Thomas Brooks, English
“Very Funny, Grandma. No Seriously, Everybody. I Need a Location. OTHER Than an Orgy.” 1852
Oil on canvas
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/// “She lov’d him for the dangers he had pass’d” —*
two years (around the world) before the mast.
He told his tales, displayed his trunk
with turtle, bird, and foreign junk,
but now he’s home in England, safe at last.
/// The stories that this sailor boy relayed
have charmed the family of the blue-eyed maid,
who’d waited for her erstwhile swain
until he sailed back home again.
A marriage soon? Depends. Had he been paid?
/// “…and although our ship harbored in France,
we young swabs had no time for romance.
Still, when duties were done
we could make time for fun.
‘Twas in Lapland they taught me this dance!”
/// Her brothers and her younger cousins played
with shells and beads the sailor had displayed.
The turtle’s stench and parrot’s sneezes
were signs of two unknown diseases
which ought to have, this trusting group, dismayed.
*According to an online post from Christie’s, an artist’s label attached to the reverse of this painting says “Relating the perils of a first long/cruise –/” followed by the slightly altered quote from Act 1, Scene 3 of Othello: “She love’d him for the dangers he had pass’d.” (Spoken originally in the first person by the Moor, explaining to her father and others how he had wooed Desdemona.)