OUIDA.
Moll Marine:
(By “Weeder.”)
Moll Marine! A simple, touching name! It had been bestowed upon her by the rude country hinds among whom she dwelt. It was all she received at their hands besides blows and curses. Moll was a common name in those parts, but none knew what it meant, none discerned the hidden poetry in that brief monosyllable. Moll Marine they called her, because she came among them as a waif from the wild waves, as a white foam fleck that the winds toss on to the cold rocks to gleam a moment in the setting sun, and then dissolve for ever into the dews of night.
She was only fifteen, tall and graceful as a young poplar, with a warm brown skin and a scented wealth of amber hair. Everybody hated her. “It was natural,” she thought. They beat her, but she cared not. She was like a lucifer; they struck her, and she blazed forth resplendent; beautiful as the spotted panther of the forest, as the shapely thistle that the ass crops unheeding, as the beaming comet that shakes out her golden tresses in the soft hush of summer nights.
And she loved. Loved madly, passionately, hopelessly.
He knew it. He knew that he had but to say, “Come!” and she would follow him to disgrace or death, to polar snows or deserts arid as Gehenna. To him she was nothing. No more than the painted fly he pinned in sport, than the yellow meadow flowers that he crushed beneath his heel, than the soft tender doves whose downy necks he wrung and whose bodies he eat with cruel relish.
[We regret to say that the rest of this contribution is improper, and unfit for publication.—Ed.]
From The Light Green. Cambridge, 1872.
The World prize competition, for parodies on Ouida’s Under Two Flags, subject “The Cambridgshire Stakes.”
First Prize.
‘Seven to 5 on Leoville; 9 to 3 on Lartington; 10 to 2 on Falmouth; 13 to 4 Flotsam; 17 to 9 Exeter; the Field bar one; 22 to 8 Lord Clive; 33 to 12 Discord! Take the Field bar one; take the Field!’ yelled a burly bookmaker, as an elegant young patrician redolent of Jockey Club sauntered past him.
‘I do take it in; also the Life,’ said the noble, as he flicked some dust from his spotless boots, and then he blew his nose gracefully.
‘O, stow yer larks!’ said the other; but the next moment he repented using such language; for the apparently delicate nobleman had carelessly taken him by the seat of his trousers and thrown him over the rails, as though he had been a feather, instead of weighing at least 15 stone.
‘Curse him!’ he muttered, as he came back trying to look pleased. ‘What d’yer want to do, my lord?’ he said, with a ghastly smile.
Mentioning a horse, the haughty young aristocrat asked what he would lay against it.
‘Against it?’ said the welcher. ‘Well, it ain’t usual for us to lay against ’em; but I’ll give yer 4 to 2.’
‘Very well,’ wearily replied the marquis; ‘in half millions. I also want to back it for a lady, in gloves.’
‘Wery good, my lord; dogskin or kid?’
This of course could only be meant for insult. The peer looked at him half amused, half disgusted, and walked listlessly away.
The welcher scowled after him with bitter hatred; but just then the bell rang, and he hurried off to see the horses and jockeys weighed. When he arrived at the shed he found all ready but one, the jockey who was to ride the horse he had laid against. He was just sitting down to dinner.
‘They’re waiting for you,’ said a steward, rushing into the room.
‘Ask them to wait a little longer; I shall be ready in forty minutes,’ said the jockey, taking a spoonful of potage à la Tortue.
The steward rushed out somewhat excitedly.
‘Now’s my time,’ said the welcher, and creeping behind the light weight he gently unfastened one of his spurs, and put another in its place. He had scarcely finished when the referee came in to say that the starter would wait no longer. Quaffing a large goblet of champagne, the jockey murmured, ‘Che, sara, sara,’ and staggered out. Why did the welcher look so fiendish. He had fastened on the jockey’s boot a spur with painted rowels.
Following him out, he could just see him galloping down the course, and hear the people cheer as their favourite went by in his crimson jacket, with scarlet sash, green hoops, pink sleeves, and yellow cap. Before he could get to the starting-box the horses were off; but disdaining to join them in the middle of the race, and wishing also to exchange a few compliments with the starter, he rode up to him, and after relieving his mind, dashed after the others. By the time he got to the ‘Corner’ he was only two furlongs behind; at the distance a hundred yards; at the Red House fifty; and as they passed the Stand he was but a length from the leaders. He touched his gallant steed with the spur for a final effort; but instead of leaving the others behind as usual, it staggered, stopped, and went to sleep. The laudanum had done its work. Just then his rider heard a great shout, and looking up saw thousands of arms carrying the victorious jockey back to the scales. La Merveille had won the Cambridgeshire.
Oracle. (E. E. D. Davis.)
Second Prize.
‘Four to none against Hartington!’ ‘8 to none against Sarserperiller!’ ‘25 to none against Stylites!’ (pronounced by the ‘welchers’ as a dissyllable, like Skylights). ‘20 to none against Lar Mervilly!’ (La Merveille). ‘2 to none bar none!’ These and a hundred other cries rose high above the roar of the Ring on the bright October afternoon that shone for the nonce over the wide windy fens and sandy loams of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk on the day of the last great scrambling handicap of the year.
Maunderers muttering to their moustaches, layers, takers, ‘ossy’ cards, tiptop swells, who had ‘put the pot on’ to any extent, ladies of rank and ladies of pleasure (the latter in sealskin and velvet, and gracefully puffing the daintiest of papilitos)—all, with an instinct of stupidity, came down eager for a ‘go in’ on the scratching Cambridgeshire.
The bell was throbbing and sobbing spasmodically; and, as that cynosure of all eyes, Hartington, whose magnificently-desiccated veins bulged out black as the bloody cords of an injected ‘subject,’ strode grandly forth, a roar, deep as the voice of forests or the moan of the sea, went suddenly up—‘the crack!’
La Merveille, the blue filly, whose neck had the Arch of Marble, was a thick, short, long-barrelled horse, with superb Watteau eyes, and an I’ll-take-the-conceit-out-of-a good-many-of-you-if-I-choose-looking head. She belonged to the Lord of the Durdans, Earl Elderberry, whose colours were Hebrew lily inclining to Primrose.
See! Twice ten thousand starters are hoisted in admirable time; the competitors muster at the post, and the coup d’œil, as they glimmer and shimmer there in the sunlight, is as that of an early Turner sunset gone ineffably mad.
Three breaks; the flag falls; a glorious start, and away they go like no end of a line of eager harlequins before their creditors. ‘Off!’ and Out of Pounds, after taking up the running, ‘compounded;’ Adamite fell; Sunburn cooled down; Caxtonian ‘pressed’ onward; Fitz-Pluto ‘warmed’ to his work. ‘Now!’ Blood lashes to fury. The Ring roars—‘It’s a skinner!’ And Breadloser, Lord Strive, Hartington, and Lar Mervilly dash like fiends through the cold, fresh, wild winter wind, blowing as it might have done in Stuart times, when Mistress Nell Gwynn, the fat King’s ‘fancy,’ was here to inhale it.
Hark! ‘The foremost wins!’ ‘Rob Boy’s a “teaser”!’ ‘Mervilly’s lost!’ ‘Flash Man’s a brilliant failure!’
Lost? A palpitating lie!
’Send me a cropper!’ exclaimed Constable, a ‘clipping’ jock who had landed many a mount. ‘Send me a cropper, if you like, but “plant” me a winner!’
The blue filly answered with lightning spontaneity. Game to the last, Constable, a great Pickwick in his mouth, coaxed a final effort out of her. The delirium of pace was upon him. ‘Go in a perisher!’
On came the trio—on, until one last convulsive impulse of the outstretched limbs, and—hark! The cry has changed. ‘Mervilly wins!’
A thousand jewelled hands hold forth bouquets of hissing eau de Cologne. And Constable, true to the canons of his Order, ‘runs her in.’
A cry as of the disappointed, the desperate, or the d—d, went out over the ghastly fens; seemed to reel from many a gallant ‘plunger’ in anticipation of an approaching ‘weigh-in.’ Next to first was Second; Better Last than Never, whose dominant instinct it was to lose, third.
There was much wisdom after the event. Two minutes eight seconds! A man on a bicycle might have done it in less time!
Cyril. (James Silvester.)
The World November 12, 1879.
A parody of Ouida’s Ariadne was published in The Weekly Dispatch parody competition, September 13, 1885, but owing to the enforced brevity of the compositions, this one consisted of little more than a catalogue of names and facts, without any fun, or humour.
Of course Mr. F. C. Burnand wrote a parody on “Ouida,” it appeared in Punch in 1878, and was entitled “Strapmore! A Romance by Weeder, author of Folly and Farini, Under Two Rags, Arryadn’ty, Chuck, Two Little Wooden Jews, Nicotine, A Horse with Glanders, In Somers Town, Shamdross, &c., &c.” This wild weird story of blood and crime was republished in book form by Bradbury, Agnew & Co.
Judy also published a parody, entitled “Bluebottles. A Novel of Queer Society” Idylised à la Ouida. This was commenced July 7, 1880.
——:o:——
The following very happy burlesque of the nautical tales in the style of Captain Marryat and Captain Chamier, was written in 1842 by the late Professor W. E. Aytoun, who, in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, wrote the Bon Gaultier Ballads.
The Flying Dutchman.
A Tale of the Sea.
We were in the midst of the storm-tossed Atlantic. A heavy simoom, blowing N.E. by S., brought in the huge tropical billows mast-high from the Gulf of Labrador, and awoke old ocean, roaring in its fury, from its unfathomable depths. No moon was visible among the hurricane rack of the sky—even the pole-star, sole magnet of the mariner’s path, was buried in the murky obscurity of the tempest; nor was it possible to see which way the ship was steering, except by the long track of livid flames which followed in the wake of the bow, or when, at times, some huge leviathan leapt up from the water beside us, and descending with the vehemence of a rock hurled from heaven, drove up a shower of aquatic splinters, like a burst of liquid lava from the sea. All the sails which usually decorated the majestic masts of H.M.S. Syncope (a real seventy-nine of the old Trafalgar build, teak-built and copper fastened) were reefed tightly up, with the exception of the mainsail, the spritsail, the mizzen-boom sail, and a few others of minor consequence. Everything was cleared away—halyards, hencoop, and binnacle had been taken down below, to prevent accidents; and the whole of the crew, along with the marines and boarders, piped to their hammocks. No one remained upon deck except the steersman, as usual lashed to the helm; Josh Junk, the first bos’un; and the author of this narrative, who was then a midshipman on board the vessel, commanded by his uncle, Commodore Sir Peregrine Pendant.
“Skewer my timbers!” exclaimed Mr. Junk, staggering from one side of the deck to the other as an enormous wave struck us on the leeside, and very nearly unshipped the capstan—“Skewer my timbers, if this a’n’t enough to put an admiral’s pipe out! Why, Master Tom, d’ye see, it’s growing altogether more and more darkerer; and if it a’n’t clearer by twelve bells, we’ll be obligated to drop anchor, which a’n’t by no means so pleasant, with a heavy swell like this, running at nineteen knots an hour in the middle of the wide Atlantic. How’s her head, boy?”
“North by south it is, sir,” replied the steersman.
“Keep her seven points more to the west, you lubber! Always get an offing when there’s a wet sheet and a flowing sea. That’s right, Jem! Hold her hard abaft, and she’ll go slick before the wind, like a hot knife through a pound of butter. Halloo, Master Tom, are you holding on by the seat-railings already—you a’n’t sick, are you? Shall I tell the steward to fetch a basin?”
“No, no, Josh,” I replied, “’tis nothing—merely a temporary qualm. But tell me—do you really apprehend any danger? If so, would it not be prudent to call up the commodore, and hang out the dead-lights?”
“Why, Master Tom,” replied the bos’un, turning his quid, “them ere’s kevestions as I can’t answer. ’Cos, first—there’s no knowing what danger is till it comes; secondly, it’s as much as my place is worth to disturb old Fire-and-Faggots—axing your pardon for the liberty—afore he’s finished his grog with the mates below; and, thirdly, it’s no use hanging out the dead-lights, ’cos we’re entirely out of oil.”
“Gracious heavens!” cried I, “and suppose any other ship should be in the same latitude?”
“Then,” said the bos’un with all imaginable coolness, “I reckon it would be a case of bump. Oak varsus teak, as the law-wers say, and Davy Jones take the weakest.—But hitch my trousers! what’s that?”
As the non-commissioned officer spoke, a bright flash was seen to the seaward immediately ahead of our vessel. It was too bright, too intense to proceed from any meteoric phenomena, such as sometimes are witnessed in those tropical climate, and the sullen report which immediately followed, indicated too clearly that it proceeded from some vessel in the vicinity.
“A first-rater, by jingo!” said Mr. Junk, “and in distress. Hold my telescope, Master Tom, till I go below and turn out the watch,”——but that instant his course was arrested.
Scarce a second had elapsed after the sound of the discharge reverberated through our rigging, when, only a hawser’s distance from our bowsprit, a phosphoric light seemed to rise from the bosom of the shadowy deep. It hung upon the hull, the binnacle, the masts, the yards of a prodigious ship, pierced apparently for three tier of guns, which, with every sail set, bore down direct upon us. One moment more and collision was inevitable; but Junk, with prodigious presence of mind, sprang to the helm, snatched the wheel from the hands of the petrified steersman, and luffed with almost supernatural force. Like a well-trained courser who obeys the rein, our noble ship instantly yielded to the impulse, and bore up a-lee, whilst the stranger came hissing up, and shot past us so close that I could distinctly mark each lineament of the pale countenances of the crew as they stood clustered upon the rigging, and even read—so powerful was that strange, mysterious light—the words painted within her sides,—“Those who go abaft the binnacle pay Cabin fare!” On, on she drove—a lambent coruscation, cleaving the black billows of the Atlantic main, about to vanish amidst the deep darkness of the night.
“That was a near shave, anyhow,” said Mr. Junk, relinquishing the wheel, “but we must know something more of that saucy clipper,” and catching up a speaking trumpet, he hailed,—
“Ship ahoy!”
“Ship yourself!” was the response.
“What’s your name?”
“What’s yours!”
“Syncope—Britannic Majesty’s seventy-nine—for Trinidad.”
“Yung Fraw—merchant ship, for Rotterdam.”
“What cargo?”
“Soap!” was the reply. “How are YOU off for it? Ha! ha! ha!”
A peal of diabolic laughter rolled across the deep, mingled with the rushing of the waves and the whistling of the winds. Another flash—another report—and the meteor light sunk as noiselessly as it had arisen into the bosom of the watery surge. At that moment the moon burst out from behind a cloud, clear and queenlike, illuminating the ocean for miles. We rushed to the stern and looked back. In vain! no vestige of a ship was there—we were alone upon the warring waters!
“By the Lord Harry!” said the bos’un, dropping the trumpet—“as sure as my name’s Josh Junk, that ’ere was the Flying Dutchman!” - - - - -
That night we were SWAMPED AT SEA!
——:o:——
OUR NEW ACTORS.
Three imitations of Charles Lamb’s essay on “Some of our Old Actors” were published in a Parody Competition in The World, October, 15, 1879. The first prize was awarded to the following:—
Taking up a to-days Standard—I know not by what freak of fancy I came to purchase one—I glanced at a few of the theatrical advertisements, which occupy no inconsiderable space in its columns. One of these presented the cast of parts in the Iron Chest at the Lyceum Theatre—Sir Edward Mortimer, by Henry Irving. What an ambitious sound it has! How clearly it brings before me the comely sad face—thoughtful and therefore sad—and the almost painfully-intense manner of the modern actor!
Of all the ‘Sir Edwards’ who have flourished in my time—a dismal phrase if taken aright, reader—that mad genius, the great little man with the fine Italian face and flashing eyes, Edmund Kean, is the most unforgetable. That of Irving comes next. He, since Kean, most fully realises the author’s idea of the style of man best suited to fill the part—‘a man of sable hue, and one in whose soul there’s something o’er which his melancholy sits and broods.’ But the secret of Irving’s success lies in his fine annihilation of self—a rare quality among players—combined with an originality which triumphs over tradition. There is a marked naturalness about his acting of this character, bottomed on enthusiasm. Like genius, he seems at times to have the power of kindling his own fire into any degree of intensity.
Kean, of whom Mrs. Siddons said, ‘There is too little of him to do anything;’ but of whom his landlady said, ‘There is something about Mr. Kean, ma’am, that tells me he will be a great man;’ Kean, whose exclamation, ‘My God, if I should succeed now, I think it will drive me mad!’ was prophetic, and who, when successful, cried, ‘D— Lord Essex, Mary; the pit rose at me!’—Kean tore the passion of the play to tatters.
Irving’s recenter style does not go to work so grossly. Seemingly convinced of the facts that whatever is done for effect will be seen to be done for effect, and that Nature for ever puts a premium on reality, he interests, as all may, by being persistently and intensely human. There is a consonancy, so to speak, which the green probationer in tragedy spoils by failing to exercise that repression which is an index of power.
In Hamlet, Mathias, in the remorseful rant of Eugene Aram, and the rest, Irving has proved himself histrionic to a degree that will always command intelligent recognition.
All have seen Sothern! What a Dundreary the world has in him! What witty conceits that pleasant creature has to trifle an hour or two away!—he whose ineffable fooling, if done by another, would partake of the essentially ludicrous. Then there is my beloved Toole, whose quirks never left a sting, who drolls inimitably, and whose quality is so irresistible that like a sunbeam, he exists but to cheer—a touching function, reader. My beloved Toole is, in his walk, in no way inferior.
Shakespeare foresaw the existence of Miss Ellen Terry when he created Portia, as Sir Walter might that of Miss Neilson when he spake in Kenilworth.
There are who say that Barry Sullivan is the leading legitimate actor of the British stage—a big distinction, which few will, perhaps, be disposed to deny him. But the difference between Sullivan and Irving is, I take it, this: Sullivan has the toga virilis, and the old and obvious canons of his art; Irving is an actor less by tradition than instinct. Sullivan’s rich baritone, with its harmonious and not-without-skill-delivered periods, stirs the whole house like the sound of a trumpet: Irving’s shriller pipe is fuller of Nature’s own rhetoric for a finer few. Sullivan may fill the theatre; Irving may find an empty seat or two in the gallery.
Cyril. (James Silvester.)
