Read Ebook: A Little Dinner at Timmins's by Thackeray William Makepeace

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Ebook has 203 lines and 13394 words, and 5 pages

"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her husband. "Rosa says she has asked the Bungays."

"Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy, who had been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, "Hang him, what business has HE to be giving parties?" allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless, to accept Rosa's invitation.

"When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's account," Mr. Rowdy thought; "and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is, why . . ." The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the Park.

"Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," calculated little Rosa.

"General Gulpin," Rosa continued, "eats a great deal, and is very stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us put HIM down!" and she noted down "Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord Castlemouldy, 1."

"You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," groaned Timmins. "Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years."

"And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!" Mrs. Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.

"Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and some sort of return we might make, I think."

"Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear--but what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?" And so, one by one, Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on Mr. Mitchel's jury.

Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company. Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt, on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution, and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she might safely invite to her little dinner.

But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in dismay.

"Pooh!" said Rosa with a laugh. "Your sister Blanche looked very well in one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it."

Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation, was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--or rather from the firm; and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L. 18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants, Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.

And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. "I have had seven days of it, though," he thought; "and that will be enough to pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with Stumpy and Rowdy."

The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs. Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to the tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.

These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the habit of entertaining her friends. There are--

People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have been asked to dinner;

That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at all, is a point which I suppose nobody will question. Timmins's earliest friend in life was Simmins, whose wife and family have taken a cottage at Mortlake for the season.

"Why, no, certainly." said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great opinion of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the list.

And what was the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs. S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully to Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to do it by her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day. If, in a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their wives would not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage, and dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput Street.

When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his little dining-room--one of those absurd little rooms which ought to be called a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a shower-bath, or a state cabin in a ship--when Fitzroy heard his mother-in-law's knock, and her well-known scuffling and chattering in the passage--in which she squeezed up young Buttons, the page, while she put questions to him regarding baby, and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what Mrs. Gashleigh had sent overnight, and the housemaid's health, and whether Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not--and when, after this preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, announcing--"Mrs. Gashleigh and the young ladies," Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper with an expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat and walked away.

Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her mamma, and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it any longer--he was hanged if he would. So he went away to chambers, leaving the field clear to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.

Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought he would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery, and he found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who was holding him and pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I suppose; so that the little fellow bawled pitifully--and his father finally quitted the premises.

No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight off, than the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put it in order. Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase, some they put behind the Encyclopaedia. Some they crammed into the drawers--where Mrs. Gashleigh found three cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters, over which she cast her eye; and by Fitz's return they had the room as neat as possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the study table.

It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs. Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young couple, at Spode and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve persons.

It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better to purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with "my silver basket in the centre," Mrs. G. said , "we need not have any extra china dishes, and the table will look very pretty."

On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least a dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-bottles, and a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and that, as they would always be useful, it would be best to purchase the articles immediately. Fitz tumbled over the basket containing them, which stood in the hall as he came in from chambers, and over the boy who had brought them--and the little bill.

The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it must be owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had lived a great part of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in great state there, was famous for making some dishes, without which, she thought, no dinner could be perfect. When she proposed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons, and gooseberry-cream, Rosa turned up her nose--a pretty little nose it was, by the way, and with a natural turn in that direction.

"Mock-turtle in June, mamma!" said she.

"It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa," the mamma replied: "it was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at Plymouth; it was good enough for the first men in the county, and relished by Lord Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after Exeter races; and I think it might be good enough for--"

"I will NOT have it, mamma!" said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot; and Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that. Once, when she had tried to physic the baby, there had been a similar fight between them.

So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with a dash--a melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were certainly thrust in among the entrees; but Rosa determined they never should make an entree at all into HER dinner-party, but that she would have the dinner her own way.

When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of 6L. 14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest smiles, and the baby in her arms. And after she had made him remark how the child grew every day more and more like him, and after she had treated him to a number of compliments and caresses, which it were positively fulsome to exhibit in public, and after she had soothed him into good humor by her artless tenderness, she began to speak to him about some little points which she had at heart.

She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and would have them.

The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and bought them at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself likewise to a neat, sweet pretty half-mourning --a neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or bombazine, or tiffany, or some such thing; but Madame Camille, of Regent Street, made it up, and Rosa looked like an angel in it on the night of her little dinner.

"And, my sweet," she continued, after the curtains had been accorded, "mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. She wants to make it very expensive, which I cannot allow. I have been thinking of a delightful and economical plan, and you, my sweetest Fitz, must put it into execution."

"I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers," Fitz said with a laugh. "Am I to put on a cap and an apron?"

"No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' , and you are to beg Monsieur Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp, as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded halls of wealth."

Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had had a fancy for the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded creature of a husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of him.

Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a man, is a member of the committee of the "Megatherium Club," and the great Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only too happy to oblige him. A young friend and protege of his, of considerable merit, M. Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged through the lamented death of Lord Hauncher, with whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an artist. He had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would impress himself to be useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur Timmins. Fitz went away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the great Mirobolant, and was one of those who voted against the decreasing of Mirobolant's salary, when the measure was proposed by Mr. Parings, Colonel Close, and the Screw party in the committee of the club.

Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful Cavalcadour called in Lilliput Street the next day. A rich crimson velvet waistcoat, with buttons of blue glass and gold, a variegated blue satin stock, over which a graceful mosaic chain hung in glittering folds, a white hat worn on one side of his long curling ringlets, redolent with the most delightful hair-oil--one of those white hats which looks as if it had been just skinned--and a pair of gloves not exactly of the color of beurre frais, but of beurre that has been up the chimney, with a natty cane with a gilt knob, completed the upper part at any rate, of the costume of the young fellow whom the page introduced to Mrs. Timmins.

Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about the gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived. His presence silenced Mrs. Gashleigh; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation with him in the French language--which she had acquired perfectly in an elegant finishing establishment in Kensington Square--had a great advantage over her mother, who could only pursue the dialogue with very much difficulty, eying one or other interlocutor with an alarmed and suspicious look, and gasping out "We" whenever she thought a proper opportunity arose for the use of that affirmative.

"I have two leetl menus weez me," said Cavalcadour to Mrs. Gashleigh.

"Minews--yes,--oh, indeed?" answered the lady.

"Two little cartes."

"Oh, two carts! Oh, we," she said. "Coming, I suppose?" And she looked out of the window to see if they were there.

Cavalcadour smiled. He produced from a pocket-book a pink paper and a blue paper, on which he had written two bills of fare--the last two which he had composed for the lamented Hauncher--and he handed these over to Mrs. Fitzroy.

The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these documents, and began to read from the pink one as follows:--

"DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES.

Potage a la Rigodon. Do. a la Prince de Tombuctou.

Deux Poissons.

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