[John Whitworth]

No. 2779: answering back

You are invited to submit Maud’s reply to Tennyson (16 lines maximum). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 3 January.

This is another one I'd swear is a repeat.

[Gail White]

Sounds wonderful. I edited a whole book of "reply poems" once, but nobody thought about Maud.

[Martin Parker]

I remember Joyce Grenfell doing this one, though not in the Spectator.

Here is my own rapid first draft --

On the last of our joint horticultural trips
I contracted, I'm sorry to tell,
both black spot and mildew plus rose-mite and thrips
and my stockings got laddered as well.

So its all your own fault that I'll not be your guest
and that Nature's once bounteous charm
I can now only view with reluctance, at best,
and a mounting degree of alarm.

For my mildew smells rank and my rose-mite now stings
and I finally see what is true --
that my garden is full of some unwelcome things,
the least welcome of which being you.

So your now-garden-phobic systemic-sprayed Maud
says that though you may temptingly coo
that the sweet "woodbine's spices are wafted abroad"
she wishes that you were there too.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Come into my kitchen, Lord Tennyson;
I’ve seen how you give me the eyeball.
I’m boiling a stew of fine venison.
Relax, and I’ll mix you a highball.

It is midnight, and done is the dance;
A draught from my cup makes you drowsy.
You have urges to get in the pants
Of maidens like me, slightly frowsy.

You think I’m a sexual thriller;
But Alf, I am virginally chaste.
Why, in fact I’m a serial killer
With cannibalistical tastes.

You entered with visions of wooing,
But now that your breathing has ceased;
I will soon have your body a-stewing,
And you’ll make a delectable feast.


(I must admit that I have always been more of a fan of that other British Alfred, Alfred Hitchcock.)

[George Simmers]

So should this be just a generalised refusal to go into a garden?
Tennyson's poem (which I think is brilliant) is a complex psychodrama. Writing a response from his Maud would be difficult, maybe, but not impossible.

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by George Simmers

So should this be just a generalised refusal to go into a garden?

Actually, I imagine the whole poem is available. For instance, the lady might reasonably resent his description of her face as "icily regular, splendidly null".

[Ann Drysdale]

This is the Joyce Grenfell version that Martin mentioned.

Maud won't come into the garden.
Maud is compelled to state
Though you stand for hours
In among the flowers
Down by the garden gate.
Maud won't come into the garden.
Sing to her as you may -
Maud says she begs your pardon
But she wasn't born yesterday.

Maud's not coming into the garden
Thanking you just the same.
Though she looks so pure
You can be quite sure
She's onto your little game.
Maud knows she's being damping -
(And how damp you already must be)
But Maudie is now decamping
To her lovely hot-water B.


Written by Joyce herself and her cousin,Nicholas Phipps, for a review "Penny Plain" in 1951.

[Martin Parker]

I suspect that Lucy V. is expecting pieces with a likely majority appeal -- and that means garden invitations. But what she may get from more widely read Sphericals is anybody's guess, of course, and well worth waiting for!

Ann, Thanks for finding the Joyce Grenfell piece. My own copy seems to be woefully misfiled and currently beyond recall. I recently found my Collected Betjeman among my wife's cookery books -- a result of having lent the house to friends, I like to think; but almost certainly an aberration all of my own increasingly addling brain's making.

[Brian Allgar]

“Come into the garden, Maud” -
Are you out of your minuscule mind?
“The black bat has flown”, “Spices wafted abroad” ...
Such drivel were better unsigned.
Those lines may have scored with a half-witted bawd,
But I’m not a girl of the kind
To dally with poets in gardens - dear Lord!
Do you think I am stupid or blind?

I know what you’re after, you’re all just the same;
You poets are lechers and ninnies.
Do I look like a girl who’d become easy game,
Or who hasn’t the faintest what sin is?
A lady to lead to your garden of shame
Like one of those poppets of Prinny’s?
So “No” is the answer, you’ve picked the wrong name -
Unless you’ve a couple of guineas.

(I only posted this so early so that I could allow myself to read the others. Highly entertaining, Martin and Douglas - and Joyce too, come to that.)

[Chris O'Carroll]

Originally Posted by Gail White

Actually, I imagine the whole poem is available. For instance, the lady might reasonably resent his description of her face as "icily regular, splendidly null".

The judge might take the stickler's position that Maud can reply only to those portions of the work that are addressed to her. But she can presumably reply to apostrophe, and if she has that superpower, then it's probably OK to situate her in an imaginary realm where she has omniscient awareness of the whole poem.