What Anthony Blanche Said to Me at Tea Time

with insincere apologies to Evelyn Waugh

My dear poetaster, you’re such a naïf!
You hardly know what goes on in the ballrooms,
and you vow that no matter how low you might sink
into scholarly depths, you shall never wear tweed.
You walk like a schoolgirl but you talk like a jobless
old codger—I say, how can one be so cobbled
together from parts so disparate? I s’pose
it’s your parentage (known to be quite undesirable)
that’s imbued your young blood with these unwholesome ways;
why, you’d be a petty criminal thing
even were you the Patriarch of Moscow himself—
and I daresay you’d have a much easier time
indulging your pickpocket impulses then.
Little lady, you must take assiduous care
that you never suppress your Byronic compulsions:
such denial can only distort and obsess,
and the next thing you know you’ll be dying of charm
just like dear old Charles Ryder (you have seen, I’m sure,
his preposterous pictures of jungles and ruins).
Anyway… I must go now, to dine with m’tutor.
Don’t forget my advice—but for God’s sake don’t take it!

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