Sala

“ In connexion with the temple there are one or more salas, or rest-houses. To build a sala is another way of making merit, and as it costs less to put up one of these wooden rest-houses than to build a temple, there are thousands of them in the country. ”

“ When I die, I hope that they will lay me in a very quiet church-yard in Kent, that I know, where some one who cared for me has been mouldering away peacefully these four years, where the [105] clergyman’s blind white pony will browse upon the salad that I am eating by the roots; where the children will come and have famous games—their silver voices and pattering feet upon the velvet turf make out a pleasant noise, I wot ”

“ By five o’clock the little industries that have prevailed since the rehearsal ended are mostly completed; and the theatre becomes quite still. It is a complete, a solemn, almost an awful stillness. All the busy life and cheerful murmur of this human ant-hill are hushed. The rows of seats are as deserted as the degrees of some old ruined amphitheatre in Rome. The stage is a desert. The “flies” and “borders” loom overhead in cobweb indistinctness. Afar off the dusky, feeble chandelier, looks like a moon on which no sun condescends to shine ”

“ There, in the tastefully yet cheaply decorated saloon, with its boarded floor and flying cupids and sylphides on the panels—there, where the gas shines, and the enlivening strains of a band, composed of a harp, piano, and violin, are heard—there, in a remote section of the apartment—the pons asinorum of the dancing-school—the adult gentlemen, who are as yet in the accidence or rudiments of dancing, are instructed in the mysteries of the “positions” and preliminary steps by Mrs. ”

“ Whereupon we walk, till the piazza, about which I have kept you so long lingering, looms in sight. A low doorway, brilliantly lit with gas, greets our view. We descend a flight of some steps, pass through a vestibule, and enter the “Cave of Harmony.”
Push further on, if you please. You are not to linger in this ante-chamber, thickly hung with pictures, and otherwise, with its circular marble tables, much resembling a Parisian café, minus the mirrors and the rattle of the dominoes. This ante-chamber will be treated of anon; but your present business is with chops and harmony. ”

“ We are in a spacious chamber, not very vast, not very lofty—for there is a false roof of ground glass, for acoustic reasons—and not very handsome. A sufficiency of oaken panelling, and windows veiled with velvet curtains, brilliant but cunningly tempered light—the absolute lamps invisible. Altogether a comfortable, well-to-do-place—say something like an enlarged edition of the coffee-room of a terminus hotel, as they are building terminus hotels now-a-days, or the newspaper-room of a club fitted up for a general meeting of the members. ”

“ It is ill for me, who dwell in quite a Crystal Palace of a glass house, to throw so much as a grain of sand at the windows opposite, but I cannot refrain from sermonising my fellows on their self-conceited bachelorhood. ”

“ The dinner was in the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. ”

“ The modern play-wrights skulk in and out of the manager’s room, and are mistaken at rehearsal for the property-men. They forsake green-rooms at night for drawing-rooms, where they can hear themselves praised, or smoking-rooms of clubs, where they can abuse one another ”

“ True, by daylight, and during the early part of the evening, it is that which it will remain all night: a broad thoroughfare inclining slightly downhill northward; a theatre on its eastern, a colonnaded opera-house on its western side; a thoroughfare containing a sufficiency [320] of shops for the sale of general merchandise, but, predominating above these, a crowd of hotels, restaurants, cigar-divans, coffee-houses, and establishments for the sale of lobsters, oysters, and pickled salmon, according to the seasons in which those dainties are considered most fit to be enjoyed. ”

“ The principal actresses and actors betake themselves to dinner, or to a walk in the park, or give themselves a finishing touch of study in the parts they are not yet quite perfect in, or, it may be, mount the steep theatrical stairs to the mountainous regions where dwell the theatrical tailor and tailoress—I entreat them to excuse me, the costumier and the mistress of the robes—with whom they confer on the weighty subject of the dresses which they are to wear that evening. The carpenters abandon work ”

“ The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d’œuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit. ”

“ For, in a roomy apartment downstairs, lighted by waxen tapers, such things as pens, ink, and paper, coffee, cognac, and cigars, are, by the forethought of the liberal proprietors of the establishment, laid out for the benefit of those merry gentlemen you saw upstairs at the small table in a line with the chairman, where they were so well taken care of ”

“ The salle à manger was a magnificent temple radiant with mirrors, and lustres, and panels painted in fresco. The dinner was an imposing rite, served with solemn ceremonies by ministering waiters. There were about thirty guests seated round, in august silence, most of them very smartly dressed, and nearly all English. A stout gentleman, with a little knob on the top of his bald head, a buff waistcoat, and a shirt amply frilled, sat opposite to me, flanked on either side by an elderly daughter in green silk. On my left I was supported by a thin young gentleman with fair hair, and blue glasses. ”

“ For Music in their Churches they have a perfect Passion. The City is well furnished with Necessaries; but the want of Cellarage makes all the Wine sour. The Inhabitants are of a Fresh Complexion, and not much troubled with Coughs ”

“ When they had taken a little rest, they all met in the director's drawing-room, and from thence they marched arm-in-arm, in solemn procession, to the office board-room, which had been transformed into a dining-room. Here the Duke gave them a magnificent dinner. Nothing was missing of the most refined and aristocratic entertainment; the plate and china, the cooking, and the service were all perfection. While they dined the grounds were lighted up with Venetian lamps, and on rising from table, every one rushed to the window to admire the effect, which was dazzlingly beautiful. ”

“ You must take the bad with the good, in this world, and in all things.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to the Opera—to her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket; and by eight o’clock it behoves us all to be in our seats, if we wish to hear the first bars of the overture. It is true that if we are so fortunate as to possess, or to hire, or to have opera-boxes given to us, we do not, frequently, make our appearance in the theatre till past nine o’clock; and that, if we are lessees or renters of stalls, the ballet has frequently commenced before we condescend to occupy our seats ”

“ Better, I take it, a mutton chop at the Cock, or the Cheshire Cheese, than these nasty Ancient Roman repasts. It is true our moderns stay their aristocratic stomachs early in the afternoon with a copious lunch of hot meats and generous wines; and [222] they say that her blessed Majesty herself, like a good, sensible woman, makes her real dinner at two o’clock, with her little children, in the nursery, and takes but a mere bite and sup at the grand stall-fed feast of gold plate in the evening. ”

“ The modern conversazione means a room or a suite of rooms thrown open for the reception of a miscellaneous mob of fashionables or of celebrities, foreign and native, political, literary, scientific, or artistic. It is a vast menagerie, a “happy family” on a monster scale, a Noah’s ark upon dry ground, and the birds, beasts, and fishes crowd and elbow each other, and roar, or yell, or howl, or bark, or low, or grunt, or squeak, or crow, or whistle, or scream, or pipe, to the infinite delectation of the host and hostess. ”

“ Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair of gloves that had required three stitches and that had received them—with a publicity perhaps not edifying—while I sat with the children at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold, clean temple of mahogany and brass, the “grown-up” dining room. ”

“ And so the oratorio goes on, the assemblage paying a grave and decorous attention to the music, and bearing themselves far more like a congregation than an audience. They are so devotedly rapt in the magnificent performance, that I expect every moment to hear the vast mass of them join in the choruses; and when, at the first bar of the sublime “Hallelujah Chorus,” the hearers all stand up, the singers in the orchestra seem to me like priests. In truth, I think that to hear an oratorio, chastens and purifies the mind, and that we go away from those grand performances wiser and better men. ”

“ Although it is so warm no one thinks of walking in the garden, or even sitting out on the perron. When we come out from dinner, though it is broad daylight, every shutter is shut and curtains drawn, and there we sit in the salon, all arranged round in a semi-circle, and make conversation, and sirop comes at nine, and, thank goodness, we get off to bed at ten! ”

“ The grand saloon, the finest of all those contained in the New Palace, formed to this procession of exalted personages and splendidly dressed women a frame worthy of the magnificence they displayed. The rich ceiling, with its gilding already softened by the touch of time, appeared as if glittering with stars. ”

“ Severe as the late General Picton is the tie of his cravat. This gracilis puer is going to dine in Thurlow Square, Brompton. That gold-rimmed lorgnon you see screwed into his face, to the damaging distortion of his muscles, will not be removed therefrom—nor during dinner, nor during wine-taking, nor during the evening party which will follow the dinner, nor during the “little music,” the dancing, the supper, the shawling, the departure, and the drive home to his chambers. He will eat in his eyeglass, and drink in his eyeglass, and flirt and polk in his eyeglass. ”

“ Then, at the door, you see a detachment of waiters, bearing fasces of long, blue staves, tipped with brass, which they distribute to sundry inoffensive gentlemen, whose real attributes are at once discovered, and who are patent to the dining-out world as Stewards. They take the staves, looking very much ashamed of them; and, bearing besides a quaint resemblance to undertakers out for a holiday, and in a procession, which would be solemn if it wasn’t funny, precede the chairman to his place of honour. ”

“ The noble dining-hall, with its delicately tinted walls, its pillars and gilded roof, with neatly dressed waiters, and the master of ceremonies patrolling the room seeing to the comfort of the guests, the arrangements of their places, and that each servant did his duty, gave a zest to one’s appetite which the tempting viands increased a hundred fold, and the soups, fish, relèves, entrées, game, relishes, vegetables, pastry, and dessert of the menu differed from the bill of fare of the previous day as does light from darkness, sweet from bitter. ”

“ Mark yonder, that roomy box on the grand tier, which a quiet, plainly-dressed party has just entered. There is a matronly lady in black, with a few bugle ornaments in her coiffure. She ensconces herself in a corner, her back towards the audience, screens herself with a curtain, and then calmly proceeds to take a review of the front rows of the stalls, and the occupants of the proscenium boxes. It is not considered etiquette to take more than a cursory glimpse of the matronly lady in black through your opera-glass. ”

“ A grand saloon that stretches across the house holds two long tables, around which are seated thirty or forty men and women, intent, silent, more statue than life-like. With your eyes closed you would scarcely be conscious that any one was in the room. ”

“ There are noble houses in England, with a door communicating from the dining room to the stables, that the master and his friends may see their favorites, after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the place of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled and spacious dining-hall of C—— is on a level with the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is removed, the large door between is thrown open, and the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling music of vespers through the rooms. ”

“ The real dining-room was big enough for a dancing floor, with an enormous table, preposterously heavy furniture all around the four sides of the room, and an air of gloom that would have removed, before the food appeared, even, all trace of a healthy appetite. ”

“ The dining-hall is a noble room, with beautiful Chinese paper, opening into a garden, which is the boast of the Republic, and is indeed singularly pretty, and kept in beautiful order, with gravel walks and fine trees, clear tanks and sparkling fountains, and an extraordinary profusion of the most beautiful flowers, roses especially. ”

“ State, and with his unequaled, dignified courtesy received his guests. In the third, and most spacious saloon, where the floor was covered with canvas for dancing, the walls were lined with mirrors, and festooned with flowers that enriched the atmosphere with odoriferous perfumes, while from a vine-covered balcony a military band filled all the air with music. Beyond the saloon, the last, or supper-room, was elegantly set out. ”