Literature breeds distress

Went to a dinner party last night in Fitzroy in a gorgeous dark dining room - it felt quite Edwardian. The food was tasty, discussion often lofty, the company always witty, and there was even an outburst of song - four of the people present had grown up with the boisterous singing of an anthem called "The Holy City" at home. (The two of us who hadn't sat very still and smiled uncertainly, confident that this too should pass.) The evening's highlight was a collective reading and reciting of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses for Children, stories with which several present had grown up, and which are in their way as grim as Struwwelpeter but somehow less sadistic (if only slightly!). I'd heard of Matilda, who "told such dreadful lies, It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes" (and burns to death) but not of "Jim, Who Ran Away From His Nurse, And Was Eaten By A Lion" or "Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably," crushed by a marble bust. Particularly pleasing to our highly literate gathering was this sobering story. (Do not resist the temptation to read it out loud!)

Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read
And Was Tossed Into A Thorny Hedge By A Bull

Some years ago you heard me sing

My doubts on Alexander Byng.

His sister Sarah now inspires

My jaded Muse, my failing fires.

Of Sarah Byng the tale is told

How when the child was twelve years old

She could not read or write a line.

Her sister Jane, though barely nine,

Could spout the Catechism through

And parts of Matthew Arnold too,

While little Bill who came between

Was quite unnaturally keen

On 'Athalie', by Jean Racine.

But not so Sarah! Not so Sal!

She was a most uncultured girl

Who didn't care a pinch of snuff

For any literary stuff

And gave the classics all a miss.

Observe the consequence of this!

As she was walking home one day,

Upon the fields across her way

A gate, securely padlocked, stood,

And by its side a piece of wood

On which was painted plain and full,

BEWARE THE VERY FURIOUS BULL

Alas! The young illiterate

Went blindly forward to her fate,

And ignorantly climbed the gate!

Now happily the Bull that day

Was rather in the mood for play

Than goring people through and through

As Bulls so very often do;

He tossed her lightly with his horns

Into a prickly hedge of thorns,

And stood by laughing while she strode

And pushed and struggled to the road.

The lesson was not lost upon

The child, who since has always gone

A long way round to keep away

From signs, whatever they may say,

And leaves a padlocked gate alone.

Moreover she has wisely grown

Confirmed in her instinctive guess

That literature breeds distress.