Oh, GRANVILLE! I wish I had known What pleasure there lay in your talk, Then I should not be pining alone Where I once was the cock of the walk! But the sound of the Lobby-going bell These moth-eaten seats never hear, Never fill at the voice of a “Swell,” Or empty when dinner-time’s near! _Punch_, November 8, 1884. ―――― THE TORTURES OF TOURISTS. Yes, I am the monarch of all I survey, My right, at the Club, there is none to dispute; The whole of the papers are mine every day, And no one esteems me a bore or a brute, The waiters, too glad to have something to do, Are eager to wait on the one man in town; I get my pet chair, without strategy too, And my button-hole’s free from the finger of Brown. The Park is my own, I can loll as I will, I can sit where I wish, I can dress as I please; And at home or abroad, though a Londoner still, I, with no one to censure, can live at my ease. No longer condemned in a whirl to exist, Nor my time in most senseless pursuits to employ, I pass the glad hours of the week as I’ll sit, And London, at last, to the full can enjoy. But go where I will, be my tasks what they may, As heedless of Fashion I linger at home, My thoughts ever dwell, both by night and by day, On my ill-advised friends who from happiness roam. Nor can I deny it is one of my joys To muse on the woes of that sorrowful band, As victims to heat, to extortion, and noise, They wander afar o’er the sea and the land. * * * * * As I dally awhile o’er my toast and the _Times_, I picture these tourists, for time ever pressed, Like spirits condemned, for most heinous of crimes, To forfeit for ever the semblance of rest; From foul-smelling places to towns fouler still, I see them dragged hither and thither away; Doomed mountains to climb, and spa waters to swill, To touts and to guides and to vergers a prey. I see them, deprived of the comforts they need, Diurnally grow more distraught and distress’d, And doom’d at hotels in succession to feed On food that they loathe, and can never digest. Whilst worse than all else, there is death in the air, And rumours the stoutest of hearts to appal, As each _Galignani_ increases the scare, And dread of the Cholera broods over all! And then when at night I retire to my bed―― To my own cosy bed in my big airy room―― I think of those friends who from London have fled To find on the coast of these islands their doom. For I see them condemned――for the heed that they pay To Fashion’s decrees――in a cupboard to sleep, Where the lodging-house flea works its merciless way, And causes its victims long vigil to keep.