by Frank Harris
Sie hat ein licht goldfarbenes
Haar Heut du Dich!
Und was sie red't das ich nicht wahr,
Heut du Dich! Heut du Dich!
Vertrau ihr nicht, sie narret Dich! (Her beauty's full of contrasts, hazel eyes and golden hair and lovely body:
Don't trust her! She's fooling you!)
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CHAPTER XIII
The Prince; General Dickson; English gluttony; Sir Robert Fowler and Finch Hatton; Ernest Beckett and Mallock; the pink 'un and free speech
It is difficult to talk of English customs in the last quarter of the nineteenth century without comparing them with the morals and modes of life of their ancestors in the last quarter of the eighteenth. In his history of the Early Life of Fox, Sir George Trevelyan paints an astonishing picture of the immoralities of the earlier aristocratic regime. Not only were the leaders of society and parliamentary governors corrupt in a pecuniary sense; not only did they drink to such excess that they were old at forty-five and permanently invalid with gout before middle-age: they gambled like madmen and some sought deliberately to turn their young sons into finished rakes.
I cannot help thinking that it was the hurricane of the French revolution that cleared the air and brought men back to an observance of such laws of morals as are also rules of health. The reform is often attributed to the influence of Queen Victoria, but from 1875 on I never could find the slightest indication or trace of her influence for good. The most striking improvement in aristocratic morality in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was brought about by the loose living Edward, Prince of Wales. Before he and his "Smart Set" came to power in London, it was still usual at dinner parties to allow the ladies to leave the table and go to the drawing-room to gossip while the men drew together and consumed a bottle or two of claret each. It was no longer the custom to get drunk, but to get half-seas over was still fairly usual; and if the ladies disappeared at nine or nine-thirty, it was customary for the men to sit drinking till ten-thirty or eleven. One result was that even men in their thirties knew a good deal about the qualities of fine wine.
It used to be said, and with some truth, that it was English, or rather London, taste that established the prices of the finer vintages of Bordeaux. There can be no doubt at all that it was English taste that taught men and women everywhere to prefer natural Champagne (brut or nature) to the sweetened and brandied varieties preferred all over the continent, and especially in France. French gourmets knew that the firm of Veuve Clicquot had almost a monopoly of Buzet, the finest natural white wine with which to make champagne, but they submitted to having this product sweetened and brandied till it could only be drunk in small quantities, towards the end of dinner with the sweets.
In the seventies the Prince of Wales came to be the acknowledged leader of the "Smart Set." Fortunately for England, he preferred the continental habit of coffee after dinner, black coffee enjoyed with the cigarette. No one who smokes can taste the bouquet of fine claret, and so the cigarette and coffee banished the habit of drinking heavily after dinner.
The Prince too preferred champagne to claret and so the taste in champagne grew keener; and soon the natural wine superseded the doctored French varieties. In the course of a single decade it became the habit in London to join the ladies after having drunk a glass or two of pure champagne during the dinner and a cup of coffee afterwards while smoking a cigarette.
Sobriety became the custom and now a man who drinks to excess would soon find it impossible to discover a house where he would be tolerated. The cigarette, introduced by the Prince of Wales, made London society sober.
In an aristocratic society good customs as well as bad sink down in everwidening circles like water poured on sand. Gentlemen in England no longer drink to excess and now it is difficult to find a man anywhere who could tell you the year of a great claret or port, whereas in the mid-Victorian era, nine men about town out of ten could have made a fair guess at any known vintage.
The hospitality of the English gentry is deservedly famous; there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, nothing to be compared to it. Of course I make allowances for the fact that young men are especially wanted at dinners because married people are more difficult to pair off. Besides, the custom of primogeniture that gives everything to the eldest son and drives the younger boys to India or the colonies puts the young men in London at a premium. The fact remains that after my first month as editor of the Evening News, I did not dine in my own house half a dozen times in the year, and I had to reject more invitations than I could accept. Nothing was expected of the young man in return: provided he was properly introduced and had decent manners and was now and then amusing or able to tell a good story, he was a persona grata everywhere. The kindness was genuine and general and deserves description.
Almost at the beginning of my work in London and when I only knew a few people of position such as Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Jeune, I received an invitation to dinner almost a month ahead from a General Dickson who, I soon found out, was well-known in London as a prominent member of the Four-in-Hand Club. In the House of Commons I happened to mention him to Agg Gardner then as now, I believe, the Member for Cheltenham, and he exclaimed, "Dickson! I should think I did know him. One of the best, a rare old boy; gives a very good dinner and usually invites only one lady to half a dozen men. Says that a pretty woman is needed to keep the talk up to a high standard. Of course, you'll go."
When the evening came I went to the house in one of the big West End squares. A couple of old soldiers were acting as footmen in the hall, and scarcely had I taken off my coat when General Dickson in person appeared out of a room to the right and welcomed me cordially. He was a fine-looking man, above middle-height, well set up with broad shoulders. He had good features, too, and his bronzed face was framed by a mass of silver hair.
"I'm glad to see you," he said warmly, giving me a strong handclasp.
"I am delighted to be here," I said, "but I thought myself quite unknown in London. It was therefore doubly kind of you to invite me. I didn't think you'd remember me!"
"I met you at Wolseley's," he said, "and at dinner you said something about beauty that struck me. You said, 'There must be something strange in any excelling beauty.' Now beauty has passed out of my life, but a good dinner still appeals to me, so I took your phrase and applied it to a dinner-where, mind you, it's equally appropriate. 'There must be something strange in any excelling dinner'. So as I knew I'd have something strange tonight, I thought it only fair to ask you for your opinion of my attempt," and he laughed heartily, pleasantly.
The dinner was very good. There was a pretty, blond woman on the General's right, whose name I forget, though I got to know her fairly well later in London. She played hostess excellently and the service was faultless, too, though all the attendants were evidently old soldiers. The butler, I remember, with silver hair like his master, had the pleasant old custom of announcing the wine he was offering you, 'Chateau Lafitte 1870,' and so on. The dinner was very good, indeed, but no surprise in it till we came to the 'savoury,' when the door at the side opened and a Russian appeared in national costume with a great silver dish. "Milk caviar," our host announced, "sent to me by His Majesty, the Czar, whom I have the honour to know slightly," and he turned smiling to me.
"'Something strange,' indeed," I cried in response, "for even in Moscow or Nijni I have never tasted it. I've heard somewhere that it all goes to the Czar."
We all enjoyed the delicacy, though I noticed that the blond mistress of the ceremony did not take any of the cut-up onions which went with the caviar, but contented herself with a squeeze of lemon, and all of us followed her example.
This dinner at General Dickson's taught me that good eating was more studied in London than anywhere else in the world. Agg Gardner knew the General for his table, just as Gardner himself was known to everyone as a gourmet and fine taster in both food and wine. He's the head still, I believe of the kitchen committee in the H
ouse of Commons.
Strange that we had no word for gourmet in English, though we have gormandiser for gourmand, and glutton for goinfre, and others could be formed as gutler-even German has got Feinschmecker, but English has no dignified word, I'm afraid, for one who has a fine palate both in food and drink. Even "feaster" has a touch of greed in it instead of discrimination; so I've coined "fine taster," though it's not very good.
But it is only among the better classes that one dines to perfection in London.
The best restaurants are no better than the best in Paris or Vienna or Moscow; and the English middle class dine worse than the French middle class because they know nothing of cooking as an art; and the poor live worse and fare harder than any class in Christendom. English liberty and aristocratic harshness result in the degradation of the weak and the wastrel, and alas; often in the martyrdom of the best and most gifted. There are no Davidsons and Middletons, no despairing suicides of genius in any other country of Christendom, though in this respect America runs England close, for her two greatest, Poe and Whitman, lived in penury and died in utter neglect. "It's needful," we are told, "that offences come, but woe unto him by whom the offence cometh."
The old bad habit of eating and drinking to excess was still rampant in the eighties at city dinners. I remember how astonished I was at my first Lord Mayor's Banquet in 1883. The Evening News being Conservative, I was given a good seat at the Lord Mayor's table, nearly opposite him and the chief speakers.
After the first banquet I never missed one for years because of the light these feasts cast on English customs and manners. I will not tell about them in detail, indeed, I couldn't if I would, for my notes only apply to two or three out of a dozen or more. The first thing that struck me was the extraordinary gluttony displayed by seven out of ten of the city magnates. Till that night I had thought that as a matter of courtesy every man in public suppressed any signs of greed he might feel, but here greed was flaunted. The man next to me ate like an ogre. I took a spoonful or two of turtle soup and left the two or three floating morsels of green meat. When he had finished his first plateful, which was emptied to the last drop in double quick tune, my neighbour, while waiting for a second helping, turned to me. "That's why I like this table," he began, openly licking his lips. "You can have as many helpings as you want."
"Can't you at the other tables?" I asked.
"You can," he admitted, "but here the servants are instructed to be courteous and they all expect a tip. Most people give a bob, but I always give half a crown if the flunkey's attentive. Why do you leave that?" he exclaimed, pointing to the pieces of green meat on my plate. "That's the best part," and he turned his fat, flushed, red face to his second plateful without awaiting my answer. The gluttonous haste of the animal and the noise he made in swallowing each spoonful amused me. In a trice he had cleared the soupplate and beckoned to the waiter for a third supply. "I'll remember you, my man," he said in a loud whisper to the waiter, "but see that you get me some green fat. I want some Calipash."
"Is that what you call Calipash?" I asked, pointing with a smile to the green gobbets on my plate.
"Of course," he said. "They used to give you Calipash and Calipee with every plateful. I'll bet you don't know the difference between them: well, Calipash conies from the upper shell and Calipee from the lower shell of the turtle.
Half these new men," and he swung his hand contemptuously round the table, "don't know the difference between real turtle and mock turtle, but I do."
I couldn't help laughing. "Now you," he went on, "this is your first banquet, I can see. You're either a Member of the 'Ouse or perhaps a journalist. Now, ain't ye?"
"I'm the editor of the Evening News," I replied, "and you've guessed right. This is my first Lord Mayor's Banquet."
"Eat that up," he said, pointing to the green pieces on my plate. "Eat that up; it'll go to your ribs and make a man of you. I gamed three pounds at my first banquet, I did, but then I'm six inches taller nor you." He was indeed a man of huge frame.
"No place like this," he went on, "no place in the world," and he emptied another glass of champagne. "The best food and the best drink in God's world and nothing to pay for it, nothing. That's England, this is London, the grandest city on earth, I always say, and I'm proud to belong to it!"
When the first helping of mutton was brought to him, he demanded jelly, and when it was brought he cleared his plate in a twinkling and asked for more.
"Do you know what that is?" he cried, turning again to me. "That's the finest Southdown mutton in the world, three or four years old, if it's a day, and fit for a prince to eat. Fair melts in your mouth, it does. I don't say nuthin' against Welsh mutton, mind ye, or Exmoor, tasty and all that, but give me Southdown. Now that," he added, pointing to the full plate the waiter had brought him, "that's a bellyful; that's cut and come again style!" And he winked approval at the waiter.
To my amazement he had a second and third helping of mutton and went through the rest of the menu with the same avidity, getting redder and redder, hotter and hotter all the while. He must have eaten a pound and a half of meat, and he admitted he had drunk three bottles of champagne before the close.
"Doesn't it make you drunk?" I asked.
"Bless you, no," he exclaimed. "If you eat your fill and put a good lining of this mutton round your belly, you can drink as much as you like, or at least I can.
Thank God for it," he added solemnly.
In the intervals of the speech-making after the dinner, he confided to me that he was the head, if I remember aright, of the Cordwainer's Company, and invited me in due course to their annual dinner a month later and treated me like a prince.
"You don't eat and drink as you ought to," was his conclusion. "There's no pleasure on earth like it, and unlike all other pleasures, the older you get, the keener your taste!" That was his philosophy. But I found William Smith a kindly host and was not surprised to hear that he stood well with all who knew him. "His word's his bond," they said, "and he's more than kind if you need him. A good fellow is Bill and a true blue Conservative." All in all, a model Englishman.
I remember at a later banquet having a little tub of a man for neighbour. He seemed uncomfortable and I couldn't account for his wrigglings till I saw he had an immense bottle between his legs.
"What's that?" I cried.
"A Jeroboam of Haut Brion '78'," he ejaculated. "The best wine in the world."
"Where on earth did you get that immense bottle?" I enquired. "It's as big as six ordinary bottles."
"No, it ain't," he said. "A magnum is two bottles and this here is four, and a rehoboam is eight, but I can't run to that."
"You don't mean to say," I interrupted, "that you're going to drink four bottles to your own cheek?"
"I don't know about cheek," he retorted angrily, "but thank God I can drink as I like without asking your permission."
"Is it really the best wine in the world?" I queried. "I'd like to taste it! Did you bring it?"
"You can have a glass," the manikin replied, "and I don't offer that to everybody, I can tell you, or there'd be d… d little left for Johnny; but you can have a glass with a heart and a half."
I went on with the bottle of champagne I had ordered till the end of dinner and then reminded my little neighbour of the promised glass.
"I oughtn't to give it you," he grumbled. "You've been smoking and no one can taste the bouquet of fine wine with tobacco smoke in his mouth. But," he added, withholding the bottle, "for God's sake, clean your palate before you taste this wine!"
"How shall I clean my palate?" I asked.
"By eating bread and salt, of course," he said, "but you'll never enjoy the real bouquet and body of wine till you've given up smoking." And as he spoke he poured into his own glass the last drops of the noble Bordeaux. "A great wine," he said, smacking his lips. "The phylloxera ruined the finest vineyards;
Chateau Lafitte had to be replanted with American vines. No one will ever again
drink a Chateau Lafitte as our fathers knew it, but this Haut Brion is the next best. What do you think I gave for that Jeroboam?"
"I can't imagine," I said. "Perhaps three or four pounds."
He smiled pityingly. "Nearer ten," he replied, "and not easy to get at that! In ten years more it'll be worth double, mark my words. I know what I'm talking about."
A curious little man, I thought to myself when I saw him drinking port and then old cognac with his coffee. "Push coffee, the French call it," he said, tapping his glass of cognac, "and they know what's good."
When the banquet was over he asked me to help him to his carriage, as his legs were drunk. "The only part of me that ever feels the wine," he said grinning. I had nearly to carry him out of the room, but he was violently sick before I got him to his brougham. Evidently, his legs were not the only part of his body to revolt that night.
The way those men ate and drank, gluttonised and guzzled was disgusting, but I had seen German students drink beer till they had to put then-fingers down their throats and then go back to the Kneipe again, rejoicing in their bestiality. "It's the same race," I said to myself again and again. "The same race with bestiality and brutality as predominant features!"
One evening later I left the hall before the speech-making had begun, and as luck would have it, I met George Wyndham at the door. "You here!" he cried. "What do you think of English conviviality?"
"English bestiality, you mean," I retorted.
"Bestiality?" he repeated. "I've seen none; what do you mean?"
"Come outside," I said and drew him outside the door into the pure air for a minute or so. "Now," I went on, "put your head in when I open the door and you'll understand what I mean!"
As I opened the door the stench was insupportable. "Good God!" cried Wyndham, "Why didn't I notice it before?"
"You're on the right side of the top table," I explained, "and therefore you suffered less than we did."