Hulot (a great ass) who dresses à l'Anglais in a pantalon à la gentlemens-ridéres, and rides a grey mare with very long legs in the Champs Elysées, fastened on to Martingale, and gabbled away about le Liverpool Stipple Chase and Monsieur Mason, wanting to know how much an English horse, pure blood, would cost. He was to be showy and very quiet. Martingale rather bluntly told him, he had better learn to ride, before he thought of buying a horse. De Faulter invited your Correspondent to come and play écarté at the Cercle some evening. A very friendly nice fellow. He was in some cavalry regiment, but sold out. I forget why he left the Rag. Perhaps it was too noisy a club for him. Sheffield Higson was holding forth, to the great disgust of De Courcy, about the English constitution, maintaining the universal corruption of the Church and aristocracy, and looking forward to the time when Mr. Cobden should be at the head of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Bright at the War Office; the revenues of the Church of England being divided pro ratâ among the schools of various denominations. To confess the truth, Higson spoils the effect of his excellent political principles by the grossest toad-eating. He never can speak without mentioning some lord as his intimate friend. De Courcy listened to his speculations in horror, and was quite unable to profess his own simple faith—that the House of Peers and the country gentlemen had an exclusive right to the government, and that the devil was the first Whig. He could only turn away, and mutter something about "an infernal snob." Protocol was boring our host with his views on the Zollverein. Altogether we were uncomfortable together, and were all delighted when dinner was announced.
The huîtres de Marenne, those genuine treasures of the deep, had disappeared when Ortolan, filling a glass of old Grave, said, "Do you know I hate a fellow who says he doesn't like a good dinner. It's generally humbug, and when it isn't that, it's something worse. It shows a want of humanity: he might just as well not like virtue, or be indifferent about cleanliness. A good dinner is better than a bad dinner, exactly as a good man is better than a bad man; and to be without a taste, is as much a defect as to be without a heart. An ancient philosopher" (Ortolan is literary, and has read Athenæs) "has defined man as a cooking animal, with great justice. Advance in cookery accompanies advance in civilisation, and they doubtless will both reach perfection at the same time. The culinary art has a direct effect in refining mankind; in the beautiful words of the Latin Grammar, it is emollient to the manners; nor does it allow them to be rough." (Higson, who has no Latin, here sneered visibly.) "After this potage bisque aux écrévisses, we feel our hearts expand in universal philanthropy. Who would grovel amid lower dirt when he can nourish his essence with stuff so ambrosial?"
"Well, for my part," said honest Martingale, "I don't care about your French flummery—it's all to hide the taste of the meat. Give me a steak of good English beef, you know what you're eating then. Who knows what this patty has inside it?" "You old heathen," exclaimed the epicure with pity, "eat therefore without inquiry; you should never work your intellect at the same time with your digestion, or you will spoil the operation of both. Eat in silence, for it is good, and thank the happy age and country which puts such delicate things before its sons."
Martingale grumbled about fellows worshipping a certain portion of their physical constitution, but devoted himself nevertheless to the suspicious paté with great success. The enthusiasm of the less prejudiced part of the guests, amongst whom is of course to be reckoned your open-minded Correspondent, was quickened by some foie gras, and rose to the highest pitch over a salmi of woodcocks, which even Martingale admitted to be no end of good, although the best woodcocks in the world were to be shot on the governor's manors in Lincolnshire. Protocol here drank the health of the chef in a glass of Cliquot's champagne amid general applause.
Your Correspondent is aware of the painful effect that would be produced on your readers, condemned to drag on a miserable existence on the indigestible products of an English kitchen, if he were to enumerate and describe the dishes that completed the repast—all light, savoury, succulent, and nourishing. But why, he begs to ask, is it, that with confessedly inferior materials a French artist can make up a dinner, and a good one, where an Anglo Saxon cook only furnishes instruments of stomachic torture? The fact is certain and the answer plain. A Frenchman considers his occupation as an art and throws his soul into it. Success is his ambition and, when achieved, his pride, and he pleases himself when he pleases you. Compare his enlightened enthusiasm with the view Mariar or Soosan takes of her métier. Think of the impenetrable stupidity, the indolent unconscientiousness, the complacent conceit, and the obstinacy which hardens the hearts towards us of that matron and that maid, and by their hands infuses death into the pot. O Mariar! O Soosan! be wise in time, learn your business, and be not slothful therein; listen to a voice of warning from a foreign strand, lest the day arrive when Missus is compelled to descend into the kitchen as Missuses used to do in times gone by, and your empire over your employers be broken up once and for ever.
The generous produce of a Burgundian autumn flamed in our glasses, loosening the tongue and not blunting the wit. The effect was varied and delightful. Old Martingale, who had been very hard on the Lancers of the Guard, admitted that in a campaign the French cavalry might be awkward customers. De Faulter ceased his allusions to the card-playing at the Cercle, and his coups at Norris's. Ortolan showed that he could talk on other subjects than gastronomy, and De Courcy was civil to Sheffield Higson, who, on the other hand, abstained from enumerating his acquaintances among that aristocracy with whose utter worthlessness and degradation he was so much impressed. Your Correspondent, who is always pleasant and equable, was, if possible, more so than usual, and in the intervals of his brilliant sallies, added by acute observation to those stores of limpid wisdom, whence he periodically dispenses to your readers.
Something in a Name after all.
We see by the French papers, that an umbrella called The Mushroom has been lately patented in Paris. We are not aware what new peculiarity of construction its inventor has discovered, but we think the the name he has selected is a highly appropriate one, and might with exceeding fitness be applied, not to his alone, but to umbrellas generally. For as mushrooms naturally belong to that class of things which are "here to-day and gone to-morrow," we think their name may very properly be used to designate so fugitive a possession as an umbrella.