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OP
OP
http://books.google.com/books?id=_CUTAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA126&output=text#PA126
"The Lily - A Coloured Annual for 1831" (p. 126)
THE ORIGIN OF DARBY AND JOAN. BY THE AUTHOR OF "DAME REBECCA BERRY (Elizabeth Isabella SPENCE)"
Within three miles of Tadcaster, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, there is a beautiful village called Healaugh, remotely situated, but celebrated from being the place where lived, more than a century ago, a couple called " Darby and Joan," and whose humble dwelling is still to be seen there.
The way leading to this rural spot had, as I drove thither, all the charm of soft pastoral scenery: rich meadows, filled with sheep and cattle; green hedgerows, intermingled with a profusion of roses and woodbine, and every bank enamelled with fragrant flowers. It was the month of June, when all the redolence of summer regales the senses, and invigorates the spirits, in beholding the gaiety of nature, and every animated object happy, amidst the song of birds, and the joyous aspect of summer.
Healaugh consists of one long street, with low thatched cottages, and formerly had rows of tall trees before every door, with a bench beneath. The Church stands at one end, partially covered with ivy, and, from resting on a green bank, embowered in lime-trees, is a pleasing object on entering the village.
Even now this sequestered little spot looks the paradise of humble life; for, in Yorkshire, the eye is not pained in beholding that squalid poverty too often seen in remote parts of England.
The rustic bench still remains on which the faithful Darby and Joan were used to sit: he smoking his pipe and quaffing his ale; she, in all the garrulity of age, relating tales of days long passed away with recollected enjoyment, surrounded by their children's children, (at this time the cottage is inhabited by one of their descendants,) or listening to their hopes and fears respecting their future prospects in life, until they almost forgot they were quietly passing into that state where hope and fear have no longer existence.
On Sunday morning the old couple were constantly seen tottering together to church, supported by some of their children or grandchildren; thus proving themselves still linked together in their duties to their Maker, as well as in their worldly enjoyments. Happy, enviable state! where sympathy doubles every joy, and lessens every grief; where kindred spirits mingle together, be it either in the highest walk of life, or the humblest of its paths. Happiness beamed with perpetual sunshine on the cottage of Darby and Joan, which is justly illustrated in Lord Wharton's ballad called
THE HAPPY OLD COUPLE
Old Darby, with Joan by his side,
I've often regarded with wonder:
He is dropsical, she is sore eyed,
And yet they are never asunder.
Together they totter about,
Or sit in the sun at the door;
And, at night, when old Darby's pipe's out,
His Joan will not smoke one whiff more.
No beauty or wit they possess,
Their several failings to cover;
Then, what are the charms, can you guess,
That make them so fond of each other ?
'Tis the pleasing remembrance of youth—
The endearments which youth did bestow;
The thoughts of past pleasure and truth,
The best of all blessings below.
Those traces for ever will last,
Nor sickness nor age can remove;
For when youth and beauty are past,
And age brings the winter of love,
A frcndship insensibly grows,
By reviews of such raptures as these,
The current of fondness still flows,
Which deepest old age cannot freeze.
The happy old pair are buried in Healaugh churchyard. Thither I bent my steps to look at their grave. I found the sexton busily employed preparing the place appointed for all men; and, as the person who generally has all the village annals by heart, to him I went for the history of the singular personages in question.
The sexton appeared to have numbered more than three score years and ten. He was a remarkably hale and good-looking old man; though his face was deeply scarred with small-pox, and he had only one eye, I scarcely ever saw so shrewd a countenance. There was in this solitary eye an expression of facetious humor, and at the same time low cunning, which amused me extremely. He actually personified the grave- digger in Hamlet; for not only with the most careless indifference did he perform his part in this scene of mortality, but he was also a humorist, and jested, as with a significant look he related the history of" Darby and Joan," and pointed out the spot where a stone marked their grave to every passer by.
To time immemorial will this faithful old couple be remembered, and quoted as an example of conjugal felicity, by the designation of "a perfect Darby and Joan," —in those instances, alas! too rare, where man and wife pass not only the spring-time of life, but old age, never asunder, having made a contract with each other in youth, to bear with the infirmities of old age together.
Thank you!
On a side note, I had difficulty getting into that passage. It just seemed sort of... fake? I don't know. It just didn't sound real to me. Sort of as if the author were living in an idealistic world where everything is perfect and beautiful, instead of in the real world, where everything is quite obviously not. Or they were trying to write as if they were. One or the other.
To look at it in time-frame. Though the article stretches too far into the second half of the century.
Austin
It's an idealized thing and all periods have their means of escapism. Yet the Joans and Darbies are still there (less and less frequently), I have met some. Not in this rural pipe smoking setting. Old and active, but without doubt dedicatedly and pleasantly faithful.
OP
The majority of references on the 'net attribute the poem to Woodfall, though they are also uncertain. "Heroes and Heroines of Fiction" (Walsh - 1914) p. 113, states: "...hero and heroine of a ballad...attributed to Matthew Prior but probably antedates him. Another claimant has been put forward in the person of Henry Woodfall, the printer. According to Timberley, Woodfall was an apprentice of John Darby, a printer of Bartholomew Close, who died in 1730, and whose devotion to his wife Joan was notorious in the locality. This 'happy couple,' in their simple contentment and dislike for change, present some analogies to the Philemon and Baucis of classic myth."
Also, http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dar1.htm states: "in the Literary Magazine in 1756, Samuel Johnson mentions a ballad about Darby and Joan. This is almost certainly the anonymous one that appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine in March 1735 [called 'The Joys of Love never forgot' - see below] ... This has usually been considered the source of the names, and various conjectures have been made, both as to the author, and as to the identity of 'Darby and Joan', but with no valid results... The DNB (Dictionary of National Biography) used to claim that Woodfall wrote the ballad to commemorate his late employer and his wife. However, the claim does not appear in the revised edition online and the connection seems not so clear-cut as once thought."
In any case, I did find a web site with the original Gentlemen's Magazine "Poetical Essay" for March 1735, entitled "The Joys of Love never forgot" (page 153).
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/ilej/...5.3.x.5.x.x.153
It's clear some liberties were taken with the version printed in The Lily (1831), as the first four lines (below) are missing.
DEAR CHLOE ! while thus, beyond measure,
You treat me with doubts and disdain,
You rob all your Youth of its pleasure ;
And hoard up an Old Age of pain !
Your maxim, That Love 's only founded
On charms that will quickly decay !
You'll find to be very ill grounded;
When once you its dictates obey.
The Passion from beauty first drawn,
Your kindness would vastly improve !
Your sight and your smiles are the Dawn,
Possession's the Sunshine, of Love !
And though the bright beams of your eyes
Should be clouded, that now are so gay,
And darkness possess all the skies ;
Yet we ne'er shall forget it was Day.
OP
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