A Little Dinner at Timmins\'s

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A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S.


by William Makepeace Thackeray




I.


Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Timmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat little
street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brobdingnag Gardens.
It is a very genteel neighborhood, and I need not say they are of a good
family.

Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T. They are
Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Right honorable the Earl of
Bungay.

Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has chambers in
Fig-tree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit.

The other day, when there was a slight difference about the payment of
fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the Solicitors, Stoke
and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the papers of the Lough Foyle
and Lough Corrib Junction Railway to Mr. Fitzroy Timmins, who was so
elated that he instantly purchased a couple of looking-glasses for his
drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but
elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two
new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the
Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs,
emerald-green and gold morocco top, and drawers all over.

Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip" and
her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's Keepsakes);
and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy forehead of his bride,
pointed out to her, in one of the innumerable pockets of the desk,
an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming little gilt blank books,
marked "My Books," which Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, he said, (he is an
Oxford man, and very polite,) "with the delightful productions of her
Muse." Besides these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson
edges, lace paper, all stamped with R. F. T. (Rosa Fitzroy Timmins)
and the hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at
Ascalon by Roaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in the
Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, light-blue
and other scented sealing waxes, at the service of Rosa when she chose
to correspond with her friends.

Rosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this sweet
present; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but they have
sunk that) the best of men; embraced him a great number of times, to the
edification of her buttony little page, who stood at the landing; and as
soon as he was gone to chambers, took the new pen and a sweet sheet of
paper, and began to compose a poem.

"What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought. "What should
be a young mother's first inspiration?" Her child lay on the sofa asleep
before her; and she began in her neatest hand--

"LINES

"ON MY SON BUNGAY DE BRACY GASHLEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS.

"Tuesday.

"How beautiful! how beautiful thou seemest,
My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe!
Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest:
Soft lashes hide thy beauteous azure eye which gleamest."

"Gleamest? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?" thought Rosa, who
had puzzled her little brains for some time with this absurd question,
when the baby woke. Then the cook came up to ask about dinner; then Mrs.
Fundy slipped over from No. 27 (they are opposite neighbors, and made
an acquaintance through Mrs. Fundy's macaw); and a thousand things
happened. Finally, there was no rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib
(against whom Major Gashleigh, Rosa's grandfather, had distinguished
himself), and so she gave up the little poem about her De Bracy.

Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from chambers to take a walk with
his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich tapestry hanging
which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found his dear girl still seated
at the desk, and writing, writing away with her ruby pen as fast as it
could scribble.

"What a genius that child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs.
Norton!" and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see what
pretty thing Rosa was composing.

It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read as
follows:--


"LILLIPUT STREET, Tuesday, 22nd May.

"Mr. and Mr. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of Sir Thomas and Lady
Kicklebury's company at dinner on Wednesday, at 7 1/2 o'clock."


"My dear!" exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face.

"Law, Fitzroy!" cried the beloved of his bosom, "how you do startle
one!"

"Give a dinner-party with our means!" said he.

"Ain't you making a fortune, you miser?" Rosa said. "Fifteen guineas a
day is four thousand five hundred a year; I've calculated it." And, so
saying, she rose and taking hold of his whiskers (which are as fine as
those of any man of his circuit,) she put her mouth close up against his
and did something to his long face, which quite changed the expression
of it; and which the little page heard outside the door.

"Our dining-room won't hold ten," he said.

"We'll only ask twenty, my love. Ten are sure to refuse in this season,
when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is the list."

"Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint Mary's."

"You are dying to get a lord into the house," Timmins said (HE had
not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am not so
affected as to call him TYMMYNS).

"Law, my dear, they are our cousins, and must be asked," Rosa said.

"Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then."

"Blanche Crowder is really so VERY fat, Fitzroy," his wife said, "and
our rooms are so VERY small."

Fitz laughed. "You little rogue," he said, "Lady Bungay weighs two of
Blanche, even when she's not in the f--"

"Fiddlesticks!" Rose cried out. "Doctor Crowder really cannot be
admitted: he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it is really quite
disagreeable." And she imitated the gurgling noise performed by the
Doctor while inhausting his soup, in such a funny way that Fitz saw
inviting him was out of the question.

"Besides, we mustn't have too many relations," Rosa went on. "Mamma,
of course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the evening; and
she'll bring her silver bread-basket and her candlesticks, which are
very rich and handsome."

"And you complain of Blanche for being too stout!" groaned out Timmins.

"Well, well, don't be in a pet," said little Rosa. "The girls won't come
to dinner; but will bring their music afterwards." And she went on with
the list.

"Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no: we MUST ask
them, Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their house in
Brobdingnag Gardens would swallow up OUR humble cot. But to people
in OUR position in SOCIETY they will be glad enough to come. The city
people are glad to mix with the old families."

"Very good," says Fitz, with a sad face of assent--and Mrs. Timmins went
on reading her list.

"Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Place."

"Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives herself the airs
of an empress; and when--"

"One's Member, you know, my dear, one must have," Rosa replied, with
much dignity as if the presence of the representative of her native
place would be a protection to her dinner. And a note was written
and transported by the page early next morning to the mansion of the
Sawyers, in Belgravine Place.


The Topham Sawyers had just come down to breakfast; Mrs. T. in her large
dust-colored morning-dress and Madonna front (she looks rather scraggy
of a morning, but I promise you her ringlets and figure will stun you of
an evening); and having read the note, the following dialogue passed:--

Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"Well, upon my word, I don't know where things will
end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked us to dinner."

Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"Ask us to dinner! What d----- impudence!"

Mrs. Topham Sawyer.--"The most dangerous and insolent revolutionary
principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer; and I shall write and hint as much to
these persons."

Mr. Topham Sawyer.--"No, d--- it, Joanna: they are my constituents and
we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will come to their party."
(He resumes the perusal of 'The times,' and Mrs. Topham Sawyer writes)--


"MY DEAR ROSA,--We shall have GREAT PLEASURE in joining your little
party. I do not reply in the third person, as WE ARE OLD FRIENDS, you
know, and COUNTRY NEIGHBORS. I hope your mamma is well: present my
KINDEST REMEMBRANCES to her, and I hope we shall see much MORE of each
other in the summer, when we go down to the Sawpits (for going abroad is
out of the question in these DREADFUL TIMES). With a hundred kisses to
your dear little PET,

"Believe me your attached

"J. T. S."


She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child was a
girl or boy: and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with the kind and
gracious nature of the reply to her invitation.




II.


The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon asking, were
Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, Rowdy and Co., of
Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, and of Lombard Street,
City.

Mrs. Timinins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the same school
together, and there was always a little rivalry between them, from the
day when they contended for the French prize at school to last week,
when each had a stall at the Fancy Fair for the benefit of the Daughters
of Decayed Muffin-men; and when Mrs. Timmins danced against Mrs. Rowdy
in the Scythe Mazurka at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher.
Rowdy took twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin
transaction (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the
hands of R-y-lty, which brought crowds to her stall); but in the Mazurka
Rosa conquered: she has the prettiest little foot possible (which in
a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even the Chinese
ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot is no trifle, as Lord
Cornbury acknowledged when it came down on his lordship's boot-tip as
they danced together amongst the Scythes.

"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy to her
husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round by that rogue
of a buttony page in the evening; and he walked to Brobdingnag Gardens,
and in the Park afterwards, with a young lady who is kitchen-maid at 27,
and who is not more than fourteen years older than little Buttons.

"These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her husband.
"Rosa says she has asked the Bungays."

"Bungays indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said Rowdy, who had
been at college with the barrister, and who, for his own part, has no
more objection to a lord than you or I have; and adding, "Hang him, what
business has HE to be giving parties?" allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless,
to accept Rosa's invitation.

"When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at Mr. Fitz's
account," Mr. Rowdy thought; "and if it is overdrawn, as it usually is,
why . . ." The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's brougham here put an end
to this agreeable train of thought; and the banker and his lady stepped
into it to join a snug little family-party of two-and-twenty, given by
Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop at their great house on the other side of the
Park.

"Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," calculated
little Rosa.

"General Gulpin," Rosa continued, "eats a great deal, and is very
stupid, but he looks well at table with his star and ribbon. Let us
put HIM down!" and she noted down "Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord
Castlemouldy, 1."

"You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," groaned
Timmins. "Why don't you ask some of our old friends? Old Mrs. Portman
has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within the last two years."

"And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for dinner!" Mrs.
Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn.

"Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always been to us; and
some sort of return we might make, I think."

"Return, indeed! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 'Mr. and
Mrs. 'Odge and Miss 'Odges' pronounced by Billiter, who always leaves
his h's out. No, no: see attorneys at your chambers, my dear--but
what could the poor creatures do in OUR society?" And so, one by one,
Timmins's old friends were tried and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as
if she had been an Irish Attorney-General, and they so many Catholics on
Mr. Mitchel's jury.

Mrs. Fitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best company.
Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his jokes; and Mrs. Butt,
on whom he practises; and Potter, who is asked because everybody else
asks him; and Mr. Ranville Ranville of the Foreign Office, who might
give some news of the Spanish squabble; and Botherby, who has suddenly
sprung up into note because he is intimate with the French Revolution,
and visits Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple more who
are amis de la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. Timmins thought she
might safely invite to her little dinner.

But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invitations came
back, everybody accepted! Here was a pretty quandary. How they were to
get twenty into their dining-room was a calculation which poor Timmins
could not solve at all; and he paced up and down the little room in
dismay.

"Pooh!" said Rosa with a laugh. "Your sister Blanche looked very well in
one of my dresses last year; and you know how stout she is. We will find
some means to accommodate them all, depend upon it."

Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Rosa, accepting the latter's invitation,
was a very gracious and kind one; and Mrs. Fitz showed it to her husband
when he came back from chambers. But there was another note which had
arrived for him by this time from Mr. Rowdy--or rather from the firm;
and to the effect that Mr. F. Timmins had overdrawn his account 28L.
18s. 6d., and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants,
Stumpy, Rowdy and Co.

*****

And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending parties in
the Lough Foyle and Lough Corrib Railroad had come to a settlement, and
that the fifteen guineas a day had consequently determined. "I have had
seven days of it, though," he thought; "and that will be enough to
pay for the desk, the dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with
Stumpy and Rowdy."




III.


The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of Mrs.
Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the invitations to the
tea-party which was to follow the more substantial meal.

These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in the habit
of entertaining her friends. There are--

People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others have been
asked to dinner;

People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all; and cry out
furiously, "Good heavens! Jane my love, why do these Timminses suppose
that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend their ----- soiree?" (the
dear reader may fill up the ----- to any strength, according to his
liking)--or, "Upon my word, William my dear, it is too much to ask us to
pay twelve shillings for a brougham, and to spend I don't know how
much in gloves, just to make our curtsies in Mrs. Timmins's little
drawing-room." Mrs. Moser made the latter remark about the Timmins
affair, while the former was uttered by Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law,
to his lady, in Gloucester Place.

That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at all, is
a point which I suppose nobody will question. Timmins's earliest friend
in life was Simmins, whose wife and family have taken a cottage at
Mortlake for the season.

"We can't ask them to come out of the country," Rosa said to her
Fitzroy--(between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. Simmins was
out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every well-regulated woman
should be of her husband's female friends)--"we can't ask them to come
so far for the evening."

"Why, no, certainly." said Fitzroy, who has himself no very great
opinion of a tea-party; and so the Simminses were cut out of the list.

And what was the consequence? The consequence was, that Simmins and
Timmins cut when they met at Westminster; that Mrs. Simmins sent back
all the books which she had borrowed from Rosa, with a withering note of
thanks; that Rosa goes about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints; that Mrs.
S., on her side, declares that Rosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully
to Captain Hicks in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was forced to
do it by her mother, and prefers the Captain to her husband to this day.
If, in a word, these two men could be made to fight, I believe their
wives would not be displeased; and the reason of all this misery, rage,
and dissension, lies in a poor little twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput
Street.

Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been asked,
old Mrs. Gashleigh, Rosa's mother--(and, by consequence, Fitzroy's
DEAR mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" is particularly
sarcastic)--Mrs. Gashleigh of course was sent for, and came with Miss
Eliza Gashleigh, who plays on the guitar, and Emily, who limps a little,
but plays sweetly on the concertina. They live close by--trust them for
that. Your mother-in-law is always within hearing, thank our stars for
the attention of the dear women. The Gashleighs, I say, live close by,
and came early on the morning after Rosa's notes had been issued for the
dinner.

When Fitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into his little
dining-room--one of those absurd little rooms which ought to be called
a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger than a shower-bath, or a
state cabin in a ship--when Fitzroy heard his mother-in-law's knock,
and her well-known scuffling and chattering in the passage--in which
she squeezed up young Buttons, the page, while she put questions to him
regarding baby, and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what
Mrs. Gashleigh had sent overnight, and the housemaid's health, and
whether Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not--and when, after this
preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, announcing--"Mrs.
Gashleigh and the young ladies," Fitzroy laid down his Times newspaper
with an expression that had best not be printed here, and took his hat
and walked away.

Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling her mamma,
and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it any longer--he was
hanged if he would. So he went away to chambers, leaving the field clear
to Rosa, mamma, and the two dear girls.

Or to one of them, rather: for before leaving the house, he thought he
would have a look at little Fitzroy up stairs in the nursery, and he
found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt Eliza, who was holding
him and pinching him as if he had been her guitar, I suppose; so that
the little fellow bawled pitifully--and his father finally quitted the
premises.

No sooner was he gone, although the party was still a fortnight off,
than the women pounced upon his little study, and began to put it in
order. Some of his papers they pushed up over the bookcase, some they
put behind the Encyclopaedia. Some they crammed into the drawers--where
Mrs. Gashleigh found three cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters,
over which she cast her eye; and by Fitz's return they had the room as
neat as possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the
study table.

It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure Mrs.
Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for the young
couple, at Spode and Copeland's; but it was only for twelve persons.

It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and better to
purchase a dozen more dessert-plates; and with "my silver basket in
the centre," Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging about that confounded
bread-basket), "we need not have any extra china dishes, and the table
will look very pretty."

On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at least a
dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight water-bottles, and
a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite; and that, as they would
always be useful, it would be best to purchase the articles immediately.
Fitz tumbled over the basket containing them, which stood in the hall as
he came in from chambers, and over the boy who had brought them--and the
little bill.

The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, it must
be owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had lived a great
part of her life in Devonshire, and kept house in great state there,
was famous for making some dishes, without which, she thought, no dinner
could be perfect. When she proposed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons,
and gooseberry-cream, Rosa turned up her nose--a pretty little nose it
was, by the way, and with a natural turn in that direction.

"Mock-turtle in June, mamma!" said she.

"It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa," the mamma replied: "it
was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when he was at Plymouth; it
was good enough for the first men in the county, and relished by Lord
Fortyskewer and Lord Rolls; Sir Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after
Exeter races; and I think it might be good enough for--"

"I will NOT have it, mamma!" said Rosa, with a stamp of her foot; and
Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that. Once, when she
had tried to physic the baby, there had been a similar fight between
them.

So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left with
a dash--a melancholy vacuum; and in which the pigeons were certainly
thrust in among the entrees; but Rosa determined they never should make
an entree at all into HER dinner-party, but that she would have the
dinner her own way.

When Fitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill of 6L.
14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest smiles, and
the baby in her arms. And after she had made him remark how the child
grew every day more and more like him, and after she had treated him to
a number of compliments and caresses, which it were positively fulsome
to exhibit in public, and after she had soothed him into good humor
by her artless tenderness, she began to speak to him about some little
points which she had at heart.

She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked since the
dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her had been put up in
the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost nothing, and she must and would
have them.

The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and bought them
at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated herself likewise to
a neat, sweet pretty half-mourning (for the Court, you know, is in
mourning)--a neat sweet barege, or calimanco, or bombazine, or tiffany,
or some such thing; but Madame Camille, of Regent Street, made it up,
and Rosa looked like an angel in it on the night of her little dinner.

"And, my sweet," she continued, after the curtains had been accorded,
"mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. She wants to make
it very expensive, which I cannot allow. I have been thinking of a
delightful and economical plan, and you, my sweetest Fitz, must put it
into execution."

"I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers," Fitz said with a
laugh. "Am I to put on a cap and an apron?"

"No: but you are to go to the 'Megatherium Club' (where, you wretch,
you are always going without my leave), and you are to beg Monsieur
Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one of his best aides-de-camp,
as I know he will, and with his aid we can dress the dinner and
the confectionery at home for ALMOST NOTHING, and we can show those
purse-proud Topham Sawyers and Rowdys that the HUMBLE COTTAGE can
furnish forth an elegant entertainment as well as the gilded halls of
wealth."

Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had had a fancy
for the cook of the Prime Minister, I believe the deluded creature of a
husband would have asked Lord John for the loan of him.




IV.


Fitzroy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so young a man,
is a member of the committee of the "Megatherium Club," and the great
Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men are, was only too happy to
oblige him. A young friend and protege of his, of considerable merit,
M. Cavalcadour, happened to be disengaged through the lamented death
of Lord Hauncher, with whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an
artist. He had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would
impress himself to be useful to a gourmet so distinguished as Monsieur
Timmins. Fitz went away as pleased as Punch with this encomium of the
great Mirobolant, and was one of those who voted against the decreasing
of Mirobolant's salary, when the measure was proposed by Mr. Parings,
Colonel Close, and the Screw party in the committee of the club.