A Little Dinner at Timmins's Read online

Norton!" and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see

  what pretty thing Rosa was composing.

  It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as

  follows:--

  "LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.

  "Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and

  Lady Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock."

  "My dear!" exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.

  "Law, Fitzroy!" cried the beloved of his bosom, "how you do startle

  one!"

  "Give a dinner-party with our means!" said he.

  "Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?" Rosa said. "Fifteen

  guineas a day is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated

  it." And, so saying, she rose and taking hold of his whiskers

  (which are as fine as those of any man of his circuit,) she put her

  mouth close up against his and did something to his long face,

  which quite changed the expression of it; and which the little page

  heard outside the door.

  "Our dining-room won't hold ten," he said.

  "We'll only ask twenty, my love. Ten are sure to refuse in this

  season, when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is the list."

  "Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's."

  "You are dying to get a lord into the house," Timmins said (HE had

  not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not

  so affected as to call him TYMMYNS).

  "Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked," Rosa said.

  "Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then."

  "Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy," his wife said,

  "and our rooms are so VERY small."

  Fitz laughed. "You little rogue," he said, "Lady Bungay weighs two

  of Blanche, even when she's not in the f--"

  "Fiddlesticks!" Rose cried out. "Doctor Crowder really cannot be

  admitted: he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really

  quite disagreeable." And she imitated the gurgling noise performed

  by the Doctor while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that

  Fitz saw inviting him was out of the question.

  "Besides, we mustn't have too many relations," Rosa went on.

  "Mamma, of course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the

  evening; and she'll bring her silver bread-basket and her

  candlesticks, which are very rich and handsome."

  "And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!" groaned out

  Timmins.

  "Well, well, don't be in a pet," said little Rosa. "The girls

  won't come to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards." And

  she went on with the list.

  "Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no: we MUST ask

  them, Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their house

  in Brobdingnag Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot. But to

  people in OUR position in SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come.

  The city people are glad to mix with the old families."

  "Very good," says Fitz, with a sad face of assent--and Mrs. Timmins

  went on reading her list.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place."

  "Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives herself

  the airs of an empress; and when--"

  "One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have," Rosa replied,

  with much dignity as if the presence of the representative of her

  native place would be a protection to her dinner. And a note was

  written and transported by the page early next morning to the

  mansion of the Sawyers, in Belgravine Place.

  The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her

  large dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks

  rather scraggy of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and

  figure will stun you of an evening); and having read the note, the

  following dialogue passed:--

  Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"Well, upon my word, I don't know where things

  will end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner."

  Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"Ask us to dinner! What d----- impudence!"

  Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary

  principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as

  much to these persons."

  Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"No, d--- it, Joanna: they are my constituents

  and we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will come to their

  party." (He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham

  Sawyer writes)--

  "MY DEAR ROSA,--We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little

  party. I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS,

  you know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. I hope your mamma is well:

  present my KINDEST REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see

  much MORE of each other in the summer, when we go down to the

  Sawpits (for going abroad is out of the question in these DREADFUL

  TIMES). With a hundred kisses to your dear little PET,

  "Believe me your attached

  "J. T. S."

  She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a

  girl or boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind

  and gracious nature of the reply to her invitation.

  II.

  The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking,

  were Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.,

  of Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard

  Street, City.

  Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school

  together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from

  the day when they contended for the French prize at school to last

  week, when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of

  the Daughters of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced

  against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed

  by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than

  Timmins in the Muffin transaction (for she had possession of a

  kettle-holder worked by the hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds

  to her stall); but in the Mazurka Rosa conquered: she has the

  prettiest little foot possible (which in a red boot and silver heel

  looked so lovely that even the Chinese ambassador remarked it),

  whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord Cornbury

  acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as they

  danced together amongst the Scythes.

  "These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy to her

  husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that

  rogue of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to

  Brobdingnag Gardens, and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady

  who is kitchen-maid at 27, and who is not more than fourteen years

  older than little Buttons.

  "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
<
br />   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."

  III.

  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;

  People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out

  furiously, "Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses

  suppose that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their -----

  soiree?" (the dear reader may fill up the ----- to any strength,

  according to his liking)--or, "Upon my word, William my dear, it is

  too much to ask us to pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to

  spend I don't know how much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in

  Mrs. Timmins's little drawing-room." Mrs. Moser made the latter

  remark about the Timmins affair, while the former was uttered by

  Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law, to his lady, in Gloucester Place.

  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.

  "We can't ask them to come out of the country," Rosa said to her

  Fitzroy--(between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins

  was out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every well-

  regulated woman should be of her husband's female friends)--"we

  can't ask them to come so far for the evening."

  "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.

  Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been

  asked, old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother--(and, by consequence,

  Fitzroy's DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" is

  particularly sarcastic)--Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and

  came with Miss Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily,

  who limps a little, but plays sweetly on the concertina. They live

  close by--trust them for that. Your mother-in-law is always within

  hearing, thank our stars for the attention of the dear women. The

  Gashleighs, I say, live close by, and came early on the morning

  after Rosa's notes had been issued for the dinn
er.

  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 (she is always bragging about that

  confounded bread-basket), 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