For years past, Glasgow has stood in the forefront
As a city given over to the small-pox
And magisterial reform.
It is, I believe,
An exceedingly well-managed city:
In fact, it appears to be managed
Out of all reasonable existence;
Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass
That it was lately visited
By a smart sample of the plague.
I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships
Are sincere and clean-thinking men.
I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,
Out of sheer public spirit
And with a view to bettering the condition
Of the city over which you preside.
In other words, I impute no motives:
That is to say, no base motives.
But, my dear Worships,
Why, in the name of Heaven, would you abolish
The harmless, necessary barmaid?
Have you never been young?
Have you never known the tender delight
Of whiling away a morning
With your elbow on the zinc
And threepennyworth of Bass before you?
What, may I ask your Worships,
Is Bass without a barmaid?
I grant that, taking them all in all,
The barmaids of Scotland
Are not what you might term
An altogether bewitching lot.
Years ago, when I was young and callow,
Fate threw me into the propinquity
Of a lady of this ilk;
She hailed from Glasgow,
And she was not beautiful;
On the other hand, I was young.
And, out of an income which was even slenderer then
Than it is now,
I purchased for that dear lady of the North
Many bottles of perfume,
Many pairs of kid gloves,
And a Prayer Book or so;
And, when I had consumed innumerable Basses
At her altar,
And the time had, as I thought, become ripe,
I offered her matrimony,
To which she replied, in limpid Doric:
"Gang awa hame to yer mither."
That, my dear Worships,
Is Glasgow!
If you can weed out of Glasgow
All young females
Possessed of this particular kind of temperament,
I am not so sure
But that you would have my blessing.
On the other hand, I am free to admit
That I hae my doots as to your capacity for so doing.
The perfume-bottle,
The kid gloves,
The Prayer Book
And "Na, na, na, I winna,"
Will always remain the prerogatives
Of the Glasgae lassies,
If I know anything of them.
Also, my dear Worships,
One thing is absolutely certain,
That, if the magistrates of all the cities
In the United Kingdom
Would take the step you have taken,
We should have gone a very considerable way
Towards solving the drink problem,
And putting Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
Into a fearful hole for money.
P.S.--I hate Scotch men,
But I sometimes think that Scotch women
Are rather bonnie.
TO A BOOKSELLER
My dear Sir,--
"There lies a vale in Ida
Lovelier
Than all the valleys
Of Ionian hills."
I take it
That this is a geographical fact.
Anyway it is Tennyson,
And I quote it
In order that you may perceive
That I have some acquaintance
With the higher walks of Literature,
And am therefore a man
Of entirely different build from yourself.
I was born a poet,
And have stuck to my trade
Unto this last.
Possibly you were born a bookseller.
I am willing to give your credit for it,
But I doubt it all the same,
For I often think the average bookseller
Must have been born a draper.
The other day I had occasion to do a little book-buying.
It was my first essay
In what I now believe to be
An altogether elegant and delightful form
Of intellectual recreation.
Of course, I went into a shop:
From the yawning Cimmerianity at the back of that shop
There came unto me swiftly and in large boots
A fat youth.
He bowed, and he bowed, and he bowed.
"I want a good edition of Shelley," I said.
And he replied straightway
"Ninepenceshillingnetoneandsixpencenethalfa-
crownnettwoandeightpencethreeandnine-
pencefiveshillingsnethalfaguineaandkindly-
stepthisway."
I said, "Thank you,
But I want Shelley,
Not egg-whisks."
Whereat he smiled and banged under my nose
A heavy volume,
Bound like a cheap purse,
And murmured, "There you are,
The best line in the market,
Two-and-eight."
And because I opened it,
And looked disconsolately at the stodgy running-titles
And the entrancing red-line border,
He cast upon me eyes of contempt and disgust,
And told me that I could not expect
Kelmscott Press and tree-calf
At the money.
In fact, that fat youth
Annoyed me.
He
Was
A bookseller.
Ah, my dear Sir,
When I reflect that whatever I may write,
No matter how excellent it may be,
Must ultimately pass into the hands
Of that fat youth
And become to him
Something
At ninepenceashillingneteighteenpencetwoandsix-
netthreeandninefiveshillingsnetorhalfaguinea-
andkindlystepthisway
The spirit of my fathers quails within me,
I know that authorship
Is a trade for fools.
Go to!
Ninepence me no ninepences,
Two-and-sixpence me no nets,
Bring yourself at once
To your logical conclusion,
And next time I call upon you
For Shelley,
Sell him to me,
As you appear to sell "Temporal Power."
By the pound
Avoirdupois.
TO THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER
My dear Deceased Wife's Sister,--
(The wife of my bosom being still happily amongst us,
The above,
As the learned might say,
Is a misnomer.
You, on the other hand,
Are a Miss ----,
And I would not marry you
To save myself from boiling oil.
If I had wanted you
I could have had you in the beginning.
And if I had married you
The wife of my bosom
Would have been aunt to her own children, as it were.
And in the event of your demise
She would also have been
My deceased wife's sister--
Which is at once inconsequential and peculiar.
A man cannot marry his deceased wife's sister
Till she is dead.
This is quite wrong.
In my humble opinion
It is also quite right.
Anyway, we will close this parenthesis
With the usual sign,
And proceed along the primrose path
Of business)
As I have already remarked
In my usual quaint way,
A man cannot marry
His deceased wife's sister
Until she is dead.
(By "she" of course I mean the man's wife.)
The bishops declare
That he cannot marry her anyhow
(By "he" I mean the man,
And by "her" of course
The bishops mean
The man's deceased wife's sister.
I desire to be explicit on these points
In order that we may avoid
Ambiguity.)
Well, my dear deceased wife's sister
(Always remembering that Mrs. ---- is still alive),
What is your view of matters?
Do you really wish to marry me or not?
Have you any opinions about Lord Hugh Cecil?
If so,
Kindly state them.
Was he or was he not justified in demanding
On Wednesday night
That the word "Shame"
Be put upon the record?
If so, why not?
If not, why so?
My dear deceased wife's sister,
Do not let us get confused.
Let us clear our minds of Cecil.
After all is said
You are the Auntie of my children,
And the great-niece of my wife's great-uncle,
Not to say the sister-in-law of my children's father.
Come along,
Here are ducats,
A ring,
And a Canadian parson,
Let us get married at once.
Of course it is so sudden.
It always is.
And we have forgotten about Mrs. ----
We always do.
But I tell you here and now,
And in good set terms,
My dear deceased wife's sister,
That if I wish to marry
Either you or any more of your mother's daughters
(Which Heaven forbid),
I shall go to Canada or Australia
And marry 'em.
TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
(_Before his Retirement_)
My dear Sir Michael Hicks-Beach,--
The devotion of one's life
To the service of the Muses
And the neglect of golden opportunities,
Is not without its compensations,
One of the chief of them being
That the devotee can look into the eyes
Of the most rapacious of Chancellors of the Exchequer
And smile.
For my own part, dear Sir Michael,
By the writing of Odes,
And general inattention to business,
I am able to knock up a precarious one hundred and seventy-five
pounds per annum;
On one hundred and sixty pounds of that sum
I am always careful to claim exemption,
Which leaves a taxable balance of fifteen pounds.
Out of this balance, my dear old friend, you are welcome to take
fifteen shillings,
Or twenty-three and fourpence ha'penny,
Or twenty-seven and sixpence farthing,
Or any other sum that you think might come in handy.
Indeed, in all the circumstances
(And without prejudice),
I should not be greatly upset
If you took the lot.
For well I wot
That the late War
Has cost more than the price of a row of houses,
And that it is my duty, as a full-blooded patriot,
To pay, and pay cheerfully;
And particularly so
Since it is not due for a month or so.
Ah, my dear Chancellor,
Who fears Black Michael
Must himself be black.
They call you Black because you want a lot of money;
I call them black because they've got it.
However, this is not a Ruskinian oration,
But an Ode,
And I shall therefore proceed to give you a few tips
As to legitimate methods of raising the wind.
Judging by your recent efforts,
You appear to be short of ideas.
Here you are.
Put sixpence a hundred on cigars.
"See What You Save"
Will see me through somehow;
Besides, I never smoke cigars.
Put a bit more on all sorts of wines and liqueurs,
Excepting Sauterne and Benedictine
(Of which I am particularly fond);
Put a bit more on beer,
And sixpence a pound on arsenic
(As a rule I do not take either);
Tax railway tickets
(I invariably travel on "passes");
Tax perambulators
(My sons and heirs can all walk);
Tax sky-signs
(Like the Omar Khayyam Club,
I never advertise);
Tax bicycles
(I abhor exertion);
Tax gold and gem jewellery
(I never keep it);
Tax fiction
And "Fourth enormous" editions
(We shall then hear less about them)
Abolish the free breakfast-table
(I invariably begin the day with lunch);
Also tax ground-rents
(I am not the Duke of Bedford);
And seize all the unclaimed bank balances
(None of which by any possibility
Can be mine).
In fact, my dear Sir Michael,
Tax and seize whatever you like.
The opulent, and the well-to-do,
Not to mention the rascally working classes,
Will have to put up with it.
TO THE COMMON GOLFER
My dear Common Golfer,--
The game you affect
Is a great game
Played by yourself
And all the crowned heads of Europe,
Not to mention all the fat persons who desire to bant,
All the thin persons who desire to become
Vigorous and muscular, as it were,
All the clerks who desire to pass for dukes,
And all the dukes who relish the society of clerks.
It is a great game:
The people who play it are not the fault of the game.
It is also a good game.
If I am not mistaken,
It is a game that originally came out of Scotland;
Therefore it must be a good game.
For everything that comes out of Scotland is good,
Even the Scot.
And golf being a great and good game
I do not see any tremendous reason
Why you, my dear Common Golfer,
Should not engage in it if you so choose.
On the other hand, I wish from the bottom of my heart
That you did not engage in it.
I know a bank
Whereon the wild thyme blows
(Or ought to blow):
Oft of a pleasant summer morn
Have I taken a cheap ticket
To a station which is not far from that bank,
And there (on the bank, that is to say) reclined me
What time I looked up into the blue dome,
And watched the lazy-pacing clouds,
And flicked away the midges,
And wished my name was Corydon,
And remembered bits of Keats
And bits of Herrick
And bits of business,
And so forth.
Oft, I say, have I done these things;
But of late I no longer do them,
Inasmuch as my bank
Has become (if I may so term it)
Golf-ridden.
The other day I repaired to the said bank
On rural musings bent.
What did I find?
Why, my dear old thymy bank
Was in the possession
Of half a dozen gross fellows in red coats,
Thy had pipes in their mouths,
And a jar of beer in their midst,
And they were actually talking and laughing
In the most uproarious fashion.
I heard one of them say
"Why did Arthur Bawl-Fore?"
And the others thought hard,
And trifled with their brassies and things,
And could not make answer.
O, my dear Common Golfer,
_You_ were of that party;
You _were_;
You are always of such parties,
You are always sitting
On other people's thymy banks,
And saying, "Why did So-and-so so-and-so?"
And depleting village public-houses of good beer,
And turning whole village populations into caddies,
And dotting the landscape with your red coats,
And generally appropriating the fair face of Nature.
I cannot stop you, my dear Common Golfer,
I cannot, O I cannot!
Would that I could. O would that I could!
In which case, perhaps, I wouldn't.
No, my dear boy,
Rural England is yours,
Also the sea-side,
Take them, old man, take them;
I hand them over to you with the best heart in the world.
Take them--they are yours--
And excuse these tears.
TO MR. PIERPONT MORGAN
Dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,--
I hasten to give you a hearty British welcome.
Come to my arms;
I am in the Trust line myself--
That is to say, I used to be
Before people started putting up announcements
To the effect that
"Poor Trust is dead,
Bad pay killed him."
Some day, an I mistake not, Mr. Morgan,
Your Trust will die:
All Trusts are grass.
Ponder it!
I am a political economist, and I know.
Meanwhile I am very pleased to think
That we have amongst us a man of your financial prowess
And purchasing power.
There is a certain class of British person
Who apparently goes in bodily fear of you.
That class of person has groaned loudly over your steel exploit,
And he has groaned loudlier still
Over your purchase of the Leyland Line of Steamships.
To groan over a fair deal of any kind
Appears to me, my dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,
To be an entirely stupid proceeding.
Nobody can come to grief by selling things,
Providing they sell them at the right price.
You have bought the Leyland Line of Steamships:
I see no reason why you should not buy all the other lines
If you want them, and have the wherewithal to pay for them,
For in the long run everything comes to him who vends.
You buy my steamships, or my steelworks,
Or, for that matter, my caller herrin':
I take your money, I put it in your bank,
And live sumptuously on the interest.
You have all the trouble
Inasmuch as you have to rake up the interest.
I sit at home and enjoy myself,
You scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme, and scheme,
and scheme, and scheme,
I am happy,
I hope you are.
Between ourselves I should not tremble
If you bought up Great Britain and Ireland (especially Ireland),
And all that in them is,
Providing always, as I have said before,
That you paid the price.
Indeed, I hope to live to see the day
When Englishmen will cease to toil and spin,
And derive their incomes
Wholly and solely from American dividends.
Fools buy things, my dear Mr. Pierpont Morgan,
Wise men sell them.
That is particularly true
When the article involved happens to be poetry.
Nevertheless, as you appear to be in a buying frame of mind,
I take this opportunity of informing you
That I have at my villa at Hindhead
A large and varied stock
Of sonnets, odes, rhymes, jingles, and what not,
Which I am prepared to sell at an enormous sacrifice.
My price to you for the lot would be
Fifteen Million Dollars.
If you care to deal, I undertake to melt your cheque
At your own bank,
And to invest the proceeds in any concerns
In which you happen to be interested,
So that you would not only get the poetry,
But also your money back again.
This, at any rate, is how it seems to me.
Vale!
TO PRINCE EDWARD OF YORK
(_On the Return of the "Ophir"_)
Most well-behaved little Prince,--
As the small boy
Who will one day be the Sovereign Lord
Of certain other small boys
In whom I am interested
I hasten to assure you
Of my loyalty to the Imperial House
Of which you are the joy and hope,
And of my respect for your own podgy little person.
To-day, I need scarcely tell you, my dear little Prince,
Is a very big day for you,
Inasmuch as
To-day your excellent parents--
Their Royal Highnesses
The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, KG.--
Return from their wanderings,
Laden, I am given to understand,
With presents for his Royal Highness
Prince Edward of York,
Who, I am given to understand,
Has been a very good boy
During these long weeks of separation.
I am quite sure
That you deserve these presents,
And that your Grandmama
Will be able to give your parents a very good account of you,
And that your Grandpapa,
With that tact which is only one of many of his excellent qualities,
Will refrain from making reports
Which might lead to parental chastisement,
I remember quite well
That when my own Mama and Papa
Returned once from a little jaunt
They brought back with them,
As a present for me,
A tin cylinder with a spike to it,
Which you set on a piece of wood
And spun round;
Then you looked through some holes in the tin cylinder
And beheld many wonderful things,
Such as a little girl skipping,
And jockeys riding a steeplechase on tigers.
If your Papa, my dear little Prince,
Has not brought you one of those,
Be sure you ask for it.
It is not rude to ask for what you do not see in the window,
Providing you say "Please."
And now before I go
Let me add a few words
Of kindly admonition.
I hope you will grow up to be a good and great man,
And that you will never give your parents
Cause for sorrow,
By turning Socialist,
Or newspaper editor,
Or attempting to imitate these Odes.
To your infant mind
This last crime
May appear to be the most innocent in the world,
Because these odes
(God wot)
Are so easy to imitate;
Diplomats, Members of Parliament, publishers' assistants,
Cabmen, poets, peers of the realm,
Nay, even the very crowned heads of Europe,
Have, at time and time,
Been consumed with a desire to do them for me;
Because, as I have said,
It is so easy.
Well, my dear little Prince,
Let us draw our moral.
The easy thing is not always the wisest thing.
I feel that in my inmost heart.
And if you blossom into manhood
With the same conviction,
More or less,
I make no doubt whatever
That you will be an immense success
As a king.
I wish you the best of luck.
TO MME. BERNHARDT
My dear Madame Bernhardt,--
I have been very nigh addressing this ode
To the winner of the Derby.
But, on second thoughts, I said,
"No, no--never!"
(_Non, non, jamais_, in fact.)
"Not while we have in our midst
One of whom I wot,
For is it meet
That the charming Mme. Bernhardt
Should return to her interesting country
Possessed of the impression that the _bas Anglais_
Have a greater feeling for _le sport_
Than for the _arts dramatiques_,
Or whatever you call 'em?
_Non, non_, a thousand times, _non!_"
Ah, Madame, believe me,
I love my country--
_La patrie, la patrie, la patrie_, you know:
It is a fine country when you understand it,
And I would have my beautiful Bernhardt
Take away with her
Nothing but splendid memories of it.
I was exceedingly glad
To read in the papers the other morning
That in the opinion of the _critics dramatiques Anglais_,
Or whatever you call 'em,
Madame had done herself proud
At the Lyceum Theatre the other evening.
One _critic dramatique Anglais_,
Or whatever you call him,
Wrote of Madame thus:
"Such passages,
Wherein the eaglet is borne away
On a flight of adoration for the dead eagle,
Recur throughout the play:
They are, in fact, its keynote,
And Mme. Bernhardt
Declaimed them with superb intensity.
The famous voice has lost its golden notes,
But its power to thrill remains,
She runs the gamut of the emotions
With all the grace and dexterity
Of
A
PROFESSOR."
Madame Bernhardt,
You will perceive
That the _critics dramatiques Anglais_,
Or whatever you call 'em,
Write of nobody
That they do not adorn;
My beautiful B.,
You are a made woman,
You have all the grace and dexterity
Of
A
PROFESSOR.
O happiness!
O crown and fulfilment of a life-time devoted to Ar-rt!
Your cup, my quenchless one,
Is at length heaped up,
Like Benjamin's,
And it runs over!
Heaven bless us all!
And in conclusion, my dear Mme. Bernhardt,
Will you do me the honour to allow me to explain
That in the event of any young enthusiast from Paris
Calling round at any of our newspaper offices
With a view to getting satisfaction
From the person who accuses you
Of having all the skill and dexterity
Of
A
PROFESSOR,
He (the young enthusiast from Paris)
Will do himself no good,
Because in my dear country, dear Madame Bernhardt,
We do not fight the duel _a la cut finger_,
Like gentlemen;
We merely throw downstairs.
TO SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT
My dear Sir William Harcourt,--
(I have not time to get up your other distinguished names,
So that you must please excuse the plain Sir William),
My dear Sir William, do you ever survey the Liberal party,
From China to Peru,
And from Rosebery to Lloyd-George as it were?
Do you, my dear Sir William? O do you?
_I_ do sometimes.
I do, Sir William, I do indeed.
O, I do!
And what is the conclusion I come to, my dear Sir William,
Ah, what?
O, what?
What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?
Shall I tell you, my dear Sir William?
You are sure you won't be offended if I do?
And it will be strictly between ourselves, now, won't it?
Well then, come hither, coz,
Put your sweet hand in mine and trust in me,
And do not construe my kindness into cruelty;
Harken, my dear Sir William, harken,
Harken, harken, harken, harken har----court:--
The Liberal party is an unweeded garden
Choked with a myriad strange growths,
And a sad, fierce, baffled, careless-ordered thing to look upon,
And in its midst there sits down perennially
A huge and ponderous and unwieldy ruminant,
Whom, merely for the sake of talking, my dear Sir William,
We will call the Harcourt.
Here, when it is not at its lordly pleasure-house,
Which men call Malwood,
The Harcourt, as I say, sits down.
Goodman Bannerman cometh to his Liberal Garden
To gather him a posy and do a little weeding;
The Harcourt is there heavily chewing the cud,
And it takes the heart out of goodman Bannerman
To behold him.
Goodman Asquith had fain pick a bit of dinner in the precincts;
The Harcourt watcheth him with rolling eye,
And goodman Asquith shivereth.
And by and by cometh the simple, rural Rosebery,
Armed cap-a-pie with a muck-fork;
Being rural he understands gardening;
He looks over the wall and sayeth,
"Gadzooks, when folk tell me that I am the man to put this
garden to rights
They speak a mortal deal o' truth.
I will e'en go in and delve a bit."
And then he beholdeth the Harcourt
Luxuriating with his back against the biggest fig tree,
And he sayeth "No;
That powerful big animal be there still,
And I know'un, I do, I know'un!"
And who shall blame him?
What jobbing gardener of any self-respect
Would undertake to do up my genariums and fuchers
If I had a wild rhinoceros gambolling upon them
Day in and day out?
I should have great difficulty
In finding such a jobbing gardener, my dear Sir William;
And, to come at once to the plain poetry so beloved of this age,
Let me tell you, my dear Sir William,
That, in my opinion, you (and no other) are at the present juncture
The real trouble and incubus of the party you love.
If you would only go home and crown yourself with a laurel or two,
And read history books, and take tea with bishops
And not come back again,
I believe the Liberal party
Would begin to get along like a house afire.
Will you not try it, my dear Sir William; oh, will you not try it?
For who would fardels bear and flounder round,
When he might sit with Lulu on the lawn
And leave his party for his party's good?
TO THE KING'S BULLDOG