The intellectual components of a successful dinner, should, if we may quote Hawthorne, be illuminated with intellect, and softened by the kindest emotions of the heart. To quote Mrs. Jameson, they must combine the caustic and the witty, the lively and the clever, and even the absurd, and the assiduous above all. Everybody must be unselfish enough not to yawn, and never seem bored. They must be self-sacrificing, but all apparently well-pleased. The intellectual components of a dinner, like the condiments of a salad, must be of the best; and it is for the hostess to mix them with the unerring tact and fine discrimination of an American woman.
CONSCIENTIOUS DINERS.
It is chiefly men of intellect who hold good eating in honour. The head is not capable of a mental operation which consists in a long sequence of appreciations, and many severe decisions of the judgment, which has not a well-fed brain.
Brillat Savarin.
A good dinner and a pretty hostess,—for there are terms on which beauty and beef can meet much to the benefit of both,—one wit, several good talkers, and as many good listeners, or more of the latter, are said to make a combination which even our greatest statesmen do not despise. Man wants good dinners. It is woman's province to provide them; but nature and education must make the conscientious diner.
It is to be feared that we are too much in a hurry to be truly conscientious diners. Our men have too many school-tasks yet,—politics, money-making, science, mental improvement, charities, psychical research, building railroads, steam monitors, colleges, and such like gauds,—too many such distractions to devote themselves as they ought to the question of entrées and entremets. They should endeavour to give the dinner a fitting place. Just see how the noble language of France, which Racine dignified and Molière amplified, respectfully puts on its robes of state which are lined with ermine when it approaches the great subject of dinner!
It is to be feared that we are far off from the fine art of dining, although many visits to Paris and much patronage of Le Doyon's, the Café Anglais, and the Café des Ambassadeurs, may have prepared us for the entremet and the pièce de résistance. We are improving in this respect and no longer bolt our dinners. The improvement is already manifest in the better tempers and complexions of our people.
But are we as conscientious as the gentleman in "Punch" who rebuked the giddy girl who would talk to him at dinner? "Do you remember, my dear, that you are in the house of the best entrées in London? I wish to eat my dinner."
That was a man to cook for! He had his appropriate calm reserve of appreciation, for the suprême de volaille. He knew how to watch and wait for the sweetbreads, and green peas. Not thrown away upon him was that last turn which makes the breast of the partridge become of a delicate Vandyck brown. How respectful was he to that immortal art for which the great French cook died, a suicide for a belated turbot.
"Ah," said Parke Godwin once, when in one of his most brilliant Brillat Savarin moods, "how it ennobles a supper to think that all these oysters will become ideas!"
But if a dinner is not a cookery book, neither is it a matter of expense alone, nor a payment of social debts. It is a question of temperature, of the selection of guests, of the fitness of things, of a proper variety, and of time. The French make their exquisite dinners light and short. The English make theirs a trifle long and heavy.