Don Juan
Page 44
Was chosen from out an amatory score,
Albeit my years were less discreet than few;
But though I also had reformed before
Those became one who soon were to be two,
I’ll not gainsay the generous public’s voice
That the young lady made a monstrous choice.
39
Oh pardon me digression, or at least
Peruse.’Tis always with a moral end
That I dissert, like grace before a feast.
For like an agéd aunt or tiresome friend,
A rigid guardian or a zealous priest,
My Muse by exhortation means to mend
All people at all times and in most places,
Which puts my Pegasus to these grave paces.
40
But now I’m going to be immoral, now
I mean to show things really as they are,
Not as they ought to be, for I avow,
That till we see what’s what in fact, we’re far
From much improvement with that virtuous plough
Which skims the surface, leaving scarce a scar
Upon the black loam long manured by vice,
Only to keep its corn at the old price.
41
But first of little Leila we’ll dispose;
For like a day-dawn she was young and pure,
Or like the old comparison of snows,
Which are more pure than pleasant to be sure.
Like many people everybody knows,
Don Juan was delighted to secure
A goodly guardian for his infant charge,
Who might not profit much by being at large.
42
Besides he had found out that he was no tutor
(I wish that others would find out the same)
And rather wished in such things to stand neuter,
For silly wards will bring their guardians blame.
So when he saw each ancient dame a suitor
To make his little wild Asiatic tame,
Consulting the society for vice
Suppression, Lady Pinchbeck was his choice.
43
Olden she was, but had been very young;
Virtuous she was and had been, I believe.
Although the world has such an evil tongue
That – but my chaster ear will not receive
An echo of a syllable that’s wrong.
In fact there’s nothing makes me so much grieve
As that abominable tittle-tattle,
Which is the cud eschewed by human cattle.
44
Moreover I’ve remarked (and I was once
A slight observer in a modest way)
And so may everyone except a dunce
That ladies in their youth a little gay,
Besides their knowledge of the world and sense
Of the sad consequence of going astray,
Are wiser in their warnings ‘gainst the woe
Which the mere passionless can never know.
45
While the harsh prude indemnifies her virtue
By railing at the unknown and envied passion,
Seeking far less to save you than to hurt you,
Or what’s still worse, to put you out of fashion,
The kinder veteran with calm words will court you,
Entreating you to pause before you dash on,
Expounding and illustrating the riddle
Of epic love’s beginning, end, and middle.
46
Now whether it be thus or that they are stricter,
As better knowing why they should be so,
I think you’ll find from many a family picture
That daughters of such mothers as may know
The world by experience rather than by lecture
Turn out much better for the Smithfield Show
Of vestals brought into the marriage mart
Than those bred up by prudes without a heart.
47
I said that Lady Pinchbeck had been talked about,
As who has not, if female, young, and pretty?
But now no more the ghost of Scandal stalked about.
She merely was deemed amiable and witty,
And several of her best bons mots were hawked about.
Then she was given to charity and pity
And passed (at least the latter years of life)
For being a most exemplary wife.
48
High in high circles, gentle in her own,
She was the mild reprover of the young
Whenever – which means everyday – they’d shown
An awkward inclination to go wrong.
The quantity of good she did ‘s unknown
Or at the least would lengthen out my song.
In brief, the little orphan of the East
Had raised an interest in her which increased.
49
Juan too was a sort of favourite with her,
Because she thought him a good heart at bottom,
A little spoilt, but not so altogether,
Which was a wonder, if you think who got him
And how he had been tossed, he scarce knew whither.
Though this might ruin others, it did not him,
At least entirely, for he had seen too many
Changes in youth to be surprised at any.
50
And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt to blame the Fates forsooth,
And wonder Providence is not more sage.
Adversity is the first path to truth.
He who hath proved war, storm, or woman’s rage,
Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,
Hath won the experience which is deemed so weighty.
51
How far it profits is another matter.
Our hero gladly saw his little charge
Safe with a lady, whose last grown-up daughter,
Being long married and thus set at large,
Had left all the accomplishments she taught her
To be transmitted, like the Lord Mayor’s barge,
To the next comer; or – as it will tell
More Muse-like – say like Cytherea’s shell.
52
I call such things transmission, for there is
A floating balance of accomplishment
Which forms a pedigree from Miss to Miss,
According as their minds or backs are bent.
Some waltz, some draw, some fathom the abyss
Of metaphysics, others are content
With music, the most moderate shine as wits,
While others have a genius turned for fits.
53
But whether fits or wits or harpsichords,
Theology, fine arts, or finer stays
May be the baits for gentlemen or lords,
With regular descent in these our days
The last year to the new transfers its hoards.
New vestals claim men’s eyes with the same praise
Of elegant et cetera in fresh batches,
All matchless creatures and yet bent on matches.
54
But now I will begin my poem.’Tis
Perhaps a little strange, if not quite new,
That from the first of cantos up to this
I’ve not begun what we have to go through.
These first twelve books are merely flourishes,
Preludios, trying just a string or two
Upon my lyre or making the pegs sure;
And when so, you shall have the overture.
55
My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin
About what’s called success or not succeeding.
Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;
’Tis a ‘great moral lesson’ they are reading.
I thought, at
setting off, about two dozen
Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be foundered,
I think to canter gently through a hundred.
56
Don Juan saw that microcosm on stilts,
Yclept the great world; for it is the least,
Although the highest. But as swords have hilts
By which their power of mischief is increased,
When man in battle or in quarrel tilts,
Thus the low world, North, South, or West, or East,
Must still obey the high, which is their handle,
Their moon, their sun, their gas, their farthing candle.
57
He had many friends who had many wives and was
Well looked upon by both to that extent
Of friendship which you may accept or pass.
It does nor good nor harm, being merely meant
To keep the wheels going of the higher class
And draw them nightly when a ticket’s sent.
And what with masquerades and fêtes and balls,
For the first season such a life scarce palls.
58
A young unmarried man with a good name
And fortune has an awkward part to play;
For good society is but a game,
The royal game of goose, as I may say,
Where everybody has some separate aim,
An end to answer or a plan to lay:
The single ladies wishing to be double,
The married ones to save the virgins trouble.
59
I don’t mean this as general, but particular
Examples may be found of such pursuits,
Though several also keep their perpendicular
Like poplars, with good principles for roots;
Yet many have a method more reticular –
‘Fishers for men’, like sirens with soft lutes.
For talk six times with the same single lady,
And you may get the wedding dresses ready.
60
Perhaps you’ll have a letter from the mother,
To say her daughter’s feelings are trepanned;
Perhaps you’ll have a visit from the brother,
All strut and stays and whiskers, to demand
What ‘your intentions are’. One way or other
It seems the virgin’s heart expects your hand;
And between pity for her case and yours,
You’ll add to matrimony’s list of cures.
61
I’ve known a dozen weddings made even thus,
And some of them high names. I have also known
Young men who, though they hated to discuss
Pretensions which they never dreamed to have shown,
Yet neither frightened by a female fuss
Nor by mustachios moved, were let alone
And lived, as did the brokenhearted fair,
In happier plight than if they formed a pair.
62
There’s also nightly, to the uninitiated,
A peril, not indeed like love or marriage,
But not the less for this to be depreciated.
It is – I meant and mean not to disparage
The show of virtue even in the vitiated –
It adds an outward grace unto their carriage –
But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot,
Couleur de rose, who’s neither white nor scarlet.
63
Such is your cold coquette, who can’t say no
And won’t say yes and keeps you on-and off-ing
On a lee shore till it begins to blow,
Then sees your heart wrecked with an inward scoffing.
This works a world of sentimental woe
And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin;
But yet is merely innocent flirtation,
Not quite adultery, but adulteration.
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‘Ye gods, I grow a talker!’ Let us prate.
The next of perils, though I place it sternest,
Is when, without regard to church or state,
A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest.
Abroad, such things decide few women’s fate
(Such, early traveller, is the truth thou learnest),
But in old England when a young bride errs,
Poor thing, Eve’s was a trifling case to hers.
65
For’tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit
Country, where a young couple of the same ages
Can’t form a friendship but the world o’erawes it.
Then there’s the vulgar trick of those damned damages.
A verdict, grievous foe to those who cause it,
Forms a sad climax to romantic homages,
Besides those soothing speeches of the pleaders
And evidences which regale all readers.
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But they who blunder thus are raw beginners.
A little genial sprinkling of hypocrisy
Has saved the fame of thousand splendid sinners,
The loveliest oligarchs of our gynocracy.
You may see such at all the balls and dinners
Among the proudest of our aristocracy,
So gentle, charming, charitable, chaste,
And all by having tact as well as taste.
67
Juan, who did not stand in the predicament
Of a mere novice, had one safeguard more,
For he was sick – no, ‘twas not the word sick I meant –
But he had seen so much good love before
That he was not in heart so very weak. I meant
But thus much and no sneer against the shore
Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings,
Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double Klockings.
68
But coming young from lands and scenes romantic,
Where lives not lawsuits must be risked for passion,
And passion’s self must have a spice of frantic,
Into a country where’tis half a fashion
Seemed to him half commercial, half pedantic,
Howe’er he might esteem this moral nation.
Besides (alas, his taste forgive and pity)
At first he did not think the women pretty.
69
I say it first, for he found out at last,
But by degrees, that they were fairer far
Than the more glowing dames whose lot is cast
Beneath the influence of the Eastern star.
A further proof we should not judge in haste;
Yet inexperience could not be his bar
To taste. The truth is, if men would confess,
That novelties please less than they impress.
70
Though travelled, I have never had the luck to
Trace up those shuffling Negroes, Nile or Niger,
To that impracticable place Timbuctoo,
Where Geography finds no one to oblige her
With such a chart as may be safely stuck to,
For Europe ploughs in Afric like bos piger;
But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there
No doubt I should be told that black is fair.
71
It is. I will not swear that black is white,
But I suspect in fact that white is black,
And the whole matter rests upon eyesight.
Ask a blind man, the best judge. You’ll attack
Perhaps this new position, but I’m right;
Or if I’m wrong, I’ll not be ta’en aback.
He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark
Within; and what sees’t thou? A dubious spark.
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But I’m relapsing into metaphysics,
That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same
Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics,
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Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame.
And this reflection brings me to plain physics
And to the beauties of a foreign dame,
Compared with those of our pure pearls of price,
Those polar summers, all sun and some ice.
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Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose
Beginnings are fair faces, ends mere fishes.
Not that there’s not a quantity of those
Who have a due respect for their own wishes.
Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows
Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious.
They warm into a scrape, but keep of course,
As a reserve, a plunge into remorse.
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But this has nought to do with their outsides.
I said that Juan did not think them pretty
At the first blush, for a fair Briton hides
Half her attractions, probably from pity,
And rather calmly into the heart glides
Than storms it as a foe would take a city,
But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try)
She keeps it for you like a true ally.
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She cannot step as does an Arab barb,
Or Andalusian girl from mass returning,
Nor wear as gracefully as Gauls her garb,
Nor in her eye Ausonia’s glance is burning.
Her voice, though sweet, is not so fit to warble those bravuras (which I still am learning
To like, though I have been seven years in Italy
And have or had an ear that served me prettily).
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She cannot do these things nor one or two
Others in that offhand and dashing style
Which takes so much (to give the devil his due),
Nor is she quite so ready with her smile,
Nor settles all things in one interview
(A thing approved as saving time and toil),
But though the soil may give you time and trouble,
Well cultivated, it will render double.
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And if in fact she takes to a grande passion,
It is a very serious thing indeed.
Nine times in ten’tis but caprice or fashion,
Coquetry or a wish to take the lead,
The pride of a mere child with a new sash on,
Or wish to make a rival’s bosom bleed;
But the tenth instance will be a tornado,
For there’s no saying what they will or may do.
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The reason’s obvious; if there’s an éclat,
They lose their caste at once, as do the pariahs.
And when the delicacies of the law
Have filled their papers with their comments various,
Society, that china without flaw
(The hypocrite), will banish them like Marius
To sit amidst the ruins of their guilt.
For Fame’s a Carthage not so soon rebuilt.