Who can remember that story about Theodore
Hook and the orange? Hook wrote a note to the hostess, saying, "Ask me
at dinner if I will venture on an orange." The lady did so, and then the
brilliant wit promptly made answer, "I'm afraid I should tumble off." A
whole volume of biography is implied in that one gruesome and vulgar
anecdote. In truth, the professional wit is no company at all; he has
the effect of a performing monkey suddenly planted on the table, and
his efforts are usually quite on a level with the monkey's.
Among the higher Bohemian sets--Bohemian they call themselves, as if
there ever was a Bohemian with five hundred a year!--good company is
common. I may say, with fear and much trembling, that the man of
letters, the man who can name you all the Restoration comedies or tell
you the styles of the contemporaries of Alan Chartier is a most terrible
being, and I should risk sharks rather than remain with him on a
desolate island; but a mixed set of artists, musicians, verse-makers,
novelists, critics--yea, even critics--contrive usually to make an
unusually pleasant company. They are all so clever that the professional
wit dares not raise his voice lest some wielder of the bludgeon should
smite him; no long-winded talk is allowed, and, though a bore may once
be admitted to the company, he certainly will never be admitted more
than once.
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