



Produced by Donald Lainson





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- 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