Kitabı oku: «John Leech, His Life and Work, Vol. 2 [of 2]», sayfa 8

Bloomerism afforded Leech many opportunities of showing that his pencil could invest eccentricity with beauty. A study of the Bloomer sketches will also show that the attempt to adopt the manly dress was, in his estimation, an insidious attempt to usurp manly work and offices. In proof of this see the charming Bloomer omnibus-conductor, who is threatened by an elderly male passenger with a summons for abusive language; or the group of Bloomer police, who fly from a riotous mob instead of arresting the ringleaders. Look at her again as "the man at the wheel" who must not be "spoken to." Those who have suffered from sea-sickness will see by the expression of the Bloomer's countenance why she should not be spoken to, and what the effect of conversation under the circumstances would most probably be. Leech gave his imagination full play in this fruitful theme. Granting the assumption of the masculine dress, he sees no reason why a proposal should not be made by the female lover instead of the male. Why, he seems to ask, should the gentleman have to undergo that terrible ordeal?

I advise my reader to seek in "Pictures of Life and Character" for a drawing of an elopement in which the positions of the principals are reversed. It is the lady who is pouring words of passionate persuasion into the ears of her frightened and half-reluctant lover, as he looks back at the home he is leaving for ever; she almost drags him to the carriage which is to bear the happy pair away to Gretna Green.

Spirit-rapping, table-turning, and the rest of it, fare badly at the hands of Leech. Happy was the thought that possessed him when, by a touch of his magic pencil, he changed the heads of a seance-party into those of geese. And how admirably humorous is the drawing in which furniture starts into life at the bidding of a medium, to the astonishment and dismay of the housemaid! Hats were supposed to "turn about and wheel about" under the influence of encircled hands round the brims. It would be a mistake to suppose that the handsome Guardsman who, with the assistance of the fingers of those pretty creatures, so patiently waits for the hat to move, has either the expectation or the desire that the experiment will be successful. No, he greatly enjoys the situation, and is eager to prolong it for any unreasonable time.

Here I cannot resist interposing a little anecdote of an experience of which I should like to have an explanation by the spiritualists. The incident took place on one of the many occasions when I served as a member of the dreaded Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy. As is well known, the Academicians have a vast variety of works of art offered for exhibition, perpetrated, as a rule, by human hands. But there is no rule without an exception, and it was my fate to witness the exception in the form of pictures painted by spirits, and sent for exhibition by their thrice-blessed proprietor. These were very striking works indeed. At first sight they looked like masses of many-coloured weeds, very weird vegetation, unlike anything "in heaven above or on the earth beneath." On nearer inspection, some childishly-drawn, half-naked figures were discernible amongst the weeds, intended to represent spiritual forms of departed friends, probably, who had been changed into these unfortunate figures. These works received our most careful examination, created laughter, and were rejected. Now, I respectfully ask what the spirits were about thus to subject themselves and their doings to the ignorant ribaldry of the Academicians? They must have known that we were in a state of darkest unbelief, and the least they could have done was to warn the owner of these works of their certain fate at our hands, and thus have saved him the trouble of sending them to Burlington House, to say nothing of the expense of the handsome frames in which they were enshrined. "I pause for a reply."

Archery and croquet afforded Leech opportunities for the display of beauty in many forms. His lady-archers are bewitching creatures, their male competitors always manly, graceful gentlemen. The pursuit of both amusements offered chances of love-making and flirtation, of which full advantage is sometimes taken; indeed, in one instance we see a game of croquet stopped altogether by a couple who find an interchange of – shall we say vows? – more interesting than the game; a feeling which, judging from the other players, is by no means shared.

Leech seems to have left no phase of human life and character untouched: whether he deals with the aristocrat or the plebeian, the Duchess or the beggar, the very poor or the very rich, the beautiful or the ugly, he is ever true to Nature; turning away from our vices, dealing lovingly with us in all ways, touching our follies lightly, humorously, and always good-naturedly – in short, invariably reflecting in his work his own disposition to what is pure, manly, and true.

CHAPTER XIX.
THOMAS HOOD AND LEECH

The difficulty of gauging public taste in matters literary and artistic can be proved by numberless examples. How often does the manager of a theatre place in trembling anxiety a piece before his audience which afterwards runs for hundreds of nights! "Our Boys" has had a long life upon the stage; but so doubtful was everyone connected with its production of its living for one night even, that another play was held in readiness to take the place of the damned one. Books that have made reputations for their authors have been refused by publisher after publisher. Engravings run the same perilous course. Print-sellers, from long experience of public wants, should know what will satisfy them; but they seem to find the difficulty that befalls publishers and the managers of theatres.

Many years ago a very pretty servant-maid became a part of my household. I induced her to sit for me, having noticed the graceful way in which her various duties were performed; and I made a half-length figure of her carrying a silver salver, on which was a decanter, thinking that the contrast between the silver, glass, and a pretty gray dress would make an effective scheme of colour. The picture was beautifully engraved by Holl, and offered for publication by a friend, who bought it, to one of the most experienced print-sellers in London. To please my friend, to whom the print-seller was under great obligation, he bought the right of publication; but having no faith in its success, my pretty servant was passed on – at a sacrifice – to another print-seller, and she afterwards found great favour with the public, and was highly remunerative to her proprietor, under the name and title of "Sherry, sir?" This title was the "happy thought" of the print-seller, who, on my remonstrating with him for vulgarizing my picture, informed me that the title had been the sole cause of the success of the engraving.

A print was published many years ago of three chorister boys in surplice and cassock, who, with open mouths and upturned eyes, are supposed to be singing. In a moment of inspiration the artist, who, I believe, was also the engraver, christened his subject, "We praise Thee, O Lord!" and then offered it at most of the principal print-shops in London, where it was invariably refused. The artist published "We praise Thee," etc., himself, and, I was told, made more than two thousand pounds by it.

All this is introductory to the most astonishing example that could be conceived of the fallacy of what I may call expert opinion, on literary merit and public taste.

I am not sure of the precise date, but I think it was about 1848 or 1849 that Hood's "Song of the Shirt" appeared in Punch. There is, or was, a letter in existence from Hood to Mark Lemon, then editor of Punch, in which the writer tells his friend he has enclosed a poem that he may publish in Punch if he likes; but he "most likely won't like," and refuse it, as the publishers, one and all, to whom it has been offered, had done without hesitation. "In that case," said Hood, "tear it up, and put it in the waste-paper-basket; for I am sick of the sight of it." This was the "Song of the Shirt," one of the most powerful, touching, and pathetic poems in the English language.

My old friend, Willert Beale, whose recently-published "Light of Other Days" has charmed so many readers, sends me the following account of the introduction of the "Song of the Shirt" into Punch:

"Mark Lemon" (then editor of Punch) "was looking over the immense heap of Punch letters on his desk, when he opened one enclosing a poem, which the writer said had been rejected by three contemporaries, and if unavailable for Punch, he begged the editor, whom he knew but slightly, to consign the paper to his waste-basket, as he was sick of the sight of it. The poem was signed 'Tom Hood,' and entitled 'The Song of the Shirt,' now so famous among us all. Of a totally different character to anything that had previously appeared in the pages of Punch, most of the staff were dead set against the insertion of it; but Mark Lemon, whose quick appreciation of its merits made him unwilling to let so valuable a prize slip from his grasp, over-ruled all objections with quiet though firm determination, and brought it before the public through the medium of Punch. The insertion trebled the sale of the number. Mark Lemon was always very proud of this success, which was certainly attributable to his efforts.

"'Hood wants but one thing to make him famous,' he used to say, 'and that is death.'

"His words were verified, for in poverty and comparative obscurity died one of England's cleverest men."

In 1849 some very painful disclosures were made in the Metropolitan police-courts, when it appeared "that numbers of poor sempstresses were paid by the slop-sellers only three-halfpence for making a shirt, and in proportion for other articles of ready-made clothing." In all probability these disclosures suggested the "Song of the Shirt," as they assuredly did the charming designs by Leech, called "Pin-Money" and "Needle-Money." It seems to me almost an impertinence for a commentator on such admirable designs as these to point out the beauties so palpable to all who look at them. We sympathize with each of these classes of beings, for they are both the results of conditions that they have done nothing to create. It is certain that one of them is miserable, and it is by no means sure that the lovely girl's pin-money brings happiness with it.

There was everything in the shape of similarity of thought and feeling to have brought Leech and Hood into intimacy, but I doubt if they ever saw much of each other. Hood's comparatively premature death, preceded by much sickness and seclusion, took place while Leech was far from the position in public estimation that he afterwards reached. In proof of similarity of humour I give the following note from Hood to Dickens:

"17, Elm Tree Road, 1841,

Saturday.

"Dear Dickens,

"As you are going to America, and have kindly offered to execute any little commission for me, pray, if it be not too much trouble, try to get me an autograph of Sandy Hook's. I have Theodore's.

"Yours very truly,

"Thos. Hood.

"My boy does not wait for an answer."

"Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg: a Golden Legend," is perhaps one of the best, as it is certainly the longest, of Hood's poems, remarkable, indeed, for its puns and ingenious play upon words, its felicitous rhyming, and its underlying moral. Miss Kilmansegg was born with a golden spoon in her mouth, and her condition is shown in the charming drawing with which Leech illustrates the following lines:

 
"What wide reverses of fate are there!
Whilst Margaret, charmed by the Bulbul rare,
In a Garden of Gull reposes,
Poor Peggy hawks nosegays from street to street,
Till – think of that, who find life so sweet! —
She hates the smell of roses!
 
 
"Not so with the infant Kilmansegg —
She was not born to steal or beg,
Or gather cresses in ditches;
To plait the straw, or bind the shoe,
Or sit all day to hem and sew,
As females must – and not a few! —
To fill their insides with stitches."
 

The christening of the golden child was an affair so splendid as to tax the poet's invention for tropes and figures worthy of the occasion:

 
"Gold! and gold! and nothing but gold!
The same auriferous shine behold
Wherever the eye could settle!
On the walls – the sideboard – the ceiling – sky – ,
On the gorgeous footmen standing by,
In coats to delight a miner's eye
With seams of precious metal.
 
 
"Gold! and gold! and besides the gold,
The very robe of the infant told
A tale of wealth in every fold —
It lapped her like a vapour!
So fine! so thin! the mind at a loss,
Could compare it to nothing except a cross
Of cobweb with banknote paper."
 

Powerful as the poet's imagination shows in these glittering rhymes, it fails him in his endeavour to find a prefix in the form of a name worthy of accompanying Kilmansegg. He says:

 
"Then the babe was crossed and blessed amain,
But instead of Kate, or Ann, or Jane,
Which the humbler female endorses —
Instead of one name, as some people prefix,
Kilmansegg went at the tails of six,
Like a carriage of state with its horses."
 

The names, therefore, are left to the imagination of the reader, who may learn, if he will, some particulars of the nameless Kilmansegg's childhood:

 
"Turn we to little Miss Kilmansegg,
Cutting her first little toothy-peg
With a fifty-guinea coral —
A peg upon which
About poor and rich
Reflection might hang on a moral.
 
 
"Born in wealth, and wealthily nursed,
Capp'd, papp'd, napp'd, and lapp'd from the first
On the knees of Prodigality,
Her childhood was one eternal round
Of the game of going on Tiddler's ground,
Picking up gold in reality.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"Gold! and gold! 'twas the burden still!
To gain the heiress's early goodwill
There was much corruption and bribery.
The yearly cost of her golden toys
Would have given half London's charity boys
And charity girls the annual joys
Of a holiday dinner at Highbury."
 

The kind of education permitted to this unfortunate heiress may be gathered from the following extracts:

 
"Long before her A B and C
They had taught her by heart her £ s. d.,
And as how she was born a great heiress;
And as sure as London was made of bricks
My Lord would ask her the day to fix
To ride in a fine gilt coach and six,
Like her Worship the Lady Mayoress.
 
 
"The very metal of merit they told,
And praised her for being as 'good as gold'!
Till she grew as a peacock haughty;
Of money they talked the whole day round,
And weighed desert like grapes, by the pound,
Till she had an idea from the very sound
That people with naught were naughty.
 
 
"Gold! still gold…
Gold ran in her thoughts and filled her brain,
She was golden-headed, like Peter's cane,
With which he walked behind her."
 

Leech's drawings which decorate "Miss Kilmansegg" display his appreciation of beauty and character, and are, in some examples, of great artistic excellence – notably in the portrait of the foreign gentleman who became the husband of the heiress. Some of them are, of course, deficient in the artistic qualities with which his long practice enabled him to enrich his latest work.

My space will not permit of my making many extracts from Hood's admirable work – only, indeed, so far as to explain Leech's drawings; but to those of my readers who make Miss Kilmansegg's acquaintance for the first time in these pages, I heartily recommend a perusal of the poem, and envy them the pleasure they will find in reading it.

Of course Miss Kilmansegg

 
"… learnt to sing and to dance,
To sit on a horse although he should prance,
And to speak a French not spoken in France
Any more than at Babel's building."
 

The steed was a thoroughbred of great spirit —

 
"A regular thoroughbred Irish horse,
And he ran away, as a matter of course,
With a girl worth her weight in guineas."
 

I think it would be very difficult to find a description of any event in any book to equal Hood's account of the mad career of the Irish horse and its unfortunate rider:

 
"Away went the horse in the madness of fright,
And away went the horsewoman mocking the sight;
Was yonder blue flash a flash of blue light,
Or only the flash of her habit?
 
 
"Away she flies, and the groom behind" —
 

encountering all the perils of London streets, till the inevitable catastrophe takes place:

 
"On and on! still frightfully fast!
Dover Street, Bond Street, all are past!
But – yes – no – yes! – they're down at last!
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
There's a shriek and a sob
And the dense dark mob
Like a billow closes around them!
'She breathes!'
'She don't'
'She'll recover!'
'She won't.'
'She's stirring! she's living by Nemesis!'
Gold, still gold, on counter and shelf,
Golden dishes as plenty as delf,
Miss Kilmansegg's coming again to herself
On an opulent goldsmith's premises!"
 

The heiress recovers; but, alas! in her fall she broke her leg, and as "the limb was doomed it couldn't be saved." A substitute must be found. Of what, then, shall the "proxy limb" be made?

 
"She couldn't – she shouldn't – she wouldn't have wood!
Nor a leg of cork, if she never stood;
And she swore an oath, or something as good,
The proxy limb should be golden!
 
 
So a leg was made in a comely mould
Of gold – fine virgin, glittering gold —
As solid as man could make it;
Solid in foot, and calf, and shank,
A prodigious sum of money it sank;
In fact 'twas a Branch of the family Bank,
And no easy matter to break it."
 

The golden leg became the talk of the town, kicking away all other attractions. The new novel, the new murder, even "wild Irish riots and rum-pusses," were neglected; in fact, "the leg was in everybody's mouth," and a grand fancy ball was given at the Kilmansegg mansion to celebrate the heiress's recovery, as well as to exhibit the golden leg. All the world and his wife worship at the golden shrine:

 
"In they go – in jackets, and cloaks,
Plumes and bonnets, turbans and tokes,
As if to a congress of nations:
Greeks and Malays, with daggers and dirks,
Spaniards and Jews, Chinese and Turks —
Some like original foreign works,
But mostly like bad translations.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
But where – where – where? with one accord
Cried Moses and Mufti, Jack and my Lord,
Wang-Fong and Il Bondacani —
When slow and heavy, and dead as a dump,
They heard a foot begin to stump,
Thump! lump!
Lump! thump!
Like the spectre in 'Don Giovanni!'
 
 
"And lo! the heiress, Miss Kilmansegg,
With her splendid, brilliant, beautiful leg,
In the garb of a Goddess olden —
Like chaste Diana going to hunt
With a golden spear – which of course was blunt,
And a tunic looped up to a gem in front,
To show the leg was golden."
 

The fancy ball was a great success, and at supper – which the poet describes in glowing language – the heiress's health was proposed:

 
"'Miss Kilmansegg,
Full glasses I beg.
Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg!'
And away went the bottle careering!
Wine in bumpers! and shouts in peals!
Till the clown didn't know his head from his heels,
The Mussulman's eyes danced two-some reels,
And the Quaker was hoarse with cheering!"
 

The party being over, and the last guest gone, Miss Kilmansegg went to bed and to dream:

 
"Miss Kilmansegg took off her leg
And laid it down like a cribbage-peg,
For the rout was done and the riot;
The square was hushed, not a sound was heard
The sky was gray, and no creature stirr'd
Except one little precocious bird
That chirped – and then was quiet.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"And then on the bed her frame she cast,
The time for repose had come at last;
But long, long after the storm is past
Rolls the turbid, turbulent billow."
 

She dreams:

 
"Gold! she saw at her golden foot
The Peer whose tree has an olden root;
The Proud, the Great, the Learned to boot,
The handsome, the gay, and the witty —
The man of Science – of Arms – of Art,
The man who deals but at Pleasure's mart,
And the man who deals in the City."
 

The poet now rhymes delightfully of the time – the perilous time – when a choice has to be made of a partner in life for the heiress. The dream was realized so far as regards the number of her suitors, for —

 
"to tell the rigid truth,
Her favour was sought by Age and Youth,
For the prey will find a prowler!
She was followed, flattered, courted, address'd,
Woo'd and coo'd and wheedl'd, and press'd
By suitors from North, South, East, and West,
Like that Heiress in song, 'Tibbie Fowler.'"
 

The embarras de choix resulted, as often happens, in the selection of the worst of the group:

 
"A foreign Count – who came incog.
Not under a cloud, but under a fog,
In a Calais packet's fore-cabin,
 
 
To charm some lady British-born,
With his eyes as black as the fruit of the thorn,
And his hooky nose, and his beard half shorn,
Like a half-converted Rabbin.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"He was dressed like one of the glorious trade —
At least, when Glory is off parade —
With a stock, and a frock, well trimmed with braid,
And frogs – that went a-wooing."
 

He could

 
"act the tender, and do the cruel;
For amongst his other killing parts,
He had broken a brace of female hearts,
And murdered three men in a duel.
 
 
"Savage at heart, and false of tongue;
Subtle with age, and smooth to the young,
Like a snake in his coiling and curling,
Such was the Count – to give him a niche —
Who came to court that heiress rich,
And knelt at her foot – one needn't say which —
Besieging her Castle of Sterling."
 

In the whole range of Leech's art, no more subtle realization of character can be found than this wonderful drawing presents; in every touch, in every line, can be read the savage brutality of the man to whom the happiness of Hood's poor rich heroine is confided. How evident is "the trail of the serpent" over features not unhandsome! The love that could fail to be warned by such a face must be blind indeed. The poet's comments, and the contrast he shows between the lots of those who "marry for money" and those in whom simple and true love have been the guiding stars, are delightful. I add an example:

 
"But, oh! the love that gold must crown!
Better, better, the love of the clown,
Who admires his lass in her Sunday gown,
As if all the fairies had dressed her!
Whose brain to no crooked thought gives birth,
Except that he never will part on earth
With his truelove's crooked tester!
 
 
"Alas! for the love that's linked with gold,
Better, better a thousand times told —
More honest and happy and laudable,
The downright loving of pretty Ciss,
Who wipes her lips, though there's nothing amiss,
And takes a kiss, and gives a kiss,
In which her heart is audible."
 

The Count has been accepted; he has presented his betrothed

 
"With a miniature sketch of his hooky nose,
And his dear dark eyes as black as sloes,
And his beard and whiskers as black as those.
The lady's consent he requited:
And instead of the lock that lovers beg,
The Count received from Miss Kilmansegg
A model, in small, of her precious leg —
And so the couple were plighted!"
 

But a short time probably elapsed between the betrothal and the marriage, which was solemnized, with golden splendour, of course, at St. James's Church. Thus the poet sings:

 
"'Twas morn – a most auspicious one!
From the golden east, the golden sun
Came forth his glorious race to run
Through clouds of most splendid tinges;
Clouds that had lately slept in shade,
But now seemed made
Of gold brocade,
With magnificent gold fringes.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"In short, 'twas the year's most golden day,
By mortals called the first of May,
When Miss Kilmansegg,
Of the golden leg
With a golden ring was married.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"And then to see the groom! the Count
With Foreign Orders to such an amount,
And whiskers so wild – nay, bestial;
He seemed to have borrowed the shaggy hair,
As well as the stars, of the Polar Bear,
To make him look celestial!"
 

Of course the church was crowded inside and out,

 
"For next to that interesting job,
The hanging of Jack, or Bill, or Bob,
There's nothing that draws a London mob
As the noosing of very rich people.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"And then, great Jove! the struggle, the crush,
The screams, the heaving, the awful rush,
The swearing, the tearing, the fighting;
The hats and bonnets, smashed like an egg,
To catch a glimpse of the golden leg,
Which between the steps and Miss Kilmansegg
Was fully displayed in alighting.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"But although a magnificent veil she wore,
Such as never was seen before,
In case of blushes, she blushed no more
Than George the First on a guinea!
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"Bravely she shone – and shone the more,
As she sailed through the crowd of squalid and poor,
Thief, beggar, and tatterdemalion;
Led by the Count, with his sloe-black eyes,
Bright with triumph, and some surprise,
Like Anson, in making sure of his prize,
The famous Mexican galleon.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"Six 'Handsome Fortunes,' all in white,
Came to help the marriage rite,
And rehearse their own hymeneals;
And then the bright procession to close,
They were followed by just as many beaux —
Quite fine enough for ideals.
 
 
"And how did the bride perform her part?
Like any bride who is cold at heart,
Mere snow with the ice's glitter;
What but a life of winter for her?
Bright but chilly, alive without stir,
So splendidly comfortless, just like a fir
When the frost is severe and bitter.
 
 
"Yet wedlock's an awful thing!
'Tis something like that feat in the ring
Which requires good nerve to do it,
When one of a 'grand equestrian troop'
Makes a jump at a gilded hoop,
Not certain at all
Of what may befall
After his getting through it.
 
 
"Such were the future of man and wife,
Whose bale or bliss to the end of life
A few short words were to settle:
Wilt thou have this woman?
I will – and then,
Wilt thou have this man?
I will, and Amen —
And those two were one flesh in the angels' ken,
Except one leg – that was metal."
 

Here we have the Count in profile, only more agreeable because the view affords less of his villainous face.

I confess I am disappointed with Leech's rendering of Miss Kilmansegg. I cannot see why she should be deprived of a portion of the sympathy one always feels for "beauty in distress." Why should she be represented as the commonplace, red-nosed creature who plays the part of the bride in Leech's drawing? To be sure, the contrast she affords to the sweet little bridesmaid behind her heightens that young lady's attractions; but I cannot help thinking the heiress is hardly treated.

I pass over the wedding-breakfast, which was composed of everything in season, and of much that was out of it —

 
"For wealthy palates there be that scout
What is in season for what is out,
And prefer all precocious savour;
For instance, early green peas, of the sort
That costs some four or five guineas a quart,
Where mint is the principal flavour."
 

The inevitable honeymoon follows —

 
"To the loving a bright and constant sphere
That makes earth's commonest scenes appear
All poetic, romantic, and tender;
Hanging with jewels a cabbage-stump,
And investing a common post or a pump,
A currant-bush or a gooseberry clump,
With a halo of dream-like splendour."
 
 
"Oh, happy, happy, thrice happy state,
When such a bright planet governs the fate
Of a pair of united lovers!
Tis theirs, in spite of the serpent's hiss,
To enjoy the pure primeval kiss,
With as much of the old original bliss
As mortality ever recovers."
 

I hope my readers will agree with me, that amongst the pleasures we receive from this delightful poem, one of the greatest is the charming little sketch which it has suggested to Leech in these two happy lovers, completely wrapped up in each other, with love in the cottage, at the board, and all about them.

But the Kilmansegg moon!

 
"Now, the Kilmansegg moon, it must be told,
Though instead of silver it tipped with gold,
Shone rather wan, and distant, and cold;
And before its days were thirty,
Such gloomy clouds began to collect,
With an ominous ring of ill-effect,
As gave but too much cause to expect
Such weather as seamen call dirty.
 
 
"She hated lanes, she hated fields,
She hated all that the country yields,
And barely knew turnips from clover;
She hated walking in any shape,
And a country stile was an awkward scrape,
Without the bribe of a mob to gape
At the leg in clambering over.
 
 
"Gold, still gold, her standard of old —
All pastoral joys were tried by gold,
Or by fancies golden and crural,
Till ere she had passed one week unblest
As her agricultural uncle's guest,
Her mind was made up and fully imprest
That felicity could not be rural."
 

And the Count?

 
"To the snow-white lambs at play,
And all the scents and sights of May,
And the birds that warbled their passion,
His ears, and dark eyes, and decided nose,
Were as deaf, and as blind, and as dull as those
That overlook the Bouquet de Rose,
The Huile Antique,
And Parfum Unique,
In a Barber's Temple of Fashion.
 
 
"And yet had that fault been his only one,
The pair might have had few quarrels or none,
For their tastes thus far were in common;
But faults he had that a haughty bride
With a golden leg could hardly abide —
Faults that would even have roused the pride
Of a far less metalsome woman.
 
 
    *      *      *      *      *
 
 
"He left her, in spite of her tender regards,
And those loving murmurs described by bards,
For the rattling of dice and the shuffling of cards
And the poking of balls into pockets.
 
 
"Moreover, he loved the deepest stake
And the heaviest bets the players would make,
And he drank – the reverse of sparely!
And he used strange curses that made her fret;
And when he played with herself at picquet,
She found to her cost —
For she always lost —
That the Count did not count quite fairly.
 
 
"And then came dark mistrust and doubt,
Gathered by worming his secrets out,
And slips in his conversation —
Fears which all her peace destroyed,
That his title was null, his coffers were void,
And his French château was in Spain, or enjoyed
The most airy of situations.
 
 
"But still his heart – if he had such a part —
She – only she – might possess his heart,
And hold her affections in fetters.
Alas! that hope, like a crazy ship,
Was forced its anchor and cable to slip
When, seduced by her fears, she took a dip
In his private papers and letters —
 
 
"Letters that told of dangerous leagues,
And notes that hinted as many intrigues
As the Count's in the 'Barber of Seville.'
In short, such mysteries came to light
That the Countess-bride, on the thirtieth night,
Woke and started up in a fright,
And kicked and screamed with all her might,
And finally fainted away outright,
For she dreamt she had married the Devil!"
 

In short, poor Miss Kilmansegg, or, rather, the "Golden Countess," was utterly wretched: