A ROYAL GIFT TO THE MASTER OF THE HORSE.
Reading edition
What will you give me, fair ladies, for a copy of verse, written between the Queen of Great Britain and your most small little journalist?
The morning of the ball the queen sent for me, and said she had a fine pair of old-fashioned gloves, white, with stiff tops and a deep gold fringe, which she meant to send to her new master of the horse, Lord Harcourt, who was to be at the dance. She wished to convey them in a copy of verses, of which she had composed three lines, but could not get on. She told me her ideas, and I had the honour to help her in the metre and now I have the honour to copy them from her own royal hand:—
“TO THE EARL OF HARCOURT.
“Go, happy gloves, bedeck Earl Harcourt’s hand, And let him know they come from fairy-land, Where ancient customs still retain their reign; To modernize them all attempts were vain. Go, cries Queen Mab, some noble owner seek, Who has a proper taste for the antique.”
Now, no criticising, fair ladies!-the assistant was neither allowed a pen nor a moment, but called upon to help finish, as she might have been to hand a fan. The earl, you may suppose, was sufficiently enchanted.