The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [19]
Pushed early down from Oxford,
With his trousers ’round his ankles,
Came young R. M. Trilipush
And he’ll admit the mem’ry rankles.
Well, off he went to Egypt
Where he was meant to fight the Kaiser,
But after several years at war
He left the Kaiser none the wiser.
Instead he sweated in the Orient
Upon his knees and hands.
(Now, try not to be prurient,
I mean that he was digging in the sands!)
He dug and dug with another limey
Until, as Boche guns assailed them,
Those two Brits, they shouted “Blimey!”
For their spades had sure not failed them.
[“Unlike ours!” I recall CCF bellowing at this point, referring to, I believe, some waiters who were slow in fetching him another drink. “Oh, Daddy, really,” my Margaret gently chided him, her knees pulled up under her chin.]
What they found that day
All of us surely know
It keeps our wives awake at night
And makes our (ahem!) imaginations grow.
They found terrific hieroglyphics,
The writings of some Pharaoh,
Which Pushy published in plain English,
And thrilled the market to its marrow.
[At his club, I had corrected Mitchell several times, explaining with increasing frustration that hieroglyphic was an adjective and hieroglyph the noun, and that his use of the term Pharaoh for an Egyptian king prior to the XVIIIth or XIXth Dynasty was thoroughly anachronistic and, frankly, grated on my ear. The XIIIth-Dynasty Atum-hadu would have been referred to as “King” not by the Hebraicised metonymical device per-o. I repeated this easily a dozen times as silver shaker after silver shaker came to the table, filled (the waiter loudly announced each time, for the benefit of whom I cannot say) with “your iced tea, Mr. Mitchell!” That said, his use of hieroglyphic when he meant to say hieroglyph I now grudgingly acknowledge as a possible debt to rhyming.]
Well, old R. M. Trilipush made some money and his name,
And found across the pond a place to build his worldly fame.
Harvard gave him fresh-faced youths to teach, and then he met a gal,
And now the rest of us know all too well he’s CCF’s best pal!
So back to the Nile our Pushy goes with Margaret’s heart in tow
As well as Chester’s cash,
[music stops, Kendall shouts the words]
“And mine, too! And mine, too!”
“And mine, too! And mine, too!”
[pointing to guests who, like him, had invested in Hand-of-Atum]
For he sure came to implore us,
And for an hour or so did bore us,
But now, by Isis, Ra, and Horus,
Ol’ Pushy will reward us!
[I should discuss the word implore for, if it was not used simply to make the Mitchells’ task of rhyming more manageable, it merits clarification. To say the least. I will come back to this point, as to just who was imploring whom.]
By Isis, Ra, and Horus,
Ol’ Pushy will reward us!
The crowd soon mastered this couplet and chanted it for some exhilarating minutes while, to my infinitely deeper pleasure, Margaret glowed and glittered under the full moon splashing through the ballroom’s glass ceiling, the silver light licking her blue and sparkling eyelids (a Cleopatran effect she and Inge had devised for the evening), and whether she had fallen asleep or was merely savouring the entertainment behind closed eyes, her beauty was then, as always, overwhelming. I felt at that instant as if I had achieved everything I ever dreamt of. A paradox, to be sure, as I had not yet set off on this expedition. I cradled her delicate, pliant hand in mine, each of her long, slender fingers articulated