“What is pea pie?” I asked.
“Cow peas and bacon,” was the answer.
With this, my Southern friend stepped to the back door of the house, asked the old man to point him out a fat turkey. The old darkey did this, saying,
“There’s one, sir, but, Lord help me, Massa, don’t kill him.”
The protest came too late. Up to the shoulder went the gun, and down fell the turkey. Now, turning to the old darkey, he said:
“Old man, pick that turkey and roast him, and tell your Massa four big buckra men are coming to dine with him to-day, at six o’clock.” We got some corn-bread from the kitchen and went off shooting. A few minutes before six, we returned, and heard indeed a racket in that old cabin. The “Massa” was there, as we saw by the buggy, standing in the front yard; the horse browsing a few feet off, the harness in the buggy, and the master shouting out, “You tell me white men came here, kill my turkey, tell you to cook him, and you don’t know them? Who in the devil can they be?” No sooner had he got this out, when I appeared on the scene. Up went his arms in astonishment.
“Why, Mc., is this you? Glad to see you and your friends.”
Down we sat at his table, and had a dinner of small rice, pea pie, and roast turkey, washed down by a bottle of fine old Madeira, which he called “the blood of his ancestors.” I looked in vain for a side-board to put silver on, or any evidence of any past fête having been given on the premises. Our host was a thoroughly local man; one of those men who, when in Paris, would say, “I’m going to town,” when he proposed returning to Savannah, which, at that time, was to him the metropolis of America. This gentleman then, like others in the South, cultivated the belief that they alone lived well, and that there was no such thing as good society in New York or other Northern cities; that New Yorkers and Northern people were simply a lot of tradespeople, having no antecedents, springing up like the mushroom, who did not know how to live, and who, when they gave dinners to their friends, ordered them from a neighboring restaurant.
At a large dinner in Savannah, given to an ex-Mayor of New York, one of the best dinner-givers in that city made the foregoing statement, and the ex-Mayor actually called upon me to substantiate it, declaring it had always been his practice thus to supply his table, when he invited a dozen or more people to dinner. So far from this being the case, I then and there assured my Southern friends that no people in the world lived better than New Yorkers, so far as creature comforts were concerned. I have tested the capacity of the Southern cook alongside of the French chef; I had them together, cooking what we call a “Saratoga Lake Dinner” at Newport, a dinner for sixty people; serving alone Spanish mackerel, Saratoga potatoes, soft shell crabs, woodcock, chicken partridges, and lettuce salad. Both were great artists in their way, but the chef came off very much the victor. I doubted then, and I doubt now, if the dinners in London are better than our New York dinners, given by one of the innumerable good dinner-givers. Our material is better in New York, and our cooks are equally as good as those in England. The sauces of the French cuisine are its feature, while there is not a single sauce in African or Southern cooking. The French get the essence and flavor out of fowl, and discard the huge joints. Take for instance, soup; give a colored cook a shin of beef and a bunch of carrots and turnips, and of this he makes a soup. A Frenchman, to give you a consommé royale, requires a knuckle of veal, a shin of beef, two fat fowls, and every vegetable known to man. The materials are more than double the expense, but then you have a delicacy of flavor, and a sifting out of everything that is coarse and gross. The chef is an educated, cultivated artist. The colored cook, such as nature made him, possessing withal a wonderful natural taste, and the art of making things savory, i.e. taste good. His cookery book is tradition. French chefs have their inspirations, are in every way almost as much inspired as writers. To illustrate this: when Henry IV. was fighting in the Pyrénées, he told his French cook to give him a new sauce. The reply was, “Where are the materials for it, your Majesty? I have nothing here but herbs and cream.” “Then make a sauce from them,” was the King’s answer. The chef did this, and produced one of the best sauces in the French cuisine, known as sauce Bearnaise.
Having exhausted quail and snipe shooting and made a failure at deer hunting, we went on the banks of the rice plantations at night, to shoot wild ducks, as they crossed the moon. Whilst whiling away the time, waiting for ducks, we talked over England and America. Lord Frederick Cavendish assured me that if I were then living in England, I could not there lead a pleasanter life than I was then leading. He liked everything at the South, the hospitality of the people, and their simple contentment and satisfaction with their surroundings. On these three places there were then six hundred slaves; the net income of these estates was $40,000 a year. They would have easily brought half a million. When the Civil War terminated, my brother-in-law was offered $100,000 for them; by the war he had lost all his slaves. To-day the estates would scarcely bring $30,000, showing the change in values caused by the Civil War.