So when they’ve been meated if with pies they’re not treated, they vow that they’re cheated;
Then against Ascot Races, and all such sweet places, they set their old faces;
And they’ll never leave town, nor to Broadstairs go down, though with bile you’re quite brown;
For their wife, they unwilling are, after cooing and billing her, to stand a cap from a Milliner—e’en a paltry twelve shillinger;
And it gives them the vapours to witness the capers, of those bowers and scrapers the young linen drapers;
Then to add to your woes, they say nobody knows how the money all goes, but they pay through the nose for the dear children’s clothes;
Though you strive and endeavour, they’re so mightily clever, that please them you’ll never, till you leave them for ever!—Yes! the hundredth time sever—“for ever and ever”!!
Now the gentlemen sure I’ve no wish to disparage,
But this is the way they go on after marriage.
From George Cruikshank’s Comic Almanac, for 1850.