[guide.chat] story carols christmas dinner
- From: vanessa <qwerty1234567a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GUIDE CHAT" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:47:26 +0100
My Christmas Dinner
It was on the twentieth of December last that I received an invitation from my
friend, Mr. Phiggins, to dine with him in Mark Lane, on Christmas Day. I had
several reasons for declining this proposition. The first was that Mr. P. makes
it a rule, at all these festivals, to empty the entire contents of his
counting-house into his little dining parlor; and you consequently sit down to
dinner with six white-waistcoated clerks, let loose upon a turkey. The second
was that I am not sufficiently well read in cotton and sugar, to enter with any
spirit into the subject of conversation. And the third was, and is, that I
never drink Cape wine. But by far the most prevailing reason remains to be
told. I had been anticipating for some days, and was hourly in the hope of
receiving, an invitation to spend my Christmas Day in a most irresistible
quarter. I was expecting, indeed, the felicity of eating plum-pudding with an
angel; and, on the strength of my imaginary engagement, I returned a polite
note to Mr. P., reducing him to the necessity of advertising for another
candidate for Cape and turkey.
The twenty-first came. Another invitation?to dine with a regiment of roast-beef
eaters, at Clapham. I declined this also, for the above reason, and for one
other, viz., that, on dining there ten Christmas Days ago, it was discovered,
on sitting down, that one little accompaniment of the roast beef had been
entirely overlooked. Would it be believed!?but I will not stay to mystify?I
merely mention the fact. They had forgotten the horseradish.
The next day arrived, and with it a neat epistle, sealed with violet-colored
wax, from Upper Brook street. ?Dine with the ladies?at home on Christmas Day.?
Very tempting, it is true; but not exactly the letter I was longing for. I
began, however, to debate within myself upon the policy of securing this bird
in hand, instead of waiting for the two that were still hopping about the bush,
when the consultation was suddenly brought to a close, by a prophetic view of
the portfolio of drawings fresh from boarding-school?moths and roses on
embossed paper;?to say nothing of the album, in which I stood engaged to write
an elegy on a Java sparrow, that had been the favorite in the family for three
days. I rung for gilt-edged, pleaded a world of polite regret, and again
declined.
The twenty-third dawned; time was getting on rather rapidly; but no card came.
I began to despair of any more invitations, and to repent of my refusals.
Breakfast was hardly over, however, when the servant brought up?not a
letter?but an aunt and a brace of cousins from Bayswater. They would listen to
no excuse; consanguinity required me, and Christmas was not my own. Now my
cousins kept no albums; they are really as pretty as cousins can be; and when
violent hands, with white kid gloves, are laid on one, it is sometimes
difficult to effect an escape with becoming elegance. I could not, however,
give up my darling hope of a pleasanter prospect. They fought with me in fifty
engagements?that I pretended to have made. I showed them the Court Guide, with
ten names obliterated?being those of persons who had not asked me to mince-meat
and mistletoe; and I ultimately gained my cause by quartering the remains of an
infectious fever on the sensitive fears of my aunt, and by dividing a
rheumatism and a sprained ankle between my sympathetic cousins.
As soon as they were gone, I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in the
direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a ?happy? Christmas.
As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the door. ?A present from
the country,? thought I, ?yes, they do dine at home; they must ask me; they
know that I am in town.? Immediately afterward a servant issued with a letter;
he took the nearest way to my lodgings, and I hurried back by another street to
receive the so-much-wished-for invitation. I was in a state of delirious
delight.
I arrived?but there was no letter. I sat down to wait, in a spirit of calmer
enjoyment than I had experienced for some days; and in less than half an hour a
note was brought to me. At length, the desired despatch had come; it seemed
written on the leaf of a lily with a pen dipped in dew. I opened it?and had
nearly fainted with disappointment. It was from a stock-broker, who begins an
anecdote of Mr. Rothschild before dinner, and finishes it with the fourth
bottle?and who makes his eight children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In
macadamizing a stray stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a
tooth, and with it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable
apology, and despatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.
December the twenty-fourth?I began to count the hours, and uttered many
poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack! no letter came;?yes, I received
a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the honor, etc. But I was too
cunning for this, and practiced wisdom for once. I happened to reflect that his
pantomime was to make its appearance on the night after, and that his object
was to perpetrate the whole programme upon me. Regret that I could not have the
pleasure of meeting Mr. Paulo, and the rest of the literati to be then and
there assembled, was of course immediately expressed.
My mind became restless and agitated. I felt, amidst all these invitations,
cruelly neglected. They served, indeed, but to increase my uneasiness, as they
opened prospects of happiness in which I could take no share. They discovered a
most tempting dessert, composed of forbidden fruit. I took down ?Childe
Harold,? and read myself into a sublime contempt of mankind. I began to
perceive that merriment is only malice in disguise, and that the chief cardinal
virtue is misanthropy.
I sat ?nursing my wrath,? till it scorched me; when the arrival of another
epistle suddenly charmed me from this state of delicious melancholy and
delightful endurance of wrong. I sickened as I surveyed, and trembled as I
opened it. It was dated??, but no matter; it was not the letter. In such a
frenzy as mine, raging to behold the object of my admiration condescend, not to
eat a custard, but to render it invisible?to be invited perhaps to a tart
fabricated by her own ethereal fingers; with such possibilities before me, how
could I think of joining a ?friendly party,??where I should inevitably sit next
to a deaf lady, who had been, when a little girl, patted on the head by Wilkes,
or my Lord North, she could not recollect which?had taken tea with the author
of ?Junius,? but had forgotten his name?and who once asked me ?whether Mr.
Munden?s monument was in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul?s???I seized a pen, and
presented my compliments. I hesitated?for the peril of precariousness of my
situation flashed on my mind; but hope had still left me a straw to catch at,
and I at length succeeded in resisting this late and terrible temptation.
After the first burst of excitement, I sunk into still deeper despondency. My
spirit became a prey to anxiety and remorse. I could not eat; dinner was
removed with unlifted covers. I went out. The world seemed to have acquired a
new face; nothing was to be seen but raisins and rounds of beef. I wandered
about like Lear?I had given up all! I felt myself grated against the world like
a nutmeg. It grew dark?I sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed
to have expired, and everybody seemed to have a delightful engagement for the
next day. I alone was disengaged?I felt like the Last Man! To-morrow appeared
to have already commenced its career; mankind had anticipated the future; ?and
coming mince pies cast their shadows before.?
In this state of desolation and dismay, I called?I could not help it?at the
house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation, and a welcome. My
protest must here however be recorded, that though I called in the hope of
being asked, it was my fixed determination not to avail myself of so protracted
a piece of politeness. No: my triumph would have been to have annihilated them
with an engagement made in September, payable three months after date. With
these feelings, I gave an agitated knock?they were stoning the plums, and did
not immediately attend. I rung?how unlike a dinner bell it sounded! A girl at
length made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed me that
the family had gone to spend their Christmas Eve in Portland Place. I rushed
down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first impulse was to go to some wharf
and inquire what vessels were starting for America. But it was a cold night?I
went home and threw myself on my miserable couch. In other words, I went to bed.
I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. Sometimes I fancied myself
seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing log: at others,
that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skating, and that the Humane
Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a Vesuvius of blankets. I awoke
a little refreshed. Alas! it was the twenty-fifth of the month?It was Christmas
Day! Let the reader, if he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my
sensations.
I swallowed an atom of dry toast?nothing could calm the fever of my soul. I
stirred the fire and read Zimmermann alternately. Even reason?the last remedy
one has recourse to in such cases?came at length to my relief: I argued myself
into a philosophic fit. But, unluckily, just as the Lethean tide within me was
at its height, my landlady broke in upon my lethargy, and chased away by a
single word all the little sprites and pleasures that were acting as my
physicians, and prescribing balm for my wounds. She paid me the usual
compliment, and then??Do you dine at home to-day, sir?? abruptly inquired she.
Here was a question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such complete dismay
in so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a Gordian tangle
to untwist; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked me the way to
Brobdingnag; had she desired me to show her the North Pole, or the meaning of a
melodrama:?any or all of these I might have accomplished. But to request me to
define my dinner?to inquire into its latitude?to compel me to fathom that sea
of appetite which I now felt rushing through my frame?to ask me to dive into
futurity, and become the prophet of pies and preserves!?My heart died within me
at the impossibility of a reply.
She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around me. Then,
for the first time it occurred to me that, in the event of my having no
engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me! ?There will at least be the
two daughters,? I whispered to myself; ?and after all, Lucy Matthews is a
charming girl, and touches the harp divinely. She has a very small, pretty
hand, I recollect; only her fingers are so punctured by the needle?and I rather
think she bites her nails. No, I will not even now give up my hope. It was
yesterday but a straw?to-day it is but the thistledown; but I will cling to it
to the last moment. There are still four hours left; they will not dine till
six. One desperate struggle, and the peril is past; let me not be seduced by
this last golden apple, and I may yet win my race.? The struggle was made??I
should not dine at home.? This was the only phrase left me, for I could not say
that ?I should dine out.? Alas! that an event should be at the same time so
doubtful and so desirable. I only begged that if any letter arrived, it might
be brought to me immediately.
The last plank, the last splinter, had now given way beneath me. I was floating
about with no hope but the chance of something almost impossible. They had
?left me alone,? not with my glory, but with an appetite that resembled an
avalanche seeking whom it might devour. I had passed one dinnerless day, and
half of another; yet the promised land was as far from sight as ever. I
recounted the chances I had missed. The dinners I might have enjoyed, passed in
a dioramic view before my eyes. Mr. Phiggins and his six clerks?the Clapham
beef-eaters?the charms of Upper Brook street?my pretty cousins, and the
pantomime writer?the stock broker, whose stories one forgets, and the elderly
lady who forgets her stories?they all marched by me, a procession of
apparitions. Even my landlady?s invitation, though unborn, was not forgotten in
summing up my sacrifices. And for what?
Four o?clock. Hope was perfectly ridiculous. I had been walking upon the
hair-bridge over a gulf, and could not get into Elysium after all. I had been
catching moonbeams, and running after notes of music. Despair was my only
convenient refuge; no chance remained, unless something should drop from the
clouds. In this last particular I was not disappointed; for, on looking up, I
perceived a heavy shower of snow, yet I was obliged to venture forth; for being
supposed to dine out, I could not of course remain at home. Where to go I knew
not: I was like my first father??the world was all before me.? I flung my coat
round me, and hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing for a
stiletto. At the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three smiling
rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had just arrived?to
make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them!?As I rushed by the parlor, a single
glance disclosed to me a blazing fire, with Lucy and several lovely creatures
in a semi-circle. Fancy, too, gave me a glimpse of a sprig of mistletoe?I
vanished from the house, like a spectre at day-break.
How long I wandered about is doubtful. At last I happened to look through a
kitchen window, with an area in front, and saw a villain with a fork in his
hand, throwing himself back in his chair choked with ecstasy. Another was
feasting with a graver air; he seemed to be swallowing a bit of Paradise, and
criticising its flavor. This was too much for mortality?my appetite fastened
upon me like an alligator. I darted from the spot; and only a few yards further
discerned a house with rather an elegant exterior, and with some ham in the
window that looked perfectly sublime. There was no time for consideration?to
hesitate was to perish. I entered; it was indeed ?a banquet-hall deserted.? The
very waiters had gone home to their friends. There, however, I found a fire;
and there?to sum up all my folly and felicity in a single word?I DINED.
from
Vanessa The Google Girl.
my skype name is rainbowstar123
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