Lucy em-
Broidered the dusk of the British Museum,
And made me so happy by talking and laughing on
That I loved them more than the frieze of the
Parthenon.
But I'm sleepy I know and don't know if I silly
ain't;
Dined to-night with your sisters, where Tommy
was brilliant;
And, while I the rest of the company deafened, I
Dallied awhile with your auntlet of seventy,
While one, Mr. Winsloe, a volume before him,
Regarded us all with a moody decorum.
No, I can't keep awake, and so, bowing and blessing
you,
And seeing and loving (while slowly undressing)
you,
Take your small hand and kiss, with a drowsed
benediction, it
Knowing, as you, I'm your ever affectionate
HARRY C. C.
I had another friend, James Kenneth Stephen, too pagan, wayward
and lonely to be available for the Souls, but a man of genius. One
afternoon he came to see me in Grosvenor Square and, being told by
the footman that I was riding in the Row, he asked for tea and,
while waiting for me wrote the following parody of Kipling and
left it on my writing-table with his card:
P.S. THE MAN WHO WROTE IT.
We all called him The Man who Wrote It. And we called It what the
man wrote, or IT for short--all of us that is, except The Girl
who Read It. She never called anything "It." She wasn't that sort
of girl, but she read It, which was a pity from the point of view
of The Man who Wrote It.
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