That twelve had struck an hour ago,
Before they had an eye to throw
On the departed;
Twelve heads turn’d round at once, and lo!
Twelve doctors started.
Whether some comrade of the dead,
Or Satan took it in his head
To steal the corpse--the corpse had fled!
’Tis only written,
That “_there was nothing in the bed,
But twelve were bitten_!”
MISS KILMANSEGG AND HER PRECIOUS LEG.
A GOLDEN LEGEND.
HER PEDIGREE.
To trace the Kilmansegg pedigree
To the very root of the family tree
Were a task as rash as ridiculous:
Through antedilvian mists as thick
As London fog such a line to pick
Were enough, in truth, to puzzle old Nick,--
Not to name Sir Harris Nicolas.
It wouldn’t require much verbal strain
To trace the Kil-man, perchance, to Cain,
But, waiving all such digressions,
Suffice it, according to family lore,
A Patriarch Kilmansegg lived of yore,
Who was famed for his great possessions.
Tradition said he feather’d his nest
Through an Agricultural Interest
In the Golden Age of farming;
When golden eggs were laid by the geese,
And Colchian sheep wore a golden fleece,
And golden pippins--the sterling kind
Of Hesperus--now so hard to find--
Made Horticulture quite charming!
A Lord of Land, on his own estate,
He lived at a very lively rate,
But his income would bear carousing;
Such acres he had of pasture and heath,
With herbage so rich from the ore beneath,
The very ewe’s and lambkin’s teeth
Were turn’d into gold by browsing.
He gave, without any extra thrift,
A flock of sheep for a birthday gift
To each son of his loins, or daughter:
And his debts--if debts he had--at will
He liquidated by giving each bill
A dip in Pactolian water.
’Twas said that even his pigs of lead,
By crossing with some by Midas bred,
Made a perfect mine of his piggery.
And as for cattle, one yearling bull
Was worth all Smithfield-market full
Of the Golden Bulls of Pope Gregory.
The high-bred horses within his stud,
Like human creatures of birth and blood,
Had their Golden Cups and flagons:
And as for the common husbandry nags,
Their noses were tied in money-bags,
When they stopp’d with the carts and waggons.
Moreover, he had a Golden Ass,
Sometimes at stall, and sometimes at grass,
That was worth his own weight in money--
And a golden hive, on a Golden Bank,
Where golden bees, by alchemical prank,
Gather’d gold instead of honey.
Gold! and gold! and gold without end!
He had gold to lay by, and gold to spend,
Gold to give, and gold to lend,
And reversions of gold _in futuro_.
In wealth the family revell’d and roll’d,
Himself and wife and sons so bold;--
And his daughters sang to their harps of gold
“O bella eta del’ oro!”
Such was the tale of the Kilmansegg Kin,
In golden text on a vellum skin,
Though certain people would wink and grin,
And declare the whole story a parable--
That the Ancestor rich was one Jacob Ghrimes,
Who held a long lease, in prosperous times,
Of acres, pasture and arable.
That as money makes money, his golden bees
Were the Five per Cents, or which you please
When his cash was more than plenty--
That the golden cups were racing affairs;
And his daughters, who sang Italian airs,
Had their golden harps of Clementi.
That the Golden Ass, or Golden Bull,
Was English John, with his pockets full,
Then at war by land and water:
While beef, and mutton, and other meat,
Were almost as dear as money to eat,
And Farmers reaped Golden Harvests of wheat
At the Lord knows what per quarter!
HER BIRTH.
What different dooms our birthdays bring
For instance, one little manikin thing
Survives to wear many a wrinkle;
While Death forbids another to wake,
And a son that it took nine moons to make
Expires without even a twinkle!
Into this world we come like ships,
Launch’d from the docks, and stocks, and slips,
For fortune fair or fatal;
And one little craft is cast away
In its very first trip in Babbicome Bay,
While another rides safe at Port Natal.
What different lots our stars accord!
This babe to be hail’d and woo’d as a Lord!
And that to be shunn’d like a leper!
One, to the world’s wine, honey, and corn,
Another, like Colchester native, born
To its vinegar, only, and pepper.
One is litter’d under a roof
Neither wind nor waterproof--
That’s the prose of Love in a Cottage--
A puny, naked, shivering wretch,
The whole of whose birthright would not fetch,
Though Robins himself drew up the sketch,
The bid of “a mess of pottage.”
Born of Fortunatus’s kin,
Another comes tenderly ushered in
To a prospect all bright and burnish’d:
No tenant he for life’s back slums--
He comes to the world, as a gentleman comes
To a lodging ready furnish’d.
And the other sex--the tender--the fair--
What wide reverses of fate are there!
Whilst Margaret, charm’d by the Bulbul rare,
In a garden of Gul reposes--
Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street
Till--think of that, who find life so sweet!--
She hates the smell of roses!
Not so with the infant Kilmansegg!
She was not born to steal or beg,
Or gather cresses in ditches;
To plait the straw, or bind the shoe,
Or sit all day to hem and sew,
As females must--and not a few--
To fill their insides with stitches!
She was not doom’d, for bread to eat,
To be put to her hands as well as her feet--
To carry home linen from mangles--
Or heavy-hearted, and weary-limb’d,
To dance on a rope in a jacket trimm’d
With as many blows as spangles.
She was one of those who by Fortune’s boon
Are born, as they say, with a silver spoon
In her mouth, not a wooden ladle:
To speak according to poet’s wont,
Plutus as sponsor stood at her font,
And Midas rock’d the cradle.
[Illustration: DUE AT MICHAELMAS.]
[Illustration: CRANE-IOLOGY.]
At her first _debut_ she found her head
On a pillow of down, in a downy bed,
With a damask canopy over.
For although, by the vulgar popular saw,
All mothers are said to be “in the straw,”
Some children are born in clover.
Her very first draught of vital air,
It was not the common chameleon fare
Of plebeian lungs and noses,--
No--her earliest sniff
Of this world was a whiff
Of the genuine Otto of Roses!
When she saw the light, it was no mere ray
Of that light so common--so everyday--
That the sun each morning launches--
But six wax tapers dazzled her eyes,
From a thing--a gooseberry bush for size--
With a golden stem and branches.
She was born exactly at half-past two,
As witnessed a time-piece in or-molu
That stood on a marble table--
Showing at once the time of day,
And a team of _Gildings_ running away
As fast as they were able,
With a golden God, with a golden Star,
And a golden Spear, in a golden Car,
According to Grecian fable.
Like other babes, at her birth she cried;
Which made a sensation far and wide--
Ay, for twenty miles around her:
For though to the ear ’twas nothing more
Than an infant’s squall, it was really the roar
Of a Fifty-thousand Pounder!
It shook the next heir
In his library chair,
And made him cry, “Confound her!”
Of signs and omens there was no dearth,
Any more than at Owen Glendower’s birth,
Or the advent of other great people:
Two bullocks dropp’d dead,
As if knock’d on the head,
And barrels of stout
And ale ran about,
And the village-bells such a peal rang out,
That they crack’d the village-steeple.
In no time at all, like mushroom spawn,
Tables sprang up all over the lawn;
Not furnish’d scantly or shabbily,
But on scale as vast
As that huge repast,
With its loads and cargoes
Of drink and botargoes,
At the birth of the Babe in Rabelais.
Hundreds of men were turn’d into beasts,
Like the guests at Circe’s horrible feasts,
By the magic of ale and cider:
And each country lass, and each country lad,
Began to caper and dance like mad,
And ev’n some old ones appear’d to have had
A bite from the Naples Spider.
Then as night came on,
It had scared King John
Who considered such signs not risible,
To have seen the maroons,
And the whirling moons,
And the serpents of flame,
And wheels of the same,
That according to some were “whizzable.”
Oh, happy Hope of the Kilmanseggs!
Thrice happy in head, and body, and legs,
That her parents had such full pockets!
For had she been born of Want and Thrift,
For care and nursing all adrift,
It’s ten to one she had had to make shift
With rickets instead of rockets!
And how was the precious baby drest?
In a robe of the East, with lace of the West,
Like one of Crœsus’ issue--
Her best bibs were made
Of rich gold brocade,
And the others of silver tissue.
And when the Baby inclined to nap
She was lull’d on a Gros de Naples lap,
By a nurse in a modish Paris cap,
Of notions so exalted,
She drank nothing lower than Curaçoa,
Maraschino, or pink Noyau,
And on principle never malted.
From a golden boat, with a golden spoon,
The babe was fed night, morning, and noon;
And although the tale seems fabulous,
’Tis said her tops and bottoms were gilt,
Like the oats in that Stable-yard Palace built
For the Horse of Heliogabalus.
And when she took to squall and kick--
For pain will ring, and pins will prick,
E’en the wealthiest nabob’s daughter--
They gave her no vulgar Dalby or gin,
But a liquor with leaf of gold therein,
Videlicet,--Dantzic Water.
In short, she was born, and bred, and nurst,
And drest in the best from the very first,
To please the genteelest censor--
And then, as soon as strength would allow
Was vaccinated, as babes are now,
With virus ta’en from the best-bred cow
Of Lord Althorpe’s--now Earl Spencer.
HER CHRISTENING.
Though Shakespeare asks us, “What’s in a name?”
(As if cognomens were much the same),
There’s really a very great scope in it.
A name?--why, wasn’t there Doctor Dodd,
That servant at once of Mammon and God,
Who found four thousand pounds and odd,
A prison--a cart--and a rope in it?
A name?--if the party had a voice,
What mortal would be a Bugg by choice?
As a Hogg, a Grubb, or a Chubb rejoice?
Or any such nauseous blazon?
Not to mention many a vulgar name,
That would make a door-plate blush for shame,
If door-plates were not so brazen!
A name?--it has more than nominal worth,
And belongs to good or bad luck at birth--
As dames of a certain degree know.
In spite of his Page’s hat and hose,
His Page’s jacket, and buttons in rows,
Bob only sounds like a page in prose
Till turned into Rupertino.
Now to christen the infant Kilmansegg,
For days and days it was quite a plague,
To hunt the list in the Lexicon:
And scores were tried, like coin, by the ring,
Ere names were found just the proper thing
For a minor rich as a Mexican.
Then cards were sent the presence to beg
Of all the kin of Kilmansegg,
White, yellow, and brown relations:
Brothers, Wardens of City Halls,
And Uncles--rich as three Golden Balls
From taking pledges of nations.
Nephews, whom Fortune seem’d to bewitch,
Rising in life like rockets--
Nieces, whose doweries knew no hitch--
Aunts, as certain of dying rich
As candles in golden sockets--
Cousins German and Cousins’ sons,
All thriving and opulent--some had tons
Of Kentish hops in their pockets!
For money had stuck to the race through life
(As it did to the bushel when cash so rife
Posed Ali Baba’s brother’s wife)--
And down to the Cousins and Coz-lings,
The fortunate brood of the Kilmanseggs,
As if they had come out of golden eggs,
Were all as wealthy as “Goslings.”
It would fill a Court Gazette to name
What East and West End people came
To the rite of Christianity:
The lofty Lord, and the titled Dame,
All di’monds, plumes, and urbanity:
His Lordship the May’r with his golden chain,
And two Gold Sticks, and the Sheriffs twain,
Nine foreign Counts, and other great men
With their orders and stars, to help “M. or N.”
To renounce all pomp and vanity.
To paint the maternal Kilmansegg
The pen of an Eastern Poet would beg,
And need an elaborate sonnet;
How she sparkled with gems whenever she stirr’d,
And her head niddle-noddled at every word,
And seem’d so happy, a Paradise Bird
Had nidificated upon it.
And Sir Jacob the Father strutted and bow’d,
And smiled to himself, and laugh’d aloud,
To think of his heiress and daughter--
And then in his pockets he made a grope,
And then, in the fulness of joy and hope,
Seem’d washing his hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.
He had roll’d in money like pigs in mud,
Till it seem’d to have entered into his blood
By some occult projection:
And his cheeks instead of a healthy hue
As yellow as any guinea grew,
Making the common phrase seem true,
About a rich complexion.
And now came the nurse, and during a pause,
Her dead-leaf satin would fitly cause
A very autumnal rustle--
So full of figure, so full of fuss,
As she carried about the babe to buss,
She seem’d to be nothing but bustle.
A wealthy Nabob was Godpapa,
And an Indian Begum was Godmamma,
Whose jewels a Queen might covet--
And the Priest was a Vicar, and Dean withal
Of that Temple we see with a Golden Ball,
And a Golden Cross above it.
The Font was a bowl of American gold,
Won by Raleigh in days of old,
In spite of Spanish bravado;
And the Book of Pray’r was so overrun
With gilt devices, it shone in the sun
Like a copy--a presentation one--
Of Humboldt’s “El Dorado.”
Gold! and gold! and nothing but gold!
The same auiferous shine behold
Wherever the eye could settle!
On the walls--the sideboard--the ceiling-sky--
On the gorgeous footmen standing by,
In coats to delight a miner’s eye
With seams of the precious metal.
Gold! and gold! and besides the gold,
The very robe of the infant told
A tale of wealth in every fold,
It lapp’d her like a vapour!
So fine! so thin! the mind at a loss
Could compare it to nothing except a cross
Of cobweb with bank-note paper.
Then her pearls--’twas a perfect sight, forsooth,
To see them, like “the dew of her youth,”
In such a plentiful sprinkle.
Meanwhile, the Vicar read through the form,
And gave her another, not overwarm,
That made her little eyes twinkle.
Then the babe was cross’d and bless’d amain!
But instead of the Kate, or Ann, or Jane,
Which the humbler female endorses--
Instead of one name, as some people prefix,
Kilmansegg went at the tails of six,
Like a carriage of state with its horses.
Oh, then the kisses she got and hugs!
The golden mugs and the golden jugs
That lent fresh rays to the midges!
The golden knives, and the golden spoons,
The gems that sparkled like fairy boons,
It was one of the Kilmansegg’s own saloons,
But look’d like Rundell and Bridge’s!
Gold! and gold! the new and the old,
The company ate and drank from gold,
They revell’d, they sang, and were merry;
And one of the Gold Sticks rose from his chair,
And toasted “the Lass with the golden hair”
In a bumper of Golden Sherry.
Gold! still gold! it rain’d on the nurse,
Who--un-like Danäe--was none the worse!
There was nothing but guineas glistening!
Fifty were given to Doctor James,
For calling the little Baby names,
And for saying, Amen!
The Clerk had ten,
And that was the end of the Christening.
HER CHILDHOOD.
Our youth! our childhood! that spring of springs!
’Tis surely one of the blessedest things
That nature ever invented!
When the rich are wealthy beyond their wealth,
And the poor are rich in spirits and health,
And all with their lots contented!
There’s little Phelim, he sings like a thrush,
In the selfsame pair of patchwork plush,
With the selfsame empty pockets,
That tempted his daddy so often to cut
His throat, or jump in the water-butt--
But what cares Phelim? an empty nut
Would sooner bring tears to their sockets.
Give him a collar without a skirt,
(That’s the Irish linen for shirt)
And a slice of bread with a taste of dirt,
(That’s Poverty’s Irish butter),
And what does he lack to make him blest?
Some oyster-shells, or a sparrow’s nest,
A candle-end, and a gutter.
But to leave the happy Phelim alone,
Gnawing, perchance, a marrowless bone,
For which no dog would quarrel--
Turn we to little Miss Kilmansegg
Cutting her first little toothy-peg
With a fifty-guinea coral--
A peg upon which
About poor and rich
Reflection might hang a moral.
Born in wealth, and wealthily nursed,
Capp’d, papp’d, napp’d, and lapp’d from the first
On the knees of Prodigality,
Her childhood was one eternal round
Of the game of going on Tickler’s ground
Picking up gold--in reality.
With extempore cartes she never play’d,
Or the odds and ends of a Tinker’s trade,
Or little dirt pies and puddings made,
Like children happy and squalid;
The very puppet she had to pet,
Like a bait for the “Nix my Dolly” set,
Was a Dolly of gold--and solid!
Gold! and gold! ’twas the burden still!
To gain the Heiress’s early goodwill
There was much corruption and bribery--
The yearly cost of her golden toys
Would have given half London’s Charity Boys
And Charity Girls the annual joys
Of a holiday dinner at Highbury.
Bon-bons she ate from the gilt _cornet_;
And gilded queens on St. Bartlemy’s day;
Till her fancy was tinged by her presents--
And first a Goldfinch excited her wish,
Then a spherical bowl with its Golden fish,
And then two Golden Pheasants.
Nay, once she squall’d and scream’d like wild--
And it shows how the bias we give to a child
Is a thing most weighty and solemn:--
But whence was wonder or blame to spring
If little Miss K.--after such a swing--
Made a dust for the flaming gilded thing
On the top of the Fish Street column?
HER EDUCATION.
According to metaphysical creed,
To the earliest books that children read
For much good or much bad they are debtors--
But before with their A B C they start,
There are things in morals, as well as art,
That play a very important part--
“Impressions before the letters.”
Dame Education begins the pile,
Mayhap in the graceful Corinthian style,
But alas for the elevation!
If the Lady’s maid or Gossip the Nurse
With a load of rubbish, or something worse,
Have made a rotten foundation.
Even thus with little Miss Kilmansegg,
Before she learned her E for egg,
Ere her Governess came, or her masters--
Teachers of quite a different kind
Had “cramm’d” her beforehand, and put her mind
In a go-cart on golden castors.
Long before her A B and C,
They had taught her by heart her L. S. D.
And as how she was born a great Heiress;
And as sure as London is built of bricks,
My Lord would ask her the day to fix,
To ride in a fine gilt coach and six,
Like Her Worship the Lady May’ress.
Instead of stories from Edgeworth’s page,
The true golden lore for our golden age,
Or lessons from Barbauld and Trimmer,
Teaching the worth of Virtue and Health,
All that she knew was the Virtue of Wealth,
Provided by vulgar nursery stealth
With a Book of Leaf Gold for a Primer.
The very metal of merit they told,
And praised her for being as “good as gold!”
Till she grew as a peacock haughty;
Of money they talk’d the whole day round,
And weigh’d desert, like grapes, by the pound,
Till she had an idea from the very sound
That people with nought were naughty.
They praised--poor children with nothing at all!
Lord! how you twaddle and waddle and squall
Like common-bred geese and ganders!
What sad little bad little figures you make
To the rich Miss K., whose plainest seed-cake
Was stuff’d with corianders!
They praised her falls, as well as her walk,
Flatterers made cream cheese of chalk,
They praised--how they praised--her very small talk,
As if it fell from a Solon;
Or the girl who at each pretty phrase let drop
A ruby comma, or pearl full-stop,
Or an emerald semi-colon.
They praised her spirit, and now and then
The Nurse brought her own little “nevy” Ben,
To play with the future May’ress,
And when he got raps, and taps, and slaps,
Scratches, and pinches, snips, and snaps,
As if from a Tigress, or Bearess,
They told him how Lords would court that hand,
And always gave him to understand
While he rubb’d, poor soul,
His carroty poll,
That his hair had been pull’d by “a _Hairess_.”
Such were the lessons from maid and nurse,
A Governess help’d to make still worse,
Giving an appetite so perverse
Fresh diet whereon to batten--
Beginning with A B C to hold
Like a royal playbill printed in gold
On a square of pearl-white satin.
The books to teach the verbs and nouns,
And those about countries, cities, and towns,
Instead of their sober drabs and browns,
Were in crimson silk, with gilt edges;--
Her Butler, and Enfield, and Entick--in short
Her “Early Lessons” of every sort,
Look’d like Souvenirs, Keepsakes, and Pledges.
Old Johnson shone out in as fine array
As he did one night when he went to the play;
Chambaud like a beau of King Charles’s day--
Lindley Murray in like conditions--
Each weary, unwelcome, irksome task,
Appear’d in a fancy dress and a mask;--
If you wish for similar copies, ask
For Howell and James’s Editions.
Novels she read to amuse her mind,
But always the affluent match-making kind
That ends with Promessi Sposi,
And a father-in-law so wealthy and grand,
He could give cheque-mate to Coutts in the Strand;
So, along with a ring and posy,
He endows the Bride with Golconda off-hand,
And gives the Groom Potosi.
Plays she perused--but she liked the best
Those comedy gentlefolks always possess’d
Of fortunes so truly romantic--
Of money so ready that right or wrong
It always is ready to go for a song,
Throwing it, going it, pitching it strong--
They ought to have purses as green and long
As the cucumber call’d the Gigantic.
Then Eastern Tales she loved for the sake
Of the Purse of Oriental make,
And the thousand pieces they put in it--
But Pastoral scenes on her heart fell cold,
For Nature with her had lost its hold,
No field but the Field of the Cloth of Gold
Would ever have caught her foot in it.
What more? She learnt to sing, and dance,
To sit on a horse, although he should prance,
And to speak a French not spoken in France
Any more than at Babel’s building--
And she painted shells, and flowers, and Turks,
But her great delight was in Fancy Works
That are done with gold or gilding.
Gold! still gold!--the bright and the dead,
With golden beads, and gold lace, and gold thread
She work’d in gold, as if for her bread;
The metal had so undermined her,
Gold ran in her thoughts and fill’d her brain,
She was golden-headed as Peter’s cane
With which he walk’d behind her.
HER ACCIDENT.
The horse that carried Miss Kilmansegg,
And a better never lifted leg,
Was a very rich bay, call’d Banker--
A horse of a breed and a mettle so rare,--
By Bullion out of an Ingot mare,--
That for action, the best of figures, and air,
It made many good judges hanker.
And when she took a ride in the Park,
Equestrian Lord, or pedestrian Clerk,
Was thrown in an amorous fever,
To see the Heiress how well she sat,
With her groom behind her, Bob or Nat,
In green, half smother’d with gold, and a hat
With more gold lace than beaver.
And then when Banker obtain’d a pat,
To see how he arch’d his neck at that!
He snorted with pride and pleasure!
Like the Steed in the fable so lofty and grand,
Who gave the poor Ass to understand,
That _he_ didn’t carry a bag of sand,
But a burden of golden treasure.
A load of treasure?--alas! alas!
Had her horse but been fed upon English grass,
And shelter’d in Yorkshire spinneys,
Had he scour’d the sand with the Desert Ass,
Or where the American whinnies--
But a hunter from Erin’s turf and gorse,
A regular thorough-bred Irish horse,
Why, he ran away, as a matter of course,
With a girl worth her weight in guineas!
Mayhap ’tis the trick of such pampered nags,--
To shy at the sight of a beggar in rags,
But away, like the bolt of a rabbit,--
Away went the horse in the madness of fright,
And away went the horsewoman mocking the sight--
Was yonder blue flash a flash of blue light,
Or only the skirt of her habit?
Away she flies, with the groom behind,--
It looks like a race of the Calmuck kind,
When Hymen himself is the starter,
And the Maid rides first in the four-footed strife,
Riding, striding, as if for her life,
While the Lover rides after to catch him a wife,
Although it’s catching a Tartar.
But the Groom has lost his glittering hat!
Though he does not sigh and pull up for that--
Alas! his horse is a tit for Tat
To sell to a very low bidder--
His wind is ruin’d, his shoulder is sprung,
Things, though a horse be handsome and young,
A purchaser _will_ consider.
But still flies the Heiress through stones and dust,
Oh, for a fall, if fall she must,
On the gentle lap of Flora!
But still, thank Heaven! she clings to her seat--
Away! away! she could ride a dead heat
With the Dead who ride so fast and fleet,
In the Ballad of Leonora!
Away she gallops,--it’s awful work!
It’s faster than Turpin’s ride to York,
On Bess that notable clipper!
She has circled the Ring!--she crosses the Park!
Mazeppa, although he was stripp’d so stark,
Mazeppa couldn’t outstrip her!