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“The day breaks slow, but e’en must man break-fast.”

Formal or informal?—An eccentric old gentleman—The ancient Britons—Breakfast in the days of Good Queen Bess—A few tea statistics—“Garraway’s”—Something about coffee—Brandy for breakfast—The evolution of the staff of life—Free Trade—The cheap loaf, and no cash to buy it.

This is a very serious subject. The first meal of the day has exercised more influence over history than many people may be aware of. It is not easy to preserve an equal mind or keep a stiff upper lip upon an empty stomach; and indigestible food-stuffs have probably lost more battles than sore feet and bad ammunition. It is an incontestable fact that the great Napoleon lost the battles of Borodino and Leipsic through eating too fast.

When good digestion waits on appetite, great men are less liable to commit mistakes—and a mistake in a great man is a crime—than when dyspepsia has marked them for her own; and this rule applies to all men.

There should be no hurry or formality about breakfast. Your punctual host and hostess may be all very well from their own point of view; but black looks and sarcastic welcomings are an abomination to the guest who may have overslept himself or herself, and who fails to say, “Good-morning” just on the stroke of nine o’clock. Far be it from the author’s wish to decry the system of family prayers, although the spectacle of the full strength of the domestic company, from the stern-featured housekeeper, or the chief lady’s-maid (the housekeeper is frequently too grand, or too much cumbered with other duties to attend public worship), to the diminutive page-boy, standing all in a row, facing the cups and saucers, is occasionally more provocative of mirth than reverence. But too much law and order about fast-breaking is to be deplored.

“I’m not very punctual, I’m afraid, Sir John,” I once heard a very charming lady observe to her host, as she took her seat at the table, exactly ten minutes after the line of menials had filed out.

“On the contrary, Lady V——” returned the master of the house, with a cast-iron smile, “you are punctual in your unpunctuality; for you have missed prayers by the sixth part of one hour, every morning since you came.” Now what should be done to a host like that?

In the long ago I was favoured with the acquaintance of an elderly gentleman of property, a most estimable, though eccentric, man. And he invariably breakfasted with his hat on. It did not matter if ladies were present or not. Down he would sit, opposite the ham and eggs—or whatever dish it might chance to be—with a white hat, with mourning band attached, surmounting his fine head. We used to think the presence of the hat was owing to partial baldness; but, as he never wore it at luncheon or dinner, that idea was abandoned. In fact, he pleaded that the hat kept his thoughts in; and as after breakfast he was closeted with his steward, or agent, or stud-groom, or keeper, for several hours, he doubtless let loose some of those thoughts to one or the other. At all events we never saw him again till luncheon, unless there was any hunting or shooting to be done.

This same old gentleman once rehearsed his own funeral on the carriage drive outside, and stage-managed the solemn ceremony from his study window. An under-gardener pushed a wheelbarrow, containing a box of choice cuttings, to represent the body; and the butler posed as chief mourner. And when anybody went wrong, or the pall-bearers—six grooms—failed to keep in step, the master would throw up the window-sash, and roar—

“Begin again!”

But this is wandering from the subject. Let us try back.

Having made wide search amongst old and musty manuscripts, I can find no record of a bill-of-fare of the first meal of the ancient Britons. Our blue forefathers, in all probability, but seldom assisted at any such smart function as a wedding-breakfast, or even a hunting one; for the simple reason that it was a case with them of, “no hunt, no breakfast.” Unless one or other had killed the deer, or the wild-boar, or some other living thing to furnish the refection the feast was a Barmecide one, and much as we have heard of the strength and hardiness of our blue forefathers, many of them must have died of sheer starvation. For they had no weapons but clubs, and rough cut flints, with which to kill the beasts of the country—who were, however, occasionally lured into pitfalls; and as to fish, unless they “tickled” them, the denizens of the streams must have had an easy time of it. They had sheep, but these were valuable chiefly on account of their wool; as used to be the case in Australia, ere the tinned meat trade was established. Most of the fruits and vegetables which we enjoy to-day were introduced into Britain by the Romans. Snipe and woodcock and (in the north) grouse may have been bagged, as well as hares. But these poor savages knew not rabbits by sight, nor indeed, much of the feathered fowl which their more favoured descendants are in the habit of shooting, or otherwise destroying, for food. The ancient Britons knew not bacon and eggs, nor the toothsome kipper, nor yet the marmalade of Dundee. As for bread, it was not invented in any shape or form until much later; and its primitive state was a tough paste of flour, water, and (occasionally) milk—something like the “damper” of the Australian bush, or the unleavened chupati which the poorer classes in Hindustan put up with, after baking it, at the present day.

The hardy, independent Saxon, had a much better time of it, in the way of meat and drink. But with supper forming the chief meal of the day, his breakfast was a simple, though plentiful one, and consisted chiefly of venison pasty and the flesh of goats, washed down with ale, or mead.

“A free breakfast-table of Elizabeth’s time,” says an old authority, “or even during the more recent reign of Charles II., would contrast oddly with our modern morning meal. There were meats, hot and cold; beef and brawn, and boar’s head, the venison pasty, and the