In the education of young ladies in England too little attention is as a rule, I think, devoted to the inculcation of the principles of sound housekeeping, and in consequence a good many mistresses of households are quite ignorant of the important details of domestic management. Many jokes, I remember, were current about one of this sort, a distinguished matron of society, whom I may mention as Lady Caroline, a dear, portly dame of high degree. Entering the married condition rather late in life (despite a good average weight of some sixteen stone) as second wife to a West-Country squire of limited estates, she undertook the management of his household with a firm determination to conduct it on unswerving principles of domestic economy. This truly admirable resolution was unfortunately unenlightened by even a glimmer of elementary knowledge of housekeeping, and her unsuccessful attempts at starting greatly entertained her numerous friends. Her prompt dismissal of her first cook in particular created much amusement. In vain had the poor woman, when taxed with dishonesty, tried to persuade her mistress that only two legs of mutton pertained to each sheep; for had not the lady, as she somewhat angrily declared, all through her life seen them grazing with four!
In these days, however, there are so many admirable books published which deal with household management and cookery in general, that little excuse can be found for those who wilfully remain ignorant of the essential amenities of existence.
I have a good collection of cookery books which I began to get together at the time when the famous Soyer, who had been cook to Lady Blessington, was creating quite a sensation in London. I remember being taken to see him, and I also recollect his wife, who was a woman of considerable artistic attainments, executing very pretty little sketches in water-colour.
Both Soyer and his wife are buried, I believe, in a sort of mausoleum in Kensal Green Cemetery, and on Soyer’s tomb is the very appropriate inscription, “Soyer tranquil.”
Gentlemen used formerly to sit long in the dining-room over their wine, of which they often drank a considerable quantity; but all this has now been changed, and to-day they soon join the ladies, whose society they very naturally prefer to the mineral waters in which so many of them indulge instead of wine. People certainly seem to me to drink much less nowadays, and of late years, I am informed, the consumption of wine at dinner-parties has sunk to a very small quantity indeed, many men drinking almost no wine at all. These would, I fancy, be bad days for people like Abraham Hayward, who, when a friend of his remarked, “Why, Hayward, I believe you could drink really any quantity of port, couldn’t you?” is said to have replied, “Yes, my dear fellow, any given quantity.” On the other hand, I believe that ladies who, up to comparatively recent years, nearly all drank water, take a good deal more wine, especially champagne, than was formerly the case.
The old custom of people asking one another to have a glass of wine at dinner has long since died out. No doubt its disappearance is a good thing, though there were occasions when it distinctly conduced to pleasant sociability. A shy man, for instance, at a dinner-party of strangers was soon put at his ease by kindly intimations that Mr. So-and-so would like to take a glass of wine with him. Not a few, however, carried the old custom too far, and, besides this, a set could be so easily made against any especial individual whom mischievous schemers might wish to exhilarate unduly.
TOBACCO
Cigarette-smoking after dinner has undoubtedly been a great factor in the cause of temperance. In old days such a thing would have been regarded with horror; indeed, I think the greatest minor change in social habits which I have witnessed is that in the attitude assumed towards tobacco-smoking, which in my youth, and even later, was, except in certain well-defined circumstances, regarded as little less than a heinous crime.
Smoking-rooms in country houses were absolutely unknown, and such gentlemen as wished to smoke after the ladies had gone to bed used, as a matter of course, to go either to the servants’ hall or to the harness-room in the stables, where at night some sort of rough preparation was generally made for their accommodation. To smoke in Hyde Park, even up to comparatively recent years, was looked upon as absolutely unpardonable, while smoking anywhere with a lady would have been classed as an almost disgraceful social crime.
The first gentleman of whom I heard as having been seen smoking a cigar in the Park was the late Duke of Sutherland, and the lady who told me spoke of it as if she had been present at an earthquake!