"Bloody marvelous!" The Saga of Mrs.Brough of Esher

Drop dead. Plop. Flop.

I don't know how I get myself into these moods. Dragging bottom emotionally for no reason that makes any sense, except that it's December, I thought I'd look up some Christmas poetry. I found one by John Betjeman that was quite nice, if long - but it fell apart by going all religious at the end, with babies in stables, etc., and ending with "God was man in Palestine/And lives today in bread and wine". Way to wreck it, John.

William Topaz McGonagall's atrocities occurred to me, and I wondered if he had done any Christmas poems (for the only thing better than a good Christmas poem is a bad Christmas poem - but it must be monumentally bad, not just dirty or jingly or a stupid takeoff of Clement Moore). But I've already "done" McGonagall in past posts, and I'm a bit sick of him, to be honest.

I found a horrible Robert Frost poem in which a man pounds on his door of a snowy evening and asks if he can cut down all the lovely snow-sparkling pines on his property to sell as Christmas trees. And here Frost hums and haws over it, turns it over in his mind, thinking: well, here are the advantages in it; and hmmm, here are the disadvantages in it; and: AIIIIIEEEEEK! Cut down all your friggin' trees?? What are you thinking? I guess back then it must have seemed that there were trees enough, that they were endless, and just a crop to be managed like any other. But I was so upset at this point that I didn't even read to the end.

Discouraged, I threw away Christmas and widened my scope to include any old poetry that was sublimely bad, but it's hard to find truly awful stuff. I found articles quoting three or four weak lines in, say, Tennyson. Auden once used a bad adjective, and somebody found a pun in Shakespeare, comparing an orange to Seville (or was it servile?). Well, who gives a shit about that? I wanted bad, and I wasn't getting it.

Until.

Until I found. . . This. 

A Tragedy

Theophilus Marzials

Death!
Plop.

The barges down in the river flop.

Flop, plop.

Above, beneath.

From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.

Plop, plop.

And scudding by

The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,

And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"

And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

*          *          *          *          *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
                              And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
                                                Plop.
                                                Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
                           Flop, plop.
*          *          *          *          *
A curse on him.
                            Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --

My Devil -- My "Friend"

I had trusted the whole of my living to!

Ugh; and I knew!

Ugh!

So what do I care,

And my head is empty as air --

I can do,

I can dare,

(Plop, plop

The barges flop

Drip drop.)

I can dare! I can dare!

And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.

Drop.

Dead.

Plop, flop.

                                              Plop.

---

                                        [-- from The Gallery of Pigeons (1874) ]

As if this bounty weren't enough, I found these little notes attached to an article about him, claiming that Marzials, not McGonagall, was the worst poet in the English language:

"Theo Marzials, the last of the Victorian aesthetes, who lived on in rural retirement, addicted to beetroot and chlorodyne (morphia, chloroform and prussic acid), for two decades after the world thought him dead. In the 1870s, as a young man with long hair, flowing moustaches and a silk bow tie over his lapels, he worked at the British Museum. According to Max Beerbohm, the great Panizzi himself, founder of the round Reading Room, was one day surprised to hear a shrill voice crying from the gallery: "Am I or am I not the darling of the Reading Room?". . .  Marzials almost outlived danger. "On the last occasion when I happened to catch sight of him, looking into a case of stuffed birds at South Kensington Museum, he had eaten five large chocolate creams in the space of two minutes," wrote Ford in 1911. "He had a career tragic in the extreme and, as I believe, is now dead." But he wasn't. He was living in a farmhouse room in Colyton, Devon. The bed, occupied day and night, had a saucer of sliced beetroot beside it, the smell of which mingled with the fumes of chlorodyne, the smoke of an oil lamp and the steam of a stockpot perpetually simmering on the
stove."

This is disjointed as hell because I've edited 300 or so words out of it, so who knows who "Ford" is, but then again, who cares? The important thing is that I have found a truly horrendous, a harrowingly bad poet, and this opens the door to all sorts of posts about him. Or not. Depends if I can find anything else. Oh, here's one -

The Ghost of Love

by: Theophilus Marzials (1850-1920)

The wan witch at the creepy midnight hour,
When the wild moon was flying to its full,
Went huddling round a damned convent's tower,
From out the crumbling slabs or tombs to pull
Some lecherous leaf or shrieking mandrake-flower.
Beneath she heard the dead men's voices dull;
Around she felt the cold souls creep and cower;
In hand she held a grinning damned's skull!

Then through the ruin'd cloisters, strangely white,
T'wards the struck moon, all swathed in colod grave-bands,
She saw dead Love wringing his hollow hands,
And gliding grimmer than a dank tomb-light.

And with a shriek she rush'd across his path--
And now the hell-worm all her body hath!

The problem with this one is, as Zero Mostel says to Gene Wilder in The Producers: "Nah, it's too good." In fact it's neither good nor bad, and is as purple as most Victorian stuff was. But it strikes me as bargain basement Gerard Manley Hopkins, and even a pale photocopy of Hopkins has a certain power behind it.

I don't know what "colod grave-bands" are, but maybe they played gigs at the cemetary. Were they people of "colo"? We'll never know. (Could be a typo, also.) So even at being the worst, Marzials wasn't the best. Or the other way around.

MARZIALS DISH. This was all I could find about his sex life, and it came from Wikipedia so it MUST be true:

"The relationship between Marzials and fellow author Edmund Gosse is debated, with some claims that their relationship was more than platonic."

But wait, there's more. . . a truly cheesy poem!

We have seen the Queen of cheese,

Laying quietly at your ease,

Gently fanned by evening breeze --

Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go

To the great Provincial Show,

To be admired by many a beau

In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees --

Or as the leaves upon the trees --

It did require to make thee please,

And stand unrivalled Queen of Cheese.

May you not receive a scar as

We have heard that Mr. Harris

Intends to send you off as far as

The great World's show at Paris.

Of the youth -- beware of these --

For some of them might rudely squeeze

And bite your cheek; then songs or glees

We could not sing o' Queen of Cheese.

We'rt thou suspended from baloon,

You'd cast a shade, even at noon;

Folks would think it was the moon

About to fall and crush them soon.

James McIntyre

I don't know what to say.

My beautiful! my beautiful!

'Arab's Farewell to his Horse'

Transcription

Arab's Farewell to his Horse.

PRICE ONE PENNY.

Copies of this popular production can always be had in

the Poet's box

My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by,

With thy proudly arch'd and glossy neck, and dark and fiery

eye,

Fret not to roam the desert now with all thy winged speed,

I may not mount on thee again-thou art sold, my Arab

steed.

Fret not with that impatient hoof, snuff not the breezy wind,

The further that thou fliest now, so far am I behind.

The stranger hath thy bridle rein-thy master hath his gold-

Fleet limbed and beautiful, farewell, thou'rt sold, my steed,

thou'rt sold.

Farewell, these free untired limbs full many a mile must

roam,

To reach the chill and wintry sky which clouds the stran-

ger's home.

Some other hand, less fond, must now thy corn and bed

prepare-

The silky mane I braided once must be another's care.

The morning sun shall dawn again, but never more with thee

Shall I gallop through the desert paths where we were wont

to be.

Evening shall darken on the earth, and o'er the sandy plain,

Some other steed, with slower step, shall bear me home

again.

Yes, thou must go, the wild free breeze, the brilliant sun

and sky,

Thy master's home, from all of these my exiled one must fly.

Thy proud dark eye will grow less proud, thy step become

less fleet,

And vainly shalt thou arch thy neck thy master's hand to

meet.

Only in sleep shall I behold that dark eye glancing bright;

Only in sleep shall hear again that step so firm and light;

And when I raise my dreaming arm to check and cheer thy

speed,

Then must I startling wake to feel thou'rt sold, my Arab

steed.

Ah! rudely then, unseen by me, some cruel hand may chide,

Till foam-wreathes lie, like crested waves, along thy panting

side,

And the rich blood that is in thee swells in thy indignant

pain,

Till careless eyes, which rest on thee, may count each started

vein.

Will they ill-use thee? If I thought-but no it cannot be-

Thou art so swift yet easy curbed, so gentle yet so free.

And yet, if haply when thou'rt gone, my lonely heart should

yearn,

Can the hand which casts thee from it now command thee

to return?

Return, alas! my Arab steed, what shall thy master do,

When thou who wert his all of joy hath vanished from his

view;

When the dim distance cheats mine eye, and, through the

gathering tears,

Thy bright form for a moment like the false mirage appears,

Slow and unmounted will I roam, with weary foot alone,

Where with fleet step and joyous bound thou oft has borne

me on.

And sitting down by that green well I'll pause and sadly

think,

It was here he bowed his glossy neck when last I saw him

drink.

When last I saw thee drink? Away! the fevered dream is

o'er,

I could not live a day and know that we should meet no

more.

They tempted me, my beautiful! for hunger' s power is strong,

They tempted me, my beautiful! but I have loved too long.

Who said that I'd giv'n thee up, who said that thou wert

sold?

'Tis false, 'tis false, my Arab steed, I fling them back their

gold;

Thus, thus, I leap upon thy back and scour the distant plains,

Away! who overtakes us now shall claim thee for his pains!

Commentary This ballad begins: 'My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by, / With thy proudly arch'd and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye'. This broadside was priced at one penny and published on Saturday, 5th June 1869. It was published by the Poet's Box, (probably Glasgow) but the town of publication has been obscured. Although it is not attributed on the broadside, this poem was written by Caroline Norton (1808-77). Norton was the granddaughter of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). Her first published poetry appeared in 1829 and as a result she became a successful magazine editor. She found further fame as a political poet and pamphleteer, but also a certain amount of notoriety when it was alleged that she had been having an affair with the Whig Home Secretary Lord Melbourne. The claims were made by Norton's husband, a Tory who was known to be violent toward her. Norton's unhappy marriage influenced her political activism, which contributed to the Marriage and Law Act of 1857. The Poet?s Box in Glasgow operated from 1849 to 1911. Matthew Leitch was the proprietor at 6 St. Andrew Lane?s, a narrow street on the south side of Gallowgate, from 1850 to 1858. His son William Munsie Leitch worked at the same address from 1859 to 1865 and at varous addresses in London Street until 1911. Many of the broadsides published by the Glasgow Poet?s Box were dated and some carried advertisements, not just for printed items but also for shoe blacking and ?soap for lovers?! Like the other ?boxes? in Dundee and Edinburgh, the Glasgow one sold love songs, sea shanties, parodies and dialogues. It is not clear what the connection between the different Poet?s Boxes were. They almost certainly sold each other?s sheets. It is known that John Sanderson in Edinburgh often wrote to the Leitches in Glasgow for songs and that later his brother Charles obtained copies of songs from the Dundee Poet?s Box. There was also a Poet?s Box in Belfast from 1846 to 1856 at the address of the printer James Moore, and one in Paisley in the early 1850s owned by William Anderson. Broadsides are single sheets of paper, printed on one side, to be read unfolded. They carried public information such as proclamations as well as ballads and news of the day. Cheaply available, they were sold on the streets by pedlars and chapmen. Broadsides offer a valuable insight into many aspects of the society they were published in, and the National Library of Scotland holds over 250,000 of them.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. I decided to leave these rather boring notes attached, because? I was so intrigued by? all the? question marks. I suppose they were meant to represent some? other kind of punctuation mark, but I can't quite? figure out which one. My favorite passage is:

Many of the broadsides published by the Glasgow Poet?s Box were dated and some carried advertisements, not just for printed items but also for shoe blacking and ?soap for lovers?! Like the other ?boxes? in Dundee and Edinburgh, the Glasgow one sold love songs, sea shanties, parodies and dialogues

"Soap for lovers?!". These people were obviously well ahead of their time.

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Whoever you are, holding me now in hand

Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,

Without one thing, all will be useless,

I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,

I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower? 

ho would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

The way is suspicious - the result uncertain, perhaps destructive; 

You would have to give up all else - I alone would expect to be your

God, sole and exclusive,

Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,

The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives

around you, would have to be abandon'd; 

Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further - Let

go your hand from my shoulders,

Put me down, and depart on your way.

Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,

Or back of a rock, in the open air,

(For in any roof'd room of a house I emerge not - nor in company,

And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,) 

But just possibly with you on a high hill - first watching lest any

person, for miles around, approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or

some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade's long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband's kiss, 

For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.

Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,

Carry me when you go forth over land or sea; 

For thus, merely touching you, is enough - is best,

And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried

eternally.

But these leaves conning, you con at peril,

For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,

They will elude you at first, and still more afterward - I will

certainly elude you,

Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me,

behold! 

Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this

book,

Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,

Nor will the candidates for my love, (unless at most a very few,) 

prove victorious,

Nor will my poems do good only - they will do just as much evil,

perhaps more; 

For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and

not hit - that which I hinted at; 

Therefore release me, and depart on your way.

Walt Whitman

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