This week’s choice is “The Lost Spectacles” by an unknown author. I have chosen it for Rachel, who sometimes is able to find her glasses.
Amaz’d she stared, was for a moment dumb,
Anon
But quick exclaim’d, “Dear sir, I’m glad you’re come.
‘Tis six years since these glasses first were lost,
And I have miss’d ‘em to my poor eyes’ cost!”
Poem 445. The Lost Spectacles
A country curate, visiting his flock,
At old Rebecca’s cottage gave a knock.
“Good morrow, dame, I mean not any libel,
But in your dwelling have you got a Bible?”
“A Bible, sir?” exclaimed she in a rage,
“D’ye think I’ve turned a Pagan in my age?
Here, Judith, and run upstairs, my dear,
‘Tis in the drawer, be quick and bring it here.”
The girl return’d with Bible in a minute,
Not dreaming for a moment what was in it;
When lo! on opening it at parlor door,
Down fell her spectacles upon the floor.
Amaz’d she stared, was for a moment dumb,
But quick exclaim’d, “Dear sir, I’m glad you’re come.
‘Tis six years since these glasses first were lost,
And I have miss’d ‘em to my poor eyes’ cost!”
Then as the glasses to her nose she raised,
She closed the Bible—saying, “God be praised!”
This amusing little poem caught my eye as I was looking for a subject this week and I couldn’t resist it. It’s an entertaining story on the surface but also hints that old Rebecca may not be as devout a worshipper as the curate might have hoped.
The curate, making his rounds of the parish as Victorian clergymen were supposed to do, visits old Rebecca and asks her if she has a Bible. Taking umbrage at the implication of godlessness, she rather haughtily upbraids the curate and bids her daughter Judith to fetch it from its resting place in a drawer upstairs.
Judith returns quickly holding the holy book but as she enters the parlour where her mother and the clergyman are awaiting her, it opens and spills out the old lady’s spectacles which fall to the floor. The old lady is speechless for a moment and then makes a revealing admission: she has done without them for the last six years and they have presumably been lying within the old Bible all that time, the implication being that for all her protestations of faith, she is less than assiduous in her study of the good book.
Unconscious of the irony of her words, she puts the glasses on and then closes the Bible again, praising God as she does so.
I like the poem because it’s a simple one with a hidden message: Rebecca, who pretends to sanctity, betrays herself unconsciously when her spectacles turn up in her Bible. Anyone may betray their true nature inadvertently in the same way.
There are no performances of this poem online, which is a shame, and the author is unknown which reminds me of Michael Flanders’s side comment in one of his monologues: “This chap Anon is writing some perfectly lovely stuff but no one seems to know who his agent is.”
I’ve dedicated this choice to Rachel, who frequently mislays her glasses or the case where they live but whose true nature is on display for all to see.
