Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 007.djvu/165

 DINNER COMPANY TO LET.—A CARD.

Clack and Caterer respectfully invite the attention of the dinner-giving department of the metropolis, to the following candid statement of facts.

It happens in London, every day, that gentlemen mount to sudden wealth by Spanish bonds, fluctuations of English stock, death of distant relations, and what not. When this event occurs, a carriage is bespoken, the ladies go to the Soho Bazaar, the father takes a house in Baker-street or Connaught-place, and the sons get blackballed at all the new clubs in the environs of the Haymarket. Yet still something is wanting. Like the Greek or Persian king (Messrs. Clack and Caterer will not be precise as to the nation) who pined to death in the midst of plenty, gentlemen thus jumping into high-life, from the abysses of Lower Thames-street and Saint Mary Axe, lament the lack of good dinner company. If they rely upon coffee-house society, their silver spoons are in jeopardy; and if they invite their own relations, they are ruined: nobody will come twice to such society. An uncle with an unpowdered pigtail, who prates of pepper and pimento: an aunt in a brown silk gown, who drinks every body's health; a son from Stockwell, who is silent when he ought to talk, accompanied by a wife, who talks when she ought to be silent, compose a species of society which may do very well at Kensington or Camden-town, but which, Messrs. Clack and Caterer confidently predict, can never take root west of Temple-bar. The consequence is that gentlemen thus circumstanced must "cut" their own relations, or nobody else will "come again." Singers may be hired at so much a-head: every body knows, to an odd sixpence, the price of "Non nobis, Domine," "Hail, Star of Brunswick," Glorious Apollo," and "Scots wha ha." Good set speakers for charity dinners may also be obtained, by inquiry at the bar of the tavern. These latter go through the routine of duty with a vast deal of decorum. They call the attention of the company in a particular manner to the present charity, leaving a blank for its name. They ascribe half of its success to the worthy treasurer, and the other half to the noble chairman, whose health they conclude with proposing, with three times three: and the accuracy of their ear enables them to cry "hip, hip, hip," nine times, interlarded at the third and sixth close with a hurrah! aided by a sharp yell which Messrs. Clack and Caterer have never been able to distinguish from the yelp of a trodden lapdog. All this is very well in its way, and it is not the wish of the advertisers to disparage such doings. Far from it: "live and let live" is their maxim. Many gentlemen by practice qualify themselves for public speakers; but good private-dinner company is still a desideratum.

Impressed with this truth, Messrs. Clack and Caterer, at a considerable expense, have provided, at their manufactory in Leicester-square, a choice assortment of good diners out of various prices, who, in clean white waistcoats, and at the shortest notice, will attend to enliven any dull gentleman's dull dinner-table. Messrs. Clack and Caterer are possessed of three silver-toned young barristers, who have their way to make in Lincoln's Inn. These gentlemen respectively and anxiously enquire after the health of any married lady's little Charlotte; ask when she last heard from Hastings; think they never saw curtains better hung in the whole course of their lives; tenderly caress the poodle that occupies the