MARIA, WHO MADE FACES AND A DEPLORABLE MARRIAGE By HILAIRE BELLOC
Reading edition
Maria loved to pull a face:
And no such commonplace grimace
As you or I or anyone
Might make at grandmamma for fun,
But one where nose and mouth and all
Were screwed into a kind of ball,
135The which—as you may well expect—
Produced a horrible effect
On those it was directed at.
One morning
she was struck like that!
Her features took their final mould
In shapes that made your blood run cold
And wholly lost their former charm.
Mamma, in agonised alarm,
136
Consulted a renowned Masseuse
—An old and valued friend of hers—
Who rubbed the wretched child for days
In five-and-twenty different ways
And after that began again.
But all in vain—but all in vain!
137
The years advance: Maria grows
Into a blooming English Rose—
With every talent, every grace
(Save in this trifle of the face).
She sang,
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recited, laughed and played
At all that an accomplished maid
Should play with skill to be of note—
Golf, the piano and
the goat;
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She talked in French till all was blue
And knew a little German too.
She told the tales that soldiers tell,
She also danced extremely well,
Her wit was pointed, loud and raw,
She shone at laying down the law,
She drank liqueurs instead of tea,
Her verse was admirably free
And quoted in the latest books—
140
But people couldn’t stand her looks.
Her parents had with thoughtful care
Proclaimed her genius everywhere,
Nor quite concealed a wealth which sounds
141Enormous—thirty million pounds—
And further whispered it that she
Could deal with it exclusively.
They did not hide her chief defect,
But what with birth and intellect
And breeding and such ample means,
And still in her delightful ’teens,
A girl like our Maria (they thought)
Should make the kind of match she ought.
Those who had seen her here at home
Might hesitate; but Paris, Rome ...
The foreigners should take the bait.
And so they did. At any rate
The greatest men of every land
Arrived in shoals to seek her hand—
Grand Dukes,
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Commanders of the Fleece,
Mysterious millionaires from Greece,
And exiled Kings in large amounts,
Ambassadors and Papal Counts
And Rastaquoairs from Buenos Aires
And famous Foreign Secretaries,
They came along in turns to call.
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But all, without exception, all,
Though with determination set,
Yet when they actually met
Would start convulsively as though
They had received a sudden blow,
And, mumbling a discreet good-day,
Would shuffle, turn and slink away.
The upshot of it was Maria
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Was married to a neighbouring squire
Who, being blind, could never guess
His wife’s appalling ugliness.
The man was independent, dull,
Offensive, poor and masterful.
It was a very dreadful thing!
Now let us turn to Sarah Byng.[4]
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