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The management might have its conception of what a hotel dining-room should look like, with an unbroken array of gentlemen in black dress-coats and ladies in white shoulders all feeding as superbly as if they were not paying for their dinners, or as if they had been severally asked for the pleasure of their company two weeks before; and the picture would doubtless be marred by figures of people in cutaways and high necks, to a degree intolerable to the artistic sense.
Vehicles of all sorts came from neighboring parishes, stopping at the different houses, and tall Norman women dismounted, wearing dark dresses, with kerchiefs crossed over the bosom, fastened with silver brooches a hundred years old. The men had put on their blue smocks over their new frock-coats or over their old dress-coats of green-cloth, the two tails of which hung down below their blouses.
This attack was so successful that the influence of the French drama soon declined, and in the reaction, Greeks, Romans, kings and princesses were replaced by honest, tiresome burghers, with their commonplace wives and daughters, and the toga and tunic gave way to woolen petticoats and dress-coats. Everything like poetry, either in language or sentiment, was banished from the stage.
At first Pierre was thunderstruck, he who only knew of nervous, silent kneeling in the depths of dim cathedrals, who was not accustomed to that religion of light, whose brilliancy transformed a religious celebration into a morning festivity. Around him, in the same tribune as himself, were gentlemen in dress-coats and ladies gowned in black, carrying glasses as in an opera-house.
Prosper did not care to sit down to dinner with guests who did not bring their dress-coats. "And now," continued Mr. Barry, "what final instructions are we to give to Soames & Simpson?" "I don't think much of Messrs. Soames & Simpson." "I believe they have the name of being honest practitioners." "I dare say; I do not in the least doubt it.
The captain put on a new uniform which he had not worn since his ship left Colombo. Scott had a new uniform also; Uncle Moses, the surgeon, Mr. Woolridge, and the professor came out in evening costume, with black dress-coats; and the young men were clothed for their age, in black.
Would there were more such friendships in the outer, wider world! Commencement with its "pomp and circumstance," its tedious ceremony and scholarly display, its friends from home mothers, sisters, sweethearts, all bright eyes and fond hearts, its music and flowers, its caps, gowns, dress-coats and "spreads," and, last and worst of all, its sorrowful "good-byes," some of them, alas! for ever!
The waiters in the diningroom, in white ties and dress-coats, move on springs, starting even to walk with a complicated use of all the muscles of the body, as if in response to the twang of a banjo; they do nothing without excessive motion and flourish. The gestures and good-humored vitality expended in changing plates would become the leader of an orchestra.
The only requirements the Emperor made as to his clothing was that it should be of fine quality and perfectly comfortable; and his coats for ordinary use, dress-coats, and even the famous gray overcoat, were made of the finest cloth from Louviers.
Carlyle, thus wildly aroused from sleep, sprang out of bed and into the corridor in her night-dress. Everybody else was in a night-dress when folks are flying for dear life, they don't stop to look for their dress-coats and best blonde caps. Out came Mr. Carlyle, who has hastily assumed his pantaloons.
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