Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 99 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 99: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# The Taking of Helen, Page 87 This is a page of running prose from what appears to be a narrative poem or dramatic work titled "The Taking of Helen." A blind man recounts his past glory as a prince of Leros, describing his beauty and travels, before narrating an encounter at a king's castle where the monarch had married a beautiful young woman. The blind man emphasizes the king's unattractive appearance—comparing him to a weasel and mocking his fondness for ornate red boots over his wife. The page includes both dialogue and poetic verse describing the aging blind man's worn face, "milky with despair." The text is densely printed in a small typeface typical of penny dreadful publications.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE TAKING OF HELEN 87 good spearmen? I was all those things, far more than you. And I was a prince, being the son of the King of Leros, the most beautiful and the most fertile and the most famous of all the islands. I went travelling on the mainland, and wherever I came they took me for a god, I was so beautiful and so strong. ‘Till I came to the castle of a King whose name I will not now re- member, a great King, lord of many lands, and rich and old, and married to a young wife.” The ancient lady settled to her chair. Long living with her man had made her face Like his, a blind one, milky with despair, With no joy left for sorrow to erase. ‘Married to a young wife,” the blind man repeated, ‘“‘a very beautiful girl, the daughter of a King, and, some said, of a goddess. ‘There is no beauty in the world now; it was all burned up in her. They tell me of the beauties now, but they are dead leaves, they are ashes, they are ghosts. Beauty has been done in flesh, it cannot be repeated. Before I became this thing I saw it. And the King, gods serve us, her hus- band, a little mean peeping tiptoe man, a grey thing, buttoned up in gilt, with a face like a weasel. God makes such fellows kings, because God is not aman, and he tumbles such fellows down because some men are. “He had long red boots of soft leather, laced to the knee, Asian fashion, which he loved better than his wife. I said he had a face like a weasel. ‘There is Connicooolks (C(O)