DISGUST: A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE.

(A woman and her husband, having been converted from free thought to Calvinism, and being utterly miserable in consequence, resolve to end themselves by poison. The man dies, but the woman is rescued by application of the stomach-pump).

PILLS? talk to me of your pills? Well, that, I must say is cool.

Can't bring my old man round? he was always a stubborn old fool.

If I hadn't taken precautions—a warning to all that wive—

He might not have been dead, and I might not have been alive.

II.

You would like to know, if I please, how it was that our troubles began?

You see, we were brought up Agnostics, I and my poor old man.

And we got some idea of selection and evolution, you know—

Professor Huxley's doing—where does he expect to go!

III.

Well, then came trouble on trouble on trouble—I may say, a peck—

And his cousin was wanted one day on the charge of forging a cheque—

And his puppy died of the mange—my parrot choked on its perch.

This was the consequence, was it, of not going weekly to church?

IV.

So we felt that the best if not only thing that remained to be done

On an earth everlastingly moving about a perpetual sun,

Where worms breed worms to be eaten of worms that have eaten their betters—

And reviewers are barely civil—and people get spiteful letters—

And a famous man is forgot ere the minute hand can tick nine—

Was to send in our P.P.C., and purchase a packet of strychnine.

Nay—but first we thought it was rational—only fair—

To give both parties a hearing—and went to the meeting-house there,

At the curve of the street that runs from the Stag to the old Blue Lion.

"Little Zion" they call it—a deal more "little" than "Zion."

VI.

And the preacher preached from the text, "Come out of her." Hadn't we come?

And we thought of the Shepherd in Pickwick—and fancied a flavour of rum

Balmily borne on the wind of his words—and my man said, "Well,

Let's get out of this, my dear—for his text has a brimstone smell."

VII.

So we went, O God, out of chapel—and gazed, ah God, at the sea.

And I said nothing to him. And he said nothing to me.

VIII.

And there, you see, was an end of it all. It was obvious, in fact,

That, whether or not you believe in the doctrine taught in a tract,

Life was not in the least worth living. Because, don't you see?

Nothing that can't be, can, and what must be, must. Q.E.D.

And the infinitesimal sources of Infinite Unideality

Curve in to the central abyss of a sort of a queer Personality.

Whose refraction is felt in the nebulæ strewn in the pathway of Mars

Like the pairings of nails Æonian—clippings and snippings of stars—

Shavings of suns that revolve and evolve and involve—and at times

Give a sweet astronomical twang to remarkably hobbling rhymes.

IX.

And the sea curved in with a moan—and we thought how once—before

We fell out with those atheist lecturers—once, ah, once and no more,

We read together, while midnight blazed like the Yankee flag,

A reverend gentleman's work—the Conversion of Colonel Quagg.

And out of its pages we gathered this lesson of doctrine pure—

Zephaniah Stockdolloger's gospel—a word that deserves to endure

Infinite millions on millions of Infinite Æons to come—

"Vocation," says he, "is vocation, and duty duty. Some."

And duty, said I, distinctly points out—and vocation, said he,

Demands as distinctly—that I should kill you, and that you should kill me.

The reason is obvious—we cannot exist without creeds—who can?

So we went to the chemist's—a highly respectable church-going man—

And bought two packets of poison. You wouldn't have done so. Wait.

It's evident, Providence is not with you, ma'am, the same thing as Fate.

Unconscious cerebration educes God from a fog,

But spell God backwards, what then? Give it up? the answer is, dog.

(I don't exactly see how this last verse is to scan,

But that's a consideration I leave to the secular man).

XI.

I meant of course to go with him—as far as I pleased—but first

To see how my old man liked it—I thought perhaps he might burst.

I didn't wish it—but still it's a blessed release for a wife—

And he saw that I thought so—and grinned in derision—and threatened my life

If I made wry faces—and so I took just a sip—and he—

Well—you know how it ended—he didn't get over me.

XII.

Terrible, isn't it? Still, on reflection, it might have been worse.

He might have been the unhappy survivor, and followed my hearse.

"Never do it again?" Why, certainly not. You don't

Suppose I should think of it, surely? But anyhow—there—I won't.

There still remain a great many parodies of Tennyson's poems to be quoted, and every day increases their number. It will, therefore, be necessary to return to this author in some future part of this collection; the following references are given to some of the more easily accessible parodies, which space will not now permit me to quote in full:—

"Edinburgh Sketches and Miscellanies." By Eric. Edinburgh and Glasgow: John Menzies and Company, 1876, contains Codger's Hall, a long and humorous parody of Locksley Hall; Once a Week, Echoes from the Clubs, and The Weekly Dispatch, October 19, 1884, also contained parodies of the same poem.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere was the subject of an advertising parody, of which the best verse ran:—

"Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange fancies in my head!

Do you remember that rich silk

You wore last year at Maidenhead?

Now "velveteen" is all the go;

'Tis richer far, and costs much less,

The lion on your old stone gates

Is not more ancient than that dress."

whilst the Charge of the Light Brigade was thus imitated by a Birmingham tea-dealer:—

"Half a League! Half a League!

Half a League, onward!

Into Gant's tea shop

Walk many hundred.

Tea is the people's cry,

Which is the kind to buy?

Gant's at Two Shillings try,

Say many hundred!

Tea-men to right of us,

Tea-men to left of us,

Grocers all round us,

Find they have blundered."

There was another parody on the Charge of the Light Brigade, in Punch, December 19, 1868.

"The Song of the 'Skyed' one, as sung at the Academy on the first Monday in May," was a parody, in ten verses, commencing:—

AWAKE I must, and early, a proceeding that I hate,

And cab it to Trafalgar Square, and ascertain my fate;

For to-morrow's the Art-Derby, the looked-for opening day

Of the Fine Art Exhibition, yearly shown by the R.A.

This appeared in Punch, May 11, 1861.

The May Queen was also imitated in a poem contained in Modern Society, March 29, 1884. It was entitled "Baron Honour," and was a very severe, and rather vulgar, skit on Lord Tennyson's adulation of the Royal Family.

In The Weekly Dispatch, September 9, 1883, five parodies were printed in a competition to anticipate the Poet Laureate's expected poem in commemoration of the late John Brown; a subject on which, however, Lord Tennyson has not as yet published a poem. In the same newspaper six parodies of Hands All Round were inserted on April 2, 1882.

These were very entertaining, and were severally entitled: "Pots all Round;" "Tennysonian Toryism Developed;" "Drinks all Round;" "Cheers all Round;" "Hands all Round (with the mask off)"; and "Howls all Round."

Truth, February 14, 1884, contained a parody entitled "In Memoriam; a Collie Dog." Punch also had a parody with the title "In Memoriam" on July 9, 1864.

"The Two Voices, as heard by Jones of the Treasury about Vacation time," was the title of a long parody in Punch, September 7, 1861.

There was also a political parody, on the same original, in Punch, May 11, 1878.

"Recollections of the Stock Exchange," a long parody of Recollections of the Arabian Nights, and dealing with the topic of Turkish Stocks, appeared in Punch, December 18, 1875.

"The Duchess's Song," after Tennyson, was in Punch, September 3, 1881; and British Birds, by Mortimer Collins (1878), contained, amongst others, a capital parody of Tennyson.