And he said:
“Oh! Abelard,” as if the topic
Were much too abstruse for his comprehension,
And he talked about “the Great Mary,”
And said: “Mr. Pound is shocked at my levity,”
When it turned out he meant Mrs. Ward.
And the other was rather like my bust by Gaudier,
Or like a real Texas colonel,
He said: “Why flay dead horses?
“There was once a man called Voltaire.”
And he said they used to cheer Verdi,
In Rome, after the opera,
And the guards couldn’t stop them,
And that was an anagram for Vittorio
Emanuele Re D’ Italia,
And the guards couldn’t stop them.
Old men with beautiful manners,
Sitting in the Row of a morning;
Walking on the Chelsea Embankment.
VIII
Ritratto
AND she said:
“You remember Mr. Lowell,
“He was your ambassador here?”
And I said: “That was before I arrived.”
And she said:
“He stomped into my bedroom....
(By that time she had got on to Browning.)
“ ... stomped into my bedroom....
“And said: ‘Do I,
“ ‘I ask you, Do I
“ ‘Care too much for society dinners?’
“And I wouldn’t say that he didn’t.
“Shelley used to live in this house.”
She was a very old lady,
I never saw her again.
HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY
(LIFE AND CONTACTS)