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There is a song that my mother used to sing to us when we were children, of which I can now remember only fragments, but what I can recall of it is so beautifully typical of the early Victorian young lady, and of what may be called the Bonnet and Shawl attitude towards the Lover, that a verse or two shall be transcribed. I believe it used to be sung at the house of my grandmother (Anna Maria Coghill, née Bushe), in Cheltenham, by one of the many literary and artistic dandies who hung about her and her handsome daughters. Lord Lytton, then Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, was one of these, and he and my grandmother were among the first amateur experimenters in mesmerism, thought-reading, and clairvoyance, as might have been expected from the future author of “Zanoni,” and from the mother of my mother (who was wont, with her usual entire frankness, to declare herself “the most curious person in the world,” i.e. the most inquisitive).
I do not know the name of the song or of its composer. It has a most suitable, whining, peevish little tune; my mother used to sing it to us with intense dramatic expression, and it was considered to be a failure if the last verse did not leave my brother and me dissolved in tears. The song is in the form of a dialogue between the Lady and the Lover, and the Lady begins:
“So so so, Sir, you’ve come at last!
I thought you’d come no more,
I’ve waited with my bonnet on
From one till half-past four!
You know I hate to sit at home
Uncertain where to go,
You’ll break my heart, I know you will,
If you continue so!”
(The tune demands the repetition of the last two lines, but it, I regret to say, cannot be given here.)
One sees her drooping on a high chair by the window (which of course is closed), her ringlets losing their curl, her cheeks their colour. The Lover takes a high hand.
“Pooh! pooh! my dear! Dry up your tears,” he begins, arrogantly, and goes on to ask for trouble by explaining that the delay was caused by his having come “down Grosvenor Gate Miss Fanny’s eye to catch,” and he ends with defiance—
“I won’t, I swear, I won’t be made
To keep time like a watch!”
The Lady replies:
“What! Fanny Grey! Ah, now indeed
I understand it all!
I saw you making love to her
At Lady Gossip’s ball!”
“My life, my soul! My dearest Jane!
I love but you alone!
I never thought of Fanny Grey!
(How tiresome she’s grown!)
I never thought of Fanny Grey!
(How tiresome she’s grown!)”