SOCIETY SIDESHOWS
Extracted from the Private Diary of the Hon. “Toothy” Badger
Dinedat the House last night. Ridiculous party given by “Bulgy” Gobblespoon to celebrate his wife’s election: the first husband and wife to sit together. To everyone’s dismay, it proved that she had only scraped in by the Prohibitionist vote, to win which she had to pledge herself never to allow any form of alcohol on any table at which she sat. Very restrictive of her dining out, I should imagine, and utterly destructive of her own dinners, which used to be rather fun. Impossible to imagine the gloom of that gathering! Even old Bitters, who was wheedled off the Front Bench to come down and say something amusing, was quite unable to sparkle on Schweppes’ ginger ale. Hurried away with little “Squeaky” Paddington (old Ponto’s new wife) to sample a drink and a spot of foot shuffling at Sheep’s. Very stuffy and a lot of ghastly people.
Somebody, turning out their lumber-room, has presented a whole shoot of pictures to the National Gallery; so I went to see who was looking at them. What that place exists for Ican never understand. Hardly anyone there except a herd of frowsy old women, with paint-boxes, who took jolly good care that nobody should come within a mile of anything worth looking at. One rather jolly girl—but very severe. The rest awful. A couple of anxious-looking people walking up and down, looking intense and making speeches about Ghirlandajo or Cimabue to an audience of yokels that doesn’t know either from cream cheese; and the remainder of London seems to use the portico as a convenient meeting-place, and never goes inside at all.
Broke my rule against large parties last night in order to go and stare at the women Members of Parliament, who allowed themselves to be shown off by old Lady Paramount Nectar at Ambrosia House. Never again. The rooms are big enough Heaven knows; but they seemed to have invited everyone in London, who had a dress-suit. Lady Biltong, whose figure needs to be put under restraint, was carried out fainting. Poor Bottisford had two ribs stove in going up the staircase and didn’t know it till he got home—kept murmuring that he must have got a touch of pleurisy in the fog. And old Sir William Bylge trod on a lady’s train and brought it clean away from the gathers (whatever those may be). Needless tosay, it proved to be a Royalty, but only a minor one. Never saw so many foreign potentates and creatures gathered together in my life before: the Duca di Corona Largo, Count Papryka da Chili, the Prince and Princess of Asta Mañana, a woman from New York, the Gizzawd of Abbyssinia, old Ramon Allones, looking younger than ever, and heaps of others. Nothing to eat, of course, and sickly sherbetty stuff masquerading as champagne. Hurried away to Stag’s with George Mossop to wash the taste out of our mouths. If old Paramount Nectar had lived, how different that supper would have been! As it is, if they took a bottle out of his cellar now, and poured it on his tomb, I believe he’d rise from the dead in very shame. Seems a bit too low to accept old Lady P.’s hospitality, and then slang the food; but, after all, he was my father’s cousin, and one feels it reflects on one’s own palate that a relation by marriage should give inferior wine.
Country house parties nowadays are becoming absurd. In the old days there was a lot to be said for country house visits. Even quite recently they could be profitably undertaken. But now!Nous avons changê tout cela.The advent of a Labour Government has put the final kybosh on even the limited hospitality one enjoyed last year. Three invitations this morning. One from Ditchwater Abbey—a place I loathe; one fromHugo Hamstringer, the fellow that made a fortune out of glue in the war, bought everything, lost the whole boiling in multiple eggshops during the slump, and is now trying to make two ends meet in that awful barrack of a place, Dundahead Hall, that he took over from “Wacker” with a block of dud oil shares in payment for his “calls” in Hamstringer, Limited, before the Company went bust—(nothing would induce me to go nearhim); and one from dear little Phyllis Biddiker, whose husband has lost everything in Southern Ireland, and who is scraping along somehow by letting off apartments at the Weir House (their place in Berkshire) to wealthy Colonials over here for the British Empire Exhibition. None asked me for more than a week-end. All say “Bring your own whisky if you want any.” Phyllis has had a present of Australian Burgundy from one of her lodgers, and offers to share it. I shall stay at home.
Because my brother Henry chose to marry, why should his almost-a-flapper daughter be motted on me to cart about London? A jade, a sly boots and a minx, she makes my life a burden. She makes me give her expensive meals, which I rather like; but I draw the line at being a decoy duck. Last night, having bled me of my entireincome at Mah Jongg—a game I shall never hope to learn—she demanded to be taken to an unintelligibly highbrow play, knowing, I suppose, that, after the agony of listening to it, I should be as wax in her hands. Then she led me by easy stages to Sheep’s Club, by pretending she wanted to dance with me. There (by the merest accident, of course) we found young Geoffrey Bannister, the one young man in London I was cautioned against allowing her to meet—as if an uncle has any control whatever—and the whole plot stood revealed. Before I could contort my features into a frown, they were dancing in the middle of the room, where they seemed to spend the remainder of the evening. I was allowed to give them supper; they allowed me to take them away at two a.m. They were almost too good to be true till we got home—driving back in Geoffrey’s car; and then they suddenly insisted on starting off to “be in at the death” at the Hunt Ball at Hillsbury, looking in at Bridget Hanover’s dance in Brook Street on the way. Told them to go to the Hunt Ball at another place beginning with the same initial, sent Geoffrey home, and packed her off to bed. No more nieces for me.
They call them “winter sports.” You cram yourself, with everybody you dislike most, intothe same train; stamp round the decks of the boat in a blizzard, swearing and trying to keep warm; ruin your digestion with the beastly food in the Train de Luxe; scrimmage with thirty other people for the sleeping berth you all booked six months before; turn out at the frontier to be browbeaten by hordes ofdouaniers; and arrive in the early morning feeling and looking like the Ancient Mariner, and discover that your rooms at the hotel have been swiped by somebody else. You turn out the manager, who shrugs his shoulders, and, after a fearful row, condescends to offer you sleeping room in an attic, on terms for which you could buy a large mansion in most countries. But your spirit is broken, and, rather than face the journey back, you accept with resignation, and crawl into the hovel allotted to you. You unpack your traps, and find that one of your skates is missing, or else that the straps have disappeared from yourskis. But you are desperate now; you bind them on your feet with string, and rush out into the snow. You are immediately knocked down by some confounded beginner who has lost control and is flying down the hill at the rate of knots. You stagger to your feet gasping, with snow down your neck and both yourskisadrift. While you are readjusting them, a bob-sleigh whizzes into you, sweeps you off your feet on top of its crew, and obliginglyoverturns down an embankment. The occupants of the sleigh are people you’ve been trying to avoid for years; and, instead of cursing you for being in the way, they fall on your neck and invite you to dinner. You are in such pain from broken arms and legs, that you can’t think of an excuse, so you have to accept. After dinner they rob you at bridge, and, as a crowning blow, the man of the party borrows money from you. At last you break away, hurry back—and find the interesting girl you were hoping to talk to, deeply engaged with some wretched subaltern. And then the Lord Chancellor or some other fearful bore insists on talking about home politics—the one thing you were dying to forget. You mutter excuses and stumble off to turn in—still nursing your wounds. Some idiot has left the window open, and there are icicles hanging from the ceiling and a pile of snow in the middle of your bed. Next day you repeat the performance, which goes on for a fortnight at least. Winter “sports”! It must refer to the people, and not to the pastimes.
“And obligingly overturns down an embankment.”
“And obligingly overturns down an embankment.”
“And obligingly overturns down an embankment.”