Punch: Punch (32.1857)

June 20, 1857.]

253

THE SOCIAL TREAD-MILL. No. 8.

" What follows on such dinners as the Kotoos' is little, if at all,
less dreary than the dinner itself. There is certainly a momentary
relief when Mrs. Kotoo gives a glance round the table with an
inclination of her head that takes in all the ladies, as much as to say—
' Don't you think, my dears, the gentlemen want a little free and easy
conversation, which it would not be proper for us to listen to,"—and
sweeps out of the room with the fleet of attendant Crinolines in her
wake. You feel that a certain amount of false pretence and social
sham has passed away with those voluminous petticoats. Not that
the women are half such humbugs as we, their lords. If left to them-
selves, I believe the wives of England would do more to put down the
Social Tread-mill than all these papers will ever do, if I continue them
till the public refuses to read or Mr. Punch to print any more. So
far as I have observed, the wives of England are more desirous of
squaring expenditure by means, more afraid of debt and the shuffling
and meanness it occasions, less anxious about keeping up appearances,
—in a word, more honest than the husbands of England by a great
deal. I think the luckiest thing that could happen to nineteen married
men out of twenty would be for their wives to be entrusted with the
control of the cheque-book, and the husbands put on a quarterly
allowance of pocket-money. It is not, then, because the women are
peculiarly humbugs that I feel more at ease when Mrs. Kotoo has
convoyed them into the drawing-room ■ but because we, the men, have
none of us been quite ourselves while they continued at the table.
The sensation produced by their departure is rather like that of
easing one's waistcoat-strap after a good dinner—a kind of moral
' deboutonnement'

"A certain style of subject, a certain tone of allusion, a certain class
of jokes and good stories may be ventured on now, from which the
female presence restrained us. To our shame be it. I do not mean
to say that this is so at all parties. But it is true of far too
many.

" Unless this be so, I don't know any reason for keeping up this
habit of separating the sexes after dinner. If it enables the ladies to
discuss us, their lords; to compare social notes usefully; to make a little
bout de toilette; or even to have out among themselves any little
affairs of friendship, honour, or business that may be on hand/that is
another matter. I know nothing of the mysteries of the Gynseceum.
(It is a harmless Greek word, ladies, and means ' the apartment of the
women.') But so far as I have ventured to pry into them, I gather
that the ladies, as a general rule, by no means approve of this segre-
gation; that the hour or half-hour spent in the drawing-room is very

dull and fiat indeed ; that it only tends to breed the smallest of small
talk ; in short, that there is no better reason on the female than there
is on the male side for keeping up this practice. It is an inheritance
from those times when gentlemen made a practice of getting drunk after
dinner. It might well have disappeared as completely as the con-
vivial habit which gave rise to it.

" I can't say we were happy after the ladies left us. Neither the
company nor the wine was good enough for that. Elatjnter would
talk about the Oaks and the Chester Cup, and how Elashman had
certainly been made safe in the Two Thousand, with a wonderful
story of old Moss, the great betting agent, how he had come into
Tattersall's yard on settling day with forty thousand pounds in
new notes in his pockets, and had left it with two pound ten, and some
odd coppers. We listened, but it didn't interest us any more than
the circuit stories contributed by Bladebone; or 'that very good
thing Campbell said in that great crim. con. case the other day—the
Indian case—Hillhouse v. Grifein, you know.' And Pennyboy
would talk about books, of all things, and took to praising Allison's
History, of all books to praise, which happened to be a strong subject
of the Reviewer, who had just been dissecting Sir Archibald for a
forthcoming number of his periodical, and who served up to us a
string of Allisonisms, headed by the famous one of his translation of
' droits du timbre,' into ' timber duties.' And then the Author out ot
spite against the Reviewer, defended Sir Archibald, and declared
him to be a great master of style, and praised his extraordinary
lucidity and power of arrangement. All which the Reviewer answered
contemptuouslv, and the Author retorted with sneers; till somehow
we found ourselves all talking at once with great vehemence, and
nobody listening to anything anybody else was saying.

" Kotoo wisely put a stop to the row, by asking ' if anybody would
take any more wine ? ' and getting up, without waiting for an answer
to his own question, led the way to the drawing-room. So we jomeu
the ladies.' I dare say they had been natural till we came m ; very
stupid probably, but still natural. We had been more natural cer-
tainly in the dining-room after they went—coarser, and more selfisn
that is, and less courteous and respectful to each other.

" But now, we all buttoned ourselves up again in our buckram suits
and put on our vizors—like Falstaff's thieves—and with the usual simper-
ing, and wagding, and grinning, re-commenced our round on the Social
Tread-mill. I should mention that several ladies had come in ' for the
evening,' who swelled the drawing-room phalanx of Crinoline consider-
ably. These new-comers sat stonily to receive us. We, who had dined
together, had contrived to get up a sort of tepid cordiality, but the new
arrivals were all utterly chilly, and of course rapidly cooled down the
party to the temperature of the flattest and flabbiest person nresent.