Don Juan
Page 49
43
This noble personage began to look
A little black upon this new flirtation,
But such small licences must lovers brook,
Mere freedoms of the female corporation.
Woe to the man who ventures a rebuke!
’Twill but precipitate a situation
Extremely disagreeable, but common
To calculators when they count on woman.
44
The circle smiled, then whispered and then sneered;
The misses bridled and the matrons frowned;
Some hoped things might not turn out as they feared;
Some would not deem such women could be found;
Some ne’er believed one half of what they heard;
Some looked perplexed and others looked profound;
And several pitied with sincere regret
Poor Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet.
45
But what is odd, none ever named the Duke,
Who, one might think, was something in the affair.
True, he was absent and’twas rumoured, took
But small concern about the when or where
Or what his consort did. If he could brook
Her gaieties, none had a right to stare.
Theirs was that best of unions past all doubt,
Which never meets and therefore can’t fall out.
46
But oh that I should ever pen so sad a line!
Fired with an abstract love of virtue, she,
My Dian of the Ephesians, Lady Adeline,
Began to think the Duchess’ conduct free,
Regretting much that she had chosen so bad a line
And waxing chiller in her courtesy,
Looked grave and pale to see her friend’s fragility,
For which most friends reserve their sensibility.
47
There’s nought in this bad world like sympathy;
’Tis so becoming to the soul and face,
Sets to soft music the harmonious sigh
And robes sweet Friendship in a Brussels lace.
Without a friend, what were humanity,
To hint our errors up with a good grace?
Consoling us with, ‘Would you had thought twice!
Ah, if you had but followed my advice!’
48
Oh Job! you had two friends; one’s quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease.
They are but bad pilots when the weather’s rough,
Doctors less famous for their cures than fees.
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off,
As they will do like leaves at the first breeze.
When your affairs come round, one way or t’other,
Go to the coffeehouse and take another.
49
But this is not my maxim; had it been,
Some heartaches had been spared me. Yet I care not;
I would not be a tortoise in his screen
Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not.
’Tis better on the whole to have felt and seen
That which humanity may bear or bear not.
’Twill teach discernment to the sensitive
And not to pour their ocean in a sieve.
50
Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast
Is that portentous phrase, ‘I told you so’,
Uttered by friends, those prophets of the past,
Who, ‘stead of saying what you now should do.
Own they foresaw that you would fall at last
And solace your slight lapse’gainst bonos mores
With a long memorandum of old stories.
51
The Lady Adeline’s serene severity
Was not confined to feeling for her friend,
Whose fame she rather doubted with posterity,
Unless her habits should begin to mend;
But Juan also shared in her austerity,
But mixed with pity, pure as e’er was penned.
His inexperience moved her gentle ruth,
And (as her junior by six weeks) his youth.
52
These forty days’ advantage of her years –
And hers were those which can face calculation,
Boldly referring to the list of peers
And noble births, nor dread the enumeration –
Gave her a right to have maternal fears
For a young gentleman’s fit education,
Though she was far from that leap year, whose leap
In female dates strikes Time all of a heap.
53
This may be fixed at somewhere before thirty –
Say seven-and-twenty, for I never knew
The strictest in chronology and virtue
Advance beyond, while they could pass for new.
Oh Time, why dost not pause? Thy scythe, so dirty
With rust, should surely cease to hack and hew.
Reset it, shave more smoothly, also slower,
If but to keep thy credit as a mower.
54
But Adeline was far from that ripe age,
Whose ripeness is but bitter at the best.
’Twas rather her experience made her sage,
For she had seen the world and stood its test,
As I have said in – I forget what page
(My Muse despises reference, as you have guessed
By this time), but strike six from seven-and-twenty,
And you will find her sum of years in plenty.
55
At sixteen she came out; presented, vaunted,
She put all coronets into commotion.
At seventeen too the world was still enchanted
With the new Venus of their brilliant ocean.
At eighteen, though below her feet still panted
A hecatomb of suitors with devotion,
She had consented to create again
That Adam, called ‘the happiest of men’.
56
Since then she had sparkled through three glowing winters,
Admired, adored, but also so correct
That she had puzzled all the acutest hinters
Without the apparel of being circumspect.
They could not even glean the slightest splinters
From off the marble, which had no defect.
She had also snatched a moment since her marriage
To bear a son and heir and one miscarriage.
57
Fondly the wheeling fireflies flew around her,
Those little glitterers of the London night,
But none of these possessed a sting to wound her.
She was a pitch beyond a coxcomb’s flight.
Perhaps she wished an aspirant profounder,
But whatsoe’er she wished, she acted right;
And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify
A woman, so she’s good, what does it signify?
58
I hate a motive like a lingering bottle,
Which with the landlord makes too long a stand,
Leaving all claretless the unmoistened throttle,
Especially with politics on hand.
I hate it, as I hate a drove of cattle,
Who whirl the dust as simooms whirl the sand.
I hate it, as I hate an argument,
A laureate’s ode, or servile peer’s ‘Content’.
59
’Tis sad to hack into the roots of things;
They are so much intertwisted with the earth.
So that the branch a goodly verdure flings,
I reck not if an acorn gave it birth.
To trace all actions to their secret springs
Would make indeed some melancholy mirth,
But this is not at present my concern,
And I refer you to wise Oxenstiern.
&nb
sp; 60
With the kind view of saving an éclat,
Both to the Duchess and diplomatist,
The Lady Adeline, as soon’s she saw
That Juan was unlikely to resist
(For foreigners don’t know that a faux pas
In England ranks quite on a different list
From those of other lands unblest with juries,
Whose verdict for such sin a certain cure is) –
61
The Lady Adeline resolved to take
Such measures as she thought might best impede
The further progress of this sad mistake.
She thought with some simplicity indeed,
But innocence is bold even at the stake
And simple in the world and doth not need
Nor use those palisades by dames erected,
Whose virtue lies in never being detected.
62
It was not that she feared the very worst.
His Grace was an enduring, married man
And was not likely all at once to burst
Into a scene and swell the clients’ clan
Of Doctors’ Commons, but she dreaded first
The magic of her Grace’s talisman
And next a quarrel – as he seemed to fret –
With Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet.
63
Her Grace too passed for being an intrigante,
And somewhat méchante in her amorous sphere,
One of those pretty, precious plagues, which haunt
A lover with caprices soft and dear,
That like to make a quarrel when they can’t
Find one, each day of the delightful year –
Bewitching, torturing, as they freeze or glow
And, what is worst of all, won’t let you go,
64
The sort of thing to turn a young man’s head,
Or make a Werter of him in the end.
No wonder then a purer soul should dread
This sort of chaste liaison for a friend.
It were much better to be wed or dead
Than wear a heart a woman loves to rend.
’Tis best to pause and think ere you rush on
If that a bonne fortune be really bonne.
65
And first, in the o’erflowing of her heart,
Which really knew or thought it knew no guile,
She called her husband now and then apart
And bade him counsel Juan. With a smile
Lord Henry heard her plans of artless art
To wean Don Juan from the siren’s wile,
And answered like a statesman or a prophet
In such guise that she could make nothing of it.
66
Firstly, he said he never interfered
In anybody’s business but the king’s;
Next that he never judged from what appeared,
Without strong reason, of those sorts of things;
Thirdly, that Juan had more brain than beard
And was not to be held in leading strings;
And fourthly, what need hardly be said twice,
That good but rarely came from good advice.
67
And therefore doubtless to approve the truth
Of the last axiom, he advised his spouse
To leave the parties to themselves, forsooth,
At least as far as bienséance allows,
That time would temper Juan’s faults of youth,
That young men rarely made monastic vows,
That opposition only more attaches;
But here a messenger brought in dispatches.
68
And being of the Council called ‘the Privy’,
Lord Henry walked into his cabinet,
To furnish matter for some future Livy,
To tell how he reduced the nation’s debt;
And if their full contents I do not give ye,
It is because I do not know them yet,
But I shall add them in a brief appendix,
To come between mine epic and its index.
69
But ere he went, he added a slight hint,
Another gentle commonplace or two,
Such as are coined in conversation’s mint
And pass for want of better, though not new,
Then broke his packet to see what was in’t,
And having casually glanced it through,
Retired, and as he went out, calmly kissed her,
Less like a young wife than an aged sister.
70
He was a cold, good, honourable man,
Proud of his birth and proud of everything,
A goodly spirit for a state divan,
A figure fit to walk before a king,
Tall, stately, formed to lead the courtly van
On birthdays, glorious with a star and string,
The very model of a chamberlain,
And such I mean to make him when I reign.
71
But there was something wanting on the whole –
I don’t know what and therefore cannot tell –
Which pretty women – the sweet souls! call soul.
Certes it was not body; he was well
Proportioned, as a poplar or a pole,
A handsome man, that human miracle,
And in each circumstance of love or war
Had still preserved his perpendicular.
72
Still there was something wanting, as I’ve said,
That indefinable je ne sais quoi,
Which, for what I know, may of yore have led
To Homer’s Iliad since it drew to Troy
The Greek Eve, Helen, from the Spartan’s bed,
Though on the whole no doubt the Dardan boy
Was much inferior to King Menelaus,
But thus it is some women will betray us.
73
There is an awkward thing which much perplexes,
Unless like wise Tiresias we had proved
By turns the difference of the several sexes:
Neither can show quite how they would be loved.
The sensual for a short time but connects us,
The sentimental boasts to be unmoved,
But both together form a kind of centaur,
Upon whose back ‘tis better not to venture.
74
A something all-sufficient for the heart
Is that for which the sex are always seeking,
But how to fill up that same vacant part?
There lies the rub, and this they are but weak in.
Frail mariners afloat without a chart,
They run before the wind through high seas breaking,
And when they have made the shore through every shock,
’Tis odd or odds it may turn out a rock.
75
There is a flower called ‘Move in idleness’,
For which see Shakespeare’s ever blooming garden.
I will not make his great description less
And beg his British godship’s humble pardon,
If in my extremity of rhyme’s distress,
I touch a single leaf where he is warden,
But though the flower is different, with the French
Or Swiss Rousseau cry, ‘Voilá la pervenche!’
76
Eureka! I have found it! What I mean
To say is not that love is idleness,
But that in love such idleness has been
An accessory, as I have cause to guess.
Hard labour’s an indifferent go-between;
Your men of business are not apt to express
Much passion, since the merchant ship, the Argo,
Conveyed Medea as her supercargo.
77
Beatus tile procul from negotiis,
Saith Horace; the great little poet’s wrong.
His other maxim Noscitur a sociis
Is
much more to the purpose of his song,
Though even that were sometimes too ferocious,
Unless good company he kept too long;
But, in his teeth, whate’er their state or station,
Thrice happy they who have an occupation!
78
Adam exchanged his Paradise for ploughing,
Eve made up millinery with fig leaves,
The earliest knowledge from the tree so knowing,
As far as I know, that the Church receives;
And since that time it need not cost much showing
That many of the ills o’er which man grieves,
And still more women, spring from not employing
Some hours to make the remnant worth enjoying.
79
And hence high life is oft a dreary void,
A rack of pleasures, where we must invent
A something wherewithal to be annoyed.
Bards may sing what they please about content;
Contented, when translated, means but cloyed.
And hence arise the woes of sentiment;
Blue devils and bluestockings and romances,
Reduced to practice and performed like dances.
80
I do declare upon an affidavit
Romances I ne’er read like those I have seen;
Nor if unto the world I ever gave it,
Would some believe that such a tale had been.
But such intent I never had nor have it;
Some truths are better kept behind a screen,
Especially when they would look like lies.
I therefore deal in generalities.
81
‘An oyster may be crossed in love’, and why?
Because he mopeth idly in his shell
And heaves a lonely subterraqueous sigh,
Much as a monk may do within his cell.
And apropos of monks, their piety
With sloth hath found it difficult to dwell.
Those vegetables of the Catholic creed
Are apt exceedingly to run to seed.
82
Oh Wilberforce! thou man of black renown,
Whose merit none enough can sing or say,
Thou hast struck one immense colossus down,
Thou moral Washington of Africa!
But there’s another little thing, I own,
Which you should perpetrate some summer’s day
And set the other half of earth to rights:
You have freed the blacks – now pray shut up the whites.
83
Shut up the bald coot bully Alexander,
Ship off the Holy Three to Senegal,
Teach them that ‘sauce for goose is sauce for gander’
And ask them how they like to be in thrall.
Shut up each high heroic salamander,
Who eats fire gratis (since the pay’s but small).
Shut up – no, not the King, but the Pavilion,
Or else ‘twill cost us all another million.
84
Shut up the world at large, let Bedlam out,