I remember being much struck by an artless reminiscence of an undergraduate, quoted in the Memoirs of a certain distinguished academical personage, who was fond of inviting young men to share his hospitality for experimental reasons.  I cannot recollect the exact words, but the undergraduate wrote of his celebrated entertainer somewhat to the following effect:  “He asked me to sit down, so I sate down; he asked me to eat an apple, so I ate it.  He asked me to take a glass of wine, so I poured one out, and drank it.  I am told that he tries to get you to talk so that he may see the kind of fellow you are; but I didn’t want him to know the kind of fellow I was, so I didn’t talk; and presently I went away.”  I think that this species of retaliation is perfectly fair in the case of experimental entertainments.  Social gatherings must be conducted on a basis of perfect equality, and the idea of duty in connection with them is a bugbear invented in the interests of those who are greedy of society, and not in a position to contribute any pleasure to a social gathering.

It might be inferred from the above considerations that I am an inveterately unsociable person; but such is not the case.  I am extremely gregarious at the right time and place.  I love to spend a large part of the day alone; I think that a perfect day consists in a solitary breakfast and a solitary morning; a single companion for luncheon and exercise; again some solitary hours; but then I love to dine in company and, if possible, to spend the rest of the evening with two or three congenial persons.  But more and more, as life goes on, do I find the mixed company tiresome, and the tete-a-tete delightful.  The only amusement of society is the getting to know what other people really think and feel:  what amuses them, what pleases them, what shocks them; what they like and what they loathe; what they tolerate and what they condemn.  A dinner-party is agreeable, principally because one is absolutely tied down to make the best of two people.  Very few English people have the art of conversing unaffectedly and sincerely before a circle; when one does come across it, it is a rare and beautiful art, like singing, or oratory.  But the presence of such an improvisatore is the only thing that makes a circle tolerable.  On the other hand, a great many English people have the art of tete-a-tete talking; and I can honestly say that I have very seldom been brought into close relations with an individual without finding an unsuspected depth and width of interest in the companionship.

But in any case the whole thing is a mere question of pleasure; and I return to my thesis, which is that the only possible theory is for every one to find and create the kind of society that he or she may like.  Depend upon it, congenial society is the only kind of society to, and in which, any one will give his best.  If people like the society of the restaurant, the club, the drawing-room, the dining-room, the open air, the cricket-field, the moor, the golf-course, in the name of pleasure and common sense let them have it; but to condemn people, by brandishing the fiery sword of duty over their heads, to attend uncongenial gatherings seems to me to be both absurd and unjust.