Having been a bachelor from my earliest youth I suppose I ought to be
accustomed to the condition; but the fact remains that I miss
something--something which only a wedding supplies.
Curiously enough this want is not a wife. I have been without one so
long that I should not know what to do with her if I had one. I should
probably overlook her, and she would become atrophied or die of neglect
or thirst. Neither do I crave a home of my own; nor golden-haired
children to climb up my knee. I can do without these accessories.
But what I do hunger for and what I _will_ have is a trousseau. Why the
acquisition of a trousseau should be a purely feminine prerogative I
have never been able to understand. A bride without a trousseau is
generally regarded as an incomplete thing--a poached-egg without toast;
a salad without dressing. But the bridegroom without a trousseau is a
recognised institution. True, he has new clothes, both seen and unseen,
but this is not a trousseau; it is merely a "replenishment of his
wardrobe." His least disreputable old things are "made to do"; and
nobody thinks slightingly of him if he attends his wedding in a
re-cuffed shirt or in boots that have been re-soled. A girl, however,
would as soon think of entering Paradise with a second-hand halo as she
would contemplate being married in anything that was not aggressively
new.
Thus it is that before my wish can be consummated I have two honoured
conventions to defy: that only a girl may possess a trousseau, and that
a marriage is a necessary condition to the acquiring of it. Fortunately
I am strong-minded. A long course of Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD'S homilies has
given me no little facility in achieving this attribute, and I am
determined that I will change neither my sex nor my status.
Now, I have prepared a list, just as--I suppose--every girl does. In the
first place I am going to indulge in the hitherto undreamt-of luxury of
a surfeit of dress-shirts. No one who has not experienced life on two
dress-shirts--one in wear, the other in the wash--can quite understand
what this will mean to me. Men like Sir JOSEPH BEECHAM, Mr.
MALLABY-DEELEY, Mr. SOLLY JOEL, Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN, and others, who,
I daresay, have four or even five, cannot know what it is to feel that
their evening's refreshment and entertainment depend on their finding
the French chalk or the india-rubber.
Therefore I am making no stint in this matter. I am having fifteen
dress-shirts, so that there may be one for wear each day in the week,
seven in the laundry, and one over for emergencies--like _Parsifal_,
that begins in the middle of the afternoon. I mean to be similarly
lavish in the matter of collars and handkerchiefs. The number of the
former which I am buying amounts almost to an epidemic; while the extent
of my commission in the latter is the result of lessons learnt in the
hard school of experience. I say unhesitatingly that the man who tries
to get through life on a mere dozen handkerchiefs is simply begging
for disaster, as, however methodical in their use he may be, a
carelessly-caught cold may any day upset his reckoning and leave him at
a loose end; sometimes scarcely that. Hence I am doing this part of my
trousseau in princely fashion. I am having half a gross of them.
Then there is my slumber-wear. For years I have hungered for silk ones,
but have had no conscientious excuse for appeasing my appetite. To buy
silk pyjamas in cold blood has hitherto seemed to me to be sheer cynical
extravagance; but now I feel that circumstances justify me in my action,
for it would be a very sorry thing for me to encounter a burglar or cope
with a fire clad in apparel that would not be up to the standard of the
rest of my wardrobe.
Now, I am a great believer in dressing for the spirit of the moment;
therefore I have resolved upon a pretty colour-scheme for my night-wear.
My pyjamas are to be of tints conducive to refreshing rest, namely and
severally white, lemon, light pink, and pale green--an idea which I
candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If
you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to
sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan.
No wonder _Macbeth_ "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in garments of
his club-colours!
I have brought the same æsthetic sense to bear upon my choice of ties
and socks: greys and blacks for times of grave political crises; fawn,
buff, pearl, moose--I am not sure that this is a colour, but it sounds
quite possible--for brighter hours; and colours familiar to every
student of spectroscopy for halcyon days of rejoicing--the opening of
the Royal Academy, the Handel Festival, the return of HARRY LAUDER, or
the elevation of Mr. BERNARD SHAW to the peerage.
As for externals, suffice it to say that they will be _en suite_, and
that I intend to introduce just a little touch of originality into my
trousers. I am going to have them made with spats sewn to the leg-ends
in order to save time and trouble in dressing.
In short, I have forgotten nothing, except spare studs, and I think it
is quite likely that I shall remember them too in course of time. I have
even gone so far as to fix a day for a dress rehearsal. But first I
shall invite my friends, as is the way with brides-elect, to a private
view of my trousseau, when they shall see all of it spread upon the
coverlet of my bed, over the backs of my chairs, or hanging in serried
ranks in my wardrobe.
And now nothing more remains to be done but to raise the necessary
funds, and with this object in view I have instructed my broker to draw
my money out of the Savings Bank. I am expecting a postal-order almost
any moment.
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