CACOËTHES SCRIBENDI
Vanity Fair (UK) (January 12, 1905)
(Complaints are being made in the papers of the modern tendency of the titled lady amateur to write works of fiction.)
LADY Clara Vere de Vere,
I do not think a lot of you:
I’ll slate your novel all I know,
If it is sent me to review.
The public looks elsewhere for books,
Your services are not required:
The daughter of a hundred earls,
You are not one to be desired.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Typewriters stand within your hall:
The stain of ink is on your brow,
The pile of sheets is waxing tall.
You hold your course without remorse:
The Public you would turn from worth
To works whose only merit is
Their authoress’s noble birth.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You get strange fancies in your head:
Lo, thrice your branching limes have blown,
And still your book remains unread.
You lack the skill to charm or thrill,
Yet, sickening of this weird disease,
You waste your valuable time,
And needs must play such pranks as these.
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
In vain your arduous toil is spent:
Critics in these un-Feudal days
Smile at the claims of long descent.
No book can be, it seems to me,
Worth reading if it is not good:
Grammar is more than coronets,
And simple style than Norman blood.
Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If time be heavy on your hands,
Is there no parish magazine
To meet your fictional demands?
Oh, give the vicar all your stuff,
If ink you feel that you must shed:
And leave the market free for those
Who write to earn their daily bread.