Relics by Thomas Burke

The turning-out of the crowded drawers of an old bureau or cabinet is / universally known as the prime pastime of the faded spinster; a pastime / in which the starved spirit may exercise itself among delicious / melancholies and wraiths of spent joys. Well, I am not yet faded, and I / am not a spinster; but I have fallen to the lure of "turning out. " I / have lately "turned out" -- not the musty souvenirs of fifty years ago, / love, fifty years ago, but the still warm fragments of A. D. 1912.

The other day, while searching irately in my fumed-oak rolltop desk for / a publisher's royalty statement which he had not sent me, I opened at / random a little devil of a drawer who conceals his being in the / right-hand lower corner. And lo! out stepped, airily, that well-polished / gentleman, Mr. Nineteen-Twelve. My anger over the missing accounts was / at once soothed. In certain chapters of this book I have harked back to / the years before 1914, and it may be that you conceive me as a doddering / old bore: a praiser of times past. But what would you have? You have / not surely the face to ask me to praise times present?

So I took a long look at Mr. Nineteen-Twelve, and went thoroughly / through him. My first discovery was an old menu. My second discovery was / a bunch of menus. You won't get exasperated -- will you? -- if I print here / the menu of a one-and-sixpenny dinner, eaten on a hot June night in / Greek Street: --

/ Hors-d'oeuvre varie.

/ Consomme Henri IV. / Creme Parmentier.

/ Saumon bouille. / Concombre.

/ Filet mignon. / Pommes sautes. / Haricots verts.

/ Poulet en casserole. / Salade saison.

/ Fraises aux liqueurs. / Glace vanille.

/ Fromages.

/ Dessert.

/ Cafe.

I dug my hand deeper into the pockets of Mr. Nineteen-Twelve, and menu / after menu and relic after relic came forth. There was a menu of a Lotus / Club supper. I'm hanged if I can remember the Lotus Club, or its idea, / or even its situation. There were old hotel bills, which, thrown / together in groups, might suggest itineraries for some very good walking / tours; for there were bills from Stratford-on-Avon and Goring-on-Thames / and High Wycombe and Oxford and Banbury; there were bills from Bognor / and Arundel and Chichester and the Isle of Wight; there were bills from / Tintern and Chepstow and Dean Forest and Monmouth; there were bills from / Kendal and Appleby and Windermere and Grasmere. Another clutching hand / gave up old menus from the Great Western, the North-Western, and the / Great Northern dining-cars. In a corner I found an assortment of fancy / cigarette tins and boxes, specially designed and engraved for various / restaurants and hotels. Now the cigarette tins are no more, and the / boxes are made from flimsy card and are none too well printed, and many / of the restaurants from which they came have disappeared, these / elaborate productions are treasurable, not only as echoes of the good / days, but as _objets d'art_.

Further search produced a flat aluminium match-case containing twelve / vestas, and crested "With compliments -- Criterion Restaurant"; and a tin / waistcoat-pocket match box, also full, containing, on the inside of the / lid, a charming glimpse of the interior of the Boulogne Restaurant -- a / man and woman at table, in 1912 fashions, lifting champagne glasses and / crying, through a loop that begins and finishes at their mouths: / "_Evviva noi_! " The sight of this streak of matches spurred me to / further prospecting, and the pan, after careful washing, yielded boxes / from Paris, with gaudy dancing-girls on either cover; insanely decorated / boxes from Italy, filled with red-stemmed, yellow-headed matches; plain / boxes from Monaco; and from Ostend, very choice boxes, decorated inside / and outside with examples of the Old Masters.

Packets of toothpicks, with wrappers advertising various English and / Continental bars, came from another corner, where they were buried under / a torn page from an old _Tatler_, showing, in various phases, Portraits / of a Well-Dressed Man. This species being now extinct, I hope the plate / of that page has been destroyed, so that my relic may possess some / value. Two tickets for the Phyllis Court enclosure at Henley lay / neglected under a printed invitation to have "A Breath of Fresh Air with / the 'Old Mitre' Christmas Club, Leaving the 'Old Mitre' by four-horse / brake at 10.30, to arrive at 'The Green Man,' Richmond, at 12 noon. A / Whacking Good Dinner and a Meat Tea. Dancing on the Lawn at Dusk. " An / old programme of the Covent Garden Grand Season recalled that / magnificent band of Wagnerians, Knupfer, Dittmar, van Rooy and the rest. / Where are they now -- these bull-voiced Rhinelanders? Within the programme / covers I found a ticket for admission to the fight between young Ahearn / and Carpentier which was abandoned; a printed card inviting me to a / Tango Tea at the Savoy; a request for the pleasure of my company at the / Empress Rooms to dance to the costive cacophony of a Pink Bavarian Band; / and half a dozen newspaper cuttings, with scare-heads and cross-heads, / dealing at much length with Debussy's tennis-court ballet, "Jeux," / danced by Nijinsky, Schollar and Karsavina. Turning over one of these / cuttings, I found a long report of the burning of a pillar-box by a / Suffragette, and a list of recent window-breakings.