As there is reciprocity in everything, if you dine with others, they, in turn, must dine with you. Passing several winters at Nassau, N.P., I dined twice a week, regularly, with the Governor of the Bahamas. I suggested to him the propriety of my giving him a dinner. He smiled, and said:
“My dear fellow, I represent Her Majesty; I cannot, in this town, dine out of my own house.”
“Egad!” said I, “then dine with me in the country!”
“That will do,” he replied; “but how will you, as a stranger, get up a dinner in this land, where it is a daily struggle to get food?”
“Leave that to me,” I said. The Governor’s accepting this invitation, recalled a story my father oft related, which caused me some anxiety as to the expense of my undertaking. A distinguished man with whom he was associated at the bar was sent as our Minister to Russia; when he returned home, my father interviewed him as to his Russian experience. He said, that after being repeatedly entertained by the royal family, he felt that it was incumbent on him, in turn, to entertain them himself; so he approached the Emperor’s grand Chamberlain and expressed this wish, who at once accepted an invitation to breakfast for the whole Imperial family. “McAllister,” he said, “I gave that breakfast; I was charmed with its success, but my dear man, it took my entire fortune to pay for it. I have been a poor man ever since.”
Having this party on hand, I went to the chef of the hotel, interviewed him, found he had been at one time the head cook of the New York Hotel in this city; so I felt safe in his hands. I went to work and made out a list of all the French dishes that could be successfully rechaufféd. Such as côtelettes de mouton en papillotte, vol au vent à la financière, boudins de volaille à la Richelieu, timbales de riz de veau, et quenelle de volaille; a boiled Yorkshire ham, easily heated over, to cook which properly it must be simmered from six to seven hours until you can turn the bone; then lay it aside twelve hours to cool; then put it in an oven, and constantly baste it with a pint of cider. It must be served hot, even after being cut. The oftener it is placed in the oven and heated the better it becomes. Thus cooked, they have been by one of my friends hermetically sealed in a tin case and sent to several distinguished men in England, who have found them a great delicacy.
I then hired for the day for $20 a shut-up country place; got plenty of English bunting, quantities of flowers; saw that my champagne was of the best and well frappéd; made a speech to the waiters and cook, urging them to show these Britishers what the Yankee could do when put to his stumps; and then with a long cavalcade of cooks, waiters, pots, and pans, heading the procession myself, went off to my orange-grove retreat, some five miles from Nassau, made my men work like beavers, and awaited the arrival of my sixty English guests, who were coming to see the American fiasco in the way of a country dinner and fête. In they came, and great was their surprise when they beheld a table for sixty people, pièces montés of confectionery, flowers, wines all nicely decanted, and a really good French dinner, at once served to them. I only relate this to show that where there is a will there is a way, and that you can so work upon a French cook’s vanity that he will, on a spurt like this, outdo himself.
Marvelous to relate, the chef positively refused to be recompensed.
“No, sir,” he replied; “I am well off; I wish no pay. Monsieur has appreciated my efforts. Monsieur knows when things are well done. He has made a great success. All the darkies on this island could not have cooked that dinner. I am satisfied.”
I was so pleased with the fellow, that when he broke down in health he came to me, and I had him as my cook two Newport summers. I kept him alive by giving him old Jamaica rum and milk fresh from the cow, taken before his breakfast,—an old Southern remedy for consumption.