Just exactly why we take every opportunity of dining in the open air when we are abroad, and carefully fight shy of it, under more or less similar circumstances, when we are at home, is one of those questions which are unsolved, and apparently unsolvable. Our distaste for British coal may be one answer to the conundrum, and another may be not unconnected with our national shyness at being seen eating our meals in public by our fellow-countrymen. Foreigners, of course, don’t count. Opportunity is not lacking, in London at any rate, for open-air dining. It can be done at several of the hotels, and in the summer there is Earl’s Court, where, despite certain obvious drawbacks of access and other things, it can be enjoyed without much discomfort.
But these are, after all, only town delights, and not comparable to a dinner on a July evening in the open air in the country. One such lingers most pleasantly in my memory. It was at a charming house in Hampshire. We dined on a marble terrace, on which soft rugs had been placed. The night was still enough for the candles on the table to burn without guttering. Below the terrace was a rose-garden, full of bloom, and in a shrubbery, not too close to the house, a Hungarian band played discreetly. The dinner, according to my recollection, was not extraordinarily good, but whatever it may have been, the surroundings, the mise en scène, were such that almost anything would have been appetizing and delightful. Why cannot more of this sort of thing be done? We cannot all possess marble terraces, rose-gardens, and Hungarian bands; but the permutations of the idea are innumerable, and I beg to present it to summer hostesses for development and improvement.
Exigencies of climate will probably never permit us to realize the al fresco meals suggested by a Watteau, a Boucher, or a Fragonard, and it is, indeed, more than questionable whether the French cuisine, which was flourishing round and about that period, was ever designed for the dîner sur l’herbe, which is, and was, an essentially bourgeois meal.
At any rate, a curious old book in four volumes, “Les Soupers de la Cour; ou L’Art de Travailler toutes sortes d’Alimens,” by Menon, which was published in Paris au Lys d’Or in 1755, contains many appallingly long menus, some comprising five services and forty or more dishes, expressly designed to be eaten out of doors. No less an authority than Carême, however, says that these menus (and they are certainly extraordinarily elaborate) were the result of pure imagination on the part of feu M. Menon, and were never actually carried out.
In our days even our shooting lunches tend to greater extent than can usefully be accommodated on the grass; and we are accordingly bidden to a farm-house, a tent, or sometimes a garnished barn. The lunch under a hedge, unloaded from the pony and spread temptingly on the grass, is almost a thing of the past, which, according to some old-fashioned fogies, is a pity.
Be that as it may, there is one open-air lunch which can never be altogether improved away. That is the river lunch, either in a punt or a skiff, with a table deftly made of the sculls and the stretchers. Moreover, it has this inestimable advantage: it is practically impossible for more than two to partake of a boat lunch with comfort. It can, of course, be done, but at a sacrifice of leg room—and other things. Of course the more dignified motor-launch lunches, served at a real table, do not count, for are they not the same as those eaten on dry land?
It was, I think, the late Sir William Vernon Harcourt who once remarked that “we are all Socialists now.” By the same token we may say to-day, “We are all motorists now,” and really, taking it by and large, the luncheon part of a motor trip is by no means the least interesting.
That British hotels, with very few exceptions, leave much to be desired is the tritest of truisms. Bad cookery, shocking attendance, and old-fashioned appointments, combined with disproportionate expense, are almost universal, and a big fortune awaits any Boniface who, with a good house on a much-frequented road, instals a really good cook, preferably a Frenchman and his wife, not necessarily a high-priced individual, and makes a speciality of well-cooked, daintily served, appetizing lunches and dinners.
We have all met, only too frequently, the miserable sham lamb, which is mere mutton saucily disguised with mint; the nearly raw cold beef; the maltreated chop; the apologetic steak; the absurd parody of a salad; the sad and heavy apple tart; and the anything but real Cheddar cheese. All these things are absurd and quite unnecessary.
It is really just as easy to cook a good dinner as a bad one. Experto crede.