I'm the Apostle of mighty Darwinity,
Stands for Divinity—sound much the same—
Apo-theistico-Pan-Asininity
Only can doubt whence the lot of us came.
Down on your knees, Superstition and Flunkeydom!
Won't you accept such plain doctrines instead?
What is so simple as primitive Monkeydom,
Born in the sea with a cold in its head?
This has some claim to rank with the ditties on the same subject by Lord Neaves and Mortimer Collins. But Claude has also gone in for something less innocent than Darwinianism. He is flirting with Babette, a pretty laundry-maid, the beloved of Gaspar. Of her, Gaspar sings as follows, in a clever parody of "Sally in our Alley":—
To catch a lover on the hip,
There's none like fair Babet-te!
You'd love to kiss her rosy lip,
But, ah! she'll never let 'ee!
Yet shall she wash my Sunday suit,
Tho' she my suit refuses,
For, oh! she washes far the best
Of all the blanchissooses!
For washing-day all round the year,
She ever sticks to one day;
She takes my linen Friday night,
And brings it back o' Monday!
When I bestow the lordly franc,
'Tis sweet to hear her "Thankee"—
She mends my hooks and darns my eyes,
And marks my pocky-hanky!
She calls the wandering button home,
However hard I cuss it;
She's good at collar and at cuff,
And truly great at gusset!
To catch a lover on the hip,
There's none like fair Babet-te!
You'd love to kiss her rosy lip,
But, ah! she'll never let 'ee!
In the course of the piece there is a good deal of direct parody of Lytton's style, both in prose and verse. For example, Claude says at one point to Babette:—
Come with me to my mother's lonely cot! I have preserved it ever in memory of mine early youth; and, believe me, that the prize of virtue never, beneath my father's honest roof, even villains dared to mar! Now, maiden, now, I think thou wilt believe me! Wilt come?
Babette. I wilt!
Again:—