The Cap and Bells; or, The Jealousies

A Faery Tale — Unfinished

I

In midmost Ind, beside Hydaspes cool,
There stood, or hovered, tremulous in the air,
A faery city, ‘neath the potent rule
Of Emperor Elfinan — famed everywhere
For love of mortal women, maidens fair,
Whose lips were solid, whose soft hands were made
Of a fit mould and beauty, ripe and rare,
To pamper his slight wooing, warm yet staid:
He loved girls smooth as shades, but hated a mere shade.

II

This was a crime forbidden by the law;
And all the priesthood of his city wept,
For ruin and dismay they well foresaw,
If impious prince no bound or limit kept,
And faery Zendervester overstepped.
They wept, he sinned, and still he would sin on,
They dreamt of sin, and he sinned while they slept;
In vain the pulpit thundered at the throne,
Caricature was vain, and vain the tart lampoon.

III

Which seeing, his high court of parliament
Laid a remonstrance at his Highness’ feet,
Praying his royal senses to content
Themselves with what in faery land was sweet,
Befitting best that shade with shade should meet:
Whereat, to calm their fears, he promised soon
From mortal tempters all to make retreat —
Ay, even on the first of the new moon,
An immaterial wife to espouse as heaven’s boon.

IV

Meantime he sent a fluttering embassy
To Pigmio, of Imaus sovereign,
To half beg, and half demand, respectfully,
The hand of his fair daughter Bellanaine.
An audience had, and speeching done, they gain
Their point, and bring the weeping bride away;
Whom, with but one attendant, safely lain
Upon their wings, they bore in bright array,
While little harps were touched by many a lyric fay.

V

As in old pictures tender cherubim
A child’s soul through the sapphired canvas bear,
So, through a real heaven, on they swim
With the sweet princess on her plumaged lair,
Speed giving to the winds her lustrous hair;
And so they journeyed, sleeping or awake,
Save when, for healthful exercise and air,
She chose to promener à l’aile, or take
A pigeon’s somerset, for sport or change’s sake.

VI

‘Dear Princess, do not whisper me so loud,’
Quoth Corallina, nurse and confidant,
‘Do not you see there, lurking in a cloud,
Close at your back, that sly old Crafticant?
He hears a whisper plainer than a rant.
Dry up your tears, and do not look so blue;
He’s Elfinan’s great state-spy militant,
His running, lying, flying footman too —
Dear mistress, let him have no handle against you!

VII

‘Show him a mouse’s tail, and he will guess,
With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse;
Show him a garden, and with speed no less,
He’ll surmise sagely of a dwelling house,
And plot, in the same minute, how to chouse
The owner out of it; show him a —’ ‘Peace!
Peace! nor contrive thy mistress’ ire to rouse!’
Returned the Princess, ‘my tongue shall not cease
Till from this hated match I get a free release.

VIII

‘Ah, beauteous mortal!’ ‘Hush!’ quoth Coralline,
‘Really you must not talk of him, indeed.’
‘You hush!’ replied the mistress, with a shine
Of anger in her eyes, enough to breed
In stouter hearts than nurse’s fear and dread:
’Twas not the glance itself made Nursey flinch,
But of its threat she took the utmost heed,
Not liking in her heart an hour-long pinch,
Or a sharp needle run into her back an inch.

IX

So she was silenced, and fair Bellanaine,
Writhing her little body with ennui,
Continued to lament and to complain,
That Fate, cross-purposing, should let her be
Ravished away far from her dear countree;
That all her feelings should be set at naught,
In trumping up this match so hastily,
With lowland blood; and lowland blood she thought
Poison, as every staunch true-born Imaian ought.

X

Sorely she grieved, and wetted three or four
White Provence rose-leaves with her faery tears,
But not for this cause — alas! she had more
Bad reasons for her sorrows, as appears
In the famed memoirs of a thousand years,
Written by Crafticant, and publishēd
By Parpaglion and Co. (those sly compeers
Who raked up every fact against the dead)
In Scarab Street, Panthea, at the Jubal’s Head.

XI

Where, after a long hypercritic howl
Against the vicious manners of the age,
He goes on to expose, with heart and soul,
What vice in this or that year was the rage,
Backbiting all the world in every page;
With special strictures on the horrid crime
(Sectioned and subsectioned with learning sage),
Of faeries stooping on their wings sublime
To kiss a mortal’s lips, when such were in their prime.

XII

Turn to the copious index, you will find
Somewhere in the column, headed letter B,
The name of Bellanaine, if you’re not blind;
Then pray refer to the text, and you will see
An article made up of calumny
Against this highland princess, rating her
For giving way, so over-fashionably,
To this new-fangled vice, which seems a burr
Stuck in his moral throat, no coughing e’er could stir.

XIII

There he says plainly that she loved a man!
That she around him fluttered, flirted, toyed,
Before her marriage with great Elfinan;
That after marriage too, she never joyed
In husband’s company, but still employed
Her wits to ’scape away to Angle-land;
Where lived the youth, who worried and annoyed
Her tender heart, and its warm ardours fanned
To such a dreadful blaze, her side would scorch her hand.

XIV

But let us leave this idle tittle-tattle
To waiting-maids, and bedroom coteries,
Nor till fit time against her fame wage battle.
Poor Elfinan is very ill at ease —
Let us resume his subject if you please:
For it may comfort and console him much
To rhyme and syllable his miseries;
Poor Elfinan! whose cruel fate was such,
He sat and cursed a bride he knew he could not touch.

XV

Soon as (according to his promises)
The bridal embassy had taken wing,
And vanished, bird-like, o’er the suburb trees,
The Emperor, empierced with the sharp sting
Of love, retirēd, vexed and murmuring
Like any drone shut from the fair bee-queen,
Into his cabinet, and there did fling
His limbs upon a sofa, full of spleen,
And damned his House of Commons, in complete chagrin.

XVI

‘I’ll trounce some of the members,’ cried the Prince,
‘I’ll put a mark against some rebel names,
I’ll make the Opposition benches wince,
I’ll show them very soon, to all their shames,
What ’tis to smother up a Prince’s flames;
That ministers should join in it, I own,
Surprises me! — they too at these high games!
Am I an Emperor? Do I wear a crown?
Imperial Elfinan, go hang thyself or drown!

XVII

‘I’ll trounce ’em! — there’s the square-cut chancellor,
His son shall never touch that bishopric;
And for the nephew of old Palfior,
I’ll show him that his speeches made me sick,
And give the colonelcy to Phalaric;
The tip-toe marquis, moral and gallant,
Shall lodge in shabby taverns upon tick;
And for the Speaker’s second cousin’s aunt,
She shan’t be maid of honour — by heaven that she shan’t!

XVIII

‘I’ll shirk the Duke of A.; I’ll cut his brother;
I’ll give no garter to his eldest son;
I won’t speak to his sister or his mother!
The Viscount B. shall live at cut-and-run;
But how in the world can I contrive to stun
That fellow’s voice, which plagues me worse than any,
That stubborn fool, that impudent state-dun,
Who sets down every sovereign as a zany —
That vulgar commoner, Esquire Biancopany?

XIX

‘Monstrous affair! Pshaw! pah! what ugly minx
Will they fetch from Imaus for my bride?
Alas! my wearied heart within me sinks,
To think that I must be so near allied
To a cold dullard fay — ah, woe betide!
Ah, fairest of all human loveliness!
Sweet Bertha! what crime can it be to glide
About the fragrant pleatings of thy dress,
Or kiss thine eyes, or count thy locks, tress after tress?’

XX

So said, one minute’s while his eyes remained
Half lidded, piteous, languid, innocent;
But, in a wink, their splendour they regained,
Sparkling revenge with amorous fury blent.
Love thwarted in bad temper oft has vent:
He rose, he stamped his foot, he rang the bell,
And ordered some death-warrants to be sent
For signature — somewhere the tempest fell,
As many a poor felon does not live to tell.

XXI

‘At the same time Eban’ (this was his page,
A fay of colour, slave from top to toe,
Sent as a present, while yet under age,
From the Viceroy of Zanguebar — wise, slow,
His speech, his only words were ‘yes’ and ‘no’,
But swift of look, and foot, and wing was he),
‘At the same time, Eban, this instant go
To Hum the soothsayer, whose name I see
Among the fresh arrivals in our empery.

XXII

‘Bring Hum to me! But stay — here, take my ring,
The pledge of favour, that he not suspect
Any foul play, or awkward murdering,
Though I have bowstrung many of his sect;
Throw in a hint, that if he should neglect
One hour, the next shall see him in my grasp,
And the next after that shall see him necked,
Or swallowed by my hunger-starvēd asp —
And mention (’tis as well) the torture of the wasp.’

XXIII

These orders given, the Prince, in half a pet,
Let o’er the silk his propping elbow slide,
Caught up his little legs, and, in a fret,
Fell on the sofa on his royal side.
The slave retreated backwards, humble-eyed,
And with a slave-like silence closed the door,
And to old Hum through street and alley hied;
He ‘knew the city’, as we say, of yore,
For shortest cuts and turns, was nobody knew more.

XXIV

It was the time when wholesale houses close
Their shutters with a moody sense of wealth,
But retail dealers, diligent, let loose
The gas (objected toon score of health),
Conveyed in little soldered pipes by stealth,
And make it flare in many a brilliant form,
That all the powers of darkness it repell’th,
Which to the oil-trade doth great scathe and harm,
And supersedeth quite the use of the glow-worm.

XXV

Eban, untempted by the pastry-cooks
(Of pastry he got store within the palace),
With hasty steps, wrapped cloak, and solemn looks,
Incognito upon his errand sallies,
His smelling-bottle ready for the alleys.
He passed the hurdy-gurdies with disdain,
Vowing he’d have them sent on board the galleys;
Just as he made his vow, it ’gan to rain,
Therefore he called a coach, and bade it drive amain.

XXVI

‘I’ll pull the string,’ said he, and further said,
‘Polluted Jarvey! Ah! thou filthy hack!
Whose springs of life are all dried up and dead,
Whose linsey-woolsey lining hangs all slack,
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack;
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter;
Whose glass once up can never be got back,
Who prov’st, with jolting arguments and bitter,
That ’tis of modern use to travel in a litter.

XXVII

‘Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou snail-creeper to and fro,
Who while thou goest ever seem’st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;
I’ the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some lazar-house thou journeyest,
And in the evening tak’st a double row
Of dowdies, for some dance or party dressed,
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.

XXVIII

‘By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge,
Schooled in a beckon, learned in a nudge,
A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge
To whisking tilburies, or phaetons rare,
Curricles, or mail-coaches, swift beyond compare.’

XXIX

Philosophizing thus, he pulled the check,
And bade the Coachman wheel to such a street,
Who, turning much his body, more his neck,
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet:
‘Certes, Monsieur were best take to his feet,
Seeing his servant can no further drive
For press of coaches, that tonight here meet
Many as bees about a straw-capped hive,
When first for April honey into faint flowers they dive.’