Ce fut un beau souper, ruisselant de surprises.
Les rôtis, cuits à point, n’arrivèrent pas froids:
Par ce beau soir d’hiver, on avait des cerises
Et du Johannisberg, ainsi que chez les rois.
Théodore de Banville, Odes Funambulesques.
THE dining-room is large and lofty, having been planned with special reference to ventilation, spaciousness, and the attractive views it commands of the copse, the garden, and the rising and the setting sun.
If it is pleasant to dream in the well-furnished library, if it is a delight to muse and study amid harmonious surroundings, how much more important it is that the great nursery of a pleasing frame of mind, the dining-room, should by its inviting surroundings and the care and intelligence bestowed upon its adjuncts, the kitchen and the wine-cellar, contribute equally to the felicity of the house and home!
With the exception of the ball-room, the dining-room should be the most spacious apartment of the house. For is it not the most occupied and visited? Three times daily, at least, the inmates assemble here; and in the case of entertainments I observe it is invariably a shrine to which the guests repair with almost one accord. To be sure, the host and hostess are not entirely neglected, and the flow of conversation is never wholly restrained in the drawing-room. Yet I have never failed to notice, where a large assemblage of invited guests is present in any house, how powerful a magnet the dining-room possesses. This not only to the sleek and rubicund among the sterner sex—men who are known for their fondness for good cheer; but even to the slim and ethereal among the gentler sex, as well. Pale sylphs whom one would scarcely suspect capable of an accomplished play of a knife and fork, staid matrons, blooming rosebuds, and elderly dames, all seem no less fascinated with the charms of the dining-room. It is the source and dispensator of joy when its appointments are perfect—the one room of all rooms of the house which may not be abolished.
How may I enjoy the other portions of my house if the dinner be poorly served and the environments amid which it is partaken be dismal or unattractive? The dinner should be the diapason to pitch one in the right key for the evening, whether it be the perusal of a favorite author, a moonlight stroll, a ball, or a symposium with one’s friends. Carlyle’s dining-room, I venture to say, was a gloomy one; or his cook, lacking a happy turn for an entrée, served him with ponderous pièces de résistance, thereby the more intensifying his natural acerbity and want of geniality. Is the German invariably happy, overflowing with Gemüthlichkeit? He has three hundred and sixty-five soups, one for every day in the year. Is the Frenchman proverbially polite and effervescent? His delicate ragoûts and fragrant Bordeaux are a constant tonic to his spirits. “Repose is as much the result of a well-organized digestion as of a quiet mind,” observes the axiomatic and irrefutable author of the 366 Menus. Thrice blessèd he who has a good conscience and a good cook. Your conscience may be as clear as a mountain brook, however, but without a good digestion life becomes a weariness.