Chapter VIII: ‘will You Speak That Word?’

Madge was singing as she dressed in her pretty little room, filled with the exhilarating breath of the early morning, which the wide open window admitted freely. This was no dainty lady’s chamber full of costly nick-knacks. Everything in it was useful, and everything was so bright and simple, that glancing into it on a winter’s day, one might have imagined that summer still lingered here.

As she stood at the chintz-draped toilet-table she could see the green glades apparently rising amidst the trees, one glade half in shadow, another with its dewdrops glistening like diamonds in the morning sunshine. Beyond that on the high ground were yellow plains of ripe grain, relieved by black and gray patches, which she knew to be fields of beans and tares. Down below there, at the foot of the meadows, the calmly flowing river sent silver flashes through every space left by the willows and elms. Farther on, she saw the stumpy tower of the old village church struggling to raise its head through a mass of ivy. And to all this her window, with its surrounding network of rose-tree branches, formed a suitable frame.

It was not a blithe song she was singing, and yet the hope that was in her voice and in her eyes took away from it all thought of sadness. It was that now old-fashioned but once popular song of the _Soldier’s Tear_, and she dwelt with sympathy on the lines, ‘Upon the hill he turned, to take a last fond look.’ She repeated them dreamily again and again, and then her face would brighten into smiles when the happier picture presented itself of the time when she should stand on the top of the hill, or at the more probable although more prosaic railway station, welcoming Philip home.

Ah, it was much better to think of that. And then, what was a year, or what were two years, to reckon in their young lives, when all the succeeding years would be theirs to pass together—always together—no matter what Aunt Hessy might say? Besides, there would be his letters! He would speak to her in them every day, and she would speak to him every day. Of course, the ridiculous postal arrangements would not permit them to receive the letters on the day they were written; but when they _were_ delivered, they would contain a full record of their daily lives.

Up from the barnyard came the loud voice of one of the labourers, rising above the obstreperous squeaking of the pigs he was feeding, as he drawled out a verse of some rustic ballad—

Ow Mary Styles, Ow Mary Styles,
It’s ’long ov yow I’m dying,
But if yow won’t have me at last,
Why, then, there’s no use crying.

A delightful combination of sentiment and philosophy, thought Madge, smiling.

Then came the other sounds which intimated that another day’s work of the farm had begun. The milk-cans rattled as they were whirled out of the dairy to the waiting carts; merry jests were passed between the men and maids; harness clattered and clanked as the horses were put into the carts or reaping-machine; and there was much horse-language mingling with the confusion of dialects as the harvest hands turned out to the fields. The melancholy ‘moo’ of the cows rose from the barn as, having been milked, they were driven out to the meadows; the cocks, although they had been crowing since daybreak, crowed with louder defiance than ever, now that their hens were cackling and clucking around them; and the ducks emitted their curious self-satisfied ‘quack’ as they waggled off to the pond.

All these sounds warned Madge that she was somewhat later than usual in getting downstairs.

She was a little startled when she discovered on the hall table a letter bearing the Ringsford Manor crest; for she knew at once it was not from Philip, and feared that some mishap might have befallen him. She knew it was not from him, because he never used this crest, although all the other members of the family did. It had been the outcome of Miss Hadleigh’s vanity, to which the others took kindly, whilst Philip laughed at it.

She learned that the note had been delivered about half an hour ago by young Jerry Mogridge, who left a special message that the ‘flunkey’ who gave it to him said it was to be given to her the moment she came down. She was surprised to find that it was from Philip’s father, and still more surprised by its contents.

MY DEAR MISS HEATHCOTE—The unusual hour at which this will
be delivered will at once apprise you that the motive which
prompts it is an important one. I cannot tell you how important
it is in my eyes; and I hope and believe that you will not only
appreciate the motive, but cordially sympathise with it.

Only a few hours ago I had to ask your assistance in a matter
which entirely concerned myself; in the present instance I have
to ask your assistance in a matter on which, I believe, your
own happiness depends. You shall judge for yourself; and your
answer will enable me to decide a question which has of late
occupied my mind a great deal.

You have not hitherto heard me raise any objection to the
journey Philip is about to make. To-day I decided that he ought
not to go away. But after a long and painful conversation with
him, I find that no words of mine can move him from his purpose.

Now, my dear Miss Heathcote, will you help me to hold him back
from this useless enterprise?

I think you will—unless I am mistaken as to the nature of your
feelings in regard to him.

My first and chief reason for desiring to keep him at home is
my anxiety to see you and him happy—to see you two united, and
him, under your influence, working earnestly in some profession.

I fear there is much danger that this desire of mine will
never be realised, if he is permitted to spend a year with one
who would delight in thwarting any wish of mine. You know his
impulsive and impressionable nature. You are too young for
experience to have taught you—and I earnestly trust it may
never teach you—that absence, change of scene, and adverse
counsels are not the most favourable conditions for keeping the
most honest man steadfast.

Pray, do not misunderstand me. I do not doubt Philip. He is
honest; but with such a nature as his, I think the trial of his
honesty is too severe; and I object to it all the more because
it is absolutely unnecessary. My proposal to him is that he
should abandon this journey, that he should enter a profession
at once, and that you should be married at as early a date as
you may be inclined to fix. I need not say that you will be
provided with ample means.

In the course of my life, few of the desires springing from my
affections have been gratified. I beg of you to gratify this
one. Although he resolutely declines to forego his purpose
for my sake, I feel assured that you have only to speak one
word—‘stay’—and he will forego it for yours.

Will you speak that word?

Believe me, your humble servant,

LLOYD HADLEIGH.

There was something so pathetic and yet so strange in this appeal of the father that she should keep his son near him, that Madge was pained as well as bewildered. Keep Philip at home!—marry him!—be happy!—help to steady his impulsive nature and influence him in some good work! What else was there that she could desire more? How beautiful the visions were that these suggestions conjured up. Her face brightened as if a blaze of sunshine fell upon it ... and then it suddenly darkened.

She, too, like Philip remembered the dead mother’s wish, and hesitated. But the question presented itself: if his mother had been alive now and had understood all the circumstances, would she have insisted upon this wish—which seemed to cause the father so much anxiety—being carried out?

She read the letter again, and this time her cheeks flushed a little at the doubt of her implied in the words, ‘unless I am mistaken as to the nature of your feelings.’ The unpleasant sensation was only momentary. How could he—how even could Philip—realise her feelings? But she also became conscious of a certain vagueness in the reasons given for the anxiety expressed by Mr Hadleigh. Were she to grant the appeal, would it not be a proof of her want of faith in Philip? _That_ idea was enough to make her answer ‘no’ at once.

And yet she hesitated. The poor old man was evidently very much in earnest. (She always thought of Mr Hadleigh as an old man, older than Uncle Dick, although he was twenty years younger than the latter.) To say ‘no’ would cause him much pain: to say ‘yes’ would afford him much happiness, and at the same time bring about the completion of her own.

There was a yelping of dogs, and above it the stentorian voice of her uncle shouting: ‘Down, Dash, down—here, Rover, here—be quiet, Tip, you brute.’

The door opened, dogs rushed in and bounded round Madge in wild delight. They were followed by Uncle Dick, his fresh ruddy face beaming with the happiness of health and content.

‘What are you dreaming about, Madge? Breakfast ready? We are as hungry as if we had been starving for a week. Thought I should have met you in the meadow as usual. What’s the matter?’

‘I am trying to solve a riddle, uncle.’

‘What!’ he exclaimed with a burst of laughter, ‘at this time in the morning. O ho! I see Master Philip was here too long yesterday.’

‘Will you try it?’

‘Don’t be a fool. Call the Missus and let’s have breakfast.’

‘To please me, uncle,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Suppose somebody asked you to do something that you wanted to do yourself, what would you say?’

‘That’s easily answered—yes, of course.’

‘But, suppose there were reasons connected with other people on account of which you ought to say “no,” what would you do?’

‘Please myself.—Now, let’s have our victuals, and confound your riddles, or I’ll send for the doctor and the parson at once.’

There was not much help to Madge in this easy settlement of the difficulty. But she had a maxim which did help her: whenever you have a doubt as to which of two courses you should take, choose the one which is least agreeable to yourself. She decided to follow it in this instance, as she had done in many others of less importance.

THE MUSE OF PARODY.

Reader, are you of those who cannot tolerate their favourite authors or their favourite poems being parodied? A lady-friend of the writer’s lately said, in regard to one of the best-known poems of a distinguished poet: ‘I admired and liked it once; but I can hardly read it now, since I saw that dreadful parody of it that appeared in _Punch_.’ If you are of this sensitive class, we fear this article is not for you. But we feel pretty sure of an audience; for we know that the large majority of readers can relish a clever parody without in the least losing their enjoyment in or respect for the thing parodied. And it is well that it is so; for parody in some shape and to some extent is early as the beginnings of literature itself; and if the fame of poets depended on their immunity from travesty, every poet that has ever won his bays, and whose reputation now rests secure and impregnable, would have been laughed out of court long since.

In speaking of modern English parody, one’s thoughts turn first, almost inevitably, to the brothers Horace and James Smith, who, in _Rejected Addresses_, may be regarded as the first to practise parody in a systematised fashion, as a vehicle of fun and humour. The _Rejected Addresses_ won high praise from Jeffrey, who pronounced the parody on Crabbe ‘an exquisite and masterly imitation;’ while the poet himself declared it to be ‘admirably done.’ We shall give a short extract from it, which we think hits off Crabbe’s manner in a way that fully justifies Jeffrey’s criticism:

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer
Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;
But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,
Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs’s shoes.
Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy
Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ;
In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred
(At number twenty-seven, it is said),
Pacing the pump, and near the Granby’s Head.
He would have bound him to some shop in town,
But with a premium he could not come down.
Pat was the urchin’s name—a red-haired youth,
Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.

In regard to the parody of Sir Walter Scott in _Rejected Addresses_, the poet himself said: ‘I must have done it myself, though I forget on what occasion.’ Here are a few lines descriptive of the Drury Lane Theatre on fire:

At length the mist awhile was cleared,
When lo! amid the wreck upreared,
Gradual a moving head appeared,
And Eagle firemen knew
’Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered,
The foreman of their crew.
Loud shouted all in signs of woe,
‘A Muggins to the rescue, ho!’
And poured the hissing tide.

Thackeray was especially happy and especially funny in his Irish burlesques. _Larry O’Toole_, a parody of the rollicking Irish bacchanalian songs with which Charles Lever made us so familiar, admirably hits the medium between close imitation and high burlesque. There is a dash in it both of _Larry O’Hale_ and the _Widow Malone_. We quote two of the three verses:

You’ve all heard of Larry O’Toole,
Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole.
He had but one eye
To ogle ye by;
Och, murther, but that was a jew’l!
A fool
He made of the girls, this O’Toole.

’Twas he was the boy didn’t fail,
That tuck down purtaties and mail;
He never would shrink
From any sthrong dthrink;
Was it whisky or Drogheda ale,
I’m bail
This Larry would swallow a pail.

Moore’s well-known lines—

I never nursed a young gazelle
To glad me with its soft dark eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die—

have been frequently parodied. Here is one version which, we think, is not very familiar:

I never had a piece of toast
Particularly long and wide,
But fell upon the sanded floor,
And always on the buttered side.

The following is by Mr H. C. Pennel, author of _Puck on Pegasus_:

I never roved by Cynthia’s beam,
To gaze upon the starry sky,
But some old stiff-backed beetle came,
And charged into my pensive eye.

And oh! I never did the swell
In Regent Street among the beaus,
But smuts the most prodigious fell,
And always settled on my nose!

In those two delightful volumes, _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking-glass_, ‘Lewis Carroll’ gives us some capital travesties. Mr Southey’s poem beginning ‘“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,’ is so familiar, that every reader will appreciate the point of the burlesque, without needing the original before him:

‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,
‘And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think at your age it is right?’

‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,
‘I thought it might injure the brain;
But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.’

The old nursery song, ‘“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,’ the same writer has likewise burlesqued:

‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail;
‘There’s a porpoise close behind me, and he’s treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?’

The late Mr J. R. Planché, whose innumerable fairy extravaganzas were so full of fun and humour, was also an expert in parody. We give the first verse of a burlesque by him of the once popular song, _When other Lips_:

When other lips and other eyes
Their tales of love shall tell—
Which means the usual sort of lies
You’ve heard from every swell;
When, bored with every sort of bosh,
You’d give the world to see
A friend whose love you know will wash,
Oh, then remember me!

The funniest burlesque of Wordsworth’s _We are Seven_, with which we are acquainted, is by Mr H. S. Leigh:

‘I thought it would have sent me mad
Last night about eleven.’
Said I: ‘What is it makes you bad?
How many apples have you had?’
She answered: ‘Only seven.’

‘And are you sure you took no more,
My little maid?’ quoth I.
‘Oh, please, sir, mother gave me four,
But they were in a pie.’

‘If that’s the case,’ I stammered out,
‘Of course you’ve had eleven.’
The maiden answered with a pout:
‘I ain’t had more nor seven.’

Here are four lines from a travesty of Tennyson’s _May Queen_—

‘You may lay me in my bed, mother—my head is throbbing sore;
And mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before;
And if you’d do a kindness to your poor desponding child,
Draw me a pot of beer, mother—and, mother, draw it mild.’

It is not necessary to name the original of the following. We quote two of the three verses which compose the whole:

He wore a brace of pistols, the night when first we met;
His deep-lined brow was frowning beneath his wig of jet;
His footsteps had the moodiness, his voice the hollow tone,
Of a bandit chief, who feels remorse, and tears his hair alone.
I saw him but at half-price, but methinks I see him now,
In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow.

A _private_ bandit’s belt and boots, when next we met, he wore;
His salary, he told me, was lower than before;
And standing at the O. P. wing, he strove, and not in vain,
To borrow half a sovereign, which he never paid again.
I saw it but a moment—and I wish I saw it now—
As he buttoned up his pocket with a condescending bow.

Tennyson’s well-known lyric, _Home they brought her warrior dead_, has been thus amusingly parodied by Mr Sawyer:

Home they brought her sailor son,
Grown a man across the sea,
Tall and broad, and black of beard,
And hoarse of voice as man may be.

Hand to shake, and mouth to kiss,
Both he offered ere he spoke;
But she said: ‘What man is this
Comes to play a sorry joke?’

Then they praised him, called him ‘smart,’
‘Tightest lad that ever stept;’
But her son she did not know,
And she neither smiled nor wept.

Rose, a nurse of ninety years,
Set a pigeon-pie in sight;
She saw him eat: ‘’Tis he, ’tis he!’
She knew him—by his appetite.

The following clever parody of Wordsworth’s _Lucy_ is but little known. It was written by Hartley Coleridge, and reappeared some years ago in _Notes and Queries_. We shall quote the first verse of the original:

She dwelt among the untrodden ways,
Beside the banks of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.

We give two of the three verses composing the parody:

He lived among the untrodden ways,
To Rydal Mount that lead;
A bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read.

Unread his works—his _Milk-white Doe_
With dust is dark and dim;
It’s still in Longman’s shop; and oh!
The difference to him!

From a parody of Tennyson’s _Mariana_, which appeared in an Australian paper, we take the concluding verse. The burden of the original ballad, it will be remembered, runs:

She only said: ‘My life is dreary;
He cometh not,’ she said;
She said: ‘I am aweary, aweary—
I would that I were dead!’

They lifted him with kindly care;
They took him by the heels and head;
Across the floor, and up the stair,
They bore him safely to his bed.
They wrapped the blankets warm and tight,
And round about his nose and chin
They drew the sheets, and tucked them in,
And whispered: ‘Poor old boy—Good-night!’
He murmured: ‘Boys, oh, deary, deary,
That punch _was_ strong,’ he said;
He said: ‘I am aweary, aweary—
Thank heaven, I’ve got to bed!’

An American magazine published some years ago a series of burlesques of the old nursery rhymes, of which we give specimens:

Little Jack Horner,
Of Latin no scorner,
In the second declension did spy
How of nouns there are some
Which, ending in _um_,
Do _not_ make their plural in _i_.

Jack and Jill
Have studied Mill,
And all that sage has taught too;
Now both promote
Jill’s claim to vote,
As every good girl ought to.

The case for the evolutionists is thus tersely put by an American poet, parodying _Sing a song of Sixpence_:

Sing a song of phosphates,
Fibrine in a line,
Four-and-twenty follicles
In the van of time.
When the phosphorescence
Evoluted brain,
Superstition ended,
Man began to reign.

Pope’s familiar couplet—

Here shall the spring its earliest sweets bestow,
Here the first roses of the year shall blow—

has been thus travestied by Miss Catherine Fanshawe, who accomplishes the step from the sublime to the ridiculous by the change of two words only:

Here shall the spring its earliest coughs bestow,
Here the first noses of the year shall blow.

Among living parodists, few, if any, excel Mr C. S. Calverley, who seems to possess every qualification for success in this sort of work. The reader will at once recognise how happily he has caught Tennyson’s method and manner in the following parody of _The Brook_, especially in the blank-verse portion. We quote two verses and the conclusion:

‘I loiter down by thorp and town;
For any job I’m willing;
Take here and there a dusty brown,
And here and there a shilling.

‘I steal from th’ parson’s strawberry plats,
I hide by the Squire’s covers;
I teach the sweet young housemaids what’s
The art of trapping lovers.’

Thus on he prattled like a babbling brook.
But 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;
They to the village. It was noised next noon
That chickens had been missed at Syllabub Farm.

We had noted down several other examples of parody by different authors, which might have served further to illustrate our subject. Our selections have necessarily lost something of force and pertinence, from the fragmentary condition in which we have been obliged to present them; but the reader, if he be sufficiently interested in the matter, may easily go to the original sources.

It needs not to be pointed out that there are limits to parody, as to all other forms of light and sportive literature, whose main object is, after all, to divert and amuse. Good taste should guide the course of parody, in fact should never be absent from it. Let the parodist hit as hard as he pleases, but let him deal no foul blow, nor aim his strokes at aught that tradition and the world’s verdict have made sacred and to be revered. Parody may be as clever, laughable, and amusing as you can make it; but it should always be good-natured, fair, and gentlemanly.

TWO DAYS IN A LIFETIME.

A STORY IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.

BY T. W. SPEIGHT.