THE JOSS AND HIS FOLLY,
Reading edition
An Extract of an overland Dispatch. I stare at it from out my casement, And ask for what is such a place meant. Byron.
July 29, 1820.
——The queerest of all the queer sights I've set sight on;— Is, the what dye-call'-t thing, here, The Folly at Brighton
The outside—huge teapots,
all drill'd round with holes, Relieved by extinguishers, sticking on poles:
The inside—all tea-things,
and dragons, and bells,
The show rooms—all show,
the sleeping rooms—cells.
But the grand Curiosity
's not to be seen—
The owner himself—
an old fat Mandarin;
A patron of painters
who copy designs,
That grocers and tea-dealers
hang up for signs:
Hence teaboard-taste artists
gain rewards and distinction, Hence his title of 'Teapot' shall last to extinction.
I saw his great chair
into which he falls—soss— And sits, in his China Shop, like a large Joss;
His mannikins round him,
in tea-tray array,
His pea-hens beside him,
to make him seem gay.
It is said when he sleeps on his state Eider-down, And thinks on his Wife, and about half a Crown;
That he wakes from these horrible dreams in a stew;
And that, stretching his arms out,
he screams, Mrs. Q.! He's cool'd on the M—ch-ss, but I'm your debtor For further particulars— in a C letter.
You must know that he hates his own wife, to a failing;—
And it's thought, it's to shun her, he's now gone out
SAILING.
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