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Jane Austen Society of Australia

Limerick Competition 1999
There was a young lady named Jane...

According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the limerick had its very beginnings in a kind of extemporised nonsense-verse sung by each member of a convivial party.

In introducing the winners of JASA’s Limerick Competition, therefore, I’d like to call attention to the appropriateness of the form itself to the present occasion, a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Jane Austen Society of Australia.

It has been suggested that the name derives from the chorus of an 18th century Irish soldiers’ song, Will you come up to Limerick? The origin of the limerick is unknown. The Shorter Oxford suggests 1898/1899 as the date of origin, in which case we should be celebrating the limerick’s centenary as well as our own 10th anniversary, but the Encyclopaedia Britannica assigns the earlier date of 1820 to the first collections of limericks in English. Edward Lear, who composed and illustrated those in his Book of Nonsense (1846) claimed to have gotten the idea from a nursery rhyme beginning ‘There was an old man of Tobago’. A typical example from Lear’s collection is this verse:

There was an Old Man who supposed
That the street door was partially closed;
But some very large rats
Ate his coats and his hats,
While that futile Old Gentleman dozed.

My own favourite among Lear’s limericks is probably the one that you all know well:

There was an old man with a beard
Who said, ‘It is just as I feared:
Two ducks and a hen,
Four larks and a wren
Have all made their nests in my beard’.

Like all other literary genres of the 18th century, the limerick is a poetic form with its own strict rules. First among these, which Lear and others duly observed, is, clearly, that a verse which is meant to be sung as a chorus must satisfy the demands of metrical accuracy; ie. it is important that an acceptable limerick, whatever its subject, should scan satisfactorily. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is very definite on this point: The limerick, says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, consists of five lines, usually rhyming aabba, and the metre is roughly anapestic, with two feet in the 3rd and 4th lines, and three feet in the others. However, some limerick-writers experimented with the form, Walter de la Mare among them. He came up with several variations, one of these being the double limerick. Among de la Mare’s best, I have a special favourite, which I’d like to share with you because it reads like a sub-plot from a novel by Fanny Burney or Jane Austen:

There was a young man in a hat and by came Miss B. in a bonnet;
He smiled when he looked at the latter, aye, and the roses upon it.
But when by and by,
As blue as the sky,
He detected her eye
‘Neath its brim, well, oh my,
He wished that fair cheek was well under his hat,
And his own half concealed in her bonnet.

Since I know that the Society’s members read widely and love literature, I thought it quite likely that an entry or two might come up with a double limerick. One came close to it – Marjorie Jones striking a personal note with an extra line in her entry on Mansfield Park:

A modest young lady named Price
Was ever so humble but nice;
When a charmer pursued her
And ardently wooed her
She put it all down to his vice -
(If only she’d asked my advice!)

Other rules gradually attached themselves over the years to the limerick, deriving more from practice than from prescription. These are: that a limerick should be popular in character, brief, humorous, often nonsensical and frequently ribald, crowded with improbable incident and brimming with innuendo, occasionally exploiting the anomalies of English spelling, or using the form for pithy observations upon serious philosophical concerns.

All these principles were taken into account when reading the entries to the competition. On consideration, some adaptation of the rules seemed in order. For example, since the limericks were to relate to the work of one of the most sensible and accurate writers in the English language, it seemed proper that ‘nonsense’ should be ruled out, unless of course it was called for by Austen’s text itself; as, for example, in the verbal contributions to the novels of such notable nitwits as Mr Woodhouse and Harriet Smith in Emma or Mrs Allen in Northanger Abbey. (As it turned out, all the entries without exception ignored mere nonsense and nitwittery.) Also, and again because of the care with which Jane Austen constructed her plots and characters, entries which treated her text with respect and accuracy were looked on with favour. This, I hasten to say, did not rule out humour, it only eliminated inaccuracy. For, since we are an Australian society (and not North American or British) ‘popular in character’ was taken to read ‘related in some way to our own experience’, ie. local or contemporary, or even Australian. Indeed, several entries, including the winning one (to which I will come later) used popular or Australian idiom to good effect. Some, interestingly, indicated to me that many of Jane Austen’s readers in the Society habitually compare her world with ours: for example, Pat Boland’s speculation on Jane Austen in Australia -

Had Jane Austen been born in Australia
would she have had success or failure
Would her pride turn to prejudice
Whilst she looked on incredulous
At the sight of the convicts’ behaviour.

or Shirley Byrne’s philosophical and moral comparison of Jane’s times with our own:

Through rose-coloured glasses we’re aided
To see Jane’s people paraded
Their behaviour’s fictitious
But oh! so delicious
How different from our world degraded.

You will agree that within the rules of the limerick as applied to this special case, there are plenty of possibilities for the limerick poet, and plenty of scope for the imagination. The entries that came in explored all such possibilities, and discovered some new and unexpected ones. However, a few entries failed to fulfil the basic requirement of accurate scansion, and so had to be eliminated at stage one – with much regret, I should add, because such entries, though they might have had a foot too few or a foot too many, were by no means short on humour or pithiness (and even occasionally on ribaldry).

A general survey showed that the great majority of the entries succinctly summarised the plots or sub-plots of the novels. Among these were notable entries by Shirley Byrne on Pride and Prejudice:

Naughty Lydia influenced Kitty
With tales of high times in the City
But Mr Bennet said ‘No
You are never to go
Until you’ve become wiser and witty’.

Hilary Rudden, also on Pride and Prejudice:

Dear Lizzie is everyone’s girl,
Her wit and her charm make us whirl.
Darcy feels he’s above her,
But can’t help but love her
Then knows he has captured a pearl.

And Marjorie Jones on Persuasion:

When Louisa fell on her head
They [all were] afraid she was dead
[When] Mary set up a wail
Captain Wentworth turned pale
But it all turned out well for dear Fred.

Also popular were character sketches as the subjects of limericks – ideal subjects since the limerick affords very little space and, as we know, Jane Austen herself went in for miniature painting in literature. Good examples included Pamela Whalan on Persuasive People:

Elizabeth Elliot was proud
Mary complained very loud
Sir Walter was vain
Mrs Clay sadly plain
And Wentworth stood out from the crowd.

And Christene Evans, also on Persuasion:

Sir Walter of Kellynch was vain
In fact, he was rather a pain
His actions were rash
He squandered his cash.
Though handsome, he hadn’t a brain.

Sometime the entries allowed Jane Austen’s characters to talk (or think) aloud, and did it very convincingly, as in Melissa Kang’s limerick on Emma:

His words ‘badly done’ were so mighty
I cannot think of them lightly
I must make amends
To family and friends
And win back my dear Mr Knightley.

Or Sadie Underwood’s delightful portrait of guests entertained at Hartfield by Mr Woodhouse, also in Emma:

There [once were] two ladies called Bates
Who were careful to watch what they ate
When Mr Woodhouse was near.
But they said, ‘Oh, my dear,
You should see what we eat when he ain’t.’

Ribaldry, as such, was present in some of the entries, but was mild by 18th century standards. However, we had Pamela Whalan’s Potted Persuasion:

There was a young Wentworth called Fred
Who wanted Anne Elliot to wed.
But the dutiful Anne
Renounced this fine man
Though he finally got her to bed.

Bedtime comes into the picture again, accompanied by lust, when Bertha McKenzie goes to work on the play within the plot of Mansfield Park:

Enter Henry, lustful cad,
Exit Maria, running mad;

and a little later.

When Maria Bertram lost her head
Playing Agatha, mother of Fred,
Mr Rushworth adoring
But so dull and boring,
Couldn’t keep her from Henry’s bed.

The limerick, like the sonnet, requires accurate rhyming, and some entries experimented with amusing and unexpected rhymes, as Marjorie Jones did in her limerick on Pride and Prejudice:

An accomplished young lady name[d] Bingley
Was afraid that she’d have to live singly,
So she set her cap
At a rich handsome chap
The thought of his wealth made her tingly.

Most of us would agree with Marjorie and Helen Sims when they rhymed Darcy with classy. Marjorie (who sent in several good entries) completed that particular one with:

When he met Liz he said
I wish we could wed
What a pity your mother’s so brassy.

While Helen Sims saw the ending of the novel differently:

Then he met sparkling Lizzy,
Fell into a tizzy
And his masculine optics grew glassy.

And added, in another limerick, that the Bennets’ daughter named Mary sang songs that would curdle a dairy. Christene Evans, an impressively inventive rhymester, and Marlene Arditto were among several competitors who noticed, like Helen, that the young Georgian lady name Lizzy sent Mr Darcy into a tizzy.

Two pithy observations that were, alas, defeated by the scansion rule included that of Denise Harris from Hunters Hill who thinks Fanny Price needs assertiveness training, and Katarina Bavcevic from WA, who yearns to throw ‘Caroline in a den’ together with her sister Mrs Hurst, and then check them ‘in a year or ten’.

Needless to say, several entries gave the author priority over her works. One of these tributes came from Jean Boland:

There was a young lady called Jane
Who lived a short life not in vain
She wrote with such style
Wit, irony [and] guile
That the fame of her name shall [ever] remain.

Another was sent in anonymously from the Northern Suburbs:

There was a young lady called Jane
Read Burney, and never in vain,
Changed her epistolary form
Took the whole world by storm,
Gave us ‘six of the best’ – so thanks Jane.

A third entry, by Julia Ermert writing on Pride and Prejudice, paid tribute to Jane Austen’s modern imitators and successors:

Mrs Wickham, née Lydia Bennet
Ran off with her man in a se’ennight ...
How the other two sisters
Procure their misters
Is told us by clever Miss Tennant!

Since none of these entries, good as they were, made it to the very top, you can expect that the winning entry was exceptional. And so it was. Or rather, so they were. Because there were two, and they were exceptional in such interestingly different ways that the Jane Austen Society has decided to present not one prize but two. Both Christene Evans and Pamela Whalan sent in several limericks, among which, in each case, two were outstanding; one (by Pamela, titled Mansfield Meditations) is strikingly witty in the Augustan manner, including in five lines two of the 18th century’s favourite literary devices, alliteration and the pun. Pamela’s other winning limerick (titled Prejudiced Pride) combines accuracy as regards the text with a delicious Australianness very appropriate to a celebration such as ours. Here they are:

Mansfield Meditations

Fanny Price was prudent and prim
Henry Crawford loved on a whim
But Edmund the fair
Joined Fanny in prayer
So Henry lost out to a hymn.

Prejudiced Pride

To capture the heart of his Lizzie
Mr Darcy was kept very busy
By reforming his way
Before naming the day
When the Bennets could break out the fizzy.

A similarly refreshing contemporaneity is at the heart of the two entries by our equal First Prize winner, Christene Evans, who also impressed with her ability to pun and rhyme effectively:

There was a young filly name Lydia
And ne’er was a teenager gydia
She ran off with Wickham
Who just couldn’t pick ‘em
And soon thought, ‘I’m gonna get rydia!’

and

When Darcy looked closely at Lizzy
His heart-beats went into a tizzy
She wasn’t so struck with ‘im
Wouldn’t have truck with ‘im
Till the sight of his pile sent her dizzy.

I would like to thank on behalf of the Society all those who sent in such entertaining and clever entries, and to thank and congratulate the winners: Christene Evans, and Pamela Whalan.

Yasmine Gooneratne

FEEDBACK: info@jasa.net.au

30 January 2002

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