And mischief-making monkey from his birth;
His parents ne’er agreed except in doting
Upon the most unquiet imp on earth.
Instead of quarrelling, had they been but both in
Their senses, they’d have sent young master forth
To school or had him soundly whipped at home
To teach him manners for the time to come.
26
Don Jóse and the Donna Inez led
For some time an unhappy sort of life,
Wishing each other, not divorced, but dead.
They lived respectably as man and wife,
Their conduct was exceedingly well-bred
And gave no outward signs of inward strife,
Until at length the smothered fire broke out
And put the business past all kind of doubt.
27
For Inez called some druggists and physicians
And tried to prove her loving lord was mad,
But as he had some lucid intermissions,
She next decided he was only bad.
Yet when they asked her for her depositions,
No sort of explanation could be had,
Save that her duty both to man and God
Required this conduct – which seemed very odd.
28
She kept a journal, where his faults were noted,
And opened certain trunks of books and letters,
All which might, if occasion served, be quoted.
And then she had all Seville for abettors,
Besides her good old grandmother (who doted).
The hearers of her case became repeaters,
Then advocates, inquisitors, and judges,
Some for amusement, others for old grudges.
29
And then this best and meekest woman bore
With such serenity her husband’s woes,
Just as the Spartan ladies did of yore,
Who saw their spouses killed and nobly chose
Never to say a word about them more.
Calmly she heard each calumny that rose
And saw his agonies with such sublimity
That all the world exclaimed, ‘What magnanimity!’
30
No doubt this patience when the world is damning us
Is philosophic in our former friends.
’Tis also pleasant to be deemed magnanimous,
The more so in obtaining our own ends,
And what the lawyers call a malus animus,
Conduct like this by no means comprehends.
Revenge in person’s certainly no virtue,
But then’tis not my fault, if others hurt you.
31
And if our quarrels should rip up old stories
And help them with a lie or two additional,
I’m not to blame, as you well know, no more is
Anyone else; they were become traditional.
Besides, their resurrection aids our glories
By contrast, which is what we just were wishing all.
And science profits by this resurrection;
Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection.
32
Their friends had tried at reconciliation,
Then their relations, who made matters worse.
’Twere hard to tell upon a like occasion
To whom it may be best to have recourse;
I can’t say much for friend or yet relation.
The lawyers did their utmost for divorce,
But scarce a fee was paid on either side
Before, unluckily, Don Jóse died.
33
He died, and most unluckily, because
According to all hints I could collect
From counsel learnèd in those kinds of laws
(Although their talk’s obscure and circumspect),
His death contrived to spoil a charming cause.
A thousand pities also with respect
To public feeling, which on this occasion
Was manifested in a great sensation.
34
But ah, he died, and buried with him lay
The public feeling and the lawyers’ fees.
His house was sold, his servants sent away;
A Jew took one of his two mistresses,
A priest the other, at least so they say.
I asked the doctors after his disease;
He died of the slow fever called the tertian,
And left his widow to her own aversion.
35
Yet Jóse was an honourable man;
That I must say, who knew him very well.
Therefore his frailties I’ll no further scan;
Indeed there were not many more to tell.
And if his passions now and then outran
Discretion and were not so peaceable
As Numa’s (who was also named Pompilius),
He had been ill brought up and was born bilious.
36
Whate’er might be his worthlessness or worth,
Poor fellow, he had many things to wound him,
Let’s own, since it can do no good on earth.
It was a trying moment that which found him
Standing alone beside his desolate hearth,
Where all his household gods lay shivered round him.
No choice was left his feelings or his pride
Save death or Doctors’ Commons – so he died.
37.
Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir
To a chancery suit and messuages and lands,
Which with a long minority and care,
Promised to turn out well in proper hands.
Inez became sole guardian, which was fair,
And answered but to Nature’s just demands.
An only son left with an only mother
Is brought up much more wisely than another.
38
Sagest of women, even of widows, she
Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon,
And worthy of the noblest pedigree
(His sire was of Castile, his dam from Arragon).
Then for accomplishments of chivalry,
In case our lord the king should go to war again,
He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery,
And how to scale a fortress – or a nunnery.
39
But that which Donna Inez most desired
And saw into herself each day before all
The learnèd tutors whom for him she hired
Was that his breeding should be strictly moral.
Much into all his studies she inquired,
And so they were submitted first to her, all
Arts, sciences; no branch was made a mystery
To Juan’s eyes, excepting natural history.
40
The languages, especially the dead,
The sciences, and most of all the abstruse,
The arts, at least all such as could be said
To be the most remote from common use,
In all these he was much and deeply read,
But not a page of anything that’s loose
Or hints continuation of the species
Was ever suffered, lest he should grow vicious.
41
His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices.
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their Aeneids, Iliads, and Odysseys
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the mythology.
42
Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s ode a good exa
mple,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample,
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with Formosum pastor Corydon.
43
Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong
For early stomachs to prove wholesome food.
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude.
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
44
Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learnèd men, who place
Judiciously from out the schoolboy’s vision
The grosser parts, but fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,
Which saves in fact the trouble of an index,
45
For there we have them all at one fell swoop,
Instead of being scattered through the pages.
They stand forth marshalled in a handsome troop
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring altogether
Like garden gods – and not so decent either.
46
The missal too (it was the family missal)
Was ornamented in a sort of way
Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all
Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they
Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all
Could turn their optics to the text and pray
Is more than I know, but Don Juan’s mother
Kept this herself and gave her son another.
47
Sermons he read and lectures he endured,
And homilies and lives of all the saints,
To Jerome and to Chrysostom inured;
He did not take such studies for restraints.
But how faith is acquired and then insured,
So well not one of the aforesaid paints
As Saint Augustine in his fine Confessions,
Which make the reader envy his transgressions.
48
This too was a sealed book to little Juan.
I can’t but say that his mamma was right,
If such an education was the true one.
She scarcely trusted him from out her sight.
Her maids were old, and if she took a new one
You might be sure she was a perfect fright;
She did this during even her husband’s life.
I recommend as much to every wife.
49
Young Juan waxed in goodliness and grace;
At six a charming child, and at eleven
With all the promise of as fine a face
As e’er to man’s maturer growth was given.
He studied steadily and grew apace
And seemed at least in the right road to heaven,
For half his days were passed at church, the other
Between his tutors, confessor, and mother.
50
At six, I said, he was a charming child,
At twelve he was a fine but quiet boy.
Although in infancy a little wild,
They tamed him down amongst them; to destroy
His natural spirit not in vain they toiled,
At least it seemed so. And his mother’s joy
Was to declare how sage and still and steady
Her young philosopher was grown already.
51
I had my doubts, perhaps I have them still,
But what I say is neither here nor there.
I knew his father well and have some skill
In character, but it would not be fair
From sire to son to augur good or ill.
He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair,
But scandal’s my aversion. I protest
Against all evil speaking, even in jest.
52
For my part I say nothing, nothing, but
This I will say (my reasons are my own)
That if I had an only son to put
To school (as God be praised that I have none),
’Tis not with Donna Inez I would shut
Him up to learn his catechism alone.
No, no, I’d send him out betimes to college,
For there it was I picked up my own knowledge.
53
For there one learns –’tis not for me to boast,
Though I acquired – but I pass over that,
As well as all the Greek I since have lost.
I say that there’s the place – but verbum sat.
I think I picked up too, as well as most,
Knowledge of matters – but no matter what.
I never married, but I think I know
That sons should not be educated so.
54
Young Juan now was sixteen years of age,
Tall, handsome, slender, but well knit; he seemed
Active, though not so sprightly as a page,
And everybody but his mother deemed
Him almost man, but she flew in a rage
And bit her lips (for else she might have screamed),
If any said so, for to be precocious
Was in her eyes a thing the most atrocious.
55
Amongst her numerous acquaintance, all
Selected for discretion and devotion,
There was the Donna Julia, whom to call
Pretty were but to give a feeble notion
Of many charms in her as natural
As sweetness to the flower or salt to ocean,
Her zone to Venus or his bow to Cupid,
But this last simile is trite and stupid.
56
The darkness of her oriental eye
Accorded with her Moorish origin.
Her blood was not all Spanish, by the by;
In Spain, you know, this is a sort of sin.
When proud Grenada fell, and forced to fly,
Boabdil wept, of Donna Julia’s kin
Some went to Africa, some stayed in Spain.
Her great-great-grandmamma chose to remain.
57
She married (I forget the pedigree)
With an hidalgo, who transmitted down
His blood less noble than such blood should be.
At such alliances his sires would frown,
In that point so precise in each degree
That they bred in and in, as might be shown,
Marrying their cousins, nay, their aunts and nieces,
Which always spoils the breed, if it increases.
58
This heathenish cross restored the breed again,
Ruined its blood, but much improved its flesh,
For from a root the ugliest in old Spain
Sprung up a branch as beautiful as fresh.
The sons no more were short, the daughters plain.
But there’s a rumour which I fain would hush;
’Tis said that Donna Julia’s grandmamma
Produced her Don more heirs at love than law.
59
However this might be, the race went on
Improving still through every generation,
Until it centered in an only son,
Who left an only daughter. My narration
May have suggested that this single one
Could be but Julia (whom on this occasion
I shall have much to speak about), and she
Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.
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60
Her eye (I’m very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke; then through its soft disguise
Flashed an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either. And there would arise
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
Which struggled through and chastened down the whole.
61
Her glossy hair was clustered o’er a brow
Bright with intelligence and fair and smooth.
Her eyebrow’s shape was like the aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Mounting at times to a transparent glow,
As if her veins ran lightning. She in sooth
Possessed an air and grace by no means common;
Her stature tall – I hate a dumpy woman.
62
Wedded she was some years and to a man
Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;
And yet I think instead of such a one
’Twere better to have two of five and twenty,
Especially in countries near the sun.
And now I think on’t, mi vien in mente,
Ladies even of the most uneasy virtue
Prefer a spouse whose age is short of thirty.
63
’Tis a sad thing, I cannot choose but say,
And all the fault of that indecent sun,
Who cannot leave alone our helpless clay,
But will keep baking, broiling, burning on,
That howsoever people fast and pray
The flesh is frail, and so the soul undone.
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,
Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.
64
Happy the nations of the moral north,
Where all is virtue, and the winter season
Sends sin without a rag on shivering forth
(’Twas snow that brought St Anthony to reason),
Where juries cast up what a wife is worth
By laying whate’er sum in mulct they please on
The lover, who must pay a handsome price,
Because it is a marketable vice.
65
Alfonso was the name of Julia’s lord,
A man well looking for his years, and who
Was neither much beloved, nor yet abhorred.
They lived together as most people do,
Suffering each other’s foibles by accord,
And not exactly either one or two.
Yet he was jealous, though he did not show it,
For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
66
Julia was – yet I never could see why –
With Donna Inez quite a favourite friend;
Between their tastes there was small sympathy,
For not a line had Julia ever penned.
Some people whisper (but no doubt they lie,
For malice still imputes some private end)
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