If the Season has had its laureates, so has the Recess. Why not? Of the
two, the latter has the more numerous elements of poetry. Town has its
charms for the versifier; there is much to say about its streets, its
parks, its belles, its balls, its many diversions. But there is even
more, surely, to say about the country, with its ancestral halls, its
watering-places, and its shootings, as well as about the seaside and the
various attractions _outre-mer_. Surely, of the two, life out of town
has even more delights, for the poet, at any rate, than life in town.
Sylvester is reported to have said that people, after tiring in town, go
to re-tire in the country. But the saying, if epigrammatic, is not
strictly true. No doubt some of us feel bored, wherever we may go, or
whatever we may do. But to most people, I imagine, the Recess, if spent
out of London, is a time of genuine enjoyment, and certainly it is a
time which deserves to be distinguished in song.
The Recess, as spent in London, has been drawn by the rhymers in
depressing tints. The picture painted by Haynes Bayly remains--for the
fashionable world, at least--almost as true as it ever was. As he said:
'In town, in the month of September,
We find neither riches nor rank;
In vain we look out for a member
To give us a nod or a frank.
Each knocker in silence reposes,
In every mansion you find
One dirty old woman who dozes,
Or peeps through the dining-room blind.'
This may be compared with the soliloquy put by H. S. Leigh in the mouth
of 'the last man' left in London:
'The Row is dull, as dull can be;
Deserted is the Drive;
The glass that stood at eighty-three,
Now stands at sixty-five.
The summer days are over,
The town, ah me! has flown,
Through Dover, or to clover--
And I am all alone.'
It has long been held, among a certain class, that to be seen in town
during the Recess is to forfeit all pretensions to _haut ton_. And so
'the last man' of the Season is naturally represented by Bayly as
somewhat ashamed of himself. 'He'll blush,' we are told, 'if you ask him
the reason Why he with the rest is not gone':
'He'll seek you with shame and with sorrow,
He'll smile with affected delight;
He'll swear he leaves London to-morrow,
And only came to it last night!'
He will tell you that he is in general request--that the difficulty is
to know where not to go:
'So odd you should happen to meet him;
So strange, as he's just passing through.'
The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the
sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on 'the Twelfth,' the other on 'the
First.' The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges.
And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of
these facts. 'Don't talk of September,' she says; 'a lady
'Must think it of all months the worst;
The men are preparing already
To take themselves off on the First.'
'Last month, their attention to quicken,
A supper I knew was the thing;
But now, from my turkey and chicken,
They're tempted by birds on the wing!
They shoulder their terrible rifles
('Tis really too much for my nerves!)
And, slighting my sweets and my trifles,
Prefer my Lord Harry's preserves!'
And she goes on to say:
'Oh, marriage is hard of digestion,
The men are all sparing of words;
And now 'stead of popping the question,
They set off to pop at the birds.'
Life at English country houses has been depicted by more than one poet.
Pope, for instance, tells us what happened when Miss Blount left
town--how
'She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashion'd halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks...
(To) divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire.'