 | A LITERARY DINNER. Tales of a traveller |  |
A LITERARY DINNER.
A few days after this conversation with Mr.
Buckthorne, he called upon me, and took me
with him to a regular literary dinner. It was
given by a great bookseller, or rather a company
of booksellers, whose firm surpassed in length
even that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.
I was surprised to find between twenty and
thirty guests assembled, most of whom I had
never seen before. Buckthorne explained this
to me by informing me that this was a “business
dinner,” or kind of field day, which the house
gave about twice a year to its authors. It is
true, they did occasionally give snug dinners to
three or four literary men at a time, but then
these were generally select authors; favourites
of the public; such as had arrived at their sixth
and seventh editions. “There are,” said he,
literature, and you may judge tolerably well of
an author's popularity, by the wine his bookseller
gives him. An author crosses the port line
about the third edition and gets into claret, but
when he has reached the sixth and seventh, he
may revel in champaigne and burgundy.”
“And pray,” said I, “how far may these gentlemen
have reached that I see around me; are
any of these claret drinkers?”
“Not exactly, not exactly. You find at these
great dinners the common steady run of authors,
one, two, edition men; or if any others are invited
they are aware that it is a kind of republican
meeting.—You understand me—a meeting of
the republic of letters, and that they must expect
nothing but plain substantial fare.”
These hints enabled me to comprehend more
fully the arrangement of the table. The two
ends were occupied by two partners of the house.
And the host seemed to have adopted Addison's
ideas as to the literary precedence of his guests.
A popular poet had the post of honour, opposite
with plates. A grave looking antiquarian, who
had produced several solid works, which were
much quoted and little read, was treated with
great respect, and seated next to a neat dressy gentleman
in black, who had written a thin, genteel,
hot pressed octavo on political economy, that was
getting into fashion. Several three volume duo-decimo
men of fair currency were placed about
the centre of the table; while the lower end was
taken up with small poets, translators, and authors,
who had not as yet risen into much notice.
The conversation during dinner was by fits and
starts; breaking out here and there in various
parts of the table in small flashes, and ending in
smoke. The poet who had the confidence of a
man on good terms with the world and independent
of his bookseller, was very gay and brilliant,
and said many clever things, which set the partner
next him in a roar, and delighted all the company.
The other partner, however, maintained
his sedateness, and kept carving on, with the air
of a thorough man of business, intent upon the
to me by my friend Buckthorne. He
informed me that the concerns of the house were
admirably distributed among the partners.—
“Thus, for instance,” said he, “the grave gentleman
is the carving partner who attends to the
joints, and the other is the laughing partner who
attends to the jokes.”
The general conversation was chiefly carried
on at the upper end of the table; as the authors
there seemed to possess the greatest courage of
the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if
they did not make much figure in talking they
did in eating. Never was there a more determined,
inveterate, thoroughly sustained attack
on the trencher, than by this phalanx of masticators.
When the cloth was removed, and the wine
began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose
among themselves. Their jokes, however,
if by chance any of them reached the upper end
of the table, seldom produced much effect. Even
the laughing partner did not seem to think it necessary
to honour them with a smile; which my
me that there was a certain degree of popularity
to be obtained, before a bookseller could afford
to laugh at an author's jokes.
Among this crew of questionable gentlemen
thus seated below the salt, my eye singled out
one in particular. He was rather shabbily dressed;
though he had evidently made the most of a
rusty black coat, and wore his shirt frill plaited
and puffed out voluminously at the bosom. His
face was dusky, but florid—perhaps a little too
florid, particularly about the nose, though the
rosy hue gave the greater lustre to a twinkling
black eye. He had a little the look of a boon
companion, with that dash of the poor devil in
it which gives an inexpressibly mellow tone to a
man's humour. I had seldom seen a face of richer
promise; but never was promise so ill kept.
He said nothing; ate and drank with the keen
appetite of a gazetteer, and scarcely stopped to
laugh even at the good jokes from the upper end
of the table. I inquired who he was. Buckthorne
he, “I have seen that face before, but where I
cannot recollect. He cannot be an author of
any note. I suppose some writer of sermons or
grinder of foreign travels.”
After dinner we retired to another room to
take tea and coffee, where we were reinforced
by a cloud of inferior guests. Authors of small
volumes in boards, and pamphlets stitched in
blue paper. These had not as yet arrived to the
importance of a dinner invitation, but were invited
occasionally to pass the evening “in a
friendly way.” They were very respectful to
the partners, and indeed seemed to stand a little
in awe of them; but they paid very devoted
court to the lady of the house, and were extravagantly
fond of the children. I looked round for
the poor devil author in the rusty black coat and
magnificent frill, but he had disappeared immediately
after leaving the table; having a dread,
no doubt, of the glaring light of a drawing room.
Finding nothing farther to interest my attention,
served, leaving the port and the thin, genteel,
hot-pressed, octavo gentlemen, masters of the
field.
| A LITERARY DINNER. Tales of a traveller | |