Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1623 page)

Our corner was, unfortunately, the farthest from the door. So, when I moved to lead the way to the carriages, I confronted a brilliant intermediate expanse of ninety yards of outer clothing alone (allowing only eighteen yards each to the ladies). Being old, wily, and respected in the house, I took care to avoid my wife, and succeeded in getting through my daughters. My son-in-law, young, innocent, and of secondary position in the family, was not so fortunate. I left him helpless, looking round the corner of his mother-in-law’s claret-coloured velvet, with one of his legs lost in his wife’s moire antique. There is every reason to suppose that he never extricated himself; for when we got into the carriages he was not to be found; and, when ultimately recovered, he exhibited symptoms of physical and mental exhaustion. I am afraid my son-in-law caught it — I am very much afraid that, during my absence, my son-in-law caught it.

We filled — no, we overflowed — two carriages. My wife and her married daughter in one, and I myself on the box — the front seat being very properly wanted for the velvet and the moire antique. In the second carriage were my three girls — crushed, as they indignantly informed me, crushed out of all shape (didn’t I tell you just now how plump one of them was?) by the miserably inefficient accommodation which the vehicle offered to them. They told my son-in-law, as he meekly mounted to the box, that they would take care not to marry a man like him, at any rate! I have not the least idea what he had done to provoke them. The worthy creature gets a great deal of scolding in the house, without any assignable cause for it. Do my daughters resent his official knowledge, as a husband, of the secret of their sister’s ugly feet? Oh, dear me, I hope not — I sincerely hope not!

At ten minutes past ten we drove to the, hospitable abode of Doctor and Mrs. Crump. The women of my family were then perfectly dressed in the finest materials. There was not a flaw in any part of the costume of any one of the party. This is a great deal to say of ninety yards of clothing, without mentioning the streams of ribbon, and the dense thickets of flowery bushes that wantoned gracefully all over their heads and half down their backs — nevertheless, I can say it. At forty minutes past four the next morning we were all assembled once more in my dining-room, to light our bedroom candles. Judging by costume only, I should not have known one of my daughters again — no, not one of them! The tulle illusion was illusion no longer. My daughter’s gorgeous substratum of gros de Naples bulged through it in half a dozen places. The pink moire antique was torn into a draggle-tailed pink train. The white lace was in tatters, and the blue gauae was in shreds.

“A charming party!” cried my daughters, in melodious chorus, as I surveyed this scene of ruin. Charming, indeed! If I had dressed up my four girls, and sent them to Greenwich Fair, with strict orders to get drunk and assault the police, and if they had carefully followed my directions, could they have come home to me in a much worse condition than the condition in which I see them now? Could any man not acquainted with the present monstrous system of party-giving look at my four young women and believe that they had been spending the evening, under the eyes of their parents, at a respectable house? If the party had been at a linen-draper’s, I could understand the object of this wanton destruction of property. But Doctor Crump is not interested in making me buy new gowns. What have I done to him that he should ask me and my family to his house, and all but tear my children’s gowns off their backs, in return for our friendly readiness to accept his invitation?

But my daughters danced all the evening, and these little accidents will happen in private ballrooms. Indeed? I did not dance, my wife did not dance, my son-in-law did not dance. Have we escaped injury on that account? Decidedly not. Velvet is not an easy thing to tear, so I have no rents to deplore in my wife’s dress. But I apprehend that a spoonful of trifle does not reach its destination properly when it is deposited in a lady’s lap; and I altogether deny that there is any necessary connection between the charms of society and the wearing of crushed macaroons adhesively dotted over the back part of a respectable matron’s dress. I picked three off my wife’s gown, as she swam out of the dining-room, on her way upstairs; and I am informed that two new breadths will be wanted in front, in consequence of her lap having been turned into a plate for trifle. As for my son-in-law, his trousers are saturated with spilled Champagne; and he took in my presence, nearly a handful of flabby lobster salad out of the cavity between his shirt-front and his waistcoat. For myself, I have had my elbow in a game pie, and I see with disgust a slimy path of extinct custard meandering down the left hand lapel of my coat. Altogether, this party, on the lowest calculation, casts me in damages to the tune of ten pounds eighteen shillings and sixpence.*

* For the information of ignorant young men who are beginning life, I subjoin the lamentable particulars of this calculation:

In damages for spoiled garments only. I have still to find out what the results may be of the suffocating heat in the rooms, and the freezing draughts in the passages and on the stairs — I have still to face the possible doctor’s bills for treating our influenzas and our rheumatisms. And to what cause is all this destruction and discomfort attributable? Plainly and simply, to this. When Doctor and Mrs. Crump issued their invitations, they followed the example of the rest of the world, and asked to their house five times as many people as their rooms would comfortably hold. Hence, jostling, bumping, and tearing among the dancers, and jostling, bumping, and spilling in the supper-room. Hence, a scene of barbarous crowding and confusion, in which the successful dancers are the heaviest and rudest couples in the company, and the successful guests at the supper-table the people who have the least regard for the restraints of politeness and the wants of their neighbours.

Is there no remedy for this great social nuisance? for a nuisance it certainly is. There is a remedy in every district in London, in the shape of a spacious and comfortable public room, which may be had for the hiring. The rooms to which I allude are never used for doubtful purposes. They are mainly devoted to Lectures, Concerts, and Meetings. When used for a private object, they might be kept private by giving each guest a card to present at the door, just as cards are presented at the opera. The expense of the hiring, when set against the expense of preparing a private house for a party, and the expense of the injuries which crowding causes, would prove to be next to nothing. The supper might be sent into the large room as it is sent into the small house. And what benefit would be gained by all this? The first and greatest of all benefits, in such cases — room. Room for the dancers to exercise their art in perfect comfort; room for the spectators to move about and talk to each other at their ease; room for the musicians in a comfortable gallery; room for eating and drinking; room for agreeable equal ventilation. In one word, all the acknowledged advantages of a public ball, with all the pleasant social freedom of a private entertainment.

And what hinders the adopting of this sensible reform? Nothing but the domestic vanity of my beloved countrymen.

I suggested the hiring of a room the other day to an excellent friend of mine who thought of giving a party, and who inhumanly contemplated asking at least a hundred people into his trumpery little ten-roomed house. He absolutely shuddered when I mentioned my idea; all his insular prejudices bristled up in an instant. “If I can’t receive my friends under my own roof, on my own hearth, sir, and in my own home, I won’t receive them at. all. Take a room, indeed! Do you call that an Englishman’s hospitality? I don’t.” It was quite useless to suggest to this gentleman that an Englishman’s hospitality, or any man’s hospitality, is unworthy of the name unless it fulfills the first great requisite of making his guests comfortable. We don’t take that far-fetched view of the case in this domestic country. We stand on our own floor (no matter whether it is only twelve feet square or not); we make a fine show in our houses (no matter whether they are large enough for the purpose or not); never mind the women’s dresses; never mind the dancers being in perpetual collision; never mind the supper being a comfortless, barbarous scramble; never mind the ventilation alternating between unbearable heat and unbearable cold — an Englishman’s house is his castle, even when you can’t get up his staircase, and can’t turn round in his rooms. If I lived in the Black Hole at Calcutta, sir, I would see my friends there because I lived there, and would turn up my nose at the finest marble palace in the whole city, because it was a palace that could be had for the hiring!

And yet the innovation on a senseless established custom which I now propose is not without precedent, even in this country. When I was a young man, I and some of my friends used to give a Bachelors’ Ball once a year. We hired a respectable public room for the purpose. Nobody ever had admission to our entertainment who was not perfectly fit to be asked into any gentleman’s house. Nobody wanted room to dance in; nobody’s dress was injured; nobody was uncomfortable at supper. Our ball was looked forward to every year by the young ladies as the especial dance of the season, at which they were sure to enjoy themselves. They talked rapturously of the charming music, and the brilliant lighting, and the pretty decorations, and the nice supper. Old ladies and gentlemen used to beg piteously that they might not be left out on account of their years. People of all ages and tastes found something to please them at the Bachelors’ Ball, and never had a recollection in connection with it which was not of the happiest nature. What prevents us, now we are married, from following the sensible proceeding of our younger days? The stupid assumption that my house must be big enough to hold all my friends comfortably,
because
it is my house. I did not reason in that way when I had lodgings, although my bachelor sitting-room was, within a few feet each way, as large as my householder’s drawing-room at the present time.

However, I have really some hopes of seeing the sensible reform which I have ventured to propose practically and generally carried out before I die. Not because I advocate it, not because it is in itself essentially reasonable; but merely because the course of Time is likely, before long, to leave obstinate Prejudice no choice of alternatives and no power of resistance. Party-giving is on the increase, party-goers are on the increase, petticoats are on the increase; but private houses remain exactly as they were. It is evidently only a question of time. The guests already overflow on to the staircase. Give us a ten years’ increase of the population, and they will overflow into the street. When the door of the Englishman’s nonsensical castle cannot be shut, on account of the number of his guests who are squeezed out to the threshold, then he will concede to necessity what he will not now concede to any strength of reasoning, or to any gentleness of persuasion. The only cogent argument with obstinate people is Main Force; and Time, in the case now under consideration, is sooner or later sure to employ it.