Harry Roseland, American
Charles Couldn’t Decide What To Give Mildred For Christmas: Another Diamond Necklace, Or That Divorce She’d Been Dropping Hints About?, 1915
Oil on canvas
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (archived if necessary), here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here (archived if necessary), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page.
/// They don’t face their Yule tree Christmas Morning,
(which they’d taken scant time in adorning).
Since the baby was born
Clarence spent every morn
heaping scorn on his wife without warning.
/// Though his wife remained proper and prim,
Clarence sat far away, looking grim.
Her good name he’d reviled
since he first saw the child;
it did not, he declared, look like him.
/// Anne denied his claims— ‘twas of no use.
She was sick of her husband’s abuse.
Their religion, of course,
did not sanction divorce.
For today, a brief holiday “truce.”
/// Despite being suspicious and mean,
Clarence will not this day “make a scene.”
He’d display “proper form”
but he couldn’t feel warm;
his cold hatred would stay evergreen.
/// All the newborns on his side are hairy,
(to the point that a few have been scary).
But because little Hugo
had no trace of lanugo,
Clarence, of Anne’s denials, was wary.
/// To poor Anne he was not being fair
for, in fact, Clarence was Hugo’s père.
What the boy’s mother did
was to “de-fuzz” the kid
by, in secret, applying some Nair.
/// Any love for his wife had long dulled.
Divorce nixed; other options he mulled.
Wedding vows he’d revoke.
Then a swift fatal stroke,
ended plans to have marriage annulled.
/// There are miracles this season brings
to the souls who believe in such things.
From the tree chimed a bell.
To the floor Clarence fell.
There he died, (but won’t get angel wings).