As to the parsons, I must acquit them honestly of any portion of this charge. It has been my fortune to ‘assist’ at more than one visitation dinner, and I can safely aver that never by any accident did the conversation become professional, nor did I hear a word of piety during the entertainment.
Country gentlemen are scarcely professional, however the similarity of their tastes and occupations might seem to warrant the classification—fox-hunting, grouse-shooting, game-preserving, road-jobbing, rent-extracting, land-tilling, being propensities in common. They are the slowest of all; and the odds are long against any one keeping awake after the conversation has taken its steady turn into shorthorns, Swedish turnips, subsoiling, and southdowns.
Artists are occasionally well enough, if only for their vanity and self-conceit.
Authors are better still, for ditto and ditto.
Actors are most amusing from the innocent delusion they labour under that all that goes on in life is unreal, except what takes place in Covent Garden or Drury Lane.
In a word, professional cliques are usually detestable, the individuals who compose them being frequently admirable ingredients, but intolerable when unmixed; and society, like a macédoine, is never so good as when its details are a little incongruous.
For my own part, I knew few things better than a table d’hôte, that pleasant reunion of all nations, from Stockholm to Stamboul; of every rank, from the grand-duke to the bagman; men and women, or, if you like the phrase better, ladies and gentlemen—some travelling for pleasure, some for profit; some on wedding tours, some in the grief of widowhood; some rattling along the road of life in all the freshness of youth, health, and well-stored purses, others creeping by the wayside cautiously and quietly; sedate and sententious English, lively Italians, plodding Germans, witty Frenchmen, wily Russians, and stupid Belgians— all pell-mell, seated side by side, and actually shuffled into momentary intimacy by soup, fish, fowl, and entremets. The very fact that you are en route gives a frankness and a freedom to all you say. Your passport is signed, your carriage packed; to-morrow you will be a hundred miles away. What matter, then, if the old baron with the white moustache has smiled at your German, or if the thin-faced lady in the Dunstable bonnet has frowned at your morality?—you ‘ll never, in all likelihood, meet either again. You do your best to be agreeable—it is the only distinction recognised; here are no places of honour, no favoured guests—each starts fair in the race, and a pleasant course I have always deemed it.
Now, let no one, while condemning the vulgarity of this taste of mine—for such I anticipate as the ready objection, though the dissentient should be a tailor from Bond Street or a schoolmistress from Brighton—for a moment suppose that I mean to include all tables d’hôte in this sweeping laudation; far, very far from it. I, Arthur O’Leary, have travelled some hundreds of thousands of miles in every quarter and region of the globe, and yet would have considerable difficulty in enumerating even six such as fairly to warrant the praise I have pronounced.
In the first place, the table d’hôte, to possess all the requisites I desire, should not have its locale in any first-rate city, like Paris, London, or St. Petersburg; no, it should rather be in Brussels, Dresden, Munich, Berne, or Florence. Again, it should not be in the great overgrown mammoth-hotel of the town, with three hundred daily devourers, and a steam-engine to slice the bouilli. It should, and will usually, be found in some retired and quiet spot—frequently within a small court, with orange-trees round the walls, and a tiny modest jet d’eau in the middle; a glass-door entering from a flight of low steps into a neat ante-chamber, where an attentive but unobtrusive waiter is ready to take your hat and cane, and, instinctively divining your dinner intentions, ushers you respectfully into the salon, and leans down your chair beside the place you select.
The few guests already arrived have the air of habitués; they are chatting together when you enter, but they conceive it necessary to do the honours of the place to the stranger, and at once include you in the conversation; a word or two suffices, and you see that they are not chance folk, whom hunger has overtaken at the door, but daily visitors, who know the house and appreciate it. The table itself is far from large—at most sixteen persons could sit down at it; the usual number is about twelve or fourteen. There is, if it be summer, a delicious bouquet in the midst; and the snowy whiteness of the cloth and the clear lustre of the water strike you instantly. The covers are as bright as when they left the hands of the silversmith, and the temperature of the room at once shows that nothing has been neglected that can contribute to the comfort of the guests. The very plash of the fountain is a grateful sound, and the long necks of the hock-bottles, reposing in the little basin, have an air of luxury far from unpleasing. While the champagne indulges its more southern character in the ice-pails in the shade, a sweet, faint odour of pineapples and nectarines is diffused about; nor am I disposed to quarrel with the chance view I catch, between the orange-trees, of a window where asparagus, game, oranges, and melons are grouped confusedly together, yet with a harmony of colour and effect Schneider would have gloried in. There is a noiseless activity about, a certain air of preparation—not such as by bustle can interfere with the placid enjoyment you feel, but something which denotes care and skill. You feel, in fact, that impatience on your part would only militate against your own interest, and that when the moment arrives for serving, the potage has then received the last finishing touch of the artist. By this time the company are assembled; the majority are men, but there are four or five ladies. They are en chapeau too; but it is a toilette that shows taste and elegance, and the freshness—that delightful characteristic of foreign dress—of their light muslin dresses is in keeping with all about. Then follows that little pleasant bustle of meeting; the interchange of a number of small courtesies, which cost little but are very delightful; the news of the theatre for the night; some soiree, well known, or some promenade, forms the whole—and we are at table.