Chapter 24
My Christmas Dinner. It was on the 20th of December last that I received an invitation from my friend, Mr. Figgins, 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 waist-coated 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. 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 21st 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, these, that on dining their 10 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, dined 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 guilt-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.
Christmas 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 affect 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 mincemeat 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 dispatch 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 stockbroker 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 dispatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind. December the 24th. 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 program upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Paolo 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 child herald and read myself into a sublime contempt of mankind. I began to perceive that merriment is only malice and disguise, and that the chief cardinal virtue is misanthropy. I sent 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 blank, but no matter, it was not the letter. In such a frenzy as mine, raging to behold the object of my admiration, condescend not 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. Mundon'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 graded 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. Tomorrow 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 daybreak.
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 was piling upon me a pelion, or rather of a suvius 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 possessed 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 Zimmerman 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 today, 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 sphinx to expound, a Gordian tangle to untwist, had she sent me a lesson in algebra or asked me the way to Brabdingnag, 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 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
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. the last moment. There are still four hours left. They will not die until 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 beg 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. Figgins and his six clerks, the Clapham beef-eaters,
the charms of Upper Brook Street, my pretty cousins, and the pantomime writer, the stockbroker, 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 Hare 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 abandon, 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 parlour, a single glance disclosed to me a blazing fire, with Lucy and several lovely creatures in a semicircle. Fancy too gave me a glimpse of a sprig of mistletoe. I vanished from the house, like a specter at daybreak. 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 criticizing 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.
End of Section 24
