FullReads

There is not much difference of opinion as to when Town is at its best. Perhaps a few misanthropists, wrapped up in their little selves and their narrow thoughts, would shut themselves up during the season, in order to escape the pain of witnessing us all in our ungodly career. Shallow butterflies they call us. And what do they know about our lives? They judge from appearances; and because we wear a cheerful expression, shutting down our cares and struggles in our inmost hearts, and not burdening other people with them, we are called shallow and worldly. No, you good and godly people, what do you know about us? You are no more capable of judging than the ephemera, which lives but for a day, and so must consider the world all sunshine, all light. How can it imagine the night which closes round later on, when neither it nor any of its ancestors have ever lived to see it?

You ought to be punished for your ignorant mutterings. You complain of the well-dressed happy throng. You should be turned out in the streets in August and September, and if the utter destitution does not shortly turn your brains back in the right direction I am afraid your case is hopeless.

Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift, like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have never seen–descriptions generally gleaned from other books and compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery: places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels. Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.

There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show ourselves and to look at others. There the equestrians canter up and down the Row. Such equestrians too! If foreigners take their ideas of English riding from the Row, they must form a high opinion of our horsemanship.

There are the loungers flocking around their friends or walking up and down in the hope of admiration. And they get it too, for who could help admiring such master-pieces of a tailor’s skill? Are these really the descendants of that Adam whose posterity had all to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow? These automatons, whose only business in life seems to be to look after pretty women and themselves? Men are supposed to be bread winners, but they have a very easy time of it, I think, though they generally try to make themselves out so overworked. Go into that great centre of business, the City, and you find everyone of these busy men out and about, always apparently in a great hurry, never seeming to arrive at any destination, running about and hustling each other, occasionally meeting an acquaintance, which proves a good opportunity for one to stand the other a “drink.” A funny way men have of showing their affection, have they not? “Ah! how de do, old fellow? Come and have a drink,” is their invariable salutation to an intimate friend. After all it is better than the mutual kissing on the part of women, which is the more emphatic the more they dislike one another. Men are less demonstrative and therefore more sincere in their friendships. Anyhow there cannot be many at work in their offices, or where could this idle crowd come from?