And my fare for the passage!
Perhaps she thinks it funny,
Aboard of the Hilda,
But I've lost purse and money,
And thee, oh, my 'Tilda!”
His pin of gold the youth undid
And in his waistcoat-pocket hid,
Then gently folded hand in hand,
And dropped asleep upon the sand.
SHE'S ALL MY FANCY PAINTED HIM
[This affecting fragment was found in MS. among the papers of the well-known author of “Was it You or I?” a tragedy, and the two popular novels, “Sister and Son,” and “The Niece's Legacy, or the Grateful Grandfather.”]
She's all my fancy painted him
(I make no idle boast);
If he or you had lost a limb,
Which would have suffered most?
He said that you had been to her,
And seen me here before;
But, in another character,
She was the same of yore.
There was not one that spoke to us,
Of all that thronged the street:
So he sadly got into a 'bus,
And pattered with his feet.
They sent him word I had not gone
(We know it to be true);
If she should push the matter on,
What would become of you?
They gave her one, they gave me two,
They gave us three or more;
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.
If I or she should chance to be
Involved in this affair,
He trusts to you to set them free,
Exactly as we were.
It seemed to me that you had been
(Before she had this fit)
An obstacle, that came between
Him, and ourselves, and it.
Don't let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
A secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.
PHOTOGRAPHY EXTRAORDINARY
The Milk-and-Water School
Alas! she would not hear my prayer!
Yet it were rash to tear my hair;
Disfigured, I should be less fair.
She was unwise, I may say blind;
Once she was lovingly inclined;
Some circumstance has changed her mind.
The Strong-Minded or Matter-of-Fact School
Well! so my offer was no go!
She might do worse, I told her so;
She was a fool to answer “No.”
However, things are as they stood;
Nor would I have her if I could,
For there are plenty more as good.
The Spasmodic or German School
Firebrands and daggers! hope hath fled!
To atoms dash the doubly dead!
My brain is fire—my heart is lead!
Her soul is flint, and what am I?
Scorch'd by her fierce, relentless eye,
Nothingness is my destiny!
LAYS OF MYSTERY, IMAGINATION, AND HUMOUR No.1
THE PALACE OF HUMBUG
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never-ending sneeze.
Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.
One showed a vain and noisy prig,
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.
And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than play.
Whose icy breast no pity warms,
Whose little victims sit in swarms,
And slowly sob on lower forms.
And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,
Where flowers are growing wild and rank,
Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.
All birds of evil omen there
Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,
The witless wanderer to snare.
The fatal Notes neglected fall,
No creature heeds the treacherous call,
For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.
The wandering phantom broke and fled,
Straightway I saw within my head
A vision of a ghostly bed,
Where lay two worn decrepit men,
The fictions of a lawyer's pen,
Who never more might breathe again.
The serving-man of Richard Roe
Wept, inarticulate with woe:
She wept, that waited on John Doe.
“Oh rouse,” I urged, “the waning sense
With tales of tangled evidence,
Of suit, demurrer, and defence.”
“Vain,” she replied, “such mockeries:
For morbid fancies, such as these,
No suits can suit, no plea can please.”
And bending o'er that man of straw,
She cried in grief and sudden awe,
Not inappropriately, “Law!”
The well-remembered voice he knew,
He smiled, he faintly muttered “Sue!”
(Her very name was legal too.)
The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:
A hurricane went raving by,
And swept the Vision from mine eye.
Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,
(The hangings, tape; the tape was red:)
'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!
Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,
What time it shudderingly recalls
That horrid dream of marble halls!
Oxford, 5.
THE MOCK TURTLE'S SONG
Beneath the waters of the sea
Are lobsters thick as thick can be—
They love to dance with you and me,
My own, my gentle Salmon!
Chorus
Salmon, come up! Salmon, go down!
Salmon, come twist your tail around!
Of all the fishes of the sea
There's none so good as Salmon!
UPON THE LONELY MOOR
[It is always interesting to ascertain the sources from which our great poets obtained their ideas: this motive has dictated the publication of the following: painful as its appearance must be to the admirers of Wordsworth and his poem of “Resolution and Independence.”]
I met an aged, aged man
Upon the lonely moor:
I knew I was a gentleman,
And he was but a boor.
So I stopped and roughly questioned him,
“Come, tell me how you live!”
But his words impressed my ear no more
Than if it were a sieve.
He said, “I look for soap-bubbles,
That lie among the wheat,
And bake them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,” he said,
“Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread—
A trifle, if you please.”
But I was thinking of a way
To multiply by ten,
And always, in the answer, get
The question back again.
I did not hear a word he said,
But kicked that old man calm,
And said, “Come, tell me how you live!”
And pinched him in the arm.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said, “I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze.
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland's Macassar Oil;
Bu
t fourpence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.”
But I was thinking of a plan
To paint one's gaiters green,
So much the colour of the grass
That they could ne'er be seen.
I gave his ear a sudden box,
And questioned him again,
And tweaked his grey and reverend locks,
And put him into pain.
He said, “I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat-buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold,
Or coin of silver-mine,
But for a copper-halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
“I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the flowery knolls
For wheels of hansom cabs.
And that's the way” (he gave a wink)
“I get my living here,
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour's health in beer.”
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I duly thanked him, ere I went,
For all his stories queer,
But chiefly for his kind intent
To drink my health in beer.
And now if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe;
Or if a statement I aver
Of which I am not sure,
I think of that strange wanderer
Upon the lonely moor.
MISS JONES
(This frolicsome verse was written for a medley of twenty-two tunes that ranged from “The Captain and His Whiskers” to “Rule Britannia.”)
'Tis a melancholy song, and it will not keep you long,
Tho I specs it will work upon your feelings very strong,
For the agonising moans of Miss Arabella Jones
Were warranted to melt the hearts of any paving stones.
Simon Smith was tall and slim, and she doted upon him,
But he always called her Miss Jones—he never got so far,
As to use her Christian name—it was too familiar.
When she called him “Simon dear” he pretended not to hear,
And she told her sister Susan he behaved extremely queer,
Who said, “Very right! very right! Shews his true affection.
If you'd prove your Simon's love follow my direction.
I'd certainly advise you just to write a simple letter,
And to tell him that the cold he kindly asked about is better.
And say that by the tanyard you will wait in loving hope,
At nine o'clock this evening if he's willing to elope
With his faithful Arabella.”
So she wrote it, & signed it, & sealed it, & sent it, & dressed herself out in her holiday things.
With bracelets & brooches, & earrings, & necklace, a watch, & an eyeglass, & diamond rings,
For man is a creature weak and impressible, thinks such a deal of appearance, my dear.
So she waited for her Simon beside the tanyard gate, regardless of the pieman, who hinted it was late.
Waiting for Simon, she coughed in the chilly night, until the tanner found her,
And kindly brought a light old coat to wrap around her.
She felt her cold was getting worse,
Yet still she fondly whispered, “Oh, take your time, my Simon, although I've waited long.
I do not fear my Simon dear will fail to come at last,
Although I know that long ago the time I named is past.
My Simon! My Simon! Oh, charming man! Oh, charming man!
Dear Simon Smith, sweet Simon Smith.”
Oh, there goes the church-clock, the town-clock, the station-clock and there go the other clocks, they are all striking twelve!
Oh, Simon, it is getting late, it's very dull to sit and wait.
And really I'm in such a state, I hope you'll come at any rate, quite early in the morning, quite early in the morning.
Then with prancing bays & yellow chaise, we'll away to Gretna Green.
For when I am with my Simon Smith—oh, that common name! Oh that vulgar name!
I shall never rest happy till he's changed that name, but when he has married me, maybe he'll love me to that degree, that he'll grant me my prayer
And will call himself “Clare”—
So she talked all alone, as she sat upon a stone,
Still hoping he would come and find her, and she started most unkimmon, when instead of darling “Simmon” 'twas a strange man that stood behind her,
Who civilly observed “Good evening, M'am,
I really am surprised to see that you're out here alone, for you must own from thieves you're not secure.
A watch, I see. Pray lend it me (I hope the gold is pure).
And all those rings, & other things—Don't scream, you know, for long ago
The policeman off from his beat has gone.
In the kitchen—” “Oh, you desperate villain! Oh, you treacherous thief!”
And these were the words of her anger and grief.
“When first to Simon Smith I gave my hand I never could have thought he would have acted half so mean as this,
And where's the new police? Oh, Simon, Simon! how could you treat your love so ill?”
They sit & chatter, they chatter with the cook, the guardians, so they're called, of public peace.
Through the tanyard was heard the dismal sound, “How on earth is it policemen never, never, never, can be found?”
PROLOGUES TO PLAYS
In his youth, Carroll wrote several plays and operaric works, one of which—La Guida Di Bragia—was performed in London. The prologues to three of the plays survive and are provided below.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE TO “LA GUIDA DI BRAGIA”
PROLOGUE 2
PROLOGUE 3
PROLOGUE TO “LA GUIDA DI BRAGIA”
(From an opera written for Carroll's Marionette Theatre)
Shall soldiers tread the murderous path of war,
Without a notion what they do it for?
Shall pallid mercers drive a roaring trade,
And sell the stuffs their hands have never made?
And shall not we, in this our mimic scene,
Be all that better actors e'er have been?
Awake again a Kemble's tragic tone,
And make a Liston's humour all our own?
Or vie with Mrs. Siddons in the art
To rouse the feelings and to charm the heart?
While Shakespeare's self, with all his ancient fires,
Lights up the forms that tremble on our wires?
Why can't we have, in theatres ideal,
The good, without the evil of the real?
Why may not Marionettes be just as good
As larger actors made of flesh and blood?
Presumptuous thought! to you and your applause
In humbler confidence we trust our cause.
PROLOGUE 2
[“Ladies and Gentlemen” seems stiff and cold.]
(Misses Beatrice and Ethel Hatch, daughters of Dr. Edwin Hatch, Vice-principal of St. Mary Hall, were friends of the author. He wrote two plays for performance at their house.)
Curtain rises and discovers the Speaker, who comes forward, thinking aloud,
824
[Speaker]
“Ladies and Gentlemen” seems stiff and cold.
There's something personal in “Young and Old”;
I'll try “Dear Friends” (addresses audience)
Oh! let me call you so.
Dear friends, look kindly on our little show.
Contr
ast us not with giants in the Art,
Nor say “You should see Sothern in that part”;
Nor yet, unkindest cut of all, in fact,
Condemn the actors, while you praise the Act.
Having by coming proved you find a charm in it,
Don't go away, and hint there may be harm in it.
Miss Crabb.
My dear Miss Verjuice, can it really be?
You're just in time, love, for a cup of tea;
And so, you went to see those people play.
Miss Verjuice.
Well! yes, Miss Crabb, and I may truly say
You showed your wisdom when you stayed away.
Miss C.
Doubtless! Theatricals in our quiet town!
I've always said, “The law should put them down,”
They mean no harm, tho' I begin to doubt it—
But now sit down and tell me all about it.
Miss V.
Well then, Miss Crabb, I won't deceive you, dear;
I heard some things I—didn't like to hear:
Miss C.
But don't omit them now.
Miss V.
Well! No! I'll try
To tell you all the painful history.
(They whisper alternately behind a small fan.)
Miss V.
And then, my dear, Miss Asterisk and he
Pretended they were lovers!!
Miss C.
Gracious me!!
(More whispering behind fan.)
Speaker.
What! Acting love!! And has that ne'er been seen
Save with a row of footlights placed between?
My gentle censors, let me roundly ask,
Do none but actors ever wear a mask?
Or have we reached at last that golden age
That finds deception only on the Stage?
Come, let's confess all round before we budge,
When all are guilty, none should play the Judge.
We're actors all, a motley company,
Some on the Stage, and others—on the sly—
And guiltiest he who paints so well his phiz
His brother actors scarce know what he is.
A truce to moralizing; we invite
The goodly company we see to-night
To have the little banquet we have got,
Well dressed, we hope, and served up hot & hot.
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 83