The air of the “passive patrician” of London society is unmistakable, inimitable, and absorbingly interesting; and never did I have a better opportunity to observe it than at the beautiful reception at Stafford House to which I was invited, “quite informally.”
In contrast to this, and as a fine example of the Londoner’s utter absence of a sense of proportion, listen to the tale of a lady who called on me one day.
I had met her before, but knew her very slightly. She was exceedingly polite, and well-bred, and of very formal manner.
The purpose of her call was to invite me to her house. She definitely stated a date ten days hence, and asked if I would enjoy a bread-and-milk supper. “For we are plain folk,” she said, “and do not entertain on an elaborate scale.”
I accepted with pleasure, and she went politely away.
But I was not to be fooled by intimations of informality. “Bread and milk,” indeed! that, I well knew, was a euphonious burlesque for a high tea if not a sumptuous dinner. I remembered that she had called personally to invite me; that she asked me ten days before the occasion; and that the hour, seven o’clock, might mean anything at all.
Therefore, when the day came, I donned evening costume, called a hansom, and started.
I had never been to the house before, and on reaching it found myself confronted by a high stone wall and a broad wooden door.
Pushing open the latter, I doubtfully entered, and seemed to be in a large and somewhat neglected garden filled with a tangle of shrubs, vines, and flowers. Magnificent old trees drooped their branches low over the winding paths; rustic arbors, covered with earwiggy vines, would have delighted Amy March; here and there a broken and weather-beaten statue of stone or marble poked its head or its headlessness up through the wandering branches.
I started uncertainly along the most promising of the paths, and at last came in sight of a house.