第12章

Of course it does not become the present writer,who has partaken of the best entertainment which his friends could supply,to make fun of their (somewhat ostentatious,as it must be confessed)hospitality.If they gave a dinner beyond their means,it is no business of mine.I hate a man who goes and eats a friend's meat,and then blabs the secrets of the mahogany.Such a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again;and though at the close of a London season that seems no great loss,and you sicken of a whitebait as you would of a whale--yet we must always remember that there's another season coming,and hold our tongues for the present.

As for describing,then,the mere victuals on Timmins's table,that would be absurd.Everybody--(I mean of the genteel world of course,of which I make no doubt the reader is a polite ornament)--Everybody has the same everything in London.You see the same coats,the same dinners,the same boiled fowls and mutton,the same cutlets,fish,and cucumbers,the same lumps of Wenham Lake ice,&c.The waiters with white neck-cloths are as like each other everywhere as the peas which they hand round with the ducks of the second course.Can't any one invent anything new?

The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neighbor's was,that he had hired,as we have said,the greater part of the plate,and that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and disasters of which no one else probably took heed.

But Rosa thought,from the supercilious air with which Mrs.Topham Sawyer was eying the plate and other arrangements,that she was remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks and spoons--which had,in fact,been borrowed from every one of Fitzroy's friends--(I know,for instance,that he had my six,among others,and only returned five,along with a battered old black-pronged plated abomination,which I have no doubt belongs to Mrs.

Gashleigh,whom I hereby request to send back mine in exchange)--their guilty consciences,I say,made them fancy that every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies:whereas,it is probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all.People never do:they never see holes in their neighbors'coats--they are too indolent,simple,and charitable.

Some things,however,one could not help remarking:for instance,though Fitz is my closest friend,yet could I avoid seeing and being amused by his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious?

His eye wandered all round the little room with quick uneasy glances,very different from those frank and jovial looks with which he is accustomed to welcome you to a leg of mutton;and Rosa,from the other end of the table,and over the flowers,entree dishes,and wine-coolers,telegraphed him with signals of corresponding alarm.

Poor devils!why did they ever go beyond that leg of mutton?

Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation,scarcely opening his mouth,except for the purposes of feasting.The fact is,our friend Tom Dawson was at table,who knew all his stories,and in his presence the greatest wag is always silent and uneasy.

Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own,and a good reputation on circuit;but he is timid before great people.And indeed the presence of that awful Lady Bungay on his right hand was enough to damp him.She was in court mourning (for the late Prince of Schlippenschloppen).She had on a large black funereal turban and appurtenances,and a vast breastplate of twinkling,twiddling black bugles.No wonder a man could not be gay in talking to HER.

Mrs.Rowdy and Mrs.Topham Sawyer love each other as women do who have the same receiving nights,and ask the same society;they were only separated by Ranville Ranville,who tries to be well with both and they talked at each other across him.

Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum,Ireland,and the Navigation Laws,quite unfit for print.Sawyer never speaks three words without mentioning the House and the Speaker.

The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort)but he ate and drank of everything which came in his way;and cut his usual absurd figure in dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat.

General Gulpin sported his star,and looked fat and florid,but melancholy.His wife ordered away his dinner,just like honest Sancho's physician at Barataria.