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In a metaphorical and technical sense, Boxing-day is always more or less "wet" generally more, and not less; but this year the expression is used climatically, and in its first intention. Christmas-eve of the year about which I write was bright and springlike; Christmas-day dismal, dark, and un-Christmas-like; but Boxing-day that year was essentially muggy, sloppy, drizzly, and nasty.
When will the French edition of your three operatic poems appear, and what publisher undertakes the edition of the "Nibelungen?" Have you arranged with Schott about the publication of the full scores of "Rhinegold" and the "Valkyrie?" Send me word as to these three things. The first performance of "Rienzi" is announced for Boxing-day.
"Yes, that it be, sir. The Horsley foxhounds are a'most allus meeting somewheres about here." "When do they meet next?" "The day arter to-morrow Boxing-day, sir. They're to meet in the field by Hallgrove Ferry, a mile and a quarter beyond the rectory, at ten o'clock in the morning. It's to be a reg'lar grand day's sport, I've heard say.
Halting a moment in the reading-room, to jot down there a few notes, one is struck with the scanty show of students. They are spending Boxing-day somewhere else.
D'Eyncourt is dispensing summary justice to the accumulations of the last two days. These are the people who have been spending Christmas-eve, Christmas-day, and some portion of Boxing-day already in the police-cells. Let us take one as a typical case.
So I determined, having heard nothing of James, to go over and spend my Christmas with the Buckleys, and see how they were getting on at their new station; and about noon on the day before Boxing-day, having followed the track made by their drays from the place I had last parted with them, I reined up on the cliffs above a noble river, and could see their new huts, scarce a quarter of a mile off, on the other side of the stream.
Such, starred round with endless episodes of "drunk and disorderly," "foul language," and so on, is our first tableau this Boxing-day. It is not a pleasant one. Let us pass on.
My housekeeper and her husband have begged for a holiday from this morning till Boxing-day, and I could not refuse. I can do without them for so short a time. I might have spent the Christmas with one of my children, but they live far away and travelling is now irksome to me. I was seventy years old a month past. Besides, they are married and have their own friends, of whom I know nothing.
But let us pass on to the artistic Boxing-day keepers at the National Gallery. The walk will take us through the Seven Dials, and can scarcely fail to be suggestive. It is now one o'clock, the traditional hour of dinner; and in Broad Street, St. Giles's, I see, for the first time to-day, the human barometer evidently standing at "much wet." A gentleman in a grey coat and red comforter, who bears palpable signs of having been more than once on his back, has just reached that perplexing point of inebriety when he can walk quickly or run, but cannot stand still or walk steadily. He is pursued by small children, mostly girls, after whom, every now and then, he runs hopelessly, to their intense gratification. The poultry and bird shops in the Seven Dials are objects of some attraction, though they savour too much of "business" to be in very great force. The National Gallery is crowded with unaccustomed art students. There is about the visitors a quiet air of doing their duty, and being determined to go through with it at any price. One brazen-faced quean speculates audibly in fact, very audibly as to which "picter" she should choose if she had her "pick," and decent matrons pass the particularly High Art of the old masters with half-averted gaze, as though they were not quite sure of doing right in countenancing such exhibitions. Hogarth's evergreen "Marriage
So we laid deep schemes to fill the house to overflowing and to have a roystering time. First, for Susan's sake, we secured a widowed cousin of mine, Eileen Wetherwood, with her four children; and we sent out invitations to the ban and arrière ban of the county's juvenility, to say nothing of that of London, for a Boxing-day orgy.
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