‘In town, in the month of September,
We find neither riches nor rank;
In vain we look out for a member
To give us a nod or a frank.
Each knocker in silence reposes,
In every mansion you find
One dirty old woman who dozes,
Or peeps through the dining-room blind.’
This may be compared with the soliloquy put by H. S. Leigh in the mouth of ‘the last man’ left in London:
‘The Row is dull, as dull can be;
Deserted is the Drive;
The glass that stood at eighty-three,
Now stands at sixty-five.
The summer days are over,
The town, ah me! has flown,
Through Dover, or to clover—
And I am all alone.’
It has long been held, among a certain class, that to be seen in town during the Recess is to forfeit all pretensions to haut ton. And so ‘the last man’ of the Season is naturally represented by Bayly as somewhat ashamed of himself. ‘He’ll blush,’ we are told, ‘if you ask him the reason Why he with the rest is not gone’:
‘He’ll seek you with shame and with sorrow,
He’ll smile with affected delight;
He’ll swear he leaves London to-morrow,
And only came to it last night!’
He will tell you that he is in general request—that the difficulty is to know where not to go:
‘So odd you should happen to meet him;
So strange, as he’s just passing through.’
The Season may be said to go to its grave with parting volleys from the sportsmen on the moors. One is fired on ‘the Twelfth,’ the other on ‘the First.’ The one is associated with grouse, the other with partridges. And Haynes Bayly makes his fashionable matron only too conscious of these facts. ‘Don’t talk of September,’ she says; ‘a lady
‘Must think it of all months the worst;
The men are preparing already
To take themselves off on the First.’
‘Last month, their attention to quicken,
A supper I knew was the thing;
But now, from my turkey and chicken,
They’re tempted by birds on the wing!
They shoulder their terrible rifles
(’Tis really too much for my nerves!)
And, slighting my sweets and my trifles,
Prefer my Lord Harry’s preserves!’
And she goes on to say: