Any difference that may exist in this universal scheme of dinner, is found in the execution, never in the plan. Some are dignified by sauces more elaborate—purer bread—hotter soup—colder water—a better regulated atmosphere—silent celerity rather than bustling officiousness in the attendants—and an air of ease and unconcern in the host and hostess, as to the matériel of the performance, evincing perfect confidence in their cook, and proving their present situation to be one of facile and frequent occurrence.
Most of the guests had rather played with the first course; the habit of eating a solid dinner alone, or en famille, under the specious name of luncheon, having taken away all natural inclination for food at seven in the evening. Many of them had refused every dish but one or two at the second, and the soufflé and fondu had replaced their numerous predecessors, when Mr. Redgill, a persevering diner, one of the few better employed hitherto than in mere words, remarked how much distress there had been in Ireland, adding, ‘they will be very well off now—ships are preparing, freighted with oatmeal; but, I suppose, they’ll not like anything but potatoes.’
‘Why,’ replied Colonel O’Trigger, ‘the potato’s the finest food in the world—(some Parmesan, if you please)—where do you see such fine fellows?’ (expanding his own Hibernian chest to most sergeant-like dimensions.) ‘When they get a little milk with their potatoes—(some port, if you please; I always take it after cheese)—when they get a little milk with them, they are the happiest people in the world!’
A prudent old gentleman then said, the present subscriptions would pay all the Irish rents. Another observed that a little starvation would be very good for them, and might bring them to a due sense of gratitude to the present government. A fourth, that it would finally be a benefit as absorbing the population, which appeared to him most desirable; for, he was anxious to prove, that a plenteous harvest, whether animal or vegetable, was fraught with misery and danger, now we were no longer blest with war to carry off our superabundance: while a fifth reasoned elaborately to show that, as it was impossible wholly to relieve the starving peasantry, nothing was so merciful as to leave them to the working of events, instead of prolonging their misery by charity, which must finally be ineffectual.
This discussion was interrupted by one of more general interest—on the proper hour of the day in which fruit ought to be plucked: and on the tube of tin, lined with velvet, which insidiously solicits its fall, with soft prevailing art, at the moment of perfection, without sullying its bloom by one ungentle pressure. Sir Philip Cayenne, a short, coarse, and sultry personage, to whom a pine-apple or a bunch of grapes seemed as unsuitable as a fan, assured us he never could touch them, unless culled before sunrise, and kept in a northern aspect. From this topic, he naturally digressed to his wines—his Greek wines! his Tenedos! his Cyprus! High and musical names! with all your delightful and shadowy associations! ye were ‘familiar in his mouth as household words,’ and, in his general spirit of appropriation, ye became his own—till his devotion to a plate of early strawberries, similar to those he told us he had bought that day for half-a-crown a dozen, suspended every other idea.
Such are the studies and pursuits of hundreds, while thousands of their fellow-subjects are expiring in the agonies of hunger—dropping down from inanition in the roads—in the ditches—in the fields—in the lime-kilns, where they sought a little temporary warmth, or the means of prolonging a miserable existence, by heating their last small pittance of coarsest food.
As to luxury, I know that the words, too much, and, too little, are high treason against property. But, though no tangible line can be drawn, though Lear is right when he says,
‘Oh, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous;
Allow not nature more than nature needs,