This memoir is about Mummy’s younger years. From early childhood, and well into her adult life, she was lovely, gracious and very intelligent. Kenneth Robinson was a Dartmouth English professor and family friend of her parents who admired young Alicia (Mummy). Using his literary confidence he expressed his admiration of her through a number of poems, a practice more socially common in the early 20th century.
Marmaduke Bangs was a super-human,
Envied by men and pursued by women.
Handsome, dashing, and twenty-five,
As yet he’d taken no maid to wive.
Princeling, paragon, beau-ideal,
He had fifty millions in U. S. Steel,
With another fifty (so said his doters)
Soundly invested in General Motors.
The rest of the competence that was his
Was in consols, whatever a consol is!
Marmaduke Bangs owned nine Rolls-Royces
With five Hispanos for second choices,
Isottas and Packards by the dozen,
A Renault he loaned to his poor lame cousin,
And several Lincolns for muddy weather –
Though he seldom went out in them all together.
Marmaduke Bangs lived everywhere:
He’d a house in Curzon Street, Mayfair,
A Paris flat in the best location
Where he went in Spring for his Spring vacation.
He owned two yachts and a country house
In Scotland handy for shooting grouse,
And villas in all the well-known plages,
Complete with tennis courts and garages.
Marmaduke had on his personal staff
Twenty-one valets and a half,
A boy for boots and an extra dresser,
A changer of studs and a trousers presser,
With a secretary for each known reason;
Add chauffeurs, butlers, and groom to season!
Marmaduke Bangs was both deep and clever.
He was up on everything, you could never
Ask him a question, however subtle,
Like who invented the first coal scuttle?
Or who was Socrates’ favorite dancer?
That Marmaduke Bangs didn’t know the answer.
He could tell the ablative from the dative,
He spoke twelve languages like a native,
He shone at tennis, at golf, at polo,
Was great at bridge, he could sing a solo,
And even (I give you my word for that)
He could take a rabbit out of a hat.
(If he’s lacking up to the present time
In my own considerable gift for rhyme.
That is his largest mis-connection
With total and absolute perfection.)
Hold! Lest our search for truth be foiled,
He had one fault more. He was slightly spoiled,
Though not incurably, understand!
He needed the touch of a woman’s hand.
Toppled over into the gutters,
Seized with the fainting and the flutters,
While mothers knelt at their bedsides nightly
(After anointing their temples lightly
With costly Parisian toilet waters)
And prayed that he’d notice their maiden daughters.
But non, as yet, for her pains and pangs,
Had won the heart of Marmaduke Bangs.
Marmaduke Bangs on the night in question,
Suffered from mental indigestion.
He stood in the doorway, idly glancing
Here and there at the people dancing,
Dewy maidens with eyes beseeching
Hovered around within easy reaching,
But something, somewhere, had failed of clicking,
Marmaduke Bangs wouldn’t start in picking.
He yawned, he nodded, he all by snored;
‘Twas evident Marmaduke Bangs was bored.
So the whisper ran like the voice of doom
From side to side of that rich ball-room,
Caught, repeated, and underscored:
“Have you heard about Marmaduke Bangs? He’s bored!”
Oh, the dismay and the agitation,
The hopelessness of the situation!
Picture that evening gone to ruin,
Oh, what a state was that hapless crew in!
Women staggered and kicked their trains out,
And men made ready to blow their brains out.
Meanwhile Marmaduke glowered and pondered.
“Why don’t they [lease me to-night?” he wondered.
“I've got no heart for the lights and laughter;
In short, I feel like the third day after.
I'm weary of girls and I'm here confessing
I'm wearier still of the way they're dressing.”
He paused. Then, lighting a fresh Abdullah,
Our hero soliloquized on color.
“Why do they wear the shades they do
Of green and yellow and pink and blue?
Whenever a girl in green goes by,
It gives me a cast in my left eye;
And pink has caused from my earliest youth
A badly impacted wisdom tooth.
Yellow makes both my arches quiver
And brings on cirrhosis of the liver,
While blue is a shade that lays me low
With, all together or in a row,
Forty or fifty dread diseases
Whose symptoms are temperature and sneezes.
I'll get my had and be off,” he said,
“Find a good book and go to bed.”
And then there burst on his dazzled sight
Alicia, glimmering, all in white.
Her presence there was a just rebuke
To the callous heart of Marmaduke.
He gasped, he tottered, he dropped his hat,
He grabbed somebody and cried, “Who is that?
Who's that? No, I don't mean him, you blight,
Not the orchestra leader. That girl in white!”
Gone in a flash was the sullen frown
As Marmaduke shouted, “That girl! That gown!”
Oh, the sweet relief, like a cool breeze ending
A day of heat, to those poor souls bending
Under the weight of his disapproval
That a moment since had seemed past removal.
What a cry went up from the dancing floor:
“Marmaduke Bangs is himself once more!”
And Marmaduke Bangs was a re-born creature.
Joy glowed bright in his every feature.
His face transformed by the rapt look on it,
He promptly moved to the girl who'd done it,
And said, with a frank and manly glance,
“My name is Bangs. Would you care to dance?”
As they moved away to the music's beat
All Marmaduke's millions were at her feet,
His yachts, his motors, his whole possession,
He listed the items in full succession.
And last he offered his personal staff,
His twenty-one valets and a half,
His boy for boots and his extra dresser,
His changer of studs and his trousers presser.
“These shall be yours when we wed,” quoth he,
“But I ask one favor – that you'll agree
Out of all our millions, our dozen dozen
To lay one aside for my poor lame cousin.”
She said, with a laugh like bubbling water,
“Let's make it a million and a quarter.”
Alicia, five years old, 1915
Although quite long, still very nice!