"THE PHYSIOLOGY OF EVENING PARTIES," BY ALBERT SMITH.
I have already spoken of the extreme difficulty of collecting material
for this book, and to difficulty must be added the expense which is
incurred by my publisher. I bear the latter affliction with the
equanimity common to those who escape it; indeed, there is a kind of
satisfaction in finding that books which are perfectly worthless as
literary productions are so highly valued on account of the prints which
illustrate them. I venture to give an instance in a very little book
called "The Physiology of Evening Parties," written by Albert Smith. My
reader will be able to judge by the extracts given in explanation of the
drawings, of the merits of Mr. Smith's part in the "Physiology." This
work, published at 2s. 6d. when clean and new, costs 18s. 6d. when well
"worn on the edge of time," yellow, dirty, and unbound. The "Physiology"
first saw the light in 1840. I plead again for forgiveness for
chronological shortcomings, which my difficulties make unavoidable.
My first illustration represents a mamma and her two daughters in the
serious business of selecting guests for an evening party.
"It is evening," says Mr. Albert Smith; "mamma and her two daughters are
seated at a table arranging the names of the visitors upon the back of
an old letter, having turned out the dusty record of the card-basket
before them in order that no one of importance may be forgotten.
"ELLEN (_loc_.): 'I am sure I don't see why we should invite the
Harveys, mamma. They have been here twice, and never asked us back
again.'
"FANNY: 'And we shall see those dreadful silver poplins again; they must
be intimately acquainted with the cane-work of all the rout-seats in
London.'
"ELLEN: 'And William Harvey is so exceedingly disagreeable; he always
looks at the ciphers on the plate to see if it is borrowed or not.'
"FANNY: 'And last year he declared the pine-apple ice was full of
little square pieces of raw potato; and when Mr. Edwards broke a tumbler
at supper he told him "not to mind, for they were only tenpence apiece
in Tottenham Court Road." The low wretch! he thought he had made a
capital joke.'
"MAMMA: 'Well, my dears, I think your papa will be annoyed if they are
left out; but never mind him--we won't ask them.'"
[Illustration: "MAMMA AND THE GIRLS."]
The discussion respecting the guests goes on, opinion as to eligibility
widely differing. Mamma proposes Mr. and Mrs. Howard and the four girls,
to which Miss Ellen says:
"All dressed alike, and standing up in every quadrille. I declare I
will get George Conway to put an ice in Harriet's chair for her to sit
down upon, in revenge for her waltzing last year, when she brushed down
the Joan of Arc, and knocked its head off."
This refined conversation continues till Miss Ellen speaks of her
brother's disposition to interfere with the invitation-list; she says:
"'We must tell Tom not to overdo us so much with his own friends. I
declare last year I did not know half the young men in the room; and it
was so very awkward when you had to introduce them.'
[Illustration: "TWO RUDE YOUNG MEN."]
"FANNY: 'And they were not nice persons. Two of them were in the pit of
the Lyceum the next night, and, seeing us in Mr. Arnold's box, would
stare us out of countenance. With a single glass, too!'"
"And in this style," says our author, "the list is arranged, the hostess
gradually becoming a prey to isinglass and acute mental inquietude,
which gradually increases as the day draws nearer, until upon the
morning of its arrival her very brain is almost turned to blancmange
from the intensity of her anxiety!"
[Illustration: "THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE."]
The whole house is, of course, turned topsy-turvy; and Leech gives us a
picture of the master of the mansion surrounded by some of the
consequences of giving an evening party.
"This state of things," says the chronicler, "much delights the
olive-branches of the family, who, left entirely alone, and quite
overlooked in the general _melee_, divert themselves by poking their
little puddy fingers into the creams, and scooping out the insides of
divers patties with a doll's leg," etc., etc.
[Illustration: "AN OLIVE-BRANCH."]
The ball begins under sundry difficulties. A most desirable person,
"_one_ for whom the party was almost given, sends a melancholy statement
of the very acute attack of influenza under which _they_ are labouring,"
which they extremely regret will prevent their accepting, etc. Then one
of the intended _belles_ of the evening is obliged to go suddenly into
the country, to see a sick aunt, but "she sends her two brothers--tall,
_gangling_, awkward young men who wear pumps and long black stocks, and
throw their legs about when they are dancing everywhere but over their
shoulders," etc., etc., says the author. Here is what Leech thinks of
the two brothers.
[Illustration: "TWO 'GANGLING' YOUNG MEN."]
I have never met with the word "gangling" before; is it an invention of
Mr. Albert Smith's? I can speak to the truth of the dress of these long
brothers, for I who write have worn the long black stock and the
peculiarly cut coat and waistcoats at many an evening party.
The numerous illustrations of "The Physiology" are such perfect examples
of Leech's earlier work, and in themselves so good, that I am induced to
produce several more of them. I don't know whether the fascinating
person under the hands of the hair-dresser is Miss Ellen or Miss Fanny.
I confess I can scarcely believe she would talk like either of them;
happy barber! perfect you are as you ply your vocation; and in that
vocation--insomuch as you have that sweet creature to contemplate--to be
envied indeed!
[Illustration: "PREPARING FOR THE BALL."]
Then we have the greengrocer, "who is to assist in waiting.... He wears
white cotton gloves with very long fingers, and was never known to
announce a name correctly, so the astonished visitor is ushered into the
room under any other appellation than his own."
[Illustration: "THE ASSISTANT-WAITER."]
[Illustration: "THE BAND."]
The band must not be forgotten. "The music arrives," says the writer,
"sometimes in the shape of a single pianist of untiring fingers and
unclosing eyes; sometimes as a harp, piano, and cornopean, who are
immediately installed in a corner of the room with two chairs, a
music-stool, and a bottle of marsala."
I ask my reader to note the individuality in the four faces in this
drawing--and in the figures no less than in the heads--each a
strongly-marked personality precisely appropriate to the instrument upon
which he performs. How admirable is the cornet-a-piston gentleman
contrasted with the pianoforte player!
The mistress of the house is described as making "uphill attempts at
conversation" pending the arrival of a sufficient number of guests to
make up a quadrille. Two old ladies, however, have already put in an
appearance, and have taken possession of the best seats to "see the
dancing," from which all attempts to move them to the card-room are
successfully resisted. There they sit, poor old wallflowers! with all
the advantage that "false hair and turbans" can give them. Though the
execution of this drawing lacks the perfection of workmanship of Leech's
later manner, he never surpassed it in expression and character.
The music "strikes up," the lady of the house throws a comprehensive
_coup d'oeil_ over her assembled visitors, and at last pitches upon a
tall young man--_whom some of you may have met before_--with short hair,
spectacles, and turned-up wristbands, as if he was about to wash his
hands with his coat on. His fate is sealed, and she advances towards
him, blandly exclaiming:
[Illustration: "WALLFLOWERS."]
"_Mr. Ledbury_, allow me to introduce you to a partner."
My own readers have heard of Mr. Ledbury; but as I think they are
unacquainted with his personal appearance, I propose to introduce him to
them, and here he is--
[Illustration: "MR. LEDBURY."]
Mr. Ledbury is "presented to a bouquet with a young lady attached to
it"--a Miss Hamilton--who freezes him completely. A quadrille is formed.
Mr. Ledbury cudgels his brains for five minutes. The young partner seems
to be "searching after some imaginary object amongst the petals of her
bouquet." The mountainous Ledbury brain is in labour. Behold the
production!
"MR. L. 'Have you been to many parties this season?'
"MISS H. 'Not a great many.'
Miss Hamilton continues the bouquet investigation. The gentleman invents
another sentence.
"MR. L. 'What do you think of Alfred Tennyson?'
"MISS H. 'I am sorry to say I have not heard his poetry. Have you?'
[Illustration: "MR. LEDBURY AND MISS HAMILTON."]
"MR. L. 'Oh yes! several times."
Mr. Ledbury waits to be asked about "Mariana" and "Locksley Hall." No
inquiry, so he "rubs up an idea upon another tack":
"MR. L. 'What do you think of our _vis-a-vis_?'
"MISS H. 'Which one?'
"MR. L. 'The lady with that strange head-dress. Do you know her?'
"MISS H. 'It is Miss Brown--my cousin.'"
Mr. Ledbury wishes he could fall through a trap in the floor.
The quadrille continues, with occasional attempts on the part of the
brilliant couple to make conversation. The acme of imbecility seems to
be reached when the lady asks if Mr. L. plays any instrument? He replies
that he plays the flute a little. Does she admire it?
"Oh, so very much!" she says.
A waltz is proposed, but that form of dancing is, says our author,
"never established without a prolonged desire on the part of everybody
to relinquish the honour of commencing it. At last the example is set by
one daring pair, timidly followed by another couple, and then by
another, who get out of step at the end of the first round, and after
treading severely upon the advanced toes of the old lady in a very
flowery cap and plum-coloured satin (one of our faded wallflowers), who
is sitting out at the top of the room, and who from that instant
deprecates waltzing as an amusement not at all consistent with her ideas
of feminine decorum."
[Illustration: "THE WALTZ."]
The young lady in this drawing has much of Leech's charm; but I should
scarcely have selected it were it not for the figure of the gentleman,
which exactly resembles that of Leech himself as I first knew him. If
conservatories, or even staircases, could speak, what flirtations they
could chronicle, what love-tales they could tell! Mr. Smith says "you
will have to confess your inability to imagine what on earth the
gentleman with the long hair, who is carefully balancing himself on one
leg against the flowerpot-stand, and the pretty girl with the bouquet,
can find to talk about so long, so earnestly."
I for one beg Mr. Albert Smith's pardon. I can easily imagine what they
are talking about.
[Illustration: "IN THE CONSERVATORY."]
It would be a grave omission if "The Belle of the Evening" were left
out of these extracts from the "Physiology of Evening Parties." Let me
present her, then. Now listen to the flourish with which the author
introduces her:
"Room for beauty! The belle of the evening claims our next attention,
the lovely dark-eyed girl so plainly yet so elegantly dressed, who wears
her hair in simple bands over her fair forehead, unencumbered by flower
or ornament of any kind, and moves in the light of her own beauty as the
presiding goddess of the room, imparting fragrance to the enamoured air
that plays around her!"
[Illustration: "THE BELLE OF THE EVENING."]
Rather tall talk, this, but excusable, perhaps, as applied to the lovely
creature Leech has drawn for us.
I feel I cannot close these extracts more appropriately than by
allowing Mr. Ledbury to appear again at the moment of his departure from
a scene in which he has so distinguished himself by his conversational,
as well as by his terpsichorean, powers. He was destined to be guilty of
one more folly--that of thinking he had but to ask for his hat to get
it.
[Illustration: "MR. LEDBURY'S HAT."]
"He walks downstairs," says Mr. Smith, "under the insane expectation of
finding his own hat, or madly deeming that the ticket pinned upon it
corresponds with the one in his waistcoat pocket."
Here I take my leave of "The Physiology of Evening Parties" in
presenting my reader with this charming little drawing, in which one
scarcely knows which to admire most--the bewildered expression of Mr.
Ledbury as he ruefully contemplates the rim of his hat, or the
sympathetic, half-laughing face of the perfect little maid. The artistic
qualities of this illustration are excellent. I say good-bye to "Evening
Parties" only to meet Mr. Albert Smith again in a work by him called
"Comic Tales and Pictures of Life," published, I think, about the time
of the "Evening Parties," or perhaps earlier, for the illustrations are,
on the whole, inferior to those in the latter production. The work under
notice is composed of a series of short stories, in which love, comedy,
and deep tragedy play alternate parts. Leech's attention is mainly
devoted to the comic scenes.
We are told of a Mr. Percival Jenks, whose frequent visits to the
theatre have led to the loss of his heart to a beauteous ballet-girl.
"The third ballet-girl from the left-hand stage-box, with the golden
belt and green wreath, in the Pas des Guirlandes, or lyres, or
umbrellas, or something of the kind, had enslaved his susceptible
affections."
[Illustration: "MR. PERCIVAL JENKS."]
No one knew who Mr. Jenks was, or what he was. Even his landlady's
information about him was confined to the idea that he was "something in
a house in the City." That idea proved to be well founded, for Mr. J.
was discovered by the head-clerk at the house in the City, spoiling
blotting-paper by drawing little opera-dancers all over it; thus
neglecting his accounts, which he had to "stay two hours after time to
make up. At half price, nevertheless, he was at the play again, his
whole existence centred on an airy compound of clear muslin and white
satin that was twirling about the stage." Mr. Jenks burned to know his
enslaver's name with a view to an introduction; and for that purpose he
haunted the stage-door, but utterly failed to recognise, amongst the
faded cloaks, and drabby bonnets that issued from that portal, the
angelic form of his charmer. He then took to haunting the places where
minor actors and other employes of the theatre most do congregate for
the purpose of social intercourse and refreshment; here at last he is
rewarded.
"Do you know the young lady," he says to a habitue, "who dances in the
ballet with a green wreath round her head?"
"And a gilt belt round her waist?" asked the friend in turn. "Oh, it's
Miss--Miss--I shall forget my own name next."
Percival was about to suggest Rosiere, Celeste, Amadee, and other pretty
cognomens, when his companion caught the name, and exclaimed:
"Miss Jukes; I thought I should recollect it."
The name certainly was not what Percival had expected; still, what was
in a name? Jenks was not poetical, and Jukes was something like it.
"Could you favour me with an introduction to her?" he asked.
"In a minute, if you wish it," replied his companion.
"You know her intimately then?"
"Very; I buy all my green-grocery of her."
The introduction takes place. Gracious powers! how a minute broke the
enchantment of many weeks! "The nymph of the Danube was habited in a
faded green cloak and straw bonnet, with limp and half-bleached pink
ribbons clinging to its form. Her pallid and almost doughy face was
deeply pitted with smallpox; her skin was rough from the constant layers
of red and white paint it had to endure," etc., etc. He fell back with a
convulsive start.
From internal evidence I find the date of "Comic Tales," etc., to be
1841, contemporary, therefore, with the establishment of _Punch_. There
is a drawing of so pretty a conceit as to warrant my selecting it,
though artistically it is inferior to Leech's work even at that time.
The drawing heads a paper entitled "Speculations on Marriage and Young
Ladies," and as it tells its own story, quotation from Mr. Smith is
needless.
In one amusing paper in "Comic Tales," the author treats us to "an Act
for amending the representation of certain public sights, termed
equestrian spectacles, in the habit of being represented at a favourite
place of resort, termed the Royal Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge." The
paper is framed in the form of an Act of Parliament, and the author
forbids the use of ancient jokes or stereotyped phrases in a very
humorous manner.
"Be it enacted," he announces, after condemning a variety of
objectionable practices, "that the clown shall not, after the first
equestrian feat, exclaim: 'Now I'll have a turn to myself!' previous to
his toppling like a coach-wheel round the ring; nor shall he fall flat
on his face, and then collecting some sawdust in his hand, drop it down
from the level of his head, and say his nose bleeds; nor shall he
attempt to make the rope-dancers' balance-pole stand on its end by
propping it up with the said sawdust; nor shall he, after chalking the
performers' shoes, conclude by chalking his own nose, to prevent his
foot slipping when he treads upon it; nor shall he pick up a small piece
of straw, for fear he should fall over it, and afterwards balance the
said straw on his chin as he runs about; neither shall the master of the
ring say to the clown, when they are leaving the circus: 'I never follow
the fool, sir!' nor shall the fool reply: 'Then I do!' and walk out
after him."
I would draw attention to the figure of the clown in this cut, which is
simply perfect in expression and character. The affected strut of the
ring-master also is admirably caught.
A paper on Christmas pantomimes is illustrated by such a perfect clown
that I cannot resist my inclination to present him to my readers.
[Illustration: CLOWN: "Oh, see what I've found!"]
"Comic Tales and Pictures of Life" contains, at least, one drawing that
is equal to Leech at his best. The cut illustrates an article on
"Delightful People," a short essay, amusing enough.
[Illustration: "MISS CINTHIA SINGS."]
Music, whether performed by the band or by musical guests, is an
important factor in an evening party. Mr. Albert Smith tells us that "a
lady of his acquaintance" had secured those "Delightful People, the
Lawsons," for a large evening party she was about to give; and after
lauding the charming qualities of Mr. and Mrs. Lawson, she put a final
touch to the Lawson attractions by informing her friend that their
daughter, Miss Cinthia Lawson, was not only a delightful girl, but that
"she sings better than anyone you ever heard in private." In the
interval of dancing Cinthia sings. "The young lady now dressed in plain
white robes, with her hair smoothed very flat round her head _a la
Grisi_, whom she thought she resembled both in style of singing and
features, and consequently studied all her attitudes from the clever
Italian's impersonation of Norma.... At last the lady begun a _bravura_
upon such a high note, and so powerful, that some impudent fellows in
the square, who were passing at the moment, sang out 'Vari-e-ty' in
reply. Presently, a young gentleman, who was standing at her side,
chanced to turn over too soon, whereupon she gave him _such_ a look,
that, if he had entertained any thoughts of proposing, would effectually
have stopped any such rash proceeding; but her equanimity was soon
restored, and she went through the aria in most dashing style until she
came to the last note, whose appearance she heralded with a _roulade_ of
wonderful execution."
I remember Grisi, and I cannot share Miss Lawson's conviction of her
resemblance to that great singer--personal resemblance, I mean--and, in
all probability, she had as feeble a claim to an equality of genius; but
that she had a powerful voice, and that she gave it full effect, is
evident by Leech's perfect rendering of that wonderful mouth, from which
one can almost hear the _roulade_. All the lines of the figure, with the
movement of the hands, and the backward action of the singer, are true
to Nature. The assistant at the music-book and the stolid old gentleman
are also excellent.
With this, the best of the drawings in "Comic Tales," I take my leave
of the book.