On your arrival, you go and shake hands with your host and hostess, then off you go: your card of invitation is as good as a feuille de route. You walk at a funeral pace, with slow and solemn steps, until your knees give way, or your head swims. Then you steer for the buffet, and if you know how to use your elbows, you get a cup of tea or coffee, an ice, or a few biscuits. The buffet, being generally the great attraction of the evening, sustains a formidable siege, and you will not get at it without a struggle or even a few bruises. But after your first stage, you feel you must halt and take some refreshment, even though it cost you two or three blows: it is a case of necessity.
As soon as the inner man is refreshed, you must put your best foot foremost and be off once more. England expects every man to do his duty. As to passing the evening at the buffet, it is not to be thought of. You cast a sad glance at the ices à la vanille and other nice things that you turn your back on regretfully, and you start on your second round, hoping on the way to be introduced to some lady and to have an occasion to return to the buffet with her. No whist tables at the conversazione, few chairs, some albums to turn over. These meetings, called conversazioni, but which might as appropriately be called walking parties (or ambulazioni?), are very favourite forms of amusement. If they were not so crowded, you might perhaps feel inclined to give your calves a good rubbing, and start ahead to do in an hour the three or four miles that are expected of you. When you feel your legs becoming a prey to thousands of needles and pins, you seek out the master of the house, and say to him, “Thank you so much for a very charming evening.” He invariably answers, “I am so glad you have enjoyed yourself.” It is good form to make these remarks without bursting out laughing in each other’s faces.
John Bull, consummate master of the art de s’ennuyer, never invented anything duller than the conversazione; it is the ne plus ultra of the art.
The Royal Academy of Paintings, the London Salon, opens on the 1st of May. If you call on Mrs. John Bull during the months of May or June, the first thing she will ask you is: “Have you been to the Academy? What pictures did you like best?” Now, the English are very good judges of painting, and I am ashamed to say that, for my part, I do not know a Van Dyck from a Van Daub. As I might venture to reply: “I noticed such and such a picture,” and create a poor impression, I have found a way out of the difficulty by the following very simple means. I get some artist friend to point out to me a score of the best pictures in the collection; I have a good look at them, carefully commit their names to memory, and set off to pay my calls.
“Have you been to...?” says Mrs. Bull.
——“Oh! yes.... By-the-bye, did you notice such and such a picture...?”
Thus I spare myself a great deal of trouble and many blunders: first, two whole days looking at the pictures, a stiff neck ... and, last but not least, the annoyance of passing for an ignoramus, which is always unpleasant ... especially when it is the case.
I suspect many a worthy Englishwoman of going to the Academy to see the new summer fashions. As to the sons of Old Merry England, I have often seen them take up their position at the buffet, and devote their attention to the whisky and brandy until the return of the ladies they brought with them. By this means they are enabled to see at the Academy twice as many pictures as the hanging Committee have admitted.