The Scandal of the Season (38 page)
Read The Scandal of the Season Online
Authors: Sophie Gee
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears;
But fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.
“To arms, to arms!” the bold Thalestris cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties, and begin th' attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise,
And bass and treble voices strike the skies;
No common weapons in their hands are found,
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.
So when bold Homer makes the gods engage,
And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage,
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms,
And all Olympus rings with loud alarms;
Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around,
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:
Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives way,
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
“O cruel nymph; a living death I bear,”
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
“Those eyes are made so killing”âwas his last.
Thus on Mæander's flow'ry margin lies
Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies.
As bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown;
She smiled to see the doughty hero slain,
But at her smile the beau revived again.
Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
See fierce Belinda on the baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord, with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued:
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
“Now meet thy fate,” th' incensed virago cried,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
“Boast not my fall,” he said, “insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low;
Nor think to die dejects my lofty mind;
All that I dread is leaving you behind!
Rather than so, ah let me still survive,
And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive.”
“Restore the lock!” she cries; and all around
“Restore the lock!” the vaulted roofs rebound.
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain.
But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed,
And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost!
The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain,
In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain:
With such a prize no mortal must be blessed,
So heav'n decrees! with heav'n who can contest?
Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere,
Since all that man e'er lost is treasured there.
There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases, And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases.
There broken vows, and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs,
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.
But trust the museâshe saw it upward rise,
Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes:
(Thus Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew,
To Proculus alone confessed in view)
A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright,
The skies bespangling with dishevelled light.
(This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey,
(As through the moonlight shade they nightly stray,
(And hail with music its propitious ray;
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes;
And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome.
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
This lock the muse shall consecrate to fame,
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
I
have been extremely fortunate to have Toby Eady as my agent in London and Jennifer Joel as my agent in New York. Without Toby, I would never have had the confidence to begin writing this book; without Jenn, I would not have had the confidence to finish it. My sincere thanks, also, to Laetitia Rutherford, Samar Hammam, and Jamie Coleman at Toby Eady Associates and Katie Sigelman at ICM New York for all that they did along the way.
With gratitude and admiration I acknowledge the advice, judgment, and experience of my editor at Scribner, Nan Graham, and my editor at Chatto & Windus, Alison Samuel. How lucky I have been to have them. I also acknowledge, with deep appreciation, the work done by Samantha Martin, editorial associate at Scribner. I thank Rachel Cugnoni at Vintage for her encouragement and guidance, and David Parrish at Random House UK for his support. Particular thanks, also, to Suzanne Dean. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Elizabeth Hayes, Susan Moldow, and Molly Dorozenski at Scribner and I thank the talented members of Scribner's production, art, and design departments.
At Random House Australia, I thank Margie Seale, Carol Davidson, Karen Reid, Jessica Dettman, and Ally Cohilj for invaluable assistance. Also in Sydney, I thank Jane Palfreyman and Benython Oldfield for their help and encouragement.
My teachers at Harvard and my colleagues at Princeton taught me how to think about English literature, history, and the world that I have written about here. I particularly acknowledge the influence of Barbara Lewalski, James Engell, Marjorie Garber, Stephen Greenblatt, Philip Fisher, Claudia Johnson, Nigel Smith, Michael Wood, Diana Fuss, James Richardson, Oliver Arnold, and Jeff Nunokawa.
Several academic studies have been indispensable in the writing of this novel. I have relied for both information and historical understanding on Maynard Mack's biography
Alexander Pope: A Life,
Valerie Rumbold's
Women's Place in Pope's World,
Howard Erskine-Hill's
The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope,
and Isobel Grundy's
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment.
I have also made extensive use of the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope's poems and the Clarendon edition of his correspondence.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the loving support and help that I have received from my mother and sister, Liz and Harriet Gee.
Sophie Gee grew up in Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1995 with a first-class honors degree in English. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1996, and received her PhD in English from Harvard in 2002. She was immediately appointed as an assistant professor in the Department of English at Princeton. She has since been named a Bicentennial Preceptor, in recognition of outstanding research and teaching as a member of Princeton's junior faculty.
She is currently working on
A Longman Cultural Edition
of the poetry of Swift and Pope. A new Vintage Classics edition of
The Rape of the Lock
is being published in August 2007.
* This is the short version of
The Rape of the Lock
by Alexander Pope, published in 1712. In the final scene of the novel, however, Alexander reads from the longer, more elaborate rewriting of the poem, completed in 1714. To see this longer version, please visit www.gutenberg.org/etext/9800 or look for the new Vintage Classics edition with an introduction by Sophie Gee.
