Читать книгу Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Various - Страница 1

In one of Webster's magnificent speeches, he remarks that so vast are the possessions of England, that her morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of its martial airs. There is another musical sound, within the British islands themselves, which does not as yet quite traverse the whole horary circle, but bids fair to do so in the course of time, and to this we would direct the attention of the American secretary, as a fitting subject for a new peroration. We allude to the Dinner-bell. At noon, in the rural districts of England, this charming sound is heard tinkling melodiously from farm or village factory; at one, in the more crowded haunts of industry, the strain is taken up ere it dies; and by the time it reaches Scotland, a full hungry peal swells forth at two. At three till past four there is a continuous ring from house to house of the small country gentry; and at five this becomes more distinct and sonorous in the towns, increasing in importance till six. From that time till seven and half-past, it waxes more and more fashionable in the tone, till at eight it stops abruptly: not like an air brought to a conclusion, but like one broken off accidentally, to be by and by resumed.

The dinner hours of the labouring-class are no doubt regulated according to business, and perhaps receive some modification from national character. An Englishman, for instance, is said to work best after his meal, and accordingly his dinner makes its appearance sometimes as early as noon, but never later than one; while a Scotchman, who is fit for anything when half-starved, is very properly kept without solid food till two o'clock. As for the smaller gentry, who scorn to dine at workmen's hours, and yet do not pretend to the abnegation of the great, they may follow their own fancy without doing any harm to others; but the case is different as regards the hours assigned to dinner-parties, for these affect the health and comfort of the whole body of the gentry together.

We are no enemy to dinner-parties; on the contrary, we think we have not enough of them, and we never shall have enough, till some change takes place in their constitution. We are a small gentleman ourselves, who dine at the modest hour of four, and what is the use to us of a six or seven o'clock invitation? We accept it, of course, being socially disposed, and being, moreover, philosopher enough to see that such meetings are good for men in society: but so far as the meal itself goes, it is to us either useless or disagreeable. If we have dined already, we do not want another dinner; and if we have not dined, our appetite is lost from sheer want. It is vain to say, Let us all dine habitually at six—seven—eight o'clock. Few of us will—few of us can—none of us ought. Nature demands a solid meal at a much earlier hour; and true refinement suggests that the object of the evening reunion should not be the satisfaction of the day's hunger. Only half of this fact is seen by the classes who give the law to fashion, and that half consists of the grosser and coarser necessity. They have already, more especially at their country seats, taken to the tiffin of the East, and at a reasonable hour make a regular dinner of hot meats, and all the usual accessories, under the name of lunch. So complete is this meal, that the ladies, led away no doubt by association, meet some hours afterwards in mysterious conclave, to drink what our ancestors called 'a dish of tea;' and having thus diluted the juices of their stomachs for the reception of another supply of heavy food, they descend to dinner!

The evening dinner is, therefore, a mere show-dinner, or something worse. But it is still more objectionable on the score of taste than on the score of health. We find no fault with the elegances of the table, in plate, crystal, china, and so forth; but an English dinner is not an elegant meal. The guests are supposed, by a polite fiction, to have the hunger of the whole day to satisfy, and provision is made accordingly. Varieties of soup, fish, flesh, fowl, game, rich-made dishes, load the board spread for a group of well-dressed men and women, known to have already dined, and who would affect to shudder at so heavy a meal, if it was termed supper. There is a grossness in this arrangement which is strangely at variance with the real advancement of the age in refinement; but it has likewise a paralysing effect both upon the freedom and delicacy of social intercourse. These show-dinners are too costly to be numerous. Even a comparatively wealthy man is compelled to look closely to the number of his entertainments. He scrutinises the claims of his acquaintance; he keeps a debtor and creditor account of dinners with them; and if now and then he invites a guest for the sake of his social qualities, he sets him down in the bill of cost. This does away with all the finer social feelings which it should be the province of such meetings to foster and gratify, and adds a tone of moral vulgarity to the material vulgarity of the repast.

Is it impossible to bring about a reform in this important matter? Difficult, not impossible. Dinner-giving is not an integral part of the monarchy, and it might therefore be touched—if not too rudely—without a political revolution. The grand obstacle would be the unsettled claims. A has given B a show-dinner, and it is the duty of B to return it. Invitation for invitation is the law of the game. How, then, stands the account? Would it be necessary to institute a dinner-insolvency court, where all defaulters might take the benefit of the act? We think not. No creditor in his senses would refuse a handsome composition; and if it could be shewn—as it might in the present case—that the composition was in real, though not ostensible value, equivalent to the debt, hesitation would vanish. Before proceeding to shew this, we shall present what may be called the common-sense statement of the whole case:—

Mankind in their natural state dine at noon, or at least in the middle of the working-day. It is the middle meal of the day—the central of three. In our artificial system of society, it has been postponed to a late hour of the afternoon, so as either to become the second of two meals, or, where lunch is taken, the third of three. The change is not consistent with hygienic principle; for, if lunch be not taken, the interval between breakfast and dinner is too great, and in that case hunger tempts to make the meal too heavy for the exhausted powers of the stomach: if, on the contrary, lunch be taken, dinner becomes an absurdity, as in that case a meal so elaborate and heavy is not required, and cannot healthfully be partaken of at so late an hour. Nevertheless, in a plan of life which devotes the eight or nine hours after breakfast either to business or to out-door amusements, it is needless to think of reviving the old meridian dinner for any but ladies and other stay-at-home people; nor even for them, seeing that they must be mainly determined in their arrangements by those leading members of the family who have to spend that part of the day away from home.

There is a need for some reform which would at once accommodate the busy, and save the multitude from the disadvantages of heavy six-and-seven-o'clock dinners. This might be effected by arranging for only a supper at six or seven o'clock—that is, some lighter meal than dinner—leaving every one to take such a lunch in the middle of the day as he could find an opportunity of eating. Let this supper be the meal of family reunions—the meal of society. Composed of a few light tasteful dishes, accompanied by other indulgences, according to taste or inclination, and followed by coffee, it would be a cheerful and not necessarily unhealthful affair. As a meal to which to invite friends, being cheaper, it would allow of more society being indulged in than is compatible with the monstrous presentments of meat and drink which constitute the modern company dinner. It would be practically a revival of those nice supper-parties which our grandfathers indulged in after the hours of business, and of the pleasantness of which we have such glowing accounts.

That this is really the common-sense view of the question, can hardly be doubted. By bringing the cost within reasonable limits, the plan proposed relieves the entertainment from moral vulgarity; and by avoiding all suggestion of a meeting for the gratification of mere physical hunger, it relieves it from material vulgarity. We have laughed too heartily at the dinner of the ancients in 'Peregrine Pickle,' to wish to lead back the age to a classic model; and yet on all subjects connected with taste, there are some things to be learned from that people whose formative genius is still the wonder of the world. The meal of society among the Greeks consisted of only two courses, or, to speak more strictly, of one course and a dessert; and the first or solid course was in all probability made up of small portions of each kind of food. The more vulgar Romans added in all cases a third, but occasionally a fourth, fifth, sixth, even a seventh course; and at the fall of the empire, barbarian taste uniting with the blasé luxury of Rome, heaped viand upon viand, and course upon course, till the satire of a later poet became mere common-place:—

This extravagance has gradually given way in the course of civilisation. We have no more meals consisting of a score of courses; no more gilded pigs, fish, and poultry; no more soups, each of three or four different colours: but as yet we are only in the midst of the transition, and have not got back even to the comparative refinement of the Greeks. At the end of their first course, the more earthly part of the entertainment was already over. Then the guests washed their hands; then they were presented with perfumes and garlands of flowers; and then they drank wine, accompanied with the singing of the pæan and the sound of flutes. Such adjuncts, with us, would for the most part be out of place and time; but some of them might be taken metaphorically, and others entirely changed—such as the libation to the gods—to suit a new religious feeling, and a new form of manners. The modern cœna might thus be made to surpass that of the ancients in refinement and elegance; and it would include, as a matter of course, some of the amusements—varying from a song to a philosophical discussion—which gave the charm to their symposia.

As for the symposium, we shall have nothing to do with that vexed subject, further than just to hint—for we should be loath to exclude from the benefit of our proposed reform a certain numerous and respectable class of the community—that in ancient times it had no necessary connection with the dinner at all. A little wine-and-water was drunk during the dessert—never during the first course—and then the meal was over. The symposium was literally a drinking-party, given, for the sake of convenience, after the dinner-party; but so far from forming a part of the latter, the guests were sometimes different. It was, in fact, in this respect, like the evening company we occasionally find assembled in the drawing-room on getting up from our show-dinners.

But such references to the customs of bygone ages are introduced merely to shew, that among the most accomplished people of history, the social meal was looked upon as a field for the display of taste, not of that barbarian magnificence which consists in quantity and cost. The cœna of the moderns should far excel that of the Greeks in elegance, refinement, and simplicity. We have all history for our teacher; we have a finer system of morals; we have a purer and holier religion; and a corresponding influence should be felt in our social manners. When the object of the feast is no longer the satisfaction of mere physical hunger, it should be something intended to minister to the appetites of the mind. When the dinner is no longer the chief thing, some trouble will doubtless be taken with the assortment of the company. Simultaneously with the business of eating and drinking, we shall have anecdote, jest, song, music, smiles, and laughter, to make us forget the business or troubles of the day; and in the morning, instead of arranging our debtor and creditor account of invitations, we shall throw in the evening's gratification to strike the balance, and then make haste to begin a new score.