Some More Edith Sitwell Chinoiserie Poetry

Posted: May 17th, 2012 | No Comments »

A Chinois-style poem from Edith Sitwell first published in Chapbook, July 1920.

A few notes:

Bohea – a tea growing area in Fujian

Sir Joshua Jebb – who was a British army engineer in Canada and then designed some of Britain’s most famous prisons – not sure why he pops up here but he did have a lot of daughters as indicated

Joppa – the city now more commonly known as Jaffa in Israel

En famille – Edith Sitwell

In the early springtime after their tea,

Through the young fields of the

springing Bohea,

Jemima, Jocasta, Dina and Deb

Walked with their father

Sir Joshua Jebb –

An admiral red, whose only notion,

(A butterfly poised on a pigtailed ocean)

Is of the peruked sea whose swell

Breaks on the flowerless rocks of Hell.

Under the thin trees,

Deb and Dinah,

Jemima, Jocasta, walked, and finer

Their black hair seemed (flat-sleek to see)

Than the young leaves of the

springing Bohea;

Their cheeks were like

nutmeg-flowers when swells

The rain into foolish silver bells.

They said, “If the door you would

only slam,

Or if, Papa, you would once say “Damn” –

Instead of merely roaring “Avast”

Or boldly invoking the nautical Blast –

We should now stand

in the street of Hell

Watching siesta shutters that fell

With a noise like amber softly sliding;

Our moon-like glances through

these gliding

Would see at her table preened and set

Myrrhina sitting at her toilette

With eyelids closed as soft

as the breeze

That flows from gold flowers

on the incense-trees.

The Admiral said,

“You could never call –

I assure you it would not do at all!

She gets down from table

without saying “Please”,

Forgets her prayers and to cross her Ts,

In short, her scandalous reputation

Has shocked the whole of the

Hellish nation;

And every turbaned Chinoiserie,

With whom we should sip

our black Bohea,

Would stretch out her simian

fingers thin

To scratch you, my dears, like a

mandoline;

For Hell is just as properly proper

As Greenwich, or as, Bath, or Joppa!”

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