Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Odd volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![1898.] but let that pass. I am not writing virginibus puerisque, but for people of mature, or perhaps a trifle plus quam mature, years and judgment. There was a much more ominous void in the day’s arrangements. There was no luncheon — at least for men. “ The first inconvenience of a Lon- don life is the late hour of dinner. To pass the day impransus, and then to sit down to a great dinner at eight o’clock, is entirely against the first dictates of common-sense and—com- mon stomachs.” (Agreed, agreed!) “ Women, however, are not so iiTa- tional as men in London, and gener- ally sit down to a substantial luncheon at three or four ” (italics ours); “ if men would do the same, the meal at eight might be lightened of many of its weighty dishes, and conversation would be no loser; for it is not to be concealed that conversation suffers great interruption from the manner in which English dinners are man- aged. First the host and hostess (or her unfortunate coadjutor) are em- ployed during three parts of dinner in doing the work of the servants, helping fish, or carving large pieces of venison to twenty hungiy souls. . . . Much time is also lost by the attention every one is obliged to pay in order to find out (which he never can do if he is short-sighted) what dishes are at the other end of the table. If a guest wishes for a glass of wine, he must peep through the Apollos and Cupids of the plateau, in order to find some one to drink with him ; otherwise he must wait tiU some one asks him, which will prob- ably happen in rapid succession, so that after having had no wine for half an hoiur, he will have to drink five glasses in five minutes.” One might spend a good deal more time over these sketches, traced by one who thoroughly understood what he was writing about. Novelists, hitherto, have shunned George IV.’s reign with curious unanimity j when they turn to it they will doubtless find that men and women were curious- ly like those of other epochs, and Lord John Russell’s papers will form a most valuable handbook to the manners and tone of good society in the ’twenties. Before replacing this book on its shelf, let me note two or three observations by this thoroughbred and thorough-paced Whig on more serious matters. The perpetual bugbear of his party was the power of the Crown; in fact it had been the dread of the preponderance of that estate to which the Whigs owed their birth. This dread, remote as it may ap- pear in our eyes, was very present in 1819 to the apprehensions of the future Prime Minister, and he reckoned up anxiously “what the Crown has gained upon liberty during this reign ” (George III.’s). He complained that the sanguinary excesses of the French Revolu- tion had been greatly exaggerated in order to inflame the public mind against the slightest indul- gence of the popular right of meet- ing and discussion, and that the Royal prerogative had been aug- mented by the increase of the national war-debt. It is hardly worth following this nascent states- man into his warning against risks which are not likely to recur in this country. Their disappearance has removed the last objection to the amalgamation of the Whig “ Left centre ” with the Conserva- tive “Right.” For tactical purposes it has been decided to maintain the Liberal Unionist organisation dis- tinct from that of the Conserva- tives, out of deference to those electors (surely only a handful) who would demur to voting for a party that was once Tory. But the Tory bugbear is as unreal now as that of the power of the Court. There is only one Tory in politics now — all honour to him ! — that gallant Yorkshireman, the Right](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22397139_0011.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
