of course, enters largely into these public entertainments; and the man who omits to fee the waiter in advance, as a rule, “gets left.” Bookmakers and others who go racing are the greatest sinners in this respect. A well-known magnate of the betting-ring (1896) invariably, after arriving at an hotel, hunts up the chef, and sheds upon him a “fiver,” or a “tenner,” according to the size of the house, and the repute of its cookery. And that metallician and his party are not likely to starve during their stay, whatever may be the fate of those who omit to “remember” the Commissariat Department. I have seen the same bookmaker carry, with his own hands, the remains of a great dish of “Hot-pot” into the dining-room of his neighbours, who had been ringing for a waiter, and clamouring for food for the best part of an hour, without effect.
The same system prevails aboard ship; and the passenger who has not propitiated the head steward at the commencement of the voyage will not fare sumptuously. The steamship companies may deny this statement; but ’tis true nevertheless.
Dinner Afloat.
Here is an average dinner-card during a life on the ocean wave:
Julienne soup, boiled salmon with shrimp sauce, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, jugged hare, French beans à la Maître d’Hôtel, chicken curry, roast turkey with purée of chestnuts, fanchouettes (what are they?), sausage rolls, greengage tarts, plum-puddings, lemon-jellies, biscuits and cheese, fruit, coffee.
Plenty of variety here, though some epicures might resent the presence of a sausage-roll (the common or railway-station bag of mystery) on the dinner table. But since the carriage of live stock aboard passenger ships has been abandoned, the living is not nearly as good; for, as before observed, the tendency of the ice-house is to make all flesh taste alike. Civilisation has, doubtless, done wonders for us; but most people prefer mutton to have a flavour distinct from that of beef.
My
Ideal Dinner
was partaken of in a little old-fashioned hostelry (at the west end of London), whose name the concentrated efforts of all the wild horses in the world would not extract. Familiarity breeds contempt, and publicity oft kills that which is brought to light. Our host was a wine-merchant in a large way of business.
“I can only promise you plain food, good sirs,” he mentioned, in advance—“no foreign kick-shaws; but everything done to a turn.”