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DIARY OF A DINING-OUT MAN.

So, here we are in the season again.-Goodness be praised! -Those country houses take too much out of a man, in return for what he extracts from them. It is well enough in those where one has the ear of the house, as well as the run of the house, remaining a fixture, while successive parties of guests appear and disappear; for the same bons mots and good stories serve to amuse his Grace on Friday, which were tried upon the country-neighbour party with success, the preceding Monday,-as inoculation was attempted upon criminals, before the royal family were submitted to the prick of the lancet. More particularly when the whole set has been renovated. It is a bore to have some single gentleman, or stationary souffre douleur cousin, on the watch for the point of every well-worn anecdote,-like people at a pantomime, familiar before-hand with the tricks.

Still, even when one makes a hit, the wear and tear of the thing is prodigious. One goes through the work of three dinners per diem ;-to wit, breakfast, luncheon, and dinner,and all without refreshment! In town, one has the chance of the clubs and morning visits to brighten one; but in a country house, where one can only rub up per aid of the new works and periodicals lying on the table, or visits shared

in common with the rest of the party, one must fall back on one's own resources,-and the effort is prodigious.

This is the third Christmas I have spent at K-Park; and decidedly, I must provide for myself elsewhere next winter. Lord K― is such a bore, with his everlasting relations!-that eternal brother and sister-in-law, and the neighbours Sir John and Lady Wiseacre, seem as completely established there, as the family plate; and it is too much to expect a man to do the agreeable, year after year, to the same people. I saw a smile exchanged between K—— and Lady Theresa, when I began my famous story about Perceval and Michael Angelo Taylor, as much as to say, "WHAT AGAIN? »—And the Wiseacres, who are as rude as all the rest of the Shropshire squirearchy, told me in plain terms one morning at breakfast, on my attempting to hitch in poor Copley's capital pun about Vale Royal, that they had been circulating it all over the country ever since they heard it from my lips, five years ago!—

Rebuffs of that description are like a blow with a pole-axe. Next Christmas, I will try Yorkshire. Yorkshire is unbroken ground. They are hospitable people, with a good hearty, wholesome laugh at one's service, and a strong capacity for being amused. There is something exhilarating in a fresh audience of that description.

I am sadly afraid, meanwhile, that K―― Park was a failure! I did not do what was expected of me, or what I expected of myself. Several of the dinners were flat as the turbot; and the Duke yawned fifty-four times during the two short days he was there. I saw Lord K-- look at me reproachfully, as much as to insinuate that it was my fault; and I have no doubt he said to Lady Theresa, I would not have invited Prattles, if I had known how dull he was growing; whereas had not Lady Theresa and her husband been there, I should have done wonders. Wilmot K-- is the dullest fellow breathing; and Lady Theresa's cold steadfast eye chills one like a nightmare !—

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(Mem. to book a good story of Lady Theresa's Englis nursery-maid, who calls the nightmare the « coach-mare,

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having caught the word cauchemar from the French bonne.) To return to K-Park.-It would be the deuce and all if a rumour should transpire that our party was fiasco. I had been foolish enough to circulate, far and near, that I was going. It has always a respectable air to be engaged, Christmas after Christmas, to the same country house. Should those yawns of the Duke's, therefore, get into circulation, the thing may cut me out of pleasant dinner-parties without end. As I mean decidedly to cut K-- Park next year, I have a great mind to take the initiative, and proclaim that the party was a lost case. It will be laid to the Kennedys, who were there for the first time. For last Christmas, nothing could be were; and I was so universally admitted to have been the life and soul of the party, that I was invited to all Lady Hunchback's dinners last season, solely on the strength of K- Park.

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Yes! the Kennedys shall answer for it. They are vulgar, pushing people, trying everything that false finery will do, to climb into good company. It won't do, There is nothing in either of them congenial with the listless haut ton of the great world. I heard Lady Theresa whisper to the Duke one evening, I never saw one of Lord K's parties turn out so ill. Too much quince in the apple-pie-too many monkeys in the menagerie !-One keeps fancying that all those whom these people were invited to entertain, had sent excuses. We have got the chorus; but the soprano and prima donna are absent without leave."

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The Duke replied by one of his best-executed yawns!And after that, K- expected one to be agreeable!

Parliament has met, and the dinners are beginning. No more country-house work till Easter, except for fox-hunters; and to amuse them, heaven be thanked, no one ever dreams of inviting conversation men. The whipper-in suffices.

My first care at the commencement of the season is to look over my list, preparatory to sowing cards for the dinner-crop, and a melancholy task it is!-Two or three of my best dowagers are pretty sure to have dropped in the interval, as is the case this very year. There is old Lady Fivecourse, in

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Berkeley Square, whose cook was really a meritorious artist, a fellow who will one day rank with the Udes and Francatelles. I called at the door the other day, to enquire what was become of him; and find that one of the executors has bribed him off to Ireland! This is a public loss. which, the man himself is lost. Genius of that description requires an enlightened audience. The Irish are scarcely up

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to more than roast and boiled. It is throwing pearls before swine to give them such a man as Survilliers, who has glimpses of real inspiration.

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I confess I had looked forward to many more pleasant dinner-parties at Lady Fivecourse's. There was no more occasion for that woman to die!-Though seventy-three, she was strong as a seventy-four-(mem. book that!)-and might have lived to be a hundred. It was entirely her own doing. She would go dining out, when, with such a cook as Survilliers, it was her duty to dine at home. And then she called in a young apothecary, instead of adhering to Sir Thomas, who never does anything, so that his patients have some chance of getting through. I don't mean to be ill-natured; but if I were a man of sufficient consequence for my funeral to figure in the Morning Post, with a list of the mourners, third mourning coach, the medical attendant of the deceased Earl, John Pillbox, Esq. I would not employ a young apothe cary, who knew that his connection in business might be established by such an advertisement.

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Poor Lady Fivecourse !-What a capital set one used: to meet at her house! It was one of the places where I most enjoyed myself. Nothing but quiet, humdrum, mediocre people, who understood nothing but eating, and for whom one's oldest stories had the charm of novelty. I remember at a dinner in Berkeley Square, last April, setting the table in a roar with an anecdote, which originally set me up as a dining-out man, in the time of George the Fourth! It was a story of Jekyll's; but he never did it justice, his imitation of the brogue being wretched. It improved in my hands. There are some stories, like some wines, which grow mellow with travelling. I never told it, better than that day at Lady Five

VOL. I.

56

course's, for I was taking pains. Lord Grangehurst was there; and I was wild to get an invitation to his new house, with the style and splendour of which the newspapers had been boring one for the last year. The spec. prospered. I dined with him three times after Easter, and was asked to Grangehurst for the battue. But, on the whole, I was not "satisfied. His cellar is not what it ought to be. No man ought to pretend to Hock who is not certain that his grandfather saw it in bottle.

Good lord! what a sorry life should I have led, but for the lucky chance which gave me a cast in the Marquis of Woodsbury's post-chaise, on our transit from Oxford on quitting college-Both were in high spirits, bursting forth like a fresh-opened bottle of champagne; and my companion fortunately mistook spirits for wit. The mistakes of a young nobleman in the enjoyment of thirty thousand a-year are sure to find imitators. The women who wanted Woodsbury, whether for themselves or their daughters, protested that I was a charming creature; and after Woodsbury married, they did not think it decent to swallow their words, as they had swallowed mine.

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During the scene of his bachelor-hood I was invited everywhere. It disarmed suspicion,-that is, the pretty creatures fancied it disarmed suspicion, to say, Mr. Prattles, are you disengaged on Friday? We shall be delighted to see you at half-past seven. Lord Woodsbury, will you do me the favour to meet Mr. Prattles ?though if, after my acceptance, it turned out that Woodsbury had a prior engagement, they took care to make my venison, mutton, and my claret, ordinaire. They were practising on my inexperience, and I upon their cunning; for it was at the expense of these manœuvres I learned almost all I know of the ways of the world.

I was such a boy, that they talked freely before me; making it tolerably clear that, according to the code of fashionable hospitality, nobody must expect to be entertained who cannot entertain in their turn, either by their invitations, or their power of shedding grace upon the invitations of others. This was a cruel lesson. Chambers, I knew, were my des

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