CHAPTER VII. THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT
Even Mr. Clarke’s “Dessert,” albeit various, is remembered chiefly by the artist’s immortal plate of the deaf postilion. The Ralph and Harry Hickorys of our day are but poor wrestlers, and are absolutely ignorant of backsword. The singlestick players of Somerset are no longer doughty yeomen of the old school; and “Hopping John made Tom Nottle’s fashion,” * it is to be hoped, has become an unknown tipple. Sir Matthew Ale, the west country squire, with a face strongly resembling a frothing mug of beer, who gave up his time to his apotheosis of John Barleycorn, has gone to his fathers, and the record of his singlestick and drinking bouts with him. His descendant is sipping a light claret sparingly, and possibly playing croquet or lawn tennis on very warm afternoons. He gives not even one pig with a greasy tail to be caught as a prize at the village fair; nor does he entertain the cobblers of his neighbourhood with a barrel of strong ale, “in order to keep up the good old custom of Crispin’s sons draining a horn of malt liquor, in which a lighted candle was placed, without singeing their faces, if they could.”
*A pint of brandy to a gallon of cider, sugared, and warmed
by a dozen hissing roasted apples bobbing in the bowl.
[Original Size] -- [Medium-Size]
How well he tells a story! how he contrives to fasten a character in your mind, and in the course of a few pages to drag you heart and soul into his company! * In his modest preface he says he hopes that even if the dishes be disliked, the plates at least will please. They have more than pleased. They are all that lives in the minds of most men of the banquet, having fallen into the hands of collectors. And yet even Mr. Clarke had a hand in this. “He feels bound to state,” he remarked, in the handsome first edition of his work, “that whatever faults the decorations may be chargeable with on the score of invention, he alone is to blame, and not Mr. George Cruikshank, to whom he is deeply indebted for having embellished his rude sketches in their transfer to wood, and translated them into a proper pictorial state, to make their appearance in public.” They have necessarily acquired a value, which they did not intrinsically possess, in passing through the hands of that distinguished artist, of whom it may truly, and on this occasion especially, be said, “Quod tetigit, ornavit,” Little did the author think that even his hand in the drawings would be forgotten, and that “Three Courses and a Dessert” would be spoken of as a book in which some of George Cruikshank’s best bits of humorous illustration on wood, exquisitely engraved, ** are to be found. Mr. Clarke’s West Country, Irish, and Legal Stories deserved a better fate; they are bright, full of humour and observation of character, and the style is easy and graceful.