village où il n’y avait d’autre feu que celui de la cuisine, dont
la cheminée était gardée par un grand nombre de voyageurs arrivées
avant lui. Pour se faire faire place, il usa d’un stratagème assez
original. Il avait aperçu en entrant quelques cloyères d’huîtres.
Il dit au maître de la maison, ‘Monsieur, avez-vous des huîtres?’
‘Oui, Monsieur, et de très-fraîches.’ ‘Faites-en porter une cloyère
à mon cheval.’ ‘Comment, Monsieur, est-ce que votre cheval mange des
huîtres?’ ‘Oui, Monsieur; au surplus, faites ce que je dis; s’il ne les
mange pas, d’autres les mangeront.’
“Le maître obéit, et les voyageurs allaient voir un cheval manger
des huîtres--qu’il ne mangea pas. Pendant ce temps, le nouvel arrivé
prend place au feu. Le maître de retour lui dit, ‘Monsieur, je savais
bien que votre cheval ne mangeait pas d’huîtres.’ ‘Eh bien, non,’ dit
l’Anglais, ‘je les mangerai; ces messieurs ont quitté leur place, je la
garderai; ainsi à tout cela, il n’y aura rien de perdu.’ Et, en effet,
il vida la cloyère sans quitter le coin du feu.”
This is a quotation, apt enough, I think, from “La Gastronomie pour
Rire, ou Anecdotes, Réflexions, Maximes, et Folies Gourmandes,” par
César Gardeton, auteur du “Directeur des Estomacs,” Paris, 1827.
As a useful recipe for oysters, I should like to refer to an extract
from a letter from Swift to Stella; it runs thuswise:--
Lord Masham made me go home with him to eat boiled oysters.
Take oysters, wash them clean; that is, wash their shells
clean; then put your oysters in an earthen pot, with their
hollow side down; then put this pot, covered, into a great
kettle with water, and so let them boil. Your oysters are
boiled in their own liquor, and do not mix water.
If oysters have to be cooked at all, which is a doctrine I do not
support, then the above seems as good a way as any other. Really
good oysters are, anyhow, too precious to be cooked, but should be
degustated _in puris naturalibus_.
A story which I venture to think apocryphal is quoted by W. R. Hare
in a curious little book, “On the Search for a Dinner,” published
in London in 1857. Speaking of dining in Paris, he refers to the
celebrated restaurant the _Rocher du Cancale_, and relates how an
English “Milord” drove up to the establishment and ordered (and ate)
a hearty meal of twenty-nine dozen oysters; after which Milord died
suddenly--and no wonder! They carried him down with great difficulty
to the carriage. The groom, on seeing his master’s body arrive,
exclaimed, with great coolness, “It is the third time that Milord gives
himself the pleasure of dying of indigestion.” “He will not die a
fourth time,” answered the _patron_, with sorrow. Milord was buried at
Père-la-Chaise. His facetious friends deposit every year by the remains
of the defunct an enormous quantity of oyster-shells. The tomb is about
five-and-twenty yards from that of Héloise and Abélard. On a slab of
black marble the following epitaph is inscribed: “Here lies ----, dead
for the third time in a duel with the oysters of the Rocher du Cancale.”
I confess that I have not had the curiosity to verify the tombstone.
Brillat-Savarin has an oyster anecdote to the effect that he was at
Versailles in the year 1798 as Commissary of the Directory, and had
frequently to meet the Registrar of the Tribunal, M. Laperte. The
latter was so fond of oysters that he used to grumble about never
having had enough to satisfy him. Being determined to procure him
that satisfaction, Brillat-Savarin asked Laperte to dinner, and the
latter accepted. “I kept up with him,” says the host, “to the third
dozen, letting him then go on by himself. He went on steadily to the
thirty-second dozen--that is to say, for more than an hour, as they
were opened but slowly--and as in the meantime I had nothing else to
do--a state quite unbearable at table--I stopped him just as he was
beginning to show more appetite than ever. My dear friend,” I said, “it
must be some other day that you have enough to satisfy you; let us now
have some dinner.” We took dinner, and he showed all the vigour and
hunger of a man who had been fasting.
These oyster-gorges are, however, mere epitomes of vulgar gluttony.
There is no more gastronomic satisfaction to be got out of thirty-three
dozen than out of the conventional two dozen. In fact, doctors rarely
prescribe more than one dozen at a time.
Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca, Pliny, Ætius, and
the old Greek doctor Oribasius, whom Julian the Apostate delighted to
honour, have all enlarged upon the virtues of the oyster. It would be
easy to add to the list and to quote corroborative passages, but the
thing has been done so often and so copiously, that it would certainly
be supererogatory and tedious. The _Tabella Cibaria_ has been referred
to by every culinary scribe, and we really know more about the oyster
habits of the Romans than we do about those of the inhabitants of the
Hebrides; which is absurd.
G. A. Sala says that the Pontiffs of Pagan Rome caused oysters to be
served at every repast; but the delicacy must have been very expensive,
since a basket of oysters cost the equivalent of nine pounds sterling.
They were served raw and were dexterously opened by a slave at a
side-table at the beginning of the dinner.
There is a story told of an astute Roman epicure named Fulvius Hirpinus
who constructed on his estate, close to the seashore, a fish-pond where
he stored or “parked” oysters, which he fattened with paste and cooked
wine, worked to the consistency of honey. He was certainly astute
because besides regaling himself and his friends on these artificially
fattened oysters, he drove a roaring trade in selling them wholesale
and retail to the nobility and gentry of Rome.
The same authority goes on to say that, oddly enough, in a
comparatively modern cookery book, that of Will Rabisha, there is a
direction, a rather ferocious one, that while oysters are undergoing
the process of broiling they should be fed with white wine and grated
bread. Of course many ways were adopted in those days for the feeding
of oysters; but a paste of oatmeal and water seems to have been the
staple of the sustenance given to the creatures before they were
considered to be fit for the table.
The Greeks, according to Athenæus, boiled and fried their oysters,
finding them, however, best of all when roasted in the coals till the
shells opened.
As early as the seventeenth century the French prepared them _en
etuvée_ and _en fricasée_. Both recipes appear in the “Délices de
la Campagne” (1654), a book of extreme interest and full of quaint
information; but not, it would seem, strictly reliable as a record of
the cookery of the time.
[Illustration: Frontispiece to “Des Magens Vertheidigung der edlen
Austern” Prague, 1731
[To face page 178]
We are so accustomed nowadays to pay half a crown, three and sixpence,
and even more for our dozen oysters, that it seems almost incredible
that our fathers regaled themselves thereon at the common or general
price of sixpence a dozen. An old poem on the subject says:--
Happy the man, who, void of care and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain
New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale.
This is from “The Splendid Shilling,” by John Philip, which, according
to Steele in the “Tatler,” was “the finest burlesque poem in the
English language.”
Just exactly why the price of oysters should have increased so
enormously in recent years has never been satisfactorily explained.
Many ridiculous reasons have been given, but they seem either
impertinent, or inadequate, or both. We need only refer to the pages of
the “Pickwick Papers” for confirmation.
“Before proceeding to the Legacy Duty Office about proving the will
of his late wife, Mr. Weller, senior, and his fellow-coachmen, as
witnesses, bethought themselves of having a drop of beer, and a little
cold beef, or an oyster. These viands were promptly produced, and the
luncheon was done ample justice to. If one individual evinced greater
powers than another it was the coachman with the hoarse voice, who took
an imperial pint of vinegar with his oysters, and did not betray the
least emotion.”
Another and more striking illustration.
“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, sir,” said Sam Weller, “that
poverty and oysters always seem to go together; the poorer a place
is the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir!
blest if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor he rushes out of his
lodgings, and eats oysters for regular desperation.”
The Colchester Oyster Feast is an annual function which is usually
graced by the presence and assistance of political and other
notabilities. The Mayor and Corporation open the proceedings by
“sizing” the oysters, eating a large number at luncheon, and
following the luncheon with prescribed draughts of gin and slices of
gingerbread. This historic repast seems, on the face of it, to be of a
somewhat incongruous nature; but it is said by those who have survived
it, and their number is very large, that the cates and beverage go well
together, and never quarrel among themselves.
Until comparatively recent times, another annual Oyster Feast took
place at Edinburgh, with a kind of civic ceremonial, known as the Feast
of Shells. A voyage was made by Provosts and Bailiffs to the oyster
beds in the Firth of Forth, and “though the solemnity of wedding the
Frith formed no part of the Chief Magistrate’s office, as wedding the
Adriatic with a gold ring did that of the Doge of Venice,” three cheers
were given by all present as the first “dredge” was hoisted on to the
deck of the civic barge.
There is an old fisherman’s song, now almost forgotten, one verse of
which runs:--
The Herring loves the merry moonlight,
The Mackerel loves the wind,
But the Oyster loves the dredger’s song,
For he comes of a gentle kind.
Many years ago a sort of popular belief was current to the absurd
effect that Oysters could be trained to sing. It is impossible to says
whence the superstition arose, but it was helped by a noted exhibition,
in London, of a “Whistling Oyster” which was supposed to emit certain
sibilant sounds. Thousands flocked to hear it, but it was more or less
conclusively proved, however, that it was a trick of ventriloquism on
the part of the showman.
In Tom Hood’s “Miss Kilmansegg and her Golden Leg,” there is an apt
reference to a Colchester Oyster, when they were very much cheaper than
they are to-day, and, as before mentioned, were practically poor men’s
food.
What different fates our stars accord!
One babe is welcomed, and wooed as a lord,
Another is shunned like a leper;
One to the world’s wine, and honey, and corn,
Another, like Colchester native, is born
To its vinegar only, and pepper.
The Americans always seem to do things on a larger scale than we,
in our effete little island, are able to do. They excel even in
the fecundity of their oysters. The British mollusc _Ostrea edulis_
produces about a million young in a season. One of the American
variety, _Ostrea Virginiana_, about ten times as many.
There is a great Oyster cult in the United States, and the different
manners of cooking, preparing, and serving the oyster are manifold.
A book might be written on the pros and cons of cooking an oyster at
all, and opinions as to its legitimacy differ, even among the erudite
on the subject. Be that as it may, the Americans certainly owe much
of their nerve-strength, hustlesomeness, and vigour to their enormous
oyster consumption. It is the ideal food to replace and restore nerve
power. It is hardly too much to say that the oyster is the foundation
of America’s commercial success.
Oliver Wendell Holmes says somewhere that two immense oysters should
be carved in marble and placed on top of the Washington monument in
Baltimore, instead of the statue of the immortal George. “I am not in
favour of removing the Father of his Country from off his imposing
pedestal, but should like to compromise matters by making him sit on a
pile of oyster-shells in lieu of a curule chair.”
When Thackeray went to Boston in 1852 he had some trouble with the
very large American oyster. “He first selected the smallest one of the
half-dozen (rejecting a larger one because, as he said, it resembled
the High Priest’s servant’s ear that Peter cut off), and then bowed his
head as though he were saying Grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he
struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget
the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied
shells. I asked him how he felt. ‘Profoundly grateful,’ he said, ‘as if
I had swallowed a small baby.’”
But Thackeray was not an authority, for he ranked “the dear little
juicy green oysters of France” above the “great white flaccid natives
in England that look as if they had been fed on pork.” This is
ungenerous.
The poet Gay wrote in praise of Oysters when Fleet Ditch, now turned
into the Farringdon Street sewer, was still a London eyesore. It
appears to have been a centre of London Oyster hucksters.
If where Fleet Ditch with muddy current flows
You chance to roam, where oyster tubs in rows
Are ranged beside the posts, there stay thy haste,
And with the savoury fish indulge thy taste.
Oysters are not unconnected with Pearls, although a real Oyster-lover
must necessarily regret that a large number of his darling food is
sacrificed for the trivial purpose of feminine adornment. It seems such
waste! It were well to cast pearls before swine, if the molluscs were
reserved for the pig-keepers. The pearls, by the by, which are used in
heraldry to denote the gradations of rank in the coronets of peers, are
the produce of the _Pinna marina_, the large pearl-oyster of the East
Indies.
A curious pearl case came before the law courts in Hamburg recently.
A merchant and his wife, dining at a local restaurant, began their
dinner, as right-minded folk always should, with oysters. In one
of the shells they found quite a considerable-sized and admirably
formed pearl. They were about to carry it off in triumph, when the
restaurant-keeper interfered and claimed it as his property. This was
disputed, and the matter taken to law, the pearl in question being
valued by experts at one hundred and fifty pounds. Eventually the
decision was given against the restaurant proprietor, the judge holding
that by purchasing the oysters the guest was entitled to anything found
in them. A just and upright judge!
Between 1775 and 1818 there lived and flourished (more or less) in
Malta, Naples, Paris, and elsewhere, a notable composer, Nicolo
Isouard, more generally known as Nicolo. He wrote many operas, all of
which are now forgotten. Having lived in Naples he was a great macaroni
eater, and prepared the dish himself in a somewhat original manner. He
stuffed each tube of macaroni with a mixture of marrow, _pâté de foie
gras_, chopped truffles, and cut-up oysters. He then heated up the
preparation, and ate it with his left hand covering up his eyes, for
he asserted that he could not afford to allow the beautiful thoughts
engendered by such exquisite food to be disturbed by any extraneous
mundane sights. No wonder he died young.
There is a Russian story, averagely true I opine, of the emancipation
of a serf through the agency of oysters. One of the ancestors of
the banking firm of Sjalouschine was originally a serf of Prince
Cheremeteff. The serf, by dealing in corn and cattle, had become very
well-to-do, and he asked the Prince again and again to set him free,
even offering him large sums of money as the price of his emancipation.
But the Prince always refused, as he was rather tickled by the idea of
owning a serf who was comparatively a rich man.
In the beginning of one September the serf went to St. Petersburg on
business, and brought back with him a barrel of oysters, the first of
the season. When he returned he asked to see the Prince, but was told
that His Highness was in a terribly bad temper because his chef had
forgotten to order any oysters. Whereupon the serf went straight to
the Prince and offered him his barrel of oysters in exchange for his
freedom. The Prince being, as aforesaid, of a humorous disposition,
and besides, wanting the oysters badly, was taken by the notion. He
agreed to the bargain, and clenched it by saying, “We will now lunch
together on the oysters.”
The family of Sjalouschine is said to bear oysters on their
coat-of-arms in memory of the emancipation.
At a dinner-party where there were twelve covers, one of the courses
consisted of scalloped oysters in silver shells. The set of shells
was broken--there were only eleven. The mistress, therefore, told the
butler that she would not eat any oysters. When the oyster course came,
he placed before his mistress one of the shells. To his horror she
did not decline it. She took up her fork and was about to plunge into
it, when the man flew to her side. “Pardon me, madam,” he murmured,
“but you said I was to remind you that the doctor forbade your eating
oysters on any account.”
[Illustration: CHAPTER VIII
WAITERS AND SNAILS]
“Will you walk a little faster?” said the Whiting to the Snail;
“There’s a lobster close behind me and he’s treading on my tail.”
LEWIS CARROLL
The collocation of Waiters and Snails under one chapter-heading is not
entirely fortuitous. The remote connexion which may fairly be said to
exist between the two is not perhaps as marked to-day as it was some
time ago, for waiters are improving rapidly, and snails--well, snails
are remaining very much where they used to be. The advent of the
well-trained foreign waiter has done much to improve our restaurant
dinner-table, and, incidentally, the temper of the average diner. Of
the expert, deft, and _sober_ British waiter there is also nothing but
good to be said. The snail has no family relationship with either of
these classes.
Unfortunately, however, there are others, many others, who are slow,
dirty, ignorant, and only occasionally sober. It is such as these who
degrade waiterdom, and to whom the snail is a fit comparison--save that
the waiter is not edible. Nothing could be smarter than a good English
waiter with a knowledge of foreign dishes, or a good foreign waiter
with a knowledge of English; and thanks to the interest now taken in
everything appertaining to dining in public places, neither is now as
uncommon as he used to be.
One P. Z. Didsbury, an American deipnosophist, once said in his wisdom:
“In a restaurant when a waiter offers you turbot, ask for salmon, and
when he offers you a sole, order a mackerel; as language to men, so
fish has been given to the waiter to disguise his thoughts.”
This maligns the individual waiter, of course; the man who is used
to attending on you, who knows your likes and dislikes, and takes a
personal interest in your contentment, but it is fairly typical of the
average restaurant waiter who sees you for the first time and thinks
you just one of the ordinary mob. For the casual customer is the facile
dupe of the waiter. He comes, he orders his dinner, or preferably,
permits it to be ordered for him, pays his bill, and goes away. Eating
with him partakes of the stoking process, and he recks little of the
particular _à la_ offered to him, if it be toothsome, and saucily
disguised.
In the best restaurants, as well in England as on the Continent,
deception, fraud, and trickery are comparatively rare. They would not
pay. But in nearly every restaurant below the class of the best some
one or other or all of the traditional time-honoured wiles of the
waiter are practised on the more or less unsuspecting customer.
There is, for instance, the well-known trick of “Putting the change to
bed.” It is preferably employed when a man is dining with a lady who,
to the cynical and experienced eye of the waiter, is obviously not his
wife. This is the very simple _modus operandi._ Your bill, we will say,
as presented to you, discreetly folded in half on a plate, comes to
one pound fifteen shillings. You place a couple of sovereigns under the
upper fold of the bill. The waiter returns with the change. If you are
careless you do not count it. You see half a crown on the bill, and
say nonchalantly “All right.” Whereupon the waiter is exceeding glad,
for you have given him five shillings. If, on the other hand, you are
observant, accurate, and careful, you will say, “The change is not
right.” The waiter, who has carefully concealed the second half-crown
between the bill and the plate, will semi-indignantly say, “I beg your
pardon, sir!” and drawing away the bill, the two half-crowns will be
exposed to view. After having doubted his word, you cannot do less
than give the poor man the two coins. So the waiter scores either way.
“Putting the change to bed” rarely fails.
Mr. Pinero illustrated this trick very neatly in his delightful farce,
“The Magistrate,” some years ago at the Old Court Theatre.
It is said that some of the most famous conjurers of to-day began life
as restaurant waiters, and certainly the knack of palming the cork of
the wine you ordered, and serving you with an inferior quality thereof,
meanwhile gravely depositing the palmed cork next to the bottle, in
its cradle, is a very old and usually successful trick. It is as well,
too, to see that the label on the wine bottle is dry and stuck fast,
because, unless you have ordered the man “just to take the chill off,”
he may have helped himself from the common stock of red or white wine,
and affixed the label of your particular vintage as he came upstairs.
It is quite extraordinary how many men who pride themselves on knowing
a good bottle of wine are deceived in this way. There is an old story
of three men dining together at a cheap restaurant. One ordered a pint
of Pontet Canet, another a pint of Medoc, and the third a pint of
Beaune. The waiter went to a speaking-tube, and shouted down it, “Three
small reds!”
The question of the substitution of corks has many and quaint
developments. An enormous trade is done at third- and fourth-rate
restaurants with “faked” champagne, which it were mere flattery to
call even “sparkling petrol.” The _restaurateurs_, foreigners it is to
be hoped to a man, import a thoroughly innocuous thin white wine, and
then bottle and aerate it, just as they would soda-water. The corks are
replaced (after being drawn) by genuine corks of well-known brands, and
there is a large market for good, sound, used champagne corks. This
market is supplied by the waiters at good-class restaurants, where
wines correct to designation are served. If the diner does not happen
to collect champagne corks (and few of us have this weakness), the
waiter carefully gathers them when clearing the table for dessert.
This is a genuine letter addressed by such a waiter to a reputable
firm of champagne importers: “I beg to send you a hundred corks of the
well-known brands of ---- and ----. They may be useful to you. I am
waiter at ----, and am often asked by customers to recommend a wine.
Awaiting your favourable reply, I am, etc.”
[Illustration: LES BOISSONS: PAR BERTALL
[To face page 194]
Another kind of waiter, neither as sharp nor as business-like as the
foregoing, on being asked what liqueur brandies they had, replied,
“Two, sir; one’s 1854 and the other’s a shilling.” That kind of waiter,
however, is more fool than thief.
A very pretty dodge, and one, moreover, which the continental waiter
finds very remunerative, is to add the date of the month to the
amount of the bill. If you are dining on 24 June, and the addition
comes to thirty-five francs, it is very easy to combine the two sums,
particularly if the date be somewhat carelessly inscribed at the head
of the account. The foreign waiter is a rare judge of character, and
can usually (though not always) tell beforehand whether or no it be
safe to try any of his little games.