Chapter 133: Social Groups for Upper Class Ladies

Chapter 133 – The Social Group of Upper Class Ladies

Mornings always pass by in a hurry, however, while some people have a full morning, others start their day at noon.

Elder finished washing up in the washroom and stretched out of his room.

He had just walked down the stairs when he saw a dusty Dumas walking back from outside with a few garlic cloves cupped in his hands smiling.

Elder smashed his mouth twice and opened his mouth to ask, “Why do you Frenchmen always like to eat garlic? What do you guys figure? Fresh breath?”

Hearing this, Dumas mercilessly sneered back, “It’s better to like garlic than to like the girls in London, and since I’ve been here, it’s the first time I’ve felt that all of the original French cows were born so beautiful.”

At the end of his speech, Dumas went to Darwin, who was sitting on the sofa in the living room reading a book, and asked, “Charles, you’ll tell me more about what ‘epilepsy’, I was a little bit mesmerized by what I heard last night. I have to admit that once upon a time I was prejudiced against the English, until I met you, I didn’t realize that there was something among the Englishmen with which I could communicate in human language.”

Darwin lifted a finger and scratched the side of his face, “Is that a compliment?”

Dumas shook his head while pointing at Elder standing on the stairs, “No, I’m disparaging the fool standing over there. Of course, I have to be honest and admit that his erotic waste-filled head isn’t completely useless, and if you put him in the right situation, at the very least he can provide a modicum of nautical knowledge.”

Elder shrugged at this, and half mockingly shouted at Dumas, “I wish the French navy could fight as hard as your mouth.”

Dumas shot back, “That’s not for you to worry about; you’ll have to be glad that Britain is an island, or you’d be second-class citizens of France by now.”

“Is that so?” Elder retorted defiantly, “I think that even the Royal Navy can fight ashore without losing to the French artillery.”

“Whoa! Thank God!” Dumas folded his arms in the manner of asking for God’s forgiveness, “I beg you, you must not say that. In the French context, the meaning represented by the group of sentences ‘English soldiers disembarking’ is not something to be stated carelessly in public.”

Elder scratched his head in great confusion, “Why?”

Dumas glanced at him, “Have you forgotten what color the uniforms of English soldiers are? In France, ‘English soldiers ashore’ is usually used by an elegant French lady to express her discomfort.”

As soon as Dumas said this, Arthur, who was buried in the newspaper on the side, couldn’t help but glance at the Red Devil, who was sitting on the side, leisurely humming a little tune.

Agareth keenly caught his sight, the red devil first froze, he looked down at his dark red skin color, then he instantly pointed at Arthur in a violent rage and shouted, “Arthur! I’m warning you, don’t think I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re thinking!”

Arthur’s eyes drifted gently back to Dumas.

He set the paper aside and spoke up, “So Alexander, do you have a clue about your novel yet or not? I have to go to General Codrington’s party next Sunday, and for a week you’ll have to write me the article whatever you say.”

Dumas threw the crushed garlic in his hand toward the coffee table, then shoved himself into the living room couch.

“What’s your hurry? It shall be quite a long story, I’ll have to conceptualize it properly, and a story of that length will give me at least six months before I can deliver the finished product to you.”

Arthur picked up his teacup and spoke, “You’re in such a hurry that you can afford to wait half a year? Why don’t I give you a suggestion, if your beginning can be a hit at General Codrington’s party, I can consider helping you contact a newspaper with a good circulation, and you will deliver a few chapters per week and publish them in a serialized form. That way, if the reader response doesn’t work, you can stop in time and consider starting over with a different idea.”

Dumas froze for a long time at the words, then stood up excitedly with a pat on his thigh: “How did you come up with this idea? You can get money once when it is serialized, and you can also get money again when you finish the manuscript and publish a separate book! It’s really a genius idea! Why don’t I say, it’s you Brits who are good at business?”

Arthur nodded slightly, “By the way, how have you considered that suggestion I gave you? Why don’t you just change the title of the book, don’t call it ‘The Revenge of Edmond Dantes’, why not call it ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, the readers don’t care about Edmond Dantes, they prefer the Count’s story than an unrecognizable minor character.

I know you’re probably trying to emulate Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe by naming it that way, but you probably don’t realize that Robinson Crusoe is just an abbreviation of the book’s title. After Defoe got famous, even with such a mediocre title it sold, so publishers didn’t bother to print its original title on the cover.”

“Robinson Crusoe is an acronym?” Dumas stroked his curly head, “And what’s its full title?”

Arthur bristled as he stood up and pulled an old book with a yellowed cover from the bookshelf in the living room and dropped it onto the coffee table.

Only a thud was heard and a puff of dust rose from the coffee table.

Dumas put his face up, and he finally got a good look at the full title of this first edition of Robinson Crusoe, printed in 1719 – The Life Experiences and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Sailor of York: for twenty-eight years he lived alone on a deserted island off the coast of the Americas, which was close to the mouth of the Oronoco River, and shipwrecked He was washed up on the shore afterward and became the only survivor, and the book tells how he was eventually and incredibly rescued by pirates.

This long list of lurid sentences takes up almost the entire cover, and an uninformed reader would likely assume that this was the publisher’s way of saving paper, so they let the story begin on the cover.

When Dumas saw this, he finally stopped insisting, wiped the sweat from his head, and said instead, “All right, I’ll listen to you then.”

His words had just fallen when he suddenly heard a sound of a rattling doorbell from outside the door – ding ding ding.

Elder yawned and pulled the door open, surfacing in front of him was an older gentleman in a tuxedo. The old gentleman smiled and took off his hat in greeting before opening his mouth and inquiring, “May I ask if Mr. Arthur Hastings is at home?”

“You are?”

“I am the butler of the Rothschild family, and our young master Lionel Rothschild sent me to deliver a hunting invitation to Mr. Hastings. If he is not in, I would be grateful if you would forward this missive to him and inform Lord Hastings that Master Lionel has asked him to meet him near the Marble Arch at eight o’clock next Sunday morning.”

Hearing this, Arthur could not help rising and going to the door, and at a glance he noticed that the other’s face was somewhat familiar, as if he were the servant who had followed Lionel that day in the real estate exchange hall.

He smiled and invited the other party in with an outstretched hand, “If you’re not busy, it’s better to come in first and have a cup of tea.”

The old butler smiled and nodded his head to accept Arthur’s invitation, he stepped into the living room, first swept a glance at Dumas who was leaning back on the sofa with a big grin, and then observed Darwin who was contemplating on a museum notebook, and roughly in his heart, he already had a preliminary judgment on the identities of the several people.

Several people briefly greeted, Arthur directly from the cupboard out of a white porcelain teacup, personally filled the old housekeeper with tea.

Seeing this, the old butler could not help but politely advise, “Mr. Hastings, in my opinion, it would be better for you to hire a servant who can provide simple housekeeping services, there are six rooms in this house, you and your friends are staying in four of them, and the other two are just right for hiring a carter and a housewife. If it is too much trouble for you to hire a servant yourself, we can also ‘recruit’ one for you.

The social circle in the Hyde Park neighborhood is not too low, and it is likely to diminish your social reputation if guests come to your home and you, the host, are kept too busy to entertain them.”

Arthur smiled, and of course understood what the other man meant, and he nodded with a smile.

“Thank you very much for your suggestion, if there is an opportunity in the future, I will seriously consider it. It’s just that right now I really have no time to be distracted by anything else, you should know that recently Scotland Yard has been working on several big cases in a row, and I also have to monitor social opinions all the time, I’m away from home most of the time, and it’s really not often that I have free time like today.

Being so busy, I have not yet had the opportunity to develop my social life, such as you just said, Lionel wants to invite me to go hunting outside the city next Sunday. As much as I’ve always wanted to go to the forest with him to hunt rabbits and chat, I’m really sorry that I already have plans on my side for next Sunday.”

“You already have plans for next Sunday?”

The old butler was first slightly shocked, but after a split second, not only did he not get disappointed or angry, but on the contrary, he gave Arthur another high look in his heart.

He smiled and asked, “Although it’s impolite to ask this, I wonder what kind of activities you are planning to attend next Sunday? If it’s a date, or if it’s to get acquainted with friends, I happen to know a few good restaurants that I might be able to recommend to you.”

Arthur didn’t intend to hide anything from him either, on the contrary, he even kind of wanted to ask something out of this old Rothschild butler’s mouth.

Because he really didn’t have any idea about the party held by General Codrington next Sunday.

Prior to this, he had never seen any party of the upper class circle, not to mention that he did not know what exactly he should prepare.

If the old butler was willing to give a little guidance, for Arthur, it would of course be more than good.

He spoke up and asked, “Do you know Admiral Codrington of the Channel Fleet? He is going back to London on leave next week, so Mrs. Codrington is planning to host a party at her home, and I happened to receive an invitation.”

“Ah …… Mrs. Codrington ……” the old butler heard this and understood what was going on, “I probably know why Admiral Codrington why you were invited. Is it possible that he hopes you can talk for them at the party about the newly emerging field of electromagnetism that has come in?”

Arthur smiled and took a sip of his tea as he joked, “Did someone from Rothschild receive an invitation as well? Why do you know so much about it?”

The old butler chuckled, “No, no, you might not know much about the social circles in London because you have been busy with official business earlier. There are many groups divided within the famous ladies of London, and Lady Codrington is the leader of one of the well-known groups.

It must be said that the ladies of that group are generally quite interesting and idiosyncratic, and it is not surprising that they would invite an up-and-coming scientist such as yourself. After all, they’ve been doing this sort of thing since the 1950s and 1960s.”

Arthur was also a little curious when he heard this, “So what exactly is the group that Mrs. Codrington is a part of?”

The old butler took a sip of his tea, knowing that it would probably be quite a struggle to explain the group to Arthur.

He opened his mouth and asked.

“You know that ‘Bluestocking Society’ founded by Mrs. Montague? Or maybe it’s okay to call it the ‘Lady Scholars’. I think you may have heard of the motto that Mrs. Montagu, the founder of the Blue Stockings, set for the society-no cards in my salon, and no more talk about whose daughter can’t find an in-law or whose servant has eloped; I don’t want to pass the time with boredom, we want to talk about something of substance.

If you want them to make a good first impression on you, I suggest that you choose to go on the day of the party wearing a pair of blue socks that you use every day, because the ladies of that society are like the name of the group – the Blue Socks Society. Neither the white silk stockings favored by the upper class nor the noble and elegant black silk stockings, the ladies of that society are quite rebellious.”

(End of chapter)