Jane Welsh Carlyle goes to a marvellous party:On Tuesday evening I was engaged to assist at
Nina Macready's birthday party---but felt so little up to gaieties on the Monday that I had resolved to send an apology as usual when voilà---on the morning of the appointed day arrives a note from
Mrs Macready imploring me almost with tears in its eyes not to disappoint her and her "poor little daughter" by sending an apology---that a well aired
bed was prepared for me &c. &c.---this fore-stalling my cruel purpose was successful---I felt that I
must go
for once---so after spending the day in writing…I dressed myself and sat down to await
the fly---"my dear," says
Carlyle, "I think I never saw you look more bilious; your face is
green and your eyes all
blood-shot!" fine comfort when one was about to make a public appearance! "the first time this season." In fact I was very ill---had been
off my sleep for a week and felt as if this night must almost finish me. But little does one know in this world what will
finish them or what will
set them up again. I question if a long course of mercury would have acted so beneficially on my liver as this party which I had gone to with a scared shudder! But then it was the
very most agreeable party that ever I was at in London---everybody there seemed animated with one purpose to make up to Mrs Macready and her children for the absence of "
the Tragic Actor" and so amiable a purpose produced the most joyous results.
Dickens and
Forster above all exerted themselves till the perspiration was pouring down and they seemed
drunk with their efforts! Only think of that excellent Dickens playing the
conjuror for one whole hour---the
best conjuror I ever saw---(and I have paid money to see several)---and Forster acting as his servant. This part of the entertainment concluded with a plum pudding made out of raw flour, raw eggs---all the raw usual ingredients---boiled in a gentleman's hat---and tumbled out reeking---all in one minute before the eyes of the astonished children and astonished grown people! that trick---and his other of changing ladies' pocket handkerchieves into comfits---and a box full of bran into a box full of---a live guinea-pig! would enable him to make a handsome subsistence let the bookseller trade go as it please---! Then the dancing---old
Major Burns with his one eye---old
Jerdan of the Literary Gazette (escaped out of the rules of the Queen's Bench for the great occasion!) the gigantic
Thackeray &c. &c. all capering like
Mænades!! Dickens did all but go down on his knees to make
me---waltz with him! But I thought I did my part well enough in talking the maddest nonsense with
him, Forster, Thackeray and
Maclise---without attempting the Impossible---however
after supper when we were all madder than ever with the pulling of crackers, the drinking of champagne, and the making of speeches; a universal country dance was proposed---and Forster
seizing me round the waist, whirled me into the thick of it and
made me dance! like a person in the tread-mill who must move forward or be crushed to death! Once I cried out "oh for the love of Heaven let me go! you are going to dash my brains out against the folding doors! " to which he answered---(you can fancy his tone)---"your
brains!! who cares about their brains
here? let them go!"
In fact the thing was rising into something not unlike the
rape of the Sabines! (
Mrs Reid was happily gone some time) when somebody looked at her watch and exclaimed "twelve o'clock!" Whereupon we all rushed to the cloak-room---and
there and in the lobby and up to the last moment the mirth raged on---
Dickens took home Thackeray and Forster with him and his wife "
to finish the night there" and a
royal night they would have of it I fancy!---ending perhaps with a visit to the watch-house.
After all---the pleasantest company, as
Burns thought,
are the
blackguards!---that is; those who have just a sufficient dash of blackguardism in them to make them snap their fingers at
ceremony and "all that sort of thing." I question if there was as much witty speech uttered in all the aristocratic, conventional drawing rooms thro'out London that night as among us little knot of blackguardist literary people who felt ourselves above all rules, and independent of the universe! Well, and the result? Why the result my dear was, that I went to bed, on my return and---slept like a top!!!! plainly proving that
excitement is
my rest! To be sure my head ached a little next morning but the coffee cleared it…
(Read the complete letter here)
