Simpering virgins

Monday, December 13th., Cadogan Square, London.

 

To the Hotel Cecil for the grand political Liberal Party dinner in honour of Vivian Phillipps, Chief Whip and organiser of the said party. Earl Grey in the chair. It was quite lively at our table. Nearly all the white-haired politicians behaved as usual at these things, just like kids - pleased to death at the slightest 'hit', or comedy platitudes. Beaming all the time. I think that it is having attended public schools that does it. They know that they must behave themselves in public life, or at least not get found out, but in private they revert to a sort of posh schoolboy mentality, secure in the knowledge that some menial will clear up after them. It is quite entertaining to observe.

Well, I have come to the conclusion that Christmas is not what it was. Where is the Christmas spirit which sought to send all tradesmen home to their families at least half-drunk? Where are the colour supplements portraying chubby children and hale old port-drinkers, and thick snow, and simpering virgins in long frocks standing with reluctant feet where the brook and the river meet? Terrible maidens those virgins - in my opinion much more devastating than the knee-showing, cocktail-consuming, smoke-inhaling, sham-jewellery wearing, hard-swearing, painted and powdered damsels of our epoch. In the days of the simper those virgins were addressed nightly by the poets of three high-brow London evening papers, and the message of their nine hundred lyrics a year was to the effect that if the virgins smiled in a particular way the poets would be in bliss for ever, and if the virgins frowned in a particular way the poets would be ruined for ever. A somewhat violent conceit; marvellously untrue to life; and where is it now?