COLLECTED POEMS Read online

  Was own up to their actual crime

  And more or less prove it too.

  Thus, a crowd of little infants

  Was called and took the oath,

  Swore Jack and Belle had skinned ’em

  And recognized them both.

  The nursemaid gave her evidence,

  And the sledge – Exhibit A –

  Was held aloft in the courtroom

  For the jury to survey

  The royal Prince did not appear.

  He had been sent to bed

  For applying his father’s walking-stick

  To a elderly footman’s head.

  ‘But you also claim it was a joke,’

  Said the judge to the accused.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you this for nothing.

  The Queen was not amused.’

  Then he sentenced them to go to jail

  For a couple of years apiece,

  And hoped that when they was let out

  Their criminal ways would cease.

  And cease they did, it can be said,

  For now the Harrises keep

  A pet shop in the Brompton Road:

  BEST DOGS AND BUDGIES – CHEEP!

  Postscript

  Unfortunately, I have just heard,

  While the above was being wrote,

  Jack was seen leaving London Zoo

  With a parrot up his coat.

  Belle Harris had distracted

  The keeper and his men.

  I fear the pair of ’em has gone back

  To sinning once again

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Child Stripping – This is generally done by females, old debauched drunken hags who watch their opportunity to accost children passing in the streets, tidily dressed with good boots and clothes. They entice them away to a low or quiet neighbourhood for the purpose, as they say, of buying them sweets, or with some other pretext. When they get into a convenient place, they give them a halfpenny or some sweets, and take off the articles of dress, and tell them to remain till they return, when they go away with the booty.

  This is done most frequently in mews in the West-end, and at Clerkenwell, Westminster, the Borough, and other similar localities. These heartless debased women sometimes commit these felonies in the disreputable neighbourhoods where they live, but more frequently in distant places, where they are not known and cannot be easily traced. This mode of felony is not so prevalent in the metropolis as formerly. In most cases, it is done at dusk in the winter evenings, from 7 to 10 o’clock.

  From Henry Mayhew’s

  London Labour and the London Poor,

  Vol. IV (published 1862)

  Captain Jim

  You’ve heard the tales of Tarzan,

  Chinese Charlie Chan,

  Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street

  And ‘cow pie’ Desperate Dan;

  Well, now I’m going to tell you

  Of another kind of man.

  Yes, now I’m going to tell you,

  As the light grows dim,

  And we sit here in the jungle

  At the wide world’s rim,

  Of the man who matched them all:

  And his name was Captain Jim.

  Where he came from is a mystery,

  Where he went to no one knows,

  But his talents were amazing

  (From his eyebrows to his toes!),

  And his brain was full of brainwaves,

  And his reputation grows.

  It all began one summer

  Near this very spot,

  When the river-boats were steaming

  And the river banks were hot,

  And the crocodiles were teeming,

  Which sometimes a child forgot.

  I was playing with my brothers,

  Bertie, Joe and little Frank,

  In the mangrove trees that twisted

  From that mossed and muddy bank;

  When young Frank climbed out too far,

  Slipped and fell, and straightways – sank.

  Hardly had he hit the water,

  Barely had the ripples spread,

  When the river started foaming

  And we saw with awful dread

  Half a dozen snapping snouts

  In a hurry to be fed.

  Well, we shouted and we threw things,

  Lumps of rock and bits of wood,

  And young Frank, he cried for help

  And tried to swim as best he could,

  But the crocs were closing in

  And it wasn’t any good

  Then at last when all seemed lost,

  And it was looking grim,

  There was a blur beside us,

  And a man leapt in to swim

  Like an arrow from a bow:

  And his name was Captain Jim.

  He was dressed, we later noticed,

  In a suit of gleaming white,

  And he even had his hat on;

  Oh, it was a stirring sight,

  As he surged into the fray

  Like a charge of dynamite.

  With his bare hands and a cricket bat

  He gave the crocs what for;

  Hit the six of them for six,

  Though I doubt they kept the score.

  Then he gave a tow to little Frank

  And calmly swam to shore.

  And that was the beginning,

  The first time he was seen,

  In the heat and haze of summer

  When the air itself was green

  And the river banks were steaming…

  And he chose to intervene.

  Where he came from is a mystery,

  Why he stayed we never knew,

  But he took a room at Macey’s

  And he moored his own canoe

  At the wharf beside the warehouse.

  And he bought a cockatoo.

  Now this, I should remind you,

  Was twenty years ago,

  In nineteen thirty-one,

  When the pace of life was slow,

  And Grandpa ran the Copper Mine

  And built this bungalow

  And the town was smaller then,

  Just some houses and a pier,

  And the Steamship Company Office

  With a barber’s at the rear,

  And a visiting policeman

  Who came by four times a year.

  So it took no time at all

  For the tale to get about;

  How the stranger with a cricket bat

  Had fished young Frankie out,

  And hammered fourteen crocodiles

  With one enormous clout.

  And as the weeks went by,

  There were other tales to tell:

  How he saved the Baxters’ baby

  (With the speed of a gazelle!)

  And the Baxters’ baby’s teddy –

  It was needing help as well.

  How he stopped a charging warthog

  As it rampaged through the town

  (Knocking bikes and fences flying,

  Pulling wires and washing down),

  With a matadorial flourish

  And a matadorial frown.

  Well, we followed him about, of course,

  Or watched him where he sat

  On Macey’s back verandah

  In his dazzling suit and hat,

  With a glass of tea beside him,

  And – sometimes – Macey’s cat.

  We listened to the gossip

  Inside the barber’s shop.

  Some said he was a gambler,

  Some said he was a cop,

  And oaths were sworn and bets were laid

  On just how long he’d stop.

  We eavesdropped on the talk

  Outside the General Store.

  They marvelled at his manicure

  And at the clothes he wore.

  Whoever did his laundry?

  What was that cricket bat for?

  In time the summer ended;
/>   The rains began to fall;

  Moss clung to the houses

  And creepers covered all.

  The river was a torrent

  And the grass grew eight feet tall

  And still he lived among us

  And continued to amaze,

  With his quick, explosive actions,

  And his steady brainy gaze;

  Though he gave no thought to wages,

  And he never looked for praise.

  And he showed us how to wrestle,

  And he taught us how to dive,

  And he saved us from the wild bees –

  We had blundered on a hive –

  When he walloped it to safety

  With a perfect cover drive.

  He delivered Mrs Foster’s fourth,

  When Doc Gains fell down drunk.

  (The doctor diagnosed himself:

  ‘I’m drunker than a skunk!’)

  Then Captain Jim took care of him,

  And tucked him in his bunk.

  At Christmas, when a touring troupe

  Arrived to do a show,

  And the tenor caught a fever

  And it was touch-and-go,

  Who was it calmly took his place?

  Well, I expect you know

  And so the seasons passed,

  And the months became a year,

  And he saved us from a cheetah,

  And he bought us ginger beer,

  And he taught us how to make our own…

  And when to interfere.

  He said: the world’s a puzzle,

  A game of keys and locks;

  A mirror in a mirror,

  A box within a box;

  And we must do the best we can

  And stand up to the shocks.

  He told us: that’s the moral,

  In a world without a plan,

  In a world without a meaning,

  Designed to puzzle man;

  You must do your intervening

  In the best way that you can.

  Some said he was a writer,

  And some, a diplomat;

  A traveller, spy, geologist,

  And various things like that.

  We said he was a cricketer;

  How else explain the bat?

  ‘You’d been on tour,’ said little Frank.

  ‘And scored a ton,’ said Joe.

  ‘And when the boat returned to home,’

  Said I, ‘you didn’t go.’

  But when we asked him was it true,

  He said, ‘Well… yes and no.’

  And he built a bridge that summer,

  And he made a mighty kite,

  And he saved us from the axeman,

  Who was ‘axing’ for a fight,

  And he beat the Mayor at poker,

  And he caught quail in the night.

  He read the weeks-old papers,

  And played the gramophone,

  And climbed the hills above the town,

  And watched the sky alone,

  And taught the barber’s daughter chess

  (who’s now your Auntie Joan).

  Then, one evening in September,

  As we sat up on the pier,

  With our mango-chutney sandwiches

  And home-made ginger beer,

  And our Steamboat Billy comics…

  We saw him disappear.

  In his suit of gleaming white

  And his loaded-up canoe,

  He passed quickly out of sight,

  There was nothing we could do,

  He had paid his bill at Macey’s;

  And he took the cockatoo.

  Well, we shouted from the quayside

  And we ran along the bank,

  And scrambled in the mangroves,

  Delayed by little Frank;

  But he was gone for evermore,

  And left behind… a blank

  Yet not quite a blank, perhaps,

  For he did leave us a note

  And some marbles (c/o Macey’s),

  And this is what he wrote:

  ‘Watch out for life’s crocodiles,

  And try to stay afloat.’

  Why he came remained a mystery,

  Why he left us, no one knows,

  But his talents were amazing

  (From his eyebrows to his toes!),

  And though it’s now all history,

  Still his reputation grows:

  The voice of Nelson Eddy,

  The dash of Errol Flynn,

  The brains of Albert Einstein,

  The speed of Rin Tin Tin,

  The cover drive of Bradman,

  The pluck of Gunga Din

  That’s how we have remembered,

  As the years grow dim

  And life slips slowly by

  On the wide world’s rim,

  The man who matched them all:

  And his name was Captain Jim.

  Now little Frank is bigger,

  And Bertie’s married Joan,

  And Joe’s become an engineer

  With ‘Wireless-Telephone’,

  And I tell bedtime stories

  To children of my own.

  One final thing, before I go

  (I heard your mother call);

  A few years back, it must have been,

  When you were both quite small,

  I bought some cigarette cards

  At the Monday Market Stall.

  Woodbine’s Famous Cricketers,

  Fifty in the set;

  They were faded, creased and dog-eared,

  Badly stained with dust and sweat;

  Yet there was a face among them

  That I never could forget

  It was him all right, I’d swear it;

  It was him without a doubt,

  With his bat raised in a flourish

  Letting go a mighty clout.

  ‘Captain James Fitz… (blur),’ it stated:

  ‘Four-forty-nine not out.’

  The Goals of Bingo Boot

  The fans in the stands are silent

  You could hear the fall of a pin

  For the fabulous flame just ended

  And the tale that’s about to begin.

  In nineteen hundred and twenty-two

  A little boy was born

  His baby cot was second-hand

  His baby shawl was torn.

  He had no teeth or teddy bear

  His hair was incomplete

  But he was the possessor of

  The most amazing feet.

  When Bingo Boot was two years old

  He chewed his little crust

  His poor old dad was on the dole

  His poor old pram was bust.

  Yet Bingo wasn’t worried

  Though his baby feet would itch

  And he could hardly wait till

  He could stroll – out on the pitch

  In school young Bingo languished

  At the bottom of the class

  His ball control was good

  It was exams he couldn’t pass.

  His little pals all shouted, ‘Foul!’

  And tended to agree

  if only teachers tested feet

  He’d get a Ph.D.

  And all the while in streets and parks

  On pitches large or small

  Without a proper pair of boots

  Sometimes without a ball!

  With tin cans in the clattering yard

  In weather cold or hot

  Young Bingo shimmied left and right

  And scored with every shot.

  His poor old mum scrubbed office floors

  His poor old gran did too

  The pantry was an empty place

  The rent was overdue.

  Then Bingo had a brainwave

  Shall I tell you what he did?

  He sold himself to the Arsenal

  For thirteen thousand quid

  The first game that he ever played

  At the t
ender age of ten

  Young Bingo just ran rings round

  Eleven baffled men.

  The fans of course went crazy

  The fans went, ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Ah!’

  While Bingo took the match ball home

  And bought his dad a car.

  And so the years went flying by

  In liniment and sweat

  Life was a great high-scoring game

  An ever-bulging net

  And Arsenal won the cup and league

  Six seasons on the trot

  All on account of Bingo Boot

  And his most amazing shot

  But now the storm clouds gathered

  And at last the whistle blew

  For the start of a really crucial game

  The battle of World War Two.

  It was England versus Germany

  And Bingo heard the call

  He marched away in his shooting boots

  To assist in Adolf’s fall.

  Then when the war was finished

  And he’d left the fusiliers

  Brave Bingo served the Gunners

  For another fifteen years.

  No net was ever empty

  No sheet was ever clean

  He scored more goals a season

  Than even Dixie Dean.

  His goals in life were modest though

  He had no wish to be

  Sir Bingo Boot of Camden Town

  Or Bingo O.B.E.

  He loved his wife and family

  His kiddies, Joyce and Jim,

  He never went to see the King

  The King came to see him.