Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922.

By. Austin Dobson

A Chapter of Froissart

YOU don’t know Froissart now, young folks.

This age, I think, prefers recitals

Of high-spiced crime, with “slang” for jokes,

And startling titles.

But, in my time, when still some few

Loved “old Montaigne,” and praised Pope’s Homer

(Nay, thought to style him “poet” too,

Were scarce misnomer),

Sir John was less ignored. Indeed,

I can recall how Some-one present

(Who spoils her grandson, Frank!) would read

And find him pleasant;

For,—by this copy,—hangs a Tale.

Long since, in an old house in Surrey,

Where men knew more of “morning ale”

Than “Lindley Murray,”

In a dim-lighted, whip-hung hall,

’Neath Hogarth’s “Midnight Conversation,”

It stood; and oft ’twixt spring and fall,

With fond elation,

I turned the old brown leaves. For there

All through one hopeful happy summer,

At such a page (I well knew where),

Some secret comer,

Whom I can picture, ’Trix, like you

(Though scarcely such a colt unbroken),

Would sometimes place for private view

A certain token;—

A rose-leaf meaning “Garden Wall,”

An ivy leaf for “Orchard corner,”

A thorn to say “Don’t come at all,”—

Unwelcome warner!—

Not that, in truth, our friends gainsaid;

But then Romance required dissembling,

(Ann Radcliffe taught us that!) which bred

Some genuine trembling;

Though, as a rule, all used to end

In such kind confidential parley

As may to you kind Fortune send,

You long-legged Charlie,

When your time comes. How years slip on!

We had our crosses like our betters;

Fate sometimes looked askance upon

Those floral letters;

And once, for three long days disdained,

The dust upon the folio settled;

For some-one, in the right, was pained,

And some-one nettled,

That sure was in the wrong, but spake

Of fixed intent and purpose stony

To serve King George, enlist and make

Minced-meat of “Boney,”

Who yet survived—ten years at least.

And so, when she I mean came hither,

One day that need for letters ceased,

She brought this with her!

Here is the leaf-stained chapter:—How

The English King laid Siege to Calais;

I think Gran. knows it even now,—

Go ask her, Alice.