Said Mr. Podsnap to Mrs. Podsnap, “Georgiana is almost eighteen.”
Said Mrs. Podsnap to Mr. Podsnap, assenting, “Almost eighteen.”
Said Mr. Podsnap then to Mrs. Podsnap, “Really I think we should have some people on Georgiana’s birthday.”
Said Mrs. Podsnap then to Mr. Podsnap, “Which will enable us to clear off all those people who are due.”
So it came to pass that Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap requested the honour of the company of seventeen friends of their souls at dinner; and that they substituted other friends of their souls for such of the seventeen original friends of their souls as deeply regretted that a prior engagement prevented their having the honour of dining with Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap, in pursuance of their kind invitation; and that Mrs. Podsnap said of all these inconsolable personages, as she checked them off with a pencil in her list, “Asked, at any rate, and got rid of;” and that they successfully disposed of a good many friends of their souls in this way, and felt their consciences much lightened.
There were still other friends of their souls who were not entitled to be asked to dinner, but had a claim to be invited to come and take a haunch of mutton vapour-bath at half-past nine. For the clearing off of these worthies, Mrs. Podsnap added a small and early evening to the dinner, and looked in at the music-shop to bespeak a well-conducted automaton to come and play quadrilles for a carpet dance.
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, and Mr. and Mrs. Veneering’s bran-new bride and bridegroom, were of the dinner company; but the Podsnap establishment had nothing else in common with the Veneerings. Mr. Podsnap could tolerate taste in a mushroom man who stood in need of that sort of thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was made to look as heavy as it could, and to take up as much room as possible. Everything said boastfully, “Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an ounce;—wouldn’t you like to melt me down?” A corpulent straddling epergne, blotched all over as if it had broken out in an eruption rather than been ornamented, delivered this address from an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished with four staring heads, each head obtrusively carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, and handed it on to the potbellied silver saltcellars. All the big silver spoons and forks widened the mouths of the company expressly for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment down their throats with every morsel they ate.
The majority of the guests were like the plate, and included several heavy articles weighing ever so much. But there was a foreign gentleman among them: whom Mr. Podsnap had invited after much debate with himself—believing the whole European continent to be in mortal alliance against the young person—and there was a droll disposition, not only on the part of Mr. Podsnap but of everybody else, to treat him as if he were a child who was hard of hearing.
As a delicate concession to this unfortunately-born foreigner, Mr. Podsnap, in receiving him, had presented his wife as “Madame Podsnap;” also his daughter as “Mademoiselle Podsnap,” with some inclination to add “ma fille,” in which bold venture, however, he checked himself. The Veneerings being at that time the only other arrivals, he had added (in a condescendingly explanatory manner), “Monsieur Vey-nair-reeng,” and had then subsided into English.
“How Do You Like London?” Mr. Podsnap now inquired from his station of host, as if he were administering something in the nature of a powder or potion to the deaf child; “London, Londres, London?”
The foreign gentleman admired it.
“You find it Very Large?” said Mr. Podsnap, spaciously.
The foreign gentleman found it very large.
“And Very Rich?”
The foreign gentleman found it, without doubt, enormement riche.
“Enormously Rich, We say,” returned Mr. Podsnap, in a condescending manner. “Our English adverbs do Not terminate in Mong, and We Pronounce the ch as if there were a t before it. We say Ritch.”
“Reetch,” remarked the foreign gentleman.
“And Do You Find, Sir,” pursued Mr. Podsnap, with dignity, “Many Evidences that Strike You, of our British Constitution in the Streets Of The World’s Metropolis, London, Londres, London?”
The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not altogether understand.
“The Constitution Britannique,” Mr. Podsnap explained, as if he were teaching in an infant school. “We Say British, But You Say Britannique, You Know,” (forgivingly, as if that were not his fault). “The Constitution, Sir.”
The foreign gentleman said, “Mais, yees; I know eem.”
A youngish sallowish gentleman in spectacles, with a lumpy forehead, seated in a supplementary chair at a corner of the table, here caused a profound sensation
