A WORD IN SEASON
FROM THE ‘KEEPSAKE’
1844

A WORD IN SEASON

The Keepsake, one of the many fashionable annuals published during the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, had for its editor in 1844 the ‘gorgeous’ Countess of Blessington, the reigning beauty who held court at Gore House, Kensington, where many political, artistic, and literary celebrities forgathered—Bulwer Lytton, Disraeli, Dickens, Ainsworth, D’Orsay, and the rest. Her ladyship, through her personal charm and natural gifts, succeeded in securing the services of eminent authors for the aristocratic publication; even Dickens could not resist her appeal, and in a letter to Forster (dated July 1843) he wrote: ‘I have heard, as you have, from Lady Blessington, for whose behalf I have this morning penned the lines I send you herewith. But I have only done so to excuse myself, for I have not the least idea of their suiting her; and I hope she will send them back to you for The Examiner.’ Lady Blessington, however, decided to retain the thoughtful little poem, which was referred to in the London Review (twenty-three years later) as ‘a graceful and sweet apologue, reminding one of the manner of Hood.’ The theme of the poem, which Forster describes as ‘a clever and pointed parable in verse,’ was afterwards satirised in Chadband (Bleak House), and in the idea of religious conversion through the agency of ‘moral pocket-handkerchiefs.’

A WORD IN SEASON

They have a superstition in the East,
That Allah, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest,
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper:
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name,
In any characters, its front imprest on,
Shall help the finder through the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
Accordingly, they make a mighty fuss
With ev’ry wretched tract and fierce oration,
And hoard the leaves—for they are not, like us,
A highly civilized and thinking nation:
And, always stooping in the miry ways,
To look for matter of this earthy leaven,
They seldom, in their dust-exploring days,
Have any leisure to look up to Heaven.

So have I known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth
Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters:
And yet, where they who should have ope’d the door
Of charity and light, for all men’s finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,
And rent the Book, in struggles for the binding.
The gentlest man among these pious Turks,
God’s living image ruthlessly defaces;
Their best high-churchman, with no faith in works,
Bowstrings the Virtues in the market-places:
The Christian Pariah, whom both sects curse
(They curse all other men, and curse each other),
Walks thro’ the world, not very much the worse—
Does all the good he can, and loves his brother.