Oh, I went to find Emin Pasha, and started away for fun,
With a box of weeds and a bag of beads, some tracts and a Maxim gun;
My friends all said I should come back dead, but I didn't care a pin,
So I ran up a bill and I made my will, and I went to find Emin!
I went to find Emin, I did, I looked for him far and wide,
I found him right, I found him tight, and a lot of folks beside;
Away through Darkest Africa, though it cost me lots of tin,
For without a doubt I'd find him out, when I went to find Emin!
Then I turned my face to a savage place, that is called Boulogne-sur-Mer,
Where the natives go on petits chevaux and the gay chemin de fer;
And the girls of the tribe I won't describe, for I'm rather a modest man.
They are poor, I suppose, for they're short of clothes, when they take what they call les bains!
And they said to me, "Oh, sapristi!" and the men remarked, "Sacré!"
And vive la guerre aux pommes de terre, and vingt minutes d'arrêt!
Voulez-vous du bœuf? j'ai huit! j'ai neuf! till they deafened me with their din,
So I parlez'd bon soir and said au revoir, for I had to find Emin!
And at last I found Emin, poor chap, in the midst of the nigger bands
Who daily prowl, with horrible howl, along the Margate sands;
I heard the tones of the rattling bones, and I hurried down to the beach—
Full well I know that they will not go till you give them sixpence each!
Said they, "Uncle Ned, oh! he berry dead, and de banjo out ob tune!
Oh! doodah, day! hear Massa play de song of de Whistling Coon!
If you ain't a snob, you'll give us a bob for blacking our blooming skin"—
But I took that band to the edge of the sand, and there I dropped 'Emin!
I have not thought it necessary, in the preceding pages, to offer any apology for stage burlesque. One must regret that it sometimes lacks refinement in word and action, and that in the matter of costume it is not invariably decorous; but that we shall always have it with us, in some form or other, may be accepted as incontrovertible. So long as there is anything extravagant in literature or manners—in the way either of simplicity or of any other quality—so long will travestie find both food and scope. That is the raison d'être of theatrical burlesque—that it shall satirise the exaggerated and the extreme. It does not wage war against the judicious and the moderate. As H. J. Byron once wrote of his own craft:—
Though some may scout it, ...
Burlesque is like the winnowing machine:
It simply blows away the husks, you know—
The goodly corn is not moved by the blow.
What arrant rubbish of the clap-trap school
Has vanished—thanks to pungent ridicule!
What stock stage-customs, nigh to bursting goaded,
With so much "blowing up" have been exploded!
Had our light writers done no more than this,
Their doggrel efforts scarce had been amiss.
In this defence of his calling, Byron had been anticipated by Planché, who, in one of his occasional pieces, introduced the following passage, in which Mr. and Mrs. Wigan and the representatives of Tragedy and Burlesque all figured. When Burlesque entered, Tragedy cried out—
Avaunt, and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee.
Unreal mockery, hence! I can't abide thee!
Burlesque. Because I fling your follies in your face,
And call back all the false starts of your race,
Show up your shows, affect your affectation,
And by such homœopathic aggravation,
Would cleanse your bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon our art—bombast and puff.