Basket of onions, The

From Henry de Marsan's Singers Journal No 58 (c1870)

The Basket of Onions.
Music at Boosey & Co, 4 Bond Street, New-York.

In me see an Actor — I play at the Play.
But this life it goes hard with me now-a-day.
Through one fairy creature. who sound onions sold-
By my worn out features my story is told:
In Covent Garden Market sometimes there she sat,
Her hair unadorned by bonnet or hat—
 
0h ! with a basket of onions that hung on her arm
Could I but wed Mary. I should get a charm!
But she loves another ; so, it‘s no use to try
To win her who cries out; “Sound onions, who'll buy!

At the Theatre-Victoria. I play leading parts.
In love-making scenes I could please all the hearts
Of those in the Boxes, both Gall'ry. and Pit:
But up in the Gall‘ry sweet Mary would sit. 
I played to her, nightly. both “Hamlet" and “Lear" —
She'd cry from the Gall'ry, in the Pit she'd drop a tear.

When I‘d done my part, I myself quickly took
Round to the front door. and for Mary I‘d look;
The way I told Mary in the dark nights so well,
By the scent of the onions I Mary could tell.
She said: "You are rich, I‘m too poor for thee,
The wife of an Actor I never can be."
 
I coaxed her and told her my wife she should be.
In spite of her calling and hard poverty;
I told her a mansion I had at command,
She should live and digest all the fat in the land.
She said: “Do not tempt me — for woman is weak—
Go, go, you rich Hactor and your one pound a week."
 
One night, I in "Hamlet" was playing the Ghost.
I ne'er thought of "Hamlet" 'twas of her I thought most:
I should have said: "Farewell, remember me!"
But I shouted out: “Onions, sound onions, who’ll buy?"
The people they hissed me, I turned blue and red.
When Mary a bottle sent down at my head -
And with her basket of onions she brought on her arm,
They pelted poor me, but I took it calm.
But she look it calmer — it seems like a dream
She left me and married a Foot-horse marine.