Rhyming letter from Jamaica (1874)

GA's rhyming letter to his brother-in-law, written from Jamaica, probably 1874.

Here I am, my dear Franklin, in Spanish Town still,

as usual, grinding away at my mill.

On Logic and Ethics, on Latin and Greek

I have been talking for hours till I scarcely can speak.

Then I have come back from College and muddled my brain

with getting up lectures on Spencer and Bain,

so I think that by way of a respite I had better

sit down and reply to your last welcome letter.

At seven we wake from our innocent sleep,

which at least has been long if it has not been deep.

Ten hours per noctem's the usual number

We allot in this idlest of islands to slumber.

Then our house-cleaner, Rose, brings us in a farrago

of arrowroot gruel or boiled milk and sago,

which we swallow in bed -- 'tis the way in Jamaica --

and then for another half hour we take a short nap

(that's abrupt, but 'monarchs sometimes,'

says Byron, 'are far less despotic than rhymes').

At eight comes my bath, the one single joy

in the twenty-four hours unmixed with alloy.

Oh! delight of delights, to be cool for a minute;

how I gloat on the water before I get in it.

How I lovingly linger and gaze from the brink

ere I make up my mind in the bosom to sink.

How I dive; how I revel awhile in its arms;

how I tear myself sadly at last from its charms.

If fair Arethusa was only as cold,

I can quite understand she had lovers of old.

By nine we have slowly completed our toilet,

for hurry at anything here is to spoil it.

One gives oneself plenty of time and of space,

reflects for a bit after washing one's face,

pulls on both one's boots with a solemn delay,

and feels one's cravat an event of the day.

For if collar and tie you too rapidly don,

you find they are melted before they're put on.

Then out to our breakfast, which needs to be good,

for man has small appetite here for his food,

where a lazy condition of liver is chronic

and one needs to be drenched with perpetual tonic;

and though there was never a house-maid like Nelly,

a cook in Jamaica is no Francatelli.

So we pick at the curry, we play with the bacon,

and we sigh with relief when the meal has been taken.

At ten I depart for the College to lecture

on every subject of human conjecture,

from the weight of the sun and the path of the planets, =

the earthquake that shakes and the breezes that fan it,

to the freedom of will and the nature of feeling, =

on the relative wrongness of fibbing and stealing.

For, this being but a one-man-power College

I alone must explore the whole circle of knowledge,

appraise all our poets from Chaucer to Tennyson,

prove Hamilton wrong and give Bentham my benison,

show how the comitia used to assemble

and crib Anglo-Saxon from Palgrave and Kemble.

Meanwhile, in the household department dear Nelly

inspects the production of pudding or jelly,

and, in short, overlooks the entire commissariat --

no easy affair in the town that we tarry at,

where we count ourselves lucky if five days a week

we can get us some jam and a morsel of steak.

By the time the sun has risen on high,

and is broiling and baking the air in the sky,

till its vertical rays, pouring down on us, kindle

such unbearable heat that I wish Grove or Tyndall

would invent us a plan for the depths of the ocean

to absorb this too active molecular motion.

But, stop, if I venture so far on detail

I never shall finish in time for the mail.

I will be brief -- well, at one we have lunch,

after which I return until three to the College to teach.

Then, my work being over, we dawdle till five,

or a visitor enters to keep us alive

by languidly broadening the two or three topics

which form our available stock in the Tropics.

Next, we take a short stroll; at seven we dine

and play at bezique or at reading till nine,

when we are both very glad to retire to rest

from our arduous labour and struggle our best

to fall off asleep, but are met by a veto

in the bloodthirsty shape of a buzzing mosquito.

Not the lion who roams through the desert for food;

not the pard or the tiger so lusts after blood;

not the wolverine so pounces down on his quarry

as that fly swoops to feast on his live, human swarry.

Like the Parthian, he flies whene'er I show fight,

and renews his attack when I put out the light.

I pursue, and he makes for his lair in the curtain;

I retreat, and on pinions, unerringly certain,

once more he returns to this cannibal strife,

where he thirsts for my blood and I thirst for his life.

Once more my manoeuvres he deftly outflanks

as I waste my assault on my innocent shanks.

In the end I succumb, sinking back in my place,

while the conqueror banquets at ease on my face.

So at last I doze off, let him bite as he may,

to repeat the whole programme da capo next day.

And here this epistle at length must be ended.

It's double as long as I ever intended;

but, having begun, I ran on by the gallon.

Believe me, as ever, Yours truly, Grant Allen.

P.S. --I subscribe myself truly' instead of 'sincerely,'

because it agrees with the metre more nearly.

As printed in Edward Clodd, Memories. London: Chapman & Hall, 1916, pp.25-26.