_THE COLONIAL MORTUARY BARD_
A writer in the _Sydney Evening News_ last year gave that journal some
amusing extracts from the visitors' book at Longwood, St. Helena. If the
extracts are authentic copies of the original entries, they deserve to
be placed on the same high plane as the following, which appeared in a
Melbourne newspaper some years ago:--
“Our Emily was so fair
That the angels envied her,
And whispered in her ear,
'We will take you away on Tuesday night!'”
I once considered this to be the noblest bit of mortuary verse ever
written; but since reading the article in the Sydney paper I have
changed my opinion, and now think it poor. Bonaparte, however, was a
great subject, and even the most unintelligent mortuary verse-maker
could not fail to achieve distinction when the Longwood visitors' book
was given up unto him. Frenchmen, especially, figure largely. Here, for
instance:--
“Malidiction. O grand homme!
O grand Napoleon!
Mais la France et toi aont venge--
Hudson Lowe est mort!”
The last line is so truly heroic--French heroic. It instantly recalled
to me a tale told by an English journalist who, on a cycling tour in
France just after the Fashoda crisis, left his “bike” under the care
of the proprietor of an hotel in Normandy. In the morning he found the
tyres slashed to pieces, and on the saddle a gummed envelope, on which
was bravely written, “Fashoda.” This was unintentional mortuary poetry.
The gallant Frenchman who did the daring deed when the owner of the
“bike” was asleep did not realise that the word itself was a splendid
mortuary epic for French aspirations generally.