SUPPER.

The supper was the only recognised repast in Rome; if, indeed, we may call that supper which sometimes took place at three in the afternoon. It was then rather a dinner, after which properly educated persons would not, and those who had supped over freely could not, eat again on the same day. The early supper hour was favoured by those who intended to remain long at table. “Imperat extructos frangere nona toros,” says Martial. The more frugal, but they must also have been the more hungry, supped, like the Queen of Carthage, at sunset; “labente die convivia quærit.” All other repasts than this had no allotted hour; each person followed inclination or necessity, and there was no difference in thejentaculum, theprandium, or themerenda,—the breakfast, dinner, or collation,—save difference of time. Bread, dried fruits, and perhaps honey, were alone eaten at these simple meals; whereat too, some, like Marius, drank before supper-time, “the genial hour for drinking.” The hosts were, in earlier ages, cooks as well as entertainers. Patroclus was famous for his Olla Podrida, and a Roman general received the Samnite ambassadors in a room where he was boiling turnips for his supper!

Sunset, however, was theordinarysupper-time amongst the Romans. “De vespere suo vivere,” in Plautus, alludes to this. In the time of Horace, ten o’clock was not an unusual hour, and men of business supped even later.At the period of the decadence of the empire, it was the fashion to go to the baths at eight, and sup at nine. The repasts which commenced earlier than this were calledtempestiva, as lasting a longer time. Those which began by daylight—de die—had a dissolute reputation; “ad amicam de die potare,” is a phrase employed in theAsinariato illustrate the great depravity of him to whom it is applied.

There is no doubt, I think, in spite of what critics say, that, however it may have been with the Romans, the Greeks certainly had four repasts every day. There was the breakfast (άκφκάτισμα), the dinner (ἄριστον), the collation (ἑσπέρισμα), and the chief of all, despite the term for dinner, the supper (δεῖπνον).

Among the Romans theCœna adventitiawas the name given to suppers whereat the return of travellers to their homes was celebrated; theCœna populariswas simply a public repast, given to the people by the government; theterrestris cœnawas, as Hegio describes it in theCaptivei, a supper of herbs,multis oleribus. The Greeks called such “a bloodless supper.” The parasite, in Athenæus, says that when he is going to a house to supper, he does not trouble himself to gaze at the architectural beauties of the mansion, nor the magnificence of the furniture, but at the smoke of the chimney. If it ascends in a thick column, he knows there is certainty of good cheer; but if it is a poor thread of smoke, says he, why then I know that there is no blood in the supper that is preparing: τὸ δεῖπνον ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ αἷμα ἔχει.

These repasts were gay enough when there was good Chian wine, unmixed with sea-water, to set the wit going. The banquets of Laïs were probably the most brilliant ever seen in Greece, for there was abundance of sprightly intellect at them. It might be said of them, as Sidney Smith says of what used to be in Paris under the ancient régime, when“a few women of brilliant talents violated all the common duties of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers.”

It is a well-ascertained fact that when the Greeks gave great entertainments, and got tipsy thereat, it was for pious reasons. They drank deeply in honour of some god. They not only drank deeply, but progressively so; their last cup at parting was the largest, and it went by the terrible name of the Cup of Necessity. There was a headache of twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it. Their pic-nic and conversation suppers were not bad things. Every guest brought his own rations in a basket; but as the rich and the selfish used to shame and tantalise the poorer guests by their savoury displays, Socrates, that dreadfully didactic personage, imperious as Beau Nash in matters of social discipline, insisted, that what each guest brought should be common to all. The result was less show and more comfort. But I would not have liked to have supped where Socrates was in the chair, for, in spite of his talents, he was a horrid bore, watching what and how each guest ate, and speaking to or at him whenever his acute eye discovered a rent in the coat of his good manners. If he sometimes said good things, he as frequently said sharp ones; and where he was president, the guests were simply at school.

It is indeed seldom that the sages are desirable associates. “Come and sup with me next Thursday,” said a French Amphitryon to a friend. “You shall meet philosophers or literary men; take your choice.” “My choice is soon made,” was the reply; “I will sup twice with you.” It was so arranged, and the supper with theliteratiwas incomparably the better banquet of the two.

The supper was the great meal of the Greeks; but neither at this, nor at any other repast, does Homer ever make mention of boiled meat. The Greeks, then, were not like our poor Greenwich pensioners, who, up to thepresent time, have never been provided with meat cooked in any other way. The result is that the men themselves look as if they were half-boiled. But a new order of things, including ovens and baked joints, has been introduced into the kitchen and refectory of the hospital, and the ancient mariners will soon show the effects of variety in diet and cooking, by a healthier and a happier hue on their solemn and storm-beaten cheeks.

And this matter of boiled meat reminds me of the old Duke of Grafton, who never ate any thing else at dinner or supper, (for it was in the days of double meals,) but boiled mutton. Yet every day the cook was solemnly summoned to his grace’s side, to listen to orders which he knew by heart, and instructions which wearied while they vexed his spirits. The duke must have been of the saddened constitution which would have entitled him to sup with that nervous Duke of Marlborough, who always joined with his invitation a request that his guest would say or do nothing to make him laugh, as his grace could not bear excitement.

At the supper-table the Romans did not decline the flesh of the ass, nor that of the dog; and they were as fond of finely fatted snails as the southern Germans are, who have inherited their taste. Macrobius, describing the supper given by the epicurean pontiff Lentulus, in honour of his reception, says that the first course was composed of sea hedgehogs, oysters, and asparagus. After these provocatives came a second course, consisting of more oysters, and various other shell-fish, fat pullets, beccaficoes, venison, wild boar, and sea nettles,—to digest the marine hedgehogs, I suppose. The third course assumed a more civilized aspect, and the guests were only tempted by fish, fowl, game, and cakes from the Ancona marshes. There is a supper of Lentulus, as described by Becker. The supper was given to Gallus, and the account of it isso little exaggerated as to afford a tolerably correct idea of what those banquets were. Nine guests, two of them “gentlemen from Perusia,” occupied thetriclinium. The pictures around represented satyrs celebrating the joyous vintage; the death of the boar; fruit and provision pieces over the door, and similar designs, calculated to awaken a relish for the banquet, were suspended between the elegant branches occupied by living thrushes. The lowest place in the middle sofa was the seat for the most honoured guest. As soon as all were in a reclining posture, the attendant slaves took off their sandals, and water in silver basins was carried round by good-looking youths, and therewith the visitors performed their brief ablutions. At a nod from the host, two servants deposited the tray bearing the dishes of the first course in the centre of the table. The chief ornament of this tray, which was adorned with tortoise-shell, was a bronze ass, whose panniers were filled with olives, and on whose back rode a Silenus, whose pores exuded a sauce which fell upon the roast breast of a sow that had never fulfilled a mother’s duty, below. Sausages on silver gridirons, with Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds beneath them to simulate fire; and dishes, also of silver, containing various vegetables, shell-fish, snails, and a reptile or two, formed the other delicacies of this course. While the guests addressed themselves thereto, they were supplied with a beverage composed of wines and honey scientifically commingled. The glory of the first course was, however, the carved figure of the brooding hen, which was brought in on a separate small tray. The eggs taken from beneath her were offered to the guests, who found the apparent eggs made of dough, on breaking which with the spoon, a fat figpecker was seen lying in the pepper-seasoned yolk, and strongly tempting the beholder to eat. This delicacy, was, of course, readily eaten, andmulsum, themixture of Hymettian honey and Falernian wines, was copiously drunk to aid digestion. A good deal of wine was imbibed, and numerous witch stories told (a favourite supper pastime), between and during the courses, at which the dishes were more and more elaborate and fantastic. A vast swine succeeded to a wild boar at the supper of Lentulus, who affecting to be enraged at his cook for forgetting to disembowel the animal before preparing it for the table, that official feigns to tremble with the energy of his repentance, and forthwith proceeds to perform the office of gutting the animal in presence of the guests. He plunges his knife into its flanks, when there immediately issues from the gaping wound string after string of little sausages. The conclusion of the supper is thus told:—“The eyes of the guest were suddenly attracted to the ceiling by a noise overhead; the ceiling opened, and a large silver hoop, on which were ointment bottles of silver and alabaster, silver garlands with beautifully chiselled leaves, and circlets and other trifles, descended upon the table; and after the dessert, prepared by the new baker, whom Lentulus purchased for a hundred thousand sesterces, had been served up, the party rose, to meet again in the brilliant saloon, the intervening moments being spent, by some in sauntering along the colonnades, and by others in taking a bath.”

In the description of the supper given by Siba to celebrate the return of Nero to Rome, we find that the slaves, when they took off the sandals of the guests, supplied them with others of a lighter description, which were fastened by crossed ribands. Those who did not come in “dress,” were furnished with variegated woollen vestments to cover their togas. Siba’s banquet began to the sound of a hydraulic organ, which, however, was only in place of our dinner-bell. When the lime-wood tables were duly covered and flowered, the guests took their places to thesound of flutes and harps, and said a sort ofgrace, by invoking Jupiter; while a modest libation of wine was cast on the floor in honour of the household gods. The first course consisted of some remarkably strange dishes, but the guests reserved their appetite, or provoked it with pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar cattle. A master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was to regulate how often the guests should drink; and the latter invariably selected the most confirmed toper.Weleave this office to the master of the house, and in well-regulated families that high official leaves his guests to do according to their good pleasure. The garlands having been duly encircled round the brows of Siba’s friends, the trumpets announced the entrance of the second course. The second course was duly discussed, its extraordinary dishes thoroughly consumed, and the four cups were drained to Nero; being the number of letters in his name; and a good deal of jollity began to abound, which was checked a little by the arrival of a present from the emperor, sent to Siba, and which consisted of a silver skeleton. As the guests feared to interpret the meaning of the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and then to singing, and philosophising; and then resumed their eating; and when the force of nature could no further go, they called in the jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, and having drawn as much amusement from these as they possibly could, they whipped up their flagging sensations by looking at the feats of Spanish dancing girls, and these were succeeded by ten couple of gladiators, who slew one another in the apartment for the pastime of the supremely indifferent personages who lay half asleep and half drunk, and lazily applauded the murderous play. The company were in the very midst of this innocent amusement when the fire was lit up in Rome by Nero, and which did not spare the mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape wasnot more furious and selfish than that which took place at Prince Schwartzenberg’s ball in Paris, at which the devouring flames had as little respect for some of the guests as they had at the terrible supper of Caius Siba.

It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records of the olden time. But this is not the case. They are fewer; but theydoexist. We read in the modern history of Germany, that a man with an uncontrollable appetite for bacon once presented himself at the tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, before Prague, which he was besieging. The man was a boor, and had sought access to the king, to ask permission to perform before him a feat which he boasted of being able to accomplish,—namely, devour a whole hog. General Koenigsmark, who was present, and was very superstitious, warned the king not to listen to a being who, if not the devil, was probably leagued with him. “I’ll tell you what it is, and please your Majesty,” said the boor, “if you will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and spurs, I’ll eat him before I begin with the hog!” The general was no coward; but he took to his heels, as though the man were serious, and left the king to enjoy what pleasure he might from seeing a peasant eat a whole pig.

In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs for supper. When Cailli was in that quarter of the world, a Bambere woman gave him some yams, and what he thought was gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On dipping his yams therein, however, he saw some little paws, and at once knew that it was the famous mouse-sauce; but he was hungry, and continued his repast. He often subsequently saw the women chopping up mice for their suppers. When the animals were caught, they were singed over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. Ahungry manmighteat thereof without loathing. We have all partaken of far less clean animals.

It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal is the very hour for wit. I do not know how this may be, but Souwarow’s wit appears to have been uncommonly alert at supper-time. When he returned from his Italian campaign to St. Petersburg, in 1799, the Emperor Paul sent Count Kontaissow to compliment him on his arrival. The count had been originally a Circassian slave, andvaletto Paul, who had successively raised him to the ranks of equerry, baron, and count. The Circassianparvenufound the old warrior at supper. “Excuse me,” said Souwarow, pausing in his meal, “I cannot recall the origin of your illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle procured for you your dignity as count.” “Well, no,” said the ex-valet, “I have never been in battle.” “Ah! perhaps you have been attached to an embassy?” “No.” “To a ministerial office then?” “That neither.” “What important post,then, have you occupied?”—“I have been valet-de-chambre to the emperor,” “Oh, indeed,” said the veteran leader, laying down his spoon, and calling aloud for his own valet, Troschka. “Here, you villain,” said he, as the latter appeared, “I tell you daily to leave off drinking and thieving, and you never listen to me. Now, look at this gentleman here. He was a valet like you; but being neither sot nor thief, he is now grand equerry to his majesty, knight of all the Russian orders, and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow his example, and you will have more titles than your master; who requires nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his supper!”

It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was generally accounted as the peculiar season of wit; but wit, often too daring at such an hour, sometimes got chastised for its over-boldness.

At one of thepetits soupersof Paris, in this olden time, when wit and philosophy had temporarily dethroned religion, a little abbé, who had the air of a full-grown Cupid in a semi-clerical disguise, or who was like Rose Pomaponne in a carnival suit at the Courtille, took upon himself to amuse the assembled company with stories intended to ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the philosophers styled Christianity,) and its professors. He was particularly comic on the subject of hell and eternal punishments, upon which questions he dilated with a fulness that would have scarcely edified either Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole of the amiable society exploded in inextinguishable laughter at hearing this villanous abbé speak of hell itself as his “feu de joie!” There was, however, one face there that bore upon it no traces of a smile. It was that of an old marechal-de-camp, who might have said, like the old beadle of St. Mary’s, Oxford, “I have held this office, sir, for more than thirty years, and, thank heaven, I am a Christian yet!” Well, the old maréchal frowned as, looking at the infidel abbé, he remarked, “I see very plainly, sir, by your uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it seems to me that you must be a deserter.” “My dear maréchal,” answered the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, “it may indeed be a little as you say, but then, you see, I do not hold in my troop the rank which you enjoy in yours. I am not a marechal-de-camp!” “Parbleu,” rejoined the old soldier, “you never could have reached such a rank, for, to judge by your conduct and sentiment, you would have been hanged long before your chance came for promotion.”

At thesoupersof Paris, however, there were few men who were of the character of our marechal-de-camp. Bungener, in his “Voltaire et son Temps,” illustrates the confusion into which men’s ideas had got upon the subject of things spiritual and things temporal, by noticing the affairof the Chevalier de la Barre, in 1766. Amid the accusations brought against him was one, according to which it was laid to his charge that he had recited in public a certain filthy ode. He was condemned to be broken on the wheel, on charges of irreligion, of which this was one. But the part of the question that must have made Astræa weep through the bandage with which poets have bound her eyes, was this, namely, that the author of the obscene ode objected to, Piron, was then in the reception of a pension from the court; and this pension had been procured for him by Montesquieu, by way of compensation for his having lost his seat at the Academy, in consequence of his having been the author of this very ode. This confusion of rewards and penalties was enough to make Justice dash her brains out with her own scales. Piron would have been in no wise troubled by such a catastrophe; the pension from the court enabled him to keep a joyous table, and that was enough for him.

Duclos was a contemporary and a co-disciple with Piron, in the temple of philosophy. In 1766, he was at Rome, where he gave such charming little suppers, that the Sacred College gratefully extended to him the privileged permission of reading improper books! The philosophers were then in possession of considerable influence. Marmontel, who was one of them, was sent to the Bastille, on a certain Friday, in the year 1760. Soon after his arrival, he was supplied with an excellent dinnermaigre, the which he ate without thinking of complaining. His servant was just on the point of addressing himself to the scanty remains, when lo! an admirable but somewhat irreligious repast, of meat and other things which come under the denomination ofgras, and are therefore forbidden on fast-days, was brought in. The unorthodox banquet was intended for Marmontel; the more lenten fare was intended for his servant. For in those days, although philosophers weresent to prison, their appetites were left to their heretical freedom.

This liberty was allowed by the state, but it was neither sanctioned nor practised by the Church. The authority of the latter was great previous to the Revolution. There was then a clerical police, which looked into the dishes as well as the consciences of the people—of all degrees. I have somewhere read of a body of this police coming in collision, during Lent, with the officers of the household of the Prince of Conti, who were conveying through the streets, from a neighbouringrotisseur’sto the ducal palace, a supper, through the covers of which there penetrated an odour which savoured strongly of something succulent and sinful, of gravy and gravity. Thereupon the archbishop’s alguazils bade the prince’s men stand and deliver. The followers of the house of Conti drew their swords in defence of their rights and sauces. Much of the latter on the side of Conti, and a little malapert blood on both sides, was spilt, to the edification of the standers by. Finally, the transgressors of the Church law were dragged to prison. The damaged repast remained on the pavé, for the benefit of poor souls who assumed ecclesiastical licence to devour it without fear of damnation; and the servants of Conti were left in damp cells to meditate at their leisure upon the argument which Dean Swift at another period had thus cast into verse:—

“Who can declare, with common sense,That bacon fried gives God offence?Or that a herring hath the charmAlmighty vengeance to disarm?Wrapt up in Majesty divine,Doth He regard on what we dine?”

“Who can declare, with common sense,

That bacon fried gives God offence?

Or that a herring hath the charm

Almighty vengeance to disarm?

Wrapt up in Majesty divine,

Doth He regard on what we dine?”

To pass from cooks and church to courtesy and coachmen, I may here speak of a certain Girard who was known in Paris, during the Terror, for his love of what he calledliberty and good living. In his early days he was a very independent coachman, and was just on the point of concluding an engagement with an aristocratic old countess, when he remarked—“Before I finally close with madame, I should like to be informed for whom madame’s horses are to make way in the streets.” “For every one,” said the countess. “On questions of precedence, I am not difficult; if it is yielded to me, I take it; if not, I wait.” “In that case,” said the aristocratic John, “I shall not suit, madame, as I myself never draw aside except for the princes of the blood!” Now this great personage in livery was no other than the Girard who became, in 1793, the “public accuser,” and who sent to the scaffold those same nobles who had not been sufficiently noble for him in 1780.

Upon the matter of what became nobility, however, there was always much confusion in the “aristocratic idea” of the highest continental families. Thus who, in contemplating the famous Princess des Ursins, seated among the most honoured at the table of the King of Spain, would dream of her writing the following sentence in one of her letters to Madame de Maintenon? “It is I who have the honour of taking from his majesty hisrobe de chambre, when he gets into bed; and I am there to give it to him again, with his slippers, when he rises in the morning.”

The flattery paid to royalty in France was never more prodigally offered than at the period when “wit and philosophy” were beginning to undermine the throne. We have an instance of this in what happened when the queen of Louis XV. arrived, in 1765, at Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where she intended to sup and sleep. She was met beneath an avenue of trees, outside the town, by the authorities, who offered to her, according to custom, bread and wine. The queen took a portion of the bread, brokeit in two, and ate thereof, as well as of some grapes, sipping also the wine; to the delight and edification of the admiring multitude. The authorities were so struck by the act of condescension on the part of the royal personage, that they made record of the fact in the register of the town council. And this they did in such terms as to cause a commentator to remark, that they could hardly have said more, had her majesty been a genuine goddess.

After all, this sort of homage had fallen off, in 1765, from what it had been two centuries before. When Louis XII. encountered his bride, Mary of England, outside Abbeville, he clapped his feeble hands, and wished the devil might seize him (and hediddie soon after) if she were not more beautiful than report had painted her! At the gates of Abbeville, the ill-assorted pair were met by the Bishop of Amiens and the municipal magistrates, to welcome them to the evening banquet ere they betook themselves to repose. The bishop presented the new Queen of France with a piece of the Real Cross. “Themayeursoffered a gift, the nature of which brings it within my subject.” The gift was usual whenever king and queen appeared at the portals of the old monkish city. It consisted of three tuns of wine, three fat oxen, and fifteen quarters of oats, three pecks of which were presented to the astonished lady on bended knee, and in a measure painted light blue, and covered with golden fleurs-de-lys. A complimentary address to the king crowned all. “Sire,” said the chief local magistrate, “you may now conclude your marriage in this our good city, without any fear of committing sin thereby; for, in the year 1409 were reformed, as abuses, those synodal statutes by which men in our city were forbidden to live with their wives, during three whole mortal days after the wedding!” The monarch entered and sat down with hisconsort to a repast which rendered both ill for more than double the period just mentioned. Louis had well-nigh died, like La Matrie, the infidel philosopher at Berlin, of an indigestion. Had he done so, it might have been said of him, as the infidel Prussian king said of La Matrie: “He was agourmand, but he died like a philosopher; let us have no more anxiety about him.”

Frederic himself loved philosophy more than faith, and philosophical though profligate kings, more than he did “Most Christian” or “Most Catholic” monarchs. He was wont, therefore, to laugh at the story of the famished beggar who, standing near the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, solicited charity of a friend of Voltaire who was passing by. “In the name of God,” said the mendicant. The student of philosophy was deaf. “In the name of the Holy Virgin!”—“In the name of the saints!” The appeal was unheeded. “In the name of Henri IV!” exclaimed the petitioned; and forthwith the Voltairean put his hand in his pocket, giving a crown-piece, in the name of a philosophical profligate, while he refused a sou when asked for in the name of God. But, as Frederic used to say, “How divine is philosophy!” In his mouth the exclamation was like the well-known cry of Marcel, the ecstatic dancing-master: “Que de choses dans un minuit!”

There is a story told in connexion with this same great Frederic which is a good table trait in its way. Joachim von Ziethen was one of the bravest of the generals who stood by Frederic the Great in victory or defeat. He was the son of a poor gentleman, and had little education save what he could pick up in barracks, camps, and battle fields, in all of which he figured in early youth. If his head was not over-ballasted with learning, his heart was well freighted with that love for God, of which some portion, as the dismissed lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in King’s College tells us, is in almost every individual withoutexception, and forms the sheet-anchor which shall enable him to ride through the storms which keep him from his desired haven of rest. He became the terror of the foes of Prussia; but among his comrades, he was known only as “good father Ziethen.” He was remarkable for his swiftness at once of resolve and execution, and in remembrance as well as illustration thereof, a sudden surprise is spoken of by an astonished Prussian as “falling on one like Ziethen from an ambush.”

Now, old Ziethen, after the triumph achieved in the Seven Years’ War, was always a welcome guest at the table of Frederic the Second. His place was ever by the side of the royal master whose cause he had more than once saved from ruin; and he only sat lower at table when there happened to be present some foreign royal mediocrity, illustriously obscure. On one occasion, he received a command to dine with the king on Good Friday. Ziethen sent a messenger to his sovereign, stating that it was impossible for him to wait on his majesty, inasmuch as that he made a point of never omitting to take the sacrament on that day, and of always spending the subsequent portion of the day in private meditation.

A week elapsed before the scrupulous old soldier was again invited to the royal dinner-table. At length he appeared in his old place, and merry were the guests, the king himself setting an example of uproarious hilarity. The fun was running fast and furious,—it was at its very loudest, when Frederic, turning to Ziethen, smacked him familiarly on the back, and exclaimed, “Well, grave old Ziethen! how did the supper of Good Friday agree with your sanctimonious stomach? Have you properly digested the veritable body and blood?” At this blasphemy, and amid the thunders of pealing laughter, the saluting artillery of the delighted guests, Ziethen leaped to his feet, and after shaking his grey hairs with indignation, and silencingthe revellers with a cry, as though they had been dogs, he turned to the godless master of the realm, and said—words, if not precisely these, certainly and exactly to this effect:—

“I shun no danger;—your majesty knows it. My life has been always ready for sacrifice, when my country and the throne required it. What I was,thatI am; and my head I would place on the block at this moment, if the striking of it off could purchase happiness for my king. But there is One who is greater than I, or any one here; and He is a greater sovereign than you who mock Him here from the throne in Berlin. He it is whose precious blood was shed for the salvation of all mankind. On Him, that Holy One, my faith reposes: He is my consoler in life, my hope in presence of death; and Iwill notsuffer His name to be derided and attacked where I am by, and have voice to protest against it. Sir, if your soldiers had not been firm in this faith, they would not have gained victories for you. If you mock this faith, and jeer at those who cling to it, you only lend a hand to bury yourself and the state in ruin.” After a pause he added, looking the while on the mute king:—“What I have spoken is God’s truth; receive it graciously.”

Frederic was the patron of Voltaire, who had dared to say at his own table that what it had taken God and twelve Apostles to build up, one man (Voltaire) would destroy. But Frederic was now, for the moment, more deeply moved by what had been uttered by the unphilosophical Ziethen than by anything that had ever fallen from the brilliant but irreligious Voltaire. He rose, flung his left arm over Ziethen’s shoulder, offered his right hand to the brave old Christian general, and exclaimed:—“Ziethen, you are a happy man! Would that I could be like you! Hold fast by your faith; and I will respect even where I cannot believe. What has occurred shall never happen again.”

A deep and solemn silence followed, and the dinner was spoiled, according to the guests, to whom the king gave the signal to disperse long before their appetites had been satisfied. Ziethen was preparing to withdraw with the rest, but Frederic, taking him by the hand, whispered:—“You, my friend, come with me to my cabinet.”

This anecdote was told by Bishop von Eylert to Frederic William III. That king, who had never heard of the incident, pronounced on it a three-piled eulogium of “excellent, pleasing, and instructive,” adding thereto a natural desire to know what passed between the king and Ziethen in the cabinet. It were doubtless well worth knowing, but I have sought for any notice of it, and all in vain. The good bishop, as he deserved, was invited to remain at Sans Souci, to supper. “I excused myself,” says the prelate, in his memoir of the king, “as having only a common upper coat on.” The king replied, smilingly, “I know very well that you have got a dollar and a dress-coat; you are the same person in either. I wantyou, not your coat; so, go in.”

The Prussian soldiers, in the days of the great Frederic, used to be allowed unlimited liberty in providing themselves with food in an enemy’s country. The like permission, but somewhat enlarged, was given to the Croat soldiers, under the name of foraging for “supper;” but in that permission they included every meal. They are as ready at it as Abyssinians; they cut a slice out of the first beast they fall in with, salt it, put it between the saddle and the horse’s back, gallop till it gets warm, and then eat it with Croat appetite. The sportsmen of Dauphiny eat beccaficoes after much the same fashion; they pluck the bird, sprinkle it with pepper and salt, carry it on their hat to dry in the air, and eat it with relish for supper, without any further cooking. They declare it is far better so than when roasted.

Celebrated as the “petits soupers” of the French were during the last century, they were equalled in brilliancy, and perhaps surpassed in popularity, by those given in Paris by the Duchess of Kingston. The adventures of that very adventurous lady rendered her a favourite with our lively neighbours. When a rustic Devonshire beauty,—wayward, capricious, ignorant, and seductive, Elizabeth Chudleigh was suddenly transplanted to the court of the Princess of Wales, as maid of honour. She there captivated the youthful Duke of Hamilton, returned his affection, and accepted the offer of his hand. They loved intensely, quarrelled furiously, and were reconciled warmly; the enemies of both toiled incessantly to prevent the marriage, and each was daily told of the alleged infidelities of the other. One of these stories excited the ardent beauty to such rage that she dismissed her ducal lover, and in the whirlwind of her wrath gave her hand to Captain Hervey, brother of the Earl of Bristol. She married in haste, and repented quite as hastily. She hated her husband before they left the church together; and after six months of the most active domestic warfare, the ill-assorted pair separated by mutual consent. She went abroad to find solace for her disappointment, and was heartily welcomed at the courts of St. Petersburg, Prussia, and Saxony; she was the favoured guest of Catherine II., and of the great Frederic, at Berlin; and no electoral banquet took place at Dresden without being enlivened by her presence and her wit. When she accepted the invitation to resume her place at the English court, the reception she met with was enthusiastic: she played whist with the men, and she drove four-in-hand as if she had been the born daughter of a charioteer, brought up to her father’s business. Her accomplishments won the heart of the simplest of dukes and the gentlest of men, his grace of Kingston, and as an ecclesiastical court, in 1769, pronounced her marriage withCaptain Hervey (now Earl of Bristol) null and void, she speedily espoused her ducal admirer, while her former husband bestowed an earl’s coronet on a second wife. The duke’s property was not entailed, and the duchess spent it with such reckless prodigality, that his grace was fairly frightened into consumption and death; and in 1773 she was a beautiful widow, with the large remnant of the duke’s fortune in her possession—as long as she did not marry again. Away she went to Rome, sailed up the Tiber in her own yacht, entertained the pope (Ganganelli) Clement XIV. at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and kept up such a state that the world had never beheld such extravagant splendour since the days of the most profuse and profligate of queens: the heirs of the duke, seeing their inheritance fast melting away, instituted against her the famous suit for bigamy, on the ground that the ecclesiastical court which broke her first marriage had no power to do so. To meet her accusers she hurried to England, where she considerably startled the modest among our grandmothers by her Sunday amusements, and the daily display afforded by the very lowest of dresses. But as she gave most splendid dinners she had no lack of friends, and few men could find it in their hearts to abandon a woman in distress, whose kitchen fires were never extinguished, who gave her guests green peas at Christmas, and whose commonest beverage was imperial tokay. The House of Lords judged her case, heard her defence, and pronounced her second marriage bigamy by overthrowing the decree of the ecclesiastical court with regard to her first union. To avoid the vulgar penalty she immediately fled, crossed the Channel in a storm, and proceeded to Munich, where she was royally entertained, especially as the law could not touch the property bequeathed her by the Duke of Kingston. The courtesy title of duchess was still allowed her, and the Elector of Bavaria added to it that of Countess of Warth.Great nobles gave entertainments in her honour, which lasted, for days, and ended with a ball, a banquet, and, instead of common-place fireworks, the storming of a town at midnight. Poor nobles vied with each other for her smiles and the life-interest of her possessions; but as she had once been nearly entrapped by a Greek Prince Warta, who turned out to be the son of an ass-driver in Trebizond, and who committed suicide in prison, she made and kept her resolution to be her own mistress for the future, and not that of either count or kaiser.

In France, where she ultimately resided, she purchased the estate of St. Assize au Port, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of Orleans, the father of “Egalité.” She paid down a million and a half of francs for it, and sold seven thousand francs’ worth of rabbits from it, during the first week of her residence there. A fricasee of the duchess’s rabbits was, for a long time, the chief dish at all theguinguettesround Paris. Her own great suppers were famous for their refinement and luxury. She was a lover of good living, agourmetrather than agourmande; an epicure of taste, but not a glutton; and the gastronomic art never could boast of a more liberal patronage than that she bestowed upon it, especially in her Paris residence; where her table, her wit, her dinners, and her diamonds, made of her, for a time, the most remarkable personage in the capital. She died suddenly, of the rupture of a blood-vessel, in 1788, and was completely forgotten before that year had also expired.

I have mentioned that our eccentric countrywoman had purchased the property of the Duke of Orleans; and that reminds me how fatal the table, and particularly the supper-table, has been to the dukes of that house. Thus Philippe, the brother of Louis XIV., quarrelled with the latter touching the marriage which the king wished to conclude between one of his own natural daughters andthe duke’s son. Orleans, fevered and flushed, went to sup “with the ladies of St. Cloud.” He had not long before eaten heavily and drunk deeply at dinner; and at this second meal he was fatally stricken with apoplexy. The king said he was sorry, and having thus far given way to his grief, he sat down with Madame de Maintenon to rehearse the overture of an opera. This duke’s son and successor gave suppers, at which his infamous daughter, the Duchess de Berri, presided, and admission to which was purchased by the candidate making simple denial of his belief in a God! The fate of both had something retributive in it. The Duchess de Berri, who had privately married a profligate and ugly officer of her guards, named De Riou, sought to overcome her father’s wrathful refusal to acknowledge the union, by giving him a splendid supperal-frescoon the terrace of Meudon, on the 13th May, 1709. The evening proved cold and damp, and the duchess caught there a fever brought on by a chill, over-feeding, and deep drinking, of which she died. Fourteen years afterwards, the sire who, at sixteen, had all the experience in vice of a man of sixty, was dining with the Duchess of Phalaria, his last mistress, when he was taken ill. The physician who was summoned enjoined abstinence immediate and complete. “Wait till to-morrow,” said the duke, “I will enjoy myself to-night.” And accordingly, the exemplary pair supped together, and the lady was in the act of telling the duke one of her lively stories. As she went on, the glass slid from his hand, and his head sank upon her shoulder. She thought he was asleep, and went on with her story; but he to whom she was telling it was stone-dead. The son of the regent duke was in every respect unlike his father. He atehislast supper with the Jansenist fathers of the Geneviève,—symbol of his general habits and the society he kept.Hisson was the father ofEgalité, and at the time of his death (1785) was popularwith the lower classes at Paris for the nightly suppers which he distributed to them, and which consisted of bread and wine, with medicine for those who needed it. It was a distribution made not charitably, but politically. Of the last meal of Egalité, before he went to execution, I only know that it was a breakfast, and not a supper, and that he both ate and drank heartily. Misfortune quite as little disturbed the appetite of the Louis Philippe of our own days. During his flight from Paris he never forgot the hour of supper or dinner; and when “William Smith” landed at Newhaven, the first thing he asked for was—something to eat. I notice these table traits, simply because the Orleanist historians always speak contemptuously of Louis XVI. eating, with appetite, in open court during his trial. The stomach of Orleans was ever as ready as that of Bourbon.

The supper has been called the conversational meal, but to make it so in perfection it requires a thorough professor of the science of conversation—one who knows that its very spirit consists less in being a good talker himself than in flinging about suggestive matter to induce others to converse upon. The host who understands the science will so do this that his guests will be satisfied with themselves. Some French writer has said, in reference to this after-supper gossip, that it should be like a game at cards, at which each player does his best,—but I do not endorse this sentiment to its fullest extent, although I allow that there is something in it. The wise generally, and dyspeptics especially, will do well to avoid political subjects after supper; and perhaps there is no more comprehensive remark to be made on this matter than one advanced by a follower of La Bruyère, a minor moralist, who has said that “la confiance fournit plus à la conversation que l’esprit ou l’érudition.”

I recollect once seeing the dullest of evenings madesuddenly bright by an apt query modestly put by one who needed not to inquire, but who quietly asked if anyone present could name the author of the line:—

“Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.”

Many a wide guess was fired off prior to the successful naming. The general opinion was in favour of Pope, and Pope has indeed written a line very like it:—

“Fine by defect, and delicately weak.”

The falling upon such coincidences are the very explosives of after-supper discussions: thus, the very familiar line—

“Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm,”

may be the text for a pretty dispute. It occurs in Addison’s “Campaign,” and also in Pope’s “Dunciad.” The latter poet too has said—

“Ye little stars, hide your diminish’d rays;”

but Milton, before him, had written—

“At whose sight all the starsHide their diminish’d heads.”

“At whose sight all the stars

Hide their diminish’d heads.”

Schiller’s “Thekla” warbles melodiously her melancholy assurance—

“Ich habe gelibt und geliebet;”

and Byron’s “Sardanapalus,” equally used up, mutters with a faint sigh the same words—

“I have lived and loved.”

We all know who tells us that

Back to Index Next