VII
Travelling abroad—Munich—Lack of comforts—Baths and bathing, then and now—A careless traveller—A carriage on a railway truck in recent years—The last of the Sedan-chairs—An eccentric menu—Abraham Hayward—Acclimatising crayfish—English truffles—Change in dinner hour—Old English fare—Careless housekeeping—Cookery books—Soyer and his wife—An obsolete custom—The triumph of tobacco.
Travelling on the Continent in old days was attended with many discomforts, which to the present generation would appear almost inconceivably irksome. In the first place, there was the passport nuisance, whilst the Customs regulations were infinitely more complicated and tedious than is at present the case. I remember that, in 1844, I nearly involved an old lady we knew—Miss Astley—in very serious trouble through innocently begging her to take a sealed packet to my sister, then staying at Mayence. In my little parcel were, amongst other things, four pairs of Tyrolean gloves, then much in fashion, and these nearly caused the arrest of this poor lady on the Belgian frontier, where the officials threatened the most frightful penalties, amongst them a fine of £50, for attempting to smuggle a lesser number of pairs of gloves through the Customs than the Belgian law allowed—the regulation being that nothing under a dozen pairs could be carried by travellers without liability to a very severe penalty. The postal arrangements abroad in old days were also totally inadequate.
CHILDISH DAYS AT MUNICH
As a child at Munich, in 1837, I recollect that our opportunities of communicating with friends in England were extremely limited, for we were practically dependent, so far as sending letters was concerned, upon our Minister or upon stray travellers passing through the city. Unfortunately for our correspondence, the English Minister had very little to communicate to the Foreign Office at home, and only sent a bag of dispatches about once a month, whilst the arrival of an English visitor was, in those days, quite an event in the old Bavarian city. Many of the habits and customs of the people of Munich were very strange and uncomfortable. The great families, for instance, entertained a strong dislike to having servants to board and sleep in their houses, and the consequence of this was that ladies, on returning from some grand party or other in a gorgeous carriage with two footmen behind, dressed in rich liveries and hats loaded with plumes and feathers, used to descend from their chariots, light their solitary night-lamps from the flambeaux of their departing footmen, and then sadly creep up to bed amidst the dreary and dismal solitude of a dark and deserted mansion.
At that time it was not at all an unusual thing on a cloudy day to see Bavarian officers, in full regimentals covered with enormous military cloaks, walking about attended by their footmen carrying umbrellas. Some of the young officers were very pleasant; we used to meet them at the table d’hôte, where, when tired of our own company, we used occasionally to dine. On one occasion I was very much amused at a newly fledged subaltern—a lieutenant, as he told us, of but six weeks’ standing—bashful and timid as a girl. That evening, for the first time, there happened to be a band at dinner, which surprised my mother, who inquired of the young officer—“D’où vient cette musique?” Blushing up to the eyes, he answered, “Madame la Comtesse, de la part du diable.” We had been talking of the opera, and the poor young man thought that my mother was asking what was the music which the band had been playing, which, oddly enough, happened to be a selection from a piece called “De la part du diable.”
We were all convulsed with laughter at this incident, which was rendered the more amusing on account of the complete mystification of the lieutenant as to what indiscretion he could have committed; however, when the matter was explained, he himself laughed just as merrily as the rest of us.
LACK OF COMFORTS
At that time an open fireplace was seldom seen in Munich, whilst carpets were practically unknown. In the house which my father took there was not even a drugget in any of the rooms, though in other respects they were quite elegantly furnished. The whole life of the place was quaint and old-fashioned—a certain amount of state and magnificence being pervaded by a homely simplicity which would arouse amusement in these more luxurious days. In the early morning or as late as noon, for instance, all of us used to go with my father to the market, where he himself would choose and buy vegetables, fruit, and game, some of which he would stuff into his pockets, whilst the main portion was placed in an enormous basket which two of us would carry, and so would we perambulate the principal streets back to our palace. After a great “chasse” of the king’s a good deal of the spoils used to be put up for public sale, and on these occasions my father would add a man-servant to our marketing party, in order to assist in carrying home, as if in triumph, the roebuck which it was his usual custom to purchase.
Well do I remember the extremely meagre provision which in those days was made on the Continent for the performance of the ordinary ablutions, but even at home in England things were not very much better. Very few country houses had bathrooms, and even where they did exist the hot water had generally to be brought up in cans. Baths, indeed, were considered more as luxuries than as anything else, whilst children, owing to the water being generally cold or at best lukewarm, regarded their weekly tub with dread rather than affection.
That Saturday tubbing of my youth is now, I suppose, in these days of almost universal bathrooms, quite a forgotten function. Modern mechanical arrangements provide a more or less constant supply of hot and cold water, and children are very rightly brought up to regard a daily bath as one of the necessities of life, which was, of course, not the case in the days when can after can of hot water had to be laboriously carried all over the house from the kitchen. Saturday night tubbing was, indeed, a sort of regular English institution, dating, I believe, from the reign of King Henry VIII., who is declared to have performed certain partial ablutions on occasional Saturday evenings, on which occasions His Majesty’s barber, John Penne or Penn, was expected to be in attendance. This John Penn was an ancestor of the famous Quaker who bore the same name, and was a man of some importance in his day.
In the famous picture by Holbein of Henry VIII. delivering a charter to the barbers and surgeons on the occasion of their amalgamation into one body, John Penn stands out as a prominent figure. There is a story, indeed, which, I fancy, rests upon no solid foundation, that the first Sir Robert Peel always expressed the greatest admiration for this painting on account of the fine portrait of the royal barber, and once actually offered the Barbers’ Corporation £2000 to allow him to have it cut out after a copy had been made to put in its place. An even more fantastic legend used to declare that Sir Robert had often expressed an intense desire to be allowed to have a bed made up upon the dining-table of the Barbers’ Company, in order that on awakening in the morning his eyes might rest upon his favourite Penn. The table in question, as a matter of fact, is an ancient dissecting table on which, previous to 1745, the bodies of criminals and malefactors were laid—the executions at Tyburn furnishing the Barber Surgeons’ Company with a constant supply of anatomical specimens.
BATHS AND BATHING
Up to comparatively recent years the country houses, as I have said, which could boast a bathroom were very few in number, whilst in the ’forties and ’fifties, and even later, such conveniences were practically unknown. In some houses, indeed, there were no big baths at all, guests being expected to perform their ablutions in the so-called foot-baths, which were a sort of cross between a wine cooler and a soup tureen. At the same time it must be added that people were probably not so very much dirtier than they are to-day, for the modern practice of lying in hot water need not necessarily be any more cleansing than the vigorous rubbing of a soaped flannel which, in old days, children were taught to apply. I remember going to stay at a country house, shortly after my marriage, where there were no baths at all. However, I determined not to be beaten; I sent to the laundry for a large wooden wash-tub, which was brought up into my bedroom, and answered its purpose uncommonly well.
Some people there were who declared baths to be dangerous, as inducing a tendency to catch constant chills. Untidiness in dress and the like were, on the whole, I think, regarded with more tolerance than is the case to-day—to go even farther back, the beautiful costumes of the eighteenth century, there is reason to believe, in many cases covered people none too careful about their personal toilet. The travelling of the past, when comparatively little luggage could be taken, was rather apt to promote careless habits of dress, and several great travellers were quite notorious for this sort of thing, their economy of linen being regarded with considerable lenience.
I recall to mind a story which used to be told of a celebrated traveller who, almost alone, had made several wonderful journeys into the Far East, and wandered over many strange and wild places on the earth’s surface, in the course of which wanderings he was declared to have contracted a supreme contempt for some of the ordinary ways of civilised society. Careless to a degree, the changing of his shirts appeared to him as nothing but an irksome usage, and, consequently, it was by no means often that a snowy expanse of shirt front graced his breast. On one occasion, when about to visit a country house at which he was to be the lion of the party, his wife, who was not accompanying him, determined that this once at least he should do her honour. The visit was to last three days, and so carefully packing three spotless shirts in his bag, she bade him at their adieu to take particular care to don one of these shirts regularly every evening. The three days passed and her husband returned. “I hope you did as I told you,” said she. “Of course I did, my dear,” was the reply. “I put on a clean shirt every evening, so with the one I started in, that makes four I am wearing at the present moment.”
TRAVELLING IN OLD DAYS
When travelling on the Continent in old days we drove most of the way in our own carriages, which, when we came across the few railways which then existed, were hoisted up on to trucks. This practice was not very agreeable, for one was exposed to many discomforts, and I had always supposed that it had long been totally extinct. This, however, appears not to be the case, for such a mode of railway travelling has been seen in England as recently as the summer of 1889, when, I am informed, the nieces of the late Archdeacon Hindes Groome (the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and a most delightful character, who remembered the rejoicings after Waterloo), saw at Bournemouth Station a large open barouche standing on an ordinary truck at the end of a train which had just arrived. In the carriage sat—quite at their ease with their sunshades up—two elderly ladies. A coachman and footman met the train; the carriage was drawn on to the platform with the ladies still in it, and from thence it was hauled outside the station, where, a pair of horses being quickly harnessed, the whole party, with the addition of a maid who had travelled in a second-class compartment, drove off.
Another curious survival was also witnessed by Miss Hindes Groome, who, when staying at Cheltenham in the early ’sixties, was told by her mother one cold Sunday morning in the winter: “I shall send for a Sedan-chair so that we can go to church in comfort. Perhaps they still have them at the place where in former days I remember that they could be hired.” The message was sent, and to the surprise of the household the Sedan-chair, borne by two men, duly arrived. The chair was brought into the house, the front door being shut, and Mrs. Hindes Groome and her little girl got in, being carried to Trinity Church, into a sort of inside lobby, in which, after the service, they once more entered the chair, and were carried home and deposited in the hall, being on both journeys completely protected from the outside air and quite immune from draughts. It may be assumed that this was about the last time that a public Sedan-chair was made use of for ordinary purposes, though I believe that at certain health resorts invalids still make occasional use of a somewhat similar conveyance. Mrs. Hindes Groome, it appears, was rather surprised, though very pleased, when she saw the men bringing up the old chair, which revived in her memory many recollections of a past age. She always declared that no modern vehicle could match a Sedan-chair for comfort in wet or rough weather. This lady’s father, who had been born in 1779, remembered the first stage-coach which ran from Cheltenham to London, at which time it was considered a wonderful improvement, for, previous to its introduction, everything came across the hills on pack-horses.
ENGLISH “AS SHE IS WROTE”
The early days of railway travelling were very unpleasant in many ways, whilst journeys on the Continent were regarded as positive adventures. Such a thing as a train de luxe was, of course, undreamt of, whilst feeble linguists were terribly handicapped on account of there being no officials well acquainted with foreign languages as is now the case; only too often the instructions to travellers purporting to be written in English were quite unintelligible. Even in comparatively recent years mistakes in the phraseology and spelling of English in foreign guide-books, time-tables, and the like, have not been uncommon; but I think the following menu, which dates from the early days of the station refreshment-room at Modane, is an almost perfect example of “English as she is wrote.” It was sent to me by a friend, and I was so much struck with it that it has been given a prominent position in a scrap-book of mine filled with cards and menus of every kind, interesting souvenirs, in many cases, of political and other banquets. One side of this menu, I must add, is printed in French, the following translation being appended on the adjoining sheet. It runs exactly as I give it here—
Modane Station
Travellers will find in the Refreshment Room (Buffet of the Station) which is in direct communication with the Custom Office, luncheon and dinner at the price of 3 frs., wine included.
Porridge.
Slender at the Saint Germain.
Pike forced meat ball sauce of the financial
Beef to bake vegetables.
Poultry snow-drop of the Bresse at the
Jelly.
Salad of the time.
Side dish, chees and desert.
(½ bottle of wine.)
The prolonged stoppage of this train to Modane is long enough to allow travellers to lunch and look over their baggage at the Custom Office.
People when on a journey in old days were not very particular about their food; indeed, too often thoroughly tired and worn out, they were thankful to get anything to eat at all. Now pretty well every one who is able to afford it is luxurious, and Spartan habits are at a discount. Nevertheless there seem to be no noted gourmets to-day such as used to exist in the past. Foremost amongst those, of course, was Abraham Hayward, whose Art of Dining is, I suppose, but little read at the present time, when many of his gastronomic ideas would be considered quite out of date. His contention, for instance, that the comparative merits of pies and puddings present a problem difficult to decide, would seem somewhat ridiculous to bons vivants of the present day, when puddings, formerly so popular, are, except in the sick-room, rarely seen. Plum-pudding, of course, still maintains its ancient place. It may not be generally known that it originated from plum-porridge, a first course always served at Christmas in the seventeenth century. This was prepared by boiling beef or mutton with a broth thickened by brown bread, raisins, currants, cloves, nutmegs, ginger, and other condiments being inserted when it was half-cooked.
ENGLISH TRUFFLES
The English are very contemptuous of many excellent things which their country affords. Amongst these is the truffle, which, though perhaps not equal in flavour to that of Périgord—called by Brillat Savarin the diamond of the kitchen—is yet most delicious when properly cooked. Besides this, owing to the small esteem in which it is held, its price is exceedingly moderate, English truffles being purchasable in Covent Garden Market at about one-eighth the price of the French variety. Years ago, when staying at the Grange in Hampshire, I asked my host, the late Lord Ashburton, whether he had ever thought of hunting for truffles in his park, abounding as it did in beech trees, under which, in this country, these esculents are found. He told me that he believed there were plenty of truffles, but it was not worth the trouble of searching for them, as no one cared for English truffles. I assured him that he was wrong, for they were excellent; and, yielding to my entreaties, he sent out orders for search to be made, and the next evening we had English truffles for dinner, which were served merely as truffles, without any announcement as to their nationality. Every one ate them, and every one said they were delicious, and from that day to this the English truffle, when in season, has continually been included in the menu of the dinners served at the country house in question. Truffles exist also at Goodwood and in Highclere Park—in fact, pretty well everywhere where there are beech trees. The difficulty in obtaining them seems to lie in the paucity of truffle-hunting dogs, which, of course, have to be specially trained for their work. No doubt, were some easy means discovered of finding truffles, their excellences would become better known, and a home-grown delicacy, which is now almost overlooked, would take its proper place in public appreciation.
Crayfish are excellent eating, as I believe the Germans realised when they entered France in 1870. I was told that for years afterwards the supply of écrevisses was very limited indeed.
Many years ago, at a time when I was living in Sussex, I formed the idea of attempting to acclimatise the crayfish in a little stream which appeared suitable to their habits, and accordingly, after everything had been prepared under expert direction, a consignment of écrevisses, sent from France, were duly placed in a pool specially enclosed with gratings, and furnished with everything that the most luxurious crayfish could possibly desire. The experiment, however, proved totally unsuccessful, for after a time not so much as even a morsel of shell was to be found. Another consignment shared exactly the same fate, and Lord Onslow, who made a similar experiment in acclimatisation, informed me that his efforts, like mine, had also ended in disaster. For a long time I was much puzzled as to what might have caused the death and also the mysterious disappearance of any remains of these écrevisses, but am now convinced that it was the result of raids by predatory water-rats, the possibility of which we had left out of our calculations.
CHANGE IN DINNER HOUR
A rather curious thing in connection with gastronomy is that for the last two hundred years the dinner hour in England has been getting later and later.
In Addison’s time people dined at two o’clock, but gradually dinner was put off and put off till four or five became the popular hour for dining amongst the well-to-do classes. With the beginning of the nineteenth century came a further postponement, and the dinner hour soon came to be fixed at some time about seven o’clock; since which period further encroachments upon the evening have taken place, and now half-past eight is by no means an unusual hour.
The old English dinner which I remember in my childhood was, of course, simplicity itself as compared with the elaborate banquets of to-day. Nevertheless, a well-cooked English dinner, now almost unobtainable, was not by any means a thing to be despised.
A small turbot, some well-roasted lamb or duckling, with green peas, followed by a good apple or apricot tart, are, when well cooked, as Lord Dudley used to say, a dinner for an emperor, and, in addition, far more healthy than many a more costly and ambitious repast.
I well remember, as a child, my father sitting at the head of the table and carving the joints himself, even when he gave a dinner-party. In consequence of this we were in terror of asking for a second helping, for even when only the family was present it was as much as he could do to find time to eat his own dinner. The modern system is without doubt much more convenient for everybody.
DOMESTIC ECONOMY
In the education of young ladies in England too little attention is as a rule, I think, devoted to the inculcation of the principles of sound housekeeping, and in consequence a good many mistresses of households are quite ignorant of the important details of domestic management. Many jokes, I remember, were current about one of this sort, a distinguished matron of society, whom I may mention as Lady Caroline, a dear, portly dame of high degree. Entering the married condition rather late in life (despite a good average weight of some sixteen stone) as second wife to a West-Country squire of limited estates, she undertook the management of his household with a firm determination to conduct it on unswerving principles of domestic economy. This truly admirable resolution was unfortunately unenlightened by even a glimmer of elementary knowledge of housekeeping, and her unsuccessful attempts at starting greatly entertained her numerous friends. Her prompt dismissal of her first cook in particular created much amusement. In vain had the poor woman, when taxed with dishonesty, tried to persuade her mistress that only two legs of mutton pertained to each sheep; for had not the lady, as she somewhat angrily declared, all through her life seen them grazing with four!
In these days, however, there are so many admirable books published which deal with household management and cookery in general, that little excuse can be found for those who wilfully remain ignorant of the essential amenities of existence.
I have a good collection of cookery books which I began to get together at the time when the famous Soyer, who had been cook to Lady Blessington, was creating quite a sensation in London. I remember being taken to see him, and I also recollect his wife, who was a woman of considerable artistic attainments, executing very pretty little sketches in water-colour.
Both Soyer and his wife are buried, I believe, in a sort of mausoleum in Kensal Green Cemetery, and on Soyer’s tomb is the very appropriate inscription, “Soyer tranquil.”
Gentlemen used formerly to sit long in the dining-room over their wine, of which they often drank a considerable quantity; but all this has now been changed, and to-day they soon join the ladies, whose society they very naturally prefer to the mineral waters in which so many of them indulge instead of wine. People certainly seem to me to drink much less nowadays, and of late years, I am informed, the consumption of wine at dinner-parties has sunk to a very small quantity indeed, many men drinking almost no wine at all. These would, I fancy, be bad days for people like Abraham Hayward, who, when a friend of his remarked, “Why, Hayward, I believe you could drink really any quantity of port, couldn’t you?” is said to have replied, “Yes, my dear fellow, any given quantity.” On the other hand, I believe that ladies who, up to comparatively recent years, nearly all drank water, take a good deal more wine, especially champagne, than was formerly the case.
The old custom of people asking one another to have a glass of wine at dinner has long since died out. No doubt its disappearance is a good thing, though there were occasions when it distinctly conduced to pleasant sociability. A shy man, for instance, at a dinner-party of strangers was soon put at his ease by kindly intimations that Mr. So-and-so would like to take a glass of wine with him. Not a few, however, carried the old custom too far, and, besides this, a set could be so easily made against any especial individual whom mischievous schemers might wish to exhilarate unduly.
TOBACCO
Cigarette-smoking after dinner has undoubtedly been a great factor in the cause of temperance. In old days such a thing would have been regarded with horror; indeed, I think the greatest minor change in social habits which I have witnessed is that in the attitude assumed towards tobacco-smoking, which in my youth, and even later, was, except in certain well-defined circumstances, regarded as little less than a heinous crime.
Smoking-rooms in country houses were absolutely unknown, and such gentlemen as wished to smoke after the ladies had gone to bed used, as a matter of course, to go either to the servants’ hall or to the harness-room in the stables, where at night some sort of rough preparation was generally made for their accommodation. To smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime.
The first gentleman of whom I heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the late Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told me spoke of it as if she had been present at an earthquake!
Well do I remember the immense care which devotees of tobacco used to take, when sallying forth in the country to enjoy it, not to allow the faintest whiff of smoke to penetrate into the hall as they lit their cigars at the door. The whole thing was really ridiculous, but I suppose it would have still been going on had it not been for our present King, who most sensibly took the lead in promoting the toleration of what is, after all, a great addition to the pleasures of life.
Besides this, there can be no doubt that the cigarette-smoking now practically universally prevalent after lunch and dinner has been a considerable factor in the direction of temperance, and has ended the practice of consuming large quantities of wine, which in old days was more or less universal. On the whole, I believe that smoking does more good than harm, in spite of the attacks sometimes levelled against it. Cigarettes, of course, are a modern invention, but I believe they already existed in a slightly different form at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when old Peninsular officers used to smoke tobacco rolled up tight in a piece of paper. They called this a papelito, and I fancy it was much the same thing as a cigarette. The exact time when cigars were introduced into England seems very uncertain. In Westward Ho! Charles Kingsley pictures Amyas Leigh smoking a cigar, and it is to be presumed that he had authority for this. At the same time it is quite clear that cigars were hardly known in England at all as late as 1730, for the writer of a book published about that time, when describing the adventures of certain English sailors taken prisoners by a Spanish pirate in South America, notes with special astonishment that the captives were presented with “segars,” of which he gives a detailed description.
The greatest traditionary smoker is, of course, Dr. Parr, whose motto is said to have been, “No pipe—no Parr.” He is also declared to have once very wittily told a lady, who had triumphantly prevented him from indulging in his beloved tobacco, that “she was the greatest tobacco stopper in England.”