Now when Anthony's life it grew harder and harder;
Less coal in the cellar, less meat in the larder;
He thought for a while, And at last (with a smile)
He determined to sacrifice even his style.
So he wrote just whatever came into his head,
Without any regard for the living or dead,
Or for what his friends thought or his enemies said.
From his style he effaced, As incentives to waste,
All the canons of grammar and even good taste;
And so book after book after book he brought out,
Which you've probably read, and you know all about;
For the publishers bought them, And ev'ry one thought them
So splendidly vulgar, that no one had ever
Read anything quite so improperly clever.
He tried ev'ry style, from the fashion of Ouida's
(His characters being Society Leaders;
The Heroine, suited to middle-class readers,—
A governess she, who might well have been humbler;
The Hero a Duke, an inveterate grumbler;
And a Guardsman who drank crême-de-menthe from a tumbler)
To that of another more popular lady,
And wrote about aristocrats who were shady,
And showed that the persons you happen to meet
In the Very Best Houses are always effete;
That they gamble all night, in particular sets,
And (Oh, hasn't she said it, Tho' can it be credit-
Ed?) have no intention of paying their debts!
His best, which the Critics said 'teemed with expression,'
Was the one-volume novel 'A Drunkard's Confession';
The next, 'My Good Woman. A Love Tale'; another,
Most popular this, 'The Flirtations of Mother';
And lastly, the crowning success of his life,
'How the Other Half Lives. By a Baronet's Wife.'
And the Publishers now are all down on their knees,
As they offer what fees He may happen to please;
And success he discerns As with rapture he learns
The amount that he earns From his roy'lty returns.
(N.B.—I omit the last 'a' here in Royalty,
For reasons of scansion and not from disloyalty.)
The moral of this is quite easy to see;
If a popular author you're anxious to be,
You won't care a digamma For truth or for grammar,
Be far from straitlaced Upon questions of taste,
And don't trouble to polish your style or to bevel,
But always write down to the popular level;
Be vulgar and smart, And you'll get to the heart
Of the persons directing the lit'rary mart,
And your writings must reach (It's a figure of speech)
The—(well, what shall we call it—compositor's) devil!
THE MOTRIOT
(After Robert Browning)
'It was chickens, chickens, all the way,
With children crossing the road like mad;
Police disguised in the hedgerows lay,
Stop-watches and large white flags they had,
At nine o'clock o' this very day.
'I broke the record to Tunbridge Wells,
And I shouted aloud, to all concerned,
"Give room, good folk, do you hear my bells?"
But my motor skidded and overturned;
Then exploded—and afterwards, what smells!
'Alack! it was I rode over the son
Of a butcher; rolled him all of a heap!
Nought man could do did I leave undone;
And I thought that butcher's boys were cheap,—
But this, poor man, 'twas his only one.