‘He is the heir to about eighty thousand per annum, to begin with,’ said Wycherley, ‘which he has already dipped beyond redemption. So far for his property. As to what he is doing here, you may have seen in the Times last week that he shot an officer of the Guards in a duel—killed him on the spot. The thing was certain—Cranmer’s the best pistol-shot in England.’
‘Ah, Wycherley, how goes it, old fellow?’ said the youth, stretching out two fingers of his well-gloved hand. ‘You see Edderdale is come over. Egad! we shall have all England here soon—leave the island to the Jews, I think!’
Sir Harry laughed heartily at the conceit, and invited him to join our party at supper; but he was already, I was rejoiced to find, engaged to the Earl of Edderdale, who was entertaining a select few at his hotel, in honour of his arrival.
A waiter now came to inform us that Mr. Crotty was waiting for us, to order supper, and we immediately proceeded to join him in the Saal.
The baronet’s eulogium on his friend’s taste in gourmandise was well and justly merited. The supper was admirable—the ‘potage printanière’ seasoned to perfection, the ‘salmi des perdreaux, aux points d’asperges,’ delicious, and the ‘ortolans à la provençale’ a dish for the gods; while the wines were of that cru and flavour that only favoured individuals ever attained to at the hands of a landlord. As plat succeeded plat, each admirably selected in the order of succession to heighten the enjoyment and gratify the palate of the guest, the conversation took its natural turn to matters gastronomic, and where, I must confess, I can dally with as sincere pleasure as in the discussion of any other branch of the fine arts. Mr. Crotty’s forte seemed essentially to lie in the tact of ordering and arranging a very admirable repast. Wycherley, however, took a higher walk; he was historically gastronome, and had a store of anecdotes about the dishes and their inventors, from Clovis to Louis Quatorze. He knew the favourite meats of many illustrious personages, and told his stories about them with an admirable blending of seriousness and levity.
There are excellent people, Arthur, who will call you sensualist for all this—good souls, who eat like Cossacks and drink like camels in the desert; before whose masticatory powers joints become beautifully less in shortest space of time, and who while devouring in greedy silence think nothing too severe to say of him who, with more cultivated palate and discriminating taste, eats sparingly but choicely, making the nourishment of his body the nutriment of his mind, and while he supports nature, can stimulate his imagination and invigorate his understanding. The worthy votaries of boiled mutton and turnips, of ribs and roasts, believe themselves temperate and moderate eaters, while consuming at a meal the provender sufficient for a family; and when, after an hour’s steady performance, they sit with hurried breathing and half-closed eyelids, sullen, stupid, and stertorous, drowsy and dull, saturated with stout and stuffed with Stilton, they growl out a thanksgiving that they are not like other men—epicures and wine-bibbers. Out upon them, I say! Let me have my light meal, be its limits a cress, and the beverage that ripples from the rock beside me; but be it such, that, while eating, there is no transfusion of the beast devoured into the man, nor, when eaten, the semi-apoplectic stupor of a gorged boa!
Sir Harry did the honours of the table, and sustained the burden of the conversation, to which Crotty contributed but little, the young man and myself being merely noneffectives; nor did we separate until the garçon came to warn us that the Saal was about to close for the night.
CHAPTER XXV. A WATERING-PLACE DOCTOR
Nothing is more distinct than the two classes of people who are to be met with in the morning and in the afternoon, sauntering along the allées of a German watering-place. The former are the invalid portion, poured forth in numbers from hotel and lodging-house; attired in every absurdity of dressing-room toilette, with woollen nightcaps and flannel jackets, old-fashioned douillettes and morocco slippers, they glide along, glass in hand, to some sulphur spring, or to repose for an hour or two in the delights of a mud bath. For the most part, they are the old and the feeble, pale of face and tottering in step. The pursuit of health with them would seem a vain and fruitless effort; the machine appears to have run its destined time, and all the skill of man is unavailing to repair it. Still, hope survives when strength and youth have failed, and the very grouping together in their gathering-places has its consolation; while the endless diversity of malady gives an interest in the eye of a sick man.