VIII
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England
Two things that are especially memorable about the eighteenth century in England, both of them concerned with spirits: its letter writers were perhaps the wittiest and most urbane the world has yet seen, and its citizens, from the princeliest to the most miserable, were confirmed and bottomless drunkards.
It is true that the upper-class topers moved in what has since been idealized into a delicate ballet of suppers, balls, musical soirées, and endless brilliant conversations, where all the drawing rooms were filled with exquisitely epigrammatical mistresses of incredibly gallant and aristocratic diplomats. Certainly the letters of brittle gossip that flowed from the pens of practically every literate person above the rank of baronet in those chatty days would prove the point . . . if it were not for such a scathing comment as Thackeray made, a hundred or so years later, in his essay on Steele:
From The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811–1863
There exists a curious document descriptive of the manners of the last age, which describes most minutely the amusements and occupations of persons of fashion in London at the time of which we are speaking; the time of Swift, and Addison, and Steele.
When Lord Sparkish, Tom Neverout, and Colonel Alwit, the immortal personages of Swift’s polite conversation, came to breakfast with my Lady Smart, at eleven o’clock in the morning, my Lord Smart was absent at the levee. His lordship was at home to dinner at three o’clock to receive his guests; and we may sit down to this meal, like the Barmecide’s, and see the fops of the last century before us. Seven of them sat down at dinner, and were joined by a country baronet who told them they kept Court hours. These persons of fashion began their dinner with a sirloin of beef, fish, a shoulder of veal, and a tongue. My Lady Smart carved the sirloin, my Lady Answerall helped the fish, and the gallant Colonel cut the shoulder of veal. All made a considerable inroad on the sirloin and the shoulder of veal with the exception of Sir John, who had no appetite, having already partaken of a beefsteak and two mugs of ale, besides a tankard of March beer as soon as he got out of bed. They drank claret, which the master of the house said should always be drunk after fish; and my Lord Smart particularly recommended some excellent cider to my Lord Sparkish, which occasioned some brilliant remarks from that nobleman. When the host called for wine, he nodded to one or other of his guests, and said, “Tom Neverout, my service to you.”
After the first course came almond-pudding, fritters, which the Colonel took with his hands out of the dish, in order to help the brilliant Miss Notable; chickens, black puddings, and soup; and Lady Smart, the elegant mistress of the mansion, finding a skewer in a dish, placed it in her plate with directions that it should be carried down to the cook and dressed for the cook’s own dinner. Wine and small beer were drunk during the second course; and when the Colonel called for beer, he called the butler Friend, and asked whether the beer was good. Various jocular remarks passed from the gentlefolks to the servants; at breakfast several persons had a word and a joke for Mrs. Betty, my lady’s maid, who warmed the cream and had charge of the canister (the tea cost thirty shillings a pound in those days). When my Lady Sparkish sent her footman out to my Lady Match to come at six o’clock and play at quadrille, her ladyship warned the man to follow his nose, and if he fell by the way not to stay to get up again. And when the gentleman asked the hall-porter if his lady was at home, that functionary replied, with manly waggishness, “She was at home just now, but she’s not gone out yet.”
After the puddings, sweet and black, the fritters, and soup, came the third course, of which the chief dish was a hot venison pasty, which was put before Lord Smart, and carved by that nobleman. Besides the pasty there was a hare, a rabbit, some pigeons, partridges, a goose, and a ham. Beer and wine were freely imbibed during this course, the gentlemen always pledging somebody with every glass which they drank; and by this time the conversation between Tom Neverout and Miss Notable had grown so brisk and lively, that the Derbyshire baronet began to think the young gentlewoman was Tom’s sweetheart: on which Miss remarked, that she loved Tom “like pie.” After the goose, some of the gentlemen took a dram of brandy, “which was very good for the wholesomes,” Sir John said; and now having had a tolerably substantial dinner, honest Lord Smart bade the butler bring up the great tankard full of October to Sir John. The great tankard was passed from hand to hand and mouth to mouth, but when pressed by the noble host upon the gallant Tom Neverout, he said, “No, faith, my lord; I like your wine, and won’t put a churl upon a gentleman. Your honour’s claret is good enough for me.” And so, the dinner over, the host said, “Hang saving, bring us up a ha’porth of cheese.”
The cloth was now taken away, and a bottle of burgundy was set down, of which the ladies were invited to partake before they went to their tea. When they withdrew, the gentlemen promised to join them in an hour: fresh bottles were brought; the “dead men,” meaning the empty bottles, removed; and “D’you hear, John! bring clean glasses,” my Lord Smart said. On which the gallant Colonel Alwit said, “I’ll keep my glass; for wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in.”
After an hour the gentlemen joined the ladies, and then they all sat and played quadrille until three o’clock in the morning, when the chairs and the flambeaux came, and this noble company went to bed.
Such were manners six or seven score years ago. I draw no inference from this queer picture—let all moralists here present deduce their own. Fancy the moral condition of that society in which a lady of fashion joked with a footman, and carved a sirloin, and provided besides a great shoulder of veal, a goose, hare, rabbit, chickens, partridges, black puddings, and a ham for a dinner for eight Christians. What—what could have been the condition of that polite world in which people openly ate goose after almond-pudding, and took their soup in the middle of dinner? Fancy a Colonel in the Guards putting his hand into a dish of beignets d’abricot and helping his neighbour, a young lady du monde! Fancy a noble lord calling out to the servants, before the ladies at his table, “Hang expense, bring us a ha’porth of cheese!” Such were the ladies of St. James’s—such were the frequenters of “White’s Chocolate-House,” when Swift used to visit it, and Steele described it as the centre of pleasure, gallantry, and entertainment, a hundred and forty years ago!
Perhaps this basic coarseness in the behavior of their period forced such people as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Horace Walpole and a hundred more to escape to other lands, willy-nilly, or bury themselves in an abyss of politics and intrigue at home.
Whatever the cause, the result was good, and the correspondence that has been preserved from those sharp-tongued intelligent snobs of two centuries ago is one of the great delights, a leaven in the mighty dough of literature.
The one letter from Lady Mary that I have chosen to print is at best a tantalizing snippet from her fat correspondence, but a good sample, I think, of the astounding woman’s energy and hungry curiosity about life.
The thought of giving birth to a child in Constantinople in 1718 is disturbing enough, in spite of Lady Mary’s calm statement that the Turks were much more progressive about such things than the English; and her little jaunt to interview the Sultana a month later is downright exhausting to look back on. And then her sharp, sharp eyes!
How could she manage, in her short visit, to count each diamond in the fastenings of pearls around the royal talpoche? How did she know that there were two hundred emeralds in each of the three necklaces, emeralds “close joined together, of the most lively green, perfectly matched, every one as large as a half-crown piece, and as thick as three crown pieces”?
And the fifty dishes of meat, each served separately! And every detail of the service itself: what was in china, what in silver, what in gold!
Lady Mary must have had the mind of a tabulating machine . . . and the unmitigated gall of a Hollywood society-columnist, unafraid of impudence in any of her questionings about the thises-and-thats of such a closed subject as the seraglio and its special etiquette of fornication. The thing, of course, that separates her forever from being either machinelike or merely obnoxious is that she wrote like a witty, charming aristocrat, which is what she was.
From the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1689–1762
Pera of Constantinople, March 10, O.S. [1718]
To the Countess of ——
I have not written to you, dear sister, these many months:—a great piece of self-denial. But I know not where to direct, or what part of the world you were in. I have received no letter from you since that short note of April last, in which you tell me that you are on the point of leaving England, and promise me a direction for the place you stay in; but I have in vain expected it till now: and now I only learn from the gazette, that you are returned, which induces me to venture this letter to your house at London. I had rather ten of my letters should be lost, than you imagine I don’t write; and I think it is hard fortune if one in ten don’t reach you. However, I am resolved to keep the copies, as testimonies of my inclination to give you, to the utmost of my power, all the diverting part of my travels, while you are exempt from all the fatigues and inconveniences.
In the first place, I wish you joy of your niece; for I was brought to bed of a daughter five weeks ago. I don’t mention this as one of my diverting adventures; though I must own that it is not half so mortifying here as in England, there being as much difference as there is between a little cold in the head, which sometimes happens here, and the consumptive cough, so common in London. Nobody keeps their house a month for lying in; and I am not so fond of any of our customs to retain them when they are not necessary. I returned my visits at three weeks’ end; and about four days ago crossed the sea, which divides this place from Constantinople, to make a new one, where I had the good fortune to pick up many curiosities.
I went to see the Sultana Hafitén, favourite of the late Emperor Mus- tapha, who, you know (or perhaps you don’t know) was deposed by his brother, the reigning Sultan Achmet, and died a few weeks after, being poisoned, as it was generally believed. This lady was, immediately after his death, saluted with an absolute order to leave the seraglio, and choose herself a husband from the great men at the Porte. I suppose you may imagine her overjoyed at this proposal. Quite contrary: these women, who are called, and esteem themselves, queens, look upon this liberty as the greatest disgrace and affront that can happen to them. She threw herself at the Sultan’s feet, and begged him to poignard her, rather than use his brother’s widow with that contempt. She represented to him, in agonies of sorrow, that she was privileged from this misfortune, by having brought five princes into the Ottoman family; but all the boys being dead, and only one girl surviving, this excuse was not received, and she [was] compelled to make her choice. She chose Bekir Effendi, then secretary of state, and above fourscore years old, to convince the world that she firmly intended to keep the vow she had made, of never suffering a second husband to approach her bed; and since she must honour some subject so far as to be called his wife, she would choose him as a mark of her gratitude, since it was he that had presented her, at the age of ten years old, to her last lord. But she has never permitted him to pay her one visit; though it is now fifteen years she has been in his house, where she passes her time in uninterrupted mourning, with a constancy very little known in Christendom, especially in a widow of twenty-one, for she is now but thirty-six. She has no black eunuchs for her guard, her husband being obliged to respect her as a queen, and not inquire at all into what is done in her apartment, where I was led into a large room, with a sofa the whole length of it, adorned with white marble pillars like a ruelle, covered with pale blue figured velvet on a silver ground, w ith cushions of the same, where I was desired to repose till the Sultana appeared, who had contrived this manner of reception to avoid rising up at my entrance, though she made me an inclination of her head, when I rose up to her. I was very glad to observe a lady that had been distinguished by the favour of an emperor, to whom beauties were every day presented from all parts of the world. But she did not seem to me to have ever been half so beautiful as the fair Fatima I saw at Adrianople; though she had the remains of a fine face, more decayed by sorrow than time. But her dress was something so surprisingly rich, I cannot forbear describing it to you. She wore a vest called donalma, and which differs from a caftán by longer sleeves, and folding over at the bottom. It was of purple cloth, straight to her shape, and thick set, on each side, down to her feet, and round the sleeves, with pearls of the best water, of the same size as their buttons commonly are. You must not suppose I mean as large as those of my Lord ——, but about the bigness of a pea; and to these buttons large loops of diamonds, in the form of those gold loops so common upon birthday coats. This habit was tied, at the waist, with two large tassels of smaller pearl, and round the arms embroidered with large diamonds: her shift fastened at the bottom with a great diamond, shaped like a lozenge; her girdle as broad as the broadest English ribbon, entirely covered with diamonds. Round her neck she wore three chains, which reached to her knees: one of large pearl, at the bottom of which hung a fine coloured emerald, as big as a turkey-egg; another, consisting of two hundred emeralds, close joined together, of the most lively green, perfectly matched, every one as large as a half-crown piece, and as thick as three crown pieces; and another of small emeralds, perfectly round. But her ear-rings eclipsed all the rest. They were two diamonds, shaped exactly like pears, as large as a big hazel-nut. Round her talpoche she had four strings of pearl, the whitest and most perfect in the world, at least enough to make four necklaces, every one as large as the Duchess of Marlborough’s, and of the same size, fastened with two roses, consisting of a large ruby for the middle stone, and round them twenty drops of clean diamonds to each. Besides this, her headdress was covered with bodkins of emeralds and diamonds. She wore large diamond bracelets, and had five rings on her fingers, all single diamonds, (except Mr. Pitt’s) the largest I ever saw in my life. It is for jewellers to compute the value of these things; but, according to the common estimation of jewels in our part of the world, her whole dress must be worth above a hundred thousand pounds sterling. This I am very sure of, that no European queen has half the quantity; and the empress’s jewels, though very fine, would look very mean near hers.
She gave me a dinner of fifty dishes of meat, which (after their fashion) were placed on the table but one at a time, and was extremely tedious. But the magnificence of her table answered very well to that of her dress. The knives were of gold, the hafts set with diamonds. But the piece of luxury that grieved my eyes was the table-cloth and napkins, which were all tiffany, embroidered with silks and gold, in the finest manner, in natural flowers. It was with the utmost regret that I made use of these costly napkins, as finely wrought as the finest handkerchiefs that ever came out of this country. You may be sure that they were entirely spoiled before dinner was over. The sherbet (which is the liquor they drink at meals) was served in china bowls; but the covers and salvers massy gold. After dinner, water was brought in a gold basin, and towels of the same kind of the napkins, which I very unwillingly wiped my hands upon; and coffee was served in china, with gold soucoupes.
The Sultana seemed in a very good humour, and talked to me with the utmost civility. I did not omit this opportunity of learning all that I possibly could of the seraglio, which is so entirely unknown among us. She assured me, that the story of the Sultan’s throwing a handkerchief is altogether fabulous; and the manner upon that occasion, no other but that he sends the kyslár agá, to signify to the lady the honour he intends her. She is immediately complimented upon it by the others, and led to the bath, where she is perfumed and dressed in the most magnificent and becoming manner. The Emperor precedes his visit by a royal present, and then comes into her apartment: neither is there any such thing as her creeping in at the bed’s foot. She said, that the first he made choice of was always after the first in rank, and not the mother of the eldest son, as other writers would make us believe. Sometimes the Sultan diverts himself in the company of all his ladies, who stand in a circle round him. And she confessed that they were ready to die with jealousy and envy of the happy she that he distinguished by any appearance of preference. But this seemed to me neither better nor worse than the circles in most courts, where the glance of the monarch is watched, and every smile waited for with impatience, and envied by those who cannot obtain it.
Horace Walpole wrote to everybody who was “anybody” in Great Britain and Europe, probably; and in a period when the ability to produce an urbane, polished, perfectly constructed letter was a prerequisite to social standing, his shine out as by far the best of their kind.
Candor was as much a part of gentlemanly manners then as common sense, and the picture that Walpole paints of himself is not always agreeable; but in the main it is easy to see why he was one of the most desirable men alive in the eighteenth century, whether as correspondent, dinner guest, lover, or architect of Strawberry Hill, his fabulous Gothic country-house.
His letter to the Earl of Hertford, written April 7, 1765, is typical of him and of the society in which he was happiest to move. And it reminds me of one of Brillat-Savarin’s aphorisms, written some fifty years later, but eternally true as all of his are bound to be: “A man who keeps a good dinner waiting for a tardy friend commits an outrage upon all the other guests.”
From the Letters of Horace Walpole, 1717–1797
. . . I was to dine at Northumberland-house, and went a little after four: there I found the Countess, Lady Betty Mackenzie, Lady Strafford; my Lady Finlater, who was never out of Scotland before; a tall lad of fifteen, her son; Lord Drogheda, and Mr. Worseley. At five, arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the Lords had begun to read the Poor-bill, which would take at least two hours, and perhaps would debate it afterwards. We concluded dinner would be called for, it not being very precedented for ladies to wait for gentlemen:—no such thing. Six o’clock came—seven o’clock came—our coaches came—well! we sent them away, and excuses were, we were engaged. Still the Countess’s heart did not relent, nor uttered a syllable of apology. We wore out the wind and the weather, the Opera and the Play, Mrs. Cornelys’s and Almack’s, and every topic that would do in a formal circle. We hinted, represented—in vain. The clock struck eight; my Lady, at last, said, she would go and order dinner; but it was a good half-hour before it appeared. We then sat down to a table for fourteen covers: but instead of substantials, there was nothing but a profusion of plates striped red, green, and yellow, gilt plate, blacks, and uniforms! My Lady Finlater, who had never seen these embroidered dinners, nor dined after three, was famished. The first course stayed as long as possible, in hopes of the Lords: so did the second. The dessert at last arrived, and the middle dish was actually set on when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay arrived!—would you believe it?—the dessert was remanded, and the whole first course brought back again!—Stay, I have not done:—just as this second first course had done its duty, Lord Northumberland, Lord Strafford, and Mackenzie came in, and the whole began a third time! Then the second course and the dessert! I thought we should have dropped from our chairs with fatigue and fumes! When the clock struck eleven, we were asked to return to the drawing-room, and drink tea and coffee, but I said I was engaged to supper, and came home to bed. My dear lord, think of four hours and a half in a circle of mixed company, and three great dinners, one after another, without interruption. . . .
And here, as fillip for Horace Walpole’s horrid dinner, and to end his letter as I began it with a quotation from Brillat-Savarin, is my translation of one of that wise old master’s typical “anecdotes”:
From The Physiology of Taste by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1755–1826
I was invited, this day, to the home of an important official. The card read five thirty, and at that precise hour all the guests had arrived, because it was common knowledge that the host loved punctuality and sometimes scolded his lazier friends.
I was struck, on my arrival, by an air of alarm which I saw everywhere: the guests whispered among themselves, or peeked through the window-panes into the courtyard, and some of their faces showed plain stupefaction. Obviously something extraordinary had occurred.
I went up to the one of the guests I felt would be best able to satisfy my curiosity, and asked him what had happened. “Alas!” he answered in a voice of the deepest suffering, “his lordship has been summoned to a conference of state. He just this moment left for it, and who knows when he will be back again?”
“Is that all ?” I replied, in an insouciant way which was far from genuine. “It’s a question of a quarter-hour at the most; some information they needed; everyone knows that an official banquet is taking place here today; there is absolutely no reason to make us fast at it.” I continued to talk this way; but in the bottom of my heart I was not without anxiety, and I should have loved to be safely out of the whole business.
The first hour passed well enough, with the guests seated next to their preferred friends; conversational banalities were soon exhausted, and we amused ourselves by guessing the reasons why our good host had been thus summoned to the Tuileries.
During the second hour a few signs of impatience began to show themselves: the guests looked at each other worriedly, and the first ones who complained aloud were three or four of the company who, not having found places to sit down and wait, were especially uncomfortable.
By the third hour, discontent was general, and everyone complained. “When will he be back?” one of them asked. “What can he be thinking of?” another said. “This is murderous!” said a third, and everywhere it was demanded, with never a satisfactory reply, “Should we go? Should we not go?”
By the fourth hour all the symptoms had grown worse: the guests stretched themselves, at the risk of knocking into their neighbors; the room was filled with the singsong of helpless yawns; every face was flushed with concentration; and not a soul listened to me when I risked remarking that our host was without doubt the most miserable of any of us.
At one point our attention was riveted by a ghostly sight. One of the guests, more familiar to the house than some of us, roamed as far as the kitchens; he came back completely out of breath; his face looking as if the end of the world were upon us, and he burst out in an almost unintelligible voice, in that heavy tone which betrays both a fear of being heard and a wish to be listened to: “His lordship left without giving any orders, and no matter how long he is gone, nothing will be served until he comes back!” He had spoken: the horror which his announcement roused could not possibly be outdone by the trumpet of the last judgment.
Among all these martyrs, the unhappiest was the good d’Aigrefeuille, well-known to all of Paris in those days; his body was the personification of misery, and the agony of a Laocoön showed in his face. Pale, distracted, sightless, he hunched himself into a chair, crossed his little hands over his generous belly, and closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to wait for his own death.
It was not Death, however, who came. About ten o’clock there was the sound of carriage-wheels in the courtyard. Everyone jumped to his feet. Gaiety took the place of sadness, and five minutes later we were seated at the table.
But the time of appetite had passed. There was a feeling of astonishment at beginning a dinner at this unfamiliar hour; our jaws could not attain that synchronized chewing which is a guarantee of perfect digestion, and I learned later that several of the guests were inconvenienced by it.
The procedure indicated in such a situation is not to eat immediately after the enforced fast has ended, but to drink a glass of sugared water, or a cup of broth, to comfort the stomach; and then to wait another twelve or fifteen minutes, since otherwise the abused organ will find too oppressive the weight of the foods with which it has been overstuffed.
One of the least read and most quoted writers of the eighteenth century, gastronomically, is Thomas Walker.
It is not easy to find much about him, except through occasional references in other people’s letters, and from his own unconscious self-portraits in The Original, which he wrote and published weekly for twenty-nine weeks before his death in 1836.
Each number of this periodical, whose title might well serve as a description of its author, contains a number of short articles on a variety of subjects: “Whatever is most interesting and important in Religion and Politics, in Morals and Manners, and in our Habits and Customs.” Mr. Walker added that he hoped to be able to treat these matters “as forcibly, perspicuously, and concisely,” as they and his own ability would allow, and although much of what he wrote seems somewhat pompous now, there is through the whole of The Original a special flavor, a serious but amiable spirit.
His was a true lawyer’s mind, orderly and logical, and yet permitting a tolerantly sensual enjoyment of the more refined pleasures of life. He described whatever subject he was considering with much more than the force, perspicuity, and conciseness he promised to strive for, and some such little picture as the one of his famous whitebait dinner has a real charm about it, in spite of its sententious lack of humor:
From The Original by Thomas Walker, ?–1836
I will give you, dear reader, an account of a dinner I have ordered this very day at Lovegrove’s at Blackwell. . . . The party will consist of seven men beside myself, and every guest is asked for some reason—upon which good fellowship mainly depends, for people brought together unconnectedly had, in my opinion, better be kept separate. . . .
The dinner is to consist of turtle followed by no other fish but whitebait, which is to be followed by no other meat but grouse, which are to be succeeded simply by apple fritters and jelly, pastry on such occasions being quite out of place. With the turtle of course there will be punch, with the whitebait, champagne, and with the grouse, claret . . . I shall permit no other wines, unless perchance a bottle of port. . . . With respect to the adjuncts, I shall take care that there is cayenne, with lemon cut in halves, not in quarters, within reach of everyone, for the turtle, and that brown bread and butter in abundance is set upon the table for the whitebait. It is no trouble to think of these little matters beforehand, but they make a vast difference in convivial contentment. The dinner will be followed by ices and a good dessert, and after which, coffee and one glass of liqueur each and no more; so that the present may be enjoyed rationally without introducing retrospective regrets. If the master of a feast wishes his party to succeed he must know how to command, and not let his guests run riot each according to his own wild fancy. Such, reader, is my idea of a dinner, of which I hope you approve.
Just as opinions vary about the table manners of Brillat-Savarin (some have him a gross boor and others a polished and delightful supper-companion), so the picture of Samuel Johnson, Gourmand, changes with the artist who paints it. There is no use pretending, however, even for the sake of variety, that anyone observed him more thoroughly than Boswell.
“The big man,” as Oliver Goldsmith called him, had strong if somewhat contradictory ideas about gastronomy, and invented a word connected with it for his dictionary: gulosity, meaning greediness, gluttony, voracity.
A few years before his death in 1772, Johnson said, after a supper which apparently left him in a mellow state, “Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.”
And Boswell goes on to say, in this characteristic excerpt from his biography of Johnson:
From The Life of Johnson by James Boswell, 1740–1795
He now appeared to me Jean Bull philosophe, and he was, for the moment, not only serious but vehement. Yet I have heard him, upon other occasions, talk with great contempt of people who were anxious to gratify their palates; and the 206th number of his Rambler is a masterly essay against gulosity. His practice indeed, I must acknowledge, may be considered as casting the balance of his different opinions upon this subject; for I never knew any man who relished good eating more than he did. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. To those whose sensations were delicate, this could not but be disgusting; and it was doubtless not very suitable to the character of a philosopher, who should be distinguished by self-command. But it must be owned, that Johnson, though he could be rigidly abstemious, was not a temperate man either in eating or drinking. He could refrain, but he could not use moderately. He told me that he had fasted two days without inconvenience, and that he had never been hungry but once. They who beheld with wonder how much he eat upon all occasions when his dinner was to his taste, could not easily conceive what he must have meant by hunger; and not only was he remarkable for the extraordinary quantity which he eat, but he was, or affected to be, a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery. He used to descant critically on the dishes which had been at table where he had dined or supped, and to recollect very minutely what he had liked. I remember, when he was in Scotland, his praising “Gordon’s palates” (a dish of palates at the Honourable Alexander Gordon’s) with a warmth of expression which might have done honour to more important subjects. “As for Maclaurin’s imitation of a made dish, it was a wretched attempt.” He about the same time was so much displeased with the performances of a nobleman’s French cook, that he exclaimed with vehemence, “I’d throw such a rascal into the river”; and he then proceeded to alarm a lady at whose house he was to sup, by the following manifesto of his skill: “I, Madam, who live at a variety of good tables, am a much better judge of cookery, than any person who has a very tolerable cook, but lives much at home; for his palate is gradually adapted to the taste of his cook; whereas, Madam, in trying by a wider range, I can more exquisitely judge.” When invited to dine, even with an intimate friend, he was not pleased if something better than a plain dinner was not prepared for him. I have heard him say on such an occasion, “This was a good dinner enough, to be sure; but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.” On the other hand, he was wont to express, with great glee, his satisfaction when he had been entertained quite to his mind. One day when we had dined with his neighbor and landlord in Bolt-court, Mr. Allen, the printer, whose old housekeeper had studied his taste in everything, he pronounced this eulogy: “Sir, we could not have had a better dinner had there been a Synod of Cooks.”
There are some people in the world who cannot read with any true enjoyment the long story of the lexicographer, or perhaps have not yet matured enough to find it anything but weighty. In the same way the books by Jane Austen are for some of us a robust delicacy to be savored long after the literary pangs of adolescence, at no matter what age, have been satisfied by less subtle dishes. Once fully tasted, though, and with the proper seasoning of leisure, they can arouse a hunger never again quite to be sated, at least by them.
Here is one fair sample of the things that Jane Austen did with words: the satirical self-betrayal of Miss Lutterel, when she writes to her dear friend Miss Lesley:
From Lesley Castle by Jane Austen, 1775–1817
Glenford, February 12th
I have a thousand excuses to beg for having so long delayed thanking you my dear Peggy for your agreeable Letter, which believe me I should not have deferred doing, had not every moment of my time during the last five weeks been so fully employed in the necessary arrangements for my sister’s marriage. . . . And now what provokes me more than anything else is that the Match is broke off, and all my Labour thrown away. Imagine how great the Disappointment must be to me, when you consider that after having laboured both by Night and by Day, in order to get the Wedding dinner ready by the time appointed, after having Roasted Beef, Broiled Mutton, and Stewed Soup enough to last the new-married Couple through the Honey-moon, I had the mortification of finding that I had been Roasting, Broiling, and Stewing both the Meat and Myself to no purpose. Indeed, my dear Friend, I never remember suffering any vexation equal to what I experienced on last Monday when my sister came running to me in the storeroom with her face as White as a Whipt Syllabub and told me that Henry had been thrown from his Horse, had fractured his Scull and was pronounced by his surgeon to be in the most emminent Danger. “Good God (said I) you don’t say so? Why what in the name of Heaven will become of all the Victuals? We shall never be able to eat it while it is good. However, we’ll call in the Surgeon to help us. I shall be able to manage the Sirloin myself, my Mother will eat the Soup, and You and the Doctor must finish the rest.” Here I was interrupted, by seeing my poor Sister fall down to all appearance Lifeless upon one of the Chests, where we keep our table linen. I immediately called my Mother and the Maids, and at last we brought her to herself again . . . we laid her upon the Bed, and she continued for some Hours in the most dreadful Convulsions. My Mother and I continued in the room with her, and when any intervals of tolerable composure in Eloisa would allow us, we joined heartfelt lamentations on the dreadful Waste in our provisions which the Event must occasion, and in concerting some plan for getting rid of them. We agreed that the best thing we could do was to begin eating them immediately, and accordingly we ordered up the cold Ham and Fowls, and instantly began our Devouring Plan on them with great Alacrity. We would have persuaded Eloisa to have taken a wing of Chicken, but she would not be persuaded. . . . We endeavored to rouse her by every means in our power, but to no purpose. I talked to her of Henry. “Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (For I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her.) I beg you would not mind it— You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Henry should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall still have to prepare a Dinner for you whenever you marry anyone else. . . . Yet I daresay he’ll die soon, and then his pain will be over and you will be easy, whereas my Trouble will last much longer, for work as hard as I may, I am certain that the pantry cannot be cleared in less than a fortnight.”
A man is no more desirable a companion because he can write well, and often the opposite seems true: few authors make their readers eager to know them as human beings. The Reverend Sydney Smith is one of the exceptions.
He might have risen as high as mortal could in the Church, if he had held his tongue or used it less amusingly (his idea of Heaven was eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets!). But his letters are probably more spiritually stimulating to his fellow men than any archiepiscopal prayers could have been a century ago, and he would not have had the time to write them anyway, wearing a mitre.
There is no proof that he actually said of strawberries, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless he never did,” but in one of his letters he wrote, “What is real piety? What is true attachment to the Church? How are these fine feelings best evinced? The answer is plain: by sending strawberries to a clergyman. Many thanks.”
Another time he wrote, “If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world it is roast pheasant and bread sauce. Barn-door fowls for Dissenters, but for the real Churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk, the pheasant, the pheasant!”
As for his much-quoted recipe in rhyme, it is not much more than a curiosity, gastronomically. It is because Sydney Smith wrote it, and not because it could possibly make a good salad dressing, that I put it here:
Recipe for Salad by Sydney Smith, 1771–1845
To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil’d eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o’er the flavour’d compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
’T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl.
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.”
It is very hard to find A Story Without a Tail. Few people have read it, or even heard of it, and yet it is probably one of the best things of its kind in all literature: a masterpiece of gastronomical writing, of jollity and good-fellowship, of hearty appetites and deep thirsts well satisfied, of humorous subtle characterization. It is fun to read, and then read again.
William Maginn, as any respectable encyclopedia will tell but few people know or care, was an Irish poet and journalist and writer of short stories.
He was of what Saintsbury calls “the second order of genius,” with a charming wit and an acute critical sense. He wrote for Blackwood’s and then Frazer’s magazines for years, and knew every other writer of his time. He was the kind of comet which now and then flashes through a literary heaven, so that other less brilliant if more important minds were a little awed by his. Thackeray put him in Pendennis, and when he died one epitaph recalled him as “the bright broken Maginn,” a subtly envious phrase.
Here is most of his Story Without a Tail, which he wrote in 1832:
From A Story Without a Tail by William Maginn, 1793–1842
It was finally agreed upon that we should dine at Jack Ginger’s chambers in the Temple. . . . There were, besides our host, Tom Meggot, Joe Macgillicuddy, Humpy Harlow, Bob Burke, Antony Harrison, and myself. As Jack Ginger had little coin and no credit we contributed each our share to the dinner. He himself provided room, fire, candles, tables, chairs, tablecloth, napkins—no, not napkins; on second thought, we did not bother ourselves with napkins—plates, dishes, knives, forks, spoons (which he borrowed from the wig-maker), tumblers, lemons, sugar, water, glasses, decanters—by the by, I am not sure that there were decanters—salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard, bread, butter (plain and melted), cheese, radishes, potatoes, and cookery. Tom Meggot was a cod’s head and shoulders, and oysters to match; Joe Macgillicuddy, a boiled leg of pork and peas-pudding; Humpy Harlow, a sirloin of beef roast, with horse-radish; Bob Burke, a gallon of half-and-half, and four bottles of whisky, of prime quality; . . . Antony Harrison, half a dozen of port, he having tick to that extent at some unfortunate wine merchant’s; and I supplied cigars à discrétion, and a bottle of rum, which I borrowed from a West-Indian friend of mine as I passed by. So that, on the whole, we were in no danger of suffering from any of the extremes of hunger and thirst for the course of that evening.
We met at five o’clock sharp, and very sharp. Not a man was missing when the clock of the Inner Temple struck the last stroke. Jack Ginger had done everything to admiration. Nothing could be more splendid than his turn-out. He had superintended the cooking of every individual dish with his own eyes, or rather eye, he having but one, the other having been lost in a skirmish when he was midshipman on board a pirate in the Brazilian service. “Ah!” said Jack often and often, “those were my honest days. Gad! did I ever think when I was a pirate that I was at the end to turn rogue, and study the law ?” All was accurate to the utmost degree. The tablecloth, to be sure, was not exactly white, but it had been washed last week, and the collection of plates was miscellaneous, exhibiting several of the choicest patterns of delf. We were not of the silver-fork school of poetry, but steel is not to be despised. If the table was somewhat rickety, the inequality in the legs was supplied by clapping a volume of Vesey under the short one. As for the chairs—but why weary about details, chairs being made to be sat upon?—it is sufficient to say that they answered their purposes, and whether they had backs or not, whether they were cane-bottomed or hair-bottomed or rush-bottomed, is nothing to the present inquiry.
Jack’s habit of discipline made him punctual, and dinner was on the table in less than three minutes after five. Down we sat, hungry as hunters, and eager for the prey.
“Is there a parson in the company?” said Jack Ginger from the head of the table.
“No,” responded I from the foot.
“Then, thank God,” said Jack, and proceeded, after this pious grace, to distribute the cod’s head and shoulders to the hungry multitude.
The history of that cod’s head and shoulders would occupy but little space to write. Its flakes, like the snow-flakes on a river, were for one moment bright, then gone for ever; it perished unpitiable. “Bring hither,” said Jack with a firm voice, “the leg of pork.” It appeared, but soon to disappear again. Not a man of the company but showed his abhorrence to the Judaical practice of abstaining from the flesh of swine. Equally clear was it in a few minutes that we were truly British in our devotion to beef. The sirloin was impartially destroyed on both sides, upper and under. Dire was the clatter of the knives, but deep the silence of the guests. Jerry Gallagher, Jack’s valet-de-chambre, footman, cook, clerk, shoeblack, aide-de-camp, scout, confidant, dun-chaser, bum-defyer, and many other offices in commendam, toiled like a hero. He covered himself with glory and gravy every minute. In a short time a vociferation arose for fluid, and the half-and-half . . . was inhaled with the most savage satisfaction.
“The pleasure of a glass of wine with you, Bob Burke,” said Joe Macgillicuddy, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“With pleasure, Joe,” replied Bob. “What wine do you choose? You may as well say port, for there is no other; but attention to manners always becomes a gentleman.”
“Port, then, if you please,” cried Joe, “as the ladies of Limerick say when a man looks at them across the table.”
“Hobnobbing wastes time,” said Jack Ginger, laying down the pot out of which he had been drinking for the last few minutes; “and besides, it is not necessary now in genteel society to pass the bottle about.”
(I here pause in my narrative to state on more accurate recollection, that we had not decanters. We drank from the black bottle, which Jack declared was according to the fashion of the Continent.)
So the port was passed round, and declared to be superb. Antony Harrison received the unanimous applause of the company; and, if he did not blush at all the fine things that were said in his favour, it was because his countenance was of that peculiar hue that no addition of red could be visible upon it. A blush on Antony’s face would be like gilding refined gold.
Whether cheese is prohibited or not in the higher circles of the West End, I cannot tell; but I know it was not prohibited in the very highest chambers of the Temple.
“It’s double Gloucester,” said Jack Ginger; “prime, bought at the corner. Heaven pay the cheesemonger, for I shan’t; but, as he is a gentleman, I give you his health.”
“I don’t think,” said Joe Macgillicuddy, “that I ought to demean myself to drink the health of a cheesemonger; but I’ll not stop the bottle.”
And, to do Joe justice, he did not. Then we attacked the cheese, and in an incredibly short period we battered in a breach of an angle of forty-five degrees in a manner that would have done honour to any engineer that directed the guns at San Sebastian.
“Clear the decks,” said Jack Ginger to Jerry Gallagher. “Gentlemen, I did not think of getting pastry, or puddings, or dessert, or ices, or jellies, or blancmange, or anything of the sort for men of sense like you.”
We all unanimously expressed our indignation at being supposed even for a moment guilty of any such weakness; but a general suspicion seemed to arise among us that a dram might not be rejected with the same marked scorn. Jack Ginger accordingly uncorked one of Bob Burke’s bottles. Whop! went the cork, and the potteen soon was seen meandering round the table.
“For my part,” said Antony Harrison, “I take this dram because I ate pork, and fear it might disagree with me.”
“I take it,” said Bob Burke, “chiefly by reason of the fish.”
“I take it,” said Joe Macgillicuddy, “because the day was warm, and it is very close in these chambers.”
“I take it,” said Tom Meggot, “because I have been very chilly all the day.”
“I take it,” said Humpy Harlow, “because it is such strange weather that one does not know what to do.”
“I take it,” said Jack Ginger, “because the rest of the company takes it.”
“And I take it,” said I, winding up the conversation, “because I like a dram.”
So we all took it for one reason or another, and there was an end of that.
“Be off, Jerry Gallagher,” said Jack. “I give to you, your heirs and assigns, all that and those which remain in the pots of half-and-half—item, for your own dinners what is left of the solids; and when you have pared the bones clean, you may give them to the poor. Charity covers a multitude of sins. Brush away like a shoeblack, and levant.”
“Why, thin, God bless your honour,” said Jerry Gallagher, “it’s a small liggacy he would have that would dippind for his daily bread for what is left behind any of ye in the way of the drink, and this blessed hour there’s not as much as would blind the left eye of a midge in one of them pots, and may it do ye all good, if it a’n’t the blessing of Heaven to see ye eating. By my sowl, he that has to pick a bone after you won’t be much troubled with the mate. Howsomever—”
“No more prate,” said Jack Ginger. “Here’s two pence for you to buy some beer; but no,” he continued, drawing his empty hand from that breeches-pocket into which he had most needlessly put it; “no,” said he, “Jerry, get it on credit wherever you can, and bid them score it to me.”
“If they will,” said Jerry.
“Shut the door,” said Jack Ginger in a peremptory tone, and Jerry retreated.
“That Jerry,” said Jack, “is an uncommonly honest fellow, only he is the damnedest rogue in London. But all this is wasting time, and time is life. Dinner is over, and the business of the evening is about to begin. So bumpers, gentlemen, and get rid of this wine as fast as we can. Mr. Vice, look to your bottles.”
And on this Jack Ginger gave a bumper toast.
This being done, every man pulled in his chair close to the table, and prepared for serious action. It was plain that we all, like Nelson’s sailors at Trafalgar, felt called upon to do our duty. The wine circulated with considerable rapidity; and there was no flinching on the part of any individual of the company. It was quite needless for our president to remind us of the necessity of bumpers, or the impropriety of leaving heel-taps. We were all too well trained to require the admonition or to fall into the error. On the other hand, the chance of any man obtaining more than his share in the round was infinitesimally small. The Sergeant himself, celebrated as he is, could not have succeeded in obtaining a glass more than his neighbours. Just to our friends, we were also just to ourselves; and a more rigid circle of philosophers never surrounded a board.
The wine was really good, and its merits did not appear the less striking from the fact that we were not habitually wine-bibbers, our devotion generally being paid to fluids more potent or heavy than the juice of the grape, and it soon excited our powers of conversation. Heavens! What a flow of soul! More good things were said in Jack Ginger’s chambers that evening than in the House of Lords and Commons in a month. We talked of everything—politics, literature, the fine arts, drama, high life, low life, the opera, the cockpit—everything from the heavens above to the hells in St. James’s Street. There was not an article in a morning, evening, or weekly paper for the week before which we did not repeat. It was clear that our knowledge of things in general was drawn in a vast degree from these recondite sources. . . . We spoke, in fact, articles that would have made the fortunes of half a hundred magazines, if the editors of these works would have had the perspicacity to insert them; and this we did with such ease to ourselves that we never for a moment stopped the circulation of the bottle, which kept running on its round rejoicing, while we settled the affairs of the nation. . . .
“I perceive this is the last bottle of port,” said Jack Ginger; “so I suppose that there cannot be any harm in drinking bad luck to Antony Harrison’s wine-merchant, who did not make it the dozen.”
“Yes,” said Harrison, “the skinflint thief would not stand more than the half, for which he merits the most infinite certainty of non-payment.”
(You may depend upon it that Harrison was as good as his word, and treated the man of bottles according to his deserts.)
The port was gathered to its fathers, and potteen punch reigned in its stead. . . . “I’ll clear away these marines,”[said Jack Ginger] “and do you, Bob Burke, make the punch. I think you will find the lemons good, the sugar superb, and the water of the Temple has been famous for centuries.”
“And I’ll back the potteen against any that ever came from the Island of Saints,” said Bob, proceeding to his duty, which all who have the honour of his acquaintance will admit him to be well qualified to perform. He made it in a couple of big blue water-jugs, observing that making punch in small jugs was nearly as great a bother as ladling from a bowl; and, as he tossed the steamy fluid from jug to jug to mix it kindly, he sang the pathetic ballad of Hugger-mo-fane:
“I wish I had a red herring’s tail,” etc.
The punch being made, and the jug revolving, the conversation continued as before. But it may have been observed that I have not taken any notice of the share which one of the party, Humpy Harlow, took in it. The fact is that he had been silent for almost all the evening, being outblazed and overborne by the brilliancy of the conversation of his companions. We were all acknowledged wits in our respective lines, whereas he had not been endowed with the same talents. How he came among us I forget, nor did any of us know well who or what he was. Some maintained he was a drysalter in the City; others surmised he might be a pawnbroker in the West End. Certain it is that he had some money, which perhaps might have recommended him to us, for there was not a man in the company who had not occasionally borrowed from him a sum too trifling, in general, to permit any of us to think of repaying it. He was a broken-backed little fellow, as vain of his person as a peacock, and accordingly we always called him Humpy Harlow, with the spirit of gentlemanlike candour which characterised all our conversation. With a kind feeling towards him, we in general permitted him to pay our bills for us whenever we dined together at tavern or chop-house, merely to gratify the little fellow’s vanity, which I have already hinted to be excessive.
He had this evening made many ineffective attempts to shine, but was at last obliged to content himself with opening his mouth for the admission, not for the utterance, of good things. He was evidently unhappy, and a rightly constituted mind could not avoid pitying his condition. As jug, however, succeeded jug, he began to recover his self-possession; and it was clear, about eleven o’clock, when the fourth bottle of potteen was converting into punch, that he had a desire to speak. We had been for some time busily employed in smoking cigars, when, all on a sudden, a shrill and sharp voice was heard from the midst of a cloud, exclaiming, in a high treble key:
“Humphries told me—”
We all puffed our Havannahs with the utmost silence, as if we were so many Sachems at a palaver, listening to the narration which issued from the misty tabernacle in which Humpy Harlow was enveloped. He unfolded a tale of wondrous length, which we never interrupted. No sound was heard save that of the voice of Harlow, narrating the story which had to him been confided by the unknown Humphries, or the gentle gliding of the jug, an occasional tingle of a glass, or the soft suspiration of the cigar. On moved the story in its length, breadth, and thickness, for Harlow gave it to us in its full dimensions. He abated it not a jot. The firmness which we displayed was unequalled since the battle of Waterloo. We sat with determined countenances, exhaling smoke and inhaling punch, while the voice still rolled onward. At last Harlow came to an end; and a babel of conversation burst from lips in which it had long been imprisoned. Harlow looked proud of his feat, and obtained the thanks of the company, grateful that he had come to a conclusion. How we finished the potteen, converted my bottle of rum into a bowl . . . how Jerry Gallagher, by super-human exertions, succeeded in raising a couple of hundred oysters for supper; how the company separated each to get to his domicile as best he could—all this must be left to other historians to narrate.
At three o’clock [the next day] Antony Harrison and I found ourselves eating bread and cheese, part of the cheese, at Jack Ginger’s. We recapitulated the events of the preceding evening, and expressed ourselves highly gratified with the entertainment. Most of the good things we had said were revived, served up again, and laughed at once more. We were perfectly satisfied with the parts we had respectively played, and talked ourselves into excessive good-humour. All on a sudden, Jack Ginger’s countenance clouded. He was evidently puzzled; and sat for a moment in thoughtful silence. We asked him, with Oriental simplicity of sense, “Why art thou troubled?” and . . . he answered:
“What was the story which Humpy Harlow told us about eleven o’clock last night, just as Bob Burke was teeming the last jug?”
“It began,” said I, “with ‘Humphries told me.’ ”
“It did,” said Antony Harrison, cutting a deep incision into the cheese.
“I know it did,” said Jack Ginger; “but what was it that Humphries told him? I cannot recollect it if I was to be made Lord Chancellor.”
Antony Harrison and I mused in silence, and racked our brains, but to no purpose. On the tablet of our memories no trace had been engraved, and the tale of Humphries, as reported by Harlow, was as if it were not so far as we were concerned.
While we were in this perplexity Joe Macgillicuddy and Bob Burke entered the room.
“We have been just taking a hair of the same dog,” said Joe. “It was a pleasant party we had last night. Do you know what Bob and I have been talking of for the last half hour?”
We professed our inability to conjecture.
“Why, then,” continued Joe, “it was about the story that Harlow told last night.”
“The story begins with ‘Humphries told me,’ ” said Bob.
“And,” proceeded Joe, “for our lives we cannot recollect what it was.”
“Wonderful!” we all exclaimed. “How inscrutable are the movements of the human mind!”
And we proceeded to reflect on the frailty of our memories, moralising in a strain that would have done honour to Dr. Johnson.
“Perhaps,” said I, “Tom Meggot may recollect it.”
Idle hope! dispersed to the winds almost as soon as it was formed. For the words had scarcely passed the “bulwark of my teeth” when Tom appeared, looking excessively bloodshot in the eye. On inquiry it turned out that he, like the rest of us, remembered only the cabalistic words which introduced the tale, but of the tale itself nothing.
Tom had been educated in Edinburgh, and was strongly attached to what he calls metapheesicks; and, accordingly, after rubbing his forehead, he exclaimed:
“This is a psychological curiosity which deserves to be developed. I happen to have half a sovereign about me” (an assertion which, I may remark in passing, excited considerable surprise in his audience); “and I’ll ask Harlow to dine with me at the Rainbow. I’ll get the story out of the humpy rascal, and no mistake.”
We acquiesced in the propriety of this proceeding; and Antony Harrison, observing that by chance he happened to be disengaged, hooked himself on Tom, who seemed to have a sort of natural antipathy to such a ceremony, with a talent and alacrity that proved him to be a veteran warrior, or what, in common parlance, is called an old soldier.
Tom succeeded in getting Harlow to dinner, and Harrison succeeded in making him pay the bill, to the great relief of Meggot’s half-sovereign, and they parted at an early hour in the morning. The two Irishmen and myself were at Ginger’s shortly after breakfast; we had been part occupied in tossing halfpence to decide which of us was to send out for ale, when Harrison and Meggot appeared. There was conscious confusion written in their countenances. “Did Humpy Harlow tell you that story?” we all exclaimed at once.
“It cannot be denied that he did,” said Meggot. “Precisely as the clock struck eleven, he commenced, ‘Humphries told me.’ ”
“Well, and what then?”
“Why, there it is,” said Antony Harrison. “May I be drummed out if I can recollect another word.”
“Nor I,” said Meggot.
The strangeness of this singular adventure made a deep impression on us all. We were sunk in silence for some minutes, during which Jerry Gallagher made his appearance with the ale, which I omitted to mention had been lost by Joe Macgillicuddy. We sipped that British beverage, much abstracted in deep thought. The thing appeared to us perfectly inscrutable. At last I said: “This will never do; we cannot exist much longer in this atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty. We must have it out of Harlow tonight, or there is an end of all the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent. I have credit,” said I, “at the widow’s in St. Martin’s Lane. Suppose we all meet there tonight, and get Harlow there if we can?”
“That I can do,” said Antony Harrison, “for I quartered myself to dine with him today, as I saw him home, poor little fellow, last night. I promise that he figures at the widow’s tonight at nine o’clock.”
So we separated. At nine every man of the party was in St. Martin’s Lane, seated in the little back parlour; and Harrison was as good as his word, for he brought Harlow with him. He ordered a sumptuous supper of mutton kidneys interspersed with sausages, and we set to. At eleven o’clock the eyes of Humpy Harlow brightened; and, putting his pipe down, he commenced in a shrill voice:
“Humphries told me—”
“Aye,” said we all with one accord, “here it is—now we shall have it—take care of it this time.”
“What do you mean?” said Humpy Harlow, performing that feat which by the illustrious Mr. John Reeve is called “flaring up.”
“Nothing,” we replied, “nothing: but we are anxious to hear that story.”
“I understand you,” said our broken-backed friend. “I now recollect that I did tell it once or so before in your company, but I shall not be a butt any longer for you or anybody else.”
“Don’t be in a passion, Humpy,” said Jack Ginger.
“Sir,” replied Harlow, “I hate nicknames. It is a mark of a low mind to use them; and, as I see I am brought here only to be insulted, I shall not trouble you any longer with my company.”
Saying this the little man seized his hat and umbrella and strode out of the room.
“His back is up,” said Joe Macgillicuddy, “and there’s no use of trying to get it down. I am sorry he is gone, because I should have made him pay for another round.”
But he was gone, not to return again, and the story remains unknown; yea, as undiscoverable as the hieroglyphical writings of the ancient Egyptians. It exists, to be sure, in the breast of Harlow; but there it is buried, never to emerge into the light of day. It is lost to the world, and means of recovering it there, in my opinion, exist none. The world must go on without it; and states and empires must continue to flourish and to fade without the knowledge of what it was that Humphries told Harlow. Such is the inevitable course of events.
There is nothing yes-and-no about liking Jorrocks. You either do or you don’t. You either think he is very funny and delightful, and forgive any such small irritations as his custard-pie-comedy pronunciations of foreign words, or you are bored by the whole insensate mess of low jokes and tack-room vulgarities.
Jorrocks, “the sporting Falstaff,” after whom Charles Dickens modeled Mr. Pickwick (himself!), was born in 1831 in the pages of The New Sporting Magazine, from the pen of its owner and editor, Robert Smith Surtees. The series of sketches of this hearty, horsey little man was called Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities, as it is today, but with the additional title: “or the Hunting, Shooting, Racing, Driving, Sailing, Eating, Eccentric and Extravagant Exploits of that renowned Sporting Citizen, Mr. John Jorrocks of St. Botolph Lane and Great Coram Corner,” and it was illustrated by Phiz.
Robert Surtees was not only a sensitive reporter of all the idioms and habits of his time, and a trained watcher of his fellows; he was a born sportsman. It was inevitable that his character’s hilarious adventures should immediately become as much a part of English life as Pickwick’s were to be a little later. Everything he said, as it appeared in the magazine, was quoted in hunting-stables and dining rooms all over the Empire, and people felt about him as Thackeray did when he wrote to Mr. Surtees, “Jorrocks has long been a dear and intimate friend of mine.”
He was, and is still, one of the great fool-heroes, infectiously and ridiculously and lovably absurd. He ate and talked and drank with irresistible gusto.
That is, he did if he is irresistible to you. If he is not, then he seems a stupid uncouth lout, a coarse fool. And if he is that, then do not read these pages I have taken from his Jaunts and Jollities, for the food in them, and the heel-taps of stout liquor, and all the silliness, will be worse than dull. (They either will be . . . or suddenly they won’t!)
From Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities by Robert Smith Surtees, 1803–1864
“Now tell me,” [asked Mr. Jorrocks] “have you any objection to breakfasting in the kitchen?—more retired, you know, besides which you get every thing hot and hot, which is what I call doing a bit of plisure.” “Not at all,” said the Yorkshireman, “so lead the way”; and down they walked to the lower regions.
It was a nice comfortable-looking place, with a blazing fire, half the floor covered with an old oil-cloth, and the rest exhibiting the cheerless aspect of the naked flags. About a yard and a half from the fire was placed the breakfast table; in the centre stood a magnificent uncut ham, with a great quartern loaf on one side and a huge Bologna sausage on the other; beside these there were nine eggs; two pyramids of muffins, a great deal of toast, a dozen ship-biscuits, and a half a pork-pie, while a dozen kidneys were spluttering on a spit before the fire, and Betsy held a gridiron covered with mutton-chops on the top; altogether there was as much as would have served ten people. “Now, sit down,” said Jorrocks, “and let us be doing, for I am as hungry as a hunter. Hope you are peckish too; what shall I give you? tea or coffee?—but take both—coffee first and tea after a bit. If I can’t give you them good, don’t know who can. You must pay your devours, as we say in France, to the ’am, for it is an especial fine one, and do take a few eggs with it; there, I’ve not given you above a pound of ’am, but you can come again, you know—‘waste not, want not.’ Now take some muffins, do, pray. Batsay, bring some more cream, and set the kidneys on the table, the Yorkshireman is getting nothing to eat. Have a chop with your kidney, werry luxterous—I could eat an elephant stuffed with grenadiers, and wash them down with a ocean of tea; but pray lay in to the breakfast, or I shall think you don’t like it. There, now take some tea and toast, or one of those biscuits, or whatever you like; would a little more ’am be agreeable? Batsay, run into the larder and see if your Missis left any of that cold chine of pork last night—and hear, bring the cold goose, and any cold flesh you can lay hands on, there are really no wittles on the table. I am quite ashamed to set you down to such a scanty fork breakfast; but this is what comes of not being master of your own house. Hope your hat may long cover your family: rely upon it, it is ‘cheaper to buy your bacon than to keep a pig.’ ”
And, as “Major Appleby” says in his introduction, “That was for two heroes who were starting out from St. Botolph’s Lane for a day with Surrey hounds!”
The other excerpt about John Jorrocks, his dinner party in honor of the great sportsman Happerley Nimrod, is my favorite.
Needless to say, the preparations for it were almost endless, and then it went on long after the host’s final perfunctory grace, through increasingly muddled toasts and “healths all ’round.” All we can read here is the actual dinner, so generous and confused and honest, with spots on the cloth and red faces no doubt, but lightened always with kindness.
It begins with the hasty departure from the drawing room of Mrs. Jorrocks, who returns on the heels of her husband’s forthright explanation of her genteel evasions about the calls of nature with a half-pint smelling-bottle held to her nose, to prove that she left for nothing less ladylike than a slight faintness. . . .
From Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities by Robert Smith Surtees, 1803–1864
Benjamin followed immediately after, and throwing open the door proclaimed, in a half-fledged voice, that “dinner was sarved,” upon which the party all started on their legs.
“Now, Mr. Happerley Nimrod,” cried Jorrocks, “you’ll trot Mrs. J—— down—according to the book of etiquette, you know, giving her the wall side. Sorry, gentlemen, I haven’t ladies apiece for you, but my sally-manger, as we say in France, is rayther small, besides which I never like to dine more than eight. Stubbs, my boy, Green and you must toss up for Belinda—here’s a half-penny, and let be ‘Newmarket’ if you please. Wot say you? a voman! Stubbs wins!” cried Mr. Jorrocks, as the halfpenny fell head downwards. “Now, Spiers, couple up with Crane, and James and I will whip in to you. But stop, gentlemen!” cried Mr. Jorrocks, as he reached the top of the stairs, “let me make one request—that you von’t eat the windmill you’ll see on the centre of the table. Mrs. Jorrocks has hired it for the evening, of Mr. Farrell, the confectioner, in Lamb’s Conduit Street, and it’s engaged to two or three evening parties after it leaves this.” “Lauk, John! how wulgar you are. What matter can it make to your friends where the windmill comes from!” exclaimed Mrs. Jorrocks in an audible voice from below, Nimrod, with admirable skill, having piloted her down the straights and turns of the staircase. Having squeezed herself between the backs of the chairs and the wall, Mrs. Jorrocks at length reached the head of the table, and with a bump of her body and wave of her hand motioned Nimrod to take the seat on her right. Green then pushed past Belinda and Stubbs, and took the place on Mrs. Jorrocks’s left, so Stubbs, with a dexterous manoeuvre, placed himself in the centre of the table, with Belinda between himself and her uncle. Crane and Spiers then filled the vacant places on Nimrod’s side, Mr. Spiers facing Mr. Stubbs.
The dining-room was the breadth of the passage narrower than the front drawing-room, and, as Mr. Jorrocks truly said, was rayther small—but the table being excessively broad, made the room appear less than it was. It was lighted up with spermaceti candles in silver holders, one at each corner of the table, and there was a lamp in the wall between the red-curtained windows, immediately below a brass nail, on which Mr. Jorrocks’s great hunting-whip and a bunch of boot garters were hung. Two more candles in the hands of bronze Dianas on the marble mantelpiece lighted up a coloured copy of Barraud’s picture of John Warde on Blue Ruin; while Mr. Ralph Lambton, on his horse Undertaker, with his hounds and men, occupied a frame on the opposite wall. The old-fashioned cellaret sideboard, against the wall at the end, supported a large bright-burning brass lamp, with raised foxes round the rim, whose effulgent rays shed a brilliant halo over eight black hats and two white ones, whereof the four middle ones were decorated with evergreens and foxes’ brushes. The dinner table was crowded, not covered. There was scarcely a square inch of cloth to be seen on any part. In the centre stood a magnificent finely spun barley-sugar windmill, two feet and a half high, with a spacious sugar foundation, with a cart and horses and two or three millers at the door, and a she-miller working a ball-dress flounce at a lower window.
The whole dinner, first, second, third, fourth course—everything, in fact, except dessert—was on the table, as we sometimes see it at ordinaries and public dinners. Before both Mr. and Mrs. Jorrocks were two great tureens of mock-turtle soup, each capable of holding a gallon, and both full up to the brim. Then there were two sorts of fish; turbot and lobster sauce, and a great salmon. A round of boiled beef and an immense piece of roast occupied the rear of these, ready to march on the disappearance of the fish and soup—and behind the walls formed by the beef of old England came two dishes of grouse, each dish holding three brace. The side dishes consisted of a calf’s head hashed, a leg of mutton, chickens, ducks, and mountains of vegetables; and round the windmill were plum-puddings, tarts, jellies, pies, and puffs.
Behind Mrs. Jorrocks’s chair stood “Batsay” with a fine brass-headed comb in her hair, and stiff ringlets down her ruddy cheeks. She was dressed in a green silk gown, with a coral necklace, and one of Mr. Jorrocks’s lavender and white coloured silk pocket-handkerchiefs made into an apron. “Binjimin” stood with the door in his hand, as the saying is, with a towel twisted round his thumb, as though he had cut it.
“Now, gentlemen,” said Mr. Jorrocks, casting his eye up the table, as soon as they had all got squeezed and wedged round it, and the dishes were uncovered, “you see your dinner, eat whatever you like except the windmill—hope you’ll be able to satisfy nature with what’s on—would have had more but Mrs. J—— is so werry fine, she won’t stand two joints of the same sort on the table.”
Mrs. J. Lauk, John, how can you be so wulgar! Who ever saw two rounds of beef, as you wanted to have? Besides, I’m sure the gentlemen will excuse any little defishency, considering the short notice we have had, and that this is not an elaborate dinner.
Mr. Spiers. I’m sure, ma’m, there’s no defishency at all. Indeed, I think there’s as much fish as would serve double the number—and I’m sure you look as if you had your soup “on sale or return,” as we say in the magazine line.
Mr. J. Haw! haw! haw! werry good, Mr. Spiers. I owe you one. Not bad soup though—had it from Birch’s. Let me send you some; and pray lay into it, or I shall think you don’t like it. Mr. Happerley, let me send you some—and, gentlemen, let me observe, once for all, that there’s every species of malt liquor under the side table. Prime stout, from the Marquess Cornwallis, hard by. Also ale, table, and what my friend Crane there calls lamentable—he says, because it’s so werry small—but, in truth, because I don’t buy it of him. There’s all sorts of drench, in fact, except water—a thing I never touch—rots one’s shoes, don’t know what it would do with one’s stomach if it was to get there. Mr. Crane, you’re eating nothing. I’m quite shocked to see you; you don’t surely live upon hair? Do help yourself, or you’ll faint from werry famine. Belinda, my love, does the Yorkshireman take care of you? Who’s for some salmon?—bought at Luckey’s, and there’s both Tally ho and Tantivy sarce to eat with it. Somehow or other I always fancies I rides harder after eating these sarces with fish. Mr. Happerley Nimrod, you are the greatest man at table, consequently I axes you to drink wine first, according to the book of etiquette—help yourself, sir. Some of Crane’s particklar, hot and strong, real stuff, none of your wan de bones [vin de beaume] or rot-gut French stuff—hope you like it—if you don’t, pray speak your mind freely, now that we have Crane among us. Binjimin, get me some of that duck before Mr. Spiers, a leg and wing, if you please, sir, and a bit of the breast.
Mr. Spiers. Certainly, sir, certainly. Do you prefer a right or left wing, sir?
Mr. Jorrocks. Oh, either. I suppose it’s all the same.
Mr. Spiers. Why no, sir, it’s not exactly all the same; for it happens there is only one remaining, therefore it must be the left one.
Mr. J. (chuckling). Haw! haw! haw! Mr. S——, werry good that—werry good indeed. I owes you two.
“I’ll trouble you for a little, Mr. Spiers, if you please,” says Crane, handing his plate round the windmill.
“I’m sorry, sir, it is all gone,” replies Mr. Spiers, who had just filled Mr. Jorrocks’s plate; “there’s nothing left but the neck,” holding it up on the fork.
“Well, send it,” rejoins Mr. Crane; “neck or nothing, you know, Mr. Jorrocks, as we say with the Surrey.”
“Haw! haw! haw!” grunts Mr. Jorrocks, who is busy sucking a bone; “haw! haw! haw! werry good, Crane, werry good—owes you one. Now, gentlemen,” added he, casting his eye up the table as he spoke, “let me adwise ye, before you attack the grouse, to take the hedge [edge] off your appetites, or else there won’t be enough, and, you know, it does not do to eat the farmer after the gentlemen. Let’s see, now—three and three are six, six brace among eight—oh, dear, that’s nothing like enough. I wish, Mrs. J——, you had followed my adwice, and roasted them all. And now, Binjimin, you’re going to break the windmill with your clumsiness, you little dirty rascal! Why von’t you let Batsay arrange the table? Thank you, Mr. Crane, for your assistance—your politeness, sir, exceeds your beauty.” [A barrel organ strikes up before the window, and Jorrocks throws down his knife and fork in an agony.] “Oh dear, oh dear, there’s that cursed horgan again. It’s a regular annihilator. Binjimin, run and kick the fellow’s werry soul out of him. There’s no man suffers so much from music as I do. I wish I had a pocketful of sudden death, that I might throw one at every thief of a musicianer that comes up the street. I declare the scoundrel has set all my teeth on edge. Mr. Nimrod, pray take another glass of wine after your roast beef.—Well, with Mrs. J—— if you choose, but I’ll join you—always says that you are the werry cleverest man of the day—read all your writings—anny-tommy [anatomy] of gaming, and all. Am a hauthor myself, you know—once set to, to write a werry long and elaborate harticle on scent, but after cudgelling my brains, and turning the thing over and over again in my mind, all that I could brew on the subject was, that scent was a werry rum thing; nothing rummer than scent, except a woman.”
“Pray,” cried Mrs. Jorrocks, her eyes starting as she spoke, “don’t let us have any of your low-lifed stable conversation here—you think to show off before the ladies,” added she, “and flatter yourself you talk about what we don’t understand. Now, I’ll be bound to say, with all your fine sporting hinformation, you carn’t tell me whether a mule brays or neighs!”
“Vether a mule brays or neighs?” repeated Mr. Jorrocks, considering. “I’ll lay I can!”
“Which, then?” inquired Mrs. Jorrocks.
“Vy, I should say it brayed.”
“Mule bray!” cried Mrs. Jorrocks, clapping her hands with delight. “There’s a cockney blockhead for you! It brays does it?”
Mr. Jorrocks. I meant to say, neighed.
“Ho! ho! ho!” grinned Mrs. J——, “neighs, does it? You are a nice man for a fox-’unter—a mule neighs—thought I’d catch you some of these odd days with your wain conceit.”
“Vy, what does it do then?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks, his choler rising as he spoke. “I hopes, at all ewents, he don’t make the ’orrible noise you do.”
“Wy, it screams, you great hass!” rejoined his loving spouse.
A single, but very resolute knock at the street door, sounding quite through the house, stopped all further ebullition, and Benjamin, slipping out, held a short conversation with someone in the street, and returned.
“What’s happened now, Binjimin?” inquired Mr. Jorrocks, with anxiety on his countenance, as the boy re-entered the room; “the ’osses arn’t amiss, I ’ope?”
“Please, sir, Mr. Farrell’s young man has come for the windmill—he says you’ve had it two hours,” replied Benjamin.
“The deuce be with Mr. Farrell’s young man! he does not suppose we can part with the mill before the cloth’s drawn—tell him to mizzle, or I’ll mill him. ‘Now’s the day and now’s the hour’; who’s for some grouse? Gentlemen, make your game, in fact. But first of all let’s have a round robin. Pass the wine, gentlemen. What wine do you take, Stubbs?”
“Why, champagne is good enough for me.”
Mr. Jorrocks. I dare say; but if you wait till you get any here, you will have a long time to stop. Shampain, indeed! had enough of that nonsense abroad—declare you young chaps drink shampain like hale. There’s red and wite port, and sherry, in fact, and them as carn’t drink, they must go without.
X. was expensive and soon became poor,
Y. was the wise man and kept want from the door.
“Now for the grouse!” added he, as the two beefs disappeared, and they took their stations at the top and bottom of the table. “Fine birds, to be sure! Hope you havn’t burked your appetites, gentlemen, so as not to be able to do justice to them—smell high—werry good—gamey, in fact. Binjimin, take an ’ot plate to Mr. Nimrod—sarve us all round with them.”
The grouse being excellent, and cooked to a turn, little execution was done upon the pastry, and the jellies had all melted long before it came to their turn to be eat. At length everyone, Mr. Jorrocks and all, appeared satisfied, and the noise of knives and forks was succeeded by the din of tongues and the ringing of glasses, as the eaters refreshed themselves with wine or malt liquors. Cheese and biscuit being handed about on plates, according to the Spirit of Etiquette, Binjimin and Batsay at length cleared the table, lifted off the windmill, and removed the cloth. Mr. Jorrocks then delivered himself of a most emphatic grace.
William Makepeace Thackeray knew good food and drink, and wrote about them lovingly, not as a separate thing but as one part, inextricable and important, of his characters and himself.
The supper menus for George II, in The Four Georges, are as dissolute as the king; Doctor Warner “revels in the thoughts of ox-cheek and burgundy—he is a boisterous, uproarious parasite, licks his master’s shoes with explosions of laughter and cunning smack and gusto, and likes the taste of that blacking as much as the best claret”; in Newgate Prison, “You need not be particular about the sauce for Mr. Rice’s fowl,” says one turnkey, “for you know he’s to be hanged in the morning.” “Yes,” the second answers, “but the chaplain sups with him, and he is a terrible fellow for melted butter.”
The oft-quoted jingles about bouillabaisse and curry are nice enough, but not particularly important, to my mind. I much prefer some such straight forward recipe as the one of Thackeray’s which starts out, “This ragout should be cooked in a stewpan rather broad than deep,” and then goes on with the matter-of-fact precision of a good cook to give proper measurements and weights and procedure.
And out of the whole interminable comedy of A Little Dinner at Timmins’s I like best the description, almost an “aside,” of the “grand cook and confectioner of the Brobdingnag quarter,” Fubsby’s:
From A Little Dinner at Timmins’s by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811–1863
[Fubsby’s was] a shop into which [Fitzroy Timmins] had often cast a glance of approbation as he passed; for there are not only the most wonderful and delicious cakes and confections in the window, but at the counter there are almost sure to be three or four of the prettiest women in the whole of this world, with little darling caps of the last French make, with beautiful wavy hair, and the neatest possible waists and aprons.
Yes, there they sit; and others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast a sheep’s- eye through those enormous plate-glass window panes. I suppose it is the fact of perpetually living among such a quantity of good things that makes those young ladies so beautiful. They come into the place, let us say, like ordinary people, and gradually grow handsomer and handsomer, until they grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can’t be otherwise: if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of that place, we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere of the most delicious pine-apples, blanc-manges, creams (some whipt, and some so good that of course they don’t want whipping), jellies, tipsy-cakes, cherry-brandy—one hundred thousand sweet and lovely things. Look at the preserved fruits, look at the golden ginger, the outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues of China oranges, ranged in the gleaming crystal cylinders. Mon Dieu! Look at the strawberries in the leaves. Each of them is as large nearly as a lady’s reticule, and looks as if it had been brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those strawberries is a meal for those young ladies behind the counter: they nibble off a little from the side; and if they are very hungry, which can scarcely ever happen, they are allowed to go to the crystal canisters and take out a rout-cake or macaroon. In the evening they sit and tell each other little riddles out of the bonbons; and when they wish to amuse themselves, they read the most delightful remarks, in the French language, about Love, and Cupid, and Beauty, before they place them inside the crackers. They always are writing down good things into Mr. Fubsby’s ledgers. It must be a perfect feast to read them. Talk of the Garden of Eden! I believe it was nothing to Mr. Fubsby’s house; and I have no doubt that after those young ladies have been there a certain time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at last that they become complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their lovely shoulders, when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) they fly up to the counter and perch there for a minute, hop down again, and affectionately kiss the other young ladies, and say, “Good-bye, dears! We shall meet again là haut.” And then, with a whirr of their deliciously-scented wings, away they fly for good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Square, and up into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat.
It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and the wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, I am sure, could write them.
It is only because I know that my butchery can do no real harm to anything as inviolate as Vanity Fair that I dare snip pieces from it. There are many more as apt as the ones I have chosen, because Thackeray used what and how his characters ate to prove their actuality.
“Tell me what a man eats . . . ,” the old saw says, and old saws are perforce right.
These cuttings give, then, a faint hint of the various states of Becky’s fortunes, from the first hot bite of curry with fat Joseph Sedley to her last sordid, hidden snack before he rescued her, so long after, from the tawdry end that seemed inevitable.
They leave out all the gay little suppers with her cuckold Rawdon and his brother officers, where Becky played and sang above the noise of the creditors, and served tidbits from the silver hot-dishes with her own exquisite hands, and kept one eye on the omnipresent Lord Steyne, protector of her extramarital chastity.
Perhaps it is wrong, truly, to try to cut into such tissue . . . but when it is as magical as this, it grows whole again while I think of it. . . .
From Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811–1863
Downstairs . . . they went, Joseph very red and blushing, Rebecca very modest, and holding her green eyes downwards. She was dressed in white, with bare shoulders as white as snow—the picture of youth, unprotected innocence, and humble virgin simplicity. “I must be very quiet,” thought Rebecca, “and very much interested about India.”
Now we have heard how Mrs. Sedley had prepared a fine curry for her son, just as he liked it, and in the course of dinner a portion of this dish was offered to Rebecca. “What is it?” said she, turning an appealing look to Mr. Joseph.
“Capital,” said he. His mouth was full of it; his face quite red with the delightful exercise of gobbling. “Mother, it’s as good as my own curries in India.”
“Oh, I must try some, if it is an Indian dish,” said Miss Rebecca. “I am sure everything must be good that comes from there.”
“Give Miss Sharp some curry, my dear,” said Mr. Sedley, laughing.
Rebecca had never tasted the dish before.
“Do you find it as good as everything else from India?” said Mr. Sedley.
“Oh, excellent!” said Rebecca, who was suffering tortures with the cayenne pepper.
“Try a chili with it, Miss Sharp,” said Joseph, really interested.
“A chili,” said Rebecca, gasping. “Oh yes!” She thought a chili was something cool, as its name imported, and was served with some. “How fresh and green they look!” she said, and put one into her mouth. It was hotter than the curry; flesh and blood could bear it no longer. She laid down her fork. “Water, for Heaven’s sake, water!” she cried. Mr. Sedley burst out laughing (he was a coarse man, from the Stock Exchange, where they love all sorts of practical jokes). “They are real Indian, I assure you,” said he. “Sambo, give Miss Sharp some water.”
The paternal laugh was echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and, as soon as she could speak, said, with a comical, good-humoured air—
“I ought to have remembered the pepper which the Princess of Persia puts in the cream-tarts in the Arabian Nights. Do you put cayenne into your cream-tarts in India, sir?”
Old Sedley began to laugh, and thought Rebecca was a good-humoured girl. Joseph simply said—“Cream-tarts, Miss? Our cream is very bad in Bengal. We generally use goats’ milk; and, ’gad, do you know, I’ve got to prefer it!”
“You won’t like everything from India now, Miss Sharp,” said the old gentleman; but when the ladies had retired after dinner, the wily old fellow said to his son, “Have a care, Joe; that girl is setting her cap at you.”
Miss Rebecca Sharp to Miss Amelia Sedley, Russell Square,
London. (Free.—Pitt Crawley.)
“My dearest, sweetest Amelia—With what mingled joy and sorrow do I take up the pen to write to my dearest friend! Oh, what a change between today and yesterday! . . . I will not tell you in what tears and sadness I passed the fatal night in which I separated from you. . . . I was awakened at daybreak by the charwoman, and having arrived at the inn, was at first placed inside the coach. But when we got to a place called Leakington, where the rain began to fall very heavily—will you believe it?—I was forced to come outside; for Sir Pitt is a proprietor of the coach, and as a passenger came at Mudbury, who wanted an inside place, I was obliged to go outside in the rain, where, however, a young gentleman from Cambridge College sheltered me very kindly in one of his several greatcoats. . . .
“A carriage and four splendid horses, covered with armorial bearings, however, awaited us at Mudbury, four miles from Queen’s Crawley, and we made our entrance to the baronet’s park in state. There is a fine avenue of a mile long leading to the house, and the woman at the lodge-gate (over the pillars of which are a serpent and a dove, the supporters of the Crawley arms), made us a number of curtsies as she flung open the old iron carved doors. . . .
“Half an hour after our arrival the great dinner-bell was rung, and I came down with my two pupils (they are very thin, insignificant little chits of ten and eight years old). I came down in your dear muslin gown . . . for I am to be treated as one of the family, except on company days, when the young ladies and I are to dine upstairs. . . .
“ ‘My lady is served,’ says the Butler in black, in an immense white shirt-frill, that looked as if it had been one of the Queen Elizabeth’s ruffs depicted in the hall. . . .
“Sir Pitt was already in the room with a silver jug. He had just been to the cellar, and was in full dress too—that is, he had taken his gaiters off, and showed his little dumpy legs in black worsted stockings. The sideboard was covered with glistening old plate—old cups, both gold and silver; old salvers and cruet-stands, like Rundell and Bridge’s shop. Everything on the table was in silver too, and two footmen, with red hair and canary-coloured liveries, stood on either side of the sideboard.
“Mr. Crawley said a long grace, and Sir Pitt said Amen, and the great silver dish-covers were removed.
“ ‘What have we for dinner, Betsy?’ said the Baronet.
“ ‘Mutton broth, I believe, Sir Pitt,’ answered Lady Crawley.
“ ‘Mouton aux navets,’ added the Butler gravely (pronounce, if you please, moutongonavvy); ‘and the soup is potage de mouton à l’Ecossaise. The side-dishes contain pommes de terre au naturel, and choufleur à l’eau.’
“ ‘Mutton’s mutton,’ said the Baronet, ‘and a devilish good thing. What ship was it, Horrocks, and when did you kill?’
“ ‘One of the black-faced Scotch, Sir Pitt; we killed on Thursday.’
“ ‘Who took any?’
“ ‘Steel, of Mudbury, took the saddle and two legs, Sir Pitt; but he says the last was too young and confounded woolly, Sir Pitt.’
“ ‘Will you take some potage, Miss ah—Miss Blunt?’ said Mr. Crawley.
“ ‘Capital Scotch broth, my dear,’ said Sir Pitt, ‘though they call it by a French name.’
“ ‘I believe it is the custom, sir, in decent society,’ said Mr. Crawley haughtily, ‘to call the dish as I have called it;’ and it was served to us on silver soup-plates by the footmen in the canary coats, with the mouton aux navets. Then ‘ale and water’ were brought, and served to us young ladies in wine-glasses. I am not a judge of ale, but I can say with a clear conscience I prefer water.
“While we were enjoying our repast, Sir Pitt took occasion to ask what had become of the shoulders of the mutton.
“ ‘I believe they were eaten in the servants’ hall,’ said my lady humbly.
“ ‘They was, my lady,’ said Horrocks; ‘and precious little else we get there neither.’
“Sir Pitt burst into a horse-laugh, and continued his conversation with Mr. Horrocks. ‘That there little black pig of the Kent sow’s breed must be uncommon fat now.’
“ ‘It’s not quite busting, Sir Pitt,’ said the Butler with the gravest air, at which Sir Pitt, and with him the young ladies this time, began to laugh violently.
“ ‘Miss Crawley, Miss Rose Crawley,’ said Mr. Crawley, ‘your laughter strikes me as being exceedingly out of place.’
“ ‘Never mind my lord,’ said the Baronet, ‘we’ll try the porker on Saturday. Kill un on Saturday morning, John Horrocks. Miss Sharp adores pork, don’t you, Miss Sharp?’
“And I think this is all the conversation that I remember at dinner. When the repast was concluded, a jug of hot water was placed before Sir Pitt, with a case-bottle containing, I believe, rum. Mr. Horrocks served myself and my pupils with three little glasses of wine, and a bumper was poured out for my lady. When we retired, she took from her work-drawer an enormous interminable piece of knitting; the young ladies began to play at cribbage with a dirty pack of cards. We had but one candle lighted, but it was in a magnificent old silver candlestick; and after a very few questions from my lady, I had my choice of amusement between a volume of sermons, and a pamphlet on the corn-laws, which Mr. Crawley had been reading before dinner.
“So we sat for an hour . . . and then we went to bed. . . .
“Saturday.—This morning, at five, I heard the shrieking of the little black pig. Rose and Violet introduced me to it yesterday; and to the stables, and to the kennel, and to the gardener, who was picking fruit to send to market, and from whom they begged hard a bunch of hothouse grapes; but he said that Sir Pitt had numbered every single ‘Man Jack’ of them, and it would be as much as his place was worth to give any away. . . .
“Lady Crawley is always knitting the worsted. Sir Pitt is always tipsy, every night; and, I believe, sits with Horrocks, the butler. . . .
“A hundred thousand grateful loves to your dear papa and mamma. Is your poor brother recovered of his rack punch? O dear! O dear! How men should beware of wicked punch!
“Ever and ever thine own
“Rebecca.”
. . . Jos had himself arrayed with unusual care and splendour; and without thinking it necessary to say a word to any member of his family . . . or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence of the fêtes the house was full of company, the tables in the street were already surrounded by persons smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in his pompous way and with his clumsy German, made inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor rooms, where some travelling pedlars had lived, and were exhibiting their jewellery and brocades; above the second-floor apartments, occupied by the état major of the gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among students, bagmen, small tradesmen, and country-folk, come in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest—as dirty a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.
Becky liked the life. She was at home with everybody in the place—pedlars, punters, tumblers, students, and all. She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians by taste and circumstance. If a lord was not by, she would talk to his courier with the greatest pleasure; the din, the stir, the drink, the smoke, the tattle of the Hebrew pedlars, the solemn, braggart ways of the poor tumblers, the sournois talk of the gambling-table officials, the songs and swagger of the students, and the general buzz and hum of the place had pleased and tickled the little woman, even when her luck was down, and she had not wherewithal to pay her bill. . . .
As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 90, was open, and a student, in jackboots and a dirty schlafrock, was lying on the bed smoking a long pipe, whilst another student, in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person within.
“Go away,” said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill; “I expect somebody—I expect my grandpapa. He mustn’t see you there.”
“Angel Englanderinn!” bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown ringlets and the large finger-ring, “do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fritz at the inn in the park. We will have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine. We shall die if you don’t.”
“That we will,” said the young nobleman on the bed. And this colloquy Jos overheard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied the language in which it was carried on.
“Newmero kattervang dooze, si vous plait,” Jos said, in his grandest manner, when he was able to speak.
“Quater fang tooce!” said the student, starting up, and he bounced into his own room, where he locked the door, and where Jos heard him laughing with his comrade on the bed.
The gentleman from Bengal was standing disconcerted by this incident, when the door of the 92 opened of itself, and Becky’s little head peeped out full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. “It’s you,” she said, coming out. “How I have been waiting for you! Stop! not yet; in one minute you shall come in.” In that instant she put a rouge-pot, a brandy-bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.
She had, by way of morning robe, a pink domino, a trifle faded and soiled, and marked here and there with pomatum; but her arms shone out from the loose sleeves of the dress very white and fair, and it was tied round her little waist so as not ill to set off the trim little figure of the wearer. She led Jos by the hand into her garret. “Come in,” she said—“come, and talk to me; sit yonder on the chair,” and she gave the Civilian’s hand a little squeeze, and laughingly placed him upon it. As for herself, she placed herself on the bed—not on the bottle and plate, you may be sure—on which Jos might have reposed, had he chosen that seat; and so there she sate and talked with her old admirer.
“How little years have changed you!” she said, with a look of tender interest. “I should have known you anywhere. What a comfort it is amongst strangers to see once more the frank, honest face of an old friend!”
The frank, honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any expression but one of openness and honesty; it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door; her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle not of wax. Becky thought of popping that into the bed too, but she only put in the little paper nightcap with which she had put the candle out on going to sleep. “I should have known you anywhere,” she continued; “a woman never forgets some things. And you were the first man I ever—I ever saw.”
“Was I, really?” said Jos. “God bless my soul, you—you don’t say so.”
“When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was scarcely more than a child,” Becky said. “How is that dear love? Oh, her husband was a sad, wicked man, and of course it was of me that the poor dear was jealous. As if I cared about him, heigh-ho! when there was somebody—but no— don’t let us talk of old times;” and she passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across her eyelids.
“Is not this a strange place,” she continued, “for a woman, who has lived in a very different world too, to be found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph Sedley, I have been made to suffer so cruelly, that I am almost made mad sometimes. I can’t stay still in any place, but wander about always restless and unhappy. All my friends have been false to me—all. There is no such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest wife that ever lived, though I married my husband out of pique, because somebody else—but never mind that. I was true, and he trampled upon me and deserted me. I was the fondest mother. I had but one child, one darling, one hope, one joy, which I held to my heart with a mother’s affection, which was my life, my prayer, my—my blessing; and they—they tore it from me—tore it from me;” and she put her hand to her heart with a passionate gesture of despair, burying her face for a moment on the bed.
The brandy-bottle inside clinked up against the plate which held the cold sausage. Both were moved, no doubt, by the exhibition of so much grief. Max and Fritz were at the door, listening with wonder to Mrs. Becky’s sobs and cries. Jos, too, was a good deal frightened and affected at seeing his old flame in this condition. And she began forthwith to tell her story—a tale so neat, simple, and artless, that it was quite evident from hearing her that if ever there was a white-robed angel escaped from heaven to be subject to the infernal machinations and villainy of fiends here below, that spotless being, that miserable unsullied martyr, was present on the bed before Jos—on the bed, sitting on the brandy-bottle. . . .
Jos went away, convinced that she was the most virtuous as she was one of the most fascinating of women, and revolving in his mind all sorts of benevolent schemes for her welfare. Her persecutions ought to be ended; she ought to return to the society of which she was an ornament. He would see what ought to be done. . . . He would go and settle about it. . . . She wept tears of heartfelt gratitude as she parted from him, and pressed his hand as the gallant stout gentleman stooped down to kiss hers.
So Becky bowed Jos out of her little garret with as much grace as if it was a palace of which she did the honours; and that heavy gentleman having disappeared down the stairs, Max and Fritz came out of their hole, pipe in mouth, and she amused herself by mimicking Jos to them as she munched her cold bread and sausage and took draughts of her favourite brandy-and-water.
Charles Dickens’s books are much easier to cut into than Thackeray’s, but it is hard to say why. Dickens wrote more directly and less by implication, so that although both men used their characters’ gastronomical habits as an intrinsic part of their being, his meals (or lack of them) are less involved in the past and future development of the story than they would be in anything by Thackeray.
Both men had a deep scorn for human venality and evil, but Dickens’s satire is angrier than his contemporary’s. However, there is always in his writings a pity and tenderness which may seem downright mawkish at times but which is in reassuring contrast to Thackeray’s ruthless dissection of his fellows, and is in evidence even when he is most scathing and bitter, as in Oliver Twist.
There, for instance, he describes how the workhouse directors discover that the inmates actually like living there, and set about to change things at once:
From Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 1812–1870
So, they established the rule, that all poor people would have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, no, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals a day of thin gruel, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays. . . . It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of the undertaker’s bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two’s gruel. But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstacies.
Here I must give a recipe from A Handbook of Cookery for Irish Workhouses. It was published in 1911, but I feel there had been few changes made in it since little Oliver ate his gruel in such a place.
SOWANS OR FLUMMERY
6 ounces unsifted oatmeal
1 gallon water
Soak meal in lukewarm water 24 hours, press the mixture through a fine sieve, boil until thick, let stand 15 minutes, and serve.
And that reminds me of a brutal proverb of the very poor in France: Tout fait ventre, pourvu que ça entre . . . (Anything that can be swallowed is food . . . Food is anything you can get down without gagging.)
From Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 1812-1870
The room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, with a copper at one end: out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal-times. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper with such eager eyes as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.
“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.
“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and, addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,
“Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!”
There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.
“For more!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”
“He did, sir,” replied Bumble.
“That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.”
Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman’s opinion. An animated discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into constant confinement; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish. In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.
“I never was more convinced of anything in my life,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill next morning: “I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung.”
It was hard to cut pieces out of A Christmas Carol: the whole foolish moving story is one of food, physical and spiritual, and I would have liked to put it here as I best like to read it, uncut from the first wonderful line, “Marley was dead: to begin with,” to the last happy, moist-eyed “God bless us, every one!”
It hurts to leave out a single phrase, and I wince at the thought of not being able to print some such unforgettable description as the one of Marley’s ghost, whose face “had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” And old Scrooge, “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,” taking “his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern.”
But it is impossible: A Christmas Carol must and can be read properly, the whole thing, again and again, and meanwhile here are crumbs of it, to whet the appetite:
From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1812–1870
The people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’! Oh, the Grocers’! Nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress: but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops.
Up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and, basking in luxurious thoughts of sage-and-onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
“What has ever got your precious father then?” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour!”
“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young Cratchits. “Hurrah! There’s such a goose, Martha!”
“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” replied the girl, “and had to clear away this morning, mother!”
“Well! Never mind so long as you are come,” said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!”
“No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. “Hide, Martha, hide!”
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit.
“Not coming!” said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. “Not coming upon Christmas Day!”
Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs—as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby—compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the applesauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the applesauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding like a speckled cannon- ball so hard and firm blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel- full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”
Which all the family re-echoed.
“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB are full of fantastic meals eaten lustily by fantastic people . . . for instance, the one after Mr. Pickwick’s hat blew off at the military show, and came to rest at the very wheels of a fat gentleman’s open barouche. The barouche, naturally, since it was within Mr. Pickwick’s world, was loaded with young and old ladies, admirers of the former, a servant boy named Joe who slept except when he was eating, and “a hamper of spacious dimensions—one of those hampers which always awakens in a contemplative mind associations connected with cold fowls, tongues, and bottles of wine”:
From The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens, 1812–1870
After a great many jokes about squeezing the ladies’ sleeves, and a vast quantity of blushing at sundry jocose proposals that the ladies should sit in the gentlemen’s laps, the whole party were stowed down in the barouche; and the stout gentleman proceeded to hand the things from the fat boy (who had mounted up behind for the purpose) into the carriage.
“Now, Joe, knives and forks.” The knives and forks were handed in, and the ladies and gentlemen inside, and Mr. Winkle on the box, were each furnished with those useful instruments.
“Plates, Joe, plates.” A similar process employed in the distribution of the crockery.
“Now, Joe, the fowls. Damn that boy; he’s gone to sleep again. Joe! Joe!” (Sundry taps on the head with a stick, and the fat boy, with some difficulty, roused from his lethargy.) “Come, hand in the eatables.”
There was something in the sound of the last word which roused the unctuous boy. He jumped up; and the leaden eyes which twinkled behind his mountainous cheeks, leered horribly upon the food as he unpacked it from the basket.
“Now make haste,” said Mr. Wardle; for the fat boy was hanging fondly over a capon, which he seemed wholly unable to part with. The boy sighed deeply, and, bestowing an ardent gaze upon its plumpness, unwillingly consigned it to his master.
“That’s right—look sharp. Now the tongue—now the pigeon-pie. Take care of that veal and ham—mind the lobsters—take the salad out of the cloth—give me the dressing.” Such were the hurried orders which issued from the lips of Mr. Wardle, as he handed in the different articles described, and placed dishes in everybody’s hands, and on everybody’s knees, in endless number.
“Now an’t this capital?” inquired that jolly personage, when the work of destruction had commenced.
“Capital!” said Mr. Winkle, who was carving a fowl on the box.
“Glass of wine?”
“With the greatest pleasure.”
“You’d better have a bottle to yourself, up there, hadn’t you?”
“You’re very good.”
“Joe!”
“Yes, sir.” (He wasn’t asleep this time, having just succeeded in abstracting a veal patty.)
“Bottle of wine to the gentleman on the box. Glad to see you, sir.”
“Thank’ee.” Mr. Winkle emptied his glass, and placed the bottle on the coach-box, by his side.
“Will you permit me to have the pleasure, sir?” said Mr. Trundle to Mr. Winkle.
“With great pleasure,” replied Mr. Winkle to Mr. Trundle: and then the two gentlemen took wine, after which they took a glass of wine round, ladies and all.
In fact, they all took a great deal of wine, and the party was very gay, and the fat gentleman asked the whole Pickwick Club to come and spend a week with him in Dingley Dell. It was a typical adventure, that is to say, for those wonderful silly delightful souls.
Of another, greater book, Dickens wrote, “Of all my books, I like this best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.”
It was first published in 1850, illustrated by Phiz, with the satisfying title The Personal History, Experience, and Observations of David Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, Which He Never Meant to be Published on Any Account. It is hard to imagine literature without it.
From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 1812–1870
The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging up, and said:
“Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“What name?” inquired the lady.
“Copperfield, ma’am,” I said.
“That won’t do,” returned the lady. “Nobody’s dinner is paid for here in that name.”
“Is it Murdstone, ma’am?” I said.
“If you’re Master Murdstone,” said the lady, “why do you go and give another name first?”
I explained to the lady how it was, who then rang a bell, and called out, “William! show the coffee-room!” upon which a waiter came running out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed a good deal surprised when he found he was only to show it to me.
It was a large long room, with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set of casters on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
He brought me some chops and vegetables, and took the covers off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying very affably, “Now, six-foot! come on!”
I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second chop, he said:
“There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?”
I thanked him, and said, “Yes.” Upon which he poured it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look beautiful.
“My eye!” he said. “It seems a good deal, don’t it?”
“It does seem a good deal,” I answered with a smile. For it was quite delightful to me to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with one arm akimbo, holding up the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
“There was a gentleman here yesterday,” he said—“a stout gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer—perhaps you know him?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think—”
“In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled choker,” said the waiter.
“No,” I said bashfully, “I haven’t the pleasure—”
“He came in here,” said the waiter, looking at the light through the tumbler, “ordered a glass of this ale—would order it—I told him not—drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn’t to be drawn; that’s the fact.”
I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I thought I had better have some water.
“Why, you see,” said the waiter, still looking at the light through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, “our people don’t like things being ordered and left. It offends ’em. But I’ll drink it, if you like. I’m used to it, and use is everything. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?”
I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.
“What have we got here?” he said, putting a fork into my dish. “Not chops?”
“Chops,” I said.
“Lord bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “I didn’t know they were chops. Why, a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain’t it lucky?”
So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that another chop, and another potato. When he had done, he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
“How’s the pie?” he said, rousing himself.
“It’s a pudding,” I made answer.
“Pudding!” he exclaimed. “Why, bless me, so it is! What!” looking at it nearer, “you don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding?”
“Yes, it is indeed.”
“Why, a batter-pudding,” he said, taking up a tablespoon, “is my favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ’un, and let’s see who’ll get most.”
The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in and win; but what with his tablespoon to my teaspoon, his dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw any one enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted still.
Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not only brought it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
I said, “Near London,” which was all I knew.
“Oh! my eye!” he said, looking very low-spirited, “I am sorry for that.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“Oh, Lord!” he said, shaking his head, “that’s the school where they broke the boy’s ribs—two ribs—a little boy he was. I should say he was— let me see—how old are you, about?”
I told him between eight and nine.
“That’s just his age,” he said. “He was eight years and six months old when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when they broke his second, and did for him.”
I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, “With whopping.”
The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there were anything to pay.
“There’s a sheet of letter-paper,” he returned. “Did you ever buy a sheet of letter-paper?”
I could not remember that I ever had.
“It’s dear,” he said, “on account of the duty. Three-pence. That’s the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else except the waiter. Never mind the ink; I lose by that.”
“What should you—what should I—how much ought I to—what would it be right to pay the waiter, if you please?” I stammered, blushing.
“If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,” said the waiter, “I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged pairint, and a lovely sister”—here the waiter was greatly agitated—“I wouldn’t take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live on broken wittles, and I sleep on the coals”—here the waiter burst into tears.
I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any recognition short of nine pence would be mere brutality and hardness of heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb, directly afterwards to try the goodness of.
It was a little disconcerting to me to find, when I was being helped up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner without any assistance. I discovered this from overhearing the lady in the bow-window say to the guard, “Take care of that child, George, or he’ll burst!” and from observing that the women-servants who were about the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My unfortunate friend the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple confidence of a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even then.
I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater expediency of my travelling by wagon. The story of my supposed appetite getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it likewise, and asked me whether I was going to be paid for at school as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms, with other pleasant questions. But the worst of it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything when an opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should remain hungry all night; for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel, in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything.
Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee. In my love-lorn condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it, for I felt as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards Dora to have a natural relish for my dinner. The quantity of walking exercise I took was not in this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the disappointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots. I think the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with vigour.
On the occasion of this domestic little party, I . . . provided a pair of soles, a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. . . . [Then,] having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender water, two wax candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist Mrs. Micawber in her toilette, at my dressing-table; having also caused the fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited the result with composure.
At the appointed time my three visitors arrived together—Mr. Micawber with more shirt collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whity-brown paper parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her, she was in such raptures that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and look.
“My dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “this is luxurious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at the Hymeneal altar.”
“He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber archly. “He cannot answer for others.” . . .
To divert his thoughts . . . I informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity. As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax candles, but she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark was never gayer than that excellent woman.
I suppose—I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose—that Mrs. Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without; besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as if it had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen fire-place. But we were not in a condition to judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the “young gal” had dropped it all upon the stairs— where it remained, by-the-by, in a long train, until it was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie; the crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking—full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy—about the failure, I mean, for I am always unhappy about Dora—if I had not been relieved by the great good-humour of my company, and by a bright suggestion from Mr. Micawber.
“My dear friend Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the—a—I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a devil, and that I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to you that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.”
There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber’s idea into effect. The division of labour to which he had referred was this: Traddles cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr. Micawber’s direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough done to begin upon, we fell to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrists, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on our plates and the mutton then preparing.
What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. I am satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; and I dare say there never was a greater success.
One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and said that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his bliss.
I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case and Dora’s flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his own good-humour, “Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, oceans!”
There was another thing I could have wished—namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the table-cloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay, and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes, and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflections to myself.
“My love,” said I to Dora, “what have you got in that dish?”
I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
“Oysters, dear,” said Dora timidly.
“Was that your thought?” said I, delighted.
“Ye-yes, Doady,” said Dora.
“There never was a happier one!” I exclaimed, laying down the carving knife and fork. “There is nothing Traddles likes so much!”
“Ye-yes, Doady,” said Dora, “and so I bought a beautiful little barrel of them, and the man said they were very good. But I—I am afraid there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.” Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
“They are only opened in both shells,” said I. “Take the top one off, my love.”
“But it won’t come off,” said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very much distressed.
“Do you know, Copperfield,” said Traddles, cheerfully examining the dish, “I think it is in consequence—they are capital oysters, but I think it is in consequence—of their never having been opened.”
They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives, and couldn’t have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters, and ate the mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast. But I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship; and we had a course of bacon instead—there happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the discomfiture I had subdued very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening—Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By-and-by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the nights when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.