'Now with mamma at tedious whist I play,
Now without scandal drink insipid tea;'
while Lady Mary Montagu's 'bride in the country' deplores the fact that
she is
'Left in the lurch,
Forgot and secluded from view,
Unless when some bumpkin at church
Stares wistfully over the pew.'
Agreeably descriptive of rural pleasures is Lord Chesterfield's 'Advice
to a Lady in Autumn.' Of recent years the subject has been treated by a
versifier who has at least a measure of the neatness of Praed, and who
enumerates among the typical guests at a country house
'A sporting parson, good at whist,
A preaching sportsman, good at gateways;'
and, again:
'A lady who once wrote a book,
And one of whom a book's been written...
One blonde whose fortune is her face,
And one whose face caught her a fortune.'
As for the daily round:
'We dance, we flirt, we shoot, we ride,
Our host's a veritable Nimrod:
We fish the river's silver tide,'
and so on. There are, of course, the county balls, and the fancy balls,
and the private theatricals, and what not, all of them celebrated by the
inevitable Praed. It was at the county ball that he saw 'the belle of
the ballroom':
'There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle
Gave signal sweet in that old hall
Of hands across and down the middle.'
It was to the county ball, as well as to the theatricals at Fustian
Hall, that Praed's 'Clarence' was so prettily invited. As for fancy
balls:
'Oh, a fancy ball's a strange affair!
Made up of silks and leathers,
Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair,
Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers.'
Of inland watering-places, Bath and Cheltenham have been perhaps most
often poetized. Bath found its _vates sacer_ in the author of the 'New
Bath Guide'; it has rarely found one since; its glories have virtually
departed. It was at Cheltenham--
'Where one drinks one's fill
Of folly and cold water'--
that Praed met his 'Partner.' And C. S. Calverley has told us how
'Year by year do Beauty's daughters
In the sweetest gloves and shawls
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
'_Nulla non donanda lauru_
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England's map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.'
Praed has a poem called 'Arrivals at a Watering-Place,' but it is not
one of the most successful of his efforts. Nor have seaside places in
general been made the subject of very excellent verse. Brighton is the
one exception. Of that 'favoured spot,' James Smith, of 'Rejected
Addresses' fame, was, perhaps, the first to write flatteringly. 'Long,'
he declared--
'Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn,
Proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering-places!
Boys yet unbreech'd, and virgins yet unborn,
On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.'
The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets
still conspire to sing the praises of 'Old Ocean's bauble, glittering
Brighton.' Everybody remembers the stirring exhortation of Mortimer
Collins:
'If you approve of flirtations, good dinners,
Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten;
Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners,
Winter at Brighton!'
Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic.
Brighton in November, he says, 'is what one should remember':
'If spirits you would lighten,
Consult good Doctor Brighton,
And swallow his prescriptions and abide by his decree;
If nerves be weak or shaken,
Just try a week with Bacon;
His physic soon is taken at our London-by-the-Sea.'
Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the
Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr.
Locker's graceful 'Invitation to Rome' and 'The Reply' to it, from which
I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital:
'Some girls, who love to ride and race,
And live for dancing, like the Bruens,
Confess that Rome's a charming place--
In spite of all the stupid ruins!'