Part 8

A former generation suffered from the Andrew Clark regime, and I can even remember a dinner menu divided into halves, one of which was headed “Clarkists,” and was confined to the dishes prescribed by that eminent medico, and the other half labelled “Just ordinary folk”--and it was much the better programme of the two. A little later one met the weird folk who produced from hidden recesses mysterious little silver boxes, from which they extracted little white pilules “to be taken between each course”--but I have noticed that these people usually ate a remarkably hearty dinner, despite, or perhaps because, of these same pilules.

One comes across, too, the Stokerites, with their peculiar antipathies, the “Natural Feeders,” the “Little Grangers,” and the _maigre tous les jours_ sort of folk. As for the vegetarians, there is little to be said for or against them. They are, of course, fully justified in their opinions, but they do give a lot of bother at an ordinary dinner party. I may be unfortunate in my vegetarian friends, but it always appears to me that after a time they seem to assimilate certain characteristics of the food they eat, and eventually become very like their favourite vegetables; so much so that they might almost be accused of cannibalism. Certain it is that I can spot a carrot-eating man by his hair, an onion-lover by his breath, and a Brussels-sprout devotee by his whiskers.

Take it, however, by and large, the food faddist, be it a he or a she, is rarely a pleasant table-companion, and in these times of strenuous dining he, she, or it, is usually a poor conversationalist and a poorer critic; which is a pity.

It is quite a mistake to imagine that a good dinner can afford to despise the adjuncts of a well-decorated table. Nothing could be more fallacious. One’s sense of taste should not alone be titillated. One’s palate-gusto is distinctly enhanced by something pleasant to look upon, by something artistic to accompany the mere mechanism of mastication, by a general sense of beauty and non-flamboyant restfulness.

We have gone far in this direction during the past two or three decades. There are many happily still surviving among us who remember vividly, and not without a certain amount of awe, the vast erections which appeared on the dinner-tables of our forbears. The silver branch candelabra, the epergnes, the great piles of fruit, the towering “set-pieces,” the bushy and umbrageous plants and flowers, the plates of mixed biscuits, and the various impossible dishes of confectionery which nobody was expected to eat.

But all this has disappeared, and one is no longer obliged to talk to one’s opposite neighbour through a jungle of horticulture. Flowers are best shown in low bowls, either china or silver, there are no useless impedimenta, the tiresome trails of smilax have long since been relegated to Peckham dinner-tables, and we have at last arrived at an era of plenty of elbow-room, discreet floral decoration, and a clean sweep of ridiculous encumbrances.

Some hostesses, indeed, cultivate the Japanese grammar of the arrangement of flowers, which gives a particular and especial value to each leaf, branch, and stalk. Others again will have merely half a dozen blooms, all told, on the table, but each bloom perfect of its kind, and displayed to the best advantage. High vases are as obsolete as the dodo, and people are gradually becoming alive to the fact that four or five exquisite roses in a big flat Hawthorn dish are more decorative than all the miserable little white china cupids in Regent Street.

The choice of odours, too, is an important consideration. No hostess with any consideration for the olfactory nerves of her guests would put strongly perfumed flowers on the dinner-table. They would only destroy the flavour of the cates, and cause annoyance rather than pleasure. Even the lovely syringa, which a good lady once described as “a respectable gardenia,” is too strong, and at the most a purely neutral scent is permissible.

In the height of summer I have met a single water-lily floating in a copper dish in the middle of the table; the lily was so perfect in itself that any other decoration would have seemed superfluous and impertinent. The stalks of flowers seen through clear glass are as beautiful as the blooms, and an arrangement of green leaves only, with no flower at all, is, if rightly understood and designed, very difficult to beat.

Only recently, dining in an artist’s studio, I was delighted with a few sprays of medlar blossom on the table, and a mass of hydrangea on the sideboard, immediately below a shelf of old pewter. The harmony was wonderfully beautiful. Such touches of taste entirely alter the character of a dinner, and from a mere feeding party it becomes an artistic pleasure. For, after all, the mere act of eating is not in itself beautiful.

Reverting to the food-faddist, there are some who, quite apart from doctors’ reasons, have the most peculiar likes and dislikes. Some never touch soup; others positively like boiled veal; and it is on record that Dr. Johnson poured lobster sauce over his plum-pudding. It is not easy to understand this extraordinary combination of the great lexicographer, but the story has good authority.

Some folk, quite worthy folk too, like cold meat and pickles, even when abroad; others make a point of drinking the wine of the country. It is told of the great Duke of Wellington that when journeying through France with Alava, in 1814, on being asked at what time they should start next day, he invariably replied “At daybreak.” And to the question what they should have for dinner, he always answered, “Cold meat.” “_Je les ai eu en horreur, à la fin_,” Alava declared, “_ces deux mots-là_--‘daybreak’ _et_ ‘cold meat.’”

The menu of a good summer dinner is always interesting. Here is one which should amply satisfy the most fastidious. It was cooked by one of the best chefs in London, and seems to me to contain some particularly interesting features.

MENU DU DINER

Zakuska. Potage à la Dauphine. Purée d’asperges à la St. Georges. Filets de Sole Bagration. Saumon froid à la Doria. Ris de Veau en Caisses à la Périgueux. Petites Croustades Glacés à la Montglas. Selle de Mouton froid. Courges farcies. Cannetons Sautés. Sauce Bigarade. Salade de Choux Rouges. Maïs à l’Américaine. Macédoine de Fruits. Bombe de Juillet. Glace de Crème aux Truffes.

Another hot-weather menu is a comparatively simple luncheon, and is principally remarkable for the fact that it is entirely cold, from the prawns to the coffee. We have all of us, of course, had many cold lunches, racing, motoring, at Henley, or elsewhere, but as a rule these casual meals lack character and homogeneity; they are of a “chucked-together” sort of nature, and whilst serving a useful purpose of their own, can hardly be called perfect pictures of their kind. No such objection can, I think, be made to the subjoined.

MENU DU DÉJEUNER

Crevettes Roses. Consommé en Gelée. Salade de Poisson. Truite froide. Sauce Rémoulade. Filet de Bœuf aux Légumes Glacés. Poulet Provençale. Salade Miladi. Pêches Daisy Miller. Coupe Jacques. Café Glacé.

The following little story from Mr. G. W. E. Russell’s “Londoner’s Logbook” has a delightful gastronomical moral, which might be adopted, with advantage, by many hosts of to-day: “‘Come and dine at eight--pot-luck, you know. Don’t dress.’ That hospitable formula recalls a genial knight who dwelt in Berkeley Square, and, applying his whole mind to the subject of dinners, attained to high perfection in the art of giving them. Two benevolent practices of his invention linger pleasantly in the memory. He caused each course to begin at a different point at the table, so that every guest in turn got the first chance at a dish. He dealt out the asparagus like cards, an equal number of pieces to each guest; and if on completion of the deal he saw that any one had got smaller pieces than his neighbours, he used the residue to redress the inequality. Surely such are those actions of the just which smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”

“Tom, whom to-day no noise stirs, Lies buried in these cloisters; If at the last trump He does not quickly jump; Only cry ‘Oysters!’”

_Epitaph on a Colchester Man’s Grave_

If you have eaten an oyster at Colchester or Faversham, in August, fresh from the sea; or a melting native at Milton, the best oyster in the world, in October; a Helford native in Cornwall; Whispered Pandores and Aberdours at Edinburgh, on the “Feast of Shells,” one hundred for a shilling, dripping in Prestonpans sea-water; Carlingfords and Powldoodies, of Burran, at Dublin; or even a Jersey oyster at St. Heliers, you know what an oyster should be.

These are the words of wisdom, written some thirty years ago by Herbert Byng Hall, a gastronomic writer of some eminence, who had made a special study of the Oyster, and wrote thereon learnedly and _con amore_.

Somehow or other there is something persuasively and personally intimate in one’s relations with an oyster, or with a couple of dozen oysters, for that matter. One does not feel the same sentimental regard for the pig that provides one with one’s morning rasher of bacon that one does for the merest preprandial oyster. And this feeling of friendship, almost intimacy, is always to be found in the writings of those who dilate upon “the breedy creatures,” as Christopher North called our illustrious bivalves in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.”

Dr. Kitchiner, for instance, says: “Those who wish to enjoy this delicious restorative in its utmost perfection must eat it at the moment it is opened, with its own gravy in the undershell; if not eaten absolutely alive, its flavour and spirit are lost. The true lover of an oyster will have some regard for the feelings of his little favourite, and contrive to detach the fish from the shell so dexterously that the oyster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his lodging till he feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmet tickling him to death.”

There are other instances innumerable of a certain dainty touch in dealing with oysters. Contact with them seems to engender humour, good nature, and a tricksey spirit. Huxley called oysters “a delicious flash of gustatory lightning”; and there is a story told of the great master, G. F. Watts, who was challenged by Millais and Leighton to produce a humorous picture, whereupon he painted a primitive man and woman on the seashore. The woman is looking with awestruck admiration at the man who has just swallowed an oyster. The man himself appears very doubtful as to the result. The picture was called “B.C. The First Oyster.”

It was originally said in a very old number of the “North British Review,” that “he must have been a very bold man who first swallowed an oyster.” An old legend assigns the first act of oyster-eating to a very natural cause. It is related that a man walking by the sea one day picked up an oyster, just as it was in the act of gaping. Observing the extreme smoothness of the interior of the shell, he insinuated his finger between them that he might feel their shining surface, when suddenly they closed upon the exploring digit, with a sensation less pleasurable than he anticipated. The prompt withdrawal of his finger was scarcely a more natural movement than its transfer to his mouth. It is not very clear why people (including babies) when they hurt their fingers put them into their mouths; but it is very certain that they do, and in this case the result was most fortunate. The owner of the finger tasted oyster juice for the first time, as Elia’s Chinaman, having burned his finger, first tasted crackling. The savour was delicious; he had made a great discovery; so he picked up the oysters, forced open the shells, banqueted upon the contents, and soon brought oyster-eating into fashion.

That tender personal regard for the innocent oyster, which I have just referred to, is very manifest in one of the most widely known poems in the English language. I mean Lewis Carroll’s “Walrus and the Carpenter.”

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!” The Walrus did beseech. “A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach; We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each.”

* * * * *

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter, “You’ve had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?” But answer came there none. And this was scarcely odd, because They’d eaten every one.

The kindly regard for the susceptibilities of the oysters is kept up even until the dire _dénoûment_ of the drama. Again we are touched by a fragment by the same author, of which, alas, we shall never know the full purport. It runs thus:--

I passed by his garden and marked, with one eye, How the owl and the oyster were sharing a pie. (_Cætera desunt._)

Mr. Thomas Hardy did not, I am sure, in the title of his novel, “The Return of the Native,” intend to celebrate the coming of oysters into the dinner menu, but it seems to sum up in a brief and pithy phrase one of the great events of the autumn. The old convention that oysters are only eatable in those months which are spelled with an “r” has, of course, much to be said for it; at any rate, so far as British oysters are concerned.

Abroad it is different, and the _parcs aux huîtres_ at French watering-places give quite excellent oysters in August, and even in July. The _huîtres de Marennes_, _huîtres d’Ostende_, and the tiny little green ones are by no means to be despised, although they do not, perhaps, quite come up in lusciousness of flavour to the real Whitstable native.

We are somewhat oyster-spoiled in this country, and particularly in London. We go to Scott’s, Sweeting’s, Driver’s, Hampton’s, Rule’s, or any first-class oyster shops, and we get, as we know we shall get, the very best brand of the very best oyster in the world; fresh, clean, untainted, and uncontaminated, which, after all is said and done, cannot be vouched for in the case of second-rate hotels and caterers.

Whether to drink champagne, Chablis, stout, or nothing with oysters is a nice point which has not as yet been authoritatively decided. Of course, champagne and Chablis go far to assimilate the oyster, but at the same time there are those (and--dare I confess it?--I am amongst the number) who are venturesome enough to assert that the oyster, pure and simple, requires no alcoholic addition. Drink Chablis, or a light hock, _after_ the oyster feast, by all means; but when eating your two or three dozen on the deep shell (always order them on the deep shell) imbibe their own liquor only, and be thankful.

“Un voyageur anglais, transi de froid, arrive dans une hôtellerie de village où il n’y avait d’autre feu que celui de la cuisine, dont la cheminée était gardée par un grand nombre de voyageurs arrivées avant lui. Pour se faire faire place, il usa d’un stratagème assez original. Il avait aperçu en entrant quelques cloyères d’huîtres. Il dit au maître de la maison, ‘Monsieur, avez-vous des huîtres?’ ‘Oui, Monsieur, et de très-fraîches.’ ‘Faites-en porter une cloyère à mon cheval.’ ‘Comment, Monsieur, est-ce que votre cheval mange des huîtres?’ ‘Oui, Monsieur; au surplus, faites ce que je dis; s’il ne les mange pas, d’autres les mangeront.’

“Le maître obéit, et les voyageurs allaient voir un cheval manger des huîtres--qu’il ne mangea pas. Pendant ce temps, le nouvel arrivé prend place au feu. Le maître de retour lui dit, ‘Monsieur, je savais bien que votre cheval ne mangeait pas d’huîtres.’ ‘Eh bien, non,’ dit l’Anglais, ‘je les mangerai; ces messieurs ont quitté leur place, je la garderai; ainsi à tout cela, il n’y aura rien de perdu.’ Et, en effet, il vida la cloyère sans quitter le coin du feu.”

This is a quotation, apt enough, I think, from “La Gastronomie pour Rire, ou Anecdotes, Réflexions, Maximes, et Folies Gourmandes,” par César Gardeton, auteur du “Directeur des Estomacs,” Paris, 1827.

As a useful recipe for oysters, I should like to refer to an extract from a letter from Swift to Stella; it runs thuswise:--

Lord Masham made me go home with him to eat boiled oysters. Take oysters, wash them clean; that is, wash their shells clean; then put your oysters in an earthen pot, with their hollow side down; then put this pot, covered, into a great kettle with water, and so let them boil. Your oysters are boiled in their own liquor, and do not mix water.

If oysters have to be cooked at all, which is a doctrine I do not support, then the above seems as good a way as any other. Really good oysters are, anyhow, too precious to be cooked, but should be degustated _in puris naturalibus_.

A story which I venture to think apocryphal is quoted by W. R. Hare in a curious little book, “On the Search for a Dinner,” published in London in 1857. Speaking of dining in Paris, he refers to the celebrated restaurant the _Rocher du Cancale_, and relates how an English “Milord” drove up to the establishment and ordered (and ate) a hearty meal of twenty-nine dozen oysters; after which Milord died suddenly--and no wonder! They carried him down with great difficulty to the carriage. The groom, on seeing his master’s body arrive, exclaimed, with great coolness, “It is the third time that Milord gives himself the pleasure of dying of indigestion.” “He will not die a fourth time,” answered the _patron_, with sorrow. Milord was buried at Père-la-Chaise. His facetious friends deposit every year by the remains of the defunct an enormous quantity of oyster-shells. The tomb is about five-and-twenty yards from that of Héloise and Abélard. On a slab of black marble the following epitaph is inscribed: “Here lies ----, dead for the third time in a duel with the oysters of the Rocher du Cancale.”

I confess that I have not had the curiosity to verify the tombstone.

Brillat-Savarin has an oyster anecdote to the effect that he was at Versailles in the year 1798 as Commissary of the Directory, and had frequently to meet the Registrar of the Tribunal, M. Laperte. The latter was so fond of oysters that he used to grumble about never having had enough to satisfy him. Being determined to procure him that satisfaction, Brillat-Savarin asked Laperte to dinner, and the latter accepted. “I kept up with him,” says the host, “to the third dozen, letting him then go on by himself. He went on steadily to the thirty-second dozen--that is to say, for more than an hour, as they were opened but slowly--and as in the meantime I had nothing else to do--a state quite unbearable at table--I stopped him just as he was beginning to show more appetite than ever. My dear friend,” I said, “it must be some other day that you have enough to satisfy you; let us now have some dinner.” We took dinner, and he showed all the vigour and hunger of a man who had been fasting.

These oyster-gorges are, however, mere epitomes of vulgar gluttony. There is no more gastronomic satisfaction to be got out of thirty-three dozen than out of the conventional two dozen. In fact, doctors rarely prescribe more than one dozen at a time.

Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca, Pliny, Ætius, and the old Greek doctor Oribasius, whom Julian the Apostate delighted to honour, have all enlarged upon the virtues of the oyster. It would be easy to add to the list and to quote corroborative passages, but the thing has been done so often and so copiously, that it would certainly be supererogatory and tedious. The _Tabella Cibaria_ has been referred to by every culinary scribe, and we really know more about the oyster habits of the Romans than we do about those of the inhabitants of the Hebrides; which is absurd.

G. A. Sala says that the Pontiffs of Pagan Rome caused oysters to be served at every repast; but the delicacy must have been very expensive, since a basket of oysters cost the equivalent of nine pounds sterling. They were served raw and were dexterously opened by a slave at a side-table at the beginning of the dinner.

There is a story told of an astute Roman epicure named Fulvius Hirpinus who constructed on his estate, close to the seashore, a fish-pond where he stored or “parked” oysters, which he fattened with paste and cooked wine, worked to the consistency of honey. He was certainly astute because besides regaling himself and his friends on these artificially fattened oysters, he drove a roaring trade in selling them wholesale and retail to the nobility and gentry of Rome.

The same authority goes on to say that, oddly enough, in a comparatively modern cookery book, that of Will Rabisha, there is a direction, a rather ferocious one, that while oysters are undergoing the process of broiling they should be fed with white wine and grated bread. Of course many ways were adopted in those days for the feeding of oysters; but a paste of oatmeal and water seems to have been the staple of the sustenance given to the creatures before they were considered to be fit for the table.

The Greeks, according to Athenæus, boiled and fried their oysters, finding them, however, best of all when roasted in the coals till the shells opened.

As early as the seventeenth century the French prepared them _en etuvée_ and _en fricasée_. Both recipes appear in the “Délices de la Campagne” (1654), a book of extreme interest and full of quaint information; but not, it would seem, strictly reliable as a record of the cookery of the time.

We are so accustomed nowadays to pay half a crown, three and sixpence, and even more for our dozen oysters, that it seems almost incredible that our fathers regaled themselves thereon at the common or general price of sixpence a dozen. An old poem on the subject says:--

Happy the man, who, void of care and strife, In silken or in leathern purse retains A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale.

This is from “The Splendid Shilling,” by John Philip, which, according to Steele in the “Tatler,” was “the finest burlesque poem in the English language.”

Just exactly why the price of oysters should have increased so enormously in recent years has never been satisfactorily explained. Many ridiculous reasons have been given, but they seem either impertinent, or inadequate, or both. We need only refer to the pages of the “Pickwick Papers” for confirmation.

“Before proceeding to the Legacy Duty Office about proving the will of his late wife, Mr. Weller, senior, and his fellow-coachmen, as witnesses, bethought themselves of having a drop of beer, and a little cold beef, or an oyster. These viands were promptly produced, and the luncheon was done ample justice to. If one individual evinced greater powers than another it was the coachman with the hoarse voice, who took an imperial pint of vinegar with his oysters, and did not betray the least emotion.”

Another and more striking illustration.