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Turning into Ladbroke Grove Road I quickly reached Notting Hill, and stealthily entered my house in Campden Hill Gardens ten minutes later. London under the Wenuses. My first act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the chain.
"What news from the Park?" I said. "Garn! 'oo yer getting at?" said my cousin's man. "Aint yer just been there?" Wot's it all abart?" "Haven't you heard of the Wenuses?" said I. "The women from Wenus?" "Quite enough," said my cousin's man, and laughed. I felt foolish and angry. "You'll hear more yet," I said, and went on my way.
Remember what ruthless havoc our own species has wrought, not only on animals such as the Moa and the Maori, but upon its own inferior races such as the Wanishing Lady and the Dodo Bensonii. The Wenuses seem to have calculated their descent with quite un-feminine accuracy. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have witnessed their preparations. Similarly pigs, had they wings, might fly.
The sun grew in strength as the time went on, and my wife gave the order to sit at ease, which was signalled to my mother. My mother tells me that she was never so pleased in her life. One o'clock struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses.
All other men in the crowd seemed to be similarly affected. We were battle-grounds of love and curiosity. For the Wenuses were gorgeous: that is the sum of the matter. I stood there ecstatic, unprogressive, immoderate; while swiftly and surely ungovernable affection for all Wenuses gripped me. Meanwhile I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. "Shameless hussies!" cried a woman near me.
To disguise my sex and identity for it was a priori almost impossible that the inhabitants of Wenus had never heard of Pozzuoli would guard me from the jellifying Mash-Glance of the Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I could remain immune to their malignant influences.
But the Wenuses were too much occupied in dropping into each other's eyes something from a bright flask, which I took to be Beggarstaffs' Elect Belladonna, to heed them. I turned in response to a tug at my swallow-tails from my wife, and when I looked again a row of Wenuses with closed lids stood before the Crinoline. Suddenly they opened their eyes and flashed them on the men before them.
I saw, however, that Pendriver was using his spade to cleave his way to the Wenuses; and Swears was standing on the brink of the pit transfixed with adoration; while a young shopman from Woking, in town for the day, completely lost his head. It came bobbing over the grass to my very feet; but I remembered the experiences of Pollock and the Porroh man and let it go.
Weller, removing his pipe to make way for the remark. 'Yes, I think it is rayther good, observed Sam, highly flattered. 'Wot I like in that 'ere style of writin', said the elder Mr. Weller, 'is, that there ain't no callin' names in it no Wenuses, nor nothin' o' that kind. Wot's the good o' callin' a young 'ooman a Wenus or a angel, Sammy? 'Ah! what, indeed? replied Sam.
Meantime the Wenuses, flushed with their success in Westbourne Grove, had carried their devastating course in a south-easterly direction, looting Marshall and Snelgrove's, bearing away the entire stock of driving-gloves from Sleep's and subjecting Redfern's to the asphyxiating fumes of the Red Weed.
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