_Veau qui tette_ was renowned for its sheep-trotters. The reputation of
others was built upon kidneys; that of Véry, on his _entrées truffées_.
The “Three Provincial Brothers” enjoyed a wide esteem for the way in
which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine kept a house that was
crowded by the admirers of fish; while that of Robert was distinguished
for the graceful attention with which previously ordered dinners were
served; and that of Henneveu for the splendid _boudoirs_ in which
shy couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, could dine in
private, and cease to find their modesty oppressive. Beauvilliers’,
as I have intimated, was a costly house; but it was not _therefore_
the most excellent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not to be
determined by its price. Four years ago an illustrious party dined at
Philippe’s, in the Rue Montorgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a
far more exquisite fashion, than if they had joined the Epicureans of
the Clarendon, at £5 per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham
and Dufferin, the Honourable W. Stuart, two other “Britishers,” and
Count D’Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The dinner on this occasion was
a _recherchée_ affair. It had been as anxiously meditated upon as an
epic poem; and it was a far pleasanter thing. “The most successful
dishes,” says the author of “The Art of Dining,” “were the _bisques_,
the _fritures à l’Italienne_, and the _gigot à la Bretanne_. Out of
compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord Brougham and Alexandre Dumas,
M. Philippe produced some _Clos de Vougeot_, which, (like his namesake
in ‘High Life Below Stairs,’) he vowed, should never go down the throat
of a man whom he did not esteem and admire; and it was voted first-rate
by acclamation.”
The French repasts are not always good, even when they are rather
costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two sat down to a repast at the
younger “Robert’s,” in Paris. The Amphitryon of the feast was M.
Daolouis; and the bill, exclusive of wine, amounted to thirty louis.
There were but three or four great dishes, and two or three sauces.
The discontent of the guests was general, and the giver of the feast
allowed that the dinner was not near so good as that of the “_Société
des Mercredis_,” at _Le Gacque’s_, which cost only seven francs per
head, ordinary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. “_Mais, à dîner,
Messieurs, à dîner!_”
DINNER TRAITS.
“For these and all His mercies”----once began Dr. Johnson, whose good
custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good things set before
him; but he almost as invariably found fault with the food given. And
of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired; and on the occasion
alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking that it was a farce
to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, in two minutes, he
would pronounce to be as worthless as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs!
And so there was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the
one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked
inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. “Well,” remarked the good
ancient dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like case, ‘God
be thanked!--nobody will say grace!’” It is seldom that “grace” is
properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious mockery at
public dinners; but then every man should silently and fervently make
thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits down
to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him,
without whom there could have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a
defaulter deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn
better manners. “Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, “eat, and
welcome!” It was all his grace; and had he said, “Come, gentlemen,
be thankful and eat,” it would have been more like the Christian
gentleman, and less like the “beau.”
It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at the
dinner-table, that the company should not be more than the Muses nor
less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited freedom of action
in the matter; for, by the _Lex Faunia_, a man was forbidden to invite
more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, except on
market days, (three times a month,) when he might invite five. The host
was restricted to spending only two and a half _drachmas_; but he might
consume annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat for each
person in his house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that
grew wild; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at
all. One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a great
deal of it, and ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the French
Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark district to carry lanterns
at night, he forgot to say a word about candles, and the wits walked
about with the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake
by ordering the candles; but as he omitted to say that these were to be
lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. So the _Lex Faunia_,
when it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit
sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten with such luscious aids to
which the name of “sauce” was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded
to the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint!
After all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who
rigorously observed the _Faunia_ Law, according to their oaths. These
were men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child,
when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling that
he could devote to gluttony; or than Lucullus, who never supped in the
“Apollo” without its costing him at least ten thousand pounds.
Notwithstanding this, the _Faunia_ Law was an absurd impertinence. It
was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras
in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, “O
Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he
boiled fish?” “And you, O King,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that
Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had
boiled fish for dinner in his camp?” The moral is, that it is best to
leave men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to
make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could commit the
crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for
himself, ἐνέπτυσεν εἰς αὐτήν, “spat in it;” and if my readers refer to
the chapter illustrating “Their Majesties at Meat,” they will find that
so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of Heathenism.
The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread and honey.
On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died.
He had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance
to such small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the fun
and the festival of Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house
begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic by dying at such
a mirthful moment. He consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept
himself alive by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his
family hoped that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He
took one sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed
away for ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those
ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think worse
of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on the day her old lover
died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was that he had
expired before six o’clock, as otherwise she would have been too late
for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant society who played cards
by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de l’Espinasse, and counted
their tricks while they commented upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced
as being twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus.
A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the digestive
powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a far less
commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which
even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the
stomach. The French _bouilli_ after soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for
it is simply, as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all
but its nourishing juice.”
“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man who has been floating
over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or sight of land
to the storm-beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render almost any
dish attractive to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect,
the French and Chinese cooks are really professional brethren; much
more so than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon!
The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and
judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and the meal
of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. They
eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not? All these are
far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is
so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has been
breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin birds’ nests eaten in China
may be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris _grisettes_:
“Rather eatable things, those _grisettes_, by the bye!” So are the
birds’ nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous
matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears’
paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subsequently
soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish
that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.
There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke of
Wellington’s cook had serious doubts as to his master being a great
man,--he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another General who was the
despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at dinner
when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce an Austrian victory
over the French. The General had one huge plate before him, a sort of
Irish stew, with every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily,
spitting out the bones, “as was his custom.” He was so delighted with
the message and the messenger, that he received him as Galba did
Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s death: with his unwiped mouth, he began
kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the
bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting down
and eating from the General’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great
Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater; but he was more nice in his
diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his
tooth-picks!
According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within
four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted; and from an invitation given
and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties but illness,
imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner;
and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the
policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of punctuality on the part of
the former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of whom it is said
that they never saw soup and fish but at their own tables. The late
Lord Dudley Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of
want of punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you
got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” On the other hand, an unpunctual
cook is scarcely to be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master
is not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the
moment it has been ordered. The great “_artiste_” who dismissed his
patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it
waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his
profession.
At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in France to
serve the soup immediately before the company entered the dining-room.
The resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of
the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the
actress; but it was tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same
period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush
the empty shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a
breach in good manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have
never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost as famous for her
love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, equally often, “on
hospitable thoughts intent.”
It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a
lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the
first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto
were intended to be highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish
parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to paper the
curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes,--promissory paper, as he
said, of no value. When his cook waited on him at breakfast-time for
orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the
attendant, as purchase-money for the necessary provisions, and sent
her to market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and
ostentatious at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the
wines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a
shade of disgust, inquired, “If any body drank port?” As no one dared
to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the owner took it
“medicinally,”) he would direct the servant to “take away the ink!”
If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a contempt for
claret, “which,” said he, “would be port, if it could!” The latter
individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his
glass of claret aloft, with a cry, “If this be war, may we never have
peace!”
Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, none
of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed in large
quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That
Sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were
“drinkable.” “From father to son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in
his incomparable work, “_Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV._,” ate and drank
with relish; and it was no jest that among the three talents attributed
by the old song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of
a “good drinker.” “None of them, however, with the exception of the
Regent, carried it to excess; but what was not excess for them, would
have been so for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory,
and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the
laws of their imperious appetite.”
When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were drinkable,
the Duke answered him in terms which I may cite, because of their
correctness. “Sire,” he replied, “they have, what they call, ‘white
Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as that of Monrachet,
or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised.
There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint,
like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but keeps better. They
have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine,
of which they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if
one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to the wine
of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, however, and it has an
indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable.
Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep,
and that is all!” “It puts people to sleep,” said the King: “send for a
pipe of it!” This is as just a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux,
as was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne: “It does not
enter,” he said, “and steal your reason; it simply makes a runaway
knock at a man’s head, and there’s an end of it!”
But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let us return to the
solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our path,
perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that they
have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or
should; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the anguish of
appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his “_Gaietés Champêtres_,” “Nemorin
takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie
Eleison de Montauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle
Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the neighbouring
_château_, and asks to be invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the
‘Iliad,’ as afflicted as woman can be, does not forget, when night
comes, to take a little refreshment.” If Seneca derided such doings, it
was only after dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made
up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural
with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said,--
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,--
Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;
And I thought I had never beheld such a face,
Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all the
acts of most importance in our lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus,
and Diana be no longer the deities or the _beati_ of the earth, the
substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, under
the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by repasts not only
births, baptisms, and marriages, but even interments.
The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time when
men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh; for then the family
necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and cooked. They
know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal
appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from
the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which
sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good
dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. A hungry man is as
slow at a joke as he is at a favour.
Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but when he was asked to
dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners generally: and he
was right; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace,
with his modest repasts and fair wine, was something of the same
opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests too
numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the
repast too eagerly consumed, there is no dinner, in the legitimate
sense of the word. I never so much admired one of the most hospitable
of Amphitryons, my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of
his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, “_Mes amis, ne
nous pressons pas!_” I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too
willing Secretary:--“_Surtout, pas de zèle!_” The most accomplished
professor of his time has laid down, as rules for securing to their
utmost degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do
not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they
be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that the lighting,
cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully
considered; that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the
wines of first quality, each in its degree; the progression of the
former from the more substantial to the more light; of the latter,
from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined
that there be no accelerated movement; all the guests are to consider
themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point at the same
time. The rules for the “after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those
more commonly observed in this country, with the exception that “punch”
expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the Peace; but the concluding
rule is worth noticing:--“That no one withdraw before eleven, and that
all be asleep by midnight.”
I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility have given to
table enjoyment. To them may be added the innovation introduced by
Talleyrand, of offering Parmesan with soup, and presenting after it
a glass of dry Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in common with St.
Peter,--he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, the dinner-time of the
Jews; and he would have also come under the anathema in Ecclesiastes
which is levelled against the Princes who eat in the morning.
Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy who made two
substantial meals daily; and Seneca was satisfied with one meal,--a
dinner of bread and figs. The Roman Priests of Mars dined jollily and
sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, and they would not be
disturbed. They were like Baillie de Suffren, who, being waited on in
India by a deputation, just as he was sitting down to dine, sent out
word that his religion would not allow of his interrupting his repast;
and the delegates retired, profoundly struck by the strictness of his
conscience. The original dinner hour of the mediæval ages was, as I
have elsewhere stated, ten o’clock, the _dixième heure_; hence the
name. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that so late an hour as
noon was fixed for the repast. It is clear, however, that we have not
so much changed the hours as changed the names of our meals. A French
historian shows us how a Dauphin of France dined (at ten o’clock) in
the fifteenth century:--
“As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his dinner rice pottage,
with leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, another of salt pork, a dish
of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece of roast
pork, cheese, and fruit.” The supper was nearly as plentiful; but,
on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is added, that
the Barons of the Court had always the half of the quantity of the
Dauphin; the Knights, the quarter; and the Equerries and Chaplains, the
eighth. “Take pride from Priests, and nothing remains,” once remarked
an Encyclopædist to Voltaire. “Umph!” said Voltaire; “do you, then,
reckon gluttony for nothing?” Gluttony, at least, does not seem to have
characterized the Dauphin’s Chaplains, in the fifteenth century, seeing
that they took an eighth where a Baron had half.
But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined after a more singular
fashion than that of the Dauphins, his ancestors. I allude to the
Prince mentioned by Maurepas, and whose imagination was so sick, that
he fancied himself a hare, and would not allow a bell to be rung,
lest it should terrify him into the woods, where he might be shot by
his own game-keepers, and afterwards served up at his own table. At
another time, he had a fancy that he would look well dished up; and,
dreaming himself a cauliflower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his
kitchen-garden, and called upon his people to come and water him! At
length, he pronounced himself dead, and refused to dine at all, as an
insult to his spiritual entity. He would have died, had he not been
visited by two friends, who introduced themselves as his late father,
and the deceased Maréchal de Luxembourg; and who solemnly invited him
to descend with them to the shades, and dine with the ghost of Maréchal
Turenne. The melancholy Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down
with them to a cellar already prepared for the banquet of the departed;
and he not only made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made of
himself a ghost, he insisted every day on dining with congenial shadows
in the coal-cellar! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was
excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially where his own
interests were concerned.
Thus much--briefly and imperfectly, I fear--for Dinner Traits. In the
next chapter we will put something on them. And as we have been drawing
examples from folly, let us end this section by adding a maxim full of
wisdom. “Be not made a beggar,” says _Ecclesiasticus_, “by banqueting
upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in thy purse.” If this maxim
were generally adopted, there might be fewer dinners given, but there
would be more dinners paid for. But some people are like the ancient
Belgians, who borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repayment
in the world to come! Many a dinner-giver belongs to the class of
the borrowing Belgians of antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps,
more intended honesty in the compact than _we_ can distinguish. A
compact far less honest was made some years ago by an Irish Baronet,
who had given so many dinners for which he had not paid, that he was
compelled to pledge his plate in order to raise means to satisfy the
most pressing of his creditors. Some time subsequently, he induced
the pawnbroker to lend him the plate for one evening, on hire; the
pawnbroker’s men were to wait at the dinner in livery, and convey the
silver back as soon as the repast was concluded. The dinner was given
and enjoyed, and the company made the attendants drunk, helped the
Baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and épergnes, with which
he set off for Paris, where some of them afterwards visited him at the
little dinners he used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed over
the matter as a very capital jest.
I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting at table to
drink, after dinner was over, was introduced by Margaret Atheling, the
Saxon Queen of Scotland. She was shocked to see the Scottish gentlemen
rise from table before _grace_ could be said by her Chaplain, Turgot;
and she offered a cup of choice wine to all who would remain. Thence
the fashion of hard drinking following the “thanksgiving.”