already quoted, gives some portion of a menu in metre. Sydney Smith, as
we all know, wrote a recipe for a salad in heroic couplets. Prior, I
think, describes a City Feast, bringing in "swan and bustard" to rhyme
with "tart and custard." The late Mr. Mortimer Collins is believed to
have been the only writer who ever put "cutlet" into a verse. When
Rogers wrote "the rich relics of a well-spent hour" he was not--though
he ought to have been--thinking of dinner. Shakespeare and Spenser,
and Milton and Wordsworth, and Shelley and Tennyson deal only with
fragments and fringes of the great subject. They mention a joint or a
dish, a vintage or a draught, but do not harmonize and co-ordinate even
such slight knowledge of gastronomy as they may be supposed to have
possessed. In fact, the subject was too great for them, and they wisely
left it to the more adequate medium of prose. Among the prose-poets who
have had the true feeling for Dinner, Thackeray stands supreme. When
he describes it facetiously, as in "The Little Dinner at Timmins's" or
"A Dinner in the City," he is good; but he is far, far better when he
treats a serious theme seriously, as in "Memorials of Gormandizing" and
"Greenwich Whitebait."
I assign the first place to Thackeray because his eulogy is more
finished, more careful, more delicate; but Sir Walter had a fine, free
style, a certain broadness of effect, in describing a dinner which
places him high in the list. Those venison pasties and spatchcocked
eels and butts of Rhenish wine and stoups of old Canary which figure
so largely in the historical novels still make my mouth water. The
dinner which Rob Roy gave Bailie Nicol Jarvie, though of necessity
cold, was well conceived; and, barring the solan goose, I should have
deeply enjoyed the banquet at which the Antiquary entertained Sir
Arthur Wardour. The imaginary feast which Caleb Balderstone prepared
for the Lord Keeper was so good that it deserved to be real. Dickens,
the supreme exponent of High Tea, knew very little about Dinner, though
I remember a good meal of the _bourgeois_ type at the house of the
Patriarch in "Little Dorrit." Lord Lytton dismissed even a bad dinner
all too curtly when he said that "the soup was cold, the ice was hot,
and everything in the house was sour except the vinegar." James Payn
left in his one unsuccessful book, "Meliboeus in London," the best
account, because the simplest, of a Fish-dinner at Greenwich; in that
special department he is run close by Lord Beaconsfield in "Tancred";
but it is no disgrace to be equalled or even surpassed by the greatest
man who ever described a dinner. With Lord Beaconsfield gastronomy was
an instinct; it breathes in every page of his Letters to his Sister. He
found a roast swan "very white and good." He dined out "to meet some
truffles--very agreeable company." At Sir Robert Peel's he reported
"the second course really remarkable," and noted the startling fact
that Sir Robert "boldly attacked his turbot with his knife." It was
he, I believe, who said of a rival Chancellor of the Exchequer that
his soup was made from "deferred stock." 'Twere long to trace the
same generous enthusiasm for Dinner through all Lord Beaconsfield's
Novels. He knew the Kitchen of the Past as well as of the Present.
Lady Annabel's Bill of Fare in "Venetia" is a monument of culinary
scholarship. Is there anything in fiction more moving than the agony of
the _chef_ at Lord Montacute's coming of age? "It was only by the most
desperate personal exertions that I rescued the _soufflés_. It was an
affair of the Bridge of Arcola." And, if it be objected that all these
scenes belong to a rather remote past, let us take this vignette of
the fashionable solicitor in "Lothair," Mr. Putney Giles, as he sits
down to dinner after a day of exciting work: "It is a pleasent thing
to see an opulent and prosperous man of business, sanguine and full
of health and a little overworked, at that royal meal, Dinner. How
he enjoys his soup! And how curious in his fish! How critical in his
_entrée_, and how nice in his Welsh mutton! His exhausted brain rallies
under the glass of dry sherry, and he realizes all his dreams with the
aid of claret that has the true flavour of the violet." "Doctors,"
said Thackeray, who knew and loved them, "notoriously dine well.
When my excellent friend Sangrado takes a bumper, and saying, with a
shrug and a twinkle of his eye, _Video meliora proboque, Deteriora
sequor_, tosses off the wine, I always ask the butler for a glass of
that bottle." That tradition of medical gastronomy dates from a remote
period of our history. "Culina," by far the richest Cookery-book ever
composed, was edited and given to the world in 1810 by a doctor--"A.
Hunter, M.D., F.R.S." Dr. William Kitchener died in 1827, but not
before his "Cook's Oracle" and "Peptic Precepts" had secured him an
undying fame. In our own days, Sir Henry Thompson's "Octaves" were the
most famous dinners in London, both as regards food and wine; and his
"Food and Feeding" is the best guide-book to greediness I know. But
here I feel that I am descending into details. "Dear Bob, I have seen
the mahoganies of many men." But to-day I am treating of Dinner rather
than of dinners--of the abstract Idea which has its real existence in
a higher sphere,--not of the concrete forms in which it is embodied
on this earth. Perhaps further on I may have a word to say about
"Dinners."
XXII
DINNERS
_Sero sed serio._ It is the motto of the House of Cecil; and the late
Lord Salisbury, long detained by business at the Foreign Office and
at length sitting down to his well-earned dinner, used to translate
it--"Unpunctual, but hungry." Such a formula may suitably introduce
the subject of our present meditations; and, although that subject is
not temporary or ephemeral, but rather belongs to all time, still at
this moment it is specially opportune. Sir James Crichton-Browne has
been frightening us to death with dark tales of physical degeneration,
and he has been heartless enough to do so just when we are reeling
under the effects of Sir Victor Horsley's attack on Alcohol. Burke, in
opposing a tax on gin, pleaded that "mankind have in every age called
in some material assistance to their moral consolation." These modern
men of science tell us that we must by no means call in gin or any of
its more genteel kinsfolk in the great family of Alcohol. Water hardly
seems to meet the case--besides, it has typhoid germs in it. Tea and
coffee are "nerve-stimulants," and must therefore be avoided by a
neurotic generation. Physical degeneracy, then, must be staved off with
food; food, in a sound philosophy of life, means Dinner; and Dinner,
the ideal or abstraction, reveals itself to man in the concrete form of
Dinners.
Having thus formulated my theme, I part company, here and now, with
poets and romancists and all that dreamy crew, and betake myself, like
Mr. Gradgrind, to facts. In loftier phrase, I pursue the historic
method, and narrate, with the accuracy of Freeman, though, alas!
without the brilliancy of Froude, some of the actual dinners on which
mankind has lived. Creasy wrote of the "Fifteen Decisive Battles of
the World"--the Fifteen Decisive Dinners of the World would be a far
more interesting theme; but the generous catalogue unrolls its scroll,
and "fifteen" would have to be multiplied by ten or a hundred before
the tale was told. A friend of mine had a pious habit of pasting into
an album the _Menu_ of every dinner at which he had enjoyed himself.
Studying the album retrospectively, he used to put an asterisk against
the most memorable of these records. There were three asterisks against
the _Menu_ of a dinner given by Lord Lyons at the British Embassy at
Paris. "_Quails and Roman Punch_," said my friend with tears in his
voice. "You can't get beyond that." This evidently had been one of the
Fifteen Decisive Dinners of his gastronomic world. Did not the poet
Young exclaim, in one of his most pietistic "Night Thoughts,"
"The undevout Gastronomer is mad"?
Or, has an unintended "G" crept into the line?
I treasure among my relics the "Bill of Fare" (for in those days we
talked English) of a Tavern Dinner for seven persons, triumphantly
eaten in 1751. Including vegetables and dessert, and excluding
beverages, it comprises thirty-eight items; and the total cost was
£81, 11s. 6d. (without counting the Waiter). Twenty years later than
the date of this heroic feast Dr. Johnson, who certainly could do most
things which required the use of a pen, vaunted in his overweening
pride that he could write a cookery-book, and not only this, but "a
better book of cookery than has ever yet been written; it should be a
book on philosophical principles." The philosophical principles must
have been those of the Stoic school if they could induce his readers or
his guests to endure patiently such a dinner as he gave poor Bozzy on
Easter-day, 1773--"a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach,
a veal pie, and a rice pudding." One is glad to know that the soup
was good; for, as Sir Henry Thompson said in "Food and Feeding," "the
_rationale_ of the initial soup has been often discussed," and the best
opinion is that the function of the soup is to fortify the digestion
against what is to come. A man who is to dine on boiled lamb, veal
pie, and rice pudding needs all the fortifying he can get. With some
of us it would indeed be a "decisive" dinner--the last which we should
consume on this planet.
True enjoyment, as well as true virtue, lies in the Golden Mean;
and, as we round the corner where the eighteenth century meets the
nineteenth, we begin to encounter a system of dining less profligately
elaborate than the Tavern Dinner of 1751, and yet less poisonously
crude than Dr. Johnson's Easter Dinner of 1773. The first Earl of
Dudley (who died in 1833) disdained kickshaws, and, with manly
simplicity, demanded only "a good soup, a small turbot, a neck of
venison, ducklings with green peas (or chicken with asparagus), and an
apricot tart." Even more meagre was the repast which Macaulay deemed
sufficient for his own wants and those of a friend: "Ellis came to
dinner at seven. I gave him a lobster curry, woodcock, and maccaroni."
From such frugality, bordering on asceticism, it is a relief to turn to
the more bounteous hospitality of Sir Robert Peel, of whose dinner the
youthful Disraeli wrote: "It was curiously sumptuous; every delicacy of
the season, and the second course, of dried salmon, olives, caviare,
woodcock pie, _foiegras_, and every combination of cured herring, &c.,
was really remarkable." Yes, indeed! "on dine remarquablement chez
vous."
After all, the social life of the capital naturally takes its tone
and manner from the august centre round which it moves. If the Court
dines well, so do those who frequent it. The legs of mutton and apple
dumplings which satisfied the simple taste of George III. read now
like a horrid dream. Perhaps, as the digestion and the brain are so
closely connected, they helped to drive him mad. His sons ate more
reasonably; and, in a later generation, gastronomic science in high
places was quickened by the thoughtful intelligence of Prince Albert
directing the practical skill of Francatelli and Moret. Here is a
brief abstract or epitome of Queen Victoria's dinner on the 21st of
September 1841. It begins modestly with two soups; it goes on, more
daringly, to four kinds of fish; four also are the joints, followed
(not, as now, preceded) by eight _entrées_. Then come chickens and
partridges; vegetables, savouries, and sweets to the number of fifteen:
and, lest any one should still suffer from the pangs of unsatiated
desire, there were thoughtfully placed on the sideboard Roast Beef,
Roast Mutton, Haunch of Venison, Hashed Venison, and _Riz au consommé_.
But those were famous days. Fifty-four years had sped their course,
and Her Majesty's Christmas Dinner in the year 1895 shows a lamentable
shrinkage. Three soups indeed there were, but only one fish, and that
a Fried Sole, which can be produced by kitchens less than Royal. To
this succeeded a beggarly array of four _entrées_, three joints, and
two sorts of game; but the _Menu_ recovers itself a little in seven
sweet dishes; while the sideboard displayed the "Boar's Head, Baron of
Beef, and Woodcock Pie," which supplied the thrifty Journalist with
appropriate copy at every Christmas of Her Majesty's long reign.
When Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli had succeeded in "dishing the
Whigs" by establishing Household Suffrage, they and their colleagues
went with a light heart and a good conscience to dine at the Ship
Hotel, Greenwich, on the 14th of August 1867. That was, in some
senses, a "decisive" dinner, for it sealed the destruction of the
old Conservatism and inaugurated the reign of Tory Democracy. The
triumphant Ministers had turtle soup, eleven kinds of fish, two
_entrées_, a haunch of venison, poultry, ham, grouse, leverets, five
sweet dishes, and two kinds of ice. Eliminating the meat, this is very
much the same sort of dinner as that at which Cardinal Wiseman was
entertained by his co-religionists when he assumed the Archbishopric
of Westminster, and I remember that his Life, by Mr. Wilfred Ward,
records the dismay with which his "maigre" fare inspired more ascetic
temperaments. "He kept the table of a Roman Cardinal, and surprised
some Puseyite guests by four courses of fish in Lent." There is
something very touching in the exculpatory language of his friend and
disciple Father Faber--"The dear Cardinal had a Lobster-salad side to
his character."
Ever since the days of Burns, the "chiel amang ye takin' notes" has
been an unpopular character, and not without reason, as the following
extract shows. Mr. John Evelyn Denison (afterwards Lord Eversley) was
Speaker of the House of Commons in 1865, and on the eve of the opening
of the Session he dined, according to custom, with Lord Palmerston,
then Prime Minister and Leader of the House. Lord Palmerston was in his
eighty-first year and gouty. Political issues of the gravest importance
hung on his life. The Speaker, like a _rusé_ old politician as he was,
kept a cold grey eye on Palmerston's performance at dinner, regarding
it, rightly, as an index to his state of health; and this was what he
reported about his host's capacities: "His dinner consisted of turtle
soup, fish, patties, fricandeau, a third _entrée_, a slice of roast
mutton, a second slice, a slice of hard-looking ham. In the second
course, pheasant, pudding, jelly. At dessert, dressed oranges and half
a large pear. He drank seltzer water only, but late in the dinner one
glass of sweet champagne, and, I think, a glass of sherry at dessert."
This was one of the "decisive" dinners, for Palmerston died in the
following October. The only wonder is that he lived so long. The dinner
which killed the Duke of Wellington was a cold pie and a salad.
"I am not one who much or oft delight" to mingle the serious work of
Dinner with the frivolities of Literature; but other people, more prone
to levity, are fond of constructing Bills of Fare out of Shakespeare;
and our National Bard is so copious in good eating and drinking that a
dozen _Menus_ might be bodied forth from his immortal page. The most
elaborate of these attempts took place in New York on the 23rd of
April 1860. The Bill of Fare lies before me as I write. It contains
twenty-four items, and an appropriate quotation is annexed to each. The
principal joint was Roast Lamb, and to this is attached the tag--
"Innocent
As is the sucking lamb."
When the late Professor Thorold Rogers, an excellent Shakespearean,
saw this citation, he exclaimed, "That was an opportunity missed. They
should have put--
'So young, and so untender!'"
XXIII
LUNCHEON
"Munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!"
So sings, or says, Robert Browning in his ditty of the Pied Piper,
and it is to be remarked that he was not driven to invent the word
"nuncheon" by the necessity of finding a rhyme for "luncheon," for
"puncheon" was ready to his hand, and "nuncheon" was not a creation,
but an archaism, defined by Johnson as "food eaten between meals."
Let no one who perpends the amazing dinners eaten by our forefathers
accuse those good men of gluttony. Let us rather bethink ourselves
of their early and unsatisfying breakfasts, their lives of strenuous
labour, their ignorance of five o'clock tea; and then thank the
goodness and the grace which on our birth have smiled, and have given
us more frequent meals and less ponderous dinners. Lord John Russell
(1792-1878) published anonymously in 1820 a book of Essays and Sketches
"by a Gentleman who has left his Lodgings." On the usages of polite
society at the time no one was better qualified to speak, for Woburn
Abbey was his home, and at Bowood and Holland House he was an habitual
guest; and this is his testimony to the dining habits of society: "The
great inconvenience of a London life is the late hour of dinner. To
pass the day _impransus_ and then to sit down to a great dinner at
eight o'clock is entirely against the first dictates of common sense
and common stomachs. Women, however, are not so irrational as men, and
generally sit down to a substantial luncheon at three or four; if men
would do the same, the meal at night might be lightened of many of its
weighty dishes and conversation would be no loser." So far, Luncheon
(or Nuncheon) would seem to be exclusively a ladies' meal; and yet
Dr. Kitchener could not have been prescribing for ladies only when he
gave his surprising directions for a luncheon "about twelve," which
might "consist of a bit of roasted Poultry, a basin of Beef Tea or Eggs
poached or boiled in the shell, Fish plainly dressed, or a Sandwich;
stale Bread, and half a pint of good Home-brewed Beer, or Toast and
Water, with about one fourth or one-third part of its measure of Wine,
of which Port is preferred, or one-seventh of Brandy."
In Miss Austen's books, Luncheon is dismissed under the cursory
appellation of "Cold Meat," and Madeira and water seems to have been
its accompaniment; but more prodigal methods soon began to creep in.
The repast which Sam Weller pronounced "a wery good notion of a lunch"
consisted of veal pie, bread, knuckle of ham, cold beef, beer, and cold
punch; and let it be observed in passing that, had he used the word
"lunch" in polite society, the omission of the second syllable would
have been severely reprehended by a generation which still spoke of
the "omnibus" and had only just discontinued "cabriolet." The verb "to
lunch" was even more offensive than the substantive from which it was
derived; and Lord Beaconsfield, describing the Season of 1832, says
that "ladies were luncheoning on Perigord pie, or coursing in whirling
britskas." To Perigord pies as a luncheon dish for the luxurious and
eupeptic may be added venison pasties--
"Now broach me a cask of Malvoisie,
Bring pasty from the doe,"
said the Duchess in "Coningsby." "That has been my luncheon--a poetic
repast." And Lady St. Jerome, when she took Lothair to a picnic, fed
him with lobster sandwiches and Chablis. Fiction is ever the mirror of
fact; and a lady still living, who published her Memoirs only a year or
two ago, remembers the Lady Holland who patronized Macaulay "sitting at
a beautiful luncheon of cold turkey and summer salad."
But, in spite of all these instances, Luncheon was down to 1840 or
thereabouts a kind of clandestine and unofficial meal. The ladies
wanted something to keep them up. It was nicer for the children than
having their dinner in the nursery. Papa would be kept at the House
by an impending division, and must get a snack when he could--and so
on and so forth. If a man habitually sate down to luncheon, and ate
it through, he was contemned as unversed in the science of feeding.
"Luncheon is a reflection on Breakfast and an insult to Dinner;" and
moreover it stamped the eater as an idler. No one who had anything to
do could find time for a square meal in the middle of the day. When Mr.
Gladstone was at the Board of Trade, his only luncheon consisted of an
Abernethy biscuit which Mrs. Gladstone brought down to the office and
forced on the reluctant Vice-President.
But after 1840 a change set in. Prince Albert was notoriously fond of
luncheon, and Queen Victoria humoured him. They dined late, and the
Luncheon at the Palace became a very real and fully recognized meal.
At it the Queen sometimes received her friends, as witness the Royal
Journal--"Mamma came to luncheon with her lady and gentleman." It could
not have been pleasant for the "lady and gentleman," but it established
the practice.
"Sunday luncheon" was always a thing apart. For some reason not
altogether clear, but either because devotion long sustained makes
a strong demand on the nervous system or because a digestive nap
was the best way of employing Sunday afternoon, men who ate no
luncheon on week-days devoured Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding on
Sundays and had their appropriate reward. Bishop Wilberforce, whose
frank self-communings are always such delightful reading, wrote in
his diary for Sunday, October 27, 1861: "Preached in York Minster.
Very large congregation. Back to Bishopthorpe. Sleepy, _eheu_, at
afternoon service; _must_ eat no luncheon on Sunday." When Luncheon
had once firmly established itself, not merely as a meal but as an
institution, Sunday luncheons in London became recognized centres of
social life. Where there was even a moderate degree of intimacy a
guest might drop in and be sure of mayonnaise, chicken, and welcome. I
well remember an occasion of this kind when I saw social Presence of
Mind exemplified, as I thought and think, on an heroic scale. Luncheon
was over. It had not been a particularly bounteous meal; the guests
had been many; the chicken had been eaten to the drumstick and the
cutlets to the bone. Nothing remained but a huge Trifle, of chromatic
and threatening aspect, on which no one had ventured to embark. Coffee
was just coming, when the servant entered with an anxious expression,
and murmured to the hostess that Monsieur Petitpois--a newly arrived
French attaché--had come and seemed to expect luncheon. The hostess
grasped the situation in an instant, and issued her commands with a
promptitude and a directness which the Duke of Wellington could not
have surpassed. "Clear everything away, but leave the Trifle. Then show
M. Petitpois in." Enter Petitpois. "Delighted to see you. Quite right.
Always at home at Sunday luncheon. Pray come and sit here and have some
Trifle. It is our national Sunday dish." Poor young Petitpois, actuated
by the same principle which made the Prodigal desire the husks, filled
himself with sponge-cake, jam, and whipped cream; and went away looking
rather pale. If he kept a journal, he no doubt noted the English Sunday
as one of our most curious institutions, and the Trifle as its crowning
horror.