It may fairly be asserted that kings may wear as graceful an aspect as guests at others’ tables, as they do when enacting the host at their own. The Prince Regent, dining off the mutton which he had helped to cook at Colonel Hanger’s, is indeed no very edifying spectacle. I will introduce my readers to a royal guest of what Hamlet would call “another kidney.”
When the Prussian general Koeckeritz had completed his fiftieth year of service in 1809, he was residing in modest apartments, becoming his celibate condition, near the Neustadt Gate at Potsdam. On the dawn of the day of his martial jubilee, he was harmoniously greeted by the bands of the garrison; but the hautboys did not discourse such sweet music as was conveyed to him in a letter from the king, full of expressions of gratitude for services rendered by him during a long half century to the crown. At a grand review held in honour of the day, the king embraced him in presence of the army, giving in his person the accolade to every other faithful soldier who had served as long; and when this had been done, Frederic William not only declared he would escort the old warrior to his plainly furnished lodgings, but requested to be invited to the déjeuner à la fourchette, which he assumed must then be wanting. Koeckeritz had the pride of Caleb Balderstone, and he turned pale at the idea of exposing his domestic economy to the eyes of a king and court. He grew eloquent in excuses, protested that he was unworthy of the honour designed for him, and piteously muttered an apologetical phrase about “old bachelors.” “Then why are you a bachelor?” asked the monarch: “I have often counselled you to marry, and this very day you shall be punished for your disobedience.” “Well,” said the general, with a sigh, denoting the resignation of despair, “if it must be so, I trust your majesty will allow me a few hours in order to make fitting preparation.” The spirit that possessed Caleb Balderstone suggested this petition. “Not five minutes!” exclaimed the sovereign; “you surely have a crust of bread and a glass of wine to give to us who are your comrades, and we desire no more! Come along, gentlemen!”
Of course, no further resistance was to be thought of, and the gay and brilliant escort led the grave Koeckeritz along, looking very much like a criminal who was about to be hanged with riotous solemnity at his own gates.
But, when he reached those gates, his surprise was extreme. The threshold was covered with flowers, the little hall was lined with the royal servants in their state suits, and the space in front of the house was partly occupied by a score of “trumpets,” who no sooner perceived the approach of the hero of the day than they received him, as our theatrical orchestras do stage kings, with a “flourish.” It is hardly necessary to add, that when the old general conducted his guests within, he found there such a banquet as Aladdin furnished his widowed mother with by means of the lamp. Everything was there, whether in or out of season; and the rare-looking flasks promised pleasure less equivocal than that held out by a Calais Boniface upon his cards, whereon his English visitors were told, that “the wine shall leave you nothing to hope for!”
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed the king, “here is bachelor’s fare with a vengeance! Let us be seated, and show that our appetites can appreciate what our comrade Koeckeritz has provided for them.” Monarch and servant, honouring and honoured, sat side by side; and so gay and so prolonged was the festival, that the king surprised all those who knew how strictly he lived by rule, by ordering the dinner at the palace to be retarded for a couple of hours. At that banquet he entertained the veteran, affecting to do so in return for the hospitality displayed by the latter in the morning. The scene was not without its moving incidents, for the king had contrived another surprise whereby to gratify his old friend and servant. As the monarch led him by the hand to the dining-room, there stood before him three of the surviving friends of his youth who had fought with him in the Seven Years’ War, and whom he had not seen for years. The king had got them together, not without difficulty; the general joy that ensued was as unalloyed as humanity could make it, and never did monarch sit at meat with more right to feel pleased, than Frederic William on this day of Koeckeritz’s jubilee. It was a day that Henri IV. of France would have delighted in. That king is said never to have dined better than one evening previous to the battle of Ivry, when he was sojourning in a country-house under the name of a French officer. There were no provisions there, but the solitary lady who was the chatelaine intimated that there was a retired tradesman who lived near, who was the possessor of a fine turkey, and who would contribute it towards a dinner, if he were only invited to partake of it. “Is he a jolly companion?” asked the supposed officer. The reply being affirmatively, the citizen and turkey were invited together, and two merrier guests never sat down with a lady to cut up a bird and crush a bottle. Henri was in the most radiant of humours; and it was when he was at his brightest, that the bourgeois avowed that he had known him from the beginning, and that after dining with a king of France, he trusted that the monarch would not object to grant him letters of nobility. Henri laughed, which was as good as consenting, and asked what arms his countship would assume? “I will emblazon the turkey that founded my good fortune,” answered the aspirant for nobility. “Ventre Saint-Gris!” exclaimed the king, laughing more immoderately, “then you shall be a gentleman, and bear your turkey ’en pal’ on a shield!” The happy citizen purchased a territorial manor near Alençon, and le Comte Morel d’Inde was not a conte pour rire.
The Russian Empress Catherine used to affect the good-fellowship that was natural to the first of the Bourbon kings of France. When she dined with the highly honoured officers of the regiment of which she was colonel, she used to hand to each a glass of spirits before the banquet commenced. At her own table the number of guests was usually select, generally under a dozen. The lord of the bed-chamber sat opposite to her, her own seat being at the centre of one of the sides, carved one of the dishes, and presented it to her. She took once of what was so offered, but afterwards dispensed with such service. In her days, many of the Russian nobility kept open tables. Any one who had been duly introduced, and knew not where to dine, had only to call at a house where he was known, and to leave word that he intended to dine there in the afternoon. He was sure to be welcomed. At the present time, the Russians are more civilized and less hospitable.
Jermann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg as good, delicate, and “meagre,”—the latter being a consequence of the continual eating that is going on, and the necessity which follows of providing what is light of digestion. The imperial household tables in the days of Paul were divided into “stations,” an arrangement which took its rise from a singular incident. The late empress, like our own Queen Adelaide, was given to inspect the “domestic accounts,” and she was puzzled by finding among them “a bottle of rum” daily charged to the Naslednik, or heir apparent! Her imperial Majesty turned over the old “expenses” of the household, to discover at what period her son had commenced this reprobate course of daily rum-drinking; and found, if not to her horror, at least to the increase of her perplexity, that it dated from the very day of his birth. The “bottle of rum” began with the baby, accompanied the boy, and continued to be charged to the man. He was charged as drinking upwards of thirty dozen of fine old Jamaica yearly! The imperial mother was anxious to discover if any other of the Czarovitch babies had exhibited the same alcoholic precocity; and it appears that they were all alike; daily, for upwards of a century back, they stood credited in the household books for that terrible “bottle of rum.” The empress continued her researches with the zeal of an antiquary, and her labours were not unrewarded. She at last reached the original entry. Like all succeeding ones, it was to the effect of “a bottle of rum for the Naslednik;” but a sort of editorial note on the margin of the same page intimated the wherefore: “On account of violent toothache, a teaspoonful with sugar to be given, by order of the physician of the imperial court.” The teaspoonful for one day had been charged as a bottle, and the entry once made, it was kept on the books to the profit of the unrighteous steward, until discovery checked the fraud,—a fraud, more gigantically amusing than that of the illiterate coachman, who set down in his harness-room book, “Two penn’orth of whipcord, 6d.” The empress showed the venerable delinquency to her husband, Paul; and he, calculating what the temporary toothache of the imperial baby Alexander had cost him, was affrighted at the outlay, and declared that he would revolutionise the kitchen department, and put himself out to board. The threat was not idly made, and it was soon seriously realized. A gastronomic contractor was found who farmed the whole palace, and did his spiriting admirably. He divided the imperial household into “stations.” The first was the monarch’s especial table, for the supply of which he charged the emperor and empress fifty roubles each daily; the table of the archdukes and archduchesses was supplied at half that price; the guests of that table, of whatever rank, were served at the same cost. The ladies and gentlemen of the household had a “station,” which was exceedingly well provisioned, at twenty roubles each. The graduated sliding scale continued to descend in proportion to the status of the feeders. The upper servants had superior stomachs, which were accounted of as being implacable at less than fifteen roubles each. Servants in livery, with finer lace but coarser digestions, dieted daily at five roubles each; and the grooms and scullions were taken altogether at three roubles a head. “A wonderful change,” says Jermann, “ensued in the whole winter palace. The emperor declared he had never dined so well before. The court, tempted by the more numerous courses, sat far longer at table. The maids of honour got fresh bloom upon their cheeks, and the chamberlains and equerries rounder faces; and most flourishing of all was the state of the household expenses, although these diminished by one-half. In short, every one, save cook and butler, was content; and all this was the result of ‘a bottle of rum,’ from which the Emperor Alexander, when heir to the crown, had been ordered by the physician to take a spoonful for the toothache.”
Herr Jermann, who was manager of the imperial company of German actors in St. Petersburg, frequently dined at the table of the “second station,” or officials’ table. There were six dishes and a capital dessert. He describes the “drinkables” as consisting of one bottle of red and one of white wine, two bottles of beer, one of kislitschi, and quass ad libitum. The dinner he speaks lightly of, as inferior on the point of cookery to that of the best restaurants in the capital. The wine was a light Burgundy; the beer heavy and Russian. The kislitschi must have been a powerful crusher of the appetite, it being a sour-sweet drink, prepared from honey, water, lemon-juice, and a decoction of herbs. Quass is a plain, cheap beverage, the better sort of which is extracted from malt, while an inferior sort is an extract of bread-crusts. It is the national drink of the lower orders. A stranger finds it at first detestable; but he not only soon becomes reconciled to it, but generally prefers it to any other beverage, especially in the brief scorching summer of St. Petersburg, when the cooling properties of quass are its great recommendation.
To talk of the fierceness of a Russian summer seems paradoxical, but it is simple truth; and probably the court of Naples itself, throughout its long season of heat, does not consume so much ice as their imperial Muscovite majesties do in the course of their slow-to-come, quick-to-go, and sharp-while-it-lasts summer. Nay, the whole capital eats ice at this season. Ice is thought such a “necessary” of life, that the first question in taking a house is, probably, touching the quality and capability of the ice-cellar, wherein they pack away as much of the Neva as they can in solid blocks. They eat it and drink it, surround their larders with it, and mix it with the water, beer, quass—in short, with whatever they drink. Nay, more, when there is a superabundance of the material, they place it under their beds and on their stoves to cool their apartments. So tremendous is the dust and heat of a Russian summer, that, for inconvenience, it is only the opposite extreme of annoyance to that experienced in the wintry visitations of frost. The ice-tubs of the popular vendors in the streets are enveloped and covered with wet cloths, to protect them from the heat of the sun. I need not say that this is not the season at which a visitor should resort to the capital. St. Petersburg in January, and Naples in July, are the respective times and places to be observed by those who can bear the consequences.
I do not know what may be the case with regard to the fruit eaten at the imperial table; but, generally speaking, fruit is never eaten by a Russian until it has been blest by a priest. Jermann, alluding to this custom, praises it on sanitary grounds, for, he says, the fruit has no chance of earning a benediction unless it be ripe; but if it then be taken to church, the blessing is granted with much attendant solemnity.