"The words of Goldsmith," said he,—
"'Heaven sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks!'
were always present to my mind when at table there! They eschew honest cold roast beef, as though there were poison in meat but once cooked, served a second time, though Hamlet is authority for our taste in that respect.—The cold venison you did me the honor to compliment so highly, at lunch, this morning, L——, would have been offered you fried by our good Yankee cousins!"
"The patron saint of la cuisine forefend!" cried a smooth-browed Englishman—"not re-cooked, I hope?"
"Assuredly!" returned W——, "I trust these ladies and Colonel Lunettes will pardon me,—but such infamous stupidity is quite common. I soon learned, however, the secret of preserving my "capacious stomach" in unimpaired capacity for action, [an irresistibly comic glance downward upon his portly person] and could, I thought, very readily explain—
'What is't that takes from them
Their stomach, pleasures, and their golden sleep,
Why they do bend their eyes upon the earth,
* * * * * * *
In thick ey'd musing and curs'd melancholy!'"
If the frank denunciations of this eccentric observer of life and manners might otherwise have been regarded as impolite, his more severe comments upon his own countrymen proved, at least, that no national partiality swayed his judgment.
I remember his telling me the following anecdote, as we chatted over our coffee, after joining the ladies in the evening:—In answer to some inquiry on my part, respecting the social condition of the people—the peasantry, as he called them, of the Provinces, he spoke in unmitigated condemnation of their ignorance, and especially of their insolence and boorishness. "Get L—— to tell you," said he, "how nearly he and his servants were frozen to death one fierce night, while an infernal gate-keeper opposed his road-right. Then, again, the other morning, Mrs. M—— (our hostess) who like every other lady here, except, perhaps, Lady Bagot, goes to market every day, was referred by a man, from whom she inquired for potatoes, to an old crone, with the words—'This lady sell them,—here is a woman who wants to buy potatoes!'"
The following morning, while our American party were driving out to the superb Fort that protects the Harbor of Kingston, to visit which we had been politely furnished with a permit by an official friend, I endeavored to draw from a very charming and accomplished lady the secret of her unusual silence and reserve at dinner the evening before. She is really a celebrity, as much for her remarkable conversational powers, as for any other reason, perhaps, and I had, therefore, the more regretted her not joining in the conversation.
"What made the mystery more difficult of solution," said one of the other ladies, "was the equally imperturbable gravity of that handsome Frenchman who sat beside Virginia."