Part 7 (1/2)
Inup a dinner with a view to its intellectual co a the the conversation around to their vieith the intention of concentrating the whole attention upon themselves One such man, called appropriately the Bore Constrictor of conversation in a certain city, really drove people away frorew tired of hearing him talk of that particular science in which he was an expert Such a talker could make the planet Jupiter a bore, and if the talker were of the feender how one would shun her verbosity
”I called on Mrs Marjoribanks yesterday,” said a free lance once, ”and we had a little gossip about Copernicus” We do not care to have anything quite so erudite, for if people are really very intimate with Copernicus they do not mention it at dinner
It is as impossible to say what makes the row the best grapes We feel it and we enjoy it, but we can give no receipt for the production of the same
As history, with exe off all the trouble of giving a dinner on his wife, why have not our clever wo in politics? Why are not our woreater politicians? Where is our Lady Jersey, our Lady Palioso? The Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian Ambassador in London, was said to have held the peace of Europe in the conduct of her _entrees_; and a country-woman of our own is to-day supposed to influence the policy of Gerely by her dinners From the polished and versatile memoirs of the Grahton, how es on the efficacy of a dinner in reconciling foes, and in theof friends How many a conspiracy was hatched, no doubt, behind an aspic of plover's eggs or a _vol au vent de volaille_ How ton, was brought to full power over a well-ordered table-cloth
How many a war cloud dispelled by the proper teundy It is related of Lord Lyndhurst that when soood wine” A French statesood dinners” Talleyrand kept the most renowned table of his day, quite as e he still spent an hour everythe dishes to be served at dinner
The Emperor Napoleon, as no epicure, nor even a connoisseur, was nevertheless pleased with Talleyrand's luxurious and refined hospitality, in consequence of the impression it made on those ere so fortunate as to partake of it On the other hand, one hesitates to conte which must have hatched an Oliver Cromwell, or still earlier that decadence of Italian cookery which es and countries have thus studied the tastes and the intellectual aptitudes and capabilities of those whoy would suggest that the _petits soupers_ on high Olyhter of the Gods,” had much to do with the politics of the Greek heaven under Jupiter Reading the Northern Saga in the saue and awful conceptions of cookery which see to do with the opera of Siegfried? Even the ht fro steel, and the h the forest, and the ice-blast freezes the hearer
The chasms of earth seeestion, and the brooding horror of a night half-roasted kid The political aspect of a Scandinavian heaven was always story
In America a hostess sure of her soups and her _entrees_, with such talkers as she could coht influence its music--by her dinners, and become an enviable Lady Palmerston
Old people are apt to say that there is a decay in the art of conversation, that it is one of the lost arts No doubt this is in a measure true all over the world A French _salon_ would be to-day an ier the fashi+on to tell anecdotes, to try to be a who sits up to amuse the company All this is bad; it is reactionary after the drone of the Bore Constrictor It is going on all over the world It is part of that hurry which has , the jelly of speech, speech condensed and boiled down, easily transported, and warranted to keep in all climates
But there is a very pleasant _juste milieu_ between the stately, perhaps starchy, anecdotist of the past and the easy and witty talker of to-day, who , and what is more, may permit a certain slovenliness of speech There are certain lish, made soberly, advisedly, and without fear of Lindley Murray, which h for the proprieties of the past The trouble is we have no standard Writers are always at work at the English language, and yet ular and least understood of all languages
The intellectual components of a successful dinner, should, if we may quote Hawthorne, be illuminated with intellect, and softened by the kindest emotions of the heart To quote Mrs Jameson, they must combine the caustic and the witty, the lively and the clever, and even the absurd, and the assiduous above all Everybody h not to yawn, and never see, but all apparently well-pleased The intellectual components of a dinner, like the condiments of a salad, must be of the best; and it is for the hostess totact and fine discrimination of an American woman
CONSCIENTIOUS DINERS
It is chieflyin honour
The head is not capable of asequence of appreciations, and ment, which has not a well-fed brain
BRILLAT SAVARIN
A good dinner and a pretty hostess,--for there are terms on which beauty and beef can ood talkers, and as ood listeners, or more of the latter, are said to reatest statesood dinners It is woman's province to provide them; but nature and education must make the conscientious diner
It is to be feared that we are too much in a hurry to be truly conscientious diners Our , science,railroads, steaauds,--too ht to the question of _entrees_ and _entre place Just see how the noble language of France, which Racine dignified and Moliere amplified, respectfully puts on its robes of state which are lined with erreat subject of dinner!
It is to be feared that we are far off froh e of Le Doyon's, the Cafe Anglais, and the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, may have prepared us for the _entre in this respect and no longer bolt our dinners The improvement is already manifest in the better tempers and complexions of our people
But are we as conscientious as the gentleirl ould talk to him at dinner? ”Do you remember, my dear, that you are in the house of the best _entrees_ in London? I wish to eat my dinner”
That was a man to cook for! He had his appropriate calm reserve of appreciation, for the _supreme de volaille_ He kneatch and wait for the sweetbreads, and green peas Not throay upon hie become of a delicate Vandyck brown How respectful was he to that ireat French cook died, a suicide for a belated turbot
”Ah,” said Parke Godwin once, when in one of his most brilliant Brillat Savarin moods, ”how it ennobles a supper to think that all these oysters will become ideas!”
But if a dinner is not a cookery book, neither is it a matter of expense alone, nor a payment of social debts It is a question of tes, of a proper variety, and of tiht and short The Englishhostess, to strike the _juste -school She -books And when all is done and said, she must realize that a cookery-book is not a dinner There are so from a cookery-book As Lady Galway said that she had put all her wits into Bradshaw's ”Railway Guide” and had never got theain, so some amateur cook remarked that she had tested her recipes with the ”cook-book in one hand and the cooking-stove in the other,”
yet the wit had stayed away All young housekeepers h the discipline--in a land where cooks are as yet scarce--of trying and failing, of trying and at length succeeding They o to _La Belle France_ to learn how to make a soup, for instance That is to say, they must study the best French authorities