A PIC-NIC FRUSTRATED.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2472, 19 February 1881, Page 4

A PIC-NIC FRUSTRATED.

(“ Australasian,” Feb. 5.)

One of the most singular examples, perhaps, ever known of a frustrated entertainment was the projected Na-tional-park Picnic. Four Sydney gentlemen, including Sir John Robert son and Mr G. F. Want, proposed subscribing £SO each and giving a pic nic to their own friends. The guests were to be conveyed to the park, and amused and entertained there for two days ; and the most careful preparation for their accommodation was being made by the intending hosts, when the irrational behaviour of a number of people tied their hands. Invitations sent out at first to 210 gentlemen, swelled in number to 280 the extra 70 being given for the most part to people who had begged for them, or on whose behalf they had been solicited. But somehow a number of people got hold of the idea that the entertainment was to be a public affair. Almost everyone insisted on being invited—and everyone invited intimated that he was going to bring a lot of his friends. One young fellow begged so hard to be included in the party that a card was sent to him ; and by return of post he wrote to accept, and to say that he “ should bring a few friends with him, and drive them down” thus entailing upon his hosts the care of his horses as well as the entertainment of his friends. Another sent in a polite note that he had received the invitation, and that his district would not be properly represented unless 94 of his friends, whose names and addresses were actually given in a tabulated list—were asked. One of the hosts was told by a gentleman that he knew of 600 people who meant to come, invitation or no invitation. It transpired that a steamer and coaches had been chartered by outside persons. And at length, alarmed at the prospect of discomfort and, perhaps danger which might accrue, the hosts felt compelled to intimate that “in consequence of overwhelming numbers of persons not invited having intimated their intention and claimed a right to join the entertainment as a public one—from which erroneous impression they cannot be removed—is impossible for the inviters to carry out what they intended with any hope of the party being a pleasant or gratifying one, and therefore, they abandon the project.” They, therefore, presented each his £SO for a public object, and retired from the position. If Theodore Hook were alive and a resident of Sydney, one would have suspected a repetition of the Berners street hoax, but this was no hoax. It was only a bad sample of very bad manners. A sample of behaviour that, as regards the contemptible practice of begging invitations, is not confined to Sydney. Just ask a Mayor of Melbourne about the time of his annual ball!