She drew from her garter a dear little dagger …

Letters

Vol. 17 No. 3 · 9 February 1995

From Kevin Laffan

It was not a spirited young lady who ‘sighed for a canter after cattle’, as John Bayley asserts in his review of Peter Taylor’s novel (LRB, 12 January), but a young man who had lost his lady love in a cattle stampede. I cannot recall who wrote the monologue but it was usually recited by a young man in white tie and tails appearing in a revue (I performed it myself at army camps during the war). The opening lines are:

It’s all very well to write revues
To carry umbrellas and keep dry shoes
To say what everyone’s saying here
And wear what everyone else must wear.
But tonight I’m sick of the whole affair
I want free life and I want fresh air …

The young man goes on to relate how much he loved Lasca, though it turns out that she was damn jealous too!

Once when I made her jealous for fun
At something I’d whispered or looked or done
One Sunday in San Antonio
To a glorious girl from the Alamo
She drew from her garter a dear little dagger
And, sting of a wasp, it made me stagger.

However, Lasca is very contrite, binds the wound with her neckerchief and throws herself on top of the reciter to save his life when they are hiding behind the corpse of his horse during a cattle stampede. The monologue ends:

And half of my heart lies buried there
In Texas down by the Rio Grande.

Kevin Laffan
London SW19

Vol. 17 No. 5 · 9 March 1995

From Brian Donaghey

May I just add a supplement to Kevin Laffan’s letter (9 February) about the poem ‘Lasca’? It was written by a minor poet named Duprez late last century, and was very popular as a recitation piece, not only in the last war, as performed by Mr Laffan, but long before that. It may have been heard in the trenches during the Great War, since it was issued on an acoustically recorded disc, on the Zonophone label. Judging from the catalogue number (X-41042) it was probably first issued in single-sided form in 1910. My own double-sided copy (where ‘Lasca’ is backed up by ‘Gunga Din’, catalogue no X-41043), issued in Australia on the same label in a pressing made by the Gramophone Co of Sydney, must date from 1920 or after. Inappropriately for ‘Lasca’, though suitably enough for ‘Gunga Din’, the reciter, Lyn Harding, uses quite a marked Northern accent.

Incidentally, it is not certain in the poem that they are sheltering behind the corpse of the horse during the stampede. The reciter proposes the action of dismounting, and shooting the horse in order to do so, but before he can act, the horse stumbles and throws them off. It is in this exposed position that Lasca makes her sacrifice for her lover.

In John Bayley’s review of Peter Taylor’s novel there is discussion of the relative merits of the variants in the line: ‘She drew from her bosom / garter a dear little dagger.’ On the record the reciter definitely says ‘garter’. It is also evident that the final lines Laffan quotes in his letter are variant from the recorded version. In that version the poem ends with a question:

I gouged out a grave a few feet deep,
And there in earth’s arms I laid her to sleep.
And I wonder why I do not care
For things that are, like the things that were:
Does half my heart lie buried there,
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande?

Brian Donaghey
English Department