“Loan of a Lover” is the leading dish,
Concluding with a dainty course of fish;
“Whitebait at Greenwich” in the best condition
(By Mr. Gladstone's very kind permission).
Before the courses will be handed round
An Entrée made of Children, nicely browned. Bell rings.
But hark! The bell to summon me away;
They're anxious to begin their little Play.
One word before I go—We'll do our best,
And crave your kind indulgence for the rest;
Own that at least we've striven to succeed,
And take the good intention for the deed.
Nov. 1871.
PROLOGUE 3
[“Wiffie! I'm sure that something is the matter]
Enter Beatrice, leading Wilfred. She leaves him at centre (front), and after going round on tip-toe, to make sure they are not overheard, returns and takes his arm.
B.
“Wiffie! I'm sure that something is the matter,
All day there's been—oh, such a fuss and clatter!
Mamma's been trying on a funny dress—
I never saw the house in such a mess! (puts her arm round his neck)
Is there a secret, Wiffie?”
W.
(shaking her off)
“Yes, of course!”
B.
“And you won't tell it? (whimpers)
Then you're very cross! (turns away from him and clasps her hands, looking up ecstatically)
I'm sure of this! It's something quite uncommon!”
W.
(stretching up his arms, with a mock-heroic air)
“Oh, Curiosity! Thy name is Woman! (puts his arm round her coaxingly)
Well, Birdie, then I'll tell! (mysteriously)
What should you say
If they were going to act—a little play?”
B.
(jumping and clapping her hands)
“I'd say ‘HOW NICE!’”
W.
(pointing to audience)
“But will it please the rest?”
B.
“Oh yes! Because, you know, they'll do their best! (turns to audience)
You'll praise them, won't you, when you've seen the play?
Just say ‘HOW NICE!’ before you go away!”
(They run away hand in hand.)
Feb. 14, 1873.
COLLEGE RHYMES AND NOTES BY AN OXFORD CHIEL
Christ Church Meadow, Oxford university, where Carroll taught Maths and wrote ‘Alice in Wonderland’ for the dean's daughter.
CONTENTS
ODE TO DAMON
THOSE HORRID HURDY-GURDIES!
MY FANCY
THE MAJESTY OF JUSTICE
THE ELECTIONS TO THE HEBDOMADAL COUNCIL
THE DESERTED PARKS
EXAMINATION STATUTE
ODE TO DAMON
(From Chloë, who Understands His Meaning.)
“Oh, do not forget the day when we met
At the fruiterer's shop in the city:
When you said I was plain and excessively vain,
But I knew that you meant I was pretty.
“Recollect, too, the hour when I purchased the flour
(For the dumplings, you know) and the suet;
Whilst the apples I told my dear Damon to hold,
(Just to see if you knew how to do it).
“Then recall to your mind how you left me behind,
And went off in a 'bus with the pippins;
When you said you'd forgot, but I knew you had not;
(It was merely to save the odd threepence!).
“Don't forget your delight in the dumplings that night,
Though you said they were tasteless and doughy:
But you winked as you spoke, and I saw that the joke
(If it was one) was meant for your Chloë!
“Then remember the day when Joe offered to pay
For us all at the Great Exhibition;
You proposed a short cut, and we found the thing shut,
(We were two hours too late for admission).
“Your ‘short cut’, dear, we found took us seven miles round
(And Joe said exactly what we did):
Well, I helped you out then—it was just like you men—
Not an atom of sense when it's needed!
“You said ‘What's to be done?’ and I thought you in fun,
(Never dreaming you were such a ninny).
‘Home directly!’ said I, and you paid for the fly,
(And I think that you gave him a guinea).
“Well, that notion, you said, had not entered your head:
You proposed ‘The best thing, as we're come, is
(Since it opens again in the morning at ten)
To wait‘—Oh, you prince of all dummies!
“And when Joe asked you ‘Why, if a man were to die,
Just as you ran a sword through his middle,
You'd be hung for the crime?’ and you said ‘Give me time!’
And brought to your Chloë the riddle—
“Why, remember, you dunce, how I solved it at once—
(The question which Joe had referred to you),
Why, I told you the cause, was ‘the force of the laws,’
And you said ‘It had never occurred to you.’
“This instance will show that your brain is too slow,
And (though your exterior is showy),
Yet so arrant a goose can be no sort of use
To society—come to your Chloë!
“You'll find no one like me, who can manage to see
Your meaning, you talk so obscurely:
Why, if once I were gone, how would you get on?
Come, you know what I mean, Damon, surely.”
THOSE HORRID HURDY-GURDIES!
A MONODY, BY A VICTIM
“My mother bids me bind my hair,”
And not go about such a figure;
It's a bother, of course, but what do I care?
I shall do as I please when I'm bigger.
“My lodging is on the cold, cold ground,”
As the first-floor and attic were taken.
I tried the garret but once, and found
That my wish for a change was mistaken.
“Ever of thee!” yes, “Ever of thee!”
They chatter more and more,
Till I groan aloud, “Oh! let me be!
I have heard it all before!”
“Please remember the organ, sir,”
What? hasn't he left me yet?
I promise, good man; for its tedious burr
I never can forget.
MY FANCY
I painted her a gushing thing,
With years perhaps a score;
I little thought to find they were
At least a dozen more;
My fancy gave her eyes of blue,
A curly auburn head:
I came to find the blue a green,
The auburn turned to red.
She boxed my ears this morning,
They tingled very much;
I own that I could wish her
A somewhat lighter touch;
And if you were to ask me how
Her charms might be improved,
I would not have them added to,
But just a few removed!
She has the bear's ethereal grace,
The bland hyena's laugh,
The footstep of the elephant,
The neck of the giraffe;
I love her still, believe me,
Though my heart its passion hides;
“She's all my fancy painted her,”
But oh! how much besides!
Mar. 15, 2.
THE MAJESTY OF JUSTICE
AN OXFORD IDYLL
They passed beneath the College gate;
And down the High went slowly on;
Then spake the Undergraduate
&nbs
p; To that benign and portly Don:
“They say that Justice is a Queen—
A Queen of awful Majesty—
Yet in the papers I have seen
Some things that puzzle me.
“A Court obscure, so rumour states,
There is, called ‘Vice-Cancellarii,’
Which keeps on Undergraduates,
Who do not pay their bills, a wary eye.
A case I'm told was lately brought
Into that tiniest of places,
And justice in that case was sought—
As in most other cases.
“Well! Justice as I hold, dear friend,
Is Justice, neither more than less:
I never dreamed it could depend
On ceremonial or dress.
I thought that her imperial sway
In Oxford surely would appear,
But all the papers seem to say
She's not majestic here.”
The portly Don he made reply,
With the most roguish of his glances,
“Perhaps she drops her Majesty
Under peculiar circumstances.”
“But that's the point!” the young man cried,
“The puzzle that I wish to pen you in—
How are the public to decide
Which article is genuine?
“Is't only when the Court is large
That we for ‘Majesty’ need hunt?
Would what is Justice in a barge
Be something different in a punt?
“Nay, nay!” the Don replied, amused,
“You're talking nonsense, sir! You know it!
Such arguments were never used
By any friend of Jowett.”
“Then is it in the men who trudge
(Beef-eaters I believe they call them)
Before each wigged and ermined judge,
For fear some mischief should befall them?
If I should recognise in one
(Through all disguise) my own domestic,
I fear 'twould shed a gleam of fun
Even on the ‘Majestic’!”
The portly Don replied, “Ahem!
They can't exactly be its essence:
I scarcely think the want of them
The ‘Majesty of Justice’ lessens.
Besides, they always march awry;
Their gorgeous garments never fit:
Processions don't make Majesty—
I'm quite convinced of it.”
“Then is it in the wig it lies,
Whose countless rows of rigid curls
Are gazed at with admiring eyes
By country lads and servant-girls?”
Out laughed that bland and courteous Don:
“Dear sir, I do not mean to flatter—
But surely you have hit upon
The essence of the matter.
“They will not own the Majesty
Of Justice, making Monarchs bow,
Unless as evidence they see
The horsehair wig upon her brow.
Yes, yes! That makes the silliest men
Seem wise; the meanest men look big:
The Majesty of Justice, then,
Is seated in the WIG.”
March 3.
THE ELECTIONS TO THE HEBDOMADAL COUNCIL
“Now is the winter of our discontent.”
[In the year 6, a Letter with the above title was published in Oxford, addressed by Mr. Goldwin Smith to the Senior Censor of Christ Church, with the two-fold object of revealing to the University a vast political misfortune which it had unwittingly encountered, and of suggesting a remedy which should at once alleviate the bitterness of the calamity and secure the sufferers from its recurrence. The misfortune thus revealed was no less than the fact that, at a recent election of Members to the Hebdomadal Council, two Conservatives had been chosen, thus giving a Conservative majority in the Council; and the remedy suggested was a sufficiently sweeping one, embracing, as it did, the following details:—
1. “The exclusion” (from Congregation) “of the non-academical elements which form a main part of the strength of this party domination.” These “elements” are afterwards enumerated as “the parish clergy and the professional men of the city, and chaplains who are without any academical occupation.”
2. The abolition of the Hebdomadal Council.
3. The abolition of the legislative functions of Convocation.
These are all the main features of this remarkable scheme of Reform, unless it be necessary to add—
4.“To preside over a Congregation with full legislative powers, the Vice-Chancellor ought no doubt to be a man of real capacity.”
But it would be invidious to suppose that there was any intention of suggesting this as a novelty.
The following rhythmical version of the Letter develops its principles to an extent which possibly the writer had never contemplated.]
“Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky?
Heard ye the dragon-monster's dreadful cry?”—
Excuse this sudden burst of the Heroic;
The present state of things would vex a Stoic!
And just as Sairey Gamp, for pains within,
Administered a modicum of gin,
So does my mind, when vexed and ill at ease,
Console itself with soothing similes,
The “dragon-monster” (pestilential schism!)
I need not tell you is Conservatism.
The “hurtling arrow” (till we find a better)
Is represented by the present Letter.
'Twas, I remember, but the other day,
Dear Senior Censor, that you chanced to say
You thought these party-combinations would
Be found, “though needful, no unmingled good.”
Unmingled good? They are unmingled ill!
I never took to them, and never will—
What am I saying? Heed it not, my friend:
On the next page I mean to recommend
The very dodges that I now condemn
In the Conservatives! Don't hint to them
A word of this! (In confidence. Ahem!)
Need I rehearse the history of Jowett?
I need not, Senior Censor, for you know it.
That was the Board Hebdomadal, and oh!
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!
Let each that wears a beard, and each that shaves,
Join in the cry “We never will be slaves!”
“But can the University afford
To be a slave to any kind of board?
A slave?” you shuddering ask. “Think you it can, Sir?”
“Not at the present moment,” is my answer.
I've thought the matter o'er and o'er again
And given to it all my powers of brain;
I've thought it out, and this is what I make it,
(And I don't care a Tory how you take it:)
It may be right to go ahead, I guess:
It may be right to stop, I do confess;
Also, it may be right to retrogress.
“In a letter on a point connected with the late elections to the Hebdomadal Council you incidentally remarked to me that our combinations for these elections, ‘though necessary were not an unmixed good.’ They are an unmixed evil.”
“I never go to a caucus without reluctance: I never write a canvassing letter without a feeling of repugnance to my task.”
“I need not rehearse the history of the Regius Professor of Greek.”
“The University cannot afford at the present moment to be delivered over as a slave to any non-academical interest whatever.”
“It may be right to go on, it may be right to stand still, or it may be right to go back.”
So says the oracle, and, for myself, I
Must say it beats to fits the one at Delphi!
To save beloved Oxford from the yoke,
(For this majority's beyond a joke)
,
We must combine, aye! hold a caucus-meeting,
Unless we want to get another beating.
That they should “bottle” us is nothing new—
But shall they bottle us and caucus too?
See the “fell unity of purpose” now
With which Obstructives plunge into the row!
“Factious Minorities,” we used to sigh—
“Factious Majorities” is now the cry.
“Votes—ninety-two”—no combination here:
“Votes—ninety-three”—conspiracy, 'tis clear!
You urge “'Tis but a unit.” I reply
That in that unit lurks their “unity.”
Our voters often bolt, and often baulk us,
But then, they never, never go to caucus!
Our voters can't forget the maxim famous
“Semel electum semper eligamus”:
They never can be worked into a ferment
By visionary promise of preferment,
Nor taught, by hints of “Paradise” beguiled,
To whisper “C for Chairman” like a child!
And thus the friends that we have tempted down
Oft take the two-o'clock Express for town.
This is our danger: this the secret foe
That aims at Oxford such a deadly blow.
What champion can we find to save the State,
To crush the plot? We darkly whisper “Wait!”
My scheme is this: remove the votes of all
The residents that are not Liberal—
Leave the young Tutors uncontrolled and free,
And Oxford then shall see—what it shall see.
What next? Why then, I say, let Convocation
Be shorn of all her powers of legislation.
But why stop there? Let us go boldly on—
Sweep everything beginning with a “Con”
Into oblivion! Convocation first,
Conservatism next, and, last and worst,
“Concilium Hebdomadale” must,
Consumed and conquered, be consigned to dust!
“To save the University from going completely under the yoke . . . we shall still be obliged to combine.”
“Caucus-holding and wire-pulling would still be almost inevitably carried on to some extent.”
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll Page 84