Notwithstanding this, the Faunia Law was an absurd impertinence. It was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, “O Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he boiled fish?” “And you, O King,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had boiled fish for dinner in his camp?” The moral is, that it is best to leave men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could commit the crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for himself, ἐνέπτυσεν εἰς αὐτήν, “spat in it;” and if my readers refer to the chapter illustrating “Their Majesties at Meat,” they will find that so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of Heathenism.
The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread and honey. On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died. He had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance to such small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the fun and the festival of Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic by dying at such a mirthful moment. He consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his family hoped that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He took one sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed away for ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think worse of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on the day her old lover died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was that he had expired before six o’clock, as otherwise she would have been too late for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant society who played cards by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de l’Espinasse, and counted their tricks while they commented upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced as being twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus.
A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the digestive powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a far less commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the stomach. The French bouilli after soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for it is simply, as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all but its nourishing juice.”
“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man who has been floating over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or sight of land to the storm-beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render almost any dish attractive to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect, the French and Chinese cooks are really professional brethren; much more so than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon!
The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and the meal of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. They eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not? All these are far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has been breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin birds’ nests eaten in China may be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris grisettes: “Rather eatable things, those grisettes, by the bye!” So are the birds’ nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears’ paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subsequently soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.
There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke of Wellington’s cook had serious doubts as to his master being a great man,—he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another General who was the despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at dinner when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce an Austrian victory over the French. The General had one huge plate before him, a sort of Irish stew, with every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting out the bones, “as was his custom.” He was so delighted with the message and the messenger, that he received him as Galba did Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s death: with his unwiped mouth, he began kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting down and eating from the General’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater; but he was more nice in his diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his tooth-picks!
According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted; and from an invitation given and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties but illness, imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner; and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of punctuality on the part of the former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of whom it is said that they never saw soup and fish but at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of want of punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” On the other hand, an unpunctual cook is scarcely to be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master is not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the moment it has been ordered. The great “artiste” who dismissed his patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his profession.
At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in France to serve the soup immediately before the company entered the dining-room. The resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the actress; but it was tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush the empty shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a breach in good manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost as famous for her love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, equally often, “on hospitable thoughts intent.”
It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto were intended to be highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to paper the curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes,—promissory paper, as he said, of no value. When his cook waited on him at breakfast-time for orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the attendant, as purchase-money for the necessary provisions, and sent her to market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and ostentatious at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the wines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a shade of disgust, inquired, “If any body drank port?” As no one dared to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the owner took it “medicinally,”) he would direct the servant to “take away the ink!”
If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a contempt for claret, “which,” said he, “would be port, if it could!” The latter individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his glass of claret aloft, with a cry, “If this be war, may we never have peace!”