Explore "The Babe, B. A" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
O bitter world, where one who longs To be recorded unforgiven, Bewitched and wild, is called a child Fit to be seen in any heaven. HOTCHPOTCH VERSES.
The Babe was a cynical old gentleman of twenty years of age, who played the banjo charmingly. In his less genial moments he spoke querulously of the monotony of the services of the Church of England, and of the hopeless respectability of M. Zola. His particular forte was dinner parties for six, skirt dancing and acting, and the performances of the duties of half-back at Rugby football. His dinner parties were selected with the utmost carelessness, his usual plan being to ask the first five people he met, provided he did not know them too intimately. With a wig of fair hair, hardly any rouge, and an ingénue dress, he was the image of Vesta Collins, and that graceful young lady might have practised before him, as before a mirror. But far the most remarkable point about the Babe, considering his outward appearance and other tastes, was his brilliance as a Rugby football player.