The Frenchman is hyperbolical, and the Englishman not even emphatic; the one makes loud expressions, the other none; the one spits in his pocket, and the other refuses to spit at all. However, there is no need of national antipathies to dissuade mankind from chewing tobacco, which is certainly one of the most aggravated indecencies that human nature has been guilty of. How it should exist where there are ladies, I do not conceive, and, least of all, do I conceive how it should exist in Philadelphia, the most gynocratic of all cities.
But I smell the dinner, and since I am in the way of aphorisms, I will give you a few to eat as a dessert, and to fill the rest of this page. In your cookery, avoid all high seasonings, and coarse flavours, they are vulgar. Cayenne, curry, allspice, and walnut pickles, and all such inflammatory dishes, are banished from the French kitchen entirely. If even the butter has a little crumb of salt in it, it is obliged, like the President’s Message, to make an apology for its sauciness. Every thing is served, as far as possible, in its own juices.
Even the ladies have left off aromatics and Eau de Cologne only keeps its place upon the toilet. High seasonings for meat are used only as antiseptics. If you ask a company to dinner, either dine out yourself, or conceal your authority, by mixing, as they do in Paris, undistinguishably with your guests. The guest must feel at his ease. And, take care to observe antipathies and affinities in the distribution of the seats. How many sin against this rule. I have known a lawyer put alongside of a judge!
The French used to place a gentleman by a lady, and both drank from the same cup, and ate from the same plate; sometimes the gentleman would put the bite into the lady’s mouth. I am sorry—sometimes I am glad—that this turtledove way of eating has gone out of fashion.
The table in America presents you the entire meal at a single view—in some houses including the dessert; and while the dishes are lugged fifty yards from the kitchen, and await then the ladies, fixing themselves, what do you think has happened? Why, the jellies are coddled, the drawn-butter has gone into blanc-mange, the beef gravy to tallow, and the chickens to goose-flesh—in a word, nothing is hot but the butter.
It may be laid down as a rule, that no man can dine who sees his dinner. Pray you observe a succession and analogy of dishes. I entreat you at least that the fish may be hot, and that it may not wait an hour for its sauce. And take care that your waiters have a proper acquaintance with human nature and its wants, and that they be penetrated with a sense of their duties. They must understand congruities, and know the desires and appetites of a guest from his countenance.
I have seen countries, where if one asks for mutton, he has to ask for turnips also! I have seen servants in our country, who, all the while you are in agony for a dish, are standing and gaping at the ceiling—fellows whom Heliogabalus would have crucified immediately after dinner. A French garçon told me he knew a man’s wants—if a gentlemanly eater—by the back of his neck. “I was puzzled,” said he, “the other day by an American—he wanted a glass of milk just after his soup.”
To remove a plate too soon by officiousness, is a monstrous fault; and to make a clatter among the dishes is excessively annoying. What a hurly-burly at an American dinner!—At the Rocher Cancale you would think the servants were bearing along the sacred things of Mother Vesta—their feet are muffled, the dishes are of velvet. In barbarous times, a monstrous baron used to bring the dinner into his hall, by servants on horseback. A good housekeeper now, by placing his dining-room and kitchen in contiguity, and all accessories at the side of their principals, studies that their services may be almost invisible.—A host of a delicate taste never introduces one, but as they do a ghost at a play, where the occasion is indispensable—nodus nisi vindice dignus. These four words of Latin just saved their distance, and I have only room to add—good night.
LETTER XXII.
The Lap-dog.—The Dame Blanche.—The Beauty in a Gallery.—The Lingère.—Madame Frederic.—Fête de Longchamps.—Parisian Fashions.—Holy Concerts.—Pretty Women.—Empire of Fashion.—Reign of Beauty.—The Fashionable Lady.