It was on the twentieth of December last that I received an invitation
from my friend, Mr. Phiggins, to dine with him in Mark Lane, on
Christmas Day. I had several reasons for declining this proposition. The
first was that Mr. P. makes it a rule, at all these festivals, to empty
the entire contents of his counting-house into his little dining parlor;
and you consequently sit down to dinner with six white-waistcoated
clerks, let loose upon a turkey. The second was that I am not
sufficiently well read in cotton and sugar, to enter with any spirit
into the subject of conversation. And the third was, and is, that I
never drink Cape wine. But by far the most prevailing reason remains to
be told. I had been anticipating for some days, and was hourly in the
hope of receiving, an invitation to spend my Christmas Day in a most
irresistible quarter. I was expecting, indeed, the felicity of eating
plum-pudding with an angel; and, on the strength of my imaginary
engagement, I returned a polite note to Mr. P., reducing him to the
necessity of advertising for another candidate for Cape and turkey.
The twenty-first came. Another invitation--to dine with a regiment of
roast-beef eaters, at Clapham. I declined this also, for the above
reason, and for one other, _viz._, that, on dining there ten Christmas
Days ago, it was discovered, on sitting down, that one little
accompaniment of the roast beef had been entirely overlooked. Would it
be believed!--but I will not stay to mystify--I merely mention the fact.
They had forgotten the horseradish.
The next day arrived, and with it a neat epistle, sealed with
violet-colored wax, from Upper Brook street. "Dine with the ladies--at
home on Christmas Day." Very tempting, it is true; but not exactly the
letter I was longing for. I began, however, to debate within myself upon
the policy of securing this bird in hand, instead of waiting for the two
that were still hopping about the bush, when the consultation was
suddenly brought to a close, by a prophetic view of the portfolio of
drawings fresh from boarding-school--moths and roses on embossed
paper;--to say nothing of the album, in which I stood engaged to write
an elegy on a Java sparrow, that had been the favorite in the family for
three days. I rung for gilt-edged, pleaded a world of polite regret, and
again declined.
The twenty-third dawned; time was getting on rather rapidly; but no card
came. I began to despair of any more invitations, and to repent of my
refusals. Breakfast was hardly over, however, when the servant brought
up--not a letter--but an aunt and a brace of cousins from Bayswater.
They would listen to no excuse; consanguinity required me, and Christmas
was not my own. Now my cousins kept no albums; they are really as pretty
as cousins can be; and when violent hands, with white kid gloves, are
laid on one, it is sometimes difficult to effect an escape with becoming
elegance. I could not, however, give up my darling hope of a pleasanter
prospect. They fought with me in fifty engagements--that I pretended to
have made. I showed them the Court Guide, with ten names
obliterated--being those of persons who had _not_ asked me to mince-meat
and mistletoe; and I ultimately gained my cause by quartering the
remains of an infectious fever on the sensitive fears of my aunt, and by
dividing a rheumatism and a sprained ankle between my sympathetic
cousins.
As soon as they were gone, I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in
the direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a "happy"
Christmas. As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the door.
"A present from the country," thought I, "yes, they _do_ dine at home;
they must ask me; they know that I am in town." Immediately afterward a
servant issued with a letter; he took the nearest way to my lodgings,
and I hurried back by another street to receive the so-much-wished-for
invitation. I was in a state of delirious delight.
I arrived--but there was no letter. I sat down to wait, in a spirit of
calmer enjoyment than I had experienced for some days; and in less than
half an hour a note was brought to me. At length, the desired despatch
had come; it seemed written on the leaf of a lily with a pen dipped in
dew. I opened it--and had nearly fainted with disappointment. It was
from a stock-broker, who begins an anecdote of Mr. Rothschild before
dinner, and finishes it with the fourth bottle--and who makes his eight
children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In macadamizing a stray
stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a tooth, and with
it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable apology, and
despatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.
December the twenty-fourth--I began to count the hours, and uttered many
poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack! no letter came;--yes, I
received a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the honor,
etc. But I was too cunning for this, and practiced wisdom for once. I
happened to reflect that his pantomime was to make its appearance on the
night after, and that his object was to perpetrate the whole programme
upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Paulo,
and the rest of the _literati_ to be then and there assembled, was of
course immediately expressed.
My mind became restless and agitated. I felt, amidst all these
invitations, cruelly neglected. They served, indeed, but to increase my
uneasiness, as they opened prospects of happiness in which I could take
no share. They discovered a most tempting dessert, composed of forbidden
fruit. I took down "Childe Harold," and read myself into a sublime
contempt of mankind. I began to perceive that merriment is only malice
in disguise, and that the chief cardinal virtue is misanthropy.
I sat "nursing my wrath," till it scorched me; when the arrival of
another epistle suddenly charmed me from this state of delicious
melancholy and delightful endurance of wrong. I sickened as I surveyed,
and trembled as I opened it. It was dated----, but no matter; it was not
_the_ letter. In such a frenzy as mine, raging to behold the object of
my admiration condescend, not to _eat_ a custard, but to render it
invisible--to be invited perhaps to a tart fabricated by her own
ethereal fingers; with such possibilities before me, how could I think
of joining a "friendly party,"--where I should inevitably sit next to a
deaf lady, who had been, when a little girl, patted on the head by
Wilkes, or my Lord North, she could not recollect which--had taken tea
with the author of "Junius," but had forgotten his name--and who once
asked me "whether Mr. Munden's monument was in Westminster Abbey or St.
Paul's?"--I seized a pen, and presented my compliments. I hesitated--for
the peril of precariousness of my situation flashed on my mind; but hope
had still left me a straw to catch at, and I at length succeeded in
resisting this late and terrible temptation.
After the first burst of excitement, I sunk into still deeper
despondency. My spirit became a prey to anxiety and remorse. I could not
eat; dinner was removed with unlifted covers. I went out. The world
seemed to have acquired a new face; nothing was to be seen but raisins
and rounds of beef. I wandered about like Lear--I had given up all! I
felt myself grated against the world like a nutmeg. It grew dark--I
sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed to have expired,
and everybody seemed to have a delightful engagement for the next day. I
alone was disengaged--I felt like the Last Man! To-morrow appeared to
have already commenced its career; mankind had anticipated the future;
"and coming mince pies cast their shadows before."
In this state of desolation and dismay, I called--I could not help
it--at the house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation, and
a welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I
called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to
avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No: my triumph
would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in
September, payable three months after date. With these feelings, I gave
an agitated knock--they were stoning the plums, and did not immediately
attend. I rung--how unlike a dinner bell it sounded! A girl at length
made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed me that
the family had gone to spend their Christmas Eve in Portland Place. I
rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first impulse was to go
to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting for America. But it
was a cold night--I went home and threw myself on my miserable couch. In
other words, I went to bed.
I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. Sometimes I fancied
myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing log:
at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skating, and that
the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a Vesuvius
of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas! it was the twenty-fifth
of the month--It was Christmas Day! Let the reader, if he possess the
imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.
I swallowed an atom of dry toast--nothing could calm the fever of my
soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmermann alternately. Even
reason--the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases--came at
length to my relief: I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But,
unluckily, just as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my
landlady broke in upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all
the little sprites and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and
prescribing balm for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliment, and
then--"Do you dine at home to-day, sir?" abruptly inquired she. Here was
a question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such complete dismay in
so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a Gordian
tangle to untwist; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked me the
way to Brobdingnag; had she desired me to show her the North Pole, or
the meaning of a melodrama:--any or all of these I might have
accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner--to inquire into its
latitude--to compel me to fathom that sea of appetite which I now felt
rushing through my frame--to ask me to dive into futurity, and become
the prophet of pies and preserves!--My heart died within me at the
impossibility of a reply.
She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around
me. Then, for the first time it occurred to me that, in the event of my
having no engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me! "There will
at least be the two daughters," I whispered to myself; "and after all,
Lucy Matthews is a charming girl, and touches the harp divinely. She has
a very small, pretty hand, I recollect; only her fingers are so
punctured by the needle--and I rather think she bites her nails. No, I
will not even now give up my hope. It was yesterday but a straw--to-day
it is but the thistledown; but I will cling to it to the last moment.
There are still four hours left; they will not dine till six. One
desperate struggle, and the peril is past; let me not be seduced by this
last golden apple, and I may yet win my race." The struggle was made--"I
should not dine at home." This was the only phrase left me, for I could
not say that "I should dine out." Alas! that an event should be at the
same time so doubtful and so desirable. I only begged that if any letter
arrived, it might be brought to me immediately.
The last plank, the last splinter, had now given way beneath me. I was
floating about with no hope but the chance of something almost
impossible. They had "left me alone," not with my glory, but with an
appetite that resembled an avalanche seeking whom it might devour. I had
passed one dinnerless day, and half of another; yet the promised land
was as far from sight as ever. I recounted the chances I had missed. The
dinners I might have enjoyed, passed in a dioramic view before my eyes.
Mr. Phiggins and his six clerks--the Clapham beef-eaters--the charms of
Upper Brook street--my pretty cousins, and the pantomime writer--the
stock broker, whose stories one forgets, and the elderly lady who
forgets her stories--they all marched by me, a procession of
apparitions. Even my landlady's invitation, though unborn, was not
forgotten in summing up my sacrifices. And for what?
Four o'clock. Hope was perfectly ridiculous. I had been walking upon the
hair-bridge over a gulf, and could not get into Elysium after all. I had
been catching moonbeams, and running after notes of music. Despair was
my only convenient refuge; no chance remained, unless something should
drop from the clouds. In this last particular I was not disappointed;
for, on looking up, I perceived a heavy shower of snow, yet I was
obliged to venture forth; for being supposed to dine out, I could not of
course remain at home. Where to go I knew not: I was like my first
father--"the world was all before me." I flung my coat round me, and
hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing for a stiletto. At
the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three smiling
rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had just
arrived--to make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them!--As I rushed by
the parlor, a single glance disclosed to me a blazing fire, with Lucy
and several lovely creatures in a semi-circle. Fancy, too, gave me a
glimpse of a sprig of mistletoe--I vanished from the house, like a
spectre at day-break.
How long I wandered about is doubtful. At last I happened to look
through a kitchen window, with an area in front, and saw a villain with
a fork in his hand, throwing himself back in his chair choked with
ecstasy. Another was feasting with a graver air; he seemed to be
swallowing a bit of Paradise, and criticising its flavor. This was too
much for mortality--my appetite fastened upon me like an alligator. I
darted from the spot; and only a few yards further discerned a house
with rather an elegant exterior, and with some ham in the window that
looked perfectly sublime. There was no time for consideration--to
hesitate was to perish. I entered; it was indeed "a banquet-hall
deserted." The very waiters had gone home to their friends. There,
however, I found a fire; and there--to sum up all my folly and felicity
in a single word--I DINED.