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- Of all the ships upon the blue,
- No ship contained a better crew
- Than that of worthy Captain Reece,
- Commanding of The Mantelpiece.
- He was adored by all his men,
- For worthy Captain Reece, R.N.,
- Did all that lay within him to
- Promote the comfort of his crew.
- If ever they were dull or sad,
- Their captain danced to them like mad,
- Or told, to make the time pass by,
- Droll legends of his infancy.
- A feather bed had every man,
- Warm slippers and hot-water can,
- Brown windsor from the captain's store,
- A valet, too, to every four.
- Did they with thirst in summer burn,
- Lo, seltzogenes at every turn,
- And on all very sultry days
- Cream ices handed round on trays.
- Then currant wine and ginger pops
- Stood handily on all the "tops;"
- And also, with amusement rife,
- A "Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life."
- New volumes came across the sea
- From Mister Mudie's libraree;
- The Times and Saturday Review
- Beguiled the leisure of the crew.
- Kind-hearted Captain Reece, R.N.,
- Was quite devoted to his men;
- In point of fact, good Captain Reece
- Beatified The Mantelpiece.
- One summer eve, at half-past ten,
- He said (addressing all his men):
- "Come, tell me, please, what I can do
- To please and gratify my crew.
- "By any reasonable plan
- I'll make you happy if I can;
- My own convenience count as NIL:
- It is my duty, and I will."
- Then up and answered William Lee
- (The kindly captain's coxswain he,
- A nervous, shy, low-spoken man),
- He cleared his throat and thus began:
- "You have a daughter, Captain Reece,
- Ten female cousins and a niece,
- A Ma, if what I'm told is true,
- Six sisters, and an aunt or two.
- "Now, somehow, sir, it seems to me,
- More friendly-like we all should be,
- If you united of 'em to
- Unmarried members of the crew.
- "If you'd ameliorate our life,
- Let each select from them a wife;
- And as for nervous me, old pal,
- Give me your own enchanting gal!"
- Good Captain Reece, that worthy man,
- Debated on his coxswain's plan:
- "I quite agree," he said, "O BILL;
- It is my duty, and I will.
- "My daughter, that enchanting gurl,
- Has just been promised to an Earl,
- And all my other familee
- To peers of various degree.
- "But what are dukes and viscounts to
- The happiness of all my crew?
- The word I gave you I'll fulfil;
- It is my duty, and I will.
- "As you desire it shall befall,
- I'll settle thousands on you all,
- And I shall be, despite my hoard,
- The only bachelor on board."
- The boatswain of The Mantelpiece,
- He blushed and spoke to Captain Reece:
- "I beg your honour's leave," he said;
- "If you would wish to go and wed,
- "I have a widowed mother who
- Would be the very thing for you --
- She long has loved you from afar:
- She washes for you, Captain R."
- The Captain saw the dame that day --
- Addressed her in his playful way --
- "And did it want a wedding ring?
- It was a tempting ickle sing!
- "Well, well, the chaplain I will seek,
- We'll all be married this day week
- At yonder church upon the hill;
- It is my duty, and I will!"
- The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece,
- And widowed Ma of Captain Reece,
- Attended there as they were bid;
- It was their duty, and they did.
- List while the poet trolls
- Of Mr. Clayton Hooper,
- Who had a cure of souls
- At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.
- He lived on curds and whey,
- And daily sang their praises,
- And then he'd go and play
- With buttercups and daisies.
- Wild crôquet Hooper banned,
- And all the sports of Mammon,
- He warred with cribbage, and
- He exorcised backgammon.
- His helmet was a glance
- That spoke of holy gladness;
- A saintly smile his lance;
- His shield a tear of sadness.
- His Vicar smiled to see
- This armour on him buckled:
- With pardonable glee
- He blessed himself and chuckled.
- "In mildness to abound
- My curate's sole design is;
- In all the country round
- There's none so mild as mine is!"
- And Hooper, disinclined
- His trumpet to be blowing,
- Yet didn't think you'd find
- A milder curate going.
- A friend arrived one day
- At Spiffton-extra-Sooper,
- And in this shameful way
- He spoke to Mr. Hooper:
- "You think your famous name
- For mildness can't be shaken,
- That none can blot your fame --
- But, Hooper, you're mistaken!
- "Your mind is not as blank
- As that of Hopley Porter,
- Who holds a curate's rank
- At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
- "He plays the airy flute,
- And looks depressed and blighted,
- Doves round about him 'toot,'
- And lambkins dance delighted.
- "He labours more than you
- At worsted work, and frames it;
- In old maids' albums, too,
- Sticks seaweed -- yes, and names it!"
- The tempter said his say,
- Which pierced him like a needle --
- He summoned straight away
- His sexton and his beadle.
- (These men were men who could
- Hold liberal opinions:
- On Sundays they were good --
- On week-days they were minions.)
- "To Hopley Porter go,
- Your fare I will afford you --
- Deal him a deadly blow,
- And blessings shall reward you.
- "But stay -- I do not like
- Undue assassination,
- And so before you strike,
- Make this communication:
- "I'll give him this one chance --
- If he'll more gaily bear him,
- Play crôquet, smoke, and dance,
- I willingly will spare him."
- They went, those minions true,
- To Assesmilk-cum-Worter,
- And told their errand to
- The Reverend Hopley Porter.
- "What?" said that reverend gent,
- "Dance through my hours of leisure?
- Smoke? -- bathe myself with scent? --
- Play crôquet? Oh, with pleasure!
- "Wear all my hair in curl?
- Stand at my door and wink -- so --
- At every passing girl?
- My brothers, I should think so!
- "For years I've longed for some
- Excuse for this revulsion:
- Now that excuse has come --
- I do it on compulsion!!!"
- He smoked and winked away --
- This Reverend Hopley Porter --
- The deuce there was to pay
- At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
- And Hooper holds his ground,
- In mildness daily growing --
- They think him, all around,
- The mildest curate going.
- Only a dancing girl,
- With an unromantic style,
- With borrowed colour and curl,
- With fixed mechanical smile,
- With many a hackneyed wile,
- With ungrammatical lips,
- And corns that mar her trips!
- Hung from the "flies" in air,
- She acts a palpable lie,
- She's as little a fairy there
- As unpoetical I!
- I hear you asking, Why --
- Why in the world I sing
- This tawdry, tinselled thing?
- No airy fairy she,
- As she hangs in arsenic green
- From a highly impossible tree
- In a highly impossible scene
- (Herself not over-clean).
- For fays don't suffer, I'm told,
- From bunions, coughs, or cold.
- And stately dames that bring
- Their daughters there to see,
- Pronounce the "dancing thing"
- No better than she should be,
- With her skirt at her shameful knee,
- And her painted, tainted phiz:
- Ah, matron, which of us is?
- (And, in sooth, it oft occurs
- That while these matrons sigh,
- Their dresses are lower than hers,
- And sometimes half as high;
- And their hair is hair they buy,
- And they use their glasses, too,
- In a way she'd blush to do.)
- But change her gold and green
- For a coarse merino gown,
- And see her upon the scene
- Of her home, when coaxing down
- Her drunken father's frown,
- In his squalid cheerless den:
- She's a fairy truly, then!
- The bravest names for fire and flames
- And all that mortal durst,
- Were General John and Private James,
- Of the Sixty-seventy-first.
- General John was a soldier tried,
- A chief of warlike dons;
- A haughty stride and a withering pride
- Were Major-General John's.
- A sneer would play on his martial phiz,
- Superior birth to show;
- "Pish!" was a favourite word of his,
- And he often said "Ho! ho!"
- Full-Private James described might be,
- As a man of a mournful mind;
- No characteristic trait had he
- Of any distinctive kind.
- From the ranks, one day, cried Private James,
- "Oh! Major-General John,
- I've doubts of our respective names,
- My mournful mind upon.
- "A glimmering thought occurs to me
- (Its source I can't unearth),
- But I've a kind of a notion we
- Were cruelly changed at birth.
- "I've a strange idea that each other's names
- We've each of us here got on.
- Such things have been," said Private James.
- "They have!" sneered General John.
- "My General John, I swear upon
- My oath I think 'tis so -- "
- "Pish!" proudly sneered his General John,
- And he also said "Ho! ho!"
- "My General John! my General John!
- My General John!" quoth he,
- "This aristocratical sneer upon
- Your face I blush to see!
- "No truly great or generous cove
- Deserving of them names,
- Would sneer at a fixed idea that's drove
- In the mind of a Private James!"
- Said General John, "Upon your claims
- No need your breath to waste;
- If this is a joke, Full-Private James,
- It's a joke of doubtful taste.
- "But, being a man of doubtless worth,
- If you feel certain quite
- That we were probably changed at birth,
- I'll venture to say you're right."
- So General John as Private James
- Fell in, parade upon;
- And Private James, by change of names,
- Was Major-General John.
By a Policeman
- Come with me, little maid,
- Nay, shrink not, thus afraid --
- I'll harm thee not!
- Fly not, my love, from me --
- I have a home for thee --
- A fairy grot,
- Where mortal eye
- Can rarely pry,
- There shall thy dwelling be!
- List to me, while I tell
- The pleasures of that cell,
- Oh, little maid!
- What though its couch be rude,
- Homely the only food
- Within its shade?
- No thought of care
- Can enter there,
- No vulgar swain intrude!
- Come with me, little maid,
- Come to the rocky shade
- I love to sing;
- Live with us, maiden rare --
- Come, for we "want" thee there,
- Thou elfin thing,
- To work thy spell,
- In some cool cell
- In stately Pentonville!
- John courted lovely Mary Ann,
- So likewise did his brother, Freddy.
- Fred was a very soft young man,
- While John, though quick, was most unsteady.
- Fred was a graceful kind of youth,
- But John was very much the strongest.
- "Oh, dance away," said she, "in truth,
- I'll marry him who dances longest."
- John tries the maiden's taste to strike
- With gay, grotesque, outrageous dresses,
- And dances comically, like
- Clodoche and Co., at the Princess's.
- But Freddy tries another style,
- He knows some graceful steps and does 'em --
- A breathing Poem -- Woman's smile --
- A man all poesy and buzzem.
- Now Freddy's operatic pas --
- Now Johnny;s hornpipe seems entrapping:
- Now Freddy's graceful entrechats --
- Now Johnny's skilful "cellar-flapping."
- For many hours -- for many days --
- For many weeks performed each brother,
- For each was active in his ways,
- And neither would give in to t'other.
- After a month of this, they say
- (The maid was getting bored and moody)
- A wandering curate passed that way
- And talked a lot of goody-goody.
- "Oh my," said he, with solemn frown,
- "I tremble for each dancing frater,
- Like unregenerated clown
- And harlequin at some the-ayter."
- He showed that men, in dancing, do
- Both impiously and absurdly,
- And proved his proposition true,
- With Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly.
- For months both John and Freddy danced,
- The curate's protests little heeding;
- For months the curate's words enhanced
- The sinfulness of their proceeding.
- At length they bowed to Nature's rule --
- Their steps grew feeble and unsteady,
- Till Freddy fainted on a stool,
- And Johnny on the top of Freddy.
- "Decide!" quoth they, "let him be named,
- Who henceforth as his wife may rank you."
- "I've changed my views," the maiden said,
- "I only marry curates, thank you!"
- Says Freddy, "Here is goings on!
- To bust myself with rage I'm ready."
- "I'll be a curate!" whispers John --
- "And I," exclaimed poetic Freddy.
- But while they read for it, these chaps,
- The curate booked the maiden bonny --
- And when she's buried him, perhaps,
- She'll marry Frederick or Johnny.
- Sir Guy was a doughty crusader,
- A muscular knight,
- Ever ready to fight,
- A very determined invader,
- And Dickey de Lion's delight.
- Lenore was a Saracen maiden,
- Brunette, statuesque,
- The reverse of grotesque,
- Her pa was a bagman from Aden,
- Her mother she played in burlesque.
- A Coryphée, pretty and loyal,
- In amber and red
- The ballet she led;
- Her mother performed at the Royal,
- Lenore at the Saracen's Head.
- Of face and of figure majestic,
- She dazzled the cits --
- Ecstaticised pits; --
- Her troubles were only domestic,
- But drove her half out of her wits.
- Her father incessantly lashed her,
- On water and bread
- She was grudgingly fed;
- Whenever her father he thrashed her
- Her mother sat down on her head.
- Guy saw her, and loved her, with reason,
- For beauty so bright
- Sent him mad with delight;
- He purchased a stall for the season,
- And sat in it every night.
- His views were exceedingly proper,
- He wanted to wed,
- So he called at her shed
- And saw her progenitor whop her --
- Her mother sit down on her head.
- "So pretty," said he, "and so trusting!
- You brute of a dad,
- You unprincipled cad,
- Your conduct is really disgusting,
- Come, come, now admit it's too bad!
- "You're a turbaned old Turk, and malignant --
- Your daughter Lenore
- I intensely adore,
- And I cannot help feeling indignant,
- A fact that I hinted before;
- "To see a fond father employing
- A deuce of a knout
- For to bang her about,
- To a sensitive lover's annoying."
- Said the bagman, "Crusader, get out."
- Says Guy, "Shall a warrior laden
- With a big spiky knob,
- Sit in peace on his cob
- While a beautiful Saracen maiden
- Is whipped by a Saracen snob?
- "To London I'll go from my charmer."
- Which he did, with his loot
- (Seven hats and a flute),
- And was nabbed for his Sydenham armour
- At Mr. Ben-Samuel's suit.
- Sir Guy he was lodged in the Compter,
- Her pa, in a rage,
- Died (don't know his age),
- His daughter, she married the prompter,
- Grew bulky and quitted the stage.
- Haunted? Ay, in a social way
- By a body of ghosts in dread array;
- But no conventional spectres they --
- Appalling, grim, and tricky:
- I quail at mine as I'd never quail
- At a fine traditional spectre pale,
- With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
- And a splash of blood on the dickey!
- Mine are horrible, social ghosts, --
- Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
- Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
- In every bad variety:
- Ghosts who hover about the grave
- Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
- You'll find their names on the architrave
- Of that charnel-house, Society.
- Black Monday -- black as its school-room ink --
- With its dismal boys that snivel and think
- Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
- And its frozen tank to wash in.
- That was the first that brought me grief,
- And made me weep, till I sought relief
- In an emblematical handkerchief,
- To choke such baby bosh in.
- First and worst in the grim array-
- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way,
- Which I wouldn't revive for a single day
- For all the wealth of Plutus --
- Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared:
- If the classical ghost that Brutus dared
- Was the ghost of his "Cæsar" unprepared,
- I'm sure I pity Brutus.
- I pass to critical seventeen;
- The ghost of that terrible wedding scene,
- When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen,
- And woke my dream of heaven.
- No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls
- Was my gushing innocent Queen of Pearls;
- If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls,
- She was one of forty-seven!
- I see the ghost of my first cigar,
- Of the thence-arising family jar --
- Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar,
- And I called the Judge "Your wushup!")
- Of reckless days and reckless nights,
- With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights,
- Unholy songs and tipsy fights,
- Which I strove in vain to hush up.
- Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks,
- Ghosts of "copy, declined with thanks,"
- Of novels returned in endless ranks,
- And thousands more, I suffer.
- The only line to fitly grace
- My humble tomb, when I've run my race,
- Is, "Reader, this is the resting-place
- Of an unsuccessful duffer."
- I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine,
- But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine,
- And now that I'm nearly forty-nine,
- Old age is my chiefest bogy;
- For my hair is thinning away at the crown,
- And the silver fights with the worn-out brown;
- And a general verdict sets me down
- As an irreclaimable fogy.
- It was a Bishop bold,
- And London was his see,
- He was short and stout and round about
- And zealous as could be.
- It also was a Jew,
- Who drove a Putney 'bus --
- For flesh of swine however fine
- He did not care a cuss.
- His name was Hash Baz Ben,
- And Jedediah too,
- And Solomon and Zabulon --
- This 'bus-directing Jew.
- The Bishop said, said he,
- "I'll see what I can do
- To Christianise and make you wise,
- You poor benighted Jew."
- So every blessed day
- That 'bus he rode outside,
- From Fulham town, both up and down,
- And loudly thus he cried:
- "His name is Hash Baz Ben,
- And Jedediah too,
- And Solomon and Zabulon --
- This 'bus-directing Jew."
- At first the 'busman smiled,
- And rather liked the fun --
- He merely smiled, that Hebrew child,
- And said, "Eccentric one!"
- And gay young dogs would wait
- To see the 'bus go by
- (These gay young dogs, in striking togs),
- To hear the Bishop cry:
- "Observe his grisly beard,
- His race it clearly shows,
- He sticks no fork in ham or pork --
- Observe, my friends, his nose.
- "His name is Hash Baz Ben,
- And Jedediah too,
- And Solomon and Zabulon --
- This 'bus-directing Jew."
- But though at first amused,
- Yet after seven years,
- This Hebrew child got rather riled,
- And melted into tears.
- He really almost feared
- To leave his poor abode,
- His nose, and name, and beard became
- A byword on that road.
- At length he swore an oath,
- The reason he would know --
- "I'll call and see why ever he
- Does persecute me so!"
- The good old Bishop sat
- On his ancestral chair,
- The 'busman came, sent up his name,
- And laid his grievance bare.
- "Benighted Jew," he said
- (The good old Bishop did),
- "Be Christian, you, instead of Jew --
- Become a Christian kid!
- "I'll ne'er annoy you more."
- "Indeed?" replied the Jew;
- "Shall I be freed?" "You will, indeed!"
- Then "Done!" said he, "with you!"
- The organ which, in man,
- Between the eyebrows grows,
- Fell from his face, and in its place
- He found a Christian nose.
- His tangled Hebrew beard,
- Which to his waist came down,
- Was now a pair of whiskers fair --
- His name Adolphus Brown!
- He wedded in a year
- That prelate's daughter Jane,
- He's grown quite fair -- has auburn hair --
- His wife is far from plain.
Back to Index. Forward to Part 2.