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- 2026-01-30T03:48:16.153Z
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- 7390
- text
- of collateral awe, hailed from the spot where Lord Verulam once abode a
bachelor--Gray’s Inn.
The apartment was well up toward heaven. I know not how many strange old
stairs I climbed to get to it. But a good dinner, with famous company,
should be well earned. No doubt our host had his dining-room so high
with a view to secure the prior exercise necessary to the due relishing
and digesting of it.
The furniture was wonderfully unpretending, old, and snug. No new
shining mahogany, sticky with undried varnish; no uncomfortably
luxurious ottomans, and sofas too fine to use, vexed you in this sedate
apartment. It is a thing which every sensible American should learn from
every sensible Englishman, that glare and glitter, gimcracks and
gewgaws, are not indispensable to domestic solacement. The American
Benedick snatches, down-town, a tough chop in a gilded show-box; the
English bachelor leisurely dines at home on that incomparable South Down
of his, off a plain deal board.
The ceiling of the room was low. Who wants to dine under the dome of St.
Peter’s? High ceilings! If that is your demand, and the higher the
better, and you be so very tall, then go dine out with the topping
giraffe in the open air.
In good time the nine gentlemen sat down to nine covers, and soon were
fairly under way.
If I remember right, ox-tail soup inaugurated the affair. Of a rich
russet hue, its agreeable flavour dissipated my first confounding of its
main ingredient with teamsters’ gads and the raw-hides of ushers. (By
way of interlude, we here drank a little claret.) Neptune’s was the next
tribute rendered--turbot coming second; snow-white, flaky, and just
gelatinous enough, not too turtleish in its unctuousness.
(At this point we refreshed ourselves with a glass of sherry.) After
these light skirmishers had vanished, the heavy artillery of the feast
marched in, led by that well-known English generalissimo, roast beef.
For aides-de-camp we had a saddle of mutton, a fat turkey, a
chicken-pie, and endless other savoury things; while for
_avant-couriers_ came nine silver flagons of humming ale. This heavy
ordnance having departed on the track of the light skirmishers, a picked
brigade of game-fowl encamped upon the board, their camp-fires lit by
the ruddiest of decanters.
Tarts and puddings followed, with innumerable niceties; then cheese and
crackers. (By way of ceremony, simply, only to keep up good old
fashions, we here each drank a glass of good old port.)
The cloth was now removed; and like Blucher’s army coming in at the
death on the field of Waterloo, in marched a fresh detachment of
bottles, dusty with their hurried march.
All these manœuvrings of the forces were superintended by a surprising
old field-marshal (I cannot school myself to call him by the inglorious
name of waiter), with snowy hair and napkin, and a head like Socrates.
Amidst all the hilarity of the feast, intent on important business, he
disdained to smile. Venerable man!
I have above endeavoured to give some slight schedule of the general
plan of operations. But anyone knows that a good genial dinner is a sort
of pell-mell, indiscriminate affair, quite baffling to detail in all
particulars. Thus, I spoke of taking a glass of claret, and a glass of
sherry, and a glass of port, and a mug of ale--all at certain specific
periods and times. But those were merely the state bumpers, so to speak.
Innumerable impromptu glasses were drained between the periods of those
grand imposing ones.
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