vengeance! Let us be seated, and show that our appetites can appreciate
what our comrade Koeckeritz has provided for them.” Monarch and
servant, honouring and honoured, sat side by side; and so gay and so
prolonged was the festival, that the king surprised all those who knew
how strictly he lived by rule, by ordering the dinner at the palace to
be retarded for a couple of hours. At that banquet he entertained the
veteran, affecting to do so in return for the hospitality displayed
by the latter in the morning. The scene was not without its moving
incidents, for the king had contrived another surprise whereby to
gratify his old friend and servant. As the monarch led him by the hand
to the dining-room, there stood before him three of the surviving
friends of his youth who had fought with him in the Seven Years’ War,
and whom he had not seen for years. The king had got them together,
not without difficulty; the general joy that ensued was as unalloyed
as humanity could make it, and never did monarch sit at meat with
more right to feel pleased, than Frederic William on this day of
Koeckeritz’s jubilee. It was a day that Henri IV. of France would
have delighted in. That king is said never to have dined better than
one evening previous to the battle of Ivry, when he was sojourning
in a country-house under the name of a French officer. There were
no provisions there, but the solitary lady who was the chatelaine
intimated that there was a retired tradesman who lived near, who was
the possessor of a fine turkey, and who would contribute it towards
a dinner, if he were only invited to partake of it. “Is he a jolly
companion?” asked the supposed officer. The reply being affirmatively,
the citizen and turkey were invited together, and two merrier guests
never sat down with a lady to cut up a bird and crush a bottle. Henri
was in the most radiant of humours; and it was when he was at his
brightest, that the _bourgeois_ avowed that he had known him from the
beginning, and that after dining with a king of France, he trusted
that the monarch would not object to grant him letters of nobility.
Henri laughed, which was as good as consenting, and asked what arms his
countship would assume? “I will emblazon the turkey that founded my
good fortune,” answered the aspirant for nobility. “Ventre Saint-Gris!”
exclaimed the king, laughing more immoderately, “then you shall be
a gentleman, and bear your turkey ’en pal’ on a shield!” The happy
citizen purchased a territorial manor near Alençon, and le Comte Morel
d’Inde was _not_ a _conte pour rire_.
The Russian Empress Catherine used to affect the good-fellowship that
was natural to the first of the Bourbon kings of France. When she dined
with the highly honoured officers of the regiment of which she was
colonel, she used to hand to each a glass of spirits before the banquet
commenced. At her own table the number of guests was usually select,
generally under a dozen. The lord of the bed-chamber sat opposite to
her, her own seat being at the centre of one of the sides, carved one
of the dishes, and presented it to her. She took once of what was so
offered, but afterwards dispensed with such service. In her days, many
of the Russian nobility kept open tables. Any one who had been duly
introduced, and knew not where to dine, had only to call at a house
where he was known, and to leave word that he intended to dine there
in the afternoon. He was sure to be welcomed. At the present time, the
Russians are more civilized and less hospitable.
Jermann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg as good,
delicate, and “meagre,”--the latter being a consequence of the
continual eating that is going on, and the necessity which follows of
providing what is light of digestion. The imperial household tables in
the days of Paul were divided into “stations,” an arrangement which
took its rise from a singular incident. The late empress, like our own
Queen Adelaide, was given to inspect the “domestic accounts,” and she
was puzzled by finding among them “a bottle of rum” daily charged to
the Naslednik, or heir apparent! Her imperial Majesty turned over the
old “expenses” of the household, to discover at what period her son had
commenced this reprobate course of daily rum-drinking; and found, if
not to her horror, at least to the increase of her perplexity, that it
dated from the very day of his birth. The “bottle of rum” began with
the baby, accompanied the boy, and continued to be charged to the man.
He was charged as drinking upwards of thirty dozen of fine old Jamaica
yearly! The imperial mother was anxious to discover if any other of the
Czarovitch babies had exhibited the same alcoholic precocity; and it
appears that they were all alike; daily, for upwards of a century back,
they stood credited in the household books for that terrible “bottle
of rum.” The empress continued her researches with the zeal of an
antiquary, and her labours were not unrewarded. She at last reached the
original entry. Like all succeeding ones, it was to the effect of “a
bottle of rum for the Naslednik;” but a sort of editorial note on the
margin of the same page intimated the wherefore: “On account of violent
toothache, a teaspoonful with sugar to be given, by order of the
physician of the imperial court.” The teaspoonful for one day had been
charged as a bottle, and the entry once made, it was kept on the books
to the profit of the unrighteous steward, until discovery checked the
fraud,--a fraud, more gigantically amusing than that of the illiterate
coachman, who set down in his harness-room book, “Two penn’orth of
whipcord, 6_d._” The empress showed the venerable delinquency to her
husband, Paul; and _he_, calculating what the temporary toothache of
the imperial baby Alexander had cost him, was affrighted at the outlay,
and declared that he would revolutionise the kitchen department, and
put himself out to board. The threat was not idly made, and it was soon
seriously realized. A gastronomic contractor was found who farmed the
whole palace, and did his spiriting admirably. He divided the imperial
household into “stations.” The first was the monarch’s especial table,
for the supply of which he charged the emperor and empress fifty
roubles each daily; the table of the archdukes and archduchesses was
supplied at half that price; the guests of that table, of whatever
rank, were served at the same cost. The ladies and gentlemen of the
household had a “station,” which was exceedingly well provisioned, at
twenty roubles each. The graduated sliding scale continued to descend
in proportion to the _status_ of the feeders. The upper servants had
superior stomachs, which were accounted of as being implacable at
less than fifteen roubles each. Servants in livery, with finer lace
but coarser digestions, dieted daily at five roubles each; and the
grooms and scullions were taken altogether at three roubles a head. “A
wonderful change,” says Jermann, “ensued in the whole winter palace.
The emperor declared he had never dined so well before. The court,
tempted by the more numerous courses, sat far longer at table. The
maids of honour got fresh bloom upon their cheeks, and the chamberlains
and equerries rounder faces; and most flourishing of all was the state
of the household expenses, although these diminished by one-half. In
short, every one, save cook and butler, was content; and all this was
the result of ‘a bottle of rum,’ from which the Emperor Alexander, when
heir to the crown, had been ordered by the physician to take a spoonful
for the toothache.”
Herr Jermann, who was manager of the imperial company of German actors
in St. Petersburg, frequently dined at the table of the “second
station,” or officials’ table. There were six dishes and a capital
dessert. He describes the “drinkables” as consisting of one bottle of
red and one of white wine, two bottles of beer, one of kislitschi,
and quass _ad libitum_. The dinner he speaks lightly of, as inferior
on the point of cookery to that of the best restaurants in the
capital. The wine was a light Burgundy; the beer heavy and Russian.
The kislitschi must have been a powerful crusher of the appetite, it
being a sour-sweet drink, prepared from honey, water, lemon-juice, and
a decoction of herbs. Quass is a plain, cheap beverage, the better
sort of which is extracted from malt, while an inferior sort is an
extract of bread-crusts. It is the national drink of the lower orders.
A stranger finds it at first detestable; but he not only soon becomes
reconciled to it, but generally prefers it to any other beverage,
especially in the brief scorching summer of St. Petersburg, when the
cooling properties of quass are its great recommendation.
To talk of the fierceness of a Russian summer seems paradoxical, but it
is simple truth; and probably the court of Naples itself, throughout
its long season of heat, does not consume so much ice as their
imperial Muscovite majesties do in the course of their slow-to-come,
quick-to-go, and sharp-while-it-lasts summer. Nay, the whole capital
eats ice at this season. Ice is thought such a “necessary” of life,
that the first question in taking a house is, probably, touching the
quality and capability of the ice-cellar, wherein they pack away as
much of the Neva as they can in solid blocks. They eat it and drink
it, surround their larders with it, and mix it with the water, beer,
quass--in short, with whatever they drink. Nay, more, when there is
a superabundance of the material, they place it under their beds and
on their stoves to cool their apartments. So tremendous is the dust
and heat of a Russian summer, that, for inconvenience, it is only
the opposite extreme of annoyance to that experienced in the wintry
visitations of frost. The ice-tubs of the popular vendors in the
streets are enveloped and covered with wet cloths, to protect them
from the heat of the sun. I need not say that this is _not_ the season
at which a visitor should resort to the capital. St. Petersburg in
January, and Naples in July, are the respective times and places to be
observed by those who can bear the consequences.
I do not know what may be the case with regard to the fruit eaten at
the imperial table; but, generally speaking, fruit is never eaten by a
Russian until it has been blest by a priest. Jermann, alluding to this
custom, praises it on sanitary grounds, for, he says, the fruit has no
chance of earning a benediction unless it be ripe; but if it then be
taken to church, the blessing is granted with much attendant solemnity.
I do not believe that the czars were ever accustomed to dine in such
state as the kaisers. The old emperors of Germany, on state occasions,
were waited on at dinner by the two happy feudatory princes of the
empire. On one of these occasions, we are told that old General
Dalzell, the terrible enemy of the Scottish Covenanters, was invited
to dine with the kaiser, and the prince-waiter nearest to him in
attendance was no less a personage than the Prince of Modena, head of
the house of Este. Some years afterwards, the Duke of York (James II.)
invited Dalzell to dine with himself and Mary of Modena. That proud
lady, however, made some show of reluctance to sit down _en famille_
with the old general; but the latter lowered her pride by telling her,
that he was not unacquainted with the greatness of the princes of
Modena, and that the last time he had sat at table with the Emperor of
Germany, a prince of that house was standing in attendance behind the
emperor’s chair.
There were other good points about Dalzell’s character; in proof of
which may be cited his dining with Dundas, an old Covenanting Scotch
laird, who would _not_ forego his long prayers before dinner, and who
especially prayed that Dalzell and his royal master might have their
hard hearts softened towards the Covenanting children of the Lord. When
the prayer was ended, and dinner about to begin, Dalzell complimented
his host on his courage in fearing man less than God. The anecdote
reminds me of one in connexion with a dinner given by a gentleman of
one of our “Protestant denominations,” in honour of the presence of
a new minister and his bride. Prayer preceded the repast, and it was
given by the host, who, introducing therein the welcomed strangers,
said, “We thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast conducted hither in safety
thy servants, our new minister and his wife. It is thou, O Lord, who
preservest both man and beast!” This was more like a kick than a
compliment; but it only called up a smile on the pretty features of the
minister’s lady.
Let us now cross the Atlantic, with Cortez and his companions, and
contemplate Montezuma in his household and at his table. Barbarian
as the Spanish invaders accounted him to be, he was superior in many
respects to most of his royal contemporaries in Europe. He was not less
magnificent than Solomon, and he was far more cleanly than Louis XIV.
On the terraced roof of his palace, thirty knights could tilt at
each other, without complaining of want of space. His armouries were
filled with weapons almost as destructive as any to be found in the
arsenals of civilized Christian kings. His granaries were furnished
with provisions paid by tributaries; three hundred servants tended the
beautiful birds of his aviaries; his menageries were the wonder and
terror of beholders; and his dwarfs were more hideous, and his ladies
more dazzling, than potentate had ever before looked upon with contempt
or admiration. His palace within and without was a marvel of Aztec art.
It was surrounded by gardens, glad with fountains and gay flowers. One
thousand ladies shared the retirement of this splendid locality, with
a master more glittering than anything by which he was environed,--who
changed his apparel four times daily, never putting on again a garment
he had once worn, and who, eating off and drinking from gold, (except
on state occasions, when his table was covered with services of
Cholulan porcelain,) never used a second time the vessels which had
once ministered to the indulgence of his appetite.
It is said eulogistically of his cooks, that they had thirty different
ways of preparing meat,--a poor boast, perhaps, compared with that of
the Parisian _chefs_, who have six hundred and eighty-five ways to
dress eggs! Three hundred dishes were daily placed before the monarch;
and such as were required to be kept hot at table were in heated
earthenware stands made for the purpose. And it is even asserted, that
this autocrat occasionally killed time before dinner by watching the
cooking of his viands, a practice in which, according to Peter Pinder,
that honest old English king used to indulge, who dined off boiled
mutton at two, and to whom the funniest sight in the world was the
clown in a pantomime swallowing carrots.
The ordinary dishes of Montezuma consisted of very dainty fare;
namely, domestic fowls, geese, partridges, quails, venison, Indian
hogs, pigeons, hares, rabbits, and other productions of his country,
including--it is alleged by some and denied by others--some very choice
dairy-fed baby, when this choice article happened to be in season! In
cold weather enormous torches, that flung forth not only light but
warmth and aromatic odours, lent additional splendour to the scene;
and to temper at once the glare and the heat, screens with deliciously
droll devices upon them, framed in gold, were placed before the
brilliant flame.
The sovereign sat, like his links, also protected by a screen. He was
not as barbarous as the most Christian kings of France, who fed in
public; nor was he personally tended like them by awkward Ganymedes
of a middle age. Four Hebes stood by the low throne and table of
their master, and these poured water on his hands, and offered him
the napkin, white as driven snow, or as the cloth on which the four
hundred dishes stood waiting his attention. Women as fair presented him
with bread; but even these fair ministers retired a few steps, when
his sacred majesty addressed himself to the common process of eating.
Then a number of ancient but sprightly nobles took their place. With
these Montezuma conversed; and, when he was particularly pleased with a
sage observation or a sprightly remark, a plate of pudding bestowed by
the royal hand made one individual happy, and all his fellows bitterly
jealous. The pudding, or whatever the dish might be, was eaten in
silent reverence; and while an Aztec emperor was at meat, no one in the
palace dared, at peril of his life, speak above his breath. Montezuma
is described as being but a moderate eater, but fond of fruits, and
indulging, with constraint upon his appetite, in certain drinks which
were of a stimulating quality, such as are found in countries where
civilization and luxury are at their highest.
“One thing I forgot, and no wonder,” says Bernal Diaz, “to mention in
its place, and that is, during the time Montezuma was at dinner, two
very beautiful women were busily employed making small cakes, with eggs
and other things mixed therein. These were delicately white, and when
made, they presented them to him on plates covered with napkins. Also,
another kind of bread was brought to him on long leaves, and plates
of cakes resembling wafers. After he had dined, they presented to him
three little canes, highly ornamented, containing liquid amber, mixed
with a herb they call tobacco; and when he had sufficiently viewed
and heard the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the
smoke of one of those canes, and then laid himself down to sleep. The
meal of the monarch ended, all his guards and attendants sat down to
dinner, and, as near as I could judge, about a thousand plates of those
eatables that I have mentioned, were laid before them, with vessels
of foaming chocolate, and fruit in immense quantities. For his women
and various inferior servants, his establishment was of a prodigious
expense, and we were astonished, amid such a profusion, at the vast
regularity that prevailed.”
What a contrast with the meal of this splendid barbarian is that of
princes of the same complexion, but of different race, the Arab! We
may fittingly include among sovereigns those Arab princes whose word,
if it be not heeded far, is promptly obeyed within the little circle
of their rule. Skins on the ground serve for table-cloths; the dishes
are, in their contents, only the reflection of each other, and in the
centre of the array whole lambs or sheep lie boiled or roasted. The
chief and his followers dine in successive relays of company. Sometimes
the skin is spread before the door of the tent, whether in a street or
in the plain, and the passers-by, even to the beggars, invited with
a “Bismillah,” In God’s name, fall to; and having eaten, exclaim,
“Hamdallilah!” God be praised! and go their way.
Not less may we include, in the roll of Majesty at Meat, those Pilgrim
Fathers who were the pioneers of civilization and liberty in America.
Scant indeed was the table of that “sovereign people,” until they found
security to sow seed, and reap the harvest in something like peace. The
first meal which they enjoyed, after long months of labour, disease,
and famine, was when they had constructed the little fort at Plymouth,
behind which they might eat in safety and thankfulness. “The captain,”
says Mr. Bartlett, in his “Pilgrim Fathers,” “had brought with him ‘a
very fat goose,’ and those on shore had ‘a fat crane, and a mallard,’
and ‘a dried neat’s tongue.’ This fare was, no doubt, washed down
with good English beer and strong waters; and thus, notwithstanding
the gloom that hung over them, the day passed cheerfully and sociably
away.” Such was the first official dinner of the “majesty of the
people” beyond the Atlantic.
And having got to the “majesty of the people,” I am reminded of a
“popular majesty,” the citizen king, Louis Philippe. He was a monarch
economically minded, and kept the most modest yet not worst furnished
of tables. His family often sate down before he arrived, detained as
he often was by state affairs. When all rose as he quietly entered the
dining-room, his stereotyped phrase was, “Que personne ne se dérange
pour moi,” and therewith ensued as little ceremony as when “William
Smith” and his household sate down to an uncrowned dinner at the little
inn at Newhaven.
They who are curious to see how admirably Louis Philippe was
constituted for making a poor-law commissioner, or a parochial
relieving overseer, should peruse the graphic biography of the king
written by Alexander Dumas. Therein is a list, made out by the monarch,
of what he thought was sufficient for the table of the princes and
princesses; and Louis of Orleans condescends to name the number of
plates of soup, or cups of coffee, that he deemed sufficient for the
requirement and support of the younger branches of his house. It shows
that the soul of a crafty “gargottier” was in the body of the citizen
king. But we have not yet contemplated the appearance and behaviour of
our own sovereigns at table, out of respect for whom we now allot a
chapter, but a brief one, to themselves.
ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES.
The utilitarians of history have declared that half our treasured
incidents of story are myths. Rufus was not slain by Sir Walter
Tyrrell; Richard III. was a marvellously proper man; and the young
princes were not smothered in the Tower. They have laid their hands on
our legends, as Augustus did his on the nose of the dead Alexander,
and with the same effect,--under the touch it crumbled into dust. The
infidels refuse even to have faith in that table trait of Alfred, which
showed him making cakes, or rather marring them, in the neatherd’s
cottage. Mr. Wilkie may have prettily painted the incident, but its
existence, anywhere but on canvas and in the poet’s brain, they
ruthlessly deny. I do not know but that they are right.
We march into the bowels of more trustworthy ground, when we pass the
frontier of the Roman period. William the Norman we know had a huge
appetite for venison; and the Saxon chronicler says, that he loved the
“high deer” as if he had been their father, which is but an equivocal
compliment to his paternal affection. His table indulgences cost the
life of hundreds, and the ruin of tens of hundreds. It brought on
corpulency; his corpulency begot a poor joke in Philip of France;
and of this joke was born such wrath in the soul of William, that he
carried fire and sword into that kingdom, and was cut short in his
career, ere he had accomplished the full measure of his revenge.
Rufus was as fat as his father, and as majestic both in his oaths
and his appetites. To every passion he yielded himself a slave; and
he feasted, like so many who would affect to be disgusted at his
dishonesty, without troubling himself as to who “suffered.” He never
paid a creditor whom he could cheat; and again, like many of the same
class, he was most affable at table; his drinking companions were on
an equality with him; and in such fellowship, over gross food and huge
goblets mantling to the brim, he cut unclean jokes on his own unclean
deeds, at which his servile and drunken hearers roared consumedly, and
swore he was a god. There was some grandeur in his ideas, however,
for he built Westminster Hall, as a vestibule to a palace, wherein he
intended to hold high revel such as the world had never seen; and a
vestibule it has now become, but to a palace wherein sits a different
sort of dignity to that dreamed of by the low-statured, fat, fierce,
and huge feeding Rufus.
All the Norman kings were fearful objects at which to fling jokes; and
the appetite of Henry I. was ruined, and his sanguinary ire aroused,
by a derisive passage in a poem by Luke de Barré. The king made the
table shake as he declared that he would let wretched versifiers know
what they were to expect if they offended the King of England; and
Barré suffered the loss of his eyes. Henry ate and drank none the less
joyously for the dead. But _Beauclerc_ was a more refined _gastronome_
than his brothers, as befitted his name; and though in many respects
his court was horribly licentious, yet when he went from one demesne
to another, to consume its revenues upon the spot, the feasting there
seems to have been attended by as much moderation as merriment.