The celebrated Damvers was chef to the as celebrated financier Grimaud de la Reynière, in the last century. Grimaud died a martyr to his epicurean tastes. He was dining on a pâté de foies gras, when he allowed his appetite to overpower his digestion, and he died of the excess. Barthe, the author of “Les Fausses Infidélités,” also fell on the field of the dining-room. He was extremely short-sighted, and ate of every thing on the table. He did not consult his appetite, but his servant, asking him, “Have I eaten of that?” “Have I had any of this?” It was after partaking too freely, both of “this” and “that,” that poor M. Barthe let his temper get the better of him in an argument, and a stroke of apoplexy sent him under the table. His cook deplored in him the loss of a man of taste.
The cook of the Count de Tessé, Master of the Horse to Marie Antoinette, was famous for dressing artichokes. The great Morillian surpassed him, however; but this feat did not save the artist from ending his days in poverty. The elder Robert was, perhaps, equal to either of them, in this or in any other respect connected with his art. The great Carême, ignorant of every thing else, was at least an accomplished cook. There is, as I have said, a tradition that his petits pâtés, when they left the Regent’s table, were sold, like the second-hand pies from the royal table at Versailles, for fabulous prices. As I have before intimated, it was for Leo X. that Carême the First invented those succulent, but orthodox, dishes, which pleased the pontifical palate at a season when gratification by gravy would have been scandalous! It was in the Baron Rothschild’s household that Carême the Second invented his famous sauce piquante, the result of his studies under Richaut, Asne, and the elder Robert. It was in and for France that Carême published the learned and curious work of which he is the reputed author, and which he may have dictated, but which he could not have written. It is marked by philosophical inquiry, instruction, and pleasant trifling; and neither book nor reputed author has been excelled by any artist, or any sample of kitchen literature, that has appeared since that period.
Before the age of Carême, the popular kitchen in France was not very superior to our own; and the patrons of tavernes and traiteurs were as coarsely fed as our frequenters of ordinaries. But as royalty fell, the restaurateurs rose; and when, in 1786, the cooks of Louis XVI. began to augur badly of their prospects, three provincial brothers, Barthélemy, Mannielles, and Simon, opened their famous restaurant, “Les Trois Frères Provençaux,” in the Palais Royal, and constituted themselves the cooks of another King,—the sovereign people. The new establishment created an era in the history of cookery, and men of all shades of politics, and Generals of all grades of reputation, resorted to the tables of the Brothers. General Bonaparte and Barras were to be seen there daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at the theatre of Mlle. Montansier. During the wars of the Empire it was the chosen stage for the farewell banquets of brethren in arms, and at this period the receipts amounted to not less than £500 sterling daily. The triumvirate of proprietors endured longer than any such union in the political world; and it was not till the reign of Louis Philippe that the establishment of “Les Trois Frères” descended, under a new proprietary, into a more unpretending position than that which it had proudly sustained during half a century. The casseroles of the savoury Brothers had remained unshaken, while Kings and constitutions had fallen around them.
The fortune of the Provincial Brothers tempted another country cook from his obscurity; and some four years after the former had set up their tables in the Palais Royal, the immortal Véry thrust his feet into wooden clogs, and trudged from a village on the Meuse up to the capital, to give it a taste of his quality. He enchanted Marshal Duroc with some of his plats, and henceforth his fortune was secure. He married a beautiful woman, whose pen kept his books, whose face attracted customers, and whose heart was devoted to her husband. A quarter of a century sufficed to enable Véry to die immensely rich, after working excessively hard, and to be magnificently entombed in the Cimetière Montmartre, under a marble column, which bore the engraved assurance that “his whole life was devoted to the useful arts.”
Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time as “the Three Brothers;” he made and unmade his fortune three or four times, and died poor, three years after Véry died so rich. Beauvilliers was the author of “L’Art du Cuisinier,” a book almost as interesting as “The Art of Dining;” and one cannot name either without standing mentally chapeau bas! before the author.
Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and heavy bill. The Veau qui tette was renowned for its sheep-trotters. The reputation of others was built upon kidneys; that of Véry, on his entrées truffées. The “Three Provincial Brothers” enjoyed a wide esteem for the way in which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine kept a house that was crowded by the admirers of fish; while that of Robert was distinguished for the graceful attention with which previously ordered dinners were served; and that of Henneveu for the splendid boudoirs in which shy couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, could dine in private, and cease to find their modesty oppressive. Beauvilliers’, as I have intimated, was a costly house; but it was not therefore the most excellent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not to be determined by its price. Four years ago an illustrious party dined at Philippe’s, in the Rue Montorgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a far more exquisite fashion, than if they had joined the Epicureans of the Clarendon, at £5 per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham and Dufferin, the Honourable W. Stuart, two other “Britishers,” and Count D’Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The dinner on this occasion was a recherchée affair. It had been as anxiously meditated upon as an epic poem; and it was a far pleasanter thing. “The most successful dishes,” says the author of “The Art of Dining,” “were the bisques, the fritures à l’Italienne, and the gigot à la Bretanne. Out of compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord Brougham and Alexandre Dumas, M. Philippe produced some Clos de Vougeot, which, (like his namesake in ‘High Life Below Stairs,’) he vowed, should never go down the throat of a man whom he did not esteem and admire; and it was voted first-rate by acclamation.”
The French repasts are not always good, even when they are rather costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two sat down to a repast at the younger “Robert’s,” in Paris. The Amphitryon of the feast was M. Daolouis; and the bill, exclusive of wine, amounted to thirty louis. There were but three or four great dishes, and two or three sauces. The discontent of the guests was general, and the giver of the feast allowed that the dinner was not near so good as that of the “Société des Mercredis,” at Le Gacque’s, which cost only seven francs per head, ordinary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. “Mais, à dîner, Messieurs, à dîner!”
DINNER TRAITS.
“For these and all His mercies”——once began Dr. Johnson, whose good custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good things set before him; but he almost as invariably found fault with the food given. And of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired; and on the occasion alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking that it was a farce to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, in two minutes, he would pronounce to be as worthless as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs! And so there was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. “Well,” remarked the good ancient dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like case, ‘God be thanked!—nobody will say grace!’” It is seldom that “grace” is properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious mockery at public dinners; but then every man should silently and fervently make thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits down to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him, without whom there could have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a defaulter deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn better manners. “Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, “eat, and welcome!” It was all his grace; and had he said, “Come, gentlemen, be thankful and eat,” it would have been more like the Christian gentleman, and less like the “beau.”
It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at the dinner-table, that the company should not be more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited freedom of action in the matter; for, by the Lex Faunia, a man was forbidden to invite more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, except on market days, (three times a month,) when he might invite five. The host was restricted to spending only two and a half drachmas; but he might consume annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat for each person in his house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that grew wild; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at all. One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a great deal of it, and ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the French Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a word about candles, and the wits walked about with the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake by ordering the candles; but as he omitted to say that these were to be lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. So the Lex Faunia, when it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten with such luscious aids to which the name of “sauce” was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint! After all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who rigorously observed the Faunia Law, according to their oaths. These were men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling that he could devote to gluttony; or than Lucullus, who never supped in the “Apollo” without its costing him at least ten thousand pounds.