Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, none of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed in large quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That Sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were “drinkable.” “From father to son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in his incomparable work, “Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV.,” ate and drank with relish; and it was no jest that among the three talents attributed by the old song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of a “good drinker.” “None of them, however, with the exception of the Regent, carried it to excess; but what was not excess for them, would have been so for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory, and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the laws of their imperious appetite.”
When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were drinkable, the Duke answered him in terms which I may cite, because of their correctness. “Sire,” he replied, “they have, what they call, ‘white Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as that of Monrachet, or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised. There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint, like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine, of which they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, however, and it has an indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable. Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep, and that is all!” “It puts people to sleep,” said the King: “send for a pipe of it!” This is as just a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux, as was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne: “It does not enter,” he said, “and steal your reason; it simply makes a runaway knock at a man’s head, and there’s an end of it!”
But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let us return to the solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our path, perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that they have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or should; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the anguish of appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his “Gaietés Champêtres,” “Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Montauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the neighbouring château, and asks to be invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the ‘Iliad,’ as afflicted as woman can be, does not forget, when night comes, to take a little refreshment.” If Seneca derided such doings, it was only after dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said,—
“’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,—
Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;
And I thought I had never beheld such a face,
Or so noble a turkey and chine.”
This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all the acts of most importance in our lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus, and Diana be no longer the deities or the beati of the earth, the substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, under the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by repasts not only births, baptisms, and marriages, but even interments.
The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh; for then the family necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and cooked. They know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke as he is at a favour.
Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but when he was asked to dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners generally: and he was right; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace, with his modest repasts and fair wine, was something of the same opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests too numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the repast too eagerly consumed, there is no dinner, in the legitimate sense of the word. I never so much admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, “Mes amis, ne nous pressons pas!” I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too willing Secretary:—“Surtout, pas de zèle!” The most accomplished professor of his time has laid down, as rules for securing to their utmost degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that the lighting, cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully considered; that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the wines of first quality, each in its degree; the progression of the former from the more substantial to the more light; of the latter, from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined that there be no accelerated movement; all the guests are to consider themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point at the same time. The rules for the “after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those more commonly observed in this country, with the exception that “punch” expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the Peace; but the concluding rule is worth noticing:—“That no one withdraw before eleven, and that all be asleep by midnight.”