[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".