But now follows the second stage:—the tablecloth is removed; clean plate, and knife and fork laid; wine and a wine-glass, and a few miserable apples or pears, with stony ship-biscuits, are brought: and now the diner seems to begin to enjoy tranquillity and comfort. His countenance assumes an expression of satisfaction; apparently sunk in profound meditation, leaning back in his chair, and looking fixedly straight before him, he suffers a sip of wine to glide down his throat from time to time, only breaking the death-like silence by now and then laboriously craunching his rocky biscuits.
When the wine is finished, follows stage the third,—that of digestion. All motion now ceases; his appetite being satisfied, he falls into a sort of magnetic sleep, only distinguishable from the natural by the open eyes. After this has lasted for half an hour or an hour, all at once it ceases; he cries out, as if under the influence of some sudden possession, ‘Waiter, my slippers;’ and seizing a candle, walks off gravely to his chamber to meet his slippers and repose.
This farce acted by five or six men at once has often amused me more than a puppet-show; and I must add, that with the exception of the incident of the slippers, pretty nearly the same scene is represented in the first clubs of the metropolis. I scarcely ever saw an Englishman read at dinner; I am not sure that they don’t think it an act of indecorum—perhaps of impiety—like singing or dancing on a Sunday for instance. Perhaps, however, it is only a rule of diatetics converted by time into a law, which no vivacity of temper can break through.
Englishmen who do not belong to the aristocracy, and are not very rich, usually travel without a servant by the mail or stage-coach, which deposits them at the inn. The man who waits on strangers to the coach, cleans their boots, &c. has the universal appellation ‘Boots.’ It is, accordingly, ‘Boots’ who brings your slippers, helps you to pull off your boots, and then departs, first asking at what time you will have, not as in Germany, your coffee, but your hot water to shave. He appears with it punctually at the appointed hour, and brings your clothes cleanly brushed. The traveller then hastens to dress himself and return to his beloved coffee-room, where the ingredients of breakfast are richly spread upon his table. To this meal he seems to bring more animation than to any other, and indeed I think more appetite; for the number of cups of tea, the masses of bread and butter, eggs and cold meat, which he devours, awaken silent envy in the breast, or rather in the stomach, of the less capable foreigner. He is now not only permitted, but enjoined (by custom, his gospel) to read. At every cup of tea he unfolds a newspaper of the size of a table-cloth. Not a single speech, crim. con., murder or other catastrophe invented by the ‘accident maker’ in London, escapes him.
Like one who would rather die of a surfeit than leave any thing uneaten which he had paid for, the systematic Englishman thinks that having called for a newspaper he ought not to leave a letter of it unread. By this means his breakfast lasts several hours, and the sixth or seventh cup is drunk cold. I have seen this glorious meal protracted so long that it blended with dinner; and you will hardly believe me when I assure you, that a light supper followed at midnight without the company quitting the table.
On this occasion several were assembled; and I must remark, generally, that when that is the case, a very different scene is exhibited. The wine, instead of producing the lethargic reverie I have described, makes them rather too talkative. Something of the kind occurred to-day. Five or six travellers were very jovial, and having carried this a little too far, a violent quarrel arose among them, which, after long continued noise and confusion, ended, strangely enough, in their all falling foul of the waiter and pushing him out at the door. Upon this the host was forced to come in, and to beg pardon for the poor fellow, who was perfectly innocent. Not one of the men who were eating at their solitary tables took the slightest notice of this affray, but stared straight before them just as indifferently as if nothing were going on.
Soon, however, one of them who had begun his dinner very late gave us a new scene. He was dissatisfied with the mutton they had brought him, and desired the waiter to tell the cook she was a d—— b——. On receiving this communication, the Irishwoman lost all respect for the author of so sensible an insult; tore herself out of the arms of her companions who vainly attempted to hold her at the dining-room door, darted with doubled fists on the offender, and overwhelmed him with such a torrent of truly national epithets, that he turned pale and left the field, roaring “my slippers” as loud again as usual, and without further attempt at resistance hastily retreated to his chamber in the third story; for, as you know, the bedrooms here are always under the roof, ‘comme au Columbier.’
When the late Grand Duke of W—— was in England, he was seized with the desire to travel alone and incognito by the ‘stage,’ as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with English life. It amused him much: the next morning, however, he was not a little surprised, when the ‘boots’ brought him his clothes, at his saying, “I hope your Royal Highness slept well last night.” He thought, however, he might have misunderstood, and taking no notice of the thing, continued his journey on the outside. The next morning, the same title. He now inquired into the matter, and found that a card with his name and rank was stitched to the inside of his cloak, and had destroyed his ‘incognito.’ What struck him the most doubtless was, that people troubled themselves so little whether a German sovereign prince sat on the top of the stage-coach or not. The common people in England care little about rank,—about foreign rank nothing. It is only the middle classes that are servile: they are delighted to talk to a foreign nobleman because they cannot get at their own haughty aristocracy. The English nobleman, even the least of the Lords, in the bottom of his heart thinks himself a greater man than the king of France.
This mode of travelling, to a man who has any thing in view beside mere change of place, or who does not feel himself flattered by the increased reverence of innkeepers and waiters, is certainly preferable to the usual manner of making the grand tour. The diminution of comfort and convenience is counterbalanced by so much that is instructive and agreeable, that one gains a hundredfold by the change.
Dublin, September 1st.