Eat Dinkydux.
You'll hate it at First.
This sort of thing continued for many decades, when, happily, its potency became attenuated, and some genius discovered that people were not always responsive to screams; that, after all, the old way was better.
Thus literature returned and linked arms once again with trade. Partly, the circularizing dodge was responsible for this, since, in the circular, the bald statement was hardly good enough. It was found that subtle means must be employed if you are striving to catch a man's attention at the breakfast-table, when sleep still crawls like a slug about the brain and temper is uncertain. Nothing is so riling to the educated person as to have ungrammatical circulars dropped in his letter-box. Their effect is that he heartily detests the article advertised, not because he has tried it and found it wanting, but because of the split infinitive or the infirm phrase. So the whoop and the yell gave place to the full-flowered essay sprigged with the considered phrase. And to my mind the best of all contemporary efforts in this direction are "Mr. Downman's" "Bulletins," of which I have a complete set. Here a fastidious pen is delightfully employed; and not the pen only, but the taste of the book-lover. Indeed, they are lovable productions, having all the gracious response to the eye and the touch of Mr. Arthur Humphreys' anthologies of seventeenth-century poetry. Everything—format, type, paper, and Elian style—breathes an air of serendipity.
The first part of each "Bulletin" consists of a number of essays on questions pertaining to wine and wine-drinking; the second half is a catalogue of "Mr. Downman's" wines and their current prices, with specimen labels, which are such gentle harmonies of line and colour that one is tempted to start collecting them. "Mr. Downman" opens his addresses in the grand manner:—
My Lords, Reverend Fathers, Ladies and Gentlemen.
And if you love your Elia, then you must read "Mr. Downman" on Decanters and Decanting, On Corkscrews, On How to Drink Wine, On Bottling, On Patriotism and Wines, On the Suiting of Food to Wine, On Wines at Picnics. His sharp-flavoured prose, full of sly nuances and coquettish conceits, has all the tone of the best claret. Hear him on salads:—
This is the time of salads. And a good salad means good oil. It also means good vinegar, or a fresh and juicy lime or lemon. Now the Almighty has given us better tools for salad-making than any wooden fork or spoon. In conditions of homely intimacy, a salad-maker, when all is ready, will wash his hands well and long as the moment approaches for serving the bowl. He will shun common or perfumed soaps, and will use nothing but a soap made from olive oil. Having dried his hands perfectly on a warm, clean towel, he will finally whisk the cup of dressing into homogeneity, will pour its contents over the salad, and will immediately proceed to wring the leaves in the liquid as a washerwoman wrings clothes in soapy water. (How horrid!) In doing this he will spoil the appearance of come of the leaves, but he will have a salad fit for the gods.
After sampling a noble Madeira in his cellar cool, in William and Mary Yard, we resumed our crawl, and in the black evening made a tour of other of the old places. At the Café de l'Europe, Mr. Jacobs, leader of the band, played for us a few old waltzes and morceaux reeking of the spirit of 1912; but even he did not handle the fiddle, or seem to care to handle it, in his old happy manner. Like the rest of us, I suppose, he felt that it wasn't worth while; it didn't matter. We called at the "Gambrinus," now owned by a Belgian; at the old "Sceptre," for a coupon's worth of boiled beef; and so to the Café Royal.
Here we received a touch or two from the old times. War has killed many lovely things, but, though it maim and break, it cannot wholly kill the things of the spirit, and in the "Royal" we found that art was still a living thing; ideas were still being discussed as though they mattered. Epstein and Augustus John, both in uniform, were there, and Austin Harrison had his usual group of poets. It was reassuring to see the old domino-playing Frenchmen, who seem part of the fixtures of the place, in their accustomed corner. The girls seemed to have packed away their affrighting futurist gowns, and were arrayed more soberly. That night they seemed to be more like human creatures, and less like deliberate Bohemians.