wretchedly imperfect without an attempted description of a Lord Mayor's
dinner at the Mansion House in London. I should have preferred the
annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to witness it.
Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular
dinners, and gladly accepted it,--taking the precaution, nevertheless,
though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a
mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence,
and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to
open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship's bountiful
hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent; so that I presented
myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half-past six
o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous
apprehensions that often tormented me at such times. The Mansion House
was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is
a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his
traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed,
however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's Industrious
Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of lifelong integrity
was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that the real
dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do,
sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted
and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only
second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the
Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this; for the original emigrants
of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were
mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the
early days of our country; so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of
huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be
hardly second to the prime minister of the throne. The true great men of
the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, connecting
themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the
aristocracy of the country.
In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a
livery of blue coats and buff breeches, in which they looked
wonderfully like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with
far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever
dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom
I should have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet
coats and large silver epaulets; but they turned out to be officers of
the Lord Mayor's household, and were now employed in assigning to the
guests the places which they were respectively to occupy at the
dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself in a little group of
friends) were announced; and ascending the staircase, we met his
Lordship in the doorway of the first reception-room, where, also, we had
the advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. As this
distinguished couple retired into private life at the termination of
their year of office, it is inadmissible to make any remarks, critical
or laudatory, on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly
emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of
preeminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost
always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If
it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary
people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and
on a scale incomparably greater than that of the Mayoralty, though
invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and
embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord
Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the President of the United
States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure.
There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide
folding-doors; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be
venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as
spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid
fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers
and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them
celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I
recollect none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it
is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for
example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face
to face, thus to bring them together under genial auspices, in
connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be
the Lord Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether,
during his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every man of
noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his
Lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued; but it seemed to me
that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which
the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among
different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society,
however, I presume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek out
modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the
bore, and doubtful about the honor.
One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other
public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt,
they were principally the wives and daughters of city magnates; and if
we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satirical
poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its
women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of
quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through
those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain
heterodox opinions which I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and
rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of
English beauty. To state the entire truth (being, at this period, some
years old in English life), my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be
deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness
than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to
find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear
countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness (Heaven
forbid that I should call it scrawniness!), a deficiency of physical
development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material
make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice,--all of which
characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more
sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was
sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgment that the English ladies,
looked at from a lower point of view, were perhaps a little finer
animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could
really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of
clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a
pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in
exchange for half a hundred-weight of human clay!
At a given signal we all found our way into an immense room, called the
Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic,
and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the
Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a
brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending
the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying
nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre
or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments
of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the
Lord Mayor's chaplain implored a blessing on the food,--a ceremony which
the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider,
I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish
before the soup.
The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in
accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls,
in spite of the otherwise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed,
judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that
there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the
capacity of the soup-tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I
partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim,
always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous
site; and the fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord
Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which people
follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of
rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently
well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for
the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in
a bill-of-fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque
border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English
and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive
reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be
carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is
attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy,
yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby
the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead
of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfillment as
a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder
that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize-oxen in the shape of
butcher's meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism
of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to
nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic
appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even
an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things
enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away
wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden
him,--a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part
of a ptarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding
high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a
wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that of the artificially
nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my
memory as completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had
clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals inspiriting us
to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen
supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with
little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a
to-morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case,
a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner.
Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table, sat a young lady
in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because
not only the super-eminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character,
would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be
drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a
picture-frame, or the covers of a romance: not that I had ever met with
her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an
apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and
picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too
apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to
gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in
the very spell that made her beautiful.[20] At her side, and familiarly
attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline
of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that
you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to
speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, you suddenly became
aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery.
There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child
would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife
(the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom
overshadowing her fair young brow) traveling in their honeymoon, and
dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor's table.
[20] My eyes were mostly drawn to a young lady, who sat nearly opposite
me, across the table. She was, I suppose, dark, and yet not dark, but
rather seemed to be of pure white marble, yet not white; but the purest
and finest complexion, without a shade of color in it, yet anything but
sallow or sickly. Her hair was a wonderful deep raven-black, black as
night, black as death; not raven-black, for that has a shiny gloss,
and hers had not, but it was hair never to be painted nor
described,--wonderful hair, Jewish hair. Her nose had a beautiful
outline, though I could see that it was Jewish too; and that, and all
her features, were so fine that sculpture seemed a despicable art beside
her, and certainly my pen is good for nothing. If any likeness could be
given, however, it must be by sculpture, not painting. She was slender
and youthful, and yet had a stately and cold, though soft and womanly
grace; and, looking at her, I saw what were the wives of the old
patriarchs in their maiden or early-married days,--what Judith was, for,
womanly as she looked, I doubt not she could have slain a man in a just
cause,--what Bathsheba was, only she seemed to have no sin in
her,--perhaps what Eve was, though one could hardly think her weak
enough to eat the apple.... Whether owing to distinctness of race, my
sense that she was a Jewess, or whatever else, I felt a sort of
repugnance, simultaneously with my perception that she was an admirable
creature.--II. 238.
After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the
dessert; and at the point of the festival where finger-glasses are
usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the
guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our
napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that
heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems
to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord Mayor's
table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar.
During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the
origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood
a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair.
When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another
official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a
solemn and sonorous proclamation (in which he enumerated the principal
guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty
of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the
illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending
in some such style as this: "and other gentlemen and ladies, here
present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup,"--giving a
sort of sentimental twang to the two words,--"and sends it round among
you!" And forthwith the loving-cup--several of them, indeed, on each
side of the tables--came slowly down with all the antique ceremony.
The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, standing up and taking the
covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who
likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which
being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and
receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next
neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a
draught, after which the third person goes through a similar manoeuvre
with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find
themselves inextricably inter-twisted and entangled in one complicated
chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I examined it critically,
both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly
ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine.
Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our
lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully
moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine
being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company
had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their
neighbors,--a degree of abstinence that might be accounted for by a
fastidious repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or possibly by
a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these
important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever
they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup,
and had no occasion for another,--ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor
original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened.
It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink,
and could never have been intended for any better purpose.
The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches
neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table
eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each new
display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, gave
awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor was about to
propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, together
with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and
the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such or such a
nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what not, was
going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor's toast; then, if
I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and
twanging of stringed instruments; and, finally, the doomed individual,
waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a
fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the
good citizens of London, and, having evidently got every word by heart
(even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual
improvisations of the moment), he really spoke like a book, and made
incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England.
The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion, but
all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to
say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits
into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into
a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious libations of Sherry and
old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to
speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so
refreshing? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of
these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their
substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen
a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should
undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt
nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent
expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I
imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his
ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard
matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a
rock in mid-ocean.[21] The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism,
of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am
afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People
used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being
jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into
their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it
that the wine and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another.
[21] I rather think that Englishmen would purposely avoid eloquence or
neatness in after-dinner speeches. It seems to be no part of their
object. Yet any Englishman almost, much more generally than Americans,
will stand up and talk on in a plain way, uttering one rough, ragged,
and shapeless sentence after another, and will have expressed himself
sensibly, though in a very rude manner, before he sits down. And this is
quite satisfactory to his audience, who, indeed, are rather prejudiced
against the man who speaks too glibly.--I. 540.
Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a
circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much
interrupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my
condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the
brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close proximity with three
very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored
name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write
it; another, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste,
kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such
happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in
England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me
good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country,
which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the
kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not
had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt
safer or cosier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the
dinner-table of the Lord Mayor.
Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lordship got up and
proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon "the literary and
commercial"--I question whether those two adjectives were ever before
married by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live
together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord--"the literary and
commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," and then
went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Great
Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country. Those
bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great
nations, throughout all history, and his Lordship felt assured that that
whole honorable company would join him in the expression of a fervent
wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the
Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry
and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of
nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously
announced that Mr. So-and-so would now respond to his Right Honorable
Lordship's toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish
for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause,
and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall.
All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord Mayor's part, after
beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct; and it seemed
very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his
dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion House wine, and go
away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship
had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have
taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the
matter to have been somewhat as follows.