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- Herausgeber: Krill Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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OLD FRIENDS: ESSAYS IN EPISTOLARY PARODY
Andrew Lang
DOSSIER PRESS
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Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Lang
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII.
Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody
By
Andrew Lang
Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody
Published by Dossier Press
New York City, NY
First published circa 1912
Copyright © Dossier Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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PREFACE
THE STUDIES IN THIS VOLUME originally appeared in the “St. James’s Gazette.” Two, from a friendly hand, have been omitted here by the author of the rest, as non sua poma. One was by Mr. Richard Swiveller to a boon companion and brother in the lyric Apollo; the other, though purporting to have been addressed by Messrs. Dombey & Son to Mr. Toots, is believed, on internal evidence, to have been composed by the patron of the Chicken himself. A few prefatory notes, an introductory essay, and two letters have been added.
The portrait in the frontispiece, copied by Mr. T. Hodge from an old painting in the Club at St. Andrews, is believed to represent the Baron Bradwardine addressing himself to his ball.
A. L.
I.
From Mr. Clive Newcome to Mr. Arthur Pendennis.
Mr. Newcome, a married man and an exile at Boulogne, sends Mr. Arthur Pendennis a poem on his undying affection for his cousin, Miss Ethel Newcome. He desires that it may be published in a journal with which Mr. Pendennis is connected. He adds a few remarks on his pictures for the Academy.
Boulogne, March 28.
Dear Pen,—I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—“Blondel” I call it—a troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the price to a guinea.
Here we are not happier than when you visited us. My poor wife is no better. It is something to have put my father out of hearing of her mother’s tongue: that cannot cross the Channel. Perhaps I am as well here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to meet her . . . my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under every bonnet. God knows I don’t go where she is likely to be met. Oh, Pen, hæret lethalis arundo; it is always right—the Latin Delectus! Everything I see is full of her, everything I do is done for her. “Perhaps she’ll see it and know the hand, and remember,” I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the milestones. I used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child. My sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal to her, Won’t you look at us? won’t you remember? I dare say she has quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind. They are gazés, as the drunk painter says in “Gerfaut;” they are veiled, a mystery. I know she’s not in a castle or a tower or a cloistered cell anywhere; she is in Park Lane. Don’t I read it in the “Morning Post?” But I can’t, I won’t, go and sing at the area-gate, you know. Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: “Mes Larmes,” Pen, do you remember?—Yours ever,
C. N.
The verses are enclosed.
THE NEW BLONDEL.
O ma Reine!
Although the Minstrel’s lost you long,
Ah, still for you he pipes the song,
As Blondel sang by cot and hall,
And found, at length, the dungeon wall,
So must your hapless minstrel fare,
He flings a ditty on the air,
For in some castle you must dwell
In palace, tower, or cloistered cell—
The wind may blow it to your ear,
But from your lattice, though you hear,
Your eyes upon the page may fall,
You may be listening after all,
II.
From the Hon. Cecil Bertie to the Lady Guinevere.
Mr. Cecil Tremayne, who served “Under Two Flags,” an officer in her Majesty’s Guards, describes to the Lady Guinevere the circumstances of his encounter with Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller. The incident has been omitted by Ouida and Mr. Henry James.
You ask me, Camarada, what I think of the little American donzella, Daisy Miller? Hesterna Rosa, I may cry with the blind old bard of Tusculum; or shall we say, Hesterna Margaritæ? Yesterday’s Daisy, yesterday’s Rose, were it of Pæstum, who values it to-day? Mais où sont les neiges d’automne? However, yesterday—the day before yesterday, rather—Miss Annie P. Miller was well enough.
We were smoking at the club windows on the Ponte Vecchio; Marmalada, Giovanelli of the Bersaglieri, young Ponto of the K.O.B.’s, and myself—men who never give a thought save to the gold embroidery of their pantoufles or the exquisite ebon laquer of their Russia leather cricket-shoes. Suddenly we heard a clatter in the streets. The riderless chargers of the Bersaglieri were racing down the Santo Croce, and just turning, with a swing and shriek of clattering spurs, into the Maremma. In the midst of the street, under our very window, was a little thing like a butterfly, with yeux de pervenche. You remember, Camarada, Voltaire’s love of the pervenche; we have plucked it, have we not? in his garden of Les Charmettes. Nous n’irons plus aux bois! Basta!
But to return. There she stood, terror-stricken, petrified, like her who of old turned her back on Zoar and beheld the incandescent hurricane of hail smite the City of the Plain! She was dressed in white muslin, joli comme un cœur, with a myriad frills and flounces and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. Open-eyed, open-mouthed, she stared at the tide of foaming steeds, like a maiden martyr gazing at the on-rushing waves of ocean! “Caramba!” said Marmalada, “voilà une jeune fille pas trop bien gardée!” Giovanelli turned pale, and, muttering Corpo di Bacco, quaffed a carafon of green Chartreuse, holding at least a quart, which stood by him in its native pewter. Young Ponto merely muttered, “Egad!” I leaped through the open window and landed at her feet.
The racing steeds were within ten yards of us. Calmly I cast my eye over their points. Far the fleetest, though he did not hold the lead, was Marmalada’s charger, the Atys gelding, by Celerima out of Sac de Nuit. With one wave of my arm I had placed her on his crupper, and, with the same action, swung myself into the saddle. Then, in a flash and thunder of flying horses, we swept like tawny lightning down the Pincian. The last words I heard from the club window, through the heliotrope-scented air, were “Thirty to one on Atys, half only if declared.” They were wagering on our lives; the slang of the paddock was on their lips.
Onward, downward, we sped, the fair stranger lifeless in my arms. Past scarlet cardinals in mufti, past brilliant έτᾶιραὶ like those who swayed the City of the Violet Crown; past pifferari dancing in front of many an albergo; through the Ghetto with its marmorine palaces, over the Fountain of Trevi, across the Cascine, down the streets of the Vatican we flew among yells of “Owner’s up,” “The gelding wins, hard held,” from the excited bourgeoisie. Heaven and earth swam before my eyes as we reached the Pons Sublicia, and heard the tawny waters of Tiber swaying to the sea.
The Pons Sublicia was up!
With an oath of despair, for life is sweet, I rammed my persuaders into Atys, caught him by the head, and sent him straight at the flooded Tiber!
“Va-t-en donc, espèce de type!” said the girl on my saddle-bow, finding her tongue at last. Fear, or girlish modesty, had hitherto kept her silent.
Then Atys rose on his fetlocks! Despite his double burden, the good steed meant to have it. He deemed, perchance, he was with the Quorn or the Baron’s. He rose; he sprang. The deep yellow water, cold in the moon’s rays, with the farthest bank but a chill grey line in the mist, lay beneath us! A moment that seemed an eternity! Then we landed on the far-off further bank, and for the first time I could take a pull at his head. I turned him on the river’s brim, and leaped him back again.
The runaway was now as tame as a driven deer in Richmond Park.
Well, Camarada, the adventure is over. She was grateful, of course. These pervenche eyes were suffused with a dewy radiance.
“You can’t call,” she said, “for you haven’t been introduced, and Mrs. Walker says we must be more exclusive. I’m dying to be exclusive; but I’m very much obliged to you, and so will mother be. Let’s see. I’ll be at the Colosseum to-morrow night, about ten. I’m bound to see the Colosseum, by moonlight. Good-bye;” and she shook her pale parasol at me, and fluttered away.
Ah, Camarada, shall I be there? Que scais-je? Well, ’tis time to go to the dance at the Holy Father’s. Adieu, Carissima.—Tout à vous,
Cis.
III.
MR. REDMOND BARRY (BETTER KNOWN as Barry Lyndon) tells his uncle the story of a singular encounter at Berlin with Mr. Alan Stuart, called Alan Breck, and well known as the companion of Mr. David Balfour in many adventures. Mr. Barry, at this time, was in the pay of Herr Potzdorff, of his Prussian Majesty’s Police, and was the associate of the Chevalier, his kinsman, in the pursuit of fortune.
Berlin, April 1, 1748.
Uncle Barry,—I dictate to Pippi, my right hand being wounded, and that by no common accident. Going down the Linden Strasse yesterday, I encountered a mob; and, being curious in Potzdorff’s interest, penetrated to the kernel of it. There I found two men of my old regiment—Kurz and another—at words with a small, dark, nimble fellow, who carried bright and dancing eyes in a pock-marked face. He had his iron drawn, a heavy box-handled cut-and-thrust blade, and seemed ready to fall at once on the pair that had been jeering him for his strange speech.
“Who is this, lads?” I asked.
“Ein Engländer,” answered they.
“No Englishman,” says he, in a curious accent not unlike our brogue, “but a plain gentleman, though he bears a king’s name and hath Alan Breck to his by-name.”
“Come, come,” says I in German, “let the gentleman go his way; he is my own countryman.” This was true enough for them; and you should have seen the Highlander’s eyes flash, and grow dim again.
I took his arm, for Potzdorff will expect me to know all about the stranger, and marched him down to the Drei Könige.
“I am your host, sir; what do you call for, Mr. Stuart of —?” said I, knowing there is never a Scot but has the name of his kailyard tacked to his own.
“A King’s name is good enough for me; I bear it plain. Mr. —?” said he, reddening.
“They call me the Chevalier Barry, of Ballybarry.”
“I am in the better company, sir,” quoth he, with a grand bow.
When a bowl of punch was brought he takes off his hat, and drinks, very solemnly, “To the King!”
“Over the water?” I asked.
“Nay, sir, on this side,” he said; and I smoked the Jacobite. But to shorten the story, which amuses my tedium but may beget it in you, I asked him if he knew the cards.
“I’m just daft when I get to the cartes,” he answered in his brogue, and we fell to piquet. Now my Scot wore a very fine coat, and on the same very large smooth silver buttons, well burnished. Therefore, perceiving such an advantage as a skilled player may enjoy, I let him win a little to whet his appetite, but presently used his buttons as a mirror, wherein I readily detected the strength of the cards he held. Before attempting this artifice, I had solemnly turned my chair round thrice.
“You have changed the luck, sir,” says Mr. Breck, or Stuart, presently; and, rising with a mighty grave air, he turned his coat and put it on inside out.
“Sir,” says I, “what am I to understand by this conduct?”
“What for should not I turn my coat, for luck, if you turn your chair?” says he. “But if you are not preceesely satisfied, I will be proud to step outside with you.”
