The quantity of stationery necessary for the carrying out of the Relief Act is certainly worth noting. In the mere preparation for their work, the Commissioners had delivered to them upwards of 10,000 books, 80,000 sheets, and 3,000,000 of card tickets; the gross weight of all not being less than fourteen tons! Two Inspectors, Major Parker and Captain Drury, having caught fever at Skibbereen and Kinsale respectively, fell victims to it.
Lest they should be suspected of not being true believers in Political Economy, the Commissioners thus conclude their first report: "Your Lordships are aware that the relief that we are now administering is not only of a temporary character, but necessarily of a nature contrary to all sound principles of policy."
The determination of the authorities to supply, as far as possible, the starving people with cooked food, especially soup, made the question of preparing it for millions one of vast importance. To produce the greatest quantity of cooked food in a palatable form, at the minimum of cost, and with the maximum of nutrition, might save the country half a million of money, and many thousands of lives besides. With this object the Government fixed upon Monsieur Soyer of the Reform Club, and appointed him Head Cook to the people of Ireland. His elevation to this unique office was announced with considerable flourish. "We learn," says one of the London journals, "that the Government have resolved forthwith to despatch M. Soyer, the chef de cuisine of the Reform Club, to Ireland, with ample instructions to provide his soups for the starving millions of Irish people." And this journal further informs us that artizans were busy day and night constructing kitchens, apparatus, etc., with which M. Soyer was to start for Dublin, "direct to the Lord Lieutenant." His plans had been examined and approved of. The soup had been served to several of the best judges "of the noble art of gastronomy in the Reform Club, not as soup for the poor, but as soup furnished for the day, in the carte." It was declared excellent. He undertook to supply the whole poor of Ireland, at one meal for each person each day. This meal with a biscuit, he assured the Executive, would be more than sufficient to sustain the strength of a strong and healthy man. One hundred gallons of the soup was to be produced for £1. And M. Soyer had satisfied the Government, that he would furnish enough and to spare of most nourishing food "for the poor of these realms;" and it was confidently anticipated that there would be no more deaths from starvation in Ireland.[248]
M. Soyer arrived in Dublin on the 1st of March, bringing with him his model kitchen and apparatus, and a building to receive them was erected on the ground in front of the Royal Barracks, and not far from the principal entrance to the Phoenix Park. Before leaving London he had published some of the receipts according to which he intended to make various kinds of soups for the starving Irish. Objections were raised in the columns of the Times against the small quantity of meat he used in making some of those soups. "A brother artiste," as M. Soyer calls him, maintained that a quarter of a pound of meat, allowed in making two gallons of his soup No. 1, was not at all enough. M. Soyer rather jauntily replies that he had made two gallons of excellent soup without any meat, and that he had, at the moment, three soups "on taste," two with meat and one without, and he defied the "scientific palate" of his brother artiste "to tell which was which." "The meat," says M. Soyer, "I consider of no more value than the other ingredients, but to give a flavour by properly blending the gelatine and the osmazome, for," he adds with complacent self-reliance, "in compounding the richest soup, the balance of it is the great art."
His brother artiste, M. Jaquet, of Johnson's tavern, Clare Court, rejoins that he never questioned M. Soyer's ability to make a palatable and pleasing soup with little or no meat, but that he himself had not acquired the valuable art of making nutritious and useful soup without meat, and that he would not like to make the experiment of doing so, "for the use of the destitute poor." He expressed the hope that receipt No. 1 might be analyzed, and if it had all things necessary for nourishment, he, of course, was silenced.
M. Jaquet had his wish. Scientific people took up M. Soyer's receipts, and dealt with them,—correctly and justly, no doubt, but in a manner that must have been anything but agreeable to the great artiste of the Reform Club, who seems to have had very exalted ideas of the importance of the mission on which he was sent to Ireland.
Thus wrote the Lancet on the subject: "The mass of the poor population of Ireland is in a state of starvation. Gaunt famine, with raging fever at her heels, are marching through the length and breadth of the sister island, and they threaten to extend their fury to this Country. The British public, under the form of clubs, committees, and relief associations, are actively engaged in sending food to the famine districts. All this is done without boasting or ostentation. But parliament and the executive, in the midst of the best intentions, seems to be agitated by a spasmodic feeling of benevolence; at one time adopting public works, at another preaching a poorlaw—now considering the propriety of granting sixteen millions for railways, and then descending to M. Soyer, the chief cook of the Reform Club, with his ubiquitous kitchens and soups, at some three farthings the quart, which is to feed all hungry Ireland.
"As this soup quackery (for it is no less) seems to be taken by the rich as a salve for their consciences, and with a belief that famine and fever may be kept at bay by M. Soyer and his kettles, it is right to look at the constitution of this soup of pretence, and the estimate formed of it by the talented but eccentric self-deceived originator.
"M. Soyer proposes to make soup of the following proportions:—Leg of beef, four ounces; dripping fat, two ounces; flour, eight ounces; brown sugar, half an ounce; water, two gallons.
"These items are exclusive of the onions, a few turnip parings, celery-tops, and a little salt, which can hardly be considered under the head of food. The above proportions give less than three ounces of solid nutriment to each quart of soup a la Soyer. Of this its inventor is reported to have said to the Government 'that a bellyful once a day, with a biscuit, (we quote from the Observer,) will be more than sufficient to maintain the strength of a strong healthy man.'