“Though I fly to Fushiyama, Steeped in opalescent Karma, I shall ne’er forget my charmer, My adorable Khansamah. Though I fly to Tokio, Where the sweet chupatties blow, I shall ne’er forget thee, no! Yamagata, daimio.”
A shilling testimonial to the Wenuses was also started by the same journal, in accordance with the precedent furnished by the similar treatment of the Graces, and an animated controversy raged in its correspondence columns with reference to mixed bathing at Margate, and its effect on the morality of the Wenuses.
A somewhat painful impression was created by the publication of an interview with a well-known dramatic critic in the periodical known as Great Scott’s Thoughts. This eminent authority gave it as his unhesitating opinion that the Wenuses were not fit persons to associate with actors, actresses, or dramatic critics, and that if, as was announced, they had been engaged at Covent Garden to lend realistic verisimilitude to the Venusberg scene in Tannhaeuser, it was his firm resolve to give up his long crusade against Ibsen, emigrate to Norway, and change his name to that of John Gabriel Borkman. A prolonged sojourn in Poppyland, however, resulted in the withdrawal of this dreadful threat, and, some few weeks after the extinction of the Wenuses, his reconciliation with the dramatic profession was celebrated at a public meeting, where, after embracing all the actor-managers in turn, he was presented by them with a magnificent silver butter-boat, filled to the brim with melted butter ready for immediate use.
APPENDIX B.
APPENDIX B.
My mother has obtained permission from the Laureate’s publishers to reprint the following stanzas from “The Pale Pink Raid":—
“Wrong? O of coarse
it’s heinous,
But we’re
going, girls, you just bet!
Do they think that the Wars
of Wenus
Can be stopped
by an epithet?
When the henpecked Earth-men
pray us
To join them at
afternoon tea,
Not rhyme nor reason can stay
us
From flying to
set them free.
* * * * *
“When the men on that
hapless planet,
Handsome and kind
and true,
Cry out, ‘Hurry up!’
O hang it!
What else can
a Wenus do?
I suppose it was rather bad
form, girls,
But really we
didn’t care,
For our planet was growing
too warm, girls,
And we wanted
a change of air.
* * * * *
“Mrs. Grundy may go
on snarling,
But still, at
the Judgment Day,
The author of England’s
Darling
I think won’t
give us away.
We failed, but we chose to
chance it,
And as one of
the beaten side,
I’d rather have made
that transit
Than written Jameson’s
Ride!”