_Cookery and Civilization._ It is only after passing through an ordeal
cruelly insidious, tolerably severe, and rather protracted, that we feel
conscientiously entitled to assert our ability to dine every day of
every week at the Reform Club, without jeopardy to those immutable
principles which are incorruptible by Whigs and indestructible by Rats.
A sneer, perhaps, is curling with “beautiful disdain” the lips of some
Conservative Achilles. Let us nip his complacent sense of
invulnerability in the bud. To eat and to err are equally attributes of
humanity. Looking at ourselves in the mirror of honest criticism, we
behold features as unchangeable as sublunary vicissitudes will allow.
“Time writes no wrinkles on our azure brow.”
Witness it! ye many years of wondrous alternation--of lurid tempest and
sunny calm--of disastrous rout and triumphant procession--of shouting
pæan and wailing dirge--witness the imperturbable tenor of our way!
Attest it, thou goodly array of the tomes of Maga, laden and sparkling,
now as ever, with wisdom and wit, science and fancy!--attest the
unwavering fidelity of our career! All this is very true; but the secret
annals of the good can never be free from temptations, and never are in
reality unblotted by peccadilloes. The fury of the demagogue has been
our laughing-stock--the versatility of trimming politicians, our scorn.
We have crouched before none of the powers which have been, or be;
neither have we been carried off our feet by the whirlwinds of popular
passion. Yet it is difficult to resist a good dinner. The victories of
Miltiades robbed Themistocles of sleep. The triumphs of Soyer are apt to
affect us, “with a difference,” after the same fashion.
There was, we remember, a spirit of surly independence within us on
visiting, for the first time, the “high capital” of Whiggery, where the
Tail at present,
“New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs.”
To admire anything was not our mood:
“The ascending pile
Stood fix’d her stately heighth; and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces, o’er the smooth
And level pavement.”
And as these lines suggested themselves, we recollected who the first
Whig is said to have been, and whose architectural glories Milton was
recording. We never yet heard a Radical disparage a peer of the realm
without being convinced, that deep in the pocket, next his heart, lay an
incautious hospitable invitation from the noble lord, to which a
precipitate answer in the affirmative had already been dispatched.
Analogously, in the magnificent edifice, whose tesselated floor we were
treading gingerly, it seemed to us that we surveyed an unmistakable
monument of an innate predilection for the splendours and comforts, the
pomp and the _abandon_, of a “proud aristocracy.” This was before
dinner, and we were hungry. To tell all that happened to us for some
hours afterwards, would, in fact, force us to transfer to our pages more
than half of the volume which is prompting these observations. Suffice
it to say, that when we again stood on Pall-Mall, a bland philanthropy
of sentiment, embracing all races, and classes, and sects of men,
permeated our bosom. Whence came the mellowing influence, seeing that we
had been, as our custom is, very innocent of wine? Nor could it be the
seductive eloquence of the company. We had, indeed, been roundly
vituperated in argument by the Liberator. Oh, yes! but we had been fed
by the Regenerator.
To us, then, on these things much meditating--so Cicero and Brougham
love to write--many of the speculations in which we had indulged, and
of the principles which we had advocated, were obviously not quite in
harmony with the views long inculcated by us on a docile public.
Suddenly the truth flashed across and illuminated the perplexity of our
ponderings. We were aware that, early in the evening, a much milder
censure than usual upon some factious Liberal manœuvre had passed our
lips. This took place just about the fourth spoonful of soup. The spells
were already in operation under the shape of “_potage à la Marcus
Hill_.” There is a fascination even in the name of this “delicious
soup”--such is the epithet of Soyer--which our readers will better
understand in the sequel. Again it was impossible to deny that we had
hazarded several equivocal observations in reference to the
Palmerstonian policy in Syria. But it was equally true that such
inadvertencies slipped from us while laboriously engaged in determining
a delicate competition between “_John Dorée à l’Orléannaise_” and
“_saumon à la Beyrout_.” A transient compliment to the influence at
elections of the famous Duchess of Devonshire was little liable to
objection, we imagined, during a playful examination of a few
“_aiguillettes de volaille à la jolie fille_.” More questionable, it
must be admitted, were certain assertions regarding the Five Points,
enunciated hastily over a “_neck of mutton à la Charte_.” No fault,
however, had we to find with the cutting facetiousness with which we had
garnished “_cotelettes d’agneau à la réforme en surprise aux
champignons_.” The title of this dish was so ludicrously applicable to
the consternation of the remnants of the Melbourne ministry--the cutlets
of lamb--in finding themselves outrun in the race by mushroom
free-traders, that our pleasantly thereanent was irresistible. It was
difficult, at the same time, to justify the expression of an opinion,
infinitely too favorable to Peel’s commercial policy, yielding to the
allurements of a “_turban des cailles à la financière_.” And, on the
whole, we smarted beneath a consciousness that all our conversation had
been perceptibly flavoured by “_filets de bécasses à la Talleyrand_.”
The result of these reflections was, simply, an alarming conviction of
the tremendous influence exercised by Soyer throughout all the workings
of the British constitution. The causes of the success of the League
begin to dawn upon us, while our gravest suspicions are confirmed by the
appearance, at this peculiar crisis, of ‘The Gastronomic Regenerator.’
What patriotism can withstand a superabundance of untaxed food, cooked
according to the tuition of Soyer? How can public virtue keep its ground
against such a rush of the raw material, covered by such a “_batterie de
cuisine_?” Cobden and Soyer, in alliance, have given a new turn, and
terribly literal power, to the fable of Menenius Agrippa.
“There was a time when all the body’s members
Rebell’d against the belly.”