Poor Uncle John!
"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"
in the old family vault in Denton chancel—and dear Aunt Fanny too!—the latter also "loo'd me weel," as the Scotch song has it,—and since, at this moment, I am in a most soft and sentimental humour—(—whisky toddy should ever be made by pouring the boiling fluid—hotter if possible—upon the thinnest lemon-peel,—and then—but everybody knows "what then—") I dedicate the following "True History" to my beloved
[AUNT FANNY.]
A LEGEND OF A SHIRT.
Virginibus, Puerisque canto.—Hor.
Old Maids, and Bachelors I chaunt to!—T. I.
I sing of a Shirt that never was new! In the course of the year Eighteen hundred and two, Aunt Fanny began, Upon Grandmama's plan, To make one for me, then her "dear little man."— —At the epoch I speak about, I was between A man and a boy, A hobble-de-hoy, A fat, little, punchy concern of sixteen,— Just beginning to flirt, And ogle,—so pert, I'd been whipt every day had I had my desert, —And Aunt Fan volunteer'd to make me a shirt!
I've said she began it,— Some unlucky planet No doubt interfered,—for, before she, and Janet Completed the "cutting-out," "hemming," and "stitching," A tall Irish footman appear'd in the kitchen;— —This took off the maid,— And, I'm sadly afraid, My respected Aunt Fanny's attention, too, stray'd; For, about the same period, a gay son of Mars, Cornet Jones of the Tenth (then the Prince's) Hussars, With his fine dark eyelashes, And finer moustaches, And the ostrich plume work'd on the corps' sabre-taches, (I say nought of the gold-and-red cord of the sashes, Or the boots far above the Guards' vile spatterdashes,)— So eyed, and so sigh'd, and so lovingly tried To engage her whole ear as he lounged by her side, Looking down on the rest with such dignified pride, That she made up her mind She should certainly find Cornet Jones at her feet, whisp'ring, "Fan, be my bride!"— —She had even resolved to say "Yes" should he ask it, —And I—and my Shirt—were both left in the basket.
To her grief and dismay She discover'd one day Cornet Jones of the Tenth was a little too gay; For, besides that she saw him—he could not say nay— Wink at one of the actresses capering away In a Spanish bolero, one night at the play, She found he'd already a wife at Cambray;— One at Paris,—a nymph of the corps de ballet;— And a third down in Kent, at a place call'd Foot's Cray.— He was "viler than dirt!"— Fanny vow'd to exert All her powers to forget him,—and finish my Shirt. But, oh! lack-a-day! How time slips away!— Who'd have thought that while Cupid was playing these tricks, Ten years had elapsed, and—I'd turn'd twenty-six?—