[A] See Volume x. page 113.
Let me first sum up all the knowledge I have acquired on the subject, by stating my firm conviction that there is no beef in Paris,—I mean, no beef fit to be eaten by a philobosopher. Some say that the French cut their meat the wrong way; that they don’t hang it properly; that they don’t hang it enough; that they beat it; that they overcook it. But I have tasted infinite varieties of French beef; of the first, second, and third categories. I have had it burnt to a cinder, and I have had it very nearly raw. I have eaten it in private English families resident in Paris, and dressed by English cooks. It is a delusion: there is no beef in Lutetia.
The first beef I tried in my last campaign was the evening I dined at His Lorship’s. Don’t be alarmed, my democratic friend. I am not upon Lord Cowley’s visiting list, nor are any coronetted cards ever left at my door on the sixth storey. I did not receive a card from the British Embassy on the occasion of the last ball at the Hôtel de Ville; and I am ashamed to confess that, so anxious was I to partake of the hospitality of the Prefect of the Seine (the toilettes and the iced punch are perfect at his balls), that I was mean enough to foreswear temporarily my nationality and to avail myself of the card of Colonel Waterton Privilege of Harshellopolis, Mass.:—said colonel being at that time, and in all probability exceedingly sick, in his stateroom of the United States steamer Forked Lightning, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. But, by His Lorship’s I mean an Anglo-French restaurant—named after a defunct English city eating-house—situate near the Place de la Concorde, and where I heard that real English roast beef was to be obtained at all hours in first-rate condition.
Now, there is one thing that I do not like abroad; yea, two that are utterly distasteful to me. The one thing is my countrymen’s hotels and restaurants. These houses of refection I have usually found exceedingly uncomfortable. So I was disposed to look somewhat coldly upon His Lordship’s invitation, as printed upon placards, and stencilled on the walls, till I was assured that his beef was really genuine, and that he was an Englishman without guile.
His Lordship’s mansion I found unpretending, even to obscurity. There was no porte-cochère, no courtyard, no gilt railings, nor green verandahs. His Lordship’s hotel was, in fact, only a little slice of a shop, with one dining-room over it; for which I was told he paid an enormous rent—some thousands of francs a-year. In his window were displayed certain English viands pleasant to the sight: a mighty beef-steak pie just cut; the kidney end of a loin of veal, with real English stuffing, palpable to sight; some sausages that might have been pork, and of Epping; some potatoes in their homely brown jackets, just out at elbows, as your well-done potatoes should be, with their flannel under-garments peeping through; and a spherical mass, something of the size and shape of a bombshell, dark in colour, speckled black and white, and that my beating heart told me was a plum-pudding. A prodigious Cheshire cheese, rugged as Helvellyn, craggy as Criffell, filled up the background like a range of yellow mountains. At the base there were dark forests of bottles branded with the names of Allsopp, and Bass, and Guinness, and there were cheering announcements framed and glazed, respecting Pale Ale on draught, L.L. whisky, and Genuine Old Tom.[B] I rubbed my hands in glee. “Ha! ha!” I said internally. “Nothing like our British aristocracy, after all. The true stock, sir! May His Lordship’s shadow never diminish.”
[B] Our gallant allies have yet much to learn about our English manners and customs. Only the other night, in the Foyer of the Grand Opera, I saw (and you may see it there still if you are incredulous) a tastefully enamelled placard, announcing that “genuine Old Tom” was to be had at the Buffet. Imagine Sir Harcourt Courtley asking the Countess of Swansdown, in the crush-room of Covent Garden Theatre, if she would take half a quartern of gin!
His Lordship’s down-stairs’ apartment was somewhat inconveniently crowded with English grooms and French palefreniers, and with an incorrigible old Frenchman, with a pipe as strong as Samson, a cap, cotton in his ears, and rings in the lobes thereof, who had learnt nothing of English but the oaths, and was cursing some very suspicious-looking meat (not my beef, I hope) most energetically. I have an opinion that stables and the perfume thereof are pretty nearly analogous the whole world over; so, at the invitation of a parboiled-looking man in a shooting-jacket and a passion (who might have been His Lordship himself for aught I knew), I went up-stairs. There was an outer chamber, with benches covered with red cotton velvet, and cracked marble tables, like an indifferent café; where some bearded men were making a horrible rattle with their dominoes, and smoking their abominable cigars (surely a course of French cigars is enough to cure the most inveterate smoker of his love for the weed). This somewhat discomposed me; but I was fain to push forward into the next saloon where the tables were laid out for dining; and taking my seat, to wait for beef.
There was myself and a black man, and his (white) wife, the Frenchman with the spectacles, and the Frenchman with the bald head (I speak of them generically, for you are sure to meet their fellows at every public dining-table abroad), the poor old Frenchman with the wig, the paralytic head and the shaking hands that trifle with the knives and forks, as though they were red-hot. There were half-a-dozen other sons of Gaul; who, with their beards, cache-nezs, and paletôts, all made to pattern, might have been one another’s brothers; two ancient maiden ladies, who looked like English governesses, who had passed, probably, some five-and-thirty years in Paris, and had begun to speak a little of the language; a rude young Englishman, who took care to make all the company aware of the coarseness of his birthplace; an English working engineer, long resident abroad, much travel-worn, and decidedly oily, who had a voice like a crank, and might have been the identical engineer that Mr. Albert Smith met on the Austrian Lloyd’s steamer; and a large-headed little boy, with a round English jacket, who sat alone, eating mournfully, and whom I could not help fancying to be some little friendless scholar in a great French school, whose jour de sortie it was, and who had come here to play at an English dinner. The days be short to thee, little boy with the large head! May they fly quickly till the welcome holidays, when thou wilt be forwarded, per rail and boat, to the London Bridge station of the South Eastern Railway, to be left till called for. I know from sad experience how very weary are the strange land and the strange bed, the strange lessons and the strange playmates, to thy small English heart!
A gaunt, ossified waiter, with blue black hair, jaws so closely shaven that they gave him an unpleasant resemblance to the grand inquisitor of the holy office in disguise seeking for heretics in a cook-shop, and who was, besides, in a perpetual cold perspiration of anger against the irate man in the shooting jacket below, and carried on fierce verbal warfare with him down the staircase. This waiter rose up against me, rather than addressed me, and charged me with a pike of bread, cutting my ordinarily immense slice from it. I mildly suggested roast beef, wincing, it must be owned, under the eye of the cadaverous waiter; who looked as if he were accustomed to duplicity, and did not believe a word that I was saying.
“Ah! rosbif!” he echoed, “bien saignant n’est ce pas?”