But all this has disappeared, and one is no longer obliged to talk to one’s opposite neighbour through a jungle of horticulture. Flowers are best shown in low bowls, either china or silver, there are no useless impedimenta, the tiresome trails of smilax have long since been relegated to Peckham dinner-tables, and we have at last arrived at an era of plenty of elbow-room, discreet floral decoration, and a clean sweep of ridiculous encumbrances.
Some hostesses, indeed, cultivate the Japanese grammar of the arrangement of flowers, which gives a particular and especial value to each leaf, branch, and stalk. Others again will have merely half a dozen blooms, all told, on the table, but each bloom perfect of its kind, and displayed to the best advantage. High vases are as obsolete as the dodo, and people are gradually becoming alive to the fact that four or five exquisite roses in a big flat Hawthorn dish are more decorative than all the miserable little white china cupids in Regent Street.
The choice of odours, too, is an important consideration. No hostess with any consideration for the olfactory nerves of her guests would put strongly perfumed flowers on the dinner-table. They would only destroy the flavour of the cates, and cause annoyance rather than pleasure. Even the lovely syringa, which a good lady once described as “a respectable gardenia,” is too strong, and at the most a purely neutral scent is permissible.
In the height of summer I have met a single water-lily floating in a copper dish in the middle of the table; the lily was so perfect in itself that any other decoration would have seemed superfluous and impertinent. The stalks of flowers seen through clear glass are as beautiful as the blooms, and an arrangement of green leaves only, with no flower at all, is, if rightly understood and designed, very difficult to beat.
Only recently, dining in an artist’s studio, I was delighted with a few sprays of medlar blossom on the table, and a mass of hydrangea on the sideboard, immediately below a shelf of old pewter. The harmony was wonderfully beautiful. Such touches of taste entirely alter the character of a dinner, and from a mere feeding party it becomes an artistic pleasure. For, after all, the mere act of eating is not in itself beautiful.
Reverting to the food-faddist, there are some who, quite apart from doctors’ reasons, have the most peculiar likes and dislikes. Some never touch soup; others positively like boiled veal; and it is on record that Dr. Johnson poured lobster sauce over his plum-pudding. It is not easy to understand this extraordinary combination of the great lexicographer, but the story has good authority.
Some folk, quite worthy folk too, like cold meat and pickles, even when abroad; others make a point of drinking the wine of the country. It is told of the great Duke of Wellington that when journeying through France with Alava, in 1814, on being asked at what time they should start next day, he invariably replied “At daybreak.” And to the question what they should have for dinner, he always answered, “Cold meat.” “Je les ai eu en horreur, à la fin,” Alava declared, “ces deux mots-là—‘daybreak’ et ‘cold meat.’”
The menu of a good summer dinner is always interesting. Here is one which should amply satisfy the most fastidious. It was cooked by one of the best chefs in London, and seems to me to contain some particularly interesting features.
MENU DU DINER
Zakuska.
Potage à la Dauphine.
Purée d’asperges à la St. Georges.
Filets de Sole Bagration.
Saumon froid à la Doria.
Ris de Veau en Caisses à la Périgueux.
Petites Croustades Glacés à la Montglas.
Selle de Mouton froid.
Courges farcies.
Cannetons Sautés. Sauce Bigarade.
Salade de Choux Rouges.
Maïs à l’Américaine.
Macédoine de Fruits.
Bombe de Juillet.
Glace de Crème aux Truffes.
Another hot-weather menu is a comparatively simple luncheon, and is principally remarkable for the fact that it is entirely cold, from the prawns to the coffee. We have all of us, of course, had many cold lunches, racing, motoring, at Henley, or elsewhere, but as a rule these casual meals lack character and homogeneity; they are of a “chucked-together” sort of nature, and whilst serving a useful purpose of their own, can hardly be called perfect pictures of their kind. No such objection can, I think, be made to the subjoined.