The anticipation of pleasure warms our imagination, and keeps those feelings alive, which possession too often extinguishes.
“’Tis expectation only makes us blest;
Enjoyment disappoints us at the best.”
Dr. Johnson has most sagaciously said; “Such is the state of life, that none are happy, but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing: when we have made it, the next wish is, immediately to change again.”
However singular our assertions may have at first appeared to those who have not considered the subject, we hope by this time we have made converts of our readers, and convinced the “Amateurs de Bonne Chère” of the truth and importance of our remarks; and that they will remember, that DINNER is the only act of the day which cannot be put off with impunity, for even FIVE MINUTES.
In a well-regulated family, all the clocks and watches should agree; on this depends the fate of the dinner; what would be agreeable to the stomach, and restorative to the system, if served at FIVE o’clock, will be uneatable and innutritive and indigestible at A QUARTER PAST.
The dining-room should be furnished with a good-going clock; the space over the kitchen fire-place with another, vibrating in unison with the former, so placed, that the cook may keep one eye on the clock, and the other on the spit, &c. She will calculate to a minute the time required to roast a large capon or a little lark, and is equally attentive to the degree of heat of her stove, and the time her sauce remains on it, when to withdraw the bakings from the oven, the roast from the spit, and the stew from the pan.
With all our love of punctuality, the first consideration must still be, that the dinner “be well done, when ’t is done.”
It is a common fault with cooks who are anxious about time, to overdress every thing—the guests had better wait than the dinner—a little delay will improve their appetite; but if the dinner waits for the guests, it will be deteriorated every minute: the host who wishes to entertain his friends with food perfectly well dressed, while he most earnestly endeavours to impress on their minds the importance of being punctual to the appointed hour, will still allow his cook a quarter of an hour’s grace.
The old adage that “the eye is often bigger than the belly,” is often verified by the ridiculous vanity of those who wish to make an appearance above their fortune. Nothing can be more ruinous to real comfort than the too common custom of setting out a table, with a parade and a profusion, unsuited not only to the circumstances of the hosts, but to the number of the guests; or more fatal to true hospitality, than the multiplicity of dishes which luxury has made fashionable at the tables of the great, the wealthy, and the ostentatious, who are, often, neither great nor wealthy.
Such pompous preparation, instead of being a compliment to our guests, is nothing better than an indirect offence; it is a tacit insinuation, that it is absolutely necessary to provide such delicacies to bribe the depravity of their palates, when we desire the pleasure of their company; and that society now, must be purchased, at the same price Swift told Pope he was obliged to pay for it in Ireland. “I should hardly prevail to find one visiter, if I were not able to hire him with a bottle of wine.” Vide Swift’s letters to Pope, July 10th, 1732.