>
And crept away in stealthiness,<br>
And lo! instead, a person sleek,<br>
Who seemed to burst with healthiness.<br>
<br>
“In me, as your adviser hints,<br>
Of Abstinence you’ve got a type -<br>
Of MR. TWEEDIE’S pretty prints<br>
I am the happy prototype.<br>
<br>
“If you abjure the social toast,<br>
And pipes, and such frivolities,<br>
You possibly some day may boast<br>
My prepossessing qualities!”<br>
<br>
BOB rubbed his eyes, and made ’em blink:<br>
“You almost make me tremble, you!<br>
If I abjure fermented drink,<br>
Shall I, indeed, resemble you?<br>
<br>
“And will my whiskers curl so tight?<br>
My cheeks grow smug and muttony?<br>
My face become so red and white?<br>
My coat so blue and buttony?<br>
<br>
“Will trousers, such as yours, array<br>
Extremities inferior?<br>
Will chubbiness assert its sway<br>
All over my exterior?<br>
<br>
“In this, my unenlightened state,<br>
To work in heavy boots I comes;<br>
Will pumps henceforward decorate<br>
My tiddle toddle tootsicums?<br>
<br>
“And shall I get so plump and fresh,<br>
And look no longer seedily?<br>
My skin will henceforth fit my flesh<br>
So tightly and so TWEEDIE-ly?”<br>
<br>
The phantom said, “You’ll have all this,<br>
You’ll know no kind of huffiness,<br>
Your life will be one chubby bliss,<br>
One long unruffled puffiness!”<br>
<br>
“Be off!” said irritated BOB.<br>
“Why come you here to bother one?<br>
You pharisaical old snob,<br>
You’re wuss almost than t’other one!<br>
<br>
“I takes my pipe - I takes my pot,<br>
And drunk I’m never seen to be:<br>
I’m no teetotaller or sot,<br>
And as I am I mean to be!”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Strike the concertina’s melancholy string!<br>
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything!<br>
Let the piano’s martial blast<br>
Rouse the Echoes of the Past,<br>
For of AGIB, PRINCE OF TARTARY, I sing!<br>
<br>
Of AGIB, who, amid Tartaric scenes,<br>
Wrote a lot of ballet music in his teens:<br>
His gentle spirit rolls<br>
In the melody of souls -<br>
Which is pretty, but I don’t know what it means.<br>
<br>
Of AGIB, who could readily, at sight,<br>
Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite.<br>
He would diligently play<br>
On the Zoetrope all day,<br>
And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night.<br>
<br>
One winter - I am shaky in my dates -<br>
Came two starving Tartar minstrels to his gates;<br>
Oh, ALLAH be obeyed,<br>
How infernally they played!<br>
I remember that they called themselves the “Oüaits.”<br>
<br>
Oh! that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,<br>
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,<br>
Photographically lined<br>
On the tablet of my mind,<br>
When a yesterday has faded from its page!<br>
<br>
Alas! PRINCE AGIB went and asked them in;<br>
Gave them beer, and eggs, and sweets, and scent, and tin.<br>
And when (as snobs would say)<br>
They had “put it all away,”<br>
He requested them to tune up and begin.<br>
<br>
Though its icy horror chill you to the core,<br>
I will tell you what I never told before, -<br>
The consequences true<br>
Of that awful interview,<br>
<i>For I listened at the keyhole in the door</i>!<br>
<br>
They played him a sonata - let me see!<br>
“<i>Medulla oblongata</i>” - key of G.<br>
Then they began to sing<br>
That extremely lovely thing,<br>
<i>Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp</i>.”<br>
<br>
He gave them money, more than they could count,<br>
Scent from a most ingenious little fount,<br>
More beer, in little kegs,<br>
Many dozen hard-boiled eggs,<br>
And goodies to a fabulous amount.<br>
<br>
Now follows the dim horror of my tale,<br>
And I feel I’m growing gradually pale,<br>
For, even at this day,<br>
Though its sting has passed away,<br>
When I venture to remember it, I quail!<br>
<br>
The elder of the brothers gave a squeal,<br>
All-overish it made me for to feel;<br>
“Oh, PRINCE,” he says, says he,<br>
“<i>If a Prince indeed you be</i>,<br>
I’ve a mystery I’m going to reveal!<br>
<br>
“Oh, listen, if you’d shun a horrid death,<br>
To what the gent who’s speaking to you saith:<br>
No ‘Oüaits’ in truth are we,<br>
As you fancy that we be,<br>
For (ter-remble!) I am ALECK - this is BETH!”<br>
<br>
Said AGIB, “Oh! accursed of your kind,<br>
I have heard that ye are men of evil mind!”<br>
BETH gave a dreadful shriek -<br>
But before he’d time to speak<br>
I was mercilessly collared from behind.<br>
<br>
In number ten or twelve, or even more,<br>
They fastened me full length upon the floor.<br>
On my face extended flat,<br>
I was walloped with a cat<br>
For listening at the keyhole of a door.<br>
<br>
Oh! the horror of that agonizing thrill!<br>
(I can feel the place in frosty weather still).<br>
For a week from ten to four<br>
I was fastened to the floor,<br>
While a mercenary wopped me with a will<br>
<br>
They branded me and broke me on a wheel,<br>
And they left me in an hospital to heal;<br>
And, upon my solemn word,<br>
I have never never heard<br>
What those Tartars had determined to reveal.<br>
<br>
But that day of sorrow, misery, and rage,<br>
I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age,<br>
Photographically lined<br>
On the tablet of my mind,<br>
When a yesterday has faded from its page<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN<br>
Was the son of an elderly labouring man;<br>
You’ve guessed him a Scotchman, shrewd reader, at sight,<br>
And p’r’aps altogether, shrewd reader, you’re right.<br>
<br>
From the bonnie blue Forth to the lovely Deeside,<br>
Round by Dingwall and Wrath to the mouth of the Clyde,<br>
There wasn’t a child or a woman or man<br>
Who could pipe with CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN.<br>
<br>
No other could wake such detestable groans,<br>
With reed and with chaunter - with bag and with drones:<br>
All day and ill night he delighted the chiels<br>
With sniggering pibrochs and jiggety reels.<br>
<br>
He’d clamber a mountain and squat on the ground,<br>
And the neighbouring maidens would gather around<br>
To list to the pipes and to gaze in his een,<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
All loved their McCLAN, save a Sassenach brute,<br>
Who came to the Highlands to fish and to shoot;<br>
He dressed himself up in a Highlander way,<br>
Tho’ his name it was PATTISON CORBY TORBAY.<br>
<br>
TORBAY had incurred a good deal of expense<br>
To make him a Scotchman in every sense;<br>
But this is a matter, you’ll readily own,<br>
That isn’t a question of tailors alone.<br>
<br>
A Sassenach chief may be bonily built,<br>
He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;<br>
Stick a skeän in his hose - wear an acre of stripes -<br>
But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.<br>
<br>
CLONGLOCKETY’S pipings all night and all day<br>
Quite frenzied poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY;<br>
The girls were amused at his singular spleen,<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN,<br>
<br>
“MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS, my lad,<br>
With pibrochs and reels you are driving me mad.<br>
If you really must play on that cursed affair,<br>
My goodness! play something resembling an air.”<br>
<br>
Boiled over the blood of MACPHAIRSON McCLAN -<br>
The Clan of Clonglocketty rose as one man;<br>
For all were enraged at the insult, I ween -<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
“Let’s show,” said McCLAN, “to this Sassenach
loon<br>
That the bagpipes <i>can</i> play him a regular tune.<br>
Let’s see,” said McCLAN, as he thoughtfully sat,<br>
“‘<i>In my Cottage</i>’ is easy - I’ll practise
at that.”<br>
<br>
He blew at his “Cottage,” and blew with a will,<br>
For a year, seven months, and a fortnight, until<br>
(You’ll hardly believe it) McCLAN, I declare,<br>
Elicited something resembling an air.<br>
<br>
It was wild - it was fitful - as wild as the breeze -<br>
It wandered about into several keys;<br>
It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I’m aware;<br>
But still it distinctly suggested an air.<br>
<br>
The Sassenach screamed, and the Sassenach danced;<br>
He shrieked in his agony - bellowed and pranced;<br>
And the maidens who gathered rejoiced at the scene -<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
“Hech gather, hech gather, hech gather around;<br>
And fill a’ ye lugs wi’ the exquisite sound.<br>
An air fra’ the bagpipes - beat that if ye can!<br>
Hurrah for CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN!”<br>
<br>
The fame of his piping spread over the land:<br>
Respectable widows proposed for his hand,<br>
And maidens came flocking to sit on the green -<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
One morning the fidgety Sassenach swore<br>
He’d stand it no longer - he drew his claymore,<br>
And (this was, I think, in extremely bad taste)<br>
Divided CLONGLOCKETTY close to the waist.<br>
<br>
Oh! loud were the wailings for ANGUS McCLAN,<br>
Oh! deep was the grief for that excellent man;<br>
The maids stood aghast at the horrible scene -<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
It sorrowed poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY<br>
To find them “take on” in this serious way;<br>
He pitied the poor little fluttering birds,<br>
And solaced their souls with the following words:<br>
<br>
“Oh, maidens,” said PATTISON, touching his hat,<br>
“Don’t blubber, my dears, for a fellow like that;<br>
Observe, I’m a very superior man,<br>
A much better fellow than ANGUS McCLAN.”<br>
<br>
They smiled when he winked and addressed them as “dears,”<br>
And they all of them vowed, as they dried up their tears,<br>
A pleasanter gentleman never was seen -<br>
Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: PETER THE WAG.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Policeman PETER FORTH I drag<br>
From his obscure retreat:<br>
He was a merry genial wag,<br>
Who loved a mad conceit.<br>
If he were asked the time of day,<br>
By country bumpkins green,<br>
He not unfrequently would say,<br>
“A quarter past thirteen.”<br>
<br>
If ever you by word of mouth<br>
Inquired of MISTER FORTH<br>
The way to somewhere in the South,<br>
He always sent you North.<br>
With little boys his beat along<br>
He loved to stop and play;<br>
He loved to send old ladies wrong,<br>
And teach their feet to stray.<br>
<br>
He would in frolic moments, when<br>
Such mischief bent upon,<br>
Take Bishops up as betting men -<br>
Bid Ministers move on.<br>
Then all the worthy boys he knew<br>
He regularly licked,<br>
And always collared people who<br>
Had had their pockets picked.<br>
<br>
He was not naturally bad,<br>
Or viciously inclined,<br>
But from his early youth he had<br>
A waggish turn of mind.<br>
The Men of London grimly scowled<br>
With indignation wild;<br>
The Men of London gruffly growled,<br>
But PETER calmly smiled.<br>
<br>
Against this minion of the Crown<br>
The swelling murmurs grew -<br>
From Camberwell to Kentish Town -<br>
From Rotherhithe to Kew.<br>
Still humoured he his wagsome turn,<br>
And fed in various ways<br>
The coward rage that dared to burn,<br>
But did not dare to blaze.<br>
<br>
Still, Retribution has her day,<br>
Although her flight is slow:<br>
<i>One day that Crusher lost his way<br>
Near Poland Street, Soho.<br>
</i>The haughty boy, too proud to ask,<br>
To find his way resolved,<br>
And in the tangle of his task<br>
Got more and more involved.<br>
<br>
The Men of London, overjoyed,<br>
Came there to jeer their foe,<br>
And flocking crowds completely cloyed<br>
The mazes of Soho.<br>
The news on telegraphic wires<br>
Sped swiftly o’er the lea,<br>
Excursion trains from distant shires<br>
Brought myriads to see.<br>
<br>
For weeks he trod his self-made beats<br>
Through Newport- Gerrard- Bear-<br>
Greek- Rupert- Frith- Dean- Poland- Streets,<br>
And into Golden Square.<br>
But all, alas! in vain, for when<br>
He tried to learn the way<br>
Of little boys or grown-up men,<br>
They none of them would say.<br>
<br>
Their eyes would flash - their teeth would grind -<br>
Their lips would tightly curl -<br>
They’d say, “Thy way thyself must find,<br>
Thou misdirecting churl!”<br>
And, similarly, also, when<br>
He tried a foreign friend;<br>
Italians answered, “<i>Il balen</i>” -<br>
The French, “No comprehend.”<br>
<br>
The Russ would say with gleaming eye<br>
“ Sevastopol!” and groan.<br>
The Greek said, Τυπτω, τυπτομαι,<br>
Τυπτω, τυπτειν,
τυπτων.”<br>
To wander thus for many a year<br>
That Crusher never ceased -<br>
The Men of London dropped a tear,<br>
Their anger was appeased<br>
<br>
At length exploring gangs were sent<br>
To find poor FORTH’S remains -<br>
A handsome grant by Parliament<br>
Was voted for their pains.<br>
To seek the poor policeman out<br>
Bold spirits volunteered,<br>
And when they swore they’d solve the doubt,<br>
The Men of London cheered.<br>
<br>
And in a yard, dark, dank, and drear,<br>
They found him, on the floor -<br>
It leads from Richmond Buildings - near<br>
The Royalty stage-door.<br>
With brandy cold and brandy hot<br>
They plied him, starved and wet,<br>
And made him sergeant on the spot -<br>
The Men of London’s pet!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE. BY A MISERABLE WRETCH.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!<br>
Through pathless realms of Space<br>
Roll on!<br>
What though I’m in a sorry case?<br>
What though I cannot meet my bills?<br>
What though I suffer toothache’s ills?<br>
What though I swallow countless pills?<br>
Never <i>you</i> mind!<br>
Roll on!<br>
<br>
Roll on, thou ball, roll on!<br>
Through seas of inky air<br>
Roll on!<br>
It’s true I’ve got no shirts to wear;<br>
It’s true my butcher’s bill is due;<br>
It’s true my prospects all look blue -<br>
But don’t let that unsettle you!<br>
Never <i>you</i> mind!<br>
Roll on!<br>
<br>
[<i>It rolls on</i>.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: GENTLE ALICE BROWN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
It was a robber’s daughter, and her name was ALICE BROWN,<br>
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;<br>
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;<br>
But it isn’t of her parents that I’m going for to sing.<br>
<br>
As ALICE was a-sitting at her window-sill one day,<br>
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;<br>
She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true,<br>
That she thought, “I could be happy with a gentleman like you!”<br>
<br>
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,<br>
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten;<br>
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road<br>
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes’ walk from her abode).<br>
<br>
But ALICE was a pious girl, who knew it wasn’t wise<br>
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;<br>
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,<br>
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.<br>
<br>
“Oh, holy father,” ALICE said, “’t would grieve
you, would it not,<br>
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot?<br>
Of all unhappy sinners I’m the most unhappy one!”<br>
The padre said, “Whatever have you been and gone and done?”<br>
<br>
“I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,<br>
I’ve assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad,<br>
I’ve planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque,<br>
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!”<br>
<br>
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear,<br>
And said, “You mustn’t judge yourself too heavily, my dear:<br>
It’s wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;<br>
But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.<br>
<br>
“Girls will be girls - you’re very young, and flighty in
your mind;<br>
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:<br>
We mustn’t be too hard upon these little girlish tricks -<br>
Let’s see - five crimes at half-a-crown - exactly twelve-and-six.”<br>
<br>
“Oh, father,” little Alice cried, “your kindness makes
me weep,<br>
You do these little things for me so singularly cheap -<br>
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;<br>
But, oh! there is another crime I haven’t mentioned yet!<br>
<br>
“A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,<br>
I’ve noticed at my window, as I’ve sat a-catching flies;<br>
He passes by it every day as certain as can be -<br>
I blush to say I’ve winked at him, and he has winked at me!”<br>
<br>
“For shame!” said FATHER PAUL, “my erring daughter!
On my word<br>
This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.<br>
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand<br>
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!<br>
<br>
“This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so!<br>
They are the most remunerative customers I know;<br>
For many many years they’ve kept starvation from my doors:<br>
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!<br>
<br>
“The common country folk in this insipid neighbourhood<br>
Have nothing to confess, they’re so ridiculously good;<br>
And if you marry any one respectable at all,<br>
Why, you’ll reform, and what will then become of FATHER PAUL?”<br>
<br>
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,<br>
And started off in haste to tell the news to ROBBER BROWN -<br>
To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,<br>
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.<br>
<br>
Good ROBBER BROWN he muffled up his anger pretty well:<br>
He said, “I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;<br>
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,<br>
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.<br>
<br>
“I’ve studied human nature, and I know a thing or two:<br>
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do -<br>
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall<br>
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small.”<br>
<br>
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;<br>
He watched his opportunity, and seized him unaware;<br>
He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,<br>
And MRS. BROWN dissected him before she went to bed.<br>
<br>
And pretty little ALICE grew more settled in her mind,<br>
She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind,<br>
Until at length good ROBBER BROWN bestowed her pretty hand<br>
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: MISTER WILLIAM.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Oh, listen to the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please,<br>
Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas.<br>
He forged a party’s will, which caused anxiety and strife,<br>
Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life.<br>
<br>
He was a kindly goodly man, and naturally prone,<br>
Instead of taking others’ gold, to give away his own.<br>
But he had heard of Vice, and longed for only once to strike -<br>
To plan <i>one</i> little wickedness - to see what it was like.<br>
<br>
He argued with himself, and said, “A spotless man am I;<br>
I can’t be more respectable, however hard I try!<br>
For six and thirty years I’ve always been as good as gold,<br>
And now for half an hour I’ll plan infamy untold!<br>
<br>
“A baby who is wicked at the early age of one,<br>
And then reforms - and dies at thirty-six a spotless son,<br>
Is never, never saddled with his babyhood’s defect,<br>
But earns from worthy men consideration and respect.<br>
<br>
“So one who never revelled in discreditable tricks<br>
Until he reached the comfortable age of thirty-six,<br>
May then for half an hour perpetrate a deed of shame,<br>
Without incurring permanent disgrace, or even blame.<br>
<br>
“That babies don’t commit such crimes as forgery is true,<br>
But little sins develop, if you leave ’em to accrue;<br>
And he who shuns all vices as successive seasons roll,<br>
Should reap at length the benefit of so much self-control.<br>
<br>
“The common sin of babyhood - objecting to be drest -<br>
If you leave it to accumulate at compound interest,<br>
For anything you know, may represent, if you’re alive,<br>
A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.<br>
<br>
“Still, I wouldn’t take advantage of this fact, but be content<br>
With some pardonable folly - it’s a mere experiment.<br>
The greater the temptation to go wrong, the less the sin;<br>
So with something that’s particularly tempting I’ll begin.<br>
<br>
“I would not steal a penny, for my income’s very fair -<br>
I do not want a penny - I have pennies and to spare -<br>
And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till,<br>
The sin would be enormous - the temptation being <i>nil</i>.<br>
<br>
“But if I broke asunder all such pettifogging bounds,<br>
And forged a party’s Will for (say) Five Hundred Thousand Pounds,<br>
With such an irresistible temptation to a haul,<br>
Of course the sin must be infinitesimally small.<br>
<br>
“There’s WILSON who is dying - he has wealth from Stock
and rent -<br>
If I divert his riches from their natural descent,<br>
I’m placed in a position to indulge each little whim.”<br>
So he diverted them - and they, in turn, diverted him.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, though, by some unpardonable flaw,<br>
Temptation isn’t recognized by Britain’s Common Law;<br>
Men found him out by some peculiarity of touch,<br>
And WILLIAM got a “lifer,” which annoyed him very much.<br>
<br>
For, ah! he never reconciled himself to life in gaol,<br>
He fretted and he pined, and grew dispirited and pale;<br>
He was numbered like a cabman, too, which told upon him so<br>
That his spirits, once so buoyant, grew uncomfortably low.<br>
<br>
And sympathetic gaolers would remark, “It’s very true,<br>
He ain’t been brought up common, like the likes of me and you.”<br>
So they took him into hospital, and gave him mutton chops,<br>
And chocolate, and arrowroot, and buns, and malt and hops.<br>
<br>
Kind Clergymen, besides, grew interested in his fate,<br>
Affected by the details of his pitiable state.<br>
They waited on the Secretary, somewhere in Whitehall,<br>
Who said he would receive them any day they liked to call.<br>
<br>
“Consider, sir, the hardship of this interesting case:<br>
A prison life brings with it something very like disgrace;<br>
It’s telling on young WILLIAM, who’s reduced to skin and
bone -<br>
Remember he’s a gentleman, with money of his own.<br>
<br>
“He had an ample income, and of course he stands in need<br>
Of sherry with his dinner, and his customary weed;<br>
No delicacies now can pass his gentlemanly lips -<br>
He misses his sea-bathing and his continental trips.<br>
<br>
“He says the other prisoners are commonplace and rude;<br>
He says he cannot relish uncongenial prison food.<br>
When quite a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad,<br>
And other educational advantages he’s had.<br>
<br>
“A burglar or garotter, or, indeed, a common thief<br>
Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef,<br>
Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford, -<br>
A cut above the diet in a common workhouse ward.<br>
<br>
“But beef and mutton-broth don’t seem to suit our WILLIAM’S
whim,<br>
A boon to other prisoners - a punishment to him.<br>
It never was intended that the discipline of gaol<br>
Should dash a convict’s spirits, sir, or make him thin or pale.”<br>
<br>
“Good Gracious Me!” that sympathetic Secretary cried,<br>
“Suppose in prison fetters MISTER WILLIAM should have died!<br>
Dear me, of course! Imprisonment for <i>Life</i> his sentence
saith:<br>
I’m very glad you mentioned it - it might have been For Death!<br>
<br>
“Release him with a ticket - he’ll be better then, no doubt,<br>
And tell him I apologize.” So MISTER WILLIAM’S out.<br>
I hope he will be careful in his manuscripts, I’m sure,<br>
And not begin experimentalizing any more.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE BUMBOAT WOMAN’S STORY.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
I’m old, my dears, and shrivelled with age, and work, and grief,<br>
My eyes are gone, and my teeth have been drawn by Time, the Thief!<br>
For terrible sights I’ve seen, and dangers great I’ve run
-<br>
I’m nearly seventy now, and my work is almost done!<br>
<br>
Ah! I’ve been young in my time, and I’ve played the
deuce with men!<br>
I’m speaking of ten years past - I was barely sixty then:<br>
My cheeks were mellow and soft, and my eyes were large and sweet,<br>
POLL PINEAPPLE’S eyes were the standing toast of the Royal Fleet!<br>
<br>
A bumboat woman was I, and I faithfully served the ships<br>
With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips,<br>
And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights,<br>
And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking midshipmites.<br>
<br>
Of all the kind commanders who anchored in Portsmouth Bay,<br>
By far the sweetest of all was kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE.’<br>
LIEUTENANT BELAYE commanded the gunboat <i>Hot Cross Bun,<br>
</i>She was seven and thirty feet in length, and she carried a gun.<br>
<br>
With a laudable view of enhancing his country’s naval pride,<br>
When people inquired her size, LIEUTENANT BELAYE replied,<br>
“Oh, my ship, my ship is the first of the Hundred and Seventy-ones!”<br>
Which meant her tonnage, but people imagined it meant her guns.<br>
<br>
Whenever I went on board he would beckon me down below,<br>
“Come down, Little Buttercup, come” (for he loved to call
me so),<br>
And he’d tell of the fights at sea in which he’d taken a
part,<br>
And so LIEUTENANT BELAYE won poor POLL PINEAPPLE’S heart!<br>
<br>
But at length his orders came, and he said one day, said he,<br>
“I’m ordered to sail with the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i> to the
German Sea.”<br>
And the Portsmouth maidens wept when they learnt the evil day,<br>
For every Portsmouth maid loved good LIEUTENANT BELAYE.<br>
<br>
And I went to a back back street, with plenty of cheap cheap shops,<br>
And I bought an oilskin hat and a second-hand suit of slops,<br>
And I went to LIEUTENANT BELAYE (and he never suspected <i>me</i>!)<br>
And I entered myself as a chap as wanted to go to sea.<br>
<br>
We sailed that afternoon at the mystic hour of one, -<br>
Remarkably nice young men were the crew of the <i>Hot Cross Bun,<br>
</i>I’m sorry to say that I’ve heard that sailors sometimes
swear,<br>
But I never yet heard a <i>Bun</i> say anything wrong, I declare.<br>
<br>
When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a “Messmate, ho! What
cheer?”<br>
But here, on the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>, it was “How do you do,
my dear?”<br>
When Jack Tars growl, I believe they growl with a big big D-<br>
But the strongest oath of the <i>Hot Cross Buns</i> was a mild “Dear
me!”<br>
<br>
Yet, though they were all well-bred, you could scarcely call them slick:<br>
Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick;<br>
And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and fair,<br>
They spent more time than a sailor should on his back back hair.<br>
<br>
They certainly shivered and shook when ordered aloft to run,<br>
And they screamed when LIEUTENANT BELAYE discharged his only gun.<br>
And as he was proud of his gun - such pride is hardly wrong -<br>
The Lieutenant was blazing away at intervals all day long.<br>
<br>
They all agreed very well, though at times you heard it said<br>
That BILL had a way of his own of making his lips look red -<br>
That JOE looked quite his age - or somebody might declare<br>
That BARNACLE’S long pig-tail was never his own own hair.<br>
<br>
BELAYE would admit that his men were of no great use to him,<br>
“But, then,” he would say, “there is little to do
on a gunboat trim<br>
I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too -<br>
And it <i>is</i> such a treat to sail with a gentle well-bred crew.”<br>
<br>
I saw him every day. How the happy moments sped!<br>
Reef topsails! Make all taut! There’s dirty weather
ahead!<br>
(I do not mean that tempests threatened the <i>Hot Cross Bun:<br>
</i>In <i>that</i> case, I don’t know whatever we <i>should</i>
have done!)<br>
<br>
After a fortnight’s cruise, we put into port one day,<br>
And off on leave for a week went kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE,<br>
And after a long long week had passed (and it seemed like a life),<br>
LIEUTENANT BELAYE returned to his ship with a fair young wife!<br>
<br>
He up, and he says, says he, “O crew of the <i>Hot Cross Bun</i>,<br>
Here is the wife of my heart, for the Church has made us one!”<br>
And as he uttered the word, the crew went out of their wits,<br>
And all fell down in so many separate fainting-fits.<br>
<br>
And then their hair came down, or off, as the case might be,<br>
And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me,<br>
Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor’s blue array,<br>
To follow the shifting fate of kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE.<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
It’s strange to think that <i>I</i> should ever have loved young
men,<br>
But I’m speaking of ten years past - I was barely sixty then,<br>
And now my cheeks are furrowed with grief and age, I trow!<br>
And poor POLL PINEAPPLE’S eyes have lost their lustre now!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: LOST MR. BLAKE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
MR. BLAKE was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,<br>
Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak,<br>
He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass of grog
on a Sunday after dinner,<br>
And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or - if Good Friday
or Christmas Day happened to come in it - three times a week.<br>
<br>
He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dresses<br>
That the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray,<br>
And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap’s distresses,<br>
He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, hole-and-corner sort
of way.<br>
<br>
I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics,<br>
When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject of the proper
width of a chasuble’s hem;<br>
I have even known him to sneer at albs - and as for dalmatics,<br>
Words can’t convey an idea of the contempt he expressed for <i>them.<br>
<br>
</i>He didn’t believe in persons who, not being well off themselves,
are obliged to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money
from wealthier people,<br>
And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks;<br>
He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priest’s
robes than with his church or his steeple,<br>
And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over
whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an
exaggerated GUY FAWKES.<br>
<br>
This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless<br>
That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged
sister, by the name of BIGGS.<br>
She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been
particularly blameless;<br>
Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing
to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.<br>
<br>
She was an excellent person in every way - and won the respect even
of MRS. GRUNDY,<br>
She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn’t have wasted a penny
if she had owned the Koh-i-noor.<br>
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday,<br>
And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the
bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when
she had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup
for the deserving poor.<br>
<br>
I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE - that outcast of society,<br>
And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look dubious
and to cough,<br>
She would say, “Oh, my friends, it’s because I hope to bring
this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety,<br>
And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was uncommonly
well off.<br>
<br>
And when MR. BLAKE’S dissipated friends called his attention to
the frown or the pout of her,<br>
Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an unmentionable
place,<br>
He would say that “she would be a very decent old girl when all
that nonsense was knocked out of her,”<br>
And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered him with
disgrace.<br>
<br>
She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and,
four or five times in the week, and never seemed to pall of them,<br>
So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that
had services at different hours, so to speak;<br>
And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their going
to all of them,<br>
So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if
they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the
week.<br>
<br>
She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate,
and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the
commonplace half-crowns and shillings,<br>
So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary
chance there wasn’t a charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a
couple of sovereigns (one for him and one for her) into the poor-box
at the door;<br>
And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping
money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,<br>
She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere
with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.<br>
<br>
On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society,<br>
For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and
wringing of hands and shaking of heads:<br>
She wouldn’t hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it
was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,<br>
And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed
doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the
boots and shoes, cooking the parlour dinner, waiting generally on the
family, and making the beds.<br>
But BLAKE even went further than that, and said that people should do
their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a
menial situation,<br>
So he wouldn’t allow his servants to do so much as even answer
a bell.<br>
Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the second
floor, much against her inclination, -<br>
And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has
put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.<br>
<br>
After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with
the rough of it,<br>
(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion
of connubial bliss),<br>
MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it,<br>
And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE’S own original
line of conduct wasn’t so much amiss.<br>
<br>
And now that wicked person - that detestable sinner (“BELIAL BLAKE”
his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities),<br>
And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike
and pity so,<br>
Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and occasionally
on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial fondlings and affectionate
reciprocities,<br>
And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it)
they expect to go!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE BABY’S VENGEANCE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Weary at heart and extremely ill<br>
Was PALEY VOLLAIRE of Bromptonville,<br>
In a dirty lodging, with fever down,<br>
Close to the Polygon, Somers Town.<br>
<br>
PALEY VOLLAIRE was an only son<br>
(For why? His mother had had but one),<br>
And PALEY inherited gold and grounds<br>
Worth several hundred thousand pounds.<br>
<br>
But he, like many a rich young man,<br>
Through this magnificent fortune ran,<br>
And nothing was left for his daily needs<br>
But duplicate copies of mortgage-deeds.<br>
<br>
Shabby and sorry and sorely sick,<br>
He slept, and dreamt that the clock’s “tick, tick,”<br>
Was one of the Fates, with a long sharp knife,<br>
Snicking off bits of his shortened life.<br>
<br>
He woke and counted the pips on the walls,<br>
The outdoor passengers’ loud footfalls,<br>
And reckoned all over, and reckoned again,<br>
The little white tufts on his counterpane.<br>
<br>
A medical man to his bedside came.<br>
(I can’t remember that doctor’s name),<br>
And said, “You’ll die in a very short while<br>
If you don’t set sail for Madeira’s isle.”<br>
<br>
“Go to Madeira? goodness me!<br>
I haven’t the money to pay your fee!”<br>
“Then, PALEY VOLLAIRE,” said the leech, “good bye;<br>
I’ll come no more, for your’re sure to die.”<br>
<br>
He sighed and he groaned and smote his breast;<br>
“Oh, send,” said he, “for FREDERICK WEST,<br>
Ere senses fade or my eyes grow dim:<br>
I’ve a terrible tale to whisper him!”<br>
<br>
Poor was FREDERICK’S lot in life, -<br>
A dustman he with a fair young wife,<br>
A worthy man with a hard-earned store,<br>
A hundred and seventy pounds - or more.<br>
<br>
FREDERICK came, and he said, “Maybe<br>
You’ll say what you happened to want with me?”<br>
“Wronged boy,” said PALEY VOLLAIRE, “I will,<br>
But don’t you fidget yourself - sit still.”<br>
<br>
<br>
THE TERRIBLE TALE.<br>
<br>
<br>
“’Tis now some thirty-seven years ago<br>
Since first began the plot that I’m revealing,<br>
A fine young woman, whom you ought to know,<br>
Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing.<br>
Herself by means of mangling reimbursing,<br>
And now and then (at intervals) wet-nursing.<br>
<br>
“Two little babes dwelt in their humble cot:<br>
One was her own - the other only lent to her:<br>
<i>Her own she slighted</i>. Tempted by a lot<br>
Of gold and silver regularly sent to her,<br>
She ministered unto the little other<br>
In the capacity of foster-mother.<br>
<br>
“<i>I was her own</i>. Oh! how I lay and sobbed<br>
In my poor cradle - deeply, deeply cursing<br>
The rich man’s pampered bantling, who had robbed<br>
My only birthright - an attentive nursing!<br>
Sometimes in hatred of my foster-brother,<br>
I gnashed my gums - which terrified my mother.<br>
<br>
“One day - it was quite early in the week -<br>
I <i>in</i> MY <i>cradle having placed the bantling</i> -<br>
Crept into his! He had not learnt to speak,<br>
But I could see his face with anger mantling.<br>
It was imprudent - well, disgraceful maybe,<br>
For, oh! I was a bad, blackhearted baby!<br>
<br>
“So great a luxury was food, I think<br>
No wickedness but I was game to try for it.<br>
<i>Now</i> if I wanted anything to drink<br>
At any time, I only had to cry for it!<br>
<i>Once</i>, if I dared to weep, the bottle lacking,<br>
My blubbering involved a serious smacking!<br>
<br>
“We grew up in the usual way - my friend,<br>
My foster-brother, daily growing thinner,<br>
While gradually I began to mend,<br>
And thrived amazingly on double dinner.<br>
And every one, besides my foster-mother,<br>
Believed that either of us was the other.<br>
<br>
“I came into <i>his</i> wealth - I bore <i>his</i> name,<br>
I bear it still - <i>his</i> property I squandered -<br>
I mortgaged everything - and now (oh, shame!)<br>
Into a Somers Town shake-down I’ve wandered!<br>
I am no PALEY - no, VOLLAIRE - it’s true, my boy!<br>
The only rightful PALEY V. is <i>you</i>, my boy!<br>
<br>
“And all I have is yours - and yours is mine.<br>
I still may place you in your true position:<br>
Give me the pounds you’ve saved, and I’ll resign<br>
My noble name, my rank, and my condition.<br>
So far my wickedness in falsely owning<br>
Your vasty wealth, I am at last atoning!”<br>
<br>
* * * * * * *<br>
<br>
FREDERICK he was a simple soul,<br>
He pulled from his pocket a bulky roll,<br>
And gave to PALEY his hard-earned store,<br>
A hundred and seventy pounds or more.<br>
<br>
PALEY VOLLAIRE, with many a groan,<br>
Gave FREDERICK all that he called his own, -<br>
Two shirts and a sock, and a vest of jean,<br>
A Wellington boot and a bamboo cane.<br>
<br>
And FRED (entitled to all things there)<br>
He took the fever from MR. VOLLAIRE,<br>
Which killed poor FREDERICK WEST. Meanwhile<br>
VOLLAIRE sailed off to Madeira’s isle.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
I sing a legend of the sea,<br>
So hard-a-port upon your lee!<br>
A ship on starboard tack!<br>
She’s bound upon a private cruise -<br>
(This is the kind of spice I use<br>
To give a salt-sea smack).<br>
<br>
Behold, on every afternoon<br>
(Save in a gale or strong Monsoon)<br>
Great CAPTAIN CAPEL CLEGGS<br>
(Great morally, though rather short)<br>
Sat at an open weather-port<br>
And aired his shapely legs.<br>
<br>
And Mermaids hung around in flocks,<br>
On cable chains and distant rocks,<br>
To gaze upon those limbs;<br>
For legs like those, of flesh and bone,<br>
Are things “not generally known”<br>
To any Merman TIMBS.<br>
<br>
But Mermen didn’t seem to care<br>
Much time (as far as I’m aware)<br>
With CLEGGS’S legs to spend;<br>
Though Mermaids swam around all day<br>
And gazed, exclaiming, “<i>That’s</i> the way<br>
A gentleman should end!<br>
<br>
“A pair of legs with well-cut knees,<br>
And calves and ankles such as these<br>
Which we in rapture hail,<br>
Are far more eloquent, it’s clear<br>
(When clothed in silk and kerseymere),<br>
Than any nasty tail.”<br>
<br>
And CLEGGS - a worthy kind old boy -<br>
Rejoiced to add to others’ joy,<br>
And, when the day was dry,<br>
Because it pleased the lookers-on,<br>
He sat from morn till night - though con-<br>
Stitutionally shy.<br>
<br>
At first the Mermen laughed, “Pooh! pooh!”<br>
But finally they jealous grew,<br>
And sounded loud recalls;<br>
But vainly. So these fishy males<br>
Declared they too would clothe their tails<br>
In silken hose and smalls.<br>
<br>
They set to work, these water-men,<br>
And made their nether robes - but when<br>
They drew with dainty touch<br>
The kerseymere upon their tails,<br>
They found it scraped against their scales,<br>
And hurt them very much.<br>
<br>
The silk, besides, with which they chose<br>
To deck their tails by way of hose<br>
(They never thought of shoon),<br>
For such a use was much too thin, -<br>
It tore against the caudal fin,<br>
And “went in ladders” soon.<br>
<br>
So they designed another plan:<br>
They sent their most seductive man<br>
This note to him to show -<br>
“Our Monarch sends to CAPTAIN CLEGGS<br>
His humble compliments, and begs<br>
He’ll join him down below;<br>
<br>
“We’ve pleasant homes below the sea -<br>
Besides, if CAPTAIN CLEGGS should be<br>
(As our advices say)<br>
A judge of Mermaids, he will find<br>
Our lady-fish of every kind<br>
Inspection will repay.”<br>
<br>
Good CAPEL sent a kind reply,<br>
For CAPEL thought he could descry<br>
An admirable plan<br>
To study all their ways and laws -<br>
(But not their lady-fish, because<br>
He was a married man).<br>
<br>
The Merman sank - the Captain too<br>
Jumped overboard, and dropped from view<br>
Like stone from catapult;<br>
And when he reached the Merman’s lair,<br>
He certainly was welcomed there,<br>
But, ah! with what result?<br>
<br>
They didn’t let him learn their law,<br>
Or make a note of what he saw,<br>
Or interesting mem.:<br>
The lady-fish he couldn’t find,<br>
But that, of course, he didn’t mind -<br>
He didn’t come for them.<br>
<br>
For though, when CAPTAIN CAPEL sank,<br>
The Mermen drawn in double rank<br>
Gave him a hearty hail,<br>
Yet when secure of CAPTAIN CLEGGS,<br>
They cut off both his lovely legs,<br>
And gave him <i>such</i> a tail!<br>
<br>
When CAPTAIN CLEGGS returned aboard,<br>
His blithesome crew convulsive roar’d,<br>
To see him altered so.<br>
The Admiralty did insist<br>
That he upon the Half-pay List<br>
Immediately should go.<br>
<br>
In vain declared the poor old salt,<br>
“It’s my misfortune - not my fault,”<br>
With tear and trembling lip -<br>
In vain poor CAPEL begged and begged.<br>
“A man must be completely legged<br>
Who rules a British ship.”<br>
<br>
So spake the stern First Lord aloud -<br>
He was a wag, though very proud,<br>
And much rejoiced to say,<br>
“You’re only half a captain now -<br>
And so, my worthy friend, I vow<br>
You’ll only get half-pay!”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: ANNIE PROTHEROE. A LEGEND OF STRATFORD-LE-BOW.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Oh! listen to the tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE.<br>
She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW;<br>
She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day -<br>
A gentle executioner whose name was GILBERT CLAY.<br>
<br>
I think I hear you say, “A dreadful subject for your rhymes!”<br>
O reader, do not shrink - he didn’t live in modern times!<br>
He lived so long ago (the sketch will show it at a glance)<br>
That all his actions glitter with the lime-light of Romance.<br>
<br>
In busy times he laboured at his gentle craft all day -<br>
“No doubt you mean his Cal-craft,” you amusingly will say
-<br>
But, no - he didn’t operate with common bits of string,<br>
He was a Public Headsman, which is quite another thing.<br>
<br>
And when his work was over, they would ramble o’er the lea,<br>
And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree,<br>
And ANNIE’S simple prattle entertained him on his walk,<br>
For public executions formed the subject of her talk.<br>
<br>
And sometimes he’d explain to her, which charmed her very much,<br>
How famous operators vary very much in touch,<br>
And then, perhaps, he’d show how he himself performed the trick,<br>
And illustrate his meaning with a poppy and a stick.<br>
<br>
Or, if it rained, the little maid would stop at home, and look<br>
At his favourable notices, all pasted in a book,<br>
And then her cheek would flush - her swimming eyes would dance with
joy<br>
In a glow of admiration at the prowess of her boy.<br>
<br>
One summer eve, at supper-time, the gentle GILBERT said<br>
(As he helped his pretty ANNIE to a slice of collared head),<br>
“This reminds me I must settle on the next ensuing day<br>
The hash of that unmitigated villain PETER GRAY.”<br>
<br>
He saw his ANNIE tremble and he saw his ANNIE start,<br>
Her changing colour trumpeted the flutter at her heart;<br>
Young GILBERT’S manly bosom rose and sank with jealous fear,<br>
And he said, “O gentle ANNIE, what’s the meaning of this
here?”<br>
<br>
And ANNIE answered, blushing in an interesting way,<br>
“You think, no doubt, I’m sighing for that felon PETER GRAY:<br>
That I was his young woman is unquestionably true,<br>
But not since I began a-keeping company with you.”<br>
<br>
Then GILBERT, who was irritable, rose and loudly swore<br>
He’d know the reason why if she refused to tell him more;<br>
And she answered (all the woman in her flashing from her eyes)<br>
“You mustn’t ask no questions, and you won’t be told
no lies!<br>
<br>
“Few lovers have the privilege enjoyed, my dear, by you,<br>
Of chopping off a rival’s head and quartering him too!<br>
Of vengeance, dear, to-morrow you will surely take your fill!”<br>
And GILBERT ground his molars as he answered her, “I will!”<br>
<br>
Young GILBERT rose from table with a stern determined look,<br>
And, frowning, took an inexpensive hatchet from its hook;<br>
And ANNIE watched his movements with an interested air -<br>
For the morrow - for the morrow he was going to prepare!<br>
<br>
He chipped it with a hammer and he chopped it with a bill,<br>
He poured sulphuric acid on the edge of it, until<br>
This terrible Avenger of the Majesty of Law<br>
Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.<br>
<br>
And ANNIE said, “O GILBERT, dear, I do not understand<br>
Why ever you are injuring that hatchet in your hand?’<br>
He said, “It is intended for to lacerate and flay<br>
The neck of that unmitigated villain PETER GRAY!”<br>
<br>
“Now, GILBERT,” ANNIE answered, “wicked headsman,
just beware -<br>
I won’t have PETER tortured with that horrible affair;<br>
If you appear with that, you may depend you’ll rue the day.”<br>
But GILBERT said, “Oh, shall I?” which was just his nasty
way.<br>
<br>
He saw a look of anger from her eyes distinctly dart,<br>
For ANNIE was a woman, and had pity in her heart!<br>
She wished him a good evening - he answered with a glare;<br>
She only said, “Remember, for your ANNIE will be there!”<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
The morrow GILBERT boldly on the scaffold took his stand,<br>
With a vizor on his face and with a hatchet in his hand,<br>
And all the people noticed that the Engine of the Law<br>
Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.<br>
<br>
The felon very coolly loosed his collar and his stock,<br>
And placed his wicked head upon the handy little block.<br>
The hatchet was uplifted for to settle PETER GRAY,<br>
When GILBERT plainly heard a woman’s voice exclaiming, “Stay!”<br>
<br>
’Twas ANNIE, gentle ANNIE, as you’ll easily believe.<br>
“O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve,<br>
It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago,<br>
And passed through that post-office which I used to keep at Bow.<br>
<br>
“I loved you, loved you madly, and you know it, GILBERT CLAY,<br>
And as I’d quite surrendered all idea of PETER GRAY,<br>
I quietly suppressed it, as you’ll clearly understand,<br>
For I thought it might be awkward if he came and claimed my hand.<br>
<br>
“In anger at my secret (which I could not tell before),<br>
To lacerate poor PETER GRAY vindictively you swore;<br>
I told you if you used that blunted axe you’d rue the day,<br>
And so you will, young GILBERT, for I’ll marry PETER GRAY!”<br>
<br>
[<i>And so she did.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</i>Ballad: AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
I’ve painted SHAKESPEARE all my life -<br>
“An infant” (even then at “play”!)<br>
“A boy,” with stage-ambition rife,<br>
Then “Married to ANN HATHAWAY.”<br>
<br>
“The bard’s first ticket night” (or “ben.”),<br>
His “First appearance on the stage,”<br>
His “Call before the curtain” - then<br>
“Rejoicings when he came of age.”<br>
<br>
The bard play-writing in his room,<br>
The bard a humble lawyer’s clerk.<br>
The bard a lawyer <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a>
- parson <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> - groom
<a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> -<br>
The bard deer-stealing, after dark.<br>
<br>
The bard a tradesman <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a>
- and a Jew <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7">{7}</a> -<br>
The bard a botanist <a name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8">{8}</a>
- a beak <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9">{9}</a> -<br>
The bard a skilled musician <a name="citation10"></a><a href="#footnote10">{10}</a>
too -<br>
A sheriff <a name="citation11"></a><a href="#footnote11">{11}</a> and
a surgeon <a name="citation12"></a><a href="#footnote12">{12}</a> eke!<br>
<br>
Yet critics say (a friendly stock)<br>
That, though it’s evident I try,<br>
Yet even <i>I</i> can barely mock<br>
The glimmer of his wondrous eye!<br>
<br>
One morning as a work I framed,<br>
There passed a person, walking hard:<br>
“My gracious goodness,” I exclaimed,<br>
“How very like my dear old bard!<br>
<br>
“Oh, what a model he would make!”<br>
I rushed outside - impulsive me! -<br>
“Forgive the liberty I take,<br>
But you’re so very” - “Stop!” said he.<br>
<br>
“You needn’t waste your breath or time, -<br>
I know what you are going to say, -<br>
That you’re an artist, and that I’m<br>
Remarkably like SHAKESPEARE. Eh?<br>
<br>
“You wish that I would sit to you?”<br>
I clasped him madly round the waist,<br>
And breathlessly replied, “I do!”<br>
“All right,” said he, “but please make haste.”<br>
<br>
I led him by his hallowed sleeve,<br>
And worked away at him apace,<br>
I painted him till dewy eve, -<br>
There never was a nobler face!<br>
<br>
“Oh, sir,” I said, “a fortune grand<br>
Is yours, by dint of merest chance, -<br>
To sport <i>his</i> brow at second-hand,<br>
To wear <i>his</i> cast-off countenance!<br>
<br>
“To rub <i>his</i> eyes whene’er they ache -<br>
To wear <i>his</i> baldness ere you’re old -<br>
To clean <i>his</i> teeth when you awake -<br>
To blow <i>his</i> nose when you’ve a cold!”<br>
<br>
His eyeballs glistened in his eyes -<br>
I sat and watched and smoked my pipe;<br>
“Bravo!” I said, “I recognize<br>
The phrensy of your prototype!”<br>
<br>
His scanty hair he wildly tore:<br>
“That’s right,” said I, “it shows your breed.”<br>
He danced - he stamped - he wildly swore -<br>
“Bless me, that’s very fine indeed!”<br>
<br>
“Sir,” said the grand Shakesperian boy<br>
(Continuing to blaze away),<br>
“You think my face a source of joy;<br>
That shows you know not what you say.<br>
<br>
“Forgive these yells and cellar-flaps:<br>
I’m always thrown in some such state<br>
When on his face well-meaning chaps<br>
This wretched man congratulate.<br>
<br>
“For, oh! this face - this pointed chin -<br>
This nose - this brow - these eyeballs too,<br>
Have always been the origin<br>
Of all the woes I ever knew!<br>
<br>
“If to the play my way I find,<br>
To see a grand Shakesperian piece,<br>
I have no rest, no ease of mind<br>
Until the author’s puppets cease.<br>
<br>
“Men nudge each other - thus - and say,<br>
‘This certainly is SHAKESPEARE’S son,’<br>
And merry wags (of course in play)<br>
Cry ‘Author!’ when the piece is done.<br>
<br>
“In church the people stare at me,<br>
Their soul the sermon never binds;<br>
I catch them looking round to see,<br>
And thoughts of SHAKESPEARE fill their minds.<br>
<br>
“And sculptors, fraught with cunning wile,<br>
Who find it difficult to crown<br>
A bust with BROWN’S insipid smile,<br>
Or TOMKINS’S unmannered frown,<br>
<br>
“Yet boldly make my face their own,<br>
When (oh, presumption!) they require<br>
To animate a paving-stone<br>
With SHAKESPEARE’S intellectual fire.<br>
<br>
“At parties where young ladies gaze,<br>
And I attempt to speak my joy,<br>
‘Hush, pray,’ some lovely creature says,<br>
‘The fond illusion don’t destroy!’<br>
<br>
“Whene’er I speak, my soul is wrung<br>
With these or some such whisperings:<br>
‘’Tis pity that a SHAKESPEARE’S tongue<br>
Should say such un-Shakesperian things!’<br>
<br>
“I should not thus be criticised<br>
Had I a face of common wont:<br>
Don’t envy me - now, be advised!”<br>
And, now I think of it, I don’t!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE KING OF CANOODLE-DUM.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
The story of FREDERICK GOWLER,<br>
A mariner of the sea,<br>
Who quitted his ship, the <i>Howler,<br>
</i>A-sailing in Caribbee.<br>
For many a day he wandered,<br>
Till he met in a state of rum<br>
CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,<br>
The King of Canoodle-Dum.<br>
<br>
That monarch addressed him gaily,<br>
“Hum! Golly de do to-day?<br>
Hum! Lily-white Buckra Sailee” -<br>
(You notice his playful way?) -<br>
“What dickens you doin’ here, sar?<br>
Why debbil you want to come?<br>
Hum! Picaninnee, dere isn’t no sea<br>
In City Canoodle-Dum!”<br>
<br>
And GOWLER he answered sadly,<br>
“Oh, mine is a doleful tale!<br>
They’ve treated me werry badly<br>
In Lunnon, from where I hail.<br>
I’m one of the Family Royal -<br>
No common Jack Tar you see;<br>
I’m WILLIAM THE FOURTH, far up in the North,<br>
A King in my own countree!”<br>
<br>
Bang-bang! How the tom-toms thundered!<br>
Bang-bang! How they thumped this gongs!<br>
Bang-bang! How the people wondered!<br>
Bang-bang! At it hammer and tongs!<br>
Alliance with Kings of Europe<br>
Is an honour Canoodlers seek,<br>
Her monarchs don’t stop with PEPPERMINT DROP<br>
Every day in the week!<br>
<br>
FRED told them that he was undone,<br>
For his people all went insane,<br>
And fired the Tower of London,<br>
And Grinnidge’s Naval Fane.<br>
And some of them racked St. James’s,<br>
And vented their rage upon<br>
The Church of St. Paul, the Fishmongers’ Hall,<br>
And the Angel at Islington.<br>
<br>
CALAMITY POP implored him<br>
In his capital to remain<br>
Till those people of his restored him<br>
To power and rank again.<br>
CALAMITY POP he made him<br>
A Prince of Canoodle-Dum,<br>
With a couple of caves, some beautiful slaves,<br>
And the run of the royal rum.<br>
<br>
Pop gave him his only daughter,<br>
HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP:<br>
FRED vowed that if over the water<br>
He went, in an English ship,<br>
He’d make her his Queen, - though truly<br>
It is an unusual thing<br>
For a Caribbee brat who’s as black as your hat<br>
To be wife of an English King.<br>
<br>
And all the Canoodle-Dummers<br>
They copied his rolling walk,<br>
His method of draining rummers,<br>
His emblematical talk.<br>
For his dress and his graceful breeding,<br>
His delicate taste in rum,<br>
And his nautical way, were the talk of the day<br>
In the Court of Canoodle-Dum.<br>
<br>
CALAMITY POP most wisely<br>
Determined in everything<br>
To model his Court precisely<br>
On that of the English King;<br>
And ordered that every lady<br>
And every lady’s lord<br>
Should masticate jacky (a kind of tobaccy),<br>
And scatter its juice abroad.<br>
<br>
They signified wonder roundly<br>
At any astounding yarn,<br>
By darning their dear eyes roundly<br>
(‘T was all they had to darn).<br>
They “hoisted their slacks,” adjusting<br>
Garments of plantain-leaves<br>
With nautical twitches (as if they wore breeches,<br>
Instead of a dress like EVE’S!)<br>
<br>
They shivered their timbers proudly,<br>
At a phantom forelock dragged,<br>
And called for a hornpipe loudly<br>
Whenever amusement flagged.<br>
“Hum! Golly! him POP resemble,<br>
Him Britisher sov’reign, hum!<br>
CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP,<br>
De King of Canoodle-Dum!”<br>
<br>
The mariner’s lively “Hollo!”<br>
Enlivened Canoodle’s plain<br>
(For blessings unnumbered follow<br>
In Civilization’s train).<br>
But Fortune, who loves a bathos,<br>
A terrible ending planned,<br>
For ADMIRAL D. CHICKABIDDY, C.B.,<br>
Placed foot on Canoodle land!<br>
<br>
That rebel, he seized KING GOWLER,<br>
He threatened his royal brains,<br>
And put him aboard the <i>Howler,<br>
</i>And fastened him down with chains.<br>
The <i>Howler</i> she weighed her anchor,<br>
With FREDERICK nicely nailed,<br>
And off to the North with WILLIAM THE FOURTH<br>
These horrible pirates sailed.<br>
<br>
CALAMITY said (with folly),<br>
“Hum! nebber want him again -<br>
Him civilize all of us, golly!<br>
CALAMITY suck him brain!”<br>
The people, however, were pained when<br>
They saw him aboard his ship,<br>
But none of them wept for their FREDDY, except<br>
HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE MARTINET.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Some time ago, in simple verse<br>
I sang the story true<br>
Of CAPTAIN REECE, the <i>Mantelpiece,<br>
</i>And all her happy crew.<br>
<br>
I showed how any captain may<br>
Attach his men to him,<br>
If he but heeds their smallest needs,<br>
And studies every whim.<br>
<br>
Now mark how, by Draconic rule<br>
And <i>hauteur</i> ill-advised,<br>
The noblest crew upon the Blue<br>
May be demoralized.<br>
<br>
When his ungrateful country placed<br>
Kind REECE upon half-pay,<br>
Without much claim SIR BERKELY came,<br>
And took command one day.<br>
<br>
SIR BERKELY was a martinet -<br>
A stern unyielding soul -<br>
Who ruled his ship by dint of whip<br>
And horrible black-hole.<br>
<br>
A sailor who was overcome<br>
From having freely dined,<br>
And chanced to reel when at the wheel,<br>
He instantly confined!<br>
<br>
And tars who, when an action raged,<br>
Appeared alarmed or scared,<br>
And those below who wished to go,<br>
He very seldom spared.<br>
<br>
E’en he who smote his officer<br>
For punishment was booked,<br>
And mutinies upon the seas<br>
He rarely overlooked.<br>
<br>
In short, the happy <i>Mantelpiece</i>,<br>
Where all had gone so well,<br>
Beneath that fool SIR BERKELY’S rule<br>
Became a floating hell.<br>
<br>
When first SIR BERKELY came aboard<br>
He read a speech to all,<br>
And told them how he’d made a vow<br>
To act on duty’s call.<br>
<br>
Then WILLIAM LEE, he up and said<br>
(The Captain’s coxswain he),<br>
“We’ve heard the speech your honour’s made,<br>
And werry pleased we be.<br>
<br>
“We won’t pretend, my lad, as how<br>
We’re glad to lose our REECE;<br>
Urbane, polite, he suited quite<br>
The saucy <i>Mantelpiece.<br>
<br>
</i>“But if your honour gives your mind<br>
To study all our ways,<br>
With dance and song we’ll jog along<br>
As in those happy days.<br>
<br>
“I like your honour’s looks, and feel<br>
You’re worthy of your sword.<br>
Your hand, my lad - I’m doosid glad<br>
To welcome you aboard!”<br>
<br>
SIR BERKELY looked amazed, as though<br>
He didn’t understand.<br>
“Don’t shake your head,” good WILLIAM said,<br>
“It is an honest hand.<br>
<br>
“It’s grasped a better hand than yourn -<br>
Come, gov’nor, I insist!”<br>
The Captain stared - the coxswain glared -<br>
The hand became a fist!<br>
<br>
“Down, upstart!” said the hardy salt;<br>
But BERKELY dodged his aim,<br>
And made him go in chains below:<br>
The seamen murmured “Shame!”<br>
<br>
He stopped all songs at 12 p.m.,<br>
Stopped hornpipes when at sea,<br>
And swore his cot (or bunk) should not<br>
Be used by aught than he.<br>
<br>
He never joined their daily mess,<br>
Nor asked them to his own,<br>
But chaffed in gay and social way<br>
The officers alone.<br>
<br>
His First Lieutenant, PETER, was<br>
As useless as could be,<br>
A helpless stick, and always sick<br>
When there was any sea.<br>
<br>
This First Lieutenant proved to be<br>
His foster-sister MAY,<br>
Who went to sea for love of he<br>
In masculine array.<br>
<br>
And when he learnt the curious fact,<br>
Did he emotion show,<br>
Or dry her tears or end her fears<br>
By marrying her? No!<br>
<br>
Or did he even try to soothe<br>
This maiden in her teens?<br>
Oh, no! - instead he made her wed<br>
The Sergeant of Marines!<br>
<br>
Of course such Spartan discipline<br>
Would make an angel fret;<br>
They drew a lot, and WILLIAM shot<br>
This fearful martinet.<br>
<br>
The Admiralty saw how ill<br>
They’d treated CAPTAIN REECE;<br>
He was restored once more aboard<br>
The saucy <i>Mantelpiece.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</i>Ballad: THE SAILOR BOY TO HIS LASS.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
I go away this blessed day,<br>
To sail across the sea, MATILDA!<br>
My vessel starts for various parts<br>
At twenty after three, MATILDA.<br>
I hardly know where we may go,<br>
Or if it’s near or far, MATILDA,<br>
For CAPTAIN HYDE does not confide<br>
In any ’fore-mast tar, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
Beneath my ban that mystic man<br>
Shall suffer, <i>coûte qui coûte</i>, MATILDA!<br>
What right has he to keep from me<br>
The Admiralty route, MATILDA?<br>
Because, forsooth! I am a youth<br>
Of common sailors’ lot, MATILDA!<br>
Am I a man on human plan<br>
Designed, or am I not, MATILDA?<br>
<br>
But there, my lass, we’ll let that pass!<br>
With anxious love I burn, MATILDA.<br>
I want to know if we shall go<br>
To church when I return, MATILDA?<br>
Your eyes are red, you bow your head;<br>
It’s pretty clear you thirst, MATILDA,<br>
To name the day - What’s that you say?<br>
- “You’ll see me further first,” MATILDA?<br>
<br>
I can’t mistake the signs you make,<br>
Although you barely speak, MATILDA;<br>
Though pure and young, you thrust your tongue<br>
Right in your pretty cheek, MATILDA!<br>
My dear, I fear I hear you sneer -<br>
I do - I’m sure I do, MATILDA!<br>
With simple grace you make a face,<br>
Ejaculating, “Ugh!” MATILDA.<br>
<br>
Oh, pause to think before you drink<br>
The dregs of Lethe’s cup, MATILDA!<br>
Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br>
Before you give me up, MATILDA!<br>
Recall again the mental pain<br>
Of what I’ve had to do, MATILDA!<br>
And be assured that I’ve endured<br>
It, all along of you, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
Do you forget, my blithesome pet,<br>
How once with jealous rage, MATILDA,<br>
I watched you walk and gaily talk<br>
With some one thrice your age, MATILDA?<br>
You squatted free upon his knee,<br>
A sight that made me sad, MATILDA!<br>
You pinched his cheek with friendly tweak,<br>
Which almost drove me mad, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
I knew him not, but hoped to spot<br>
Some man you thought to wed, MATILDA!<br>
I took a gun, my darling one,<br>
And shot him through the head, MATILDA!<br>
I’m made of stuff that’s rough and gruff<br>
Enough, I own; but, ah, MATILDA!<br>
It <i>did</i> annoy your sailor boy<br>
To find it was your pa, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
I’ve passed a life of toil and strife,<br>
And disappointments deep, MATILDA;<br>
I’ve lain awake with dental ache<br>
Until I fell asleep, MATILDA!<br>
At times again I’ve missed a train,<br>
Or p’rhaps run short of tin, MATILDA,<br>
And worn a boot on corns that shoot,<br>
Or, shaving, cut my chin, MATILDA.<br>
<br>
But, oh! no trains - no dental pains -<br>
Believe me when I say, MATILDA,<br>
No corns that shoot - no pinching boot<br>
Upon a summer day, MATILDA -<br>
It’s my belief, could cause such grief<br>
As that I’ve suffered for, MATILDA,<br>
My having shot in vital spot<br>
Your old progenitor, MATILDA.<br>
<br>
Bethink you how I’ve kept the vow<br>
I made one winter day, MATILDA -<br>
That, come what could, I never would<br>
Remain too long away, MATILDA.<br>
And, oh! the crimes with which, at times,<br>
I’ve charged my gentle mind, MATILDA,<br>
To keep the vow I made - and now<br>
You treat me so unkind, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
For when at sea, off Caribbee,<br>
I felt my passion burn, MATILDA,<br>
By passion egged, I went and begged<br>
The captain to return, MATILDA.<br>
And when, my pet, I couldn’t get<br>
That captain to agree, MATILDA,<br>
Right through a sort of open port<br>
I pitched him in the sea, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
Remember, too, how all the crew<br>
With indignation blind, MATILDA,<br>
Distinctly swore they ne’er before<br>
Had thought me so unkind, MATILDA.<br>
And how they’d shun me one by one -<br>
An unforgiving group, MATILDA -<br>
I stopped their howls and sulky scowls<br>
By pizening their soup, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
So pause to think, before you drink<br>
The dregs of Lethe’s cup, MATILDA;<br>
Remember, do, what I’ve gone through,<br>
Before you give me up, MATILDA.<br>
Recall again the mental pain<br>
Of what I’ve had to do, MATILDA,<br>
And be assured that I’ve endured<br>
It, all along of you, MATILDA!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE REVEREND SIMON MAGUS.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A rich advowson, highly prized,<br>
For private sale was advertised;<br>
And many a parson made a bid;<br>
The REVEREND SIMON MAGUS did.<br>
<br>
He sought the agent’s: “Agent, I<br>
Have come prepared at once to buy<br>
(If your demand is not too big)<br>
The Cure of Otium-cum-Digge.”<br>
<br>
“Ah!” said the agent, “<i>there’s</i> a berth
-<br>
The snuggest vicarage on earth;<br>
No sort of duty (so I hear),<br>
And fifteen hundred pounds a year!<br>
<br>
“If on the price we should agree,<br>
The living soon will vacant be;<br>
The good incumbent’s ninety five,<br>
And cannot very long survive.<br>
<br>
See - here’s his photograph - you see,<br>
He’s in his dotage.” “Ah, dear me!<br>
Poor soul!” said SIMON. “His decease<br>
Would be a merciful release!”<br>
<br>
The agent laughed - the agent blinked -<br>
The agent blew his nose and winked -<br>
And poked the parson’s ribs in play -<br>
It was that agent’s vulgar way.<br>
<br>
The REVEREND SIMON frowned: “I grieve<br>
This light demeanour to perceive;<br>
It’s scarcely <i>comme il</i> <i>faut</i>, I think:<br>
Now - pray oblige me - do not wink.<br>
<br>
“Don’t dig my waistcoat into holes -<br>
Your mission is to sell the souls<br>
Of human sheep and human kids<br>
To that divine who highest bids.<br>
<br>
“Do well in this, and on your head<br>
Unnumbered honours will be shed.”<br>
The agent said, “Well, truth to tell,<br>
I <i>have</i> been doing very well.”<br>
<br>
“You should,” said SIMON, “at your age;<br>
But now about the parsonage.<br>
How many rooms does it contain?<br>
Show me the photograph again.<br>
<br>
“A poor apostle’s humble house<br>
Must not be too luxurious;<br>
No stately halls with oaken floor -<br>
It should be decent and no more.<br>
<br>
“ No billiard-rooms - no stately trees -<br>
No croquêt-grounds or pineries.”<br>
“Ah!” sighed the agent, “very true:<br>
This property won’t do for you.”<br>
<br>
“All these about the house you’ll find.” -<br>
“Well,” said the parson, “never mind;<br>
I’ll manage to submit to these<br>
Luxurious superfluities.<br>
<br>
“A clergyman who does not shirk<br>
The various calls of Christian work,<br>
Will have no leisure to employ<br>
These ‘common forms’ of worldly joy.<br>
<br>
“To preach three times on Sabbath days -<br>
To wean the lost from wicked ways -<br>
The sick to soothe - the sane to wed -<br>
The poor to feed with meat and bread;<br>
<br>
“These are the various wholesome ways<br>
In which I’ll spend my nights and days:<br>
My zeal will have no time to cool<br>
At croquet, archery, or pool.”<br>
<br>
The agent said, “From what I hear,<br>
This living will not suit, I fear -<br>
There are no poor, no sick at all;<br>
For services there is no call.”<br>
<br>
The reverend gent looked grave, “Dear me!<br>
Then there is <i>no</i> ‘society’? -<br>
I mean, of course, no sinners there<br>
Whose souls will be my special care?”<br>
<br>
The cunning agent shook his head,<br>
“No, none - except” - (the agent said) -<br>
“The DUKE OF A., the EARL OF B.,<br>
The MARQUIS C., and VISCOUNT D.<br>
<br>
“But you will not be quite alone,<br>
For though they’ve chaplains of their own,<br>
Of course this noble well-bred clan<br>
Receive the parish clergyman.”<br>
<br>
“Oh, silence, sir!” said SIMON M.,<br>
“Dukes - Earls! What should I care for them?<br>
These worldly ranks I scorn and flout!”<br>
“Of course,” the agent said, “no doubt!”<br>
<br>
“Yet I might show these men of birth<br>
The hollowness of rank on earth.”<br>
The agent answered, “Very true -<br>
But I should not, if I were you.”<br>
<br>
“Who sells this rich advowson, pray?”<br>
The agent winked - it was his way -<br>
“His name is HART; ’twixt me and you,<br>
He is, I’m grieved to say, a Jew!”<br>
<br>
“A Jew?” said SIMON, “happy find!<br>
I purchase this advowson, mind.<br>
My life shall be devoted to<br>
Converting that unhappy Jew!”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: MY DREAM.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
The other night, from cares exempt,<br>
I slept - and what d’you think I dreamt?<br>
I dreamt that somehow I had come<br>
To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom -<br>
<br>
Where vice is virtue - virtue, vice:<br>
Where nice is nasty - nasty, nice:<br>
Where right is wrong and wrong is right -<br>
Where white is black and black is white.<br>
<br>
Where babies, much to their surprise,<br>
Are born astonishingly wise;<br>
With every Science on their lips,<br>
And Art at all their finger-tips.<br>
<br>
For, as their nurses dandle them<br>
They crow binomial theorem,<br>
With views (it seems absurd to us)<br>
On differential calculus.<br>
<br>
But though a babe, as I have said,<br>
Is born with learning in his head,<br>
He must forget it, if he can,<br>
Before he calls himself a man.<br>
<br>
For that which we call folly here,<br>
Is wisdom in that favoured sphere;<br>
The wisdom we so highly prize<br>
Is blatant folly in their eyes.<br>
<br>
A boy, if he would push his way,<br>
Must learn some nonsense every day;<br>
And cut, to carry out this view,<br>
His wisdom teeth and wisdom too.<br>
<br>
Historians burn their midnight oils,<br>
Intent on giant-killers’ toils;<br>
And sages close their aged eyes<br>
To other sages’ lullabies.<br>
<br>
Our magistrates, in duty bound,<br>
Commit all robbers who are found;<br>
But there the Beaks (so people said)<br>
Commit all robberies instead.<br>
<br>
Our Judges, pure and wise in tone,<br>
Know crime from theory alone,<br>
And glean the motives of a thief<br>
From books and popular belief.<br>
<br>
But there, a Judge who wants to prime<br>
His mind with true ideas of crime,<br>
Derives them from the common sense<br>
Of practical experience.<br>
<br>
Policemen march all folks away<br>
Who practise virtue every day -<br>
Of course, I mean to say, you know,<br>
What we call virtue here below.<br>
<br>
For only scoundrels dare to do<br>
What we consider just and true,<br>
And only good men do, in fact,<br>
What we should think a dirty act.<br>
<br>
But strangest of these social twirls,<br>
The girls are boys - the boys are girls!<br>
The men are women, too - but then,<br>
<i>Per contra</i>, women all are men.<br>
<br>
To one who to tradition clings<br>
This seems an awkward state of things,<br>
But if to think it out you try,<br>
It doesn’t really signify.<br>
<br>
With them, as surely as can be,<br>
A sailor should be sick at sea,<br>
And not a passenger may sail<br>
Who cannot smoke right through a gale.<br>
<br>
A soldier (save by rarest luck)<br>
Is always shot for showing pluck<br>
(That is, if others can be found<br>
With pluck enough to fire a round).<br>
<br>
“How strange!” I said to one I saw;<br>
“You quite upset our every law.<br>
However can you get along<br>
So systematically wrong?”<br>
<br>
“Dear me!” my mad informant said,<br>
“Have you no eyes within your head?<br>
You sneer when you your hat should doff:<br>
Why, we begin where you leave off!<br>
<br>
“Your wisest men are very far<br>
Less learned than our babies are!”<br>
I mused awhile - and then, oh me!<br>
I framed this brilliant repartee:<br>
<br>
“Although your babes are wiser far<br>
Than our most valued sages are,<br>
Your sages, with their toys and cots,<br>
Are duller than our idiots!”<br>
<br>
But this remark, I grieve to state,<br>
Came just a little bit too late<br>
For as I framed it in my head,<br>
I woke and found myself in bed.<br>
<br>
Still I could wish that, ’stead of here,<br>
My lot were in that favoured sphere! -<br>
Where greatest fools bear off the bell<br>
I ought to do extremely well.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
I often wonder whether you<br>
Think sometimes of that Bishop, who<br>
From black but balmy Rum-ti-Foo<br>
Last summer twelvemonth came.<br>
Unto your mind I p’r’aps may bring<br>
Remembrance of the man I sing<br>
To-day, by simply mentioning<br>
That PETER was his name.<br>
<br>
Remember how that holy man<br>
Came with the great Colonial clan<br>
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican;<br>
And kindly recollect<br>
How, having crossed the ocean wide,<br>
To please his flock all means he tried<br>
Consistent with a proper pride<br>
And manly self-respect.<br>
<br>
He only, of the reverend pack<br>
Who minister to Christians black,<br>
Brought any useful knowledge back<br>
To his Colonial fold.<br>
In consequence a place I claim<br>
For “PETER” on the scroll of Fame<br>
(For PETER was that Bishop’s name,<br>
As I’ve already told).<br>
<br>
He carried Art, he often said,<br>
To places where that timid maid<br>
(Save by Colonial Bishops’ aid)<br>
Could never hope to roam.<br>
The Payne-cum-Lauri feat he taught<br>
As he had learnt it; for he thought<br>
The choicest fruits of Progress ought<br>
To bless the Negro’s home.<br>
<br>
And he had other work to do,<br>
For, while he tossed upon the Blue,<br>
The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo<br>
Forgot their kindly friend.<br>
Their decent clothes they learnt to tear -<br>
They learnt to say, “I do not care,”<br>
Though they, of course, were well aware<br>
How folks, who say so, end.<br>
<br>
Some sailors, whom he did not know,<br>
Had landed there not long ago,<br>
And taught them “Bother!” also, “Blow!”<br>
(Of wickedness the germs).<br>
No need to use a casuist’s pen<br>
To prove that they were merchantmen;<br>
No sailor of the Royal N.<br>
Would use such awful terms.<br>
<br>
And so, when BISHOP PETER came<br>
(That was the kindly Bishop’s name),<br>
He heard these dreadful oaths with shame,<br>
And chid their want of dress.<br>
(Except a shell - a bangle rare -<br>
A feather here - a feather there<br>
The South Pacific Negroes wear<br>
Their native nothingness.)<br>
<br>
He taught them that a Bishop loathes<br>
To listen to disgraceful oaths,<br>
He gave them all his left-off clothes -<br>
They bent them to his will.<br>
The Bishop’s gift spreads quickly round;<br>
In PETER’S left-off clothes they bound<br>
(His three-and-twenty suits they found<br>
In fair condition still).<br>
<br>
The Bishop’s eyes with water fill,<br>
Quite overjoyed to find them still<br>
Obedient to his sovereign will,<br>
And said, “Good Rum-ti-Foo!<br>
Half-way I’ll meet you, I declare:<br>
I’ll dress myself in cowries rare,<br>
And fasten feathers in my hair,<br>
And dance the ‘Cutch-chi-boo!’” <a name="citation13"></a><a href="#footnote13">{13}</a><br>
<br>
And to conciliate his See<br>
He married PICCADILLILLEE,<br>
The youngest of his twenty-three,<br>
Tall - neither fat nor thin.<br>
(And though the dress he made her don<br>
Looks awkwardly a girl upon,<br>
It was a great improvement on<br>
The one he found her in.)<br>
<br>
The Bishop in his gay canoe<br>
(His wife, of course, went with him too)<br>
To some adjacent island flew,<br>
To spend his honeymoon.<br>
Some day in sunny Rum-ti-Foo<br>
A little PETER’ll be on view;<br>
And that (if people tell me true)<br>
Is like to happen soon.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE HAUGHTY ACTOR.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
AN actor - GIBBS, of Drury Lane -<br>
Of very decent station,<br>
Once happened in a part to gain<br>
Excessive approbation:<br>
It sometimes turns a fellow’s brain<br>
And makes him singularly vain<br>
When he believes that he receives<br>
Tremendous approbation.<br>
<br>
His great success half drove him mad,<br>
But no one seemed to mind him;<br>
Well, in another piece he had<br>
Another part assigned him.<br>
This part was smaller, by a bit,<br>
Than that in which he made a hit.<br>
So, much ill-used, he straight refused<br>
To play the part assigned him.<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
<i>That night that actor slept, and I’ll attempt<br>
To tell you of the vivid dream he dreamt.<br>
<br>
<br>
</i>THE DREAM.<br>
<br>
<br>
In fighting with a robber band<br>
(A thing he loved sincerely)<br>
A sword struck GIBBS upon the hand,<br>
And wounded it severely.<br>
At first he didn’t heed it much,<br>
He thought it was a simple touch,<br>
But soon he found the weapon’s bound<br>
Had wounded him severely.<br>
<br>
To Surgeon COBB he made a trip,<br>
Who’d just effected featly<br>
An amputation at the hip<br>
Particularly neatly.<br>
A rising man was Surgeon COBB<br>
But this extremely ticklish job<br>
He had achieved (as he believed)<br>
Particularly neatly.<br>
<br>
The actor rang the surgeon’s bell.<br>
“Observe my wounded finger,<br>
Be good enough to strap it well,<br>
And prithee do not linger.<br>
That I, dear sir, may fill again<br>
The Theatre Royal Drury Lane:<br>
This very night I have to fight -<br>
So prithee do not linger.”<br>
<br>
“I don’t strap fingers up for doles,”<br>
Replied the haughty surgeon;<br>
“To use your cant, I don’t play <i>rôles<br>
</i>Utility that verge on.<br>
First amputation - nothing less -<br>
That is my line of business:<br>
We surgeon nobs despise all jobs<br>
Utility that verge on<br>
<br>
“When in your hip there lurks disease”<br>
(So dreamt this lively dreamer),<br>
“Or devastating <i>caries<br>
</i>In <i>humerus</i> or <i>femur,<br>
</i>If you can pay a handsome fee,<br>
Oh, then you may remember me -<br>
With joy elate I’ll amputate<br>
Your <i>humerus</i> or <i>femur</i>.”<br>
<br>
The disconcerted actor ceased<br>
The haughty leech to pester,<br>
But when the wound in size increased,<br>
And then began to fester,<br>
He sought a learned Counsel’s lair,<br>
And told that Counsel, then and there,<br>
How COBB’S neglect of his defect<br>
Had made his finger fester.<br>
<br>
“Oh, bring my action, if you please,<br>
The case I pray you urge on,<br>
And win me thumping damages<br>
From COBB, that haughty surgeon.<br>
He culpably neglected me<br>
Although I proffered him his fee,<br>
So pray come down, in wig and gown,<br>
On COBB, that haughty surgeon!”<br>
<br>
That Counsel learned in the laws,<br>
With passion almost trembled.<br>
He just had gained a mighty cause<br>
Before the Peers assembled!<br>
Said he, “How dare you have the face<br>
To come with Common Jury case<br>
To one who wings rhetoric flings<br>
Before the Peers assembled?”<br>
<br>
Dispirited became our friend -<br>
Depressed his moral pecker -<br>
“But stay! a thought! - I’ll gain my end,<br>
And save my poor exchequer.<br>
I won’t be placed upon the shelf,<br>
I’ll take it into Court myself,<br>
And legal lore display before<br>
The Court of the Exchequer.”<br>
<br>
He found a Baron - one of those<br>
Who with our laws supply us -<br>
In wig and silken gown and hose,<br>
As if at <i>Nisi Prius.<br>
</i>But he’d just given, off the reel,<br>
A famous judgment on Appeal:<br>
It scarce became his heightened fame<br>
To sit at <i>Nisi Prius.<br>
<br>
</i>Our friend began, with easy wit,<br>
That half concealed his terror:<br>
“Pooh!” said the Judge, “I only sit<br>
In <i>Banco</i> or in Error.<br>
Can you suppose, my man, that I’d<br>
O’er <i>Nisi Prius</i> Courts preside,<br>
Or condescend my time to spend<br>
On anything but Error?”<br>
<br>
“Too bad,” said GIBBS, “my case to shirk!<br>
You must be bad innately,<br>
To save your skill for mighty work<br>
Because it’s valued greatly!”<br>
But here he woke, with sudden start.<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
He wrote to say he’d play the part.<br>
I’ve but to tell he played it well -<br>
The author’s words - his native wit<br>
Combined, achieved a perfect “hit” -<br>
The papers praised him greatly.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE TWO MAJORS.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
An excellent soldier who’s worthy the name<br>
Loves officers dashing and strict:<br>
When good, he’s content with escaping all blame,<br>
When naughty, he likes to be licked.<br>
<br>
He likes for a fault to be bullied and stormed,<br>
Or imprisoned for several days,<br>
And hates, for a duty correctly performed,<br>
To be slavered with sickening praise.<br>
<br>
No officer sickened with praises his <i>corps<br>
</i>So little as MAJOR LA GUERRE -<br>
No officer swore at his warriors more<br>
Than MAJOR MAKREDI PREPERE.<br>
<br>
Their soldiers adored them, and every grade<br>
Delighted to hear their abuse;<br>
Though whenever these officers came on parade<br>
They shivered and shook in their shoes.<br>
<br>
For, oh! if LA GUERRE could all praises withhold,<br>
Why, so could MAKREDI PREPERE,<br>
And, oh! if MAKREDI could bluster and scold,<br>
Why, so could the mighty LA GUERRE.<br>
<br>
“No doubt we deserve it - no mercy we crave -<br>
Go on - you’re conferring a boon;<br>
We would rather be slanged by a warrior brave,<br>
Than praised by a wretched poltroon!”<br>
<br>
MAKREDI would say that in battle’s fierce rage<br>
True happiness only was met:<br>
Poor MAJOR MAKREDI, though fifty his age,<br>
Had never known happiness yet!<br>
<br>
LA GUERRE would declare, “With the blood of a foe<br>
No tipple is worthy to clink.”<br>
Poor fellow! he hadn’t, though sixty or so,<br>
Yet tasted his favourite drink!<br>
<br>
They agreed at their mess - they agreed in the glass -<br>
They agreed in the choice of their “set,”<br>
And they also agreed in adoring, alas!<br>
The Vivandière, pretty FILLETTE.<br>
<br>
Agreement, you see, may be carried too far,<br>
And after agreeing all round<br>
For years - in this soldierly “maid of the bar,”<br>
A bone of contention they found!<br>
<br>
It may seem improper to call such a pet -<br>
By a metaphor, even - a bone;<br>
But though they agreed in adoring her, yet<br>
Each wanted to make her his own.<br>
<br>
“On the day that you marry her,” muttered PREPERE<br>
(With a pistol he quietly played),<br>
“I’ll scatter the brains in your noddle, I swear,<br>
All over the stony parade!”<br>
<br>
“I cannot do <i>that</i> to you,” answered LA GUERRE,<br>
“Whatever events may befall;<br>
But this <i>I can</i> do - <i>if you</i> wed her, <i>mon cher!<br>
</i>I’ll eat you, moustachios and all!”<br>
<br>
The rivals, although they would never engage,<br>
Yet quarrelled whenever they met;<br>
They met in a fury and left in a rage,<br>
But neither took pretty FILLETTE.<br>
<br>
“I am not afraid,” thought MAKREDI PREPERE:<br>
“For country I’m ready to fall;<br>
But nobody wants, for a mere Vivandière,<br>
To be eaten, moustachios and all!<br>
<br>
“Besides, though LA GUERRE has his faults, I’ll allow<br>
He’s one of the bravest of men:<br>
My goodness! if I disagree with him now,<br>
I might disagree with him then.”<br>
<br>
“No coward am I,” said LA GUERRE, “as you guess -<br>
I sneer at an enemy’s blade;<br>
But I don’t want PREPERE to get into a mess<br>
For splashing the stony parade!”<br>
<br>
One day on parade to PREPERE and LA GUERRE<br>
Came CORPORAL JACOT DEBETTE,<br>
And trembling all over, he prayed of them there<br>
To give him the pretty FILLETTE.<br>
<br>
“You see, I am willing to marry my bride<br>
Until you’ve arranged this affair;<br>
I will blow out my brains when your honours decide<br>
Which marries the sweet Vivandière!”<br>
<br>
“Well, take her,’ said both of them in a duet<br>
(A favourite form of reply),<br>
“But when I am ready to marry FILLETTE.<br>
Remember you’ve promised to die!”<br>
<br>
He married her then: from the flowery plains<br>
Of existence the roses they cull:<br>
He lived and he died with his wife; and his brains<br>
Are reposing in peace in his skull.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: EMILY, JOHN, JAMES, AND I. A DERBY LEGEND.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
EMILY JANE was a nursery maid,<br>
JAMES was a bold Life Guard,<br>
JOHN was a constable, poorly paid<br>
(And I am a doggerel bard).<br>
<br>
A very good girl was EMILY JANE,<br>
JIMMY was good and true,<br>
JOHN was a very good man in the main<br>
(And I am a good man too).<br>
<br>
Rivals for EMMIE were JOHNNY and JAMES,<br>
Though EMILY liked them both;<br>
She couldn’t tell which had the strongest claims<br>
(And <i>I</i> couldn’t take my oath).<br>
<br>
But sooner or later you’re certain to find<br>
Your sentiments can’t lie hid -<br>
JANE thought it was time that she made up her mind<br>
(And I think it was time she did).<br>
<br>
Said JANE, with a smirk, and a blush on her face,<br>
“I’ll promise to wed the boy<br>
Who takes me to-morrow to Epsom Race!”<br>
(Which I would have done, with joy).<br>
<br>
From JOHNNY escaped an expression of pain,<br>
But Jimmy said, “Done with you!<br>
I’ll take you with pleasure, my EMILY JANE!”<br>
(And I would have said so too).<br>
<br>
JOHN lay on the ground, and he roared like mad<br>
(For JOHNNY was sore perplexed),<br>
And he kicked very hard at a very small lad<br>
(Which <i>I</i> often do, when vexed).<br>
<br>
For JOHN was on duty next day with the Force,<br>
To punish all Epsom crimes;<br>
Young people <i>will</i> cross when they’re clearing the course<br>
(I do it myself, sometimes).<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
The Derby Day sun glittered gaily on cads,<br>
On maidens with gamboge hair,<br>
On sharpers and pickpockets, swindlers and pads,<br>
(For I, with my harp, was there).<br>
<br>
And JIMMY went down with his JANE that day,<br>
And JOHN by the collar or nape<br>
Seized everybody who came in his way<br>
(And <i>I</i> had a narrow escape).<br>
<br>
He noticed his EMILY JANE with JIM,<br>
And envied the well-made elf;<br>
And people remarked that he muttered “Oh, dim!”<br>
(I often say “dim!” myself).<br>
<br>
JOHN dogged them all day, without asking their leaves;<br>
For his sergeant he told, aside,<br>
That JIMMY and JANE were notorious thieves<br>
(And I think he was justified).<br>
<br>
But JAMES wouldn’t dream of abstracting a fork,<br>
And JENNY would blush with shame<br>
At stealing so much as a bottle or cork<br>
(A bottle I think fair game).<br>
<br>
But, ah! there’s another more serious crime!<br>
They wickedly strayed upon<br>
The course, at a critical moment of time<br>
(I pointed them out to JOHN).<br>
<br>
The constable fell on the pair in a crack -<br>
And then, with a demon smile,<br>
Let JENNY cross over, but sent JIMMY back<br>
(I played on my harp the while).<br>
<br>
Stern JOHNNY their agony loud derides<br>
With a very triumphant sneer -<br>
They weep and they wail from the opposite sides<br>
(And <i>I</i> shed a silent tear).<br>
<br>
And JENNY is crying away like mad,<br>
And JIMMY is swearing hard;<br>
And JOHNNY is looking uncommonly glad<br>
(And I am a doggerel bard).<br>
<br>
But JIMMY he ventured on crossing again<br>
The scenes of our Isthmian Games -<br>
JOHN caught him, and collared him, giving him pain<br>
(I felt very much for JAMES).<br>
<br>
JOHN led him away with a victor’s hand,<br>
And JIMMY was shortly seen<br>
In the station-house under the grand Grand Stand<br>
(As many a time <i>I’ve</i> been).<br>
<br>
And JIMMY, bad boy, was imprisoned for life,<br>
Though EMILY pleaded hard;<br>
And JOHNNY had EMILY JANE to wife<br>
(And I am a doggerel bard).<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE PERILS OF INVISIBILITY.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Old PETER led a wretched life -<br>
Old PETER had a furious wife;<br>
Old PETER too was truly stout,<br>
He measured several yards about.<br>
<br>
The little fairy PICKLEKIN<br>
One summer afternoon looked in,<br>
And said, “Old PETER, how de do?<br>
Can I do anything for you?<br>
<br>
“I have three gifts - the first will give<br>
Unbounded riches while you live;<br>
The second health where’er you be;<br>
The third, invisibility.”<br>
<br>
“O little fairy PICKLEKIN,”<br>
Old PETER answered with a grin,<br>
“To hesitate would be absurd, -<br>
Undoubtedly I choose the third.”<br>
<br>
“’Tis yours,” the fairy said; “be quite<br>
Invisible to mortal sight<br>
Whene’er you please. Remember me<br>
Most kindly, pray, to MRS. P.”<br>
<br>
Old MRS. PETER overheard<br>
Wee PICKLEKIN’S concluding word,<br>
And, jealous of her girlhood’s choice,<br>
Said, “That was some young woman’s voice:<br>
<br>
Old PETER let her scold and swear -<br>
Old PETER, bless him, didn’t care.<br>
“My dear, your rage is wasted quite -<br>
Observe, I disappear from sight!”<br>
<br>
A well-bred fairy (so I’ve heard)<br>
Is always faithful to her word:<br>
Old PETER vanished like a shot,<br>
Put then - <i>his suit of clothes did not</i>!<br>
<br>
For when conferred the fairy slim<br>
Invisibility on <i>him,<br>
</i>She popped away on fairy wings,<br>
Without referring to his “things.”<br>
<br>
So there remained a coat of blue,<br>
A vest and double eyeglass too,<br>
His tail, his shoes, his socks as well,<br>
His pair of - no, I must not tell.<br>
<br>
Old MRS. PETER soon began<br>
To see the failure of his plan,<br>
And then resolved (I quote the Bard)<br>
To “hoist him with his own petard.”<br>
<br>
Old PETER woke next day and dressed,<br>
Put on his coat, and shoes, and vest,<br>
His shirt and stock; <i>but could not find<br>
His only pair of</i> - never mind!<br>
<br>
Old PETER was a decent man,<br>
And though he twigged his lady’s plan,<br>
Yet, hearing her approaching, he<br>
Resumed invisibility.<br>
<br>
“Dear MRS. P., my only joy,”<br>
Exclaimed the horrified old boy,<br>
“Now, give them up, I beg of you -<br>
You know what I’m referring to!”<br>
<br>
But no; the cross old lady swore<br>
She’d keep his - what I said before -<br>
To make him publicly absurd;<br>
And MRS. PETER kept her word.<br>
<br>
The poor old fellow had no rest;<br>
His coat, his stick, his shoes, his vest,<br>
Were all that now met mortal eye -<br>
The rest, invisibility!<br>
<br>
“Now, madam, give them up, I beg -<br>
I’ve had rheumatics in my leg;<br>
Besides, until you do, it’s plain<br>
I cannot come to sight again!<br>
<br>
“For though some mirth it might afford<br>
To see my clothes without their lord,<br>
Yet there would rise indignant oaths<br>
If he were seen without his clothes!”<br>
<br>
But no; resolved to have her quiz,<br>
The lady held her own - and his -<br>
And PETER left his humble cot<br>
To find a pair of - you know what.<br>
<br>
But - here’s the worst of the affair -<br>
Whene’er he came across a pair<br>
Already placed for him to don,<br>
He was too stout to get them on!<br>
<br>
So he resolved at once to train,<br>
And walked and walked with all his main;<br>
For years he paced this mortal earth,<br>
To bring himself to decent girth.<br>
<br>
At night, when all around is still,<br>
You’ll find him pounding up a hill;<br>
And shrieking peasants whom he meets,<br>
Fall down in terror on the peats!<br>
<br>
Old PETER walks through wind and rain,<br>
Resolved to train, and train, and train,<br>
Until he weighs twelve stone’ or so -<br>
And when he does, I’ll let you know.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE MYSTIC SELVAGEE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Perhaps already you may know<br>
SIR BLENNERHASSET PORTICO?<br>
A Captain in the Navy, he -<br>
A Baronet and K.C.B.<br>
You do? I thought so!<br>
It was that Captain’s favourite whim<br>
(A notion not confined to him)<br>
That RODNEY was the greatest tar<br>
Who ever wielded capstan-bar.<br>
He had been taught so.<br>
<br>
“BENBOW! CORNWALLIS! HOOD! - Belay!<br>
Compared with RODNEY” - he would say -<br>
“No other tar is worth a rap!<br>
The great LORD RODNEY was the chap<br>
The French to polish!<br>
“Though, mind you, I respect LORD HOOD;<br>
CORNWALLIS, too, was rather good;<br>
BENBOW could enemies repel,<br>
LORD NELSON, too, was pretty well -<br>
That is, tol-lol-ish!”<br>
<br>
SIR BLENNERHASSET spent his days<br>
In learning RODNEY’S little ways,<br>
And closely imitated, too,<br>
His mode of talking to his crew -<br>
His port and paces.<br>
An ancient tar he tried to catch<br>
Who’d served in RODNEY’S famous batch;<br>
But since his time long years have fled,<br>
And RODNEY’S tars are mostly dead:<br>
<i>Eheu fugaces</i>!<br>
<br>
But after searching near and far,<br>
At last he found an ancient tar<br>
Who served with RODNEY and his crew<br>
Against the French in ’Eighty-two,<br>
(That gained the peerage).<br>
He gave him fifty pounds a year,<br>
His rum, his baccy, and his beer;<br>
And had a comfortable den<br>
Rigged up in what, by merchantmen,<br>
Is called the steerage.<br>
<br>
“Now, JASPER” - ’t was that sailor’s name -<br>
“Don’t fear that you’ll incur my blame<br>
By saying, when it seems to you,<br>
That there is anything I do<br>
That RODNEY wouldn’t.”<br>
The ancient sailor turned his quid,<br>
Prepared to do as he was bid:<br>
“Ay, ay, yer honour; to begin,<br>
You’ve done away with ‘swifting in’ -<br>
Well, sir, you shouldn’t!<br>
<br>
“Upon your spars I see you’ve clapped<br>
Peak halliard blocks, all iron-capped.<br>
I would not christen that a crime,<br>
But ’twas not done in RODNEY’S time.<br>
It looks half-witted!<br>
Upon your maintop-stay, I see,<br>
You always clap a selvagee!<br>
Your stays, I see, are equalized -<br>
No vessel, such as RODNEY prized,<br>
Would thus be fitted!<br>
<br>
“And RODNEY, honoured sir, would grin<br>
To see you turning deadeyes in,<br>
Not <i>up</i>, as in the ancient way,<br>
But downwards, like a cutter’s stay -<br>
You didn’t oughter;<br>
Besides, in seizing shrouds on board,<br>
Breast backstays you have quite ignored;<br>
Great RODNEY kept unto the last<br>
Breast backstays on topgallant mast -<br>
They make it tauter.”<br>
<br>
SIR BLENNERHASSET “swifted in,”<br>
Turned deadeyes up, and lent a fin<br>
To strip (as told by JASPER KNOX)<br>
The iron capping from his blocks,<br>
Where there was any.<br>
SIR BLENNERHASSET does away,<br>
With selvagees from maintop-stay;<br>
And though it makes his sailors stare,<br>
He rigs breast backstays everywhere -<br>
In fact, too many.<br>
<br>
One morning, when the saucy craft<br>
Lay calmed, old JASPER toddled aft.<br>
“My mind misgives me, sir, that we<br>
Were wrong about that selvagee -<br>
I should restore it.”<br>
“Good,” said the Captain, and that day<br>
Restored it to the maintop-stay.<br>
Well-practised sailors often make<br>
A much more serious mistake,<br>
And then ignore it.<br>
<br>
Next day old JASPER came once more:<br>
“I think, sir, I was right before.”<br>
Well, up the mast the sailors skipped,<br>
The selvagee was soon unshipped,<br>
And all were merry.<br>
Again a day, and JASPER came:<br>
“I p’r’aps deserve your honour’s blame,<br>
I can’t make up my mind,” said he,<br>
“About that cursed selvagee -<br>
It’s foolish - very.<br>
<br>
“On Monday night I could have sworn<br>
That maintop-stay it should adorn,<br>
On Tuesday morning I could swear<br>
That selvagee should not be there.<br>
The knot’s a rasper!”<br>
“Oh, you be hanged,” said CAPTAIN P.,<br>
“Here, go ashore at Caribbee.<br>
Get out - good bye - shove off - all right!”<br>
Old JASPER soon was out of sight -<br>
Farewell, old JASPER!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: PHRENOLOGY.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
“Come, collar this bad man -<br>
Around the throat he knotted me<br>
Till I to choke began -<br>
In point of fact, garotted me!”<br>
<br>
So spake SIR HERBERT WRITE<br>
To JAMES, Policeman Thirty-two -<br>
All ruffled with his fight<br>
SIR HERBERT was, and dirty too.<br>
<br>
Policeman nothing said<br>
(Though he had much to say on it),<br>
But from the bad man’s head<br>
He took the cap that lay on it.<br>
<br>
“No, great SIR HERBERT WHITE -<br>
Impossible to take him up.<br>
This man is honest quite -<br>
Wherever did you rake him up?<br>
<br>
“For Burglars, Thieves, and Co.,<br>
Indeed, I’m no apologist,<br>
But I, some years ago,<br>
Assisted a Phrenologist.<br>
<br>
“Observe his various bumps,<br>
His head as I uncover it:<br>
His morals lie in lumps<br>
All round about and over it.”<br>
<br>
“Now take him,” said SIR WHITE,<br>
“Or you will soon be rueing it;<br>
Bless me! I must be right, -<br>
I caught the fellow doing it!”<br>
<br>
Policeman calmly smiled,<br>
“Indeed you are mistaken, sir,<br>
You’re agitated - riled -<br>
And very badly shaken, sir.<br>
<br>
“Sit down, and I’ll explain<br>
My system of Phrenology,<br>
A second, please, remain” -<br>
(A second is horology).<br>
<br>
Policeman left his beat -<br>
(The Bart., no longer furious,<br>
Sat down upon a seat,<br>
Observing, “This is curious!”)<br>
<br>
“Oh, surely, here are signs<br>
Should soften your rigidity:<br>
This gentleman combines<br>
Politeness with timidity.<br>
<br>
“Of Shyness here’s a lump -<br>
A hole for Animosity -<br>
And like my fist his bump<br>
Of Impecuniosity.<br>
<br>
“Just here the bump appears<br>
Of Innocent Hilarity,<br>
And just behind his ears<br>
Are Faith, and Hope, and Charity.<br>
<br>
He of true Christian ways<br>
As bright example sent us is -<br>
This maxim he obeys,<br>
‘<i>Sorte tuâ contentus sis</i>.’<br>
<br>
“There, let him go his ways,<br>
He needs no stern admonishing.”<br>
The Bart., in blank amaze,<br>
Exclaimed, “This is astonishing!<br>
<br>
“I <i>must</i> have made a mull,<br>
This matter I’ve been blind in it:<br>
Examine, please, <i>my</i> skull,<br>
And tell me what you find in it.”<br>
<br>
That Crusher looked, and said,<br>
With unimpaired urbanity,<br>
“SIR HERBERT, you’ve a head<br>
That teems with inhumanity.<br>
<br>
“Here’s Murder, Envy, Strife<br>
(Propensity to kill any),<br>
And Lies as large as life,<br>
And heaps of Social Villany.<br>
<br>
“Here’s Love of Bran-New Clothes,<br>
Embezzling - Arson - Deism -<br>
A taste for Slang and Oaths,<br>
And Fraudulent Trusteeism.<br>
<br>
“Here’s Love of Groundless Charge -<br>
Here’s Malice, too, and Trickery,<br>
Unusually large<br>
Your bump of Pocket-Pickery - ”<br>
<br>
“Stop!” said the Bart., “my cup<br>
Is full - I’m worse than him in all;<br>
Policeman, take me up -<br>
No doubt I am some criminal!”<br>
<br>
That Pleeceman’s scorn grew large<br>
(Phrenology had nettled it),<br>
He took that Bart. in charge -<br>
I don’t know how they settled it.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE FAIRY CURATE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Once a fairy<br>
Light and airy<br>
Married with a mortal;<br>
Men, however,<br>
Never, never<br>
Pass the fairy portal.<br>
Slyly stealing,<br>
She to Ealing<br>
Made a daily journey;<br>
There she found him,<br>
Clients round him<br>
(He was an attorney).<br>
<br>
Long they tarried,<br>
Then they married.<br>
When the ceremony<br>
Once was ended,<br>
Off they wended<br>
On their moon of honey.<br>
Twelvemonth, maybe,<br>
Saw a baby<br>
(Friends performed an orgie).<br>
Much they prized him,<br>
And baptized him<br>
By the name of GEORGIE,<br>
<br>
GEORGIE grew up;<br>
Then he flew up<br>
To his fairy mother.<br>
Happy meeting -<br>
Pleasant greeting -<br>
Kissing one another.<br>
“Choose a calling<br>
Most enthralling,<br>
I sincerely urge ye.”<br>
“Mother,” said he<br>
(Rev’rence made he),<br>
“I would join the clergy.<br>
<br>
“Give permission<br>
In addition -<br>
Pa will let me do it:<br>
There’s a living<br>
In his giving -<br>
He’ll appoint me to it.<br>
Dreams of coff’ring,<br>
Easter off’ring,<br>
Tithe and rent and pew-rate,<br>
So inflame me<br>
(Do not blame me),<br>
That I’ll be a curate.”<br>
<br>
She, with pleasure,<br>
Said, “My treasure,<br>
’T is my wish precisely.<br>
Do your duty,<br>
There’s a beauty;<br>
You have chosen wisely.<br>
Tell your father<br>
I would rather<br>
As a churchman rank you.<br>
You, in clover,<br>
I’ll watch over.”<br>
GEORGIE said, “Oh, thank you!”<br>
<br>
GEORGIE scudded,<br>
Went and studied,<br>
Made all preparations,<br>
And with credit<br>
(Though he said it)<br>
Passed examinations.<br>
(Do not quarrel<br>
With him, moral,<br>
Scrupulous digestions -<br>
’Twas his mother,<br>
And no other,<br>
Answered all the questions.)<br>
<br>
Time proceeded;<br>
Little needed<br>
GEORGIE admonition:<br>
He, elated,<br>
Vindicated<br>
Clergyman’s position.<br>
People round him<br>
Always found him<br>
Plain and unpretending;<br>
Kindly teaching,<br>
Plainly preaching,<br>
All his money lending.<br>
<br>
So the fairy,<br>
Wise and wary,<br>
Felt no sorrow rising -<br>
No occasion<br>
For persuasion,<br>
Warning, or advising.<br>
He, resuming<br>
Fairy pluming<br>
(That’s not English, is it?)<br>
Oft would fly up,<br>
To the sky up,<br>
Pay mamma a visit.<br>
<br>
* * * * * * * *<br>
<br>
Time progressing,<br>
GEORGIE’S blessing<br>
Grew more Ritualistic -<br>
Popish scandals,<br>
Tonsures - sandals -<br>
Genuflections mystic;<br>
Gushing meetings -<br>
Bosom-beatings -<br>
Heavenly ecstatics -<br>
Broidered spencers -<br>
Copes and censers -<br>
Rochets and dalmatics.<br>
<br>
This quandary<br>
Vexed the fairy -<br>
Flew she down to Ealing.<br>
“GEORGIE, stop it!<br>
Pray you, drop it;<br>
Hark to my appealing:<br>
To this foolish<br>
Papal rule-ish<br>
Twaddle put an ending;<br>
This a swerve is<br>
From our Service<br>
Plain and unpretending.”<br>
<br>
He, replying,<br>
Answered, sighing,<br>
Hawing, hemming, humming,<br>
“It’s a pity -<br>
They’re so pritty;<br>
Yet in mode becoming,<br>
Mother tender,<br>
I’ll surrender -<br>
I’ll be unaffected - ”<br>
But his Bishop<br>
Into <i>his</i> shop<br>
Entered unexpected!<br>
<br>
“Who is this, sir, -<br>
Ballet miss, sir?”<br>
Said the Bishop coldly.<br>
“’T is my mother,<br>
And no other,”<br>
GEORGIE answered boldly.<br>
“Go along, sir!<br>
You are wrong, sir;<br>
You have years in plenty,<br>
While this hussy<br>
(Gracious mussy!)<br>
Isn’t two and twenty!”<br>
<br>
(Fairies clever<br>
Never, never<br>
Grow in visage older;<br>
And the fairy,<br>
All unwary,<br>
Leant upon his shoulder!)<br>
Bishop grieved him,<br>
Disbelieved him;<br>
GEORGE the point grew warm on;<br>
Changed religion,<br>
Like a pigeon, <a name="citation14"></a><a href="#footnote14">{14}</a><br>
And became a Mormon!<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: THE WAY OF WOOING.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A maiden sat at her window wide,<br>
Pretty enough for a Prince’s bride,<br>
Yet nobody came to claim her.<br>
She sat like a beautiful picture there,<br>
With pretty bluebells and roses fair,<br>
And jasmine-leaves to frame her.<br>
And why she sat there nobody knows;<br>
But this she sang as she plucked a rose,<br>
The leaves around her strewing:<br>
“I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br>
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br>
But the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br>
<br>
A lover came riding by awhile,<br>
A wealthy lover was he, whose smile<br>
Some maids would value greatly -<br>
A formal lover, who bowed and bent,<br>
With many a high-flown compliment,<br>
And cold demeanour stately,<br>
“You’ve still,” said she to her suitor stern,<br>
“The ’prentice-work of your craft to learn,<br>
If thus you come a-cooing.<br>
I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br>
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br>
As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br>
<br>
A second lover came ambling by -<br>
A timid lad with a frightened eye<br>
And a colour mantling highly.<br>
He muttered the errand on which he’d come,<br>
Then only chuckled and bit his thumb,<br>
And simpered, simpered shyly.<br>
“No,” said the maiden, “go your way;<br>
You dare but think what a man would say,<br>
Yet dare to come a-suing!<br>
I’ve time to lose and power to choose;<br>
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br>
As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br>
<br>
A third rode up at a startling pace -<br>
A suitor poor, with a homely face -<br>
No doubts appeared to bind him.<br>
He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist,<br>
And off he rode with the maiden, placed<br>
On a pillion safe behind him.<br>
And she heard the suitor bold confide<br>
This golden hint to the priest who tied<br>
The knot there’s no undoing;<br>
With pretty young maidens who can choose,<br>
’T is not so much the gallant who woos,<br>
As the gallant’s <i>way</i> of wooing!”<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: HONGREE AND MAHRY. A RECOLLECTION OF A SURREY MELODRAMA.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
The sun was setting in its wonted west,<br>
When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Met MAHRY DAUBIGNY, the Village Rose,<br>
Under the Wizard’s Oak - old trysting-place<br>
Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine.<br>
<br>
They thought themselves unwatched, but they were not;<br>
For HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Found in LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC<br>
A rival, envious and unscrupulous,<br>
Who thought it not foul scorn to dodge his steps,<br>
And listen, unperceived, to all that passed<br>
Between the simple little Village Rose<br>
And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br>
<br>
A clumsy barrack-bully was DUBOSC,<br>
Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact<br>
That animates a proper gentleman<br>
In dealing with a girl of humble rank.<br>
You’ll understand his coarseness when I say<br>
He would have married MAHRY DAUBIGNY,<br>
And dragged the unsophisticated girl<br>
Into the whirl of fashionable life,<br>
For which her singularly rustic ways,<br>
Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude),<br>
Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical),<br>
Would absolutely have unfitted her.<br>
How different to this unreflecting boor<br>
Was HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br>
<br>
Contemporary with the incident<br>
Related in our opening paragraph,<br>
Was that sad war ’twixt Gallia and ourselves<br>
That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes;<br>
And so LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC<br>
(Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style)<br>
And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Were sent by CHARLES of France against the lines<br>
Of our Sixth HENRY (Fourteen twenty-nine),<br>
To drive his legions out of Aquitaine.<br>
<br>
When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Returned, suspecting nothing, to his camp,<br>
After his meeting with the Village Rose,<br>
He found inside his barrack letter-box<br>
A note from the commanding officer,<br>
Requiring his attendance at head-quarters.<br>
He went, and found LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES.<br>
<br>
“Young HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
This night we shall attack the English camp:<br>
Be the ‘forlorn hope’ yours - you’ll lead it, sir,<br>
And lead it too with credit, I’ve no doubt.<br>
As every man must certainly be killed<br>
(For you are twenty ’gainst two thousand men),<br>
It is not likely that you will return.<br>
But what of that? you’ll have the benefit<br>
Of knowing that you die a soldier’s death.”<br>
<br>
Obedience was young HONGREE’S strongest point,<br>
But he imagined that he only owed<br>
Allegiance to his MAHRY and his King.<br>
“If MAHRY bade me lead these fated men,<br>
I’d lead them - but I do not think she would.<br>
If CHARLES, my King, said, ‘Go, my son, and die,’<br>
I’d go, of course - my duty would be clear.<br>
But MAHRY is in bed asleep, I hope,<br>
And CHARLES, my King, a hundred leagues from this.<br>
As for LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC,<br>
How know I that our monarch would approve<br>
The order he has given me to-night?<br>
My King I’ve sworn in all things to obey -<br>
I’ll only take my orders from my King!”<br>
Thus HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Interpreted the terms of his commission.<br>
<br>
And HONGREE, who was wise as he was good,<br>
Disguised himself that night in ample cloak,<br>
Round flapping hat, and vizor mask of black,<br>
And made, unnoticed, for the English camp.<br>
He passed the unsuspecting sentinels<br>
(Who little thought a man in this disguise<br>
Could be a proper object of suspicion),<br>
And ere the curfew bell had boomed “lights out,”<br>
He found in audience Bedford’s haughty Duke.<br>
<br>
“Your Grace,” he said, “start not - be not alarmed,<br>
Although a Frenchman stands before your eyes.<br>
I’m HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br>
My Colonel will attack your camp to-night,<br>
And orders me to lead the hope forlorn.<br>
Now I am sure our excellent KING CHARLES<br>
Would not approve of this; but he’s away<br>
A hundred leagues, and rather more than that.<br>
So, utterly devoted to my King,<br>
Blinded by my attachment to the throne,<br>
And having but its interest at heart,<br>
I feel it is my duty to disclose<br>
All schemes that emanate from COLONEL JOOLES,<br>
If I believe that they are not the kind<br>
Of schemes that our good monarch would approve.”<br>
<br>
“But how,” said Bedford’s Duke, “do you propose<br>
That we should overthrow your Colonel’s scheme?”<br>
And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores,<br>
Replied at once with never-failing tact:<br>
“Oh, sir, I know this cursed country well.<br>
Entrust yourself and all your host to me;<br>
I’ll lead you safely by a secret path<br>
Into the heart of COLONEL JOOLES’ array,<br>
And you can then attack them unprepared,<br>
And slay my fellow-countrymen unarmed.”<br>
<br>
The thing was done. The DUKE of BEDFORD gave<br>
The order, and two thousand fighting men<br>
Crept silently into the Gallic camp,<br>
And slew the Frenchmen as they lay asleep;<br>
And Bedford’s haughty Duke slew COLONEL JOOLES,<br>
And gave fair MAHRY, pride of Aquitaine,<br>
To HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: ETIQUETTE. <a name="citation15"></a><a href="#footnote15">{15}</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
The<i> Ballyshannon</i> foundered off the coast of Cariboo,<br>
And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew;<br>
Down went the owners - greedy men whom hope of gain allured:<br>
Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.<br>
<br>
Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew,<br>
The passengers were also drowned excepting only two:<br>
Young PETER GRAY, who tasted teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO.,<br>
And SOMERS, who from Eastern shores imported indigo.<br>
<br>
These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,<br>
Upon a desert island were eventually cast.<br>
They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used,<br>
But they couldn’t chat together - they had not been introduced.<br>
<br>
For PETER GRAY, and SOMERS too, though certainly in trade,<br>
Were properly particular about the friends they made;<br>
And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth -<br>
That GRAY should take the northern half, while SOMERS took the south.<br>
<br>
On PETER’S portion oysters grew - a delicacy rare,<br>
But oysters were a delicacy PETER couldn’t bear.<br>
On SOMERS’ side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick,<br>
Which SOMERS couldn’t eat, because it always made him sick.<br>
<br>
GRAY gnashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store<br>
Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature’s shore.<br>
The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved,<br>
For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.<br>
<br>
And SOMERS sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south,<br>
For the thought of PETER’S oysters brought the water to his mouth.<br>
He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff:<br>
He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.<br>
<br>
How they wished an introduction to each other they had had<br>
When on board the <i>Ballyshannon</i>! And it drove them nearly
mad<br>
To think how very friendly with each other they might get,<br>
If it wasn’t for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!<br>
<br>
One day, when out a-hunting for the <i>mus ridiculus,<br>
</i>GRAY overheard his fellow-man soliloquizing thus:<br>
“I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on,<br>
M’CONNELL, S. B. WALTERS, PADDY BYLES, and ROBINSON?”<br>
<br>
These simple words made PETER as delighted as could be,<br>
Old chummies at the Charterhouse were ROBINSON and he!<br>
He walked straight up to SOMERS, then he turned extremely red,<br>
Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and said:<br>
<br>
I beg your pardon - pray forgive me if I seem too bold,<br>
But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old.<br>
You spoke aloud of ROBINSON - I happened to be by.<br>
You know him?” “Yes, extremely well.”
“Allow me, so do I.”<br>
<br>
It was enough: they felt they could more pleasantly get on,<br>
For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew ROBINSON!<br>
And Mr. SOMERS’ turtle was at PETER’S service quite,<br>
And Mr. SOMERS punished PETER’S oyster-beds all night.<br>
<br>
They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs:<br>
They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;<br>
They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;<br>
On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.<br>
<br>
They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,<br>
And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light;<br>
Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon,<br>
And all because it happened that they both knew ROBINSON!<br>
<br>
They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore,<br>
And day by day they learned to love each other more and more.<br>
At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day,<br>
They saw a frigate anchored in the offing of the bay.<br>
<br>
To PETER an idea occurred. “Suppose we cross the main?<br>
So good an opportunity may not be found again.”<br>
And SOMERS thought a minute, then ejaculated, “Done!<br>
I wonder how my business in the City’s getting on?”<br>
<br>
“But stay,” said Mr. PETER: “when in England, as you
know,<br>
I earned a living tasting teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO.,<br>
I may be superseded - my employers think me dead!”<br>
“Then come with me,” said SOMERS, “and taste indigo
instead.”<br>
<br>
But all their plans were scattered in a moment when they found<br>
The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound;<br>
When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind,<br>
To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.<br>
<br>
As both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke,<br>
They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke:<br>
’Twas ROBINSON - a convict, in an unbecoming frock!<br>
Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!<br>
<br>
They laughed no more, for SOMERS thought he had been rather rash<br>
In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash;<br>
And PETER thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon<br>
In making the acquaintance of a friend of ROBINSON.<br>
<br>
At first they didn’t quarrel very openly, I’ve heard;<br>
They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word:<br>
The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head,<br>
And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.<br>
<br>
To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth,<br>
And PETER takes the north again, and SOMERS takes the south;<br>
And PETER has the oysters, which he hates, in layers thick,<br>
And SOMERS has the turtle - turtle always makes him sick.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: AT A PANTOMIME. BY A BILIOUS ONE.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
An Actor sits in doubtful gloom,<br>
His stock-in-trade unfurled,<br>
In a damp funereal dressing-room<br>
In the Theatre Royal, World.<br>
<br>
He comes to town at Christmas-time,<br>
And braves its icy breath,<br>
To play in that favourite pantomime,<br>
<i>Harlequin Life and Death.<br>
<br>
</i>A hoary flowing wig his weird<br>
Unearthly cranium caps,<br>
He hangs a long benevolent beard<br>
On a pair of empty chaps.<br>
<br>
To smooth his ghastly features down<br>
The actor’s art he cribs, -<br>
A long and a flowing padded gown.<br>
Bedecks his rattling ribs.<br>
<br>
He cries, “Go on - begin, begin!<br>
Turn on the light of lime -<br>
I’m dressed for jolly Old Christmas, in<br>
A favourite pantomime!”<br>
<br>
The curtain’s up - the stage all black -<br>
Time and the year nigh sped -<br>
Time as an advertising quack -<br>
The Old Year nearly dead.<br>
<br>
The wand of Time is waved, and lo!<br>
Revealed Old Christmas stands,<br>
And little children chuckle and crow,<br>
And laugh and clap their hands.<br>
<br>
The cruel old scoundrel brightens up<br>
At the death of the Olden Year,<br>
And he waves a gorgeous golden cup,<br>
And bids the world good cheer.<br>
<br>
The little ones hail the festive King, -<br>
No thought can make them sad.<br>
Their laughter comes with a sounding ring,<br>
They clap and crow like mad!<br>
<br>
They only see in the humbug old<br>
A holiday every year,<br>
And handsome gifts, and joys untold,<br>
And unaccustomed cheer.<br>
<br>
The old ones, palsied, blear, and hoar,<br>
Their breasts in anguish beat -<br>
They’ve seen him seventy times before,<br>
How well they know the cheat!<br>
<br>
They’ve seen that ghastly pantomime,<br>
They’ve felt its blighting breath,<br>
They know that rollicking Christmas-time<br>
Meant Cold and Want and Death, -<br>
<br>
Starvation - Poor Law Union fare -<br>
And deadly cramps and chills,<br>
And illness - illness everywhere,<br>
And crime, and Christmas bills.<br>
<br>
They know Old Christmas well, I ween,<br>
Those men of ripened age;<br>
They’ve often, often, often seen<br>
That Actor off the stage!<br>
<br>
They see in his gay rotundity<br>
A clumsy stuffed-out dress -<br>
They see in the cup he waves on high<br>
A tinselled emptiness.<br>
<br>
Those aged men so lean and wan,<br>
They’ve seen it all before,<br>
They know they’ll see the charlatan<br>
But twice or three times more.<br>
<br>
And so they bear with dance and song,<br>
And crimson foil and green,<br>
They wearily sit, and grimly long<br>
For the Transformation Scene.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Ballad: HAUNTED.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Haunted? Ay, in a social way<br>
By a body of ghosts in dread array;<br>
But no conventional spectres they -<br>
Appalling, grim, and tricky:<br>
I quail at mine as I’d never quail<br>
At a fine traditional spectre pale,<br>
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,<br>
And a splash of blood on the dickey!<br>
<br>
Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -<br>
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,<br>
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,<br>
In every bad variety:<br>
Ghosts who hover about the grave<br>
Of all that’s manly, free, and brave:<br>
You’ll find their names on the architrave<br>
Of that charnel-house, Society.<br>
<br>
Black Monday - black as its school-room ink -<br>
With its dismal boys that snivel and think<br>
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,<br>
And its frozen tank to wash in.<br>
That was the first that brought me grief,<br>
And made me weep, till I sought relief<br>
In an emblematical handkerchief,<br>
To choke such baby bosh in.<br>
<br>
First and worst in the grim array-<br>
Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,<br>
Which I wouldn’t revive for a single day<br>
For all the wealth of PLUTUS -<br>
Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:<br>
If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared<br>
Was the ghost of his “Caesar” unprepared,<br>
I’m sure I pity BRUTUS.<br>
<br>
I pass to critical seventeen;<br>
The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,<br>
When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen,<br>
And woke my dream of heaven.<br>
No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls<br>
Was my gushing innocent Queen of Pearls;<br>
If she wasn’t a girl of a thousand girls,<br>
She was one of forty-seven!<br>
<br>
I see the ghost of my first cigar,<br>
Of the thence-arising family jar -<br>
Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar,<br>
And I called the Judge “Your wushup!”)<br>
Of reckless days and reckless nights,<br>
With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,<br>
Unholy songs and tipsy fights,<br>
Which I strove in vain to hush up.<br>
<br>
Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,<br>
Ghosts of “copy, declined with thanks,”<br>
Of novels returned in endless ranks,<br>
And thousands more, I suffer.<br>
The only line to fitly grace<br>
My humble tomb, when I’ve run my race,<br>
Is, “Reader, this is the resting-place<br>
Of an unsuccessful duffer.”<br>
<br>
I’ve fought them all, these ghosts of mine,<br>
But the weapons I’ve used are sighs and brine,<br>
And now that I’m nearly forty-nine,<br>
Old age is my chiefest bogy;<br>
For my hair is thinning away at the crown,<br>
And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;<br>
And a general verdict sets me down<br>
As an irreclaimable fogy.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Footnotes:<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> A version
of this ballad is published as a Song, by Mr. Jeffreys, Soho Square.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> This ballad
is published as a Song, under the title “If,” by Messrs.
Cramer and Co.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> “Go
with me to a Notary - seal me there<br>
Your single bond.” <i>- Merchant of Venice</i>, Act I., sc. 3.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> “And
there shall she, at Friar Lawrence’ cell,<br>
Be shrived and married.” - <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, Act II., sc.
4.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> “And
give the fasting horses provender.” - <i>Henry the Fifth</i>,
Act IV., sc. 2.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> “Let
us, like merchants, show our foulest wares.” <i>- Troilus and
Cressida</i>, Act I., sc. 3.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7">{7}</a> “Then
must the Jew be merciful.” - <i>Merchant of Venice</i>, Act IV.,
sc. 1.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8">{8}</a> “The
spring, the summer,<br>
The chilling autumn, angry winter, change<br>
Their wonted liveries.” - <i>Midsummer Night Dream</i>, Act IV.,
sc. 1.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9">{9}</a> “In
the county of Glo’ster, justice of the peace and <i>coram</i>.”<br>
<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, Act I., sc. 1.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10">{10}</a> “What
lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?” - <i>King John</i>, Act V.,
sc. 2.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote11"></a><a href="#citation11">{11}</a> “And
I’ll provide his executioner.” <i>- Henry the Sixth</i>
(Second Part), Act III., sc. 1.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12">{12}</a> “The
lioness had torn some flesh away,<br>
Which all this while had bled.” - <i>As You Like It</i>, Act IV.,
sc. 3.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote13"></a><a href="#citation13">{13}</a> Described
by MUNGO PARK.<br>
<br>
<a name="footnote14"></a><a href="#citation14">{14}</a> “Like
a bird.” - <i>Slang expression.<br>
<br>
</i><a name="footnote15"></a><a href="#citation15">{15}</a> Reprinted
from the “The Graphic,” by permission of the proprietors.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, FIFTY BAB BALLADS ***<br>
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