VI.
Continues—symptomatically terse—
This first of serials in doggerel verse.
O Jill, my peerless, perfumed, powdered darling;
Quintessence of all fairies I’ve adored
In London’s lanes, by Devon Budleigh’s farling,
At Berkeley’s, Kettner’s, Ritz’s, Carlton’s board;
Jill whose white hands ne’er knew roughhouse-work’s gnarling;
Whose clothes not twenty Coxes could afford!
How shall man sing the seasoned cee-sprung carriage
In which you rolled from that first kiss to marriage?
What days they were! What noon-times and what twilights!
The whole wide earth seemed fashioned for your pleasure;
Its very heavens, gold-and-crystal skylights
Whereunder you picked orchid blooms at leisure.
For others, shadowed gloom; for you, the high lights—
The pomp, the pride, the dance’s twanging measure ...
And if one begged: “Take coin,” you’d say, “and toss it her.
Poor thing! That skirt was never cut by Rossiter.”
Dear, rotten days! And yet, a Jack grows wistful
At thoughts of all the Jills whom he remembers,
In times when he had boodle by the fist-full
And fires of youth—where now are only embers.
Jack’s Jills! Why, Muse possesses quite a list full,
May’s Jill, and June’s Jill, August’s, and September’s ...
Yet dares no more than skim each light adventure
Which followed on flirtationship’s indenture.
For there’s a tide in the affairs of flappers,
Of those, at least, that West End mothers breed—
(Your Wapping matron’s more inclined to slap hers:
A vulgar trick—yet one which serves some need!)—
A spring-time blood-tide, mounting to young nappers,
Heady as wine, a mischief-making mead,
Which—though a man find every known excuse for ’em—
To put it mildly, does the very deuce for ’em.
And shall my sweetest Muse, than whom none chaster
E’er fluttered to console the middle-age-time
Of any neurasthenic poetaster,
Ope her full throat to sing Jill’s ’prentice rage-time?—
The unnerving doubts, the certainties which braced her,
The follied moments and the ensuing sage time,
The major and the minor bards who sung to her,
The men who knelt, the “little friends” who clung to her;
The last strange morning-dreams, the tea-tray’s rattle,
The letters—opened, skimmed, and tossed aside;
The leisured getting-up, the breakfast-prattle,
The summoning ’phone-bell and the mid-day ride;
The lunch; the afternoons of tittle-tattle—
Town’s latest scandal, dance, divorce or bride;
The “dear boys,” climbers, partis, portion-stalkers;
The furtive teas at Charbonnel and Walker’s;
The Morny-scented bath before the dinner;
The deft maid’s fingers in the unruly hair;
The risqué talk of some sweet social sinner,
Half-heard across the table’s candle-glare;
The Bridge, so much too high for a beginner;
The Ball; the moment’s whisper on the stair:
The thousand faces, phases, thoughts, books, travellings,
Which whirl youth’s silk cocoon in its unravellings.
Ah no! not ours with huckstering pen to retail
How slumb’rous beauties wake from girl-time’s dozing.
Let Hubert Wales and D. H. Lawrence detail
The purfled passion-blossom’s slow unclosing.
No rainbow’s purple e’er shall tinge our she-tale,
No censor’s yoke restrain its swift composing.
Moreover—quite apart from Muse’s purity—
There’s nothing half so dull as immaturity.
So please imagine—(though I know it’s risky
To trust in Britons for imagination,
Save those rare few whom peace-time’s hoarded whisky
Still fires to spiritual exaltation,
Or such as stand, when questioning House grows frisky,
Pat on their first inspired asseveration)—
Jill as she was in times of sugared plenty:
The Bond Street goddess, ætat three-and-twenty.
Goddess, indeed! These meagre days that skimp us,
Poor mortals, bullied, badged, and bombed and rationed,
Scarce knows that breed which once on high Olympus
Flaunted in radiant raiment, Poiret-fashioned.
Goddess indeed! A self-sure, jade-eyed, slim puss—
Of life’s each latest luxury impassioned;
Sleek; mateless; restless; rampant; supple-sinewed;
Sharp-clawed; capricious; and ... to be continued.
Transcriber’s Notes
The following apparent typographical errors were corrected.
Page [15], “enver” changed to “never.” (but for you there’s never a place)
Page [43], "cazone" changed to "canzone." (Still holds his own at sonnet or canzone)
Page [63], “mornnig” changed to “morning.” (That mid-day brought and morning shall remove)