by Thomas Hood
Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,
‘Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,
Or smother’d in the sandy hot simoom,
Or crush’d in Chili by earth’s awful quake,
Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,
Or dirged by syrens and the billows’ boom, —
Or stiffen’d to a stock mid Alpine snows,
Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,
Or suck’d by Vampyres to a last repose,
Or self-destroy’d, impatient of my woes:
‘Still fare you well, however I may fare,
A fare perchance to the Lethean shore,
Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,
Or dash’d down cataracts with dreadful roar:
Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core.
This hand you should have claim’d in church or minster,
Some cannibal may gnaw’ — she read no more —
Prone ou the carpet fell the senseless spinster,
Losing herself, as ‘twere, in Kidderminster!
Of course of such a fall the shook was great,
In rush’d the father, panting from the shop,
In rush’d the mother, without cap or tête,
Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;
The cook to change her apron did not stop,
The charwoman next scrambled up the stair, —
All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop, —
And then they stand and smother round the chair,
Exclaiming in a chorus, ‘Give her air!’
One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,
Another rams a phial up her nose;
A third crooks all her finger-joints together,
A fourth rips up her laces and her bows,
While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,
And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump
A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,
As if in fetching her — some wits so jump
She must be fetch’d with water like a pump!
No wonder that thus drench’d, and wrench’d, and gall’d,
As soon as possible, from syncope’s fetter
Her senses had the sense to be recall’d,
‘I’m better — that will do — indeed I’m better,’
She cried to each importunate besetter;
Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother,
The prudent parent seized the lover’s letter,
(Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother)
And read it thro’ from one end to the other.
From first to last, she never skipp’d a word —
For young Lorenzo of all youths was one
So wise, so good, so moral she averr’d,
So clever, quite above the common run —
She made him sit by her, and call’d him son,
No matrimonial suit, e’en Duke’s or Earl’s,
So flatter’d her maternal feelings — none!
For mothers always think young men are pearls
Who come and throw themselves before their girls.
And now, at warning signal from her finger, —
The servants most reluctantly withdrew,
But list’ning on the stairs contrived to linger;
For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,
At last the features of her parent knew,
And, summoning her breath and vocal pow’rs,
‘Oh, mother!’ she exclaimed— ‘Oh, is it true —
Our dear Lorenzo’ — the dear name drew show’rs —
‘Ours,’ cried the mother, ‘pray don’t call him ours!
‘I never liked him, never, in my days! ‘
(‘Oh yes — you did’ — said Ellen with a sob,) —
‘There always was a something in his ways—’
(‘So sweet — so kind,’ said Ellen, with a throb,)
‘His very face was what I call a snob,
And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons,
He had a sort of air of the swell mob;
I’m sure when he has come of afternoons
To tea, I’ve often thought — I’ll watch my spoons!’
‘The spoons!’ cried Ellen, almost with a scream,
‘Oh cruel — false as cruel — and unjust!
He that once stood so high in your esteem!’ —
‘He!’ cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,
‘I like him? — yes — as any body must
An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil:
Didn’t he bring you Bonaparty’s bust?
Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil —
My favourite was always Mr. Neville.
‘Lorenzo? — I should like, of earthly things,
To see him hanging forty cubits high;
Doesn’t he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try
To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on — a prodigious tail! — Oh, daughter!
And don’t he ask you down his area — fie!
And recommend to cut your being shorter,
With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?’
Alas! to think how readers thus may vary
A writer’s sense! — What mortal would have thought
Lorenzo’s hint about Professors Airy
And Pond to such a likeness could be brought!
Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught —
To make a comet of poor Ellen’s moon,
Could furnish forth an image so distraught,
As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon,
Tail’d — like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!
And yet, whate’er absurdity the brains
May hatch, it ne’er wants wet-nurses to suckle it;
Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains
To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;
No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it
To jingle bell-like on his empty head, —
No mental mud — but some will knead and knuckle it,
And fancy they are making fancy-bread; —
No ass has written, but some ass has read.
No dolts could lead if others did not follow ‘em.
No Hahnemann could give decillionth drops,
If any man could not be got to swallow ‘em;
But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo’s meanings, heads and tails,
The Father seized upon her malaprops
‘My girl down areas — of a, night! ‘Ods nails!
I’ll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!
‘I will! — as sure as I was christen’d John!
A girl — well born — and bred, — and school’d at Ditton —
Accomplish’d — handsome — with a tail stuck on!
And chuck’d — Zounds! — chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten;
I wish I had been by when that was written!’ —
And doubling to a fist each ample hand,
The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton,
As if in training for a fight, long plann’d, —
With Nobody — for love — at No Man’s Land!
‘I’ll pond — I’ll tail him!’ — In a voice of thunder
He recommenced his fury and his fuss,
Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder,
Like one of those great guns that end in buss.
‘I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us I’
But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others,
His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus:
‘Men are not women — fathers can’t be mothers, —
Females are females’ — and a few such others.
So saying, w
ith rough nudges, willy-nilly,
She hustled him outside the chamber-door,
Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly;
And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor:
Id est, she shut him in the outer space,
With just as much apology — no more —
As Boreas would present in such a case,
For slamming the street door right in your face.
And now, the secrets of the sex thns kept,
What passed in that important tête-à-tete
‘Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except
Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate —
So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,
In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks,
In such a very waspish stinging state —
But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;
Because that new fast four-inside — the Comet,
Instead of keeping its appointed time,
Had deviated some few minutes from it,
A thing with all astronomers a crime,
And he had studied in that lore sublime;
Nor did his heat get any less or shorter
For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime
A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,
Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter.
At length, ‘Fair Ellen’ sounding with a flourish,
The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart
Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish
The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart,
And soon upon the roof he ‘topped his part.’
Which never had a more impatient man on,
Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start
Like lightning greased, — or, as at Ballyshannon
Sublimed, ‘greased lightning shot out of a cannon.’
For, ever since the letter left his hand,
His mind had been in vacillating motion,
Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land,
That cannot ask its way, and has no notion
If right or left leads to the German Ocean —
Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies,
Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,
Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,
He went and booked himself for our metropolis.
‘Oh, for a horse,’ or rather four, ‘with wings!’
For so he put the wish into the plural —
No relish he retained for country things,
He could not join felicity with rural,
His thoughts were all with London and the mural, —
Where architects — not paupers — heap and pile stones;
Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural,
How fast they could macadamize the milestones
Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones.
Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived
In Nature one artistical fine stroke;
For instance, how that purple hill relieved
The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke,
And how the red cow carried off her cloak;
Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey, —
Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak!
Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way,
Came boldly out from a white cloud — to bray!
Such things have no delight for worried men,
That travel full of care and anxious smart:
Coachmen and horses, are your artists then;
Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart,
Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart,
Let every neck be put into its noose,
Then tip ‘em on the flank to make ‘em start, —
And see how they will draw! — Four screws let loose
Would make a difference — or I’m a goose!
Nor cared he more about the promised crops,
If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,
For flies in turnips, or a blight in hops,
Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d;
In short, no items of the farming trade,
Peas, beans, tares, ‘taters, could his mind beguile;
Nor did he answer to the servant maid,
That always asked at every other mile, —
‘Where do we change, Sir?’ with her sweetest smile.
Nor more he listened to the Politician,
Who lectured on his left, a formal prig,
Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition,
Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig;
Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big,
Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory,
Called one a sad bad Poet — and a Whig,
And one, a first-rate proser — and a Tory;
So critics judge, now, of a song or story.
Nay, when the coachman spoke about the’Leger,
Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet,
Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger,
And nags as right, or righter than a trivet,
The theme his crack’d attention could not rivet;
Though leaning forward to the man of whips,
He seem’d to give an ear, — but did not give it,
For Ellen’s moon (that saddest of her slips)
Would not be hidden by a ‘new Eclipse.’
If any thought e’er flitted in his head —
Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky,
It was to wish the team all thorough-bred,
And every buckle on their backs a jockey:
When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky,
He never watch’d the wheel, and long’d to lock it; —
He liked the bolters that set off so cocky:
Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it,
Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.
Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey
Finish’d an hour and a quarter under time, —
Without a case for surgeon or attorney,
Just as St. James’s rang its seventh chime,
And now, descending from his seat sublime,
Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights,
In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime,
Call’d England’s Heart — but which, as seen of nights,
Has rather more th’ appearance of its lights.
Away he scudded — elbowing, perforce.
Thro’ cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier,
With fruit, knives, pencils, — all dirt cheap of course, —
Coachmen, and hawkers, of the Globe and ‘Currier; ‘
Away! — the cookmaid is not such a skurrier,
When, fit to split her gingham as she goes,
With six just striking on the clock to hurry her,
She strides along with one of her three beaux,
To get well placed at ‘Ashley’s’ — now Ducrow’s.
‘I wonder if her moon is full to-night!’
He mutter’d, jealous as a Spanish Don,
When, lo! — to aggravate that inward spite,
In glancing at a board he spied thereon
A play-bill for dramatic folks to con,
In letters such as those may read, who run,
‘“KING JOHN” — oh yes, — I recollect King John!
“My Lord, they say five moons” — five moons! — well done!
I wonder Ellen was content with one!
‘Five moons — all full! — and all at once in heav’n!
She should have lived in that prolific reign! ‘
Here he arrived in front of number seven,
Th’ abode of all his joy and all his pain;
&nb
sp; A sudden tremor shot through every vein,
He wish’d he’d come up by the heavy waggon,
And felt an impulse to turn back again,
Oh, that he ne’er had quitted the Old Dragon!
Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.
His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth, —
The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread,
As if it had a living lion’s mouth,
With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red,
In which he had engaged to put his head.
The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour, —
As though ‘t would cause a shower-bath to shed
Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper —
He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper.
‘What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce
A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,
Instead of putting out its wick at once;
She’s gone — it’s very evident I’ve lost her, —
And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her —
Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,
To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster, —
Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,
Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.
‘Yes — here I leave her,’ and as thus he spoke,
He plied the knocker with such needless force,
It almost split the panel of sound oak;
And then he went as wildly through a course
Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce
Between the bell and its dumbfounded handle;
Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse,
And thrust into his face her blown-out candle, —
To recognise the author of such scandal.
Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot,
Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair,
With other noise than his whose’ very foot
Had music in’t as he came up the stair:’
And then with no more manners than a bear,
His hat upon his head, no matter how,
No modest tap his presence to declare,
He bolted in a room, without a bow,
And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow! —
Like fond Medora, watching at her window,