EPITAPH ON A DYER.
This Dyer with a dire liver tried
To earn a living dyeing, and he died.
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER.
No. VIII.—THE DUFFER AS A HOST.
Of course I don't try to give dinners at home. The difficulties and anxieties are too enormous. First there is inviting the people. I like to have none but very clever men and very pretty women, but nobody's acquaintance is limited to those rare beings, and, if I did invite them, they would all have previous engagements: I do not blame them. But suppose that two or three of the wits and beauties accept, that is worse than ever, because the rest are a Q.C. (who talks about his cases) and his wife, who talks about her children. An old school-fellow, who has no conversation that does not begin, "I say, do you remember old JACK WILLIAMS." This does not entertain the beauty, who sits next him.
A Dowager Duchess, she knows none of the other people and wonders audibly (to me) who they are. A clever young man, whose language is the language of the future, and whose humour is of a date to which I humbly hope my own days may not be prolonged. A Psychical Researcher, with a note-book; he gets at the Duchess at once, and cross-examines her about a visionary Piper who plays audible pibrochs through Castle Blawearie, her ancestral home. Does she think the pibroch could be taken down in a phonograph. Could the Piper be snapped in a kodak? The Duchess does not know what a phonograph is; never heard of a kodak. She does not like the note-book any more than Mr. Pickwick's cabman liked it. She is afraid of getting into print. Then there is the Warden of St. Jude's, a great scholar; he pricks up his ears, not the keenest, at the word kodak, and begins to talk about a newly-discovered Codex of PODONIAN the Elder. Nobody knows what a Codex is. There is a School-board Lady, but, alas, she is next the Warden of St. Jude's, not next the enthusiastic Clergyman, who proses about a Club for Milliners. There is GRIGSBY, who develops an undesirable interest in the Milliners' Club. Have they a Strangers' Room? Do they give suppers? Are they Friendly Girls? Everyone thinks GRIGSBY flippant and coarse; I wish I had not asked him to come. There is a Positivist, who sneers at the Clergyman; there are a Squire and his wife from Rutlandshire: she is next the Radical Candidate for the Isle of Dogs. They do not seem to get on well together. GRIGSBY and the humorist of the future are chaffing each other across the table: nobody understands them; I don't know whether they are quarrelling or not. Miss JONES, the authoress of Melancholy Moods (in a Greek dress, with a pince-nez: a woman should not combine these attributes) is next the Squire: he has never heard of any of her friends the Minor Poets: she takes no interest in Hay, nor in Tithes. I see the Guardsman and the Beauty looking at each other across the flowers and things: the language of their eyes is not difficult, nor pleasant, to read. Why is the champagne so hot, and why are the ices so salt and hard? I know something is the matter with the claret: something is always the matter with the claret. It has been iced, and the champagne has been standing for days in an equable temperature of 65°.