GOING TO PARTIES

Evening Star, Issue 21636, 3 February 1934, Page 2

GOING TO PARTIES

[Written by Paxache for the ‘ Evening Star.’] We lent the people next door our boat, lent it willingly for the whole of the holiday's. We lent them our lown mower twice a week, though they did not even oil it. We lent them eggs, our newspapers, a screwdriver, and gramophone records, the last unwillingly. Often we told them the correct time, and threw occasional bones to their dog. With some danger to ourselves, but as unobtrusively as possible, we fished one of their children out of the river? Were they grateful? Serpents’ teeth! They asked us to a party. There is one glory' of the sun and another of the moon, and entertainments for the town are not entertainments for the country. The thought of bridge at the seaside had the same effect on us as the fat white woman had on the poet—-out of place, yet not exotic. We thought enviously of the little match girl who stood under the gaslight’s glitter and pressed her bluecold cheeks against the plate-glass window which gave on a brilliant convivial scene. After the last match guttered out in her frozen fingers she died of exposure and malnutrition, but she died with her illusions undispelled. She thought parties, particularly big parties, were lovely. When one is not asked to a party the correct thing to do is to keep a stiff upper lip; when one is asked,; the problem is not to keep the lip too stiff. Moustaches should not bristle at parties. We could not tell our neighbours that we did not play bridge, because they would say we could ‘‘just talk.” We could not say we had no clothes, when our equipment of shorts, slacks, beach pyjamas, and blazers had dazzled all eyes whenever we went to the store. Anyhow, the seaside is not as touchy about clothes as the farm, where the problem is whether to wear old clothes and risk the hostess’s saying anything does for the country, or to dress in the latest models, when the host will say the best tailoring is out of his reach with butter-fat where it is. Our neighbours played bridge in bathing suits, so our clothes would do. Pressure of work? Certainly the kindly might credit us with being too busy to wash our dishes until evening; but, on the other hand, the work-harrassed do not 101 l on their verandahs in deshabille all morning, and lie on the grass in a slightly different deshabille all afternoon. We could not say we never went to parties, when social grace was apparent in the casual way we rescued drowning children. > The rescued child was finishing the apple we had given it so that it would not hear our discussion of its parents’ message.

There was nothing for it but td accept. We went, and the party was not nearly so bad as we had expected.

They never are, but all the same, onije the knell of the thirtieth year has sounded, people should not be expected to go to parties. That the popularity of parties is on the wane is shown by the efforts made to keep them going by introducing freakish touches. As if christenings and birthdays and gardens and week-ends were not sufficient excuses for parties, new pretexts are constantly ‘being found. There are parties for reading and walking, for the pictures, for petting (now called necking). The group idea of recreation seems to be overdone, as most of these pursuits would be more enjoyable in twos or threes. It is better to read alone, uninterrupted by the chuckles or snorts of others; better to walk alone, untroubled by the blisters or panting breaths of others; better for those behind you at the pictures if you are not in a hearty group; while even the slogan of the more the merrier does not make a necking party irresistible. The desperate attempts of some grown-ups to recapture the spirit of childhood is seen in the fervour with which they throw themselves back to childhood parties. They turn down their socks and open their shirts, or tie bows on their hair apd sashes round their middles, and prance round selfconsciously. It is possible that such parties are to encourage the children, and are intended as a corrective to the teaching of Bertrand Russell and other philosophers who protest that childhood is not the happiest period in one’s life. If it is fun to put back the clock, it might be funnier to put it further back, and go to parties, not as children, but as chimpanzees and orangoutangs. The party-ridden could keep their natural suffering expressions, the supper would not be much trouble for the hostesses, and climbers would be quite at home. Or. why not skip the animal stage and go to parties simply as cabbages? It is not that 1 dislike parties, but that I like them so well I would fain have them a little smaller and much rarer. And there should not be so much food. It is amusing when a little boy wonders whether the games as well as the tea are the party, tut ft is dreadful for an adult to look up with relief when supper is brought in. It is permissible to be excited about hundreds and thousands on their bread and butter, but it is pathetic to see an eye moisten at the sight of oyster patties. Once upon a time one of the delights of a children’s party was that there was always something to take home, a slice of birthday cake and a piece or two of Turkish delight and the joke out of the bon-bon. The sleeping brothers and sisters would waken up and share the spoils, but who will waken up now for the delights or the jokes we bring home from parties? It is rarely that we remember vividly ordinary parties, while we have bruised memories of those unconventional gatherings where it was expected of guests that they sat on the floor. Of housewarming parties one vivid memory is that of the hostess’s face when she saw a butt dropped into her floating bowl. But the good house-warming parties are given when the house is still unfurnished and floors are being stained. Then, with a couple of boxes for seats and (he scullery bench for a table, and sixpence worth of cake from the shop at the corner, afternoon tea be-

camos a real party. The empty house welcomes its guests with an echo, and the makeshift furniture carries us as far back to Nature as the civilised can go without feeling the jolts. Even better than a party in an unfurnished house is the supper by which the newly emancipated celebrate the first room of their own. We do not forget the hostess who stands on her bed to poach eggs over the gas-bracket, nor the host who offers us cocoa in his tooth-mug. At such parties the guests are never like those in the poem, silent and dammed; rather does their hilarity become an embarrassment, like the laughter of those children that we weren’t allowed to ask into the house and entertained clandestinely in the wash shed.

The very hest parties are not hilarious, though, nor do they have many people. It takes an optimist like Byron to picture a party at which hundreds of hearts beat happily. The best party is heralded by no invitation, and for it no clothes are laid out and pressed. It is held in a smallish, shabby room on a gusty night. There is a tap at the door, almost indistinguishable from the tapping made by the rose bush that should have been tied up a week ago. The door opens to a friend, who kicks the dying log into new life, and settles down and talks.