_Wherein the Gentle Art of Dining is Variously Described._
"Move back, Lonnegan, and let me get at it!" cried MacWhirter the next
afternoon. "You jab a fire as if it were something you wanted to kill!
Coddle it a little, like this," and Mac laid the warm cheeks of two logs
together and a sputtering of hot kisses filled the hearth.
"Don't call him 'Lonnegan,' Mac, in that rude and boisterous way,"
expostulated Boggs. "It jars on his Royal Highness's finer
sensibilities. Say 'Mr. Lonnegan, will you have the kindness to remove
your beautiful and well-groomed and fashionable carcass until I can add
a stick or two to my fire?' Lonnegan has been in society--out every
night this week, I hear."
Mac replaced the tongs and straightened his back, his face turned toward
Lonnegan.
"Were you really on exhibition, Lonny?" Mac's impatience never lasts
many seconds.
The architect nodded, then answered slowly:
"Five dinners and a tea."
"All rich houses, I suppose?"
"Very rich."
"And all wanted plans for country seats, of course?"
"Some of them--two, I think."
"Extra dry champagne, under-done canvas-backs and costly terrapin served
every five minutes?"
"No. Extra dry canvas-backs, done-over terrapin, and cheap champagne.
Served but once, thank God!"
"Wore your swell clothes, I presume?"
"Yes, swallow-tail on me every night and a head on me every morning,"
answered Lonnegan with a grave face. "Why do you ask, Mac?"
"Oh, just to keep in touch with the history of my country, old man."
While the two men talked, Pitkin and Van Brunt walked in--the latter a
Dutch painter in New York for the winter, just arrived by steamer. The
atmosphere of No. 3 was evidently congenial to the man, for, after a
hand-shake all round, the Hollander produced his own pipe, filled it
from a leather pouch in his pocket, and sat down before the fire as
unconcerned and as contented as if he'd been one of the fire's circle
from the day of its lighting. Good Bohemians, so called the world over,
have an international code of manners, just as all club men of equal
class agree upon certain details of dress and etiquette, no matter what
their tongue. The brush, the chisel, the trowel, and the test-tube are
so many talismans--open sesames to the whole fraternity.
The Hollander had overheard the last half of Mac's sally and Lonnegan's
grave rejoinder.
"Yes, the terrapin and the canvas-back, I hear much of them. What does a
terrapin look like, Mr. Lonnegan?"
"A terrapin, Van Brunt," interrupted Boggs, "is a hide-bound little
beast that sleeps in the mud, is as ugly as the devil, and can bite a
tenpenny nail in two with his teeth when he's awake. When he is boiled
and picked clean, and served with Madeira, he is the most toothsome
compound known to cookery."
"Correctly described, Boggs--'compound' is good," said Lonnegan. "The
up-to-date-modern-millionnaire-terrapin, Mr. Van Brunt, is a reptile
compounded of glue, chicken-bones, chopped calf's head, and old
India-rubber shoes. When ready for use it tastes like flour paste served
in hot flannel. I may be wrong about the chopped calf's head, but I'm
all right about the India-rubber shoes. I've been eating them this
week, and part of a heel is still here"--and he tapped his shirt-front.
"And the canvas-back?" continued Van Brunt, laughing. "It is a duck, is
it not?"
"Occasionally a duck--I speak, of course, of tables where I have
dined--but seldom a canvas-back."
"And they live in the marshes, I hear, and feed on the wild celery--do
they not?"
"No; they live in a cold storage six months in the year, and feed on
sawdust and ice," replied Lonnegan with the face of a stone god.
"Hard life, isn't it?" remarked Boggs to the circle at large.
"For the duck?" asked Pitkin.
"No--for Lonnegan. Orders for country houses come high."
"Serves him right!" ventured Marny. "No business eating such messes;
ought to get back to----"
"Hog and hominy," interrupted Lonnegan, still with the same grave face.
"Both. That's what most of your millionnaires were brought up on."
Pitkin sprang from his seat, and, thrusting both hands into his pockets,
burst out with--
"Gentlemen, you really don't know what good eating is! The taste for
terrapin and canvas-back is part of the degeneration of the age; so is
it for truffles, mushrooms, caviare, and a lot of such messes. The
French, whose cuisine we imitate, turn out a lot of flat-chested,
spindle-shanks on sauces and ragouts. We'll go to the devil in the same
way if we follow their cooks. The English raise the highest standard of
man on tough bread and the most insipid boiled mutton in the world. What
we have got to do is to get back to our plain old-fashioned kitchens.
The best dinner I ever had in my life was when I was sixteen years old,
and even now, whenever I get a whiff from a shop where they are cooking
the same combination, I can no more pass it than a drunkard can pass a
rum-mill."
"Drunk on pork and beans!" growled Boggs in a low voice to Marny. "I
knew you'd come to no good end, Pitkin. You ought to sign a pledge and
join a non-adulterated food society."
"Something better than pork and beans, you beggar!" retorted
Pitkin--"something that makes my mouth water every time I think of it.
And hungry! the prodigal son was an over-fed alderman to me; real
gnawing, empty kind of hunger."
Ford stood up and faced the circle.
"The great sculptor, gentlemen, is about to tell us what he knows of
biblical history. Silence!"
"I had been out gunning all day----"
"I didn't know you were a sportsman," interpolated Boggs.
"I had been gunning all day," Pitkin repeated firmly, ignoring the
Chronic Interrupter, "and had lost my way over the mountains. Just about
dark I reached the valley and made for a small cabin with a curl of
smoke coming out of the chimney. As I came nearer I got a whiff from a
fry-pan that made me ravenous--one of those smells you never forget to
your dying day. As I opened the gate I could see the glow of a fire in
the stove, the smell getting stronger every minute. Inside, I found a
man sitting in his shirt-sleeves by a table. The table had two plates on
it, two knives, two forks, and two big china cups. Bending over the hot
stove was his wife. She was stirring a large bowl filled to the brim
with buckwheat batter. On the stove was a hot griddle and a fry-pan, and
coiled in the fry-pan, trim as a rope coiled flat on a yacht's deck, lay
a string of link sausages, with the bight of the line sticking up in the
centre, like Mac's thumb.
"'Are you Pitkin's boy?' the man said, after I had explained.
"'Yes.'
"'Sit down and eat'
"The old man had two cakes, and I had two cakes. They were griddled in
fours, and we both had a link of sausage with each instalment. I never
moved from my chair until the tide-mark oh the bowl had gone down five
inches, and the core of the sausages looked as if a solid shot had
struck it. That smell! and the way it all tasted, and the little brown
frazzlings around the edges of the celestial cakes, and the sizzlings of
fat on the sausages, and the boiling hot coffee that washed it all down!
Oh, go to with your Delmonico dishes! Give me the days of my youth! If I
had but four breaths left in me, and if somebody should pass that pan of
sausages under my nose, I could rise up and whip my weight in wild-cats.
And yet that smell doesn't bring to my memory the way my hunger was
satisfied, or how the food tasted. What I recall is the low-ceiled room,
and the glow of the fire; the warmth and comfort everywhere, and the
high light on the old Frau's face bending over her griddle. You'd just
love to have painted that old woman, Mac."
The Hollander had listened quietly and without comment, both to
Lonnegan's chaff and to Pitkin's enthusiastic recital.
"Ah, yes, you are quite right, Mr. Pitkin; after all, it is the
imagination that is fed, not the stomach."
The measured tones of the speaker's voice at once commanded attention;
even Boggs twisted his head to catch his words:
"It is his imagination, too, which suffers when a man loses his money
and becomes poor. What he misses most, then, is not his horses and
carriages and fine houses; it is his table, and the clean napkins and
the linen, and hot plates and the quite thin glasses. Is it not so? I
can think of nothing more satisfying than a well-appointed table, with
the servants about and the dishes properly served, and with the flowers,
silver, and glass, the better wines coming later, the coffee and cigar
at the end. And I can think of nothing more pitiful than for a man who
has had all this, to be obliged to stand at a cheap counter and eat a
cheap sandwich. My father used to tell me a story about the spendthrift
son of an old baron who lived in my town, by the name of De Ruyter, and
who spent in just two years every guilder his father left him. Then came
roulette, and at last he was a tout for gaming-houses--so poor that he
had but one coat to his back. All this time, having been born a
gentleman, he managed to keep himself clean, his clothes brushed and
mended, and his shirt and collar ironed. That is quite difficult for a
man who is poor.
"One day an old friend of his dead father's, a very rich man, took pity
on him, and asked him to call at his house so that he might arrange to
get him work. He received him in his library and rang for cigars and
brandy, which his servant brought on a silver plate. The brandy the poor
fellow drank, but the cigar he begged permission to put in his pocket
and smoke later in the day. It was one of those great cigars the rich
Hollanders smoke, about as long as your hand and thick like two fingers.
This one had a little band around it, with the coat of arms of the
gentleman stamped in gold; not a cigar you can buy even in Amsterdam,
but a cigar made especially for very big customers like this one.
"When young De Ruyter went out from the library he carried a letter to a
merchant on the dock, which got for him a situation at ten guilders a
week, and this big cigar. All the way to his lodgings in the garret he
kept his hand on it as it lay flat in his waist-coat-pocket. At every
street corner he took it out carefully to see that it was not mashed or
broken. When he pushed in his room door he began to look around for a
place to put it. He was afraid to carry it around with him for fear of
crushing it. At last he saw a crack in the plaster just above the bed,
showing two open laths. He wrapped it most carefully in paper and laid
it in the opening; here it would be dry and out of danger; here he could
always be sure that it was safe. Then he presented his letter and went
to work for the merchant on the dock.
"All that week he waited for Saturday night, when he would get his first
ten guilders, and all that week before he went to sleep he would take a
look at the cigar to be sure it was there. Every morning when he awoke
he did the same thing. When Saturday night came, and the money was laid
in his hand, he hurried to his garret, washed himself clean, brushed the
only coat he owned, took out the precious cigar, laid it on his bed
where it would be safe while he finished dressing, put his hat on one
side of his head in his old rakish way, gave a look at himself in the
broken glass, and downstairs he goes humming a tune to himself. He was
very happy. Now he would have the best dinner he had had for months, and
feel like a gentleman once more. And the cigar! Ah, that would end it
all up! You see, gentlemen, with us the whole dinner is only the cigar;
everything is arranged most carefully for that.
"Then De Ruyter walks into Van Hoesen's, the largest cafe we have in my
town; stands until the head waiter recognizes him and comes over to his
side; orders with his old magnificent manner the wines, the soup, the
entrees, even the anchovies after the sweets--that is a custom of
ours--the whole costing ten guilders, with one guilder to the waiter.
When it was served he sat himself down, opened his napkin, tipped the
newspaper where he could glance at it, and ate very slowly like a man of
leisure.
"When the coffee was passed the head waiter brought to him an assortment
of cigars on a tray, some one guilder each, some five cents. De Ruyter
pushed them away with a contemptuous wave of the hand, saying, 'There is
nothing you have to my taste; I will smoke my own.'
"The great moment had now arrived. He paid his bill, ordered a fresh
candle, waited until the head waiter, whose guilder had made him all the
more obsequious, had lighted it and stood waiting where he could see,
and then slipped his hand into his inside pocket for the cigar. It was
not there! Then he remembered that he had not taken it from the bed.
"He ran all the way home. There lay the cigar on the blanket. The next
instant it was on the floor and under his heel.
"'Lie there, damn you!' he said, crushing it to pieces. 'You have
spoiled my dinner!'
* * * * *
"You see, gentlemen, it was not the hunger of the empty stomach; it was
a starved imagination that was ravenous like a wolf. Ah, cannot you feel
for the poor fellow? All the week hungry, one great idea of the dignity
of rank in his mind, and then to have his triumph spoiled, and under the
eyes of the head waiter, too! And such beasts of waiters they are at
home, with their eyes seeing everything and their tongues never still!
My father, when he would tell the story, would tap his chair and say,
'Ah, poor devil! such a pity--such a pity he forgot it! It would have
tasted so good to him!' That was a word of my father's--'He forgot
it--he forgot it,' he would say, shaking his finger at us."
"All to the credit of your father, Van Brunt," burst out Marny; "but if
you want my candid opinion of your blue-blooded, busted baron, I think
he was a selfish brute, without the first glimmer of what a gentleman
should have done under such circumstances, and I leave it to everybody
here to decide whether I'm right or wrong. What he ought to have done
was to hunt around for some of his friends, order a dinner for two, hand
his friend the cigar and take a cheap one from the waiter for himself.
What you call 'fine eating' has nothing to do with either the stomach or
with the imagination. Fine eating is an excuse for good fellowship; when
you don't have that, it is a 'stalled ox' and the rest of it. What you
want is to open with a laugh and eat straight through to that same kind
of music. All the good dinners in the world were jolly dinners; all the
poor ones were funeral gatherings, no matter how good the cooking. I'll
give you an idea of what a good dinner ought to be. None of your
selfish, solitary-confinement sort of a meal like this self-centred
Dutchman's, but a rip-roaring, waistcoat-swelling, breath-catching,
hilarious feast, which began with a hurrah, continued with every man
singing psalms of thanksgiving over the dishes and the company, and
ended with a tempest of good cheer and everybody loving everybody else
twice as much for having come together."
"Clam-chowder club, of course," growled Boggs, "with a brass band and a
cord of firewood, and three-legged stools to sit on."
Marny glared at the Chronic Interrupter, made a movement with his hand
as if to compel his silence, and continued:
"We had eaten nothing since breakfast but five raw clams apiece,
and----"
"Where was all this, Marny, anyhow?" asked Boggs.
"Down at Uncle Jesse Conklin's, on Cap Tree Island," retorted Marny
impatiently.
"All right--sounded as if it might be at a summer boarding-house. Go
ahead!"
"No, down on Great South Bay. The Stone Mugs had an outing and I went
along. These clams coming on an empty stomach and being right out of the
salt water and fresh and cold----"
"Mixed in your statements, old man: can't be salt and fresh at the same
time. But go on! So far we've only got five clams to be hilarious
on----"
Marny reached over and grabbed Boggs by the collar.
"Will you shut up, or shall I throw you over the banisters?"
"I'll shut up--like your clam; won't say another word, so help me!" and
Boggs held up one hand as if to be sworn.
"These clams," continued Marny, releasing his hold on Boggs's collar,
"coming as they did on an empty stomach, made every man ravenous. French
shrimps, Dutch pickles, and Swedish anchovies--all the appetizers you
ever heard of--were mild compared to them. Uncle Jesse had opened them
himself, the ten men standing around taking the contents of each shell
from the end of Uncle Jesse's fork and then waiting their turns until
the fork came their way again. All this was under a shed in full view of
the harbor and the old man's boats and buildings.
"When the sun went down we went into the bar-room, and Uncle Jesse
compounded a mixture which made an afternoon call on the five clams, and
by that time we could have eaten each other. Six o'clock came, and no
signs of anything. Half past six, and not the faintest smell of fried,
boiled, or roasted: no hurrying waiters in sight; no maids in aprons;
nothing indicating any preparation or any place for it to preparate in
unless it was a room behind a small white-pine door which Uncle Jesse
had locked in full view of the hungry crowd. Only once did he explain
this mystery; that was when he jerked his thumb in the direction of the
vacancy on the other side of the panels, and remarked sententiously,
'Won't be long now.'
"Soon a wild misgiving arose in our minds. Had anything happened to the
cook, or would the simple repast--we had left the details to Uncle
Jesse--consist of only clams and cocktails?
"All this time Uncle Jesse was patient and polite, but almighty
mysterious. Bets now began to be made in whispers by the men: It would
be thin oyster soup, pumpkin pies, and cider; or cold corn beef and
preserves; or, worse still, codfish balls and griddle-cakes. Seven
o'clock came--seven-five--seven-ten. Then a gong sounded in the next
room, and Uncle Jesse sprang to the door, raised one hand while the
other fumbled with the lock, and shouted as he swung back the door:
"'Solid men to the front!'
"You should have seen that table! One long perspective of
bliss--porter-house steak and broiled blue-fish--porter-house steak and
broiled blue-fish--porter-house steak and broiled blue-fish down to the
end of the table; and alongside each plate a quart of extra-dry,
frappeed to half a degree, and a pint of Burgundy the temperature of
your sweet-heart's hand! All about were heaps of home-made bread and
flakes of butter, and--Oh, that table!
"We stood paralyzed for a moment, and then sent up a roaring cheer that
nearly lifted the roof. Uncle Jesse wasn't going to sit down, but we
grabbed him by the shoulders and started him on the run for the end of
the table, and there he sat until only heaps of bones and dead bottles
marked the scene of action. Whenever a man could get his breath he broke
out in song, everybody joining in. 'Oh, dem golden fritters!' was
chanted to an accompaniment of clattering forks on empty plates, the
cook and his staff craning their heads through the door and helping out
with a double shuffle of their own.
"Coffee was served in the bar-room, and all filed out to drink it,
every man full to his eyelids and saturated with a contentment that only
Long Island blue-fish and Fulton Market steak with the necessary liquids
and solids could produce.
"While we smoked on and sipped our coffee, Uncle Jesse's silences became
more frequent, and soon the old fellow dozed off to sleep. He was over
seventy then, and was used to having a nap after dinner.
"Now came the best part of the feast. Every man tiptoed out of the room,
overhauled his sketch-trap, took out charcoal, color tubes and brushes,
red chalk, whatever came handy, and started in to work--some standing on
chairs above where the old man sat sound asleep, others working away
like mad on the coarse, whitewashed walls, making portraits of
him--sketches of the landing and fish houses we had seen during our
waiting--outlines of the bar and background, no one breathing loud or
even whispering, so afraid they would wake him--until every square foot
of the walls were covered with sketches. When we were through, someone
coughed, and the old man sat up and began to rub his eyes. Pleased!
Well, I should think so! He gave one bound, made a tour of the room
studying each sketch, dodged under his bar and began to set up things,
and would have continued to set up things all night had we permitted it.
Every spring after that, when he rewhitewashed the old room, he would
work carefully around each sketch, the new whitewash making a mat for
the pictures. People came for miles up and down the bay to see them, and
there was more extra-dry and trimmings sold that summer than ever
before. Ever after that, whenever a friend of any member of the Stone
Mugs went ashore at Cap Tree Island, and after settling his score
mentioned incidentally that he knew So-and-So of the Mugs, and had heard
of the wonderful dinner, etc., the old man would always push his money
back to him with:
"'Not a cent--not a cent! Stay a week and order what you want, and if
you don't want everything in the house I'll get my gun.'"
"Haven't got a time-table, have you, Marny," asked Boggs feelingly, "of
the boat that goes to Cap Tree Island?"
"Do you no good, Boggs," answered Jack Stirling. "The old man has been
in heaven these ten years. I knew his broiled blue-fish--none better.
Marny is right--they were wonderful. But really, Marny, do you call that
a good dinner?--ten men, fifteen bottles of assorted wines, five steaks,
five broiled fish, and----"
"Well, what else would you call it? What would you want?" retorted
Marny.
"What else? Oh, my dear Marny! and you ask that question!"
"Wasn't there enough to eat?"
"Plenty."
"Wine all right?"
"Perfect."
"Jolly crowd of the best fellows in the world?"
"Yes."
"What then?"
"What then, you fish-monger? Why, just one woman! Let me tell you of a
dinner!"
Jack was on his feet now, his hand outstretched, his eyes partly closed
as if the scene he was about to describe lay immediately beneath his
gaze.
"It was on a balcony overlooking St. Cloud--all Paris swimming in a
golden haze. There were violets--and a pair of long gray gloves on the
white cloth--and a wide-brimmed hat crowned with roses, shading a pair
of brown eyes. Oh! such eyes! 'A pint of Chablis,' I said to the waiter;
'sole a la Marguerey, some broiled mushrooms, and a fruit salad--and
please take the candles away; we prefer the twilight.'
"But the perfume of the violets--and the lifting of her lashes--and the
way she looked at me, and----"
[Illustration: But the perfume of the violets and the way she looked at
me.]
Jack stopped, bent over, and gazed into the smouldering coals of the now
dying fire.
"Go on, Jack," urged Pitkin in an encouraging tone--they had lived
together in the same studio in the Quartier, these two, and knew each
other's lives as they did their own pockets,--or each other's, for that
matter.
"No, I'm not going on--only waste it on you fellows. That's all. Just
one of my memories, my boy. But it comes from wet violets, mark you, not
from fry-pans, cold bottles, or hot fish," and he glanced at Marny.