CHAPTER XIII.. The Confessions of a Diner.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DINER.

My First City Dinner--A Minnow against the Stream--Those Table Plans--Chaos--The City Alderman, Past and Present--Whistler's Lollipops--Odd Volumes--Exchanging Names--Ye Red Lyon Clubbe--The Pointed Beards--Baltimore Oysters--The Sound Money Dinner--To Meet General Boulanger--A Lunch at Washington--No Speeches.

THE THIRTEEN CLUB--What it was--How it was Boomed--Gruesome Details--Squint-Eyed Waiters--Superstitious Absentees--My Reasons for being Present--'Arry of Punch--The Lost "Vocal" Chords--The Undergraduate and the Undertaker--Model Speeches--Albert Smith An Atlantic Contradiction--The White Horse--The White Feather--Exit 13.

Probably no meal varies so much in the time of its celebration as that most important one, dinner. Some people still exist who dine at one o'clock; some also there are who daily observe that fearsome feast yclept "High Tea." The majority of people dine at various times ranging between seven o'clock and half-past eight, but there is one individual alone who dines at six. It is the City Guilder. Time was when City princes dwelt in City palaces, and rose at five, breakfasted at seven, lunched at twelve, dined at five and retired to rest at ten; but nowadays these magnates are lords of the City from ten till four, and of the West End and the suburbs for the remainder of the twenty-four hours, and they would in the ordinary course of things invite you to dinner at eight o'clock or so. What inscrutable law, then, compels them to hold their state dinners at the dread hour of six?

For it is at this time, when the ebb-tide of humanity sets strongest from the City, that the honoured guest of a City Company may be seen fighting his way, like a minnow against stream, in a hansom to his dinner at the hall of the Guild. Still, he goes "where glory waits him," so what recks he that the hour is altogether uncongenial and inconvenient?

Nevertheless, I know as a matter of fact that this earliness compels many invited guests to decline the honour and pleasure of dining with a "Gill" (as "Robert" would say), who would without doubt accept the invitation were the hours of the Guild as reasonable as their cuisine is excellent.

Personally, however, it has often been a pleasure to me to leave my easel at four o'clock and prepare to meet my practical City patrons "on their own midden" at "5.30 for 6."

As an illustration I will record a reminiscence of a very pleasant evening I once spent in the City, when the festivities--save for my having to make a speech--went off with that success which is inseparable from City dinners.

Imprimis, I arrive in daylight and evening dress. These two, like someone and holy water, don't agree, for not all the waters of Geneva nor the arts of the queen of all blanchisseuses can destroy the horrid contrast between a white tie and a white shirt; yet another good argument in favour of a reasonable dinner hour.

I hate being in a minority. More especially do I detest being in such a decidedly pronounced minority as one joins when one drives into the City about six o'clock in the evening against a vast current of toilers of commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch--he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to decline the next invitation I receive for a City dinner.

However, I live to reach Cannon Street and the mansion of the "Gill."

I am soon ushered into the Cedar Room, where I am received by the Master and the Wardens in their robes.

I mingle with the Guilders and their guests, and find the members of the Worshipful Company informing their friends that they are now in the Cedar Room; then they sniff, and the guests sniff and say "Charming!" Then they remark, "What a lot of pencils it would make!" and laugh, and the artists present agree that City folks are shoppy.

On a side table the stranger sees a number of what appear to him diagrams of City improvements, with mains and drains and all sorts of things, but on closer inspection they turn out to be the plans of the table. You discover one bearing your name, and opposite it a red cross, or perhaps I ought to say an exaggerated asterisk.

When you have taken your seat downstairs in the Banqueting Hall you inspect your plan, from which you find that you can tell who everybody is. Capital idea!

"Ah, seat Number 24, the great Professor Snuffers!"

You direct your gaze across the table to seat No. 24, and lo! your cherished preconception of the Professor vanishes instanter, for his bearing is military, and his whole appearance seems to denote muscle rather than mind.

This plan opens up a mine of instruction and information. You refer again, and next to the Professor you find the "Master of the Scalpers' Company."

"Dear, me, what a clerical-looking old gentleman!" is your mental comment.

Next you look for "The Rev. Canon Dormouse."

"Why, he's quite a youth! Can't be more than five-and-twenty, and wears a medal and an eye-glass! How types have changed!"

It occurs to you to open a conversation with your next neighbour, which you do by making a casual allusion to the Canon.

"Yes, dear old gentleman; does a lot for the poor--life devoted to them."

"Dear me, does he? Now to my mind, judging from appearances, the Master of the Scalpers' Company seems more cut out for that kind of work."

"Ha! ha! He's better at curing hams than souls."

"Well, I should not have thought so, merely judging character as an artist. Professor Snuffers seems to me also curiously unique. I know a good many Professors, but I never met one so anti-professional in appearance as that gentleman."

"Ah, Snuffers! Old friend of mine--where is he?"

"There," and you point to the name on the plan and nod over to the other side of the table.

"No, that's not Snuffers! I recollect now he told me he would not be able to come. That's Major Bangs, a guest asked to fill a vacant chair."

Similarly you find that the eye-glass youth is not Canon Dormouse, the clerical-looking gentleman not the Master of the Scalpers' Company, and so on. Oh, they are a capital idea, those plans!

On the occasion in question I met one of the Sheriffs of the City, who is also an Alderman--not a fat, apoplectic, greasy, vulgar Crsus, but a handsome, thoughtful-looking gentleman, decidedly under fifty, who might be anything but an Alderman. But indeed the long-accepted type of an Alderman is exploded--such a type, bursting with good dinners, wealth and vulgarity, must explode--and the phnix which has risen from his ashes would scarcely be recognised by the most liberal of naturalists as belonging to the same species. John Leech may have had living examples for his gross and repulsive monuments of gluttony; in my own experience, however, I find a gulf of great magnitude between the Alderman of caricature and the Alderman I have met in the flesh. The former has gone over to the majority of "four-bottle men" and other bygone phenomena.

Well, let us return to the dinner. The fare is excellent, the company delightful, and I am just revelling in that beatific state of mind born of a sufficiency of the good things of this earth, when nothing seems to me more pleasant than a City dinner, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by the Toastmaster, who bears a warrant to consign me to misery. I have to make a speech. I have passed through the ordeal before, but I find that familiarity, as far as speech-making is concerned, breeds no contempt. Between the City and the art in which I am interested there exists no affinity, and this perhaps is a blessing in disguise, as for once in a way one is of necessity compelled to "sink the shop." However, it is soon over. A plunge, a gasp or two, a few quick strokes, and I am through the breakers and on the shore--I mean on my seat. That was years ago--I am an old hand now.

I never could subscribe to that unwritten and unhonoured law which provides that an after-dinner speaker is entitled to five minutes in which to apologise for his incompetency in that capacity, and fifty-five minutes in which to speechify; and I have often wished that speechmakers one and all would recollect that a few words well-chosen and to the point, and a timely termination, are far more acceptable to the listener than all their maundering oratorical tours "from China to Peru," from the Mansion House to the moon. When I am going to a City dinner my own children show a lively interest to know the name of the Company, and if I name the Skinners' Guild their interest culminates in uproarious delight; but if I mention any other, most uncomplimentary groans greet the announcement, for the guests of the Company to which I refer can choose either to take or have sent to them a huge box of the choicest sweetmeats when the entertainment is over.

A propos of this, I recollect an incident the mention of which will, I fear, send a cold shudder through any worshipper of "Nubian" nocturnes and incomprehensible "arrangements." On one occasion after leaving the banquet of this Guild I beheld Whistler--"Jimmy" of the snowy tuft, the martyred butterfly of the "peacock room"--to whose impressionable soul the very thought of a sugar-stick should be direst agony, actually making his way homewards hugging a great box of lollipops!

I met a curious City man, not at a City dinner, but at "Ye Odd Volumes," where we both happened to be guests. He was certainly an odd-looking guest, a very old volume out-of-date--odd-fashioned overcoat with gold buttons, an odd-fashioned "stock," and an odd-looking shirt. While waiting for dinner he looked at me oddly, and eventually addressed me in this odd way:

"Sir, may I have the pleasure of exchanging names with you?"

"Why, certainly; my name is Harry Furniss."

"H'm, ha, eh, ha!" and he walked away.

After dinner came the speeches. As each guest was called upon, my odd friend was to his evident chagrin not named; I noticed from time to time the old gentleman was elevated--sitting high. At last, after I had returned thanks for the visitors, he rose and asked to be allowed to speak. He said something nice about me--the reason he explained to me later. The burthen of his speech was a protest that he had not seen one odd volume that night. "If you've got 'em, produce 'em. Ah!" (snapping his fingers at the company in general) "I don't think you know what an odd volume is!" And then turning round he placed on the table a huge volume on which he had been sitting all through dinner.

"There," he said, "that's an odd volume if you like--that's something unique. It contains 9,987 hotel bills--a chronicle (of my hotel expenses) for two-thirds of the present century."

Later he came round to me. He assured me that he didn't catch my name when he asked for it, but when I was speaking he recognised me and was glad to have the opportunity of making my acquaintance. It appeared he had bought many hundreds of "Romps" books for children and given them to Children's Hospitals and other institutions. So he had besides an odd volume a good heart--and what is more surprising, a watch in every pocket! Watch-collecting was his hobby, and, like a conjuror, he produced them from the most unexpected and mysterious places. One belonged to the Emperor Maximilian, and had in its case moving figures to strike the time. I confess I wished he had exchanged watches with me in place of names. His name, by the way, was Holborn; he was a well-known City tea-merchant.

When I visited Leeds for the British Association Meeting, I was made a member of Ye Red Lyon Clubbe, a dining club which I understand meets once a year as a relief to the daily monotony of the serious business of the Association--in fact, "for one night only" the British Ass. assumes the Lion's skin. To see learned Professors who have been dilating for hours and days on the most abstruse scientific subjects, with the most solemn faces, amidst the dullest surroundings, suddenly appear wagging their dress-coat tails to represent the tail of the hungry lion, and emitting the most extraordinary mournful, growling sounds, the nearest approach at imitating the roar of the lion, and otherwise behaving like a lot of schoolboys on the night before the holidays, is certainly a scene not familiar to the thousands who belong to the British Association.

Burlesque-scientific speeches are made after dinner, and although there are generally some practical jokes in chemical illustrations, the merry wits do not tamper with the dinner itself further than preparing a most excellent burlesque menu, which I take the liberty of here introducing:

JOURNAL OF SECTIONAL PROCEEDINGS.

Issued Tuesday Evening, September 9th, 1890, at 5.30 p.m.

SECTION A... Hors d'Oeuvres--Kinetic Vacua.

SECTION B... Puree Pontoise--Isomeric Naphthalene. Consomme a la Princesse--Hydracid Halogen.