XXIII
LUNCHEON
"Munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!"
So sings, or says, Robert Browning in his ditty of the Pied Piper, and it is to be remarked that he was not driven to invent the word "nuncheon" by the necessity of finding a rhyme for "luncheon," for "puncheon" was ready to his hand, and "nuncheon" was not a creation, but an archaism, defined by Johnson as "food eaten between meals." Let no one who perpends the amazing dinners eaten by our forefathers accuse those good men of gluttony. Let us rather bethink ourselves of their early and unsatisfying breakfasts, their lives of strenuous labour, their ignorance of five o'clock tea; and then thank the goodness and the grace which on our birth have smiled, and have given us more frequent meals and less ponderous dinners. Lord John Russell (1792-1878) published anonymously in 1820 a book of Essays and Sketches "by a Gentleman who has left his Lodgings." On the usages of polite society at the time no one was better qualified to speak, for Woburn Abbey was his home, and at Bowood and Holland House he was an habitual guest; and this is his testimony to the dining habits of society: "The great inconvenience of a London life is the late hour of dinner. To pass the day impransus and then to sit down to a great dinner at eight o'clock is entirely against the first dictates of common sense and common stomachs. Women, however, are not so irrational as men, and generally sit down to a substantial luncheon at three or four; if men would do the same, the meal at night might be lightened of many of its weighty dishes and conversation would be no loser." So far, Luncheon (or Nuncheon) would seem to be exclusively a ladies' meal; and yet Dr. Kitchener could not have been prescribing for ladies only when he gave his surprising directions for a luncheon "about twelve," which might "consist of a bit of roasted Poultry, a basin of Beef Tea or Eggs poached or boiled in the shell, Fish plainly dressed, or a Sandwich; stale Bread, and half a pint of good Home-brewed Beer, or Toast and Water, with about one fourth or one-third part of its measure of Wine, of which Port is preferred, or one-seventh of Brandy."
In Miss Austen's books, Luncheon is dismissed under the cursory appellation of "Cold Meat," and Madeira and water seems to have been its accompaniment; but more prodigal methods soon began to creep in. The repast which Sam Weller pronounced "a wery good notion of a lunch" consisted of veal pie, bread, knuckle of ham, cold beef, beer, and cold punch; and let it be observed in passing that, had he used the word "lunch" in polite society, the omission of the second syllable would have been severely reprehended by a generation which still spoke of the "omnibus" and had only just discontinued "cabriolet." The verb "to lunch" was even more offensive than the substantive from which it was derived; and Lord Beaconsfield, describing the Season of 1832, says that "ladies were luncheoning on Perigord pie, or coursing in whirling britskas." To Perigord pies as a luncheon dish for the luxurious and eupeptic may be added venison pasties—
"Now broach me a cask of Malvoisie,
Bring pasty from the doe,"
said the Duchess in "Coningsby." "That has been my luncheon—a poetic repast." And Lady St. Jerome, when she took Lothair to a picnic, fed him with lobster sandwiches and Chablis. Fiction is ever the mirror of fact; and a lady still living, who published her Memoirs only a year or two ago, remembers the Lady Holland who patronized Macaulay "sitting at a beautiful luncheon of cold turkey and summer salad."
But, in spite of all these instances, Luncheon was down to 1840 or thereabouts a kind of clandestine and unofficial meal. The ladies wanted something to keep them up. It was nicer for the children than having their dinner in the nursery. Papa would be kept at the House by an impending division, and must get a snack when he could—and so on and so forth. If a man habitually sate down to luncheon, and ate it through, he was contemned as unversed in the science of feeding. "Luncheon is a reflection on Breakfast and an insult to Dinner;" and moreover it stamped the eater as an idler. No one who had anything to do could find time for a square meal in the middle of the day. When Mr. Gladstone was at the Board of Trade, his only luncheon consisted of an Abernethy biscuit which Mrs. Gladstone brought down to the office and forced on the reluctant Vice-President.