A Drawing-room Tea
An Early Departure
THE “season” begins about the time Parliament opens, and Parliament’s opening and closing depends more or less on fox-hunting and grouse-shooting. As the “season” approaches, town-houses are opened and “green” servants are broken in; secretaries busy themselves with lists and stationery, and the winter campaign begins immediately upon the family’s return to town. As a London house is seldom needed for more than the formal entertainments of a season, it is in most cases hired; consequently, it is seldom attractive. Acquaintances are entertained in the city, and friends are taken into the country to spend the week’s end on the family estate, surrounded by the household gods and the most attractive side of all England. There the future members of the House of Lords, and the belles of some future Drawing-room, ride donkeys, and the older people ride wheels and sit under English oaks and make little water-color sketches, and it is easily seen why only social duties take them to London.
Distinguished Guests
By eight o’clock in the evening almost every other house that you see will have a little red carpet stretching from its door to the curb, and in some cases a temporary awning over it. The streets seem to be given over entirely to carriages and hansoms carrying people to dinner. When the last guest has arrived the carpet is taken in until later on, when it again rolls back down the steps and across the pavement, between two lines of footmen, while the butler whistles for hansoms, and half of fashionable London goes to its own house, its club, or its lodgings. A Member of Parliament, during a short recess, will leave the House and drive miles to a dinner. He may arrive thirty minutes late, or leave before the dinner is half over. A Quartermaster-General will leave the War Office an hour earlier, because he has promised to go bicycling with some young people, and an Editor will leave his paper and accompany his wife to a tea.
After Dinner