THACKERAY'S LITTLE SERMON.
England has produced some eminent epicures. As prominent among them as among her novelists is William Makepiece Thackeray. In a magazine article on Greenwich and Whitebait, dated 1844, he expressed his scorn for those who do not appreciate good food. "A man who brags regarding himself; that whatever he swallows is the same to him, and that his coarse palate recognizes no difference between venison and turtle, pudding or mutton-broth, as his indifferent jaws close over them, brags about a personal defect—the wretch—and not about a virtue. It is like a man boasting that he has no ear for music, or no eye for color, or that his nose cannot scent the difference between a rose and a cabbage—I say, as a general rule, set that man down as a conceited fellow who swaggers about not caring for dinner."
Three years earlier, in his Memorials of Gormandizing, which he penned in Paris, he preached another sermon on the subject—a sermon which may fitly be reprinted here because the state of affairs which distressed Thackeray has not been quite mended yet—far from it. Speaking of Parisian opportunities for gastronomic experiments, he says:
"A man in London has not, for the most part, the opportunity to make these experiments. You are a family man, let us presume, and you live in that metropolis for half a century. You have on Sunday, say, a leg of mutton and potatoes for dinner. On Monday you have cold mutton and potatoes. On Tuesday, hashed mutton and potatoes; the hashed mutton being flavored with little damp triangular pieces of toast, which always surround that charming dish. Well, on Wednesday, the mutton ended, you have beef: the beef undergoes the same alterations of cookery and disappears. Your life presents a succession of joints, varied every now and then by a bit of fish and some poultry....
"Some of the most pure and precious enjoyments of life are unknown to you. You eat and drink, but you do not know the art of eating and drinking; nay, most probably you despise those who do. 'Give me a slice of meat,' say you, very likely, 'and a fig for your gourmands.' You fancy it is very virtuous and manly all this. Nonsense, my good sir; you are indifferent because you are ignorant, because your life is passed in a narrow circle of ideas, and because you are bigotedly blind and pompously callous to the beauties and excellencies beyond you.
"Sir, RESPECT YOUR DINNER; idolize it, enjoy it properly. You will be by many hours in the week, many weeks in the year, and many years in your life the happier if you do.
"Don't tell me that it is not worthy of a man. All a man's senses are worthy of enjoyment, and should be cultivated as a duty. The senses are the arts.... You like your dinner, man; never be ashamed to say so. If you don't like your victuals, pass on to the next article; but remember that every man who has been worth a fig in this world, as poet, painter, or musician, has had a good appetite and a good taste."