The Express.
London, England, 1868-05-27 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 27.

THE SEASON.

Tat five minutes before and after te I p.m., de-
serves to beoome as famous as the •,•"art d'h, etre
of RABBLAIS. They have been made memorable
by the British Parliament of 1868. At live mi-
nutes to ten an empty House and a discomfited
Government, at live minutes past ten turned
tables, and the mortifying consciousness " too
" late." But the exodus Loafing to the first state
of things was more remarkable when the numbers
in the early division of the night are compared
with that said to have taken place in compliance
with an astute and sonorous cry from a 4beral

THE

bench. The difference hetes:NM tie nunabeas ire-
sent on the first occasion and the last amid be
reckoned by hundreds, and the question di Where
were the absented 1 No we conversant with the I
whirl of the London season need pause for a re-
ply. Despite the complaints current as to its busi-
nese, its attractions will ever be fruitful in ember-
remanent to the ablest and most experienced whip.
The first ambition of life being to get into the
I House, the second would seem to be to keep out
of it when elected there. The countless claims of
metropolitan existence are in full swing, and our
legislators, like every one else of the faintest
importance, are deep in engagements and requests.
The social labours of a fashionable or ',ladle
career make but a trite story, but their severity
seems to grow with the century, and even admit-
ting the parties and fetes to be fewer than usual,
this year, London society is to the full as busy
as it need care to be. The great
national rite of Kotoo is being practised
with as much unflagging vigour as when the
Snob papers were written, and little TUFTHUNT
toadied the Marquis of CASABAS. At dinner
parties where the solemn forms of precedence are
observed with as much precision as if the host and
[hostess had served their apprenticeship to Ulster
King-at-firms ; at public banquets, where the best
I seats and the most toothsome dishes are reserved for
the cross-table ; in ball-rooms, where the best eartis
of the season have their train of vestals and are
looked up to as demigods ; at assemblies, to which
guests crowd to have their names recorded next
day in fashionable columns ; and at clubs, where
reepectfulbutton-holding and committee courtesy is
is at the beck of the man known to be influential
—the season's influences assert their sway. A
Ottefeelo L'o;eete. of the toils to be gone through
and avoided would fill this sheet. Polities, music,
flirting, dining, strolling, driving, riding snake
up an exhausting curriculum. Public dinners
form a heavy item in the list. Besides charity
festivals there are so many people nowa-
days who appear to be sufficiently virtuous, or
eminent, or patriotic to be table-cloth heroes,
that applications to serve as steward, or to take
tickets from friends, are becoming plentiful as
blackberries. But lukewarm aide-dishes, fiery
sherry, acid champagne, sonorous shouts from the
fearful being known as toastmaster, verbose plati-
tudes from the luckless fellow-creature in the
chair, cumbrous efforts at extrication from the
intricate labyrinth of their own eloquence on the
part of guests, heat, vexation, weariness, and in-
digestion are among the recognised thorns in
modern flesh. Private dinners have no
medium. They are enjoyable er hateful—
a tableland of Promise flowing with things far
dearer to educated palates than either milk or
honey, or a Sahara without an oasis, a weary
waste of conversational waters amid which the most
earnest-minded dove may seek a resting-place in
vain. Party-givers complain of the scarcity of
lions this year. The interesting representative
traveller who has discovered another " missing
" link ;" or practised cannibalism from necessity,
..r insulted an ancient religion at the risk of his
life, or followed a river to its fountain-head to
destroy the theory of every previous explorer, or
been tatooed as chieftain of an impose
sible tribe of fire water worshippers, is want-
ing, nor is his place supplied by other
leonine varieties. The market for picturesque
celebrities is, in commercial parlance, fiat and
heavy. Foreign patriots are not in supply ;
spiritualism has become ridiculous ; the dis-
coverers and inventors of the period are not suffi-
ciently remarkable for Society's crown ; so that
until the Abyssinian lions return from their cap-
tivity London is depending mainly upon its internal
resources for wonder and talk. Yet the scientific
soirees were never more crowded. Visit the Geo-
graphical, or the Statistical, or the Engineers, or
the Antiquaries, and it seems as if the fate of the
empire hung upon the subject to which each
seeiety is devoted. The average citizen of the
world feels himself terriblybehind-hand in his facts,
when the various members of these recondite ado-
ciatious pour out their accumulated knowledge and
are contradicted or confirmed by learned fellows
whose life-time seems devoted to tripping
their neighbours up. To listen to an abstruse
paper, to dispute its facts and politely ridicule its '
conclusions, and to subsequently criticise its
author and his censors, over weak tea and thin
bread and butter, represents the enjoyment of the '
season to a large and eminently respectable class.
To another and more numerous body, the two
opera-houses, each rejoicing in its individual and
separate existence, the fascinations of
NII,%ssON, the hearts Mdlie. PATTI has 110 H, and
the public rejoicings at her being still wedded to
her art, and Millie. PAULINE LUteA'S range and
compass, form no inconsiderable items in daily
life. But morning concerts at noble houses, the
excellence of the French plays, and the poverty of
English ones, our moat popular light comedian's
success as a stage murderer and thief, the last
flower-show, and to-day's race, are all talked of
with an eagerness which makes the common asser-
tion, " a poor season," difficult to believe. Yet
our fashionable tradespeople insist upon it, and
the people who give parties, and the people who
visit, cumirm them. Despite the signs and gym-
bola we have quoted, the gaieties of the year are
said to be below the average. The last commercial
crisis has left its brand; and the government returns
of the number of people keeping carriages, the
daily receipts of West-end shopkeepers, or the slack
demand for rout chairs and temporary ball-rooms,
are all appealed to in support of the assertion.
As neither the Abyssinian penny nor the political
situation are sufficient to account for this, a
dismal kind of comfort is derived from making a
scapegoat out of Joint-stock Companies and City
speculation. But to the outside observer of our
London thoroughfares the season seems as pros-
perous and gay as ever. Regent-street is blocked
every fine afternoon. Family carriages, cabs, and
omnibuses make up the traffic. Mail phaetons are
rare, and the old cabriolet, with its homoeopathic
tiger, clinging for dear life behind, rarer still.
The former eschew shopping thoroughfares on
principle—the latter never really survived Count
D'Oe,iv's death. But your fine old coach, your
spacious landau, your fat and comfortable
brougham, are never seen to better advantage than
ill Regent-street or Bond-street. At the doors of
; the great silk mercers, drawn up higgledy-pig-
! pledy, like a disorganised flock of sheep—round
the corners of quiet streets, in the vicinity of
• celebrated jewellers or the famous bonnet shops,
they are lying-to cosily, a fleet of Dutch-built
vessels becalmed. Quite a little regiment of foot-
men, of the finest quality, hang round the
favoured shop doors. Those calves are never seen
in town out of the season. As well visit the
Drive in October to look for rank and fashion as
expect those radiant figures to the fore, save at
some such date as this. Liveried beings of an
inferior grade imitate their strut and parody
their calm repose ; bat their cahres betisy them,
and where art has been called in to supple-
ment Nature, the effort is vain. Your true foot-
man, the aristocrat of his class—the 311131 hiughed
at by shallow satirists, only vials the metropolis