With catholic
sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good
in everybody and everything, which is certainly amiable, and perhaps
just, but disqualifies a man in some degree for the business of life,
which requires for its conduct a certain degree of prejudice. Mr.
Vavasour's breakfasts were renowned. Whatever your creed, class, or
country, one might almost add your character, you were a welcome guest
at his matutinal meal, provided you were celebrated. That qualification,
however, was rigidly enforced.
It not rarely happened that never were men more incongruously grouped.
Individuals met at his hospitable house who had never met before, but
who for years had been cherishing in solitude mutual detestation, with
all the irritable exaggeration of the literary character. Vavasour liked
to be the Amphitryon of a cluster of personal enemies. He prided himself
on figuring as the social medium by which rival reputations became
acquainted, and paid each other in his presence the compliments which
veiled their ineffable disgust. All this was very well at his rooms in
the Albany, and only funny; but when he collected his menageries at his
ancestral hall in a distant county, the sport sometimes became tragic.
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