Punch (32.1857)

Mat 9. 1857. J

181

admits that these wedding-breakfast orations are an intolerable
SOCIAL TREAD-MILL. nuisance. T don't know which of the prevailing styles of this class of

oratory is worse, the pathetic or the jocose, or the floundering,
which aims at a combination of grave and gay, and comes to grief
between the two. There is that dreadful friend of the family, who
proposes the healtn of the young couple. Why can't he be content to
do it simply, to utter in six words of honest meaning a hearty wish that
happiness may attend them—that God may bless their union? Every
one, if appealed to, must admit you can't get beyond that. No person
-one would suppose—who really felt a genuine regard for the pair
-or for either of them—would wish at such a time to attempt more
than a brief and fervent blessing.

" Yet here is a well-meaning Briton—no fool, probably, in his
business—not a recognised bore in common life—not an open and no-
torious humbug, hypocrite, and impostor—who gets up to propose the
health of the newly-mai-ried couple, or the health of their respective
Papas and Mammas ; and in so doing, maunders for a quarter of an hour
in a style that blends folly, tediousness, and insincerity, till you blush
for the man as you sit. My readers may have observed—I often have
—the expression of pain and shame on the countenances of the listeners
to a discourse of this class. I always long to hide my face while one
of these melancholy exhibitions is in progress. I believe, from com-
paring notes with others, that this feeling is very common.

" But worse even than this—the heavy business of the wedding-
breakfast—is its light comedy, the hide-bound pleasantry of the gentle-
man who rises to propose 'the bridesmaids', and similar provocative
toasts, in what the rejtorters call 'a higldy humorous speech.'

" Of the many forms of social suffering I know of none worse than
sitting under one of these douches of wedding-breakfast jocoseness.
Not one Briton in a thousand can be playful on his legs—above all
not playful extempore. He must be common-place—must stand in the
old Joe Miller ways—must trot out the battered old hack pleasan-
tries, or he is lost. So long as the man is humble-minded enough not
to attempt anything new, one submits with a certain equanimity.
The mind is subdued to familiar forms of suffering. But the infliction
becomes terrible, when the speaker is ambitious enough to attempt
anything original. Bear is then added to the listeners' other suf-
ferings. There is the constant dread of a fall—of the poor fellow's
being entangled and tripped up in one of his own complicated meta-
phors—of his staking himself on one of his own jokes—not that the
point would pierce very deep—of his coming down with a crash in one
of his oratorical flip-flaps. Do not tell me there can be any pleasure in
a performance, at the conclusion of which every one vents a pent-up
breath of thankful relief—which is watched as one watches the tottering
steps of an unskilful tight-rope dancer, in a 'terrific ascent.' The
audience can no more relish the jokes of the wedding-breakfast orator
than the spectator enjoy the squibs and crackers let off round the
performer in one of these break-neck exhibitions at Cremorne or
Vauxhall

" Mb. Punch,

" I promised to devote an entire letter to "Wedding-Break-
fasts. It is not so much that these entertainments are more dreary
than the rest of the table ceremonies, under which society suffers. On
the contrary, except for the plague of speechifying, they would, be
rather jollier than most of our social gatherings : but the wedding-
breakfast stands in the front-rank of the married man's experiences.
It is like those rites which used to come first in the initiation
of a novice into the ancient mysteries, or the secret-societies of the
middle-ages, in which the greenhorn was made to run the gauntlet
of the most hideous hobgoblins, and the most startling surprises. Such
an introduction was supposed at once to casehaiden the candidate's
nerves, and to test his courage. On the same principle one may
suppose the newly-married man is exposed to the green-grocerism,
the Gunterism, the champagne-fired enthusiasm and speechification, I " This social nuisance of wedding-breakfasts has lately had a colossal
the stale and threadbare pleasantries, the mock sentiment, and I illustration, which I have been surprised to find has received no notice
pinchbeck cordiality of the wedding-breakfast. It is a quintessence, from Mr. Punch. I allude to that gorgeous Judaic family ceremonial
as it were, of what he will have to go through in the future, in the ! at Gunnersbury, in which God Hymen and God Mammon were equally
way of costly and pretentious entertainment, affected good fellowship, : honoured, where, to judge from the newspapers, the altar must have

and hollow gaiety. If he can stand those awful waiters—the array
of those long tables, with their spun-sugar bird-cages, and plaster-
of-Paris temples—their profusion of highly-decorated pastry, forced
fruit, glace tongues, insipid chickens, chilly galantines, and ice-
creams ; if he is not sickened with the speeches, and does not loathe
champagne for ever after, he maybe safely pronounced fit for the inner
rites of the married life of society.

" But the performances in the mysteries will be found on the whole,
duller than those of the initiation. The bead still dances in the
champagne of wedding-breakfasts. The liquor handed round at the
dinners, and breakfasts and suppers, of which that is the prelude, will
be found flat, insipid—dead as ditch-water. I always feel that there
is something significant in the general chilliness of the viands at a
wedding-breakfast. You detect a gelatinous character about the feast.
Your fun, like your fruit, is forced. The very wedding-cake has its
emblematic icing—for so, I believe, the highly decorated crust,
apparently compounded of sweetened gypsum and prussic-acid, is
styled by the confectioners. There is good fruit and aromatic spice
under that most indigestible and snowy covering, whereof none

been of solid gold, the nuptial torches of precious woods steeped in
the rarest spices, the bridal couch stuffed with bank-notes, and the
liquor, in which the health of the young couple was pledged, nothing
less than aurum-potabile. Even here I observed that the nuisances I am
complaining of were duly submitted to. Lord John Bussell did the
heavy business, and Mr. Bernal Osborne the light comedy. The
state of the thing was grand, befitting what Lord John described as
' a union between two members of the most powerful family of Europe,'
but no act of the social penance was wanting.

" As to the gold and gems, the pearls and diamonds that flashed and
shone through the luxuriant paragraphs of Jenkins, in describing that
marriage, I felt for once that such display was not out of place. There
was something grand in the Oriental magnificence—the insolent splen-
dour—the parade of 'money-power.' Dukes and Lords, and Prime
Ministers and Secretaries of State were summoned to bow down before
the Golden Image that Bothschild the king had set up ; and they
came and bowed dutifully, and did public suit and service to the
' Almighty Dollar.' Mammon really kept royal state at Gunners-
bury Park that morning. Let us hope that poor little Hymen was not
can eat and live ! What a good and sweet, and sustaining thing I smothered under his robes of cloth of gold ; that the fair young bride

marriage is in itself. _ Why do we invest it with icing ? Why hide its
sweetness and its spices —its mixture of currants and lemon-peel, and
its substratum of honest flour,—under a hard shell of frosty ceremonial,
flourished all over with shallow devices in confectioner's taste ? Why
do we all put our necks under the heel of Gtjnter? Why allow our
simple pleasures to be dashed by the awful presence of those white-
cravatted waiters—Eumenides of the chair-back, each shadowing
forth the Nemesis of the bill to pay ?

" But worse than the cold breakfast are the speeches. Which of us
has not groaned under this infliction ? So far as I know, every one

may not find herself, like Tarpeia crushed beneath her gifts—those
armlets and necklaces, and jewelled parasols, and gem-encrusted
writing-cases, and services of gold and services of silver—which so
bewddered and bedazzled us ' outer barbarians' even upon paper;
that there may be no danger for her and her husband, of the fate of
Midas, who, having the power of turning all things to gold, starved
for want of bread.

" On us humbler labourers at the social crank that Gunnersbury
wedding works somewhat as the apparition of a Palmer or a Waine-
wright—a Bedpath or a Bobson—might tell upon our brother