The glass is full, and now my glass is run:
And now I live, and now my life is done.
OLD Lunt was a dirty old man who wore a cracked bowler hat rammed down
on his head, a frock-coat green with age, trousers that hung in loops
and folds about his lean shanks, and boots held together with leather
laces and bits of string. He had one room at the corner of the mews,
and he lived God knows how. Ann always said that he would stand on the
doorstep of a butcher's shop and sniff like a dog, and stay there
until they flung him a scrap of meat. On a Saturday night he was to be
seen prowling about the shops, feeling the rabbits and fowls, and then
shuffling away as though his appetite had been satisfied through his
fingers. He never shaved, but clipped his beard close. The skin hung
so loose on his jaws that shaving would have been perilous. His eyes
were gray, watery, and red-rimmed, and he had ears like red rosettes.
He used to watch for René to come out, and then wait by his own door
to see if the car left the yard. If it did not, then he would come
shambling along and stand at the gate of the yard. And if René were
working on his car he would edge nearer and nearer until he could peer
into the engine. Often he would stand quite silent, and go away
without a word. Occasionally he would talk and mumble.
"I remember when there warn't no railways, and my brother Philip drove
his horses from Glossop to Sheffle. They used to say there wouldn't be
no engines. But there was engines. Then they said there wouldn't be no
engines on the road. But there is engines on the road. And things grow
worse and worse for poetry."
With variations, that was his customary address.
About once a month he would sidle up to René and beg for the loan of
one shilling, and ten days or a fortnight later he would return a
penny or twopence.
"Interest, interest. Times bad. I must ask you to extend the loan."
Sometimes he would give the coppers wrapped up in old ballads telling
of murders and hangings, shipwrecks, battles, national events, some in
print, some in writing, all dirty. In this way René became possessed
of an ode to the Albert Memorial:
Proud monument, thou Christmas cake in stone!
The thing thou meanest never yet has grown
In English soil, a virtue not content
To be its own reward, a virtue bent
On cheating life of man and man of life.
We English have rejoicèd in the strife
Of being, till that virtue chilled our blood
And had us hypnotized and nipped in bud
Our aspiration. We of Shakespeare's line
Had in our living made our life divine
Till, as we grew accustomed to look at you,
We worshiped man transformed into a statue.
This poem was written on the inside of a grocer's bag, and when it was
handed to René it contained threepence. It was signed Jethro Lunt, and
dated April 4, 1887.
One day Old Lunt extended his usual observations, and ended by asking
morosely:
"Did you--did you read my poems?"
"Why, yes," answered René, "all of them."
"Have you really now? No one has read my poems for thirty years. It's
only the old ballads I sell now, and them not often. The newspapers do
all the murders and hangings. Till the halfpenny newspapers came in, I
could sell a murder or two in certain streets. I had one about Charley
Peace:
Charles Peace, he played the violin.
Music excited him to sin
Like drink with other men.