AFTEE DINNEE 249 



by highly seasoned dishes. A parson cousin of mine once dined 

 with Mr. John Corlett, " Master " of the Pink Un. There was, he 

 told me, nothing for dinner but turbot and venison, but very marvel- 

 lous Madeira " sack " to follow. No doubt there are still numerous 

 survivals of this school of high hving and plain thinking. I myself 

 was brought up in those traditions, and I think that they were 

 bound up with the fact that, though smoking was not treated as the 

 " filthy " hole-and-corner habit it had been in quite early Victorian 

 times, still one could not smoke where and when one pleased as we 

 do now, and one never expected to finish one's dinner with a cigarette 

 or smoke of any kind. Tobacco was reserved till the ladies had 

 retired for the night, and it was de rigueur to change one's coat, so 

 that one should not smell of tobacco ; to smoke when drinking the 

 wine of those days was almost as great a sacrilege as it would even 

 now be to play bridge in church. 



Fashions change slowly, and there are places where the older 

 ways still survive. I have stayed in a house for partridge shooting 

 of the old sort, which began with zest on " The First," and where 

 the son of the house and myself were both tainted with modernism, 

 in that we had hammerless ejector guns. Such September shooting 

 had used to be honoured with the best after-dinner vintages, and 

 our host kept up the old traditions. But as soon as the wine had 

 gone round the son went out and came back with cigarettes and 

 matches, which he handed round on his own account. I was, in a 

 sense, the son's guest, and knew him well enough to refuse ;pro tern. 

 But another guest gravely took a cigarette, laid it by his glass, and 

 went on with his wine. The son, not taking the hint, then pressed 

 matches upon him ; he took one and laid it carefully beside the 

 cigarette. When coffee came in and he had said " No more wine, 

 thank you," he took up the cigarette and lit it with the match, 

 to the vast delight of the seniors, and the comparative discomfiture 

 of the son. 



To such times do the after-dinner habits of the early beaglers 

 belong, and though not on all points a laudator temporis acti, I 

 like those old ways, though there is much to be said for lighter 

 meals and less liquor, the quick coffee and smoke and au adjourn- 



