Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3831/Love's Labour Not Lost
I wish you knew my sister-in-law; she is probably one of the sweetest girls that ever breathed. Yet we are none of us perfect, and Grace has a drawback. She cannot forget that I am a poet. A fortnight ago she wrote to me:—
"Dear Edwin,—I am in such a fix. You remember Mary Smith? She has persuaded a young doctor friend of hers to start an album for original poems. He is such a nice fellow, though perhaps not very fond of poetry, if left to himself. But he has bought the album and has asked her to write on the first page. So she has come to me about it; and I am writing to ask if you would be a great brick and help us, because we get mixed up so with the feet, and I know it is nothing to you to write poetry. Could you possibly let me have it by return?
Yours affectionately,
Grace.
P.S.—Entre nous, she is rather keen on him, I think."
Somehow, when Grace's note reached me at the Local Government Board (she has a habit of addressing her communications to me there, in faintly perfumed envelopes much appreciated by the messengers), I was not in a poetical mood. For the past three weeks my branch had been engaged on the subject of Drains in the Eastern Counties, and that very morning I was completing an exhaustive minute dealing with the probable effects of an improved system of sanitation on the public health of the Borough of Ipswich. Still, I felt that something must be done. So I consulted Jones. Jones is, like myself, a poet; he is also the official whom Ministers of the Crown are accustomed, when hard pressed, to consult on the subject of Infantile Mortality amongst Suburban Undertakers; why, I cannot say, though many think it is on the strength of his having been a Philpott's Theological Prizeman at Oxford. I scribbled him a line in pencil: "Come over into number thirteen and help us; and bring your cigarettes." He came, and before leaving the office at 4.30 I was enabled to comply with my sister-in-law's request. I wrote as follows:—
"Dear Grace,—I do not remember Mary Smith. On the other hand, since in poetry, as in boxing and batting, the proper management of the feet is everything, and requires more practice than either you or your friend have apparently been able to devote to it, I have much pleasure in coming to the rescue. In dealing with members of the medical profession it is never wise to beat about the bush; superfluous subtlety merely irritates them. I have therefore endeavoured to make the poem just the artless outpouring of the innocent passion of such a girl as I imagine your friend Mary Smith to be. Here it is.
To George.
Oh, you therapeutic dove, you!
How I long to snuggle coyly on your chest;
And reposing there to woo you,
Till, with soft responsive coo, you
Bid me share your warm but hygienic nest!
I have tarried, I have tarried,
Hoping still that I should catch you on the hop;
For to pining, lonely Mary
To be George's own canary
Would be sweeter than the sweetest ginger pop."
"'George'—in the title and body of the poem—can of course be altered, if necessary; but something, I know not what, tells me that that is his name, and that it is probably followed by Harris. I may be mistaken, but George Harris, as I feel I know him, is a simple, muscular young man, addicted to tennis and his bicycle, fairly good at diagnosing whooping cough or a broken leg. He likes his pipe and reads the Referee on Sunday mornings. Mary, however, will change all that. She will furnish in fumed oak, art flower-pots, and the poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and so will lead him gradually to higher and better things. I wish her all success. Yours, Edwin.
P.S.—It is true that doves seldom marry canaries, nor do the latter drink ginger beer to any considerable extent. But George will not notice these discrepancies. He is not hypercritical."
Two days later I heard from Grace again.
Dear Edwin,—Thank you so much for the verses, though perhaps they are a little—well, a little outspoken, aren't they? Unfortunately, Mary's friend is not named George or Harris. He is not even English, but a very nice dark brown man from Asia, a Hindu, I think, and only trying to be a doctor at present. As soon as he is one he is going back again. I ought to have told you this before, as I feel it might have helped you. But thanks very much all the same.
Yours affectionately, Grace."
When I showed this to Jones he expressed his chagrin with a freedom and resource surprising even in a Civil Servant; but, having put our hands to the plough, we felt we could hardly leave Mary Smith in the cart. So we set to again, and I posted the following poem to Grace:—
Farewell.
You may now perchance pro tem. be
Not indifferent to a simple English maid,
Soon the daughters dark and dingy
Of the land of Ranjitsinhji,
Will be throwing her completely in the shade.
When she had you almost landed
(Yes, the metaphors are mixed, but never mind)?
Oh, imagine her emotion
When the cruel Indian Oceat
Separates you from the girl you left behind.
It was nearly a week before I heard from Grace. Then she wrote—
"Dear Edwin,—It was really too sweet of you to send the second set. We have discovered, however, that Mary's friend is a Parsee, and therefore a worshipper of the sun, and she thinks the last line in the first verse would offend his family's religious scruples. She fears, too, that he might not endorse the epithet 'dingy' as applied by you to his female compatriots. So we have decided not to write in his album. I think however that the first poem (with modifications) would do for the album of a friend of my own, whose name, as it happens, is George. So I have asked the vicar to tone it down for me. He is a Durham man. Do you mind?
Yours affectionately, Grace."
I read her letter, and breathed a deep sigh. Then seizing a telegraph form, I wired: "Have no objection to Durham vicars. Am ordering salt-cellars. Do not write again. Edwin."