University of Virginia Library

CANTO IV. THE MIDNIGHT DRIVE.

DEDICATION. TO ------

'Tis evening, June in all its might,
Broad day,—at ten o'clock at night.
Tired of my lord's tenth, tenth told story,
Forgetting that the day's before ye:—
Expecting to find earth in gloom,
You sally from the heated room,
And find, no matter where you drive,
The world with vulgars all alive.
Ye well-bred charms of southern skies,
Where daylight by appointment dies;
Where, just as your Siesta's done,
Dead to a second drops the sun:
As dead as ever melo-drame,
Engender'd 'twixt K*n*r*d and L*m*b;
As dead as Antipope professions
Of Mister B*nk*s's final sessions.
'Tis sweet Italian Night; you rise,
The rabble vanish from your eyes:
Ten thousand figures round you flit,
They're seen as much as H*rt*n's wit.
You hear a whisper, smell cigars,
Catch the low twanging of guitars;
And, but where Punch sets up his camp,
Or where “Our Lady” lights her lamp,
While some sweet face beneath it twinkles,
Fresh from its holy water sprinkles;
Or lights and chanting in some chapel,
Remind you that you're still “en Naples;”
You'd think the locomotive hosts
Were very easy manner'd ghosts.
While here, the night will never drop,
Go where you will, you meet the shop.
Whirl to the West, you find the park
But turn'd a fuller Noah's ark;—
Whirl to the North, the favourite spot
For us to breakfast and be shot;
The feed and fight alike are o'er,
Chalk Farm is now Chalk Farm no more.
There, Nash, thy plaster town aspires,—
Retreat of Moorfields and Black Friars.
The stucco fine, the gravel finer;
The lamps divine, the lake diviner.—
The whole affair superbly pretty!
The whole,—the trader and his city.
There pant, uneasy for their life,
Fat pair, the aldērman and wife;
There groans the Genius of some ward,
For twelve revolving months, my Lord!
The bulky owner of Molasses
Envies his happier brother asses:
The worthy, rich from porcine slaughter,
Curses the day he saw its water;
All round the wretch so ultra fine—
He dreads to stir, sit, sleep, or dine.
Yet there, if men their eyes will ope,
They'll find en costume à la Hope,
Temptation fresh from London Wall,
The beauty of the Easter ball;
From three months finishing in France
Return'd, with Death in every glance;
A half De Stael, half Eloise,
To trample the piano's keys—
To blot black beetles upon paper—
To light the “Muse's midnight taper;”
To sigh for “dear Count Strogonoff,”
(A valet that nigh whisk'd her off;)
To dream of “Marquis Romanzini,
(You'd buy the scoundrel for a guinea;)
To heave the breast, and roll the eye,
And lisp, “Di tanti palpiti!”
Yet, in those cit-infested valleys,
Before for polar frost he sallies,
To drive in Tartar skulls the sense
Of “Honi soit qui mal y pense;”
As no man's fitter for this barter,
Than he who once has “caught a Tartar;”
Gay H*tf*d rears his Tuscan dome,
For lordly fashion's lordliest home.
Land of the North, enchanting clime,
Where Summer sits enthron'd in slime!
Where Winter, quick as winds can blow,
O'erlays the aforesaid slime with snow;
And fog, and frost, and mire together,
No doubt make very pleasant weather;
Ten years are gone (my tears flow fast!)
Since on your charms I gazed my last—
Since in all jargons under heaven
My vows were to your charmers given;
To swampy Holland's maids of mud—
To Denmark's, fish in face and blood;
To greasy Teutchland's thick-legged vrows—
To Sweden's, kindred to their cows;
To all diversities of skin,
Through Peter's realms of oil and gin;
Where lovers overhead in love
Make speeches bottom'd on a stove;
And maidens touch'd with mutual flame,
Return them,—bottom'd on the same.
H-tf-d, beware of tender passions,
Until you know the Calmuck fashions;
The man caught serenading there,
Will soon betray a loss of ear.
Or, if unsnipt the stanza flows,
The zephyr mulcts you in a nose;
There Cupid has no time to linger,
Each moment costs a toe or finger;
You're lucky if you quit the place
The half-possessor of your face.
The maiden that is over nice
Will see her love preserved in ice.
Transcendent soil of fen and fog,
Where man is but a larger frog!
The Haymarket's a burst of light;
The Opera—mighty Pasta's night!
Bold, splendid, tragic, first the song
Bursts like a cataract along;
Then, like a mountain stream subsiding,
Between its banks of roses gliding,
The harmony, sweet, solemn, clear,
In new enchantment bathes the ear.
Yet noble as her noblest strain,
The actress o'er us throws the chain;
The queenly step, the depth of eye,
The strife of passion wild and high,
The art, true nature's matchless art,
Its strength, its burning source, the heart;
The searching agony of tone,
Make all the struggling soul her own.
The spell dissolved,—I take my rounds;
A licensed sportsman on those grounds:
The rich preserve, that few approach,
Without a title and a coach;
But I, who “know the price of stocks,”
Cry “Sesame!” to every box;
They know I scorn the charming ties,
So take my folly as it flies.
We settle “who escapes to Paris,”—
“Whose in the Austrian box the star is;
“What wonder in the red and yellow
“Has fix'd thy lorgnette, Count P*lm*lla;
“What whisker'd monster, Mynheer Falck!
“Holds in such very solemn talk;
“Whose cheeks and chin are too much tinted,
“Whose marriage has been more than hinted;
“Whom all-resistless P*l*gn*c
“Has kept this fortnight on the rack;
“Whom L-v-n thinks the Belle to-night,
“(The Prince is always in the right);
“For whom is built the Viscount's villa,—
“But hark,—'tis magic, or Brambilla.”
Then drops the eye upon the pit,
Where dandies stand, and dowdies sit;
The irksome prison of he-brutes.
That to their beds would take their boots;
Where St*nh*pe in the foremost tier,
Performs an extra chandelier,
Reflecting on his polish'd forehead
The light from every stage-lamp borrow'd.
Or, where the Foreign Office nest
Shews fifty in a box comprest;
The diplomatic exquisites!
Copies of statesmen, beaux, and wits.
Thus men, ordain'd the world to master
Give their fac-similes in plaster;
And Chathams, Wellingtons, and Naps,
Are sold by Savoyards for raps.
“The Colonel? yes, he never misses,
Since F-fe deserted the coulisses.
Why sits he from the crowd aloof,
Gazing so fiercely on the roof?”
“'Tis whisper'd that he comes to town
Express, to have the house knock'd down.”
Yet I like thee, pleasant Tr---;
Though the sages of the Bench
Would not give a single stiver
For thy bridge along the river:
Though the dames of Billingsgate
Swore to duck thee soon or late;
Though the guardians of the mud
Would have swamp'd thee, ebb or flood;
Though the grisly men of coals
Rose in black fan-hatted shoals;
Though the sapient aldermen
Fought thee with ill-spelling pen;
Though the doubly sapient Mayor
Thunder'd nonsense from the chair;
Though against thee spouted Cam,
(Wolf that crush'd the bleat of L*mb;)
Sings the R*g*rs—“Classic streams,
Long may the Cam defend the Thames!”
Though Whig—Tory—Neuter Jack
Threw his burden on thy back;
Though the man of the Bazaar
On thee turn'd his stable war,
Libel, paragraph, and plate,
Showering round thy patriot pate;
Pealing vengeance in thy ear
The whole grande nation boutiquière.
I own, I like this easy talking,
A kind of Opera sleep-walking;
Just made for lazy brains like mine!
Let wits and sages strive to shine.
My loveliest of all lovely things
Is woman, angel without wings;
Yet if there's horror beyond human,
To me 'tis philosophic woman.
Although you ate your primal steaks
Among the honest Oxford Greeks,
Or suck'd your dose of British port
Where Euclid holds by Cam his Court;
Or in Ierne's “Silent Sister”
Spunged on the vintner and the pistor.
Ierne! theme of many a line,
That never trickled from the Nine;
Ierne, land of bulls and cows,
Of many an English widow's spouse,
Of proud and patriot absentees,
Of rich reversionary fees,
Of old rebellion's glowing embers!
Of just one hundred virtuous Members,
As sapient as the dames that bore them,
As modest as their sires before them;
All dumb—of which I'm no regretter,
(The less that's sometimes said the better.)
Yet, when a good thing's in the wind,
No man will think them deaf or blind;
Not but I know they hate a job,
Though such might fill a patriot's fob;
Not but I know, in all their garrets
They'd scorn to act the treasury parrots;
Or crowd upon a special night,
To stand the drill “eyes left or right,”
Or make the rather thicker calls,
In Whitehall when a peerage falls:
Yet no twelve men on earth would find
Those patriots either deaf or blind!
Ierne, true Romance's spot,
Alike by Heaven and Earth forgot!
Thy people gayest of the gay,
Where every ribbon breeds a fray!
Thy soil the richest of the rich,
Where famine huts in every ditch!
Holy dominion of the Pope!
Ruled by the musket and the rope!
Pure gem of the Atlantic flood,
With every field, a field of blood!
Yet, seated by an Edinbro' dame
Away at once goes all your fame:
In vain you've woo'd the classic muse,
You're nothing in the land of trews;
In vain before your Oxford quorum
You've worked the Typ: Barytonorum,
Or all your cerebellum puzzled
To find in logic reason muzzled,
While Davison the disputations
Made all your syllogisms fugacious;
In vain Darii and Bocardo,
Unless you've thumb'd our friend Ricardo;
Your Wisdom's in a genuine stew,
Unless you've read the last Review.
What know you of the safety-valve?
How schistus splits, or camels calve?
How modern population thickens?
How stoves increase the breed of chickens?
How nature in her human sluices
Makes gastric and th'et cetera juices?
How every blue-bell has its spouse,
True to its vegetable vows?
How hornstein, trap, and selenite,
Were made before earth saw the light?
How true philosophy exposes
The terrible mistakes of Moses?—
How cows communicate their thoughts?
How all the lights of Earth are Scots?
But hush?—the Déesse of the ballet,
The woe and wonder of Fop's-alley,
Where T---re in ecstasies
Forgets the fire of Spanish eyes.
She comes!—Soft, sparkling, like a star,
Floats on her sylphid wing, Brocard:
Beside the beauty, gay Fleurot
Floats, witchery from top to toe.
I glance a moment, feel my heart
Not meant to act a Roman part;
Make my best bow to all the fair,
And whirl full gallop to the square.
Along the streets the chamber-light,
Shows toilets busy for the night.
Oh! for a touch of friend Asmodeus,
A station on some roof commodious;
To watch, without a compound fracture,
The sweet, man-killing manufacture!—
There beauty in her mirror grows,
Let rivals hate the shape it shows.
Now wreathe the brow the raven tresses,
A smile the dear effect confesses:
Now round the neck the diamonds glitter,
No cynic could at this look bitter.
On goes the jewel-bound panache;
Her eyes return it flash for flash.
The tissued silk, the Brussels lace,
What wonder if she like that face?—
'Tis but plain justice to admire
That shape, that step, that eye of fire.
Last, o'er her shoulders drops the shawl,
To hide, in mercy to us all,
What,—if I dar'd to speak my mind,
Might make, but never meet, me blind.
There stands a figure for thee, Lawrence,
Worth all the belles of Rome or Florence:
Thou, whose immortalizing touch,
Defies old Time's hard-handed clutch;—
Gives light to eyes, and bloom to lips,
That scorn a century's eclipse,
That even when L*c*s*t*r's self is past,
Her charms shall round our grandsons cast.—
On H*pe's fair brow bid beauty sit,
Flash life from J*rs*y's eye of wit;
And show how majesty can fling
Its mantle o'er a patriot King.
Young ladies all, pray take example
From this, (by no means single sample,)
Of how much pleasanter 'tis dressing,
To constitute a ball-room's blessing;
Taking from every curl the papers,
In sight of half a dozen tapers;
Giving your beauty between whiles
Those sweet anticipation smiles,
By which the bosoms of five hundred,
Ere morn, shall of their hearts be plunder'd,—
Than sitting up without a light,
'Twixt twelve and one o'clock at night;
Your way around your chamber stealing,
O'er drawers and trunks, and toilets reeling;
All trembling, fearing, freezing, hoping,
In preparations for eloping!
I've known the thing gone through by dozens;
It happened to my four first cousins.
Determined ere her passions cool
To play the' irrevocable fool;
Just as the old ones turn their backs,
The fair her prettiest jupons packs;
Was never midnight sent so slow—
At length the lover stands below.
The letter on the toilet lies,
To wipe the household's morning eyes.
“Hope—anguish—duty—heart too tender—
She's sure her mother would commend her—
Chance—fate—forgive her—or forget her,”
All know the true elopement letter.
She listens at the chamber-door,
But not a soul will deign to snore;
She trembles at the window's height,
The very moon seems up in spite.
Till safe on terra firma landed,
By Cupid and the lover handed;
Through man-traps, spring-guns, briers, and brambles,
The pair begin their marriage rambles.
Snug in the by-way stands the chaise,
Off go the spanking set of bays;
To Scotland turning all their noses,
That road being always strew'd with roses.
Till fagg'd, and frighted, starved, pursued—
By bar-maids envied, grooms halloo'd—
All dust, and heat, and smoke, and smother,
Already crop-sick of each other—
Yet for true penitents decreed,
They reach that Styx of Love—the Tweed.
For England's vulgar groves and lawns,
Now Scotia's landscape on them dawns;
Beside them steals the muddy rill—
Above them towers the naked hill;
Around them vegetates the hovel,
Where brutes, both two and four-legg'd, grovel;
And lassies gay, with scarlet locks,
All innocent of shoes and smocks.
Till shown in pity to their sighs,
The Smithy's sacred smokes arise;
Where shines the drunken son of Etna,
The high-priest of thy temple, Gretna.
Before him stand the culprits pale,
Dim, dusty, draggled head and tail:
The lady like a drooping lily,
'Twixt tear and smile, 'twixt sad and silly;
The man, a man, no matter what,
Love thinks too rapidly for thought.
Down goes the fee, on goes the ring,
The little Loves all clap the wing;
The fatal word's by Vulcan spoken,
For which they'll wish his neck were broken.
I reach the Rout, find every stair
A package of the fainting fair;
Find every inch of every room
Cover'd with petticoat and plume;
A group of the Fitz--- chins,
Rabbies might envy them their skins;
The H---gh, resistless figure,
The glass of fashion, à la rigueur.
No art of life can make a dance—
In vain my lord and lady prance;
The weary shufflers stand stock still,
Till dies the death, the choked quadrille.
Then turning off my cab to B**dl*'s,
I glance upon the high-born noodles,
That, silent as a ring of Quakers,
Melt their right honourable acres;
See the fat Viscount's heavy fist
Sweep thousands at two-handed whist;
While Verjuice, genius of the place,
Hunts, like a hound, his wither'd Grace;
And Owlface, ghost of other years,
Babbles the feats, of long-past peers,
When ancient Queensberry shook the box,
And all men join'd to pigeon Fox.
Dear Gaming, if my easy rhyme
Shall ever reach the true sublime;
If ever from the Muse's rill
A drop within my plume distil,
That drop be sacred to thy praise,
Thou “Love” of noble nights and days!
Gaming! to thine, ecstatic witch,
Aladdin's wand was but a switch.
Let Katterfelto Hohenlohe
Work miracles on tooth or toe;
Rescue from purgatory's fires
A nun's four bones, much more a friar's;
Give flesh and blood to wooden legs,
Teach Irish hens to lay fresh eggs:
Or cool the blood, or thin the skulls
Of patriots of the land of bulls;
Or bid old Nick make ropes of sand,—
You'll beat his Highness out of hand.
Delightful work, to see the stroke
That shaves a province of its oak;
That, where the mighty mansion stood
A sort of heirloom of the flood,
That scorn'd the Dane's and Norman's spoil,
A thing imbedded in the soil;
Let but thy sceptre give a twist,
The walls are melted into mist;
The wooded hill, the teeming plain,
Are empty as their master's brain;
While go the lords of hills and valleys
To snuff the fishy gales of Calais;
Or reinforce thy sands, Boulogne,
With ragged leaders of the ton.
Or let it give another tweak,
The common, bleakest of the bleak,
Where not even gipsies make their den,
A sallow waste of weed and fen,
Some sullen solitude of sand,
Some second Bagshot of the land,
Where, but a highwayman, or Duke,
No man would give a second look;
Wave but thy cue, a palace rises,
A wood the native eye surprises;
A river through the meadows gushes,
You count the vine and peach by bushes;
Along the causeway's narrow'd border
A portal, Nash's native order:
Sublime whitewasher, great rough caster,
The Michael Angelo of plaster;
That, give him but his fling in brick,
Defies the Roman and the Greek;
Invites the passing stage-coach noses
To drink the otto of its roses.
While, deep its sacred bowers within
Shrined from the world's oppressive din,
Cool in the broad verandah's shade,
The hero of the scene is laid:
Around him shine the works of Buhl,
The living bronze, the gold pendule;
The Grecian group, the Tuscan vase,
The case of humming birds from Mawe's;
The Titian glowing from Madrid,
(A Monarch's self was there outbid;)
The Venus starting from her nest,
Not Lansdowne has her lighter drest.
Ye endless vineyards, for whose table
Wear ye all hues from white to sable?
Ye mighty orangeries, for whom,
Like ladies, lay ye on your bloom?
Ye groves of peach and plum, ye pineries,
For whom are worn your birth-day fineries?
Whose hand Patrician dares to cull ye?
Answer, ye perfumed breezes—Gulley!
Gaming! what charm of lip or eye
Can with thy thousand beauties vie?
From woman's glance, what living flash
Rivals the radiance of the cash?
Though woman's tongue in silver flows,
Yet gold's the music of rouleaux.
Thou, that giv'st all the virtues scope,
The Hope, that to the last will hope;
The more than soldier's boasted Courage,
That goes to ruin without demurrage;
The Love, that makes our neighbour's pelf
As dear to all, as to himself;
The Loyalty that, live or die,
Still keeps the Sovereign in its eye.