, because Calcutta society
was so little adapted to appreciate meeting talented actresses--there
were so many people whom Alicia had to consider as to whether they
would "mind." Hilda marvelled at the sanguine persistence of
Miss Livingstone's efforts in this direction, the results were so
fragmentary, so dislocated and indecisive, but she also rejoiced. She
took life, as may have appeared, at a broad and generous level, it quite
comprehended the salient points of a Calcutta dinner-party; and it was
seldom that she failed, metaphorically speaking, to carry away a bone
from the feast. If you found this reprehensible she would have told you
she had observed they do it in Japan, where manners are the best in the
world.

Doubtless Hilda would have dwelt longer upon such a dinner-party than I,
with no consolatory bone to gnaw in private, find myself inclined to do.
To me it is depressing and a little cruel to be compelled to betray the
inadequacy of the personal element at Alicia's banquets, especially in
connection with the conspicuous excellence of the cooking. A poverty of
cuisine would have provoked no contrast, and one irony the less would
have been offered up to the gods that season. The limitations of her
resources were, of course, arbitrary, that is plain in the fact that she
asked such a person as the Head of the Department of Education, with no
better reason than that he had laid almost the whole of Shelley under
critical notes for the benefit of Calcutta University. There was also a
civilian who had written a few years before an article in the Nineteenth
Century about the aboriginal tribes of the Central Provinces, and
the lady attached to him, who had been at one time the daughter of a
Lieutenant-Governor. The Barberrys were there because Mrs. Barberry
loved meeting anybody that was clever, admired brains beyond anything;
and an A.D.C. who had to be asked because Mrs. Barberry was; and Captain
Salter Symmes, who took leading male parts in Mr. Pinero's plays when
they were produced in Simla and was invariably considered up there to
have done them better than any professional they have at home, though
he was even more successful as a contortionist when the entertainment
happened to be a burlesque. Taking Hilda and Lindsay and Stephen Arnold
as a basis, Alicia had built up her party, with the contortionist as it
were at the apex, on his head. The Livingstones had family connection
with a leading London publishing fi