"RESPECTED SIR,-I still regret your absence, and my lodgings are still at your command. Madame Jourdain mourns over you, and desires me to say she will be delighted to see you again. There have been no letters except the enclosed. The lady has called here again, and wished to see the apartments, which she says she still intends taking for a friend. Also there has called an agent of police, who made some inquiries as to your relationship to Monsieur Laporte, which I answered, I hope, satisfactorily. I showed him the inventory, of which he took a copy. I told him I did not know where you were. For which story my wife has gone to church, and after confession got absolution. All she confessed was that her husband had said he did not know where a friend stayed, while in point of fact he did. The priest ordered her to say the Rosary of the Virgin ten times over, which she and I have managed to do betwixt us. You may depend upon me keeping your secret. I feel proud of being entrusted with it. "I am, &c., "LOUIS JOURDAIN." It was with mingled feelings I perused these letters. I need hardly say that pleasure at first predominated, for who that has ever known what it is to hear that he is beloved by her he loves, can forget that moment of ecstatic pleasure, in comparison of which all other joy is as nothing? This is the first impression; afterwards, when we get over the delicious surprise, it may be that the very knowledge we are loved inflicts the most poignant anguish. Are we in a position to return this love? Can we take her to our heart and say rest here, O my beloved? If we cannot, if poverty or convention forbid, then not only have we our own unhappiness to bear, but the reflection that we have made another unhappy for whom we would have died. Such was my position. After the first throb of intense happiness there rose up betwixt me and her the recollection of my hopeless condition, my loss of rank and wealth, my want of a home, even of a name, and I said it can never be; happen what may, 'I must keep away from her. But her friends insisted she should marry another, who, if I could believe Albert, was unworthy of her. Never until now, though many had been the bitter thoughts that had passed through my mind, had I felt so acutely my misfortunes and my powerlessness. The chalice of love was presented to my lips, and I must dash it to the ground. The other incidents mentioned in Albert's letter and Jourdain's made at the time no impression on me. In my reply to Albert, I said that his letter had given me the greatest pain, since I must abjure a happiness beyond my brightest hopes, and also abstain from assisting her for whom I would have died a thousand deaths. I entered somewhat more into the detail of my former life, retaining my incognito, but extenuating nothing, and pointing out how it was necessary that I should, if possible, banish all thought of his cousin. I said I would try to do so, and hoped that time and change would have their effect. I said so, and wrote as coldly as my fevered brain would permit, because I felt sure that Albert would show the letter to his cousin; and the story of my former life, and the possibility I expressed of being able to efface the impression she had made on me, might lower me in her eyes, and dissipate what I believed to be the mere transient and romantic affection of a young girl. "HOST AND GUEST," OR GASTRONOMY IN ALL AGES. FROM the days of Heliogabalus and Vitellius to those of Alderman Curtis, so many centuries later in European annals, the useful gastronomical art has been held in high esteem. When its high priest, in the person of the former emperor, and in the year 220, passed in his chariot, drawn by six milk-white steeds, through the thoroughfares of Rome, clad in rich robes of silk and gold, how the hearts of the Udes, Vereys, Bechamels, and Rundells of the time must have exulted at the triumph of their refined profession. Then it was, we infer from Gibbon, that the utmost powers of this sensual art were summoned to do honour to the master of the world, to revive his jaded appetite, and to get citizens of refined taste knighted for the invention of a new sauce. The senate of Rome had, it is true, in the way of precedent, been consulted about the dressing of a turbot by a former emperor, and the honour paid by Heliogabalus to the art was like a preceding decision of a modern court of Chancery, to be acted upon again, no matter whether right or wrong. Fancy our House of Lords sitting in solemn discussion upon the dressing of what the French call "a pheasant of the sea. "* The Lord Chancellor announcing the royal pleasure. Our lords the bishops, from the example of the Church in the middle ages, not of course later, taking a prominent part in the discussion, particularly their graces the archbishops, whose tastes may be supposed still more refined than those of their less elevated brethren, as their faith must be presumed to be of a more generous, and enlarged nature in consequence of their position. But to descend a good many stages, where shall we find the art more honoured than in the little spot in the vast capital of England, called, par excellence, the "City ?" Could the present author find a parallel for it since Rome fell before the Goths? Small it is, and rapidly diminishing, but the sweet savour of its dishes must long continue to associate it with all that is grateful in gastronomy. Who can help recalling under the present topic the City knight, Sir William Curtis, whose name should be immortalised in all Apician works with a halo of glory around it? Who can help recalling, too, the knight's political as well as Apician friendships? There is much Christian charity in a good eater, and diplematists "train," to use a pugilistic term, with dinners of most refined concoction, formed under culinary disguises, to "season" them, as the people say in the West Indies, for the more troublesome maskings which envelope their crafty operations. Who that lived in that day, or has read his history, but must remember Lord Castlereagh's immortal expedition to Walcheren? His lordship, wishing to see a little of that which was to be his crowning exploit with posterity, embarked in the yacht of Sir William, The French say that turbot, the king of fish, may be dressed the second day en Bechamel;" but the first day it must be simply boiled, and taken with plain butter, "un beau cordon de persil à l'entour" its only accompaniment. It should -be served with a silver-gilt fish-slice, or silver at least. All this plainness attaches to the royalty of the fish. It stands alone. This is its due: "It a la simplicité des heros comme il en a la majesté; et toute l'espèce de parure l'offense bien plus qu'elle ne l'honore." How whose culinary apparatus on board was of unrivalled excellence. came Mr. Kirwan to pass over the finest judge of turtle that the age has produced? When the boat which carried Lord Castlereagh to his friend came alongside the yacht, he was heartily welcomed by Sir William, who was represented in a waggish picture of that time leaning over the vessel's side, with a greasy soup-ladle in his hand, welcoming the noble lord on board. Of the parody annexed we remember one stanza. It was on the old song of "Black-eyed Susan:" All in the downs the fleet was moored, The streamers waving in the wind, If my fat William sails among your crew ?" How Sir William and his lordship became cozy together was in this mode heroically related, and is now become, if not the theme of an epic, yet one of history, like Troy town. All, too, is possibly registered in the annals of Cokenay, among regal visits and important events, that is, if the corporation has yet learned how to record events of interest superior to their registries of comestibles, and their disposal of them, and other things to be nameless, in a snug way. These, it must be admitted, are still matters of a primary character in the only body of the kind which our rulers have not yet, Whig or Tory, had the nerve to purify: it is, perhaps, a little too Augean! However this may be, my Lord Palmerston and a cabinet minister or two dine in the City now and then, to keep up old recollections, but it is all forced work. The crowds of "quality" that used to feed and dance there occasionally, visit it no more. The great merchants and bankers keep offices and warehouses there, but find the air too thick for breathing, beyond a few hours at a time. The morning visit and afternoon departure tell how the estimation of the civic locality has fallen in the market. Only the fag end of a diminished population remains" the glory of Israel has departed." The fine, convenient old houses of the rich, and at one time of the great, are metamorphosed into offices and warehouses. Good heavens! what cookery they once saw! How chines and ale were dispensed there. Strong ales for breakfast-no coffee and tea slopping! Even the principal City heroes, the illustrious merchant and his cat, have ceased to be the boast of civic tongues-in fact, the poetry of the City is gone for ever, "obiit, evasit, eripuit!" The glorious days are passed when the begowned and beknighted, and as often benighted, complimented their more distinguished guests with a certain quaint originality.* The feasting, however, has always been creditable to donors who would expire under the μéλas (wμòs, or black broth of the heroic Spartans; but then civic men are not expected to be heroes in the field and at the table together. George IV., when Prince of Wales, was a man of profound gastronomical taste, and his friendship for the worthy alderman above named may be dated from that circumstance; yet we dare not call it dis * General Tarlton has left upon record that at a Mansion House feast a corporation don addressed him, "Eat away, general! Eat away the finest; we pay all the same!" interested. Even Weltje,* the prince's cook, paled his ineffectual fire before the artiste of Sir William, and the prince borrowed him upon fitting occasions to prepare turtle for his more distinguished guests. This man of Sir William was said to have been equal to the most pressing gastronomical emergencies, in fact, to be able to concoct a sauce with which a man might eat his own father, to quote an illustrious homme de bouche. The man should have been knighted, and would have been, no doubt, had knighthood gone according to merit, but no doubt this great cook was a Frenchman, and though able to serve a dinner in the Apollo Chamber of Lucullus, had a taint of Jacobinism about him; or he might have been suspected to have had, in Pitt's days, when a poulet á la Marengo, served at a public table, would from the name have led to a suspicion of disaffection towards the sovereign that lost us America from a distaste for a ragout á l'Americain. No matter, the glory of genius outlives kings, and Sir William's head man remains to this hour unmatched, unrivalled; at least we know not where his equal is to be found Que cet heureux phénix est encore à trouver! In cookery, as in the dance, the French against the world! our present author agrees. Beauvilliers will exist in story with that renowned "Diou de la danse," as Grim styles him, who, when his son made his début on the stage, told him before half of Paris, noble and ignoble, to do his best, remembering that his great "father" was observing his saltatory essay. The French, we find, are not only great in the manipulation, but also in the description of all which appertains to the gustatory art. They describe it as usual, "Noyée dans les flots d'une inaltérable gaîté." Thus, we remember that when an unlucky goose, like a brandy-drinking East Indian, gets an enlarged liver-though not from the same cause, being penned up in a grating near a large culinary fire, and overfed to produce the disease, the effect of which gastronomists so much value-they say it is only the idea of his lot which consoles him, and imparts to him courage to sustain it: "he reflects that his liver, larger than himself, larded with truffles, and covered with an inimitable paste, will depart on its travels by the aid of M. Corcellet,† and carry as widely throughout Europe the glory of his name as that of some heroes in their own imagination. In consequence, he resigns himself to his destiny, and does not shed a single tear." *This personage was originally a German gingerbread baker, who sold cakes of which the Prince of Wales was fond, and took him into his service. He rose to be chief cook and purveyor at Carlton House, and his self-conceit rose with his fortunes. He would even take liberties of speech with the prince. He had an only daughter, who offended the dignity of the chief cook by marrying his assistant. Weltje, who had once sold his gingerbread in the streets, felt his aristocratical sensations wounded. He represented his degradation to his royal highness, and urged the dismissal of his son-in-law. The good-humoured prince recommended forgiveness, but the "high born" German could not brook the insult so easily. The prince's pat ence became exhausted; he dismissed Weltje, and gave the son-in-law his post. Weltje had made a good fortune, and built houses at Brighton, besides keeping a subscription house in London. Thus he fared better than Pharaoh's chief baker, without perhaps deserving to do so. † Of Strasburg: an artiste celebrated for his goose-liver patties, sent all over France and Europe. The patties of Thoulouse and Agen are of duck's livers. But we must not further dilate on that branch of a topic which Ude, Rundell, Glasse, and other recent names famous in the world on the same subject, have written until little more was to be said. The present volume differs from theirs. It is historical, as well as practical. It plunges into the remote antiquity of the art. Indeed, its chief aim seems to be to make us acquainted with the gastronomical science of the ancients and of the middle ages, subjects on which Smollett has touched so admirably in “Peregrine Pickle." Nor does the present writer, Mr. Kirwan, a work by whom we recently noticed, seem to estimate very highly the dishes and ragouts, receipts for which have reached our time. He says and his experience from his own table bears witness to the fact of his judgment—that "An impartial person need but to glance over the ten books left us under the name of Apicius, to come to the conclusion of the ingenious Jean le Clerc, who says that the work contains receipts for extraordinary dishes and strange ragouts, which would ruin the stomach and burn up the blood.'" The celebrated condiment of the ancients called " garum," supposed by some to be the expressed brine of the anchovy, others of an acrid de-coction from mackerel, is described as among the most nauseous of those used by the Romans. Assuredly, the brine of the anchovy cannot be so very much out of the way as our author would have it, or even the herring-brine of Horace. Caviare is a much more strange condiment, the raw roe of the sturgeon, crammed into casks with salt, by dirty Russian serfs, and, in good sooth, as Shakspeare says, in the way of a thing not to be relished by an unsophisticated palate-that it is "caviare to the general." Garum, it seems, is still relished in Turkey, according to our. author, who gives us the sources of his extensive experience. We fear. our author does not relish anchovy, and, in that case, we must deem him figuratively what some of his brethren, out of "pure" Christian affection, deemed one of the authors of the " Essays and Reviews" the other day, until the privy council sat on the question heretical as to the canon, not of faith, but of degustation, and obstinate in the interpretation of his own palate. It is true, we have heard of odd things being taken in the way of sauce, and we know a lady who would not touch soy because she had heard it came from Egypt, and, she had no doubt, was compounded of decomposed mummy. A Lucanian boar of a tender kind, with anchovy brine, could hardly be a bad dish, even ill treated, as Horace tells us, when it was served up before him. Fish, wild-fowl, lampreys, crane roasted, ganders' livers, hares, and blackbirds, as we find in the above poet, at a badly-cooked repast, show that the materials themselves were not of the most contemptible character: a French cook might have made something of them, as Johnson said might be made of Scotsmen, if caught young. A swine's paunch in Roman times was, no doubt, the original of the Scotch haggis, smuggled across the Roman wall northwards by some legionary deserter to the hyperborean barbarians, whom it kept at bay far up in the High-lands. Our author, we perceive, could not have dined comfortably at classic. Tibur; his leaning towards Gallic cookery is strong, and we fear we are liable to the same soft impeachment, despite the Roman poet and roasted Yet in the Apollo of Lucullus there must have been a countless crane. |