FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186  
187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   >>   >|  
_Life of life, thy lips enkindle._ Suddenly he turned to Stephen: --He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! _The god pursuing the maiden hid_. --We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome. --Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in _Richard III_ and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: _William the conqueror came before Richard III_. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time. Cours la Reine. _Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux?_ --The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary. Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: --Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! --And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes? Do and do. Thing done. In a
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186  
187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202   203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Penelope

 

Richard

 
William
 

Burbage

 

Twenty

 

Stephen

 

mistress

 

Fitton

 

answered

 

blankets


enkindle

 
conqueror
 
dainty
 

birdsnies

 
player
 
bankside
 

maiden

 

suited

 

quality

 

knocking


Manningham

 

burgher

 

Suddenly

 

turned

 

Shakespeare

 

overhearing

 

Encore

 

neighbour

 

Tennyson

 
gentleman

friends

 

Anycock

 
daughter
 

diamond

 

twenty

 
suppose
 

Stratford

 
Margaret
 

Minette

 
height

society

 

cochonneries

 

petites

 
ferons
 

Davenant

 

Mulligan

 
upturned
 

prayed

 

Blessed

 
cockcanary