Punch: Punch (17.1849)

MR. BROWN'S LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN.

great and little dinners.

TT has been said, dear Bob,
that I have seen the maho-
ganies of many men, and it
is with no small feeling of
pride and gratitude that I
am enabled to declare also,
that I hardly remember in
my lile to have had a bad
dinner. Would to Heaven
that all mortal men could say
likewise! Indeed, and in the
presence of so much want and
misery as pass under our ken
daily, it is with a feeling of
something like shame and
humiliation that I make the
avowal; but I have robbed
no man of his meal that I
know of, and am here speak-
ing of yery humble as well
as very grand banquets, the
which I maintain are, when there is a sufficiency, almost always good.

Yes, all dinners are good, from a shilling upwards. The plate of boiled
beef which Mary, the neat-handed waitress, brings or used to bring you
in the Old Bailey—1 say used, for ah me ! I speak of years long past,
when the cheeks of Mary were as blooming as the carrots which she
brought up with the beef, and she may be a grandmother by this time, or
a pallid ghost, far out of the regions of beef j—from the shilling dinner of
beef and carrots to the grandest banquet of the season—everything is
good. There are no degrees in eating. I mean that mutton is as good
as venison—beef-steak, if you are hungry, as good as turtle—bottled
ale, if you like it, to the' full as good as Champagne;—there is no
delicacy m the world which Monsieur Francatelli or Monsieur
SoYER can produce, which I believe to be better than toasted cheese.
I have seen a dozen of epicures at a grand table forsake every French
and Italian delicacy for boiled leg of pork and pease pudding. You can
but be hungry, and eat and be happy.

What is the moral I would deduce from this truth, if truth it be P
I would have a great deal more hospitality practised than is common
among us—more hospitality, and less show. Properly considered, the
quality of dinner is twice blest; it blesses him that gives, and him that
takes: a dinner with friendliness is the best of all friendly meetings—
a pompous entertainment, where no love is, the least satisfactory.

Why then do we of the middle classes, persist in giving entertain-
ments so costly, and beyond our means ? This will be read by many a
man and woman next Thursday, who are aware that they live on leg of
mutton themselves, or worse than this, have what are called meat teas,
than which I can't conceive a more odious custom : that ordinarily they
are very sober in their way of life ; that they like in reality that leg of
mutton better than the condiments of that doubtful French artist who
comes from the pastrycook's, and presides over the mysterious stew-

Cis in the kitchen : why then on their company dinners should they
e up in the magnificent manner in which they universally do ?
Everybody has the same dinner in London, and the same soup,
saddle of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, entrees, champagne, and so
forth. I own myself to being no better nor worse than my neighbours
in this respect, and rush off to the confectioner's for sweets, &c.; hire
sham butlers and attendants ; have a fellow going round the table with
still and dry champagne, as if I knew his name, and it was my custom
to drink those wines every day of my life. I am as bad as my
neighbours; but why are we so bad, 1 ask ?—why are we not more
reasonable ?

If we receive very great men or ladies at our houses, I will lay a
wager that they will select mutton and gooseberry tart for their dinner;

forsaking the entrees which the men in white Berlin gloves are handing
round in the Birmingham plated dishes. Asking lords and ladies, who
have great establishments of then: own, to French dinners and deli-
cacies, is like inviting a grocer to a meal of figs, or a pastrycook to a
banquet of raspberry tart s. They have had enough of them. And great
folks, if they like you, take no count of your feasts, and grand prepa-
rations, and can but eat mutton like men.

One cannot have sumptuary laws now-a-days, or restrict the gastro-
nomical more than any other trade : but I wish a check could be put
upon our dinner-extravagances by some means, and am confident that
the pleasures of life would greatly be increased by moderation. A man
might give two dinners for one, according to the present pattern. Half
your money is swallowed up in a dessert, which nobody wants in the
least, and which I always grudge to see arriving at the end of plenty.
Services of culinary kickshaws swallow up money, which gives no-
body pleasure, except the pastry-cook, whom it enriches. Everybody
lives as if he had three or four thousand a year.

Somebody with a voice potential should cry out against this over-
whelming luxury. What is mere decency in a very wealthy man is
absurdity—nay, wickedness, in a poor one: a frog by nature, I am an
insane, silly creature, to attempt to swell myself to the size of the ox,
my neighbour. Oh, that I could establish in the middle classes of
London an LvX\-entree and Anti-Dessert movement! I would go down
to posterity not ill-deserving of my country in such a case, and might be
ranked among the social benefactors. Let us have a meeting at Willis's
Rooms, Ladies and Gentlemen, for the purpose, and get a few philan-
thropists, philosophers, and bishops or so, to speak ! As people, in
former days, refused to take sugar, let us get up a society which shall
decline to eat dessert and made-dishes.*

In this way, I say, every man who now gives a dinner might give two ■
and take in a host of poor friends and relatives, who are now excluded
from his hospitality. For dinners are given mostly in the middle classes
by way of revenge : and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson ask Mr. and
Mrs. Johnson, because the latter have asked them. A man at this rate
who gives four dinners of twenty persons in the course of the season,
each dinner casting him something very near upon thirty pounds, receives
in return, Wb will say, forty dinners from the friends whom he has
himself invited. That is, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson pay a hundred and
twenty pounds, as do all their friends, for forty-four dinners of which
they partake. So that they may calculate that every time they dine with
their respected friends, they pay about twenty-eight shillings per tete.
What a sum this is, dear Johnson, for you and me to spend upon our
waistcoats ! What does poor Mrs. Johnson care for all these garish
splendours, who has had her clinner at two with the dear children in the
nursery ? Our custom is not hospitality or pleasure, but to be able to
cut off a certain number of acquaintance from the dining list.

One of these dinners of twenty, again, is scarcely ever pleasant,
as far as regards society. You may chance to get near a pleasant
neighbour and neighbouress, when your corner of the table is possibly
comfortable. But there can be no general conversation. Twenty people
cannot engage together in talk. You would want a speaking-trumpet
to communicate from your place by the lady of the house (for I wish to
give my respected reader the place of honour) to the lady at the opposite
corner at the right of the host. If you have a joke or a mot to make,
you cannot utter it before such a crowd. A joke is nothing which can
only get a laugh out of a third part of the company. The most eminent
wags of my acquaintance are dumb in these_ great parties: and your
raconteur or story-teller, if he is prudent, will invariably hold his tongue.
For what can be more odious than to be compelled to tell a story at the
top of your voice, to be called on to repeat it for the benefit of a distant
person who has only heard a part of the anecdote ? There are stories

* Mr. Beown here enumerates three entrees, which, he confesses, he can-noi resist, and
likewise preserved cherries at dessert: but the principle is good, though the man is weak.

Vol 17.

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