Cab Horse on Parnassus

AN UNREPENTANT VICTORIAN (342 pp.] --Derek Hudson--Macmillion ($3.50).

Queen Victoria was leaving Cambridge House in London one day in 1850 when a lunatic gave her a whack on the head with a cane, raising a nasty bruise. Popular

Poet Martin Farquhar Tupper heard the shocking news and immediately produced a suitable poem: 0 dastard! Thus to strike that brow

Anointed and so fair;

0 brave young Queen! that bruise is

now The brightest jewel there.

The following day, Tupper's loyal outcry was in the hands of a job printer, and within 48 hours 100 copies were on their way to the Queen, to Tupper's friends and to newspapers in Britain and the U.S.

By Return Mail. The Edgar Guest of Victorian England, Tupper could produce verse for any occasion, and with facility that was the wonder of his time. He was tipped out of a carriage once, and promptly turned out a verse on the moral lessons to be learned in carriage accidents ("0 trials and troubles and losses in life!/ What are ye but simples to strengthen my soul?"). Asked to compose an eclogue to be recited by the Queen's daughters at her birthday party, Tupper sent the lines by return mail. His practice of sending poems to the newspapers was not mere exhibitionism. It was also public relations for his magnum opus, Proverbial Philosophy, a galaxy of truisms dressed up in a slipslop rhythmic prose.

Tupper's shrewd self-advertising carried Proverbial Philosophy through 50 editions between 1838 and its last printing in 1880.

It sold nearly half a million copies in England, a million in the U.S. Typical Tupperisms:

On the untroubled mind: "Yea, there is no cosmetic like a holy conscience." On electricity: "Knowledge hath clipped the lightning's wings, and mewed it up for a purpose."

Figure of Fun. For a time Queen Victoria had a taste for Tupper's poetry. When the Princess Royal married Prince Frederick of Prussia, she commanded lyrics from Tupper, and ordered him to the palace to present the bride & groom with specially bound copies of Proverbial Philosophy. The bard got a private audience and passed the books direct from his own common paws into the royal hands. He was told it was an honor that had been done to only one other British writer--George III was once as gracious to Dr. Samuel Johnson. Americans were impressed with Tupper too. When he visited the U.S. in 1851, he dined with President Millard Fillmore at the White House and was introduced to members of the cabinet.

And yet the story told by Biographer Derek Hudson is a tragic one. Tupper had his success young. In the '60s the public outgrew him, and he became a figure of fun. As people began to snicker, other disasters struck him too. He lost his savings in speculations. His publishers went bankrupt and failed to pay him. His wife became an alcoholic and was out of her head for a time. His eldest son ran hugely into debt, was kicked out of the army, and almost broke Tupper's heart when he was found suffering from delirium tremens in a prostitute's lodgings. Another son was killed in an accident. Tupper himself, who died in 1889, at 79, lived out his last years on public doles and subscriptions raised among his friends.

Biographer Hudson skillfully knits the personal story of Martin Tupper with a fascinating study of the triumph, decline & fall of a literary mediocrity who held a position unique in the history of Anglo-American literature.

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