Food is a subject of conversation more spiritually refreshing
even than the weather, for the number of possible remarks about
the weather is limited, whereas of food you can talk on and on
and on. Moreover, no heat of controversy is induced by mention of
the atmospheric conditions (seeing that we are all agreed as to
what is a good day and what is a bad one), and where there can be
no controversy there can be no intimacy in agreement. But tastes
in food differ so sharply (as has been well said in Latin and, I
believe, also in French) that a pronounced agreement in them is
of all bonds of union the most intimate. Thus, if a man hates
tapioca pudding he is a good fellow and my friend.
To each his favourite meal. But if I say that lunch is mine I do
not mean that I should like lunch for breakfast, dinner, and tea;
I do not mean that of the four meals (or five, counting supper)
lunch is the one which I most enjoy--at which I do myself most
complete justice. This is so far from being true that I
frequently miss lunch altogether ... the exigencies of the
journalistic profession. To-day, for instance, I shall probably
miss it. No; what I mean is that lunch is the meal which in the
abstract appeals to me most because of its catholicity.
We breakfast and dine at home, or at other people's homes, but we
give ourselves up to London for lunch, and London has provided an
amazing variety for us. We can have six courses and a bottle of
champagne, with a view of the river, or one poached egg and a box
of dominoes, with a view of the skylights; we can sit or we can
stand, and without doubt we could, if we wished, recline in the
Roman fashion; we can spend two hours or five minutes at it; we
can have something different, every day of the week, or cling
permanently (as I know one man to do) to a chop and chips--and
what you do with the chips I have never discovered, for they
combine so little of nourishment with so much of inconvenience
that Nature can never have meant them for provender. Perhaps as
counters. ... But I am wandering from my theme.
There is this of romance about lunch, that one can imagine great
adventures with stockbrokers, actor-managers, publishers, and
other demigods to have had their birth at the luncheon table. If
it is a question of "bulling" margarine or "bearing" boot-polish,
if the name for the new play is still unsettled, if there is some
idea of an American edition--whatever the emergency, the final
word on the subject is always the same, "Come and have lunch with
me, and we'll talk it over"; and when the waiter has taken your
hat and coat, and you have looked diffidently at the menu, and in
reply to your host's question, "What will you drink?" have made
the only possible reply, "Oh, anything that you're drinking"
(thus showing him that you don't insist on a bottle to yourself)-
-THEN you settle down to business, and the history of England is
enlarged by who can say how many pages.
And not only does one inaugurate business matters at lunch, but
one also renews old friendships. Who has not had said to him in
the Strand, "Hallo, old fellow, I haven't seen you for ages; you
must come and lunch with me one day"? And who has not answered,
"Rather! I should love to," and passed on with a glow at the
heart which has not died out until the next day, when the
incident is forgotten? An invitation to dinner is formal, to tea
unnecessary, to breakfast impossible, but there is a casualness,
very friendly and pleasant, about invitations to lunch which make
them complete in themselves, and in no way dependent on any lunch
which may or may not follow.
Without having exhausted the subject of lunch in London (and I
should like to say that it is now certain that I shall not have
time to partake to-day), let us consider for a moment lunch in
the country. I do not mean lunch in the open air, for it is
obvious that there is no meal so heavenly as lunch thus eaten,
and in a short article like this I have no time in which to dwell
upon the obvious. I mean lunch at a country house. Now, the most
pleasant feature of lunch at a country house is this--that you
may sit next to whomsoever you please. At dinner she may be
entrusted to quite the wrong man; at breakfast you are faced with
the problem of being neither too early for her nor yet too late
for a seat beside her; at tea people have a habit of taking your
chair at the moment when a simple act of courtesy has drawn you
from it in search of bread and butter; but at lunch you follow
her in and there you are--fixed.
But there is a place, neither London nor the country, which
brings out more than any other place all that is pleasant in
lunch. It was really the recent experience of this which set me
writing about lunch. Lunch in the train! It should be the "second
meal"--about 1.30-- because then you are really some distance
from London and are hungry. The panorama flashes by outside,
nearer and nearer comes the beautiful West; you cross rivers and
hurry by little villages, you pass slowly and reverently through
strange old towns ... and, inside, the waiter leaves the potatoes
next to you and slips away.
Well, it is his own risk. Here goes. ... What I say is that, if a
man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of
fellow.