Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

Carême studied under various great masters, but he perfected his studies under Boucher, _chef des services_ of the Prince Talleyrand. The glory of Carême was co-eval with that of Napoleon: those two individuals were great men at the same period; but the glory of one will, perhaps, be a little more enduring than that of the other. I will not say _whose_ glory will thus last the longer; for as was remarked courteously by the Oxford candidate for honours, who was more courteous than “crammed,” and who was asked which were the minor Prophets, “I am not willing to draw invidious distinctions!”

In the days of the Empire,--the era of the greatness, of the achievements, and of the reflections of Carême,--the possession of him was as eagerly contested by the rich as that of a nymph by the satyrs. He was alternately the glory of Talleyrand, the boast of Lavalette, and the pride of the Saxon Ambassador. In their houses, too, his hand was as often on his pen as on the handle of his _casserole_; and inspiration never visited his brain without the call being duly registered in his note-book, with reflections thereon highly philosophical and gastronomic.

But Carême was capricious. It was not that he was unfaithful, but he was _volage_; and he passed from kitchen to kitchen, as the bee wings from flower to flower. The Emperor Alexander dined with Talleyrand, and forthwith he seduced Carême: the seduction-money was only £100 sterling per month, and the culinary expenses. Carême did not yield without much coyness. He urged his love for study, his desire to refine the race of which he made himself the model, his love for his country; and he even accompanied, for a brief moment, “Lord Stewart” to Vienna; but it was more in the way of policy than pastry: for Count Orloff was sent after him on a mission, and Carême, after flying, with the full intention of being followed, to London and Paris, yielded to the golden solicitation, and did the Emperor Alexander the honour of becoming the head of the imperial kitchen in whatever palace His Majesty presided. But the delicate susceptibility of Carême was wounded by discovering that his book of expenses was subjected to supervision. He flung up his appointment in disgust, and hastened across Europe to England. The jealous winds wished to detain him for France, and they blew him back on the coast between Calais and Boulogne, exactly as they did another gentleman, who may not be so widely known as Carême, but who has been heard of in England under the name of William Wordsworth. Carême accepted the omen, repaired to Paris, entered the service of the Princess Bagration, and served the table of that capricious lady, _en maître d’hôtel_. As the guests uttered ecstatic praises of the fare, the Princess would smile upon him as he stood before her, and exclaim, “He is the pearl of cooks!” Is it a matter of surprise that he was vain? Fancy being called a “pearl” by a Princess! On reading it we think of the days when Lady Mary Wortley Montague put nasty footmen into eclogues, and deified the dirty passions of Mrs. Mahony’s lacquey.

The Princess, however, ate herself into a permanent indigestion, and Carême transferred his services to the English Ambassador at the Court of Vienna. There, every morning, seated in his magnificent kitchen, Carême received the visit of “Milor Stewart,” who seldom left him without presents and encouragements. Indeed, these rained upon the immortal artist. The Emperor Alexander had consented to have Carême’s projects in culinary architecture dedicated to him, and, with notice of consent, sent him a diamond ring. When Prince Walkouski placed it on his finger, the cook forgot his dignity, and burst into tears. So did all the other cooks in the Austrian capital,--out of sheer jealousy.

Carême, two years before George IV. was King, had been for a short period a member of the Regent’s household. He left Vienna to be present at the Coronation; but he arrived too late; and he does not scruple to say, very ungenerously, that the banquet was spoiled for want of his presence, nor to insinuate that the colleagues with whom he would have been associated were unworthy of such association,--an insinuation at once base and baseless. After being the object of a species of semi-worship, and yielding to every new offer, yet affecting to despise them all, Carême ultimately tabernacled with Baron Rothschild in Paris; and the super-human excellency of his dinners, is it not written in the “Book without a Name” of Lady Morgan? And was not his residence there the object of envy, and cause of much melancholy, and opportunity for much eulogy, on the part of George IV.? Well, Anthony Carême would have us believe as much with respect to himself and the King; but we do not believe a word of it; for the royal table was never better cared for by the royal officers, whose duty lay in such care, than at this very period. George IV. is said to have tempted him by offering triple salaries; but all in vain; for London was too _triste_ an abiding place for a man whose whole soul, out of kitchen hours, was given to study. And so Carême remained with his Jewish patron until infirmity overtook his noble nature, and he retired to dictate his immortal works (like Milton, very!) to his accomplished daughter. _Les beaux restes_ of Carême were eagerly sought after; but he would not heed what was no longer a temptation; for he was realizing twenty thousand francs a year from the booksellers, besides the interest of the money he had saved. Think of it, shade of Milton! Eight hundred pounds sterling _yearly_, for writing on kitchen-stuff! Who would compose epics after that? But Carême’s books were epics after their sort, and they are highly creditable to the scribe who wrote them from his notes. Finally, even Antony Carême died, like cooks of less degree; but he had been the imperial despot of European kitchens, had been “beringed” by Monarchs, and been smiled on by Princesses; he had received Lords in his kitchen, and had encountered ladies who gave him a great deal for a very little knowledge in return; and finally, as Fulke Greville had inscribed on his tomb that he had been the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, so the crowning joy of Carême’s life might have been chiselled on his monument, indicating that he had been the friend of one whom he would have accounted a greater man than the knightly hero in question,--namely, _il Maestro Rossini_! Carême’s cup was thereat full; and he died, perfectly convinced that paradise itself would be glad at his coming.

The celebrated Damvers was _chef_ to the as celebrated financier Grimaud de la Reynière, in the last century. Grimaud died a martyr to his epicurean tastes. He was dining on a _pâté de foies gras_, when he allowed his appetite to overpower his digestion, and he died of the excess. Barthe, the author of “_Les Fausses Infidélités_,” also fell on the field of the dining-room. He was extremely short-sighted, and ate of every thing on the table. He did not consult his appetite, but his servant, asking him, “Have I eaten of that?” “Have I had any of this?” It was after partaking too freely, both of “this” _and_ “that,” that poor M. Barthe let his temper get the better of him in an argument, and a stroke of apoplexy sent him under the table. His cook deplored in him the loss of a man of taste.

The cook of the Count de Tessé, Master of the Horse to Marie Antoinette, was famous for dressing artichokes. The great Morillian surpassed him, however; but this feat did not save the artist from ending his days in poverty. The elder Robert was, perhaps, equal to either of them, in this or in any other respect connected with his art. The great Carême, ignorant of every thing else, was at least an accomplished cook. There is, as I have said, a tradition that his _petits pâtés_, when they left the Regent’s table, were sold, like the second-hand pies from the royal table at Versailles, for fabulous prices. As I have before intimated, it was for Leo X. that Carême the First invented those succulent, but orthodox, dishes, which pleased the pontifical palate at a season when gratification by gravy would have been scandalous! It was in the Baron Rothschild’s household that Carême the Second invented his famous _sauce piquante_, the result of his studies under Richaut, Asne, and the elder Robert. It was in and for France that Carême published the learned and curious work of which he is the reputed author, and which he may have dictated, but which he could not have written. It is marked by philosophical inquiry, instruction, and pleasant trifling; and neither book nor reputed author has been excelled by any artist, or any sample of kitchen literature, that has appeared since that period.

Before the age of Carême, the popular kitchen in France was not very superior to our own; and the patrons of _tavernes_ and _traiteurs_ were as coarsely fed as our frequenters of ordinaries. But as royalty fell, the _restaurateurs_ rose; and when, in 1786, the cooks of Louis XVI. began to augur badly of their prospects, three provincial brothers, Barthélemy, Mannielles, and Simon, opened their famous _restaurant_, “_Les Trois Frères Provençaux_,” in the Palais Royal, and constituted themselves the cooks of another King,--the sovereign people. The new establishment created an era in the history of cookery, and men of all shades of politics, and Generals of all grades of reputation, resorted to the tables of the Brothers. General Bonaparte and Barras were to be seen there daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at the theatre of Mlle. Montansier. During the wars of the Empire it was the chosen stage for the farewell banquets of brethren in arms, and at this period the receipts amounted to not less than £500 sterling daily. The triumvirate of proprietors endured longer than any such union in the political world; and it was not till the reign of Louis Philippe that the establishment of “_Les Trois Frères_” descended, under a new proprietary, into a more unpretending position than that which it had proudly sustained during half a century. The _casseroles_ of the savoury Brothers had remained unshaken, while Kings and constitutions had fallen around them.

The fortune of the Provincial Brothers tempted another country cook from his obscurity; and some four years after the former had set up their tables in the Palais Royal, the immortal Véry thrust his feet into wooden clogs, and trudged from a village on the Meuse up to the capital, to give it a taste of his quality. He enchanted Marshal Duroc with some of his _plats_, and henceforth his fortune was secure. He married a beautiful woman, whose pen kept his books, whose face attracted customers, and whose heart was devoted to her husband. A quarter of a century sufficed to enable Véry to die immensely rich, after working excessively hard, and to be magnificently entombed in the _Cimetière Montmartre_, under a marble column, which bore the engraved assurance that “his whole life was devoted to the useful arts.”

Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time as “the Three Brothers;” he made and unmade his fortune three or four times, and died poor, three years after Véry died so rich. Beauvilliers was the author of “_L’Art du Cuisinier_,” a book almost as interesting as “The Art of Dining;” and one cannot name either without standing mentally _chapeau bas!_ before the author.

Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and heavy bill. The _Veau qui tette_ was renowned for its sheep-trotters. The reputation of others was built upon kidneys; that of Véry, on his _entrées truffées_. The “Three Provincial Brothers” enjoyed a wide esteem for the way in which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine kept a house that was crowded by the admirers of fish; while that of Robert was distinguished for the graceful attention with which previously ordered dinners were served; and that of Henneveu for the splendid _boudoirs_ in which shy couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, could dine in private, and cease to find their modesty oppressive. Beauvilliers’, as I have intimated, was a costly house; but it was not _therefore_ the most excellent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not to be determined by its price. Four years ago an illustrious party dined at Philippe’s, in the Rue Montorgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a far more exquisite fashion, than if they had joined the Epicureans of the Clarendon, at £5 per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham and Dufferin, the Honourable W. Stuart, two other “Britishers,” and Count D’Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The dinner on this occasion was a _recherchée_ affair. It had been as anxiously meditated upon as an epic poem; and it was a far pleasanter thing. “The most successful dishes,” says the author of “The Art of Dining,” “were the _bisques_, the _fritures à l’Italienne_, and the _gigot à la Bretanne_. Out of compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord Brougham and Alexandre Dumas, M. Philippe produced some _Clos de Vougeot_, which, (like his namesake in ‘High Life Below Stairs,’) he vowed, should never go down the throat of a man whom he did not esteem and admire; and it was voted first-rate by acclamation.”

The French repasts are not always good, even when they are rather costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two sat down to a repast at the younger “Robert’s,” in Paris. The Amphitryon of the feast was M. Daolouis; and the bill, exclusive of wine, amounted to thirty louis. There were but three or four great dishes, and two or three sauces. The discontent of the guests was general, and the giver of the feast allowed that the dinner was not near so good as that of the “_Société des Mercredis_,” at _Le Gacque’s_, which cost only seven francs per head, ordinary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. “_Mais, à dîner, Messieurs, à dîner!_”

DINNER TRAITS.

“For these and all His mercies”----once began Dr. Johnson, whose good custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good things set before him; but he almost as invariably found fault with the food given. And of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired; and on the occasion alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking that it was a farce to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, in two minutes, he would pronounce to be as worthless as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs! And so there was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. “Well,” remarked the good ancient dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like case, ‘God be thanked!--nobody will say grace!’” It is seldom that “grace” is properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious mockery at public dinners; but then every man should silently and fervently make thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits down to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him, without whom there could have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a defaulter deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn better manners. “Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, “eat, and welcome!” It was all his grace; and had he said, “Come, gentlemen, be thankful and eat,” it would have been more like the Christian gentleman, and less like the “beau.”

It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at the dinner-table, that the company should not be more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited freedom of action in the matter; for, by the _Lex Faunia_, a man was forbidden to invite more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, except on market days, (three times a month,) when he might invite five. The host was restricted to spending only two and a half _drachmas_; but he might consume annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat for each person in his house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that grew wild; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at all. One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a great deal of it, and ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the French Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a word about candles, and the wits walked about with the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake by ordering the candles; but as he omitted to say that these were to be lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. So the _Lex Faunia_, when it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten with such luscious aids to which the name of “sauce” was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint! After all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who rigorously observed the _Faunia_ Law, according to their oaths. These were men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling that he could devote to gluttony; or than Lucullus, who never supped in the “Apollo” without its costing him at least ten thousand pounds.

Notwithstanding this, the _Faunia_ Law was an absurd impertinence. It was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, “O Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he boiled fish?” “And you, O King,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had boiled fish for dinner in his camp?” The moral is, that it is best to leave men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could commit the crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for himself, ἐνέπτυσεν εἰς αὐτήν, “spat in it;” and if my readers refer to the chapter illustrating “Their Majesties at Meat,” they will find that so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of Heathenism.

The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread and honey. On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died. He had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance to such small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the fun and the festival of Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic by dying at such a mirthful moment. He consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his family hoped that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He took one sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed away for ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think worse of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on the day her old lover died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was that he had expired before six o’clock, as otherwise she would have been too late for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant society who played cards by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de l’Espinasse, and counted their tricks while they commented upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced as being twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus.

A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the digestive powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a far less commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the stomach. The French _bouilli_ after soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for it is simply, as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all but its nourishing juice.”

“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man who has been floating over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or sight of land to the storm-beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render almost any dish attractive to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect, the French and Chinese cooks are really professional brethren; much more so than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon!

The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and the meal of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. They eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not? All these are far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has been breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin birds’ nests eaten in China may be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris _grisettes_: “Rather eatable things, those _grisettes_, by the bye!” So are the birds’ nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears’ paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subsequently soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.

There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke of Wellington’s cook had serious doubts as to his master being a great man,--he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another General who was the despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at dinner when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce an Austrian victory over the French. The General had one huge plate before him, a sort of Irish stew, with every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting out the bones, “as was his custom.” He was so delighted with the message and the messenger, that he received him as Galba did Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s death: with his unwiped mouth, he began kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting down and eating from the General’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater; but he was more nice in his diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his tooth-picks!

According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted; and from an invitation given and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties but illness, imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner; and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of punctuality on the part of the former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of whom it is said that they never saw soup and fish but at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of want of punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” On the other hand, an unpunctual cook is scarcely to be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master is not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the moment it has been ordered. The great “_artiste_” who dismissed his patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his profession.

At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in France to serve the soup immediately before the company entered the dining-room. The resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the actress; but it was tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush the empty shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a breach in good manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost as famous for her love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, equally often, “on hospitable thoughts intent.”

It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto were intended to be highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to paper the curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes,--promissory paper, as he said, of no value. When his cook waited on him at breakfast-time for orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the attendant, as purchase-money for the necessary provisions, and sent her to market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and ostentatious at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the wines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a shade of disgust, inquired, “If any body drank port?” As no one dared to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the owner took it “medicinally,”) he would direct the servant to “take away the ink!”

If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a contempt for claret, “which,” said he, “would be port, if it could!” The latter individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his glass of claret aloft, with a cry, “If this be war, may we never have peace!”

Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, none of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed in large quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That Sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were “drinkable.” “From father to son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in his incomparable work, “_Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV._,” ate and drank with relish; and it was no jest that among the three talents attributed by the old song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of a “good drinker.” “None of them, however, with the exception of the Regent, carried it to excess; but what was not excess for them, would have been so for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory, and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the laws of their imperious appetite.”

When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were drinkable, the Duke answered him in terms which I may cite, because of their correctness. “Sire,” he replied, “they have, what they call, ‘white Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as that of Monrachet, or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised. There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint, like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine, of which they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, however, and it has an indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable. Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep, and that is all!” “It puts people to sleep,” said the King: “send for a pipe of it!” This is as just a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux, as was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne: “It does not enter,” he said, “and steal your reason; it simply makes a runaway knock at a man’s head, and there’s an end of it!”

But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let us return to the solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our path, perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that they have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or should; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the anguish of appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his “_Gaietés Champêtres_,” “Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Montauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the neighbouring _château_, and asks to be invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the ‘Iliad,’ as afflicted as woman can be, does not forget, when night comes, to take a little refreshment.” If Seneca derided such doings, it was only after dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said,--

“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,--
Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;
And I thought I had never beheld such a face,
Or so noble a turkey and chine.”

This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all the acts of most importance in our lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus, and Diana be no longer the deities or the _beati_ of the earth, the substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, under the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by repasts not only births, baptisms, and marriages, but even interments.

The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh; for then the family necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and cooked. They know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke as he is at a favour.

Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but when he was asked to dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners generally: and he was right; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace, with his modest repasts and fair wine, was something of the same opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests too numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the repast too eagerly consumed, there is no dinner, in the legitimate sense of the word. I never so much admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, “_Mes amis, ne nous pressons pas!_” I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too willing Secretary:--“_Surtout, pas de zèle!_” The most accomplished professor of his time has laid down, as rules for securing to their utmost degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that the lighting, cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully considered; that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the wines of first quality, each in its degree; the progression of the former from the more substantial to the more light; of the latter, from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined that there be no accelerated movement; all the guests are to consider themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point at the same time. The rules for the “after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those more commonly observed in this country, with the exception that “punch” expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the Peace; but the concluding rule is worth noticing:--“That no one withdraw before eleven, and that all be asleep by midnight.”

I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility have given to table enjoyment. To them may be added the innovation introduced by Talleyrand, of offering Parmesan with soup, and presenting after it a glass of dry Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in common with St. Peter,--he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, the dinner-time of the Jews; and he would have also come under the anathema in Ecclesiastes which is levelled against the Princes who eat in the morning.

Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy who made two substantial meals daily; and Seneca was satisfied with one meal,--a dinner of bread and figs. The Roman Priests of Mars dined jollily and sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, and they would not be disturbed. They were like Baillie de Suffren, who, being waited on in India by a deputation, just as he was sitting down to dine, sent out word that his religion would not allow of his interrupting his repast; and the delegates retired, profoundly struck by the strictness of his conscience. The original dinner hour of the mediæval ages was, as I have elsewhere stated, ten o’clock, the _dixième heure_; hence the name. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that so late an hour as noon was fixed for the repast. It is clear, however, that we have not so much changed the hours as changed the names of our meals. A French historian shows us how a Dauphin of France dined (at ten o’clock) in the fifteenth century:--

“As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his dinner rice pottage, with leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, another of salt pork, a dish of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece of roast pork, cheese, and fruit.” The supper was nearly as plentiful; but, on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is added, that the Barons of the Court had always the half of the quantity of the Dauphin; the Knights, the quarter; and the Equerries and Chaplains, the eighth. “Take pride from Priests, and nothing remains,” once remarked an Encyclopædist to Voltaire. “Umph!” said Voltaire; “do you, then, reckon gluttony for nothing?” Gluttony, at least, does not seem to have characterized the Dauphin’s Chaplains, in the fifteenth century, seeing that they took an eighth where a Baron had half.

But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined after a more singular fashion than that of the Dauphins, his ancestors. I allude to the Prince mentioned by Maurepas, and whose imagination was so sick, that he fancied himself a hare, and would not allow a bell to be rung, lest it should terrify him into the woods, where he might be shot by his own game-keepers, and afterwards served up at his own table. At another time, he had a fancy that he would look well dished up; and, dreaming himself a cauliflower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his kitchen-garden, and called upon his people to come and water him! At length, he pronounced himself dead, and refused to dine at all, as an insult to his spiritual entity. He would have died, had he not been visited by two friends, who introduced themselves as his late father, and the deceased Maréchal de Luxembourg; and who solemnly invited him to descend with them to the shades, and dine with the ghost of Maréchal Turenne. The melancholy Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down with them to a cellar already prepared for the banquet of the departed; and he not only made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made of himself a ghost, he insisted every day on dining with congenial shadows in the coal-cellar! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially where his own interests were concerned.

Thus much--briefly and imperfectly, I fear--for Dinner Traits. In the next chapter we will put something on them. And as we have been drawing examples from folly, let us end this section by adding a maxim full of wisdom. “Be not made a beggar,” says _Ecclesiasticus_, “by banqueting upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in thy purse.” If this maxim were generally adopted, there might be fewer dinners given, but there would be more dinners paid for. But some people are like the ancient Belgians, who borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repayment in the world to come! Many a dinner-giver belongs to the class of the borrowing Belgians of antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps, more intended honesty in the compact than _we_ can distinguish. A compact far less honest was made some years ago by an Irish Baronet, who had given so many dinners for which he had not paid, that he was compelled to pledge his plate in order to raise means to satisfy the most pressing of his creditors. Some time subsequently, he induced the pawnbroker to lend him the plate for one evening, on hire; the pawnbroker’s men were to wait at the dinner in livery, and convey the silver back as soon as the repast was concluded. The dinner was given and enjoyed, and the company made the attendants drunk, helped the Baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and épergnes, with which he set off for Paris, where some of them afterwards visited him at the little dinners he used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed over the matter as a very capital jest.

I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting at table to drink, after dinner was over, was introduced by Margaret Atheling, the Saxon Queen of Scotland. She was shocked to see the Scottish gentlemen rise from table before _grace_ could be said by her Chaplain, Turgot; and she offered a cup of choice wine to all who would remain. Thence the fashion of hard drinking following the “thanksgiving.”

THE MATERIALS FOR DINING.

“All flesh is grass;” and grass has been the foundation of all feasts, in a double sense. It was not only a part of the early repast, in some shape or another, by derivation rather than immediately, but it formed the most ancient seats occupied by primitive and pastoral guests in very remote times. Dr. Johnson approved of asparagus being called “grass.” Romulus thought grass a sacred emblem, or he would not have suddenly converted his twelve lay foster-brothers into a priesthood to look after it. When Baber had defeated the Afghans of Kohat, they approached him in despair, and, according to their custom when in extremities, with grass between their teeth, to signify, as the imperial autobiographer says, “We are your oxen.” Baber treated them worse than oxen; for the amiable savage says, “All that were taken alive were beheaded by my order, and at the next halting-place we erected a minaret of their skulls.” And the conqueror dined pleasantly in front of the monument.

My friend, Captain Lionel da Costa, tells me, that on accompanying (_en amateur_) a French force on a razzia against an Arab tribe in Algeria, he witnessed the employment of grass as an emblem of defiance rather than of submission. The French officers had assembled the Arab Chiefs, and, telling them that the foreigners had filled up their wells, carried off their cattle, and burned their dwellings, exhorted them to submission, asking them what they would do further against a country so powerful as France? The Arabs, as if impelled simultaneously, stooped to the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass there growing, and began chewing the same in angry silence: this was all their reply, and by it they intimated that they would eat what the earth gave, like the beasts that are upon it, rather than surrender. Their enemies could not refrain from admiring and feeding such adversaries; their mute eloquence was worth more than any thing uttered to tyrants by Power’s statue of the Greek Slave, which, according to Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, “thunders white silence,”--a silence that must have been akin to that in the French Tragedy, “_silence qui se fit entendre_!”

Soup, as I have remarked, is not a bad preparation for the stomach. Some one calls it the “preface of a dinner,” adding, however, that a good work needs no preface. Soup is of very ancient date. Rebecca and Jacob ate of a pottage, in which the meat was cut into small bits _before_ the muscular fibres had cooled and become hardened, and stewed in milk, thickened with meal and herbs. The famous French gastronomist, the Marquis de Cussy, was orthodox in his gastronomy, fed well, but heeded the church. His favourite soup in Lent was an onion soup, composed of a score of small bulbs, well cleaned, sliced, and put into a stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter and a little sugar. They were turned over the fire till they became of a fine golden colour, when they were moistened with broth, and the necessary quantity of bread added. Before the soup was served, its excellence was perfected by the addition of two small glasses of very old Cognac brandy. This Lent fare was, however, only the preface to salmon and asparagus, with which the orthodox epicure mortified his appetite.

The famous Carême did with the soups he discovered, what the most famous navigators have done with the new territories on which they were the first to land; namely, give them the names of the most illustrious contemporaries then existing. Royalty was honoured in the “_Potage Condé_;” music in that of “Boieldieu;” and the medical faculty, which Carême generally despised, in the “_Soupes à la Broussais_, _Roques_, and _Segalas_;” poetry was illustrated in the “_Lamartine_;” history in the “_Dumesnil_;” and philosophy in the “_Potage Buffon_.” The last name he thus bestowed, was to his last culinary inspiration just before death, when he conferred on a vegetable soup the name of “Victor Hugo.” It was after reading the “_Messéniennes_,” that he created the “_Matelotte à la Delavigne_;” and he paid the doctor who had cured him of an indigestion, by inventing the dish of fish which he called “_Perche à la Gaubert_.” And with this record we will put the fish on our own table.

“It is only the Arabs of the desert that affect to despise fish.” This eastern proverb is tantamount to the more homely one of, “The grapes are sour;” for the Arabs only affect to despise that which they cannot readily obtain. The Jews were prohibited from eating fishes without scales or fins. The Egyptian Priests cared not for fish of any sort, but they generally allowed the people to eat with what appetite they chose, of what the priesthood declined to taste. It is said in the legend, that St. Kevin lived by the fish he caught in the Lake of Glendaloch; and that when the celebrated beauty tempted him, she did it by flattery and suggestion:--

“‘You’re a rare hand at fishing,’ says Kate,
‘It’s yourself, dear, that knows how to hook them;
But, when you have caught them, agrah!
Don’t you want a young woman to cook them?’”

Gatis, Queen of Spain, was something like Mr. Lover’s “Kate;” for, if her subjects caught fish well, she it was who first taught them how to cook what they caught, and how to enjoy what they cooked.

When philosophers were occupied with inquiries touching the soul of an oyster, fish was probably not a popular diet. It certainly was not so in Greece, until a comparatively late period. Then fish became fashionable: the legislature secured their freshness by decreeing that no seller should sit down until he had sold his entire stock; sages discussed their qualities, and tragic writers introduced heroes holding dialogues on the qualities of fish-sauce. There was a Greek society at that day “against cruelty to fish,” by devouring what also, allegedly, made the devourer ferocious and inhuman; but general society did not allow its appetite to be influenced thereby.

The Romans were enthusiastic for the mullet. It was for them _the_ fish, _par excellence_. It was sometimes served up six pounds in weight, and such a fish was worth £60 sterling. It was cooked on the table, for the benefit and pleasure of the guests. In a glass vessel filled with brine made from water, the blood of the mackerel, and salt, the live mullet, stripped of its scales, was enclosed; and as its fine pink colour passed through its dying gradations, until paleness and death ensued, the _convives_ looked on admiringly, and lauded the spectacle.

The turbot was next in estimation; but as, occasionally, offending slaves were flung into the turbot preserves for the fish to feed upon, some gastronomists have affected to be horror-stricken at the idea of eating a _turbot à la Romaine_; quite forgetting that so many of our sea-fish, in their own domain, feed largely on the human bodies which accident, or what men call by that name, casts into the deep. Our own early ancestors in Britain were said to have entirely abstained from fish. In later days, however, here as in France, the finny tribes were protected by royal decrees; and certain fish were named--the sturgeon was one--as to be caught for the royal table alone. In the same days porpoises and seals were devoured by the commonalty, and the latter knew not the art of the cooks of Louis XIV., who could so dress fish as to give it the taste of any flesh they pleased to fix on as an object of imitation. By this means, the King in Lent, while he obeyed the church, enjoyed the gratification of feeling as though he were cheating Heaven,--and with impunity, too!

The most curious fish of which I have ever read, were those of a lake attached to a Burgundian convent, and which were always of the same number as the monks. If one of these sickened and died, the same circumstance occurred with the fish; and if a new brother appeared in the refectory, there was also sure to be found a new denizen in the pond. These fish were, of course, piously inclined; but they did not come up, in that respect, to the parrot of Cardinal Ascanius, which could not only repeat the Creed, but could maintain a thesis! I believe that the Burgundian fish were principally perch; and they _are_ an eccentric fish. Arthur Young says, that “about the year 1760, perch first appeared in all the lakes of Ireland and in the Shannon at the same time.”

As a singularity with respect to the cooking of fish, I may mention that observed by the Romans with the _sepia_, or “cuttle-fish.” They invariably took out the eyes before boiling it. It is in allusion to this custom that Trachalion says, in the _Rudens_,--

“_Age nunc jam,
Jube oculos elidere, itidem ut sepiis faciunt coqui._”

I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle-fish was esteemed a fitting sacrifice to the gods; but I do not know if pious people had their pet _sepiæ_, as they had their pet lambs and pigs, (“_Sunt domi agni et porci sacres_,” says the orthodox husband in the _Rudens_,) reared for the purpose of being offered at the altars.

The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for the imperial table. At those of Greece it was introduced by sound of trumpet, and it was almost as esteemed a subject at those of Rome, until Vespasian condescended not to care for it, and to bring other fish into fashion. “It is _caviare_ to the general,” is a proverb which Shakspeare has popularized. The _caviare_ is the roe of the sturgeon dried; that of the larger sturgeon, which produces hundredweights of eggs, and tons of oil, is _caviare_ for the general, and is not worth eating. The delicate white _caviare_ is the produce of the smaller sturgeon, and it is highly esteemed by gastronomists. It forms a great portion of the food taken by the Greeks during their long Lent.