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Meantime in the English hotels home-played farces, tableaux-vivants, and even balls enliven the evenings; a charity bazaar sheds genial consternation; Christmas and New Year are solemnised with Pantagruelian dinners, and from time to time the young folks carol and revolve untunefully enough through the figures of a singing quadrille.
Sir Cyril Meres was already beginning to plan his wonderful tableaux-vivants, which, however, did not come off until February. The extraordinary imitative talent which his artistic career had been one long struggle to disguise, was for once to be allowed full play.
On the same estate with us there is living a zoologist called Wagner and his family, and some Kisilyovs not the Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones. Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the father sketches, as he is an artist. We get up performances, tableaux-vivants, and picnics.
He suggested the weekly publication of a newspaper in the saloon, and energetically promoted and encouraged such sports and pastimes as are practicable on board ship; al fresco concerts on the poop, impromptu dances, tableaux-vivants, charades, recitations, etcetera, for the evening; and deck-quoits, follow-my-leader, shooting at bottles, fishing, etcetera, during the day.
The dinner was finished; the nuts and the jokes were cracked; the café, the chasse-café, the enigmas, the conundrums, the anecdotes, the songs, the tableaux-vivants followed each other. My amiable hostess seemed to think I must have had enough of it, and, with her graceful acquiescence, I stole out after a confidential pantomimic leave-taking with her and my host.
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