Nothing to Eat

Mrs. Merdle Discourseth of the necessity of good Wine and other Matters

   So while we are eating the fruits of the vine,   Don’t let us forget such a health giving juice,   As Champagne, or Sherbet, or other good wine,   Nor sin by neglecting its ‘temperate use.’   Now Sherbet, my husband extols to the skies,   With me though, my stomach is weak and won’t bear it:   And Sherry, though sometimes affecting my eyes,   A bottle with pleasure we’ll open and share it.   Ha, ha, well-a-day—what a queer world to live in,   If one were contented on little to dine,   We need not be longing another to be in,   Where women, they tell us, exist without wine;   Where husbands are happy and women content;   Where dresses, though gauzy, are fit for the street;   Where no one is wretched with purses unbent,   With nothing to wear and nothing to eat.   Where women no longer are treated la Turk,   Where husbands descended from Saxon or Norman,   For women when sickly are willing to work,   And not long for Utah and pleasures la Mormon—   Where men freely marry and live with their wives,   And not live as you do, mon Colonel, so single.   Such wretched and dinnerless bachelor lives;   You don’t know the pleasure there is in the tingle   Of ears pricked by lectures, la curtain, au Caudle,   Or noise of young Dinewells beginning to toddle;   While plodding all day with your paper and quills,   And copy, and proof sheets, and work for the printer,   Pray what do you know of the housekeeper’s bills,   And other such ‘pleasures of hope’ for the winter?   You men, selfish creatures, think all of the care   Of living and keeping yourselves in existence,   Is due to your own daily labor, and share,   From breakfast to dinner of business persistance;   While woman is either a plaything or drudge,   According to station of wealth or position,   Which men help along with a word or a nudge   To heaven high up or low down to perdition.   But what was I saying of a world free from care,   Of eating and drinking and dresses to wear?   Where women by husbands are never tormented,   And never asked money where husbands dissented?   And never see others, their rivals, in fashion ahead,   And never have doctors—a woman’s great dread—   And nothing, I hope, like my own indigestion,   To torment and starve them, as this one does me,   And keep them from sipping—forgive the suggestion—   The nectar etherial they drink for their tea.

Mrs. Merdle Suggesteth that Dinner being finished, the Gentlement will Smoke. In the meantime, she Discourseth

   “Now Merdle—now Colonel—I know you are waiting.   And thinking my talking to eating’s a bar,   Still hoping, by tasting, my appetite sating,   Will give you the license to smoke a cigar.   Well then, I’ve done now, and hope too you’ve dined,   As well as down town where you dine for a shilling,   At Taylor’s, or Thompson’s, or one of the kind,   Where mortals are flocking each day for their filling;   Or else at the Astor where bachelors quarter,   Where port holes for windows give light to the room,   Far out of the region of Eve’s every daughter,   So high they are stuck up away toward the moon.   Though as for the ‘stuck up’ no walls built of brick,   Or granite, or marble, or dirty red sand,   Could stick up a man who himself’s but a stick,   An inch above where he would naturally stand.   To witness the truth of this final assertion,   I call you to witness the sticks at the door,   Where they make it a daily, a ‘manly’ diversion,   To ogle each woman, and sometimes do more,   Who passes the hotel that’s named by a saint,   Where boorish bad manners give room for complaint.   Where idlers and loafers, with gamblers a few,   Make up for the nonce the St. Nicholas crew.   The ‘outside barbarians,’ I freely confess,   Who ogle our faces and ogle our dress,   Who spit where we walk as dirty a puddle   As bipeds can make when their brains are ‘a muddle,’   Do not prove the inside is as dirty as they are,   Or else the gods help all the ladies who stay there.   Why any prefer in a hotel to stay,   Instead of a house of their choosing to own,   Is just to avoid all the trouble, they say,   That servants to give us are certainly prone,   I’m sure if a tyranny more terrible prevails,   In Austria or other despotic domain,   My memory where most certainly fails,   That servants and milliners over us gain,   Just here in New York, and the more is the pity,   Where Wood is the Mogul that governs the city.

Mrs. Merdle, having “Nibbled a Little” for two Hours at Dinner, retireth from the Table unsatisfied

   “Impatient—oh yes—just the way with you men!   I never have time to half finish my eating   Ere Merdle is done; such a fidget is then,   He’d starve me I think rather ‘n miss of a meeting   Where brokers preside o’er the fate of the stocks,   As Pales presided o’er shepherds and flocks.   Now while you are smoking—what nonsense and folly—   I’ll go to my room.—don’t say No, for I must—   Put on a new dress, with assistance of Molly,   And then with a little strong tea and a crust,   My strength I may hope for a walk will be able   As far as the gate, and a very short ride,   To give me a relish again for the table—   What else do we live for in this world beside?”

The Poet Moralizeth—He Discourseth to those who Gorge and Complain

   Oh! Kitty Malone—Mrs. Merdle ‘tis now—   Was there ever on earth than this, greater folly?   Still gorging, while groaning, and swearing a vow,   That yours is a case of most sad melancholy.   With table that Croesus never had but might covet,   You live but to eat and to eat ‘cause you love it;   And yet while you swallow great sirloins of meat   Complain like a beggar of nothing to eat.

He Discourseth of the Wherefore of Bachelorism

   “What else do we live for in this world beside?”   Alas! ‘t is the question of ten times a day,   That comes on the wind, or that floats on the tide,   And creeps in the houses where men go to pray.   What else do we live for than get such a wife   As this of the banker of our faint description?   What else is the end of our fashionable life   From which men escape as they would from conscription?   What else is the reason so few natives marry,   Than this, that extravagance leads on to ruin?   It is because few men are able to carry   The load of this baking and roasting and stewing,   Of buying and wasting extravagant meat,   Where women are dying of “nothing to eat;”    Where men in corruption so rapidly tending,   In morals and wealth in bankruptcy ending.   That forging and stealing and breaches of trust,   And ten thousand arts of the confidence game,   And follies uncounted of men “on a bust,”    Are follies and crimes of this age to our shame,   Till angels who witness the folly so wide   Extended from palace to farm-house and cot,   Might wonder if mortals life’s objects forgot,   Or Merdle’s position is man’s common lot?

He Discourseth of What some Mortals Live for

   “What else do they live for in this world beside?”   What else but for Kittys or one of the same,   Do mothers their daughters at schools give the touch   That leaves them to live as a wife but in name   While position and fashion they frantically clutch.   What else do they live for, our girls so refined,   So forward, precocious, and gifted at ten   They are flirting and courting and things of the kind,   That never came under our grandmother’s ken.   At fifteen so dressed up, and hooped up, I ween,   They’re mothers full often before they’re sixteen,   And fading and dowdy and sickly at twenty,   With one boy in trowsers and two girls in laces   Complaining of starving while dying of plenty   The fate is of ladies in fashionable places.

He Imploreth Mercy upon those condemned with fashionable folly to Marry, and Illustrateth their Condition

   Now heaven in mercy be kind to the wretch,   Who marries for money or fashion or folly;   He’d better accept of the noose of Jack Ketch   Than such a “help-meet;” or at once marry Dolly   The cook, or with Bridget, the maid of the broom;   With one he’d be sure to get coffee and meat,   And never hear whining of nothing to eat,   And ‘t other would make up his bed and his room;   And if he was blest with a child now and then,   As happens sometimes with your fashionable wives,   Who’re coupled to bipeds, in nature called men,   He’d need no insurance to warrant their lives;   And need no expense of a grand “bridal tour,”    Or visit each season at “watering places,”    Where fashion at people well known to be poor,   In money or station, will make ugly faces;   Where women, though married, with roues will flirt;   Where widows, though widows in fresh sable weeds,   Spread nets that entangle like old Nessus’ shirt   And finish with Burdell and Cunningham deeds;   Where daughters when fading are taken to spend   A month at the springs, or a week in salt water;   Where bachelors flirting on Ellen attend,   Are whispered by mamma, “engaged to my daughter.”

He Imploreth Merry for other Unfortunate Beings

   Now heaven in mercy be kind to the wretches   Who stay on the earth like this Mrs. Merdle!   More wretched than ever a wretch on the hurdle   Was drawn by all England’s official Jack Ketches;   More wretched, if can be, at church on a Sunday   A woman, who worships, than God, more her dress,   Would be if she heard or e’en thought Mrs. Grundy   Would sneer at the set of a bonnet or tress;   Or say that she thought Miss Freelove’s new pattern   Of laces, or collars, or yard flowing sleeves,   Looked more like the dress of a real Miss Slattern   And not “so becoming” ’s the first one of Eve’s.

He Discourseth of a Common Prayer

   Yet look at the thousands whose every day prayer,   Far more than their own or their neighbor’s salvation,   Absorbs every thought, every dream, and all care,   “To eat or to wear, is anything new in creation?”

He Discourseth of Trouble and Sorrow

   What else do they live for? They live but for this;   And nothing but this ever troubles their thinking;   Rich eating, rich dressing, and flirting’s their bliss,   And life’s better purposes constantly blinking.   Their life’s but a tissue of trouble and sorrow   Of what is the fashion or will be to-morrow.

He Moralizeth upon what a Day may Bring forth

   “To-morrow!” who’ll warrant to-morrow we’ll see?   Who’ll care the next day or day after for dinner?   Or what the next fashion of new dress will be?   Or who Mrs. Grundy will say is the winner?   Having reached Thirtysixthly, the Author is   about to Make the “Application,” and Pray   forgiveness, but concludes by remaining Incog.   “Who’ll care for, to-morrow, for this bit of scandal,   With malice prepense that a cynic has written?   (That’s what they will say when the poem they handle,   Who feel ‘tis themselves whom the mad dog has bitten;   And wish he was treated as dogs with the rabies   Are treated, to stop his unmannerly bark;   Or packed off to bed as you do naughty babies,   To sleep, or be frightened all alone in the dark.)   Who’ll care? why the author of this ugly poem—   He’ll care—for a reason—that all of you read it—   He’ll care for the cash you’ll give—Oh! how he needs it—   (Oh! what would you give, ladies dear, just to know him?—)   But that, by your leave, by the aid of the elf   The printer employs, he will keep to himself.   He knows, if you knew him, what fate he would meet;   At every table you’d give him—nothing to eat.   Excuse then, dear ladies, the author his shyness,   And accept his conge at the end of thisFINIS