But, the best thing was what he said to me. He is so droll that he
insisted upon coming down, and finishing the dance just as he was. The
funny fellow brushed against all the dresses in his way, and, finally
said to me, as he pointed to a lemon-seed upon his coat:
“I feel so very _lemon-choly_ for what I have done.”
I laughed very much (you were in the other room), but Mr. P. stepped
up and ordered him to leave the house. Boosey said he would do no such
thing; and I have no doubt we should have had a scene, if Mr. P. had
not marched him straight to the door, and put him into a carriage, and
told the driver where to take him. Mr. P. was red enough when he came
back.
“No man shall insult me or my guests, by getting drunk in my house,”
said he; and he has since asked me not to invite Boosey nor “any of
his kind,” as he calls them, to our house. However, I think it will
pass over. I tell him that all young men of spirit get a little
excited with wine sometimes, and he mustn’t be too hard upon them.
“Madame,” said he to me, the first time I ventured to say that, “no
man with genuine self-respect ever gets drunk twice; and, if you had
the faintest idea of the misery which a little elegant intoxication
has produced in scores of families that you know, you would never
insinuate again that a little excitement from wine is an agreeable
thing. There’s your friend Mrs. Croesus (he thinks she’s my friend,
because we call each other ‘dear’!); she is delighted to be a
fashionable woman, and to be described as the ‘peerless and
accomplished Mrs. Croesus’ in letters from the Watering-places to the
Herald; but I tell you, if anything of the woman or the mother is left
in the fashionable Mrs. Croesus, I could wring her heart as it never
was wrung--and never shall be by me--by showing her the places that
young Timon Croesus haunts, the people with whom he associates and the
drunkenness, gambling, and worse dissipations of which he is guilty.
“Timon Croesus is eighteen or nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty years old;
and Polly, I tell you, he is actually _blasé_, worn out with
dissipation, the companion of blacklegs, the chevalier of Cyprians,
tipsy every night, and haggard every morning. Timon Croesus is the
puny caricature of a man, mentally, morally, and physically. He gets
‘elegantly intoxicated’ at your parties; he goes off to sup with
Gauche Boosey; you and Mrs. Croesus think them young men of
spirit,--it is an exhilarating case of sowing wildcats, you
fancy,--and, when, at twenty-five, Timon Croesus stands ruined in the
world, without aims or capacities, without the esteem of a single man
or his own self-respect--youth, health, hope, and energy, all gone
forever--then you and your dear Mrs. Croesus will probably wonder at
the horrible harvest. Mrs. Potiphar, ask the Rev. Cream Cheese to omit
his sermon upon the maidenhood of Lot’s wife, and preach from this
text: ‘They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.’ Good heavens!
Polly, fancy our Fred growing up to such a life! I’d rather bury him
to-morrow!”
I never saw Mr. P. so much excited. He fairly put his handkerchief to
his eyes, and I really believe he cried! But I think he exaggerates
these things: and as he had a very dear friend that went worse and
worse, until he died frightfully, a drunkard, it is not strange he
should speak so warmly about it. But as Mrs. Croesus says:
“What can you do? You can’t curb these boys, you don’t want to break
their spirits, you don’t want to make them milk-sops.”
When I repeated this speech to Mr. P., he said to me with a kind of
solemnity:
“Tell Mrs. Croesus that I am not here to judge nor dictate: but she
may be well assured, that every parent is responsible for every child
of his to the utmost of the influence he can exert, whether he chooses
to consider himself so or not; and if not now, in this world, yet
somewhere and somehow, he must hear and heed the voice that called to
Cain in the garden, ‘Where is Abel, thy brother?’”
I can’t bear to hear Mr.P. talk in that way; it sounds so like
preaching. Not precisely like what I hear at church but like what we
mean when we say “preaching,” without referring to any particular
sermon. However, he grants that young Timon is an extreme case: but,
he says, it is the result that proves the principle, and a state of
feeling which not only allows, but indirectly fosters, that result, is
frightful to think of.
“Don’t think of it then, Mr. P.,” said I. He looked at me for a moment
with the sternest scowl I ever saw upon a man’s face, then he suddenly
ran up to me, and kissed me on the forehead (although my hair was all
dressed for Mrs. Gnu’s dinner), and went out of the house. He hasn’t
said much to me since, but he speaks very gently when he does speak,
and sometimes I catch him looking at me in such a singular way, so
half mournful, that Mr. Cheese’s eyes don’t seem so very sad after
all.
However, to return to the party, I believe nothing else was injured
except the curtains in the front drawing-room, which were so smeared
with ice-cream and oyster gravy, that we must get new ones; and the
cover of my porcelain tureen was broken by the servant, though the man
said he didn’t really mean to do it, and I could say nothing; and a
party of young men, after the German Cotillion, did let fall that
superb cut-glass Claret, and shivered it, with a dozen of the
delicately engraved straw-stems that stood upon the waiter. That was
all, I believe--oh! except that fine “Dresden Gallery,” the most
splendid book I ever saw, full of engravings of the great pictures in
Dresden, Vienna, and the other Italian towns, and which was sent to
Mr. P. by an old friend, an artist, whom he had helped along when he
was very poor. Somebody unfortunately tipped over a bottle of claret
that stood upon the table, (I am sure I don’t know how it got there,
though Mr. P. says Gauche Boosey knows,) and it lay soaking into the
book, so that almost every picture has a claret stain, which looks so
funny. I am very sorry, I am sure, but as I tell Mr. P., it’s no use
crying for spilt milk. I was telling Mr. Boosey of it at the Gnus’
dinner. He laughed very much, and when I said that a good many of the
faces were sadly stained, he said in his droll way, “You ought to call
it _L’Opera di Bordeaux; Le Domino rouge._” I supposed it was
something funny, so I laughed a good deal. He said to me later: “Shall
I pour a little claret into your book--I mean into your glass?”