Framley Parsonage Anthony Trollope (best english novels for beginners .TXT) đ
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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For some time Mrs. Proudie was much at a loss to know by what sort of party or entertainment she would make herself famous. Balls and suppers were of course out of the question. She did not object to her daughters dancing all night at other housesâ âat least, of late she had not objected, for the fashionable world required it, and the young ladies had perhaps a will of their ownâ âbut dancing at her houseâ âabsolutely under the shade of the bishopâs apronâ âwould be a sin and a scandal. And then as to suppersâ âof all modes in which one may extend oneâs hospitality to a large acquaintance, they are the most costly.
âIt is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for the mere sake of eating and drinking,â Mrs. Proudie would say to the clergymenâs wives from Barsetshire. âIt shows such a sensual propensity.â
âIndeed it does, Mrs. Proudie; and is so vulgar too!â those ladies would reply.
But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing, openhanded hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of Bishop Grantlyâ âGod rest his soul! One old vicarâs wife there was whose answer had not been so courteousâ â
âWhen we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,â she had said, âwe do all have sensual propensities.â
âIt would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all that at home,â Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide.
But a conversazione would give play to no sensual propensity, nor occasion that intolerable expense which the gratification of sensual propensities too often produces. Mrs. Proudie felt that the word was not all that she could have desired. It was a little faded by old use and present oblivion, and seemed to address itself to that portion of the London world that is considered blue, rather than fashionable. But, nevertheless, there was a spirituality about it which suited her, and one may also say an economy. And then as regarded fashion, it might perhaps not be beyond the power of a Mrs. Proudie to regild the word with a newly burnished gilding. Some leading person must produce fashion at first hand, and why not Mrs. Proudie?
Her plan was to set the people by the ears talking, if talk they would, or to induce them to show themselves there inert if no more could be got from them. To accommodate with chairs and sofas as many as the furniture of her noble suite of rooms would allow, especially with the two chairs and padded bench against the wall in the back closetâ âthe small inner drawing-room, as she would call it to the clergymenâs wives from Barsetshireâ âand to let the others stand about upright, or âgroup themselves,â as she described it. Then four times during the two hoursâ period of her conversazione tea and cake were to be handed round on salvers. It is astonishing how far a very little cake will go in this way, particularly if administered tolerably early after dinner. The men canât eat it, and the women, having no plates and no table, are obliged to abstain. Mrs. Jones knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake in her hand till it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best dress. When Mrs. Proudie, with her weekly books before her, looked into the financial upshot of her conversazione, her conscience told her that she had done the right thing.
Going out to tea is not a bad thing, if one can contrive to dine early, and then be allowed to sit round a big table with a tea urn in the middle. I would, however, suggest that breakfast cups should always be provided for the gentlemen. And then with pleasant neighboursâ âor more especially with a pleasant neighbourâ âthe affair is not, according to my taste, by any means the worst phase of society. But I do dislike that handing round, unless it be of a subsidiary thimbleful when the business of the social intercourse has been dinner.
And indeed this handing round has become a vulgar and an intolerable nuisance among us second-class gentry with our eight hundred a yearâ âthere or thereabouts;â âdoubly intolerable as being destructive of our natural comforts, and a wretchedly vulgar aping of men with large incomes. The Duke of Omnium and Lady Hartletop are undoubtedly wise to have everything handed round. Friends of mine who occasionally dine at such houses tell me that they get their wine quite as quickly as they can drink it, that their mutton is brought to them without delay, and that the potato-bearer follows quick upon the heels of carnifer. Nothing can be more comfortable, and we may no doubt acknowledge that these first-class grandees do understand their material comforts. But we of the eight hundred can no more come up to them in this than we can in their opera-boxes and equipages. May I not say that the usual tether of this class, in the way of carnifers, cupbearers, and the rest, does not reach beyond neat-handed Phyllis and the greengrocer? and that Phyllis, neat-handed as she probably is, and the greengrocer, though he be ever so active, cannot administer a dinner to twelve people who are prohibited by a Medo-Persian law from all self-administration whatever? And may I not further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders dining out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner at all. Phyllis, with the potatoes, cannot reach us till
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