It was very likely true, for her daughter produced a letter from Princess ——, a married daughter of the Queen, containing the most confidential communications concerning her marriage and domestic affairs, which has probably been made to serve for some time as ‘cheval de parade’ to gratify the vanity of the possessor. Is it not most extraordinary that our German great people, many of whom are by no means wanting in pride and ‘morgue’ towards their own countrymen, should treat every little English Squire or Miss, however utterly deficient in intellectual pretensions, almost as an equal, without in the least inquiring whether this person occupies a station at home which warrants such a reception?
Nothing lets us down more in the eyes of the English themselves than this obsequious worship of foreigners; the meanness of which consists in this, that its true foundation generally lies in the profound respect which high and low have for English money.
It requires a considerable fortune here to keep up a country-house; for custom demands many luxuries, and, according to the aspiring and imitative manners of the country, as much (in the main things) at the shopkeeper’s house, as at the Duke’s;—a handsomely fitted-up house, with elegant furniture, plate, servants in new and handsome liveries, a profusion of dishes and foreign wines, rare and expensive dessert, and in all things an appearance of superfluity,—‘plenty’ as the English call it. As long as there are visitors in the house, this way of life goes on; but many a family atones for it by meagre fare when alone: for which reason nobody here ventures to pay a visit in the country without being invited, and these invitations usually fix the day and hour. The acquaintances are generally numerous; and as both room and the time allotted to the reception of guests are small, one must give place to another. True hospitality this can hardly be called; it is rather the display of one’s own possessions, for the purpose of dazzling as many as possible. After a family has thus kept open house for a month or two, they go for the remainder of the time they have to spend in the country, to make visits at the houses of others; but the one hospitable month costs as much as a wealthy landed proprietor spends in a whole year with us.
As you never were in England, I must say a few words on the routine of an English dinner, which, as I have said, is, ‘à peu de chose près’, everywhere alike.
You like the details of daily life, and have often told me that you feel the want of them in most books of travels, and yet that nothing gives you a more lively conception of a foreign country. You must therefore forgive me if I go into trifles.
The gentlemen lead the ladies into the dining-room, not as in France, by the hand, but by the arm; and here, as there, are emancipated from the necessity of those antiquated bows, which even in some of the best society in Germany, are exchanged every time one hands out a lady. On the other hand, there is a most anxious regard to rank, in the midst of all which the strangest blunders are made as to that of foreigners. I execrated mine to-day, as it brought me to the head of the table; while my friend very cleverly slipped himself in between the pretty sisters. When you enter, you find the whole of the first course on the table, as in France.
After the soup is removed, and the covers are taken off, every man helps the dish before him, and offers some of it to his neighbour;[13] if he wishes for anything else, he must ask across the table, or send a servant for it;—a very troublesome custom, in place of which, some of the most elegant travelled gentlemen have adopted the more convenient German fashion of sending the servants round with the dishes.
It is not usual to take wine without drinking to another person. When you raise your glass, you look fixedly at the one with whom you are drinking, bow your head, and then drink with great gravity. Certainly many of the customs of the South Sea Islanders, which strike us the most, are less ludicrous. It is esteemed a civility to challenge anybody in this way to drink; and a messenger is often sent from one end of the table to the other to announce to B—— that A—— wishes to take wine with him; whereupon each, sometimes with considerable trouble, catches the other’s eye, and goes through the ceremony of the prescribed nod with great formality, looking at the moment very like a Chinese mandarin. If the company is small, and a man has drunk with everybody, but happens to wish for more wine, he must wait for the dessert, if he does not find in himself courage enough to brave custom.
At the conclusion of the second course comes a sort of intermediate dessert of cheese, butter, salad, raw celery, and the like; after which ale, sometimes thirty or forty years old, and so strong that when thrown on the fire it blazes like spirit, is handed about. The tablecloth is then removed: under it, at the best tables, is a finer, upon which the dessert is set. At inferior ones, it is placed on the bare polished table. It consists of all sorts of hot-house fruits, which are here of the finest quality, Indian and native preserves, stomachic ginger, confitures, and the like. Clean glasses are set before every guest, and, with the dessert plates and knives and forks, small fringed napkins are laid. Three decanters are usually placed before the master of the house, generally containing claret, port, and sherry, or madeira. The host pushes these in stands, or in a little silver wagon on wheels, to his neighbour on the left. Every man pours out his own wine, and if a lady sits next him, also helps her; and so on till the circuit is made, when the same process begins again. Glass jugs filled with water happily enable foreigners to temper the brandy which forms so large a component part of English wines. After the dessert is set on, all the servants leave the room: if more is wanted the bell is rung, and the butler (Haushofmeister) alone brings it in. The ladies sit a quarter of an hour longer, during which time sweet wines are sometimes served, and then rise from table. The men rise at the same time, one opens the door for them, and as soon as they are gone, draw closer together; the host takes the place of the hostess, and the conversation turns upon subjects of local and everyday interest, in which the stranger is pretty nearly forgotten, and must content himself with listening to what he can take very little part in. Every man is, however, at liberty to follow the ladies as soon as he likes,—a liberty of which Count B—— and I very quickly availed ourselves. We had the singular satisfaction of learning that this was in accordance with the latest mode, as much drinking is now ‘unfashionable.’ Accordingly the dandy had already preceded us. We found him with the ladies, who received us in a ‘salon,’ grouped around a large table on which were tea and coffee.[14] When the whole company was re-assembled, all fell off into groups, according to their pleasure. Some entertained themselves with music; here and there a couple whispered in the recess of a window; several talked politics;—the dandy alone remained solitary: sunk into a large easy chair, he had laid his elegantly shod right foot over his left knee, and in that attitude became apparently so absorbed in Madame de Stäel’s ‘Allemagne’ that he took not the slightest notice of any one present.
‘A tout prendre,’ I must do this pretty young fellow the justice to say that he was not at all a bad copy of higher originals. Perhaps I was bribed into this favourable opinion by his talking much at dinner about the great Göthe, and praising his ‘Fost;’ both of whom (Göthe and Fost) Lord Byron has brought into fashion in England. Fost seemed to please him, particularly on account of what he conceived to be its atheistical tendency, for he had, as he informed us, spent half his life in Paris, and avowed himself an ‘esprit fort.’