Читать книгу The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of a Greedy Woman - Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Страница 7

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If things yield themselves unto our mercy why should we not have the fruition of them, or apply them to our advantage? From evil, good may come; from the little, springs greatness. A reckless gamester, to defy the pangs of hunger, which might drag him from his beloved cards, brings to the gaming table slices of bread with ham between. If other men despise—or deplore, according to their passing mood—his folly, to their own pleasure and profit can they still turn his invention. The sandwich has become a universal possession for all time, though for a century the earl who created it has lain dead. His foibles should be forgotten, his one redeeming virtue remembered. For him a fair and spacious niche in the world's Valhalla.

A hero indeed is he who left the sandwich as an heirloom to humanity. It truly is the staff of life, a substantial meal for starving traveller or bread-winner; but none the less an incomparable work of art, a joy to the gourmand of fancy and discretion. The very name has come to be a pregnant symbol of holiday-making for all with souls to stir at the thought of food and drink. It is an inexhaustible stimulus to the imagination; to the memory a tender guide to the past's happiest days and hours.

For, in fancy, between the slices of bread, place thick, uncompromising pieces of beef or mutton, and to the Alps you are at once transported. Again, on the short, fragrant grass you sit; from its temporary snow-grave a little above, Perren or Imboden fetches the bottle of wine, ordinary enough in reality, nectar as you drink it there; Seiler's supplies you take from the faithful knapsack, opening paper package after paper package; and your feast of big, honest, no-nonsense-about-them sandwiches you devour with the appetite of a schoolboy, and the zeal of the convert to plain living and high mountain climbing.

Or, thin the slices, make them the covering for ham and tongue, or—if you be greatly favoured—for sardines and anchovies; and then memory will spread for you the banquet in the pleasant pastures that border the Cam, the willows bowering you from the August sun with shade, your boat moored to the cool bank; and with Claret cup, poured, mayhap, into old college tankards, you quench your thirst, while lazily you listen to the distant plashing of oars and lowing of kine, and all life drifts into an idle dream.

Or, the ham of Bayonne, the pâté de foie gras of Périgueux, you bury in the deep recesses of a long, narrow, crisp petit pain, and then, quick in a French railway carriage will you find yourself: a bottle of wine is at your side; the Echo de Paris lies spread on the seat before you; out of the window long lines of poplars go marching with you toward Paris, whither you are bound "to make the feast."

Grim and gruesome, it may be, are some of the memories evoked: ill-considered excursions to the bar of the English railway station, hasty lunches in chance bun shops, foolish testings of "ham and beef" limitations. But, henceforth, take heed to chasten your experience with the sandwich, that remembrance may not play you such scurvy tricks. Treat it aright with understanding and respect, and it will keep you in glad holiday humour, in the eating thereof as in the memory.

Life, alas! is not all play in Thames sunshine and keen Alpine air, or in hopeful journeying through the pleasant land of France. But in the everyday of stern work and doleful dissipation the sandwich is an ally of infallible trustworthiness and infinite resources. In the hour of need it is never found wanting. To dine well, authorities have proclaimed in ex cathedrâ utterance, you must lunch lightly; but not, therefore, does it follow that the light luncheon should be repellently prosaic. Let it be dainty—a graceful lyric—that it may fill you with hope of the coming dinner. And lyrical indeed is the savoury sandwich, well cut and garnished, served on rare faïence or old silver; a glass, or perhaps two, of Bordeaux of some famous vintage, to strengthen its subtle flavour.

An ally again at afternoon tea it proves, if at five o'clock drink tea you must; a mistake, surely, if you value your dinner. To belittle the excellence of crumpets and muffins well toasted, would be to betray a narrow mind and senseless prejudice; but these buttery, greasy delicacies in private should be eaten, where the ladies of Cranford sucked their oranges. And at the best their excellence is homely. In the sandwich well devised is something exotic and strange, some charm elusive and mysterious.

But let not the sandwich be of ham, except rarely, for the etherealized luncheon, the mystic tea. Reserve this well-meaning, but unpoetic, viand for the journey and the day of open-air sport, to which so admirably it is fitted. Nor so reserving it, will you be hampered in making what Dumas calls tartines à l'Anglaise. Infinity is at your disposal, if you be large and liberal enough to grasp the fact. One hundred numbered the varieties known to that genius of Glasgow, who, for his researches, has been honoured by a place in dictionary and Encyclopædia. To these you may add, if time and leisure you find for a trip to Budapest and the famous Kügler's, where, with your tea, will be served such exquisite sandwiches, so original and many in their devices that you can but come away marvelling, in all eagerness to emulate the artist who designed them.

For the luncheon sandwich, choose from the countless treasures of the sea. Rapture is in the sardine, not the oiled from France, but the smoked from Norway; tunny fish or anchovies are dreams of delight; caviar, an ecstacy, the more delicious if a dash of lemon juice be added. And, if you would know these in perfection, use brown bread instead of white. Salmon is not to be scorned, nor turbot to be turned from in contempt; they become triumphs if you are not too niggardly with cayenne pepper; triumphs not unknown to Cheapside. Nor are the various so-called creams—of shrimps, of lobster, of salmon—altogether to be despised, and they, too, the better prove for the judicious touch of cayenne. But confine not your experiments to the conventional or the recommended. Overhaul the counter of the fishmonger. Set your wits to work. Cultivate your artistic instincts. Invent! Create! Many are the men who have painted pictures: few those who have composed a new and perfect sandwich.

Upon the egg, likewise, you may rely for inspiration—the humble hen's egg, or the lordly plover's. Hard-boiled, in thin slices (oh! the memories of Kügler's, and the Russian railway station, and the hor d'œuvres, Tartar-guarded sideboard, now awakened!) or well grated; by itself, or in endless combinations, the egg will ever repay your confidence.

Upon sausage, also, you may count with loving faith. Butterbrod mit Wurst—Wurst and philosophy, these are the German masterpieces. And here, you may visit the delicatessen shop to good purpose. Goose-liver, Brunswick, garlic, Bologna, truffled—all fulfil their highest destiny, when in thinnest of thin slices, you lay them between slices no less thin of buttered bread—brown or white, as artistic appropriateness suggests—a faint suspicion of mustard to lend them piquancy.

Beef and mutton, when not cut in Alpine chunks, are comforting, and with mustard duly applied, grateful as well. Fowl and game, galantine and tongue, veal and brawn—no meat there is, whether fresh or boned or potted, that does not adapt itself gracefully to certain occasions, to certain needs. And here, again, be not slow to arrange new harmonies, to suggest new schemes. It should be your endeavor always to give style and individuality to your sandwiches.

Cheese in shavings, or grated, has great merit. Greater still has the cool cucumber, fragrant from its garden ground, the unrivalled tomato, the crisp, sharp mustard and cress. Scarce a green thing growing that will not lend itself to the true artist in sandwich-making. Lettuce, celery, watercress, radishes—not one may you not test to your own higher happiness. And your art may be measured by your success in proving the onion to be the poetic soul of the sandwich, as of the salad bowl. For afternoon tea the dainty green sandwich is the daintiest of them all.

If to sweets your taste incline, then easily may you be gratified, though it be a taste smacking of the nursery and the schoolroom. Jams and marmalades you may press into service; chocolate or candied fruit. And sponge cake may take the place of bread, and, with strawberries between, you have the American strawberry short-cake.

But, whatever your sandwich, above all things see that its proportions be delicate and symmetrical; that it please the eye before ever the first fragment has passed into the mouth.