LORD HOLLYGREENS COURTSHIP
(BY MRS. E. B. BR—N—G.)
A POET WRITES TO HIS FRIEND. Place—BEDLAM. Time—PROBABLY "SATURDAY NIGHT ABOUT TWO O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING."
"Dear my friend, and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you;
"Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will." (!!!) Mrs. Browning's "Lady Geraldine's Courtship."
O Ho, Ha Ha, He He—Hum!!!! 0,
Charley, let me weep adown your
Manly bosom! o'er that chamber, tears
must surely run ad libi.—
I'm a victim! friend and pitcher!—done incontinently
brown—your
Poet is immensely diddled by a—but narrabo tibi:—
(There's a Lady, * who writes verses, in the true spas—
modic metre,—
Better writes she, certes, better than all women with—
out end:
Writes full darkly:—I defy all Bards alive or dead to
beat her
At a nubibustic stanza that no man can comprehend—
Her sublime afflatus had I, and her noble scorn of
rhyming,
I could write you something tallish—should make
Lindley Murray suffer,—
Would she "lean her spirit" o'er me, in this rhympho—
leptic climbing, **
I would paint My Courtship in a style would make
you stare, Old Buffer!)—
* I cannot forego this opportunity of paying my humble tribute of ad— miration to the genius and accomplishments of Mrs. Barrett Browning, whose lamented death has occurred since the above effusion first appeared in print; and I do so the more readily as I fear lest lines which were written in mere gaité de cour may possibly have been construed into a serious attack upon works, the general and undoubted merits of which I should be the first to acknowledge.
** "Nymphs of mountain, not of valley, we are wont to call the muses— "And in nympholeptic climbing, poets pass from mount to star." —Lady Geraldine's Courtship.
You know, Charley, 'where I saw my Marianne (first) in
Belgravia;
And (secundo) how I loved her, with more love than
kith and kin do:
(Tertio) how I won,—and wed her,—yestermorn; and
her behaviour
You shall hear in five words—last night she exodus'd
BY THE WINDOW!!=
O! my Charley, you remember, on that cold fifth of
November,
As we saunter'd slowly Eastward, with the weed between
our lips;
How we spied a damsel beauteous, lymphomatically
duteous,
(I.E. cook at Number 7, scrubbing of the kitchen steps).
Charley, you and I remember, on that bright fifth of
November,
How she knelt there like a statue,—knelt bare-armëd
in the breeze,—
Whist her saponaceous lavement catalambanized the
pavement,
And her virginal white vesture flutter'd, reef d-wise, to
the knees.
Spell-bound in the road behind her, paused the Hurdy—
Gurdy Grinder,
Strangling in his wild excitement, Jumping Jimmy the
baboon;
Whilst the Genius of the Organ, fascinated by her
Gorgon
Beauty, stood enraptured—captured—playing madly out
of tune.
Then with her blue eyes entrancing, and her taper ankle
glancing,
And her rounded arms akimbo resting on her dainty
waist;
She half turn'd,—and turning threw me one glance
"utterly to undo me"—
(Well, you know'twas me she look'd at, Charley, and
she show'd her taste! )
Evermore my soul beguiling, in arch silence she kept
smiling—
And my heart within my bosom, pretematurally hopp'd;
Still as near I drew, and nearer, she grew fair and yet
more fairer (!)—
On both knees upon the pavement (Miles's bags, my
Boy) I dropp'd.
Then—but why should I confide you, what you know as
well as I do?
How she look'd up like an angel, (I can see her figure still!)
"I am yours, sir, if you'll take me—if you'll marry me
and make me
"A fine Lady, like my Missis:"—how I cried, "By
Jove, I WILL!"
How thenceforward ev'ry morning, wet and wind and
weather scorning,
By the steps of Number 7, punctual as the clock I past,—
How my love grew daily stronger—strength'ning as the
days grew longer—
Till my Marianne consented, and we named the day at
last.
How my Queen of Cake and Curry volunteer'd a
muffin-worry,
How I fondly made my advent somewhat ere the
moment due,—
And on going to the cupboard, like a second Mother
Hubbard,
Found the same, not "bare," but fill'd with six feet one
of Horse Guards Blue.
"Monster!'tis my only brother!"—"Silence, Madam—
you're another:
"Come out of your cupboard, Lobster! come out, gallant
Corporal Brown,—
"Slave! (I said) base Kitchen-creeper! (said I) I will
stop your peeper!
"I will tap your claret, Lobster,—I'll—"
—but here he knock'd me down.
How, still chain'd by Love the Fetterer, spite of cupboard
and etcetera,
To Cremome one night I took her, in a "Pork Pie"
highly killing;
Purvey'd buns and ices satis, and a sherry-cobbler
—gratis!
(Tho' you know I do not, Charley, love to sep'rate from
a shilling)—
How, when ev'rything was paid for; fun and fireworks
only stay'd for;
And my belle amie had eaten ev'rything that she was able;
Whilst the Resonant Steam-Dragon* (that's the tea—
pot), and the flagon
Of Lymphatic Cow (that's milk), stood smiling on the
arbor table,—
"Might she just step out and find her parasol she'd left
behind her?
"Whilst I kindly pour'd the tea out, and the cream that
look'd so yellow?"—
* "She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant Steam-Eagles Follow far on the direction of her little dove-like hand." Lady Geraldine's Courtship.
Yellow? Ha, ha! who could think it!—She never came
back to drink it:—
I fell flooded in a Brown. * ( study, understood, Old Fellow).
How my love withstood this trial, (toughish there is no
denial)
Soul-subdued by her low pleading, satin-tongued, soap—
soft as silk,—
Not a saint his heart could harden, thus so sweetly
ask'd for pardon:—
I suck'd in the obvious crammer kindly as my mother's
milk.
Soh! (I said)—and then forgave her: and she promised
to behave her—
Self in future like an angel (which she did, and show'd
her wings)
And I fancied yestermorning (fool) that my reward was
dawning,—
So it was—and with a vengeance! (fool again) But
some one rings?—
* . . . "I fell flooded in a dark."— Lady Geraldine's Courtship.
'Twas a cruel thing—but funny?—her eloping ere her
Honey—
Moon'd scarce risen?—cutting, very,—and for me the
world is dead.
Slightly crushing to my hopes is this performance on the
ropes! Miss
Marianne suspensa scalis—(would t'were sus. per col.
instead!)
Ass that I was to be wedded!—Wonderfully wooden—
headed!
I'm a wiser man now, Charley,—certes, up to snuff—but
sadder,—
Oh, the fickle little Hindoo! Facilis descensus window!
Oh—that bell again! what's this?—— A Bill
OF £5 FOR THE LADDER!
