DINNER TRAITS.
“For these and all His mercies”——once began Dr. Johnson, whose good custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good things set before him; but he almost as invariably found fault with the food given. And of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired; and on the occasion alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking that it was a farce to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, in two minutes, he would pronounce to be as worthless as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs! And so there was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. “Well,” remarked the good ancient dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like case, ‘God be thanked!—nobody will say grace!’” It is seldom that “grace” is properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious mockery at public dinners; but then every man should silently and fervently make thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits down to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him, without whom there could have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a defaulter deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn better manners. “Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, “eat, and welcome!” It was all his grace;and had he said, “Come, gentlemen, be thankful and eat,” it would have been more like the Christian gentleman, and less like the “beau.”
It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at the dinner-table, that the company should not be more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited freedom of action in the matter; for, by theLex Faunia, a man was forbidden to invite more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, except on market days, (three times a month,) when he might invite five. The host was restricted to spending only two and a halfdrachmas; but he might consume annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat for each person in his house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that grew wild; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at all. One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a great deal of it, and ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the French Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a word about candles, and the wits walked about with the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake by ordering the candles; but as he omitted to say that these were to be lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. So theLex Faunia, when it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten with such luscious aids to which the name of “sauce” was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint! After all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who rigorously observed theFauniaLaw, according to their oaths. These were men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling that he could devote to gluttony; or than Lucullus, whonever supped in the “Apollo” without its costing him at least ten thousand pounds.
Notwithstanding this, theFauniaLaw was an absurd impertinence. It was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, “O Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he boiled fish?” “And you, O King,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had boiled fish for dinner in his camp?” The moral is, that it is best to leave men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could commit the crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for himself, ἐνέπτυσεν εἰς αὐτήν, “spat in it;” and if my readers refer to the chapter illustrating “Their Majesties at Meat,” they will find that so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of Heathenism.
The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread and honey. On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died. He had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance to such small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the fun and the festival of Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic by dying at such a mirthful moment. He consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his family hoped that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He took one sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed away for ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think worse of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on theday her old lover died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was that he had expired before six o’clock, as otherwise she would have been too late for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant society who played cards by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de l’Espinasse, and counted their tricks while they commented upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced as being twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus.
A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the digestive powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a far less commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the stomach. The Frenchbouilliafter soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for it is simply, as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all but its nourishing juice.”
“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man who has been floating over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or sight of land to the storm-beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render almost any dish attractive to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect, the French and Chinese cooks are really professional brethren; much more so than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon!
The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and the meal of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. They eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not? All these are far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has been breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin birds’ nests eaten in China may be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Parisgrisettes: “Rather eatable things, thosegrisettes, by the bye!” So are the birds’ nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears’ paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subsequently soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.
There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke of Wellington’s cook had serious doubts as to his master being a great man,—he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another General who was the despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at dinner when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce an Austrian victory over the French. The General had one huge plate before him, a sort of Irish stew, with every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting out the bones, “as was his custom.” He was so delighted with the message and the messenger, that he received him as Galba did Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s death: with his unwiped mouth, he began kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting down and eating from the General’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater; but he was more nice in his diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his tooth-picks!
According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted; and from an invitation given and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties but illness, imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner; and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of punctuality onthe part of the former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of whom it is said that they never saw soup and fish but at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of want of punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” On the other hand, an unpunctual cook is scarcely to be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master is not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the moment it has been ordered. The great “artiste” who dismissed his patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his profession.
At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in France to serve the soup immediately before the company entered the dining-room. The resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the actress; but it was tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush the empty shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a breach in good manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost as famous for her love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, equally often, “on hospitable thoughts intent.”
It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto were intended to be highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to paper the curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes,—promissory paper, as he said, of no value. When his cookwaited on him at breakfast-time for orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the attendant, as purchase-money for the necessary provisions, and sent her to market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and ostentatious at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the wines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a shade of disgust, inquired, “If any body drank port?” As no one dared to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the owner took it “medicinally,”) he would direct the servant to “take away the ink!”
If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a contempt for claret, “which,” said he, “would be port, if it could!” The latter individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his glass of claret aloft, with a cry, “If this be war, may we never have peace!”
Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, none of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed in large quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That Sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were “drinkable.” “From father to son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in his incomparable work, “Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV.,” ate and drank with relish; and it was no jest that among the three talents attributed by the old song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of a “good drinker.” “None of them, however, with the exception of the Regent, carried it to excess; but what was not excess for them, would have been so for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory, and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the laws of their imperious appetite.”
When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were drinkable, the Duke answered him in terms which Imay cite, because of their correctness. “Sire,” he replied, “they have, what they call, ‘white Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as that of Monrachet, or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised. There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint, like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine, of which they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, however, and it has an indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable. Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep, and that is all!” “It puts people to sleep,” said the King: “send for a pipe of it!” This is as just a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux, as was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne: “It does not enter,” he said, “and steal your reason; it simply makes a runaway knock at a man’s head, and there’s an end of it!”
But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let us return to the solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our path, perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that they have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or should; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the anguish of appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his “Gaietés Champêtres,” “Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Montauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the neighbouringchâteau, and asks to be invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the ‘Iliad,’ as afflicted as woman can be, does not forget, when night comes, to take a little refreshment.” If Seneca derided such doings, it was only afterdinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said,—
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,—Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;And I thought I had never beheld such a face,Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,—Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;And I thought I had never beheld such a face,Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,—Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;And I thought I had never beheld such a face,Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,—
Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;
And I thought I had never beheld such a face,
Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all the acts of most importance in our lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus, and Diana be no longer the deities or thebeatiof the earth, the substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, under the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by repasts not only births, baptisms, and marriages, but even interments.
The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh; for then the family necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and cooked. They know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke as he is at a favour.
Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but when he was asked to dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners generally: and he was right; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace, with his modest repasts and fair wine, was something of the same opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests too numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the repast too eagerly consumed, there is nodinner, in the legitimate sense of the word. I never so much admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, “Mes amis, ne nous pressons pas!” I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too willing Secretary:—“Surtout, pas de zèle!” The most accomplished professor of his time has laid down, as rules for securing to their utmost degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that the lighting, cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully considered; that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the wines of first quality, each in its degree; the progression of the former from the more substantial to the more light; of the latter, from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined that there be no accelerated movement; all the guests are to consider themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point at the same time. The rules for the “after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those more commonly observed in this country, with the exception that “punch” expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the Peace; but the concluding rule is worth noticing:—“That no one withdraw before eleven, and that all be asleep by midnight.”
I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility have given to table enjoyment. To them may be added the innovation introduced by Talleyrand, of offering Parmesan with soup, and presenting after it a glass of dry Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in common with St. Peter,—he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, the dinner-time of the Jews; and he would have also come under the anathema in Ecclesiastes which is levelled against the Princes who eat in the morning.
Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy who made two substantial meals daily; and Seneca was satisfied with one meal,—a dinner of bread and figs. The Roman Priests of Mars dined jollily and sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, and they would not be disturbed. They were like Baillie de Suffren, who, being waited on in India by a deputation, just as he was sitting down to dine, sent out word that his religion would not allow of his interrupting his repast; and the delegates retired, profoundly struck by the strictness of his conscience. The original dinner hour of the mediæval ages was, as I have elsewhere stated, ten o’clock, thedixième heure; hence the name. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that so late an hour as noon was fixed for the repast. It is clear, however, that we have not so much changed the hours as changed the names of our meals. A French historian shows us how a Dauphin of France dined (at ten o’clock) in the fifteenth century:—
“As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his dinner rice pottage, with leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, another of salt pork, a dish of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece of roast pork, cheese, and fruit.” The supper was nearly as plentiful; but, on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is added, that the Barons of the Court had always the half of the quantity of the Dauphin; the Knights, the quarter; and the Equerries and Chaplains, the eighth. “Take pride from Priests, and nothing remains,” once remarked an Encyclopædist to Voltaire. “Umph!” said Voltaire; “do you, then, reckon gluttony for nothing?” Gluttony, at least, does not seem to have characterized the Dauphin’s Chaplains, in the fifteenth century, seeing that they took an eighth where a Baron had half.
But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined after a more singular fashion than that of the Dauphins,his ancestors. I allude to the Prince mentioned by Maurepas, and whose imagination was so sick, that he fancied himself a hare, and would not allow a bell to be rung, lest it should terrify him into the woods, where he might be shot by his own game-keepers, and afterwards served up at his own table. At another time, he had a fancy that he would look well dished up; and, dreaming himself a cauliflower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his kitchen-garden, and called upon his people to come and water him! At length, he pronounced himself dead, and refused to dine at all, as an insult to his spiritual entity. He would have died, had he not been visited by two friends, who introduced themselves as his late father, and the deceased Maréchal de Luxembourg; and who solemnly invited him to descend with them to the shades, and dine with the ghost of Maréchal Turenne. The melancholy Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down with them to a cellar already prepared for the banquet of the departed; and he not only made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made of himself a ghost, he insisted every day on dining with congenial shadows in the coal-cellar! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially where his own interests were concerned.
Thus much—briefly and imperfectly, I fear—for Dinner Traits. In the next chapter we will put something on them. And as we have been drawing examples from folly, let us end this section by adding a maxim full of wisdom. “Be not made a beggar,” saysEcclesiasticus, “by banqueting upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in thy purse.” If this maxim were generally adopted, there might be fewer dinners given, but there would be more dinners paid for. But some people are like the ancient Belgians, who borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repayment in the world to come! Many a dinner-giverbelongs to the class of the borrowing Belgians of antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps, more intended honesty in the compact thanwecan distinguish. A compact far less honest was made some years ago by an Irish Baronet, who had given so many dinners for which he had not paid, that he was compelled to pledge his plate in order to raise means to satisfy the most pressing of his creditors. Some time subsequently, he induced the pawnbroker to lend him the plate for one evening, on hire; the pawnbroker’s men were to wait at the dinner in livery, and convey the silver back as soon as the repast was concluded. The dinner was given and enjoyed, and the company made the attendants drunk, helped the Baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and épergnes, with which he set off for Paris, where some of them afterwards visited him at the little dinners he used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed over the matter as a very capital jest.
I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting at table to drink, after dinner was over, was introduced by Margaret Atheling, the Saxon Queen of Scotland. She was shocked to see the Scottish gentlemen rise from table beforegracecould be said by her Chaplain, Turgot; and she offered a cup of choice wine to all who would remain. Thence the fashion of hard drinking following the “thanksgiving.”