"Come hither, come hither, the broom was in blossom all over
yon rise,
There went a wild murmur of brown bees about it with songs from
the wood.
We shall never be younger, O Love! let us forth to the world
'neath our eyes--
Ay! the world is made young, e'en as we, and right fair is her
youth, and right good."
Appetites flourish in the free air of hills and meadows, and after
drinking in the ozone of the sea, one feels like drinking something
else. There is a very good story of a reverend bishop who with a
friend went a-fishing, like Peter, and being very thirsty essayed to
draw the cork of a claret bottle. In his zeal he struck his bottle
against a stone, and the claret oozed out to refresh the thirsty
earth, instead of that precious porcelain of human clay of which the
bishop was made. His remark to his friend was, "James, you are a
layman, why don't you say something?"
Now to avoid having our layman or our reverend wish to say something,
let us try to suggest what they should eat and what they should drink.
There are many kinds of picnics,--fashionable ones at Newport and
other watering-places, where the French waiters of the period are told
to get up a repast as if at the Casino; there are clam-bakes which are
ideal, and there are picnics at Lenox and at Sharon, where the hotel
keeper will help to fill the baskets.
But the real picnic, which calls for talent and executive ability,
should emanate from some country house, where two or three other
country houses co-operate and help. Then what jolly drives in the
brakes, what queer old family horses and antediluvian wagons, what
noble dog-carts, and what prim pony phaetons can join in the
procession. The day should be fine, and the place selected a hillside
with trees, commanding a fine view. This is at least desirable. The
necessity for a short walk, a short scramble after leaving the horses,
should not be disregarded.
The night before the picnic, which presumably starts early, the lady
of the house should see to it that a boiled ham of perfect flavour is
in readiness, and she may flank it with a boiled tongue, four roasted
chickens, a game pie, and any amount of stale bread to cut into
sandwiches.
Now a sandwich can be at once the best and the worst thing in the
world, but to make it the best the bread should be cut very thin, the
butter, which must be as fresh as a cowslip, should be spread with
deft fingers, then a slice of ham as thin as a wafer with not too much
fat must be laid between, with a _soupçon_ of mustard. The prepared
ham which comes in cans is excellent for making sandwiches. Cheese
sandwiches, substituting a thin slice of American fresh cheese for the
ham, are delicious, and some rollicking good-livers toast the cheese.
Tongue, cold beef, and even cold sausages make excellent varieties of
sandwich. To prevent their becoming the "sand which is under your
feet" cover them over night with a damp napkin.
Chicken can be eaten for itself alone, but it should be cut into very
convenient fragments, judiciously salted and wrapped in a very white
napkin.
The game or veal pie must be in a strong earthen dish, and having been
baked the day before, its pieces will have amalgamated with the crust,
and it will cut into easily handled slices.
All must be packed in luncheon baskets with little twisted cornucopias
holding pepper and salt, hard-boiled eggs, the patty by itself,
croquettes, if they happen to be made, cold fried oysters, excellent
if in batter and well-drained after cooking; no article must be
allowed to touch another.
If cake and pastry be taken, each should have a separate basket. Fruit
also should be carefully packed by itself, for if food gets mixed and
mussy, even a mountain appetite will shun it.
A bottle of olives is a welcome addition, and pickles and other
relishes may be included. Sardines are also in order.
Now what to drink? Cold tea and iced coffee prepared the night before,
the cream and sugar put in just before starting, should always be
provided. They are capital things to climb on, to knit up the
"ravelled sleeve of care," and if somewhat exciting to the nerves,
will be found the best thirst-quenchers.
These beverages should be carefully bottled and firmly corked,--and
don't forget the corkscrew. Plenty of tin cups, or those strong glass
beer-mugs which you can throw across the room without breaking, should
also be taken.
Claret is the favourite wine for picnics, as being light and
refreshing. Ginger ale is excellent and cheap and compact.
"Champagne," says Walter Besant in his novel "By Celia's Arbour" is a
wine as Catholic as the Athanasian Creed, because it goes well with
chicken and with the more elaborate _pâté de foie gras_.
Some men prefer sherry with their lunch, some take beer. If you have
room and a plentiful cellar, take all these things. But tea and coffee
and ginger ale will do for any one, anywhere.
It has been suggested by those who have suffered losses from
mischievous friends, that a composite basket containing everything
should be put in each carriage, but this is refining the matter.
Arrived at the picnic-ground, the whole force should be employed by
the hostess as an amiable body of waiters. The ladies should set the
tables, and the men bring water from the spring. The less ceremony the
better.
Things have not been served in order, they never are at a picnic, and
the cunning hostess now produces some claret cup. She has made it
herself since they reached the top of the mountain. Two bottles of
claret to one of soda water, two lemons, a glass of sherry, a cucumber
sliced in to give it the most perfect flavour, plenty of sugar and
ice; and where had she hidden that immense pitcher, a regular brown
toby, in which she has brewed it?
"I know," said an _enfant terrible_; "I saw her hiding it under the
back seat."
There it is, filled with claret cup, the most refreshing drink for a
warm afternoon. Various young persons of opposite sexes, who have been
looking at each other more than at the game pie, now prepare to
disappear in the neighbouring paths, under a pretence but feebly made
of plucking blackberries,--artless dissemblers!
Mamma shouts, "Mary, Caroline, Jane, Tom, Harry, be back before five,
for we must start for home." May she get them, even at half-past six.
From a group of peasants over a bunch of sticks in the Black Forest,
to a queen who delighted to picnic in Fontainebleau, these _al fresco_
entertainments are ever delicious. We cannot put our ears too close to
the confessional of Nature. She has always a new secret to tell us,
and from the most artificial society to that which is primitive and
rustic, they always carry the same charm. It is the Antæus trying to
get back to Mother Earth, who strengthens him.
In packing a lunch for a fisherman, or a hunter, the hostess often has
to explain that brevity is the soul of wit. She must often compress a
few eatables into the side pocket, and the bottle of claret into the
fishing-basket. If not, she can palm off on the man one of those tin
cases which poor little boys carry to school, which look like books
and have suggestive titles, such as "Essays of Bacon," "Crabbe's
Tales," or "News from Turkey," on the back. If the fisherman will take
one of these his sandwiches will arrive in better order.
The Western hunter takes a few beans and some slices of pork, some say
in his hat, when he goes off on the warpath. The modern hunter or
fisher, if he drive to the meet or the burn, can be trusted with an
orthodox lunch-basket, which should hold cold tea, cold game-pie, a
few olives, and a bit of cheese, and a large reserve of sandwiches.
When we grow more celestial, when we achieve the physical theory of
another life, we may know how to concentrate good eating in a more
portable form than that of the sandwich, but we do not know it yet.
Take an egg sandwich,--hard-boiled eggs chopped, and laid between the
bread and butter. Can anything be more like the sonnet?--complete in
only fourteen lines, and yet perfection! Only indefinite chicken,
wheaten flour, the milk of the cow, all that goes to make up our daily
food in one little compact rectangle! Egg sandwich! It is immense in
its concentration.
Some people like to take salads and apple pies to picnics. There are
great moral objections to thus exposing these two delicacies to the
rough experiences of a picnic. A salad, however well dressed, is an
oily and slippery enjoyment. Like all great joys, it is apt to escape
us, especially in a lunch basket. Apple pie, most delicate of pasties,
will exude, and you are apt to find the crust on the top of the
basket, and the apple in the bottom of the carriage.
If you will take salad, and will not be taught by experience, make a
perfect _jardinière_ of all the cold vegetables, green peas, beans,
and cauliflower, green peppers, cucumbers, and cold potatoes, and take
this mixture dry to the picnic. Have your mayonnaise in a bottle, and
dress the salad with it after sitting down, on a very slippery, ferny
rock, at the table. Truth compels the historian to observe, that this
is delicious with the ham, and you will not mind in the least, until
the next day, the large grease-spot on the side breadth of your gown.
As for the apple pie, that is taken at the risk of the owner. It had
better be left at home for tea.
Of course, _pâté de foie gras_, sandwiches, boned turkey, jellied
tongue, the various cold birds, as partridges, quails, pheasant, and
chicken, and raw oysters, can be taken to a very elaborate picnic near
a large town. Salmon dressed with green sauce, lobster salad, every
kind of salad, is in order if you can only get it there, and
"_caviare_ to the general." Cold terrapin is not to be despised; eaten
on a bit of bread it is an excellent dainty, and so is the cold fried
oyster.
Public picnics, like Sunday-school picnics, fed with ice cream and
strawberries; or the clam bake, a unique and enjoyable affair by the
sea, are in the hands of experts, and need no description here. The
French people picnic every day in the _Bois de Boulogne_, the woods of
Versailles, and even on their asphalt, eating out of doors when they
can. It is a very strange thing that we do not improve our fine
climate by eating our dinners and breakfasts with the full draught of
an unrivalled ozone.