Collections and Recollections Part 18

Each in turn, as he was taken, Volunteered his own suggestions, His ingenious suggestions.

First the Governor, the Father: He suggested velvet curtains, And the corner of a table, Of a rosewood dining-table.

He would hold a scroll of something, Hold it firmly in his left hand; He would keep his right hand buried (Like Napoleon) in his waistcoat; He would contemplate the distance With a look of pensive meaning, As of ducks that die in tempests.

Grand, heroic was the notion, Yet the picture failed entirely, Failed, because he moved a little; Moved, because he couldn't help it."

Who does not know that Father in the flesh? and who has not seen him--velvet curtains, dining-table, scroll, and all--on the most conspicuous wall of the Royal Academy? The Father being disposed of,

"Next his better half took courage, She would have her picture taken."

But her restlessness and questionings proved fatal to the result.

"Next the son, the Stunning-Cantab: He suggested curves of beauty, Curves pervading all his figure, Which the eye might follow onward Till they centered in the breastpin, Centered in the golden breastpin.

He had learnt it all from Ruskin, Author of the _Stones of Venice_."

But, in spite of such culture, the portrait was a failure, and the elder sister fared no better. Then the younger brother followed, and his portrait was so awful that--

"In comparison the others Seemed to one's bewildered fancy To have partially succeeded."

Undaunted by these repeated failures, Hiawatha, by a great final effort, "tumbled all the tribe together" in the manner of a family group, and--

"Did at last obtain a picture Where the faces all succeeded-- Each came out a perfect likeness Then they joined and all abused it, Unrestrainedly abused it, As the worst and ugliest picture They could possibly have dreamed of; 'Giving one such strange expressions-- Sullen, stupid, pert expressions.

Really any one would take us (Any one that didn't know us) For the most unpleasant people.'

Hiawatha seemed to think so, Seemed to think it not unlikely."

How true to life is this final touch of indignation at the unflattering truth! But time and s.p.a.ce forbid me further to pursue the photographic song of Hiawatha.

_Phantasmagoria_ filled an aching void during the ten years which elapsed between the appearance of _Verses and Translations_ and that of _Fly Leaves_. The latter book is small, only 124 pages in all, including the _Pickwick_ Examination Paper, but what marvels of mirth and poetry and satire it contains! How secure its place in the affections of all who love the gentle art of parody! My rule is not to quote extensively from books which are widely known; but I must give myself the pleasure of repeating just six lines which even appreciative critics generally overlook. They relate to the conversation of the travelling tinker.

"Thus on he prattled like a babbling brook.

Then I: 'The sun hath slipt behind the hill, And my Aunt Vivian dines at half-past six,'

So in all love we parted; I to the Hall, He to the village. It was noised next noon That chickens had been missed at Syllabub Farm."

Will any one stake his literary reputation on the a.s.sertion that these lines are not really Tennyson's?

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Rev. Thomas Short, 1789-1879.

XXVIII.

PARODIES IN VERSE--_continued_.

When I embarked upon the subject of metrical parody I said that it was a sh.o.r.eless sea. For my own part, I enjoy sailing over these rippling waters, and cannot be induced to hurry. Let us put in for a moment at Belfast. There in 1874 the British a.s.sociation held its annual meeting; and Professor Tyndall delivered an inaugural address in which he revived and glorified the Atomic Theory of the Universe. His glowing peroration ran as follows: "Here I must quit a theme too great for me to handle, but which will be handled by the loftiest minds ages after you and I, like streaks of morning cloud, shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past." Shortly afterwards _Blackwood's Magazine_, always famous for its humorous and satiric verse, published a rhymed abstract of Tyndall's address, of which I quote (from memory) the concluding lines:--

"Let us greatly honour the Atom, so lively, so wise, and so small; The Atomists, too, let us honour--Epicurus, Lucretius, and all.

Let us d.a.m.n with faint praise Bishop Butler, in whom many atoms combined To form that remarkable structure which it pleased him to call his mind.

Next praise we the n.o.ble body to which, for the time, we belong (Ere yet the swift course of the Atom hath hurried us breathless along)-- The BRITISH a.s.sOCIATION--like Leviathan worshipped by Hobbes, The incarnation of wisdom built up of our witless n.o.bs; Which will carry on endless discussion till I, and probably you, Have _melted in infinite azure_--and, in short, till all is blue."

Surely this translation of the Professor's misplaced dithyrambics into the homeliest of colloquialisms is both good parody and just criticism.

In 1876 there appeared a clever little book (attributed to Sir Frederick Pollock) which was styled _Leading Cases done into English, by an Apprentice of Lincoln's Inn_. It appealed only to a limited public, for it is actually a collection of sixteen important law-cases set forth, with explanatory notes, in excellent verse imitated from poets great and small. Chaucer, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Clough, Rossetti, and James Rhoades supply the models, and I have been credibly informed that the law is as good as the versification. Mr. Swinburne was in those days the favourite b.u.t.t of young parodists, and the gem of the book is the dedication to "J.S." or "John Stiles," a mythical person, nearly related to John Doe and Richard Roe, with whom all budding jurists had in old days to make acquaintance. The disappearance of the venerated initials from modern law-books inspired the following:--

"When waters are rent with commotion Of storms, or with sunlight made whole, The river still pours to the ocean The stream of its effluent soul; You, too, from all lips of all living, Of worship disthroned and discrowned, Shall know by these gifts of my giving That faith is yet found;

"By the sight of my song-flight of cases That bears, on wings woven of rhyme, Names set for a sign in high places By sentence of men of old time; From all counties they meet and they mingle, Dead suitors whom Westminster saw; They are many, but your name is singles Pure flower of pure law.

"So I pour you this drink of my verses, Of learning made lovely with lays, Song bitter and sweet that reheares The deeds of your eminent days; Yea, in these evil days from their reading Some profit a student shall draw, Though some points are of obsolete pleading, And some are not law.

"Though the Courts, that were manifold, dwindle To divers Divisions of One, And no fire from your face may rekindle The light of old learning undone, We have suitors and briefs for our payment, While, so long as a Court shall hold pleas, We talk moonshine with wigs for our raiment, Not sinking the fees."

Some five-and-twenty years ago there appeared the first number of a magazine called _The Dark Blue_. It was published in London, but was understood to represent in some occult way the thought and life of Young Oxford, and its contributors were mainly Oxford men. The first number contained an amazing ditty called "The Sun of my Songs." It was dark, and mystic, and transcendental, and unintelligible. It dealt extensively in strange words and cryptic phrases. One verse I must transcribe:--

"Yet all your song Is--'Ding dong, Summer is dead, Spring is dead-- O my heart, and O my head Go a-singing a silly song All wrong, For all is dead.

Ding dong, And I am dead!

Dong!'"

I quote thus fully because Cambridge, never backward in poking fun at her more romantic sister, shortly afterwards produced an excellent little magazine named sarcastically _The Light Green_, and devoted to the ridicule of its cerulean rival. The poem from which I have just quoted was thus burlesqued, if, indeed, burlesque of such a composition were possible:--

"Ding dong, ding dong, There goes the gong; d.i.c.k, come along, It is time for dinner Wash your face, Take your place.

Where's your grace, You little sinner?

"Baby cry, Wipe his eye.

Baby good, Give him food.

Baby sleepy, Go to bed.

Baby naughty, Smack his head!"

_The Light Green_, which had only an ephemeral life, was, I have always heard, entirely, or almost entirely, the work of one undergraduate, who died young--Arthur Clement Hilton, of, St. John's.[32] He certainly had the knack of catching and reproducing style. In the "May Exam.," a really good imitation of the "May Queen," the departing undergraduate thus addresses his "gyp":--

"When the men come up again, Filcher, and the Term is at its height, You'll never see me more in these long gay rooms at night; When the "old dry wines" are circling, and the claret-cup flows cool, And the loo is fast and furious, with a fiver in the pool."

In 1872 "Lewis Carroll" brought out _Through the Looking-gla.s.s_, and every one who has ever read that pretty work of poetic fancy will remember the ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter. It was parodied in _The Light Green_ under the t.i.tle of "The Vulture and the Husbandman."

This poem described the agonies of a _viva-voce_ examination, and it derived its t.i.tle from two facts of evil omen--that the Vulture plucks its victim, and that the Husbandman makes his living by ploughing:--

"Two undergraduates came up, And slowly took a seat, They knit their brows, and bit their thumbs, As if they found them sweet; And this was odd, because, you know, Thumbs are not good to eat.

"'The time has come,' the Vulture said, 'To talk of many things-- Of Accidence and Adjectives, And names of Jewish Kings; How many notes a Sackbut has, And whether Shawms have strings.'

"'Please sir,' the Undergraduates said, Turning a little blue, 'We did not know that was the sort Of thing we had to do.'

'We thank you much,' the Vulture said; 'Send up another two.'"

The base expedients to which an examination reduces its victims are hit off with much dexterity in "The Heathen Pa.s.s-ee," a parody of an American poem which is too familiar to justify quotation:--