Читать книгу Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea - Marion Harland - Страница 80

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He was a shrewd Cœlebs who restrained his loverly impatience to throw himself, in unconditional surrender, at the feet of his beloved, by the resolution to see her first at the breakfast-table. It is to be regretted that his admiring biographer has not recorded the result of the experiment. Let us hope, for the sake of preserving the “unities of the drama,” that Cecilia was “in good form” on the momentous occasion; not a thread ironed awry in bib or tucker; not a rebellious hair in her sleek locks. Cœlebs—Hannah More’s Cœlebs—and every other that I ever read or heard of, was a pragmatical prig; the complacent proprietor of a patent refrigerator, very commodious and in excellent repair, but which ought never, even by his conceited self, to have been mistaken for a heart.

Knowing you, my reader, as I do, I would not insult your good sense by intimating that the husband of your choice resembles him in any leading trait. Being a sensible (and avowedly a fallible) man, therefore, John does not expect you to appear at the breakfast-table in the flowing robes and elaborate laces that belong to the leisure hours of the day. If he does, he should don dress-coat and white cravat to keep you in countenance. He will not find fault with a neat peignoir (if it be neat), or a plainly-trimmed dress, or a white apron before the same. He ought to look for, and to see a clean collar put on straight and fastened snugly at the throat, or a white ruffle and cuffs, or wrist-ruffles, to correspond, and hair in irreproachable order. I have seen women who called themselves ladies, who could never find time to give their hair what they called “a good combing,” until afternoon. And time and patience would fail me, and I fear the equanimity of your diaphragm as well, were I to attempt even a partial recapitulation of the many and disgustful varieties of morning toilettes, of which I have been the unwilling spectator. You should hear my John—whose profession takes him into what the renowned Ann Gale styles the “buzzom of families,” at all sorts of unconventional hours—dilate upon this theme. Not invalid attire. When the work of wearing the robe of flesh becomes a matter of pain and difficulty, he must be indeed hypercritical who notes the ill-fitting wrapper, or roughened hair.

“But the queens of the breakfast-table!” he says, with lifted eyebrows. “The grimy chrysalids of the afternoon butterflies! It is not a casual glimpse of Cinderella on sweeping-day, or during house-cleaning week, that I complain of; but my heart swells with sincerest pity for the husbands before whose eyes the play is enacted three hundred and sixty-five times every year; to whom the elf-locks and collarless neck, the greasy, lank, torn dressing-gown of dark calico appear as surely and regularly as the light of each new day.”

I do not say that you should bring to the breakfast-table a face like a May morning. I hate stereotyped phrases and stereotyped smiles. But try to look as gracious as though a visitor sat between you and the gentleman at the foot of the board. It is not always easy to appear even moderately cheerful at breakfast-time. An eminent physician told me once, as the result of many years’ study and observation, that no woman should be up in the morning more than an hour before breaking her fast. My own experience has so far corroborated the wisdom of the advice that I always strive to impress upon my domestics, especially the not strong ones, the expediency of eating a slice of bread and drinking a cup of tea during the interval that must elapse between their rising-hour and the kitchen breakfast. I practise the like precaution against faintness and headache, in my own case, when I have to give my personal superintendence to the morning meal, or when it is later than usual. But with all precautionary measures, I believe “before breakfast” to be the most doleful hour of the twenty-four to a majority of our sex. In winter, the house is at a low temperature; dressing, a hurried and disagreeable business; the children are drowsy, lazy, and cross; John “doesn’t want to seem impatient, but would like to have breakfast on time, to-day, my dear, as I have an important engagement.” While the mother, who has slept with one ear quite open all night, and one eye half shut, because she fancied, at bed-time, that baby’s breathing was not quite natural, fights twenty battles with bodily discomfort and spiritual irritability before she takes her seat behind the coffee-urn, and draws her first long breath at the beginning of the “blessing,” that reminds her of the mercies, new every morning, which are still hers. For all this, try womanfully to launch John upon the day’s voyage with a smile and word of cheer. Think twice before you tell him of the cook’s indolence and stupidity, and the housemaid’s petulance. In the hope that the nauseating pain in your head may yield to a “good cup of tea”—(bless it, with me, O my sisters, one and all!) it is as well to withhold the fact of its existence from him. If he will read the morning paper over his coffee, his cakes growing cold meanwhile, and thereby obliges the cook to bake twice as many as would be necessary for the meal were all to partake of it at the same time, restrain the censure that trembles on your tongue, and chat merrily with the children. A silent, hasty breakfast is one of the worst things imaginable for their digestion and tempers.

You would often rather have “a comfortable cry” in a corner than act thus, but persuade yourself bravely that nine-tenths of your miserable sensations are hysterical, and, therefore, ephemeral. If we women do not know what the “morning cloud” is, nobody does. Still, remember it “passeth away.”

If possible, let your eating-room be light and pleasant—warm in winter, breezy in summer. Not only should the table be neat, orderly, and, so far as you can make it so, pretty, but guard against what I have mentally characterized, in some very grand salles-à-manger, as the “workshop look”—the look that says to all who enter—“This is the place where you must eat.” There are tall beaufets with loads of plate and glass, side-tables with reserves of implements for the labors of the hour and place; pictures of game, fish and fruit;—more eating;—and if the walls are frescoed, more game, sheep and oxen, or, at the best, hunting, seem to reassure the consumers of to-day that there will be more creatures killed in season for to-morrow’s dinner. Therefore, eat, drink and be solemn while doing it, as befits the season and surroundings. There is nothing like having a single eye to business.

Do not fret yourself if your dining-room boasts neither paintings nor frescoes. Throw open all the shutters in the morning, and coax in every available ray of sunlight. Press the weather into service to adorn the repast. If fine, remark upon the blueness of the sky and the enjoyment of the outer world in the glory of the day. If stormy, make the best of home-cheer, and promise something attractive as an evening entertainment, should the weather continue wet, or snowy. A canary-bird in the sunniest window is a good thing to have in a breakfast-room if you like his shrill warbling. A pot of English ivy, brave and green, twisting over the face of the old clock, and festooning the windows, is a choice bit of brightness in the winter time. In summer, when flowers are cheap and plentiful, never set the table without them if you can get nothing more than a button-hole bouquet to lay on John’s napkin. Insist that the children shall make themselves tidy before coming to the table, whatever may be the meal, even if they will meet nobody except yourself there. Teach them early that it is a disgrace to themselves and to you to eat with unclean hands and faces. Inculcate, further, the propriety of introducing, while at table, topics that will interest and please all. Let wrangling, fault-finding and recrimination be never so much as named among them. These are little things, but whatever detracts from the idea that the family repast is a tri-daily festival, and should be honored and enjoyed as such, is a wrong to those whose happiness it is your mission to guard and maintain. A wrong to health as to heart. Food swallowed in bitterness of spirit engenders dyspepsia and bile as surely as do acrid fruit and heavy bread. A sharp reprimand will take away sensitive Mamie’s appetite, and a frown between the eyes that, when serene, seem to John to mirror heaven itself, will beget in his bosom that indescribable sinking of heart we know as “goneness,” which is yet not physical faintness.

I have jotted down these hints under the heading of “Breakfast,” although most of them are applicable to all meals, because, as a rule, people bring less keenness of hunger to this than to any other. It is as if the longest fast that separates our stated time of eating from another were the hardest to break; as if we had got out of the habit of desiring and receiving food. It behooves us, then, as wise housewives, to make provision against mortifying rejection of our viands by various and artful devices to tempt the dull or coy appetite. Especially should we study to avoid sameness in our breakfast bills of fare; an easy thing to compass by a moderate exercise of foresight and ingenuity on the part of the housewife.

The American breakfast should be a pleasing medium between the heavy cold beef and game pie of the English and the—for our climate and “fast” habits of life—too light morning refreshment of the French. That in order to accomplish these ends it is not necessary greatly to increase the market bills of the household, or the cares of the mistress, I have tried to prove in these pages, while I have not deemed it well to specify, in all cases, which are exclusively breakfast dishes. Very many of those I have described might appear with equal propriety at breakfast, at luncheon, at what is spoken of in provincial circles as “a hearty supper,” or as an entrée or side-dish at dinner.