Lady Hyacinth Abroad
If I’m ever to show my face in society again
I’ve got to find a new cause of my own, and quickly!
Come, come, any ideas?
Daisy Greville has the old
Lady Sitwell has the blind
And the fund for sailors’ widows?
That’s the two of them combined
Night school for the nervous?
Lady Beach and Margaret Guest
Crutches for the crippled?
That was Elsie Pond’s bequest
Wayward women?
Daisy Greville
Who’s behind disfigured men?
Daisy Greville
And the deaf?
Don’t tell me–it’s Greville yet again
Everyone’s got something
Can’t you see why I’m bereft?
I want to do some good, but what the devil’s left?
What the devil’s left?
If I may, your Ladyship
One hears about such terrible poverty in Egypt these days
Egypt
Land of the Pharaohs and of Moses the Israelite
Home to the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx
That’s it!
We’ll populate an orphanage in Cairo
With foundlings from the reeds along the Nile
To watch a creature grow, to swaddle it and know
The joy of its pathetic little smile
Its little smile
The news will travel soon enough to London
To London
Our selflessness will meet with great acclaim
Huzzah!
The sniping will be stilled
And the empire will be filled
With homes for bastard children in my name
All aboard the Luxor express to Cairo!
And off she went. What I’d failed to tell
Her was that a violent uprising against the empire was imminent
And no British citizen was considered safe
So you can imagine my surprise
When Lady Hyacinth returned to London, quite unharmed
Oh, where will my largesse be truly appreciated?
I need a place so low that hope itself has been abandoned!
You’ve heard, of course, of the untouchables in India?
India
Land of Hindus and Muslims, of tamarind and saffron
Exotic and unknowable
That’s it!
We’ll find ourselves some lepers in the Punjab
The hopeless and the wretched and the cursed
Forgotten and unblessed
Unblessed
I’ll take them to my breast
Your breast
If Daisy Greville doesn’t get there first
When we arrive, they’ll hobble out to greet us
Hello there
Their toothless grins would melt a heart of stone
Ahh
And every dilettante
Will envy me and want
A colony of lepers of her own
Now, not a word to even your mothers till we leave, although–
Come to think of it, what is the point of helping others unless you let the whole world know?
Call the Times of London!
And off she went
I’d neglected to mention the malaria pandemic in the Punjab
A bit of insurance, in case leprosy itself failed to prove contagious
So you can imagine my shock when Lady Hyacinth
Returned to London in record time, quite the picture of health
I don’t suppose you’d be willing to penetrate the jungle of deepest, darkest Africa
Africa
From Zululand to Yoruba, home of proud warriors
Their naked torsos rippling in the firelight!
We’ll civilize a village in the jungle
The jungle
It can’t take long to learn their mother tongue
Not long then
Of words, they have but six
And five of them are clicks
And all of them are different words for dung
And can’t you see their frightful painted faces
Their faces
They’ll teach us how to swing from vine to vine
From vine to vine to vine
It’s Daisy Greville’s loss
She’ll never come across
A tribe of backward natives worse than mine
The Hottentots and Pygmies may appall us
But even they are part of God’s design
Ahhh
We bid you all goodbye
Goodbye
Let all of London try
To find a tribe of natives worse than mine
Charity toward others is divine
Divine, divine, divine, divine, charity is divine