ON FEASTERS AND FEASTING. On the Attachment of the Moderns to Good Eating and Drinking-Its Consequences and Operation upon Society-Different Description of Dinner Parties - Royal - Noble - Parliamentary - Clerical Methodistical Charitable Theatrical Legal - Parochial Literary- Commercial and Civil Gourmands-Sketches at a Side-table, by Bernard Blackmantle. "There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, ARMSTRONG. IN such esteem is good eating held by the moderns, that the only way in which Englishmen think they can celebrate any important event, or effect any charitable purpose, is by a good dinner. From the palace to the pot-house, the same affection for good eating and drinking pervades all classes of mankind. The sovereign, when he would graciously condescend to bestow on any individual some mark of his special favour, invites him to the royal banquet, seats him tête-à-tête with the most polished prince in Europe; by this act of royal notice exalts him in the public eye, and by the suavity and elegance of his manners rivets his affections and secures his zeal for the remainder of his life. The ministers too have their state dinners, where all important questions are considered before they are submitted to the grand council of the nation. The bishops dine in holy conclave to benefit christianity, and moralize over Champagne on the immorality of mankind. The judges dine with the lord chancellor on the first day of term, and try their powers of mastication before they proceed to try the merits of their fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators; but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal rat-catcher immediately cages, and contrives, by the aid of a blue or red ribband, to render extremely useful and docile. Your orthodox ministers dine on tithes, turtle, and Easter offerings, until they become as sleek as their own velvet cushions, and eke from charity to mankind almost as red in the face from the ruby tint of red port, and the sorrowful recollections of sin and death. The methodist and sectarians have their pious love feasts-bachelor's fare, bread and butter and kisses, with a dram of comfort at parting, I suppose. The deaf, the dumb, the lame, the blind, all have their annual charitable dinnerings; and even the Actor's Fund is almost entirely dependent on the fund of amusement they contrive to offer to their friends at their annual fund dinner. The church-wardens dine upon a child, and the overseers too often upon the mite extorted from the poor. Even modern literature is held in thraldom by the banquetings of modern booksellers and publishers, who by this method contrive to cram the critics with their crudities, and direct the operation of their servile pens in the cutting up of poor authors. At the Publisher's Club, held at the Albion, Dr. Kitchener and Will Jerdan rule the roast; here these worthies may be heard commenting with pro found critical consistency on culinaries and the classics, gurgling down heavy potations of black strap, and making still heavier remarks upon black letter bibliomania, until all the party are found labouring "Dare pondus idonea fumo," or, in the language of Cicero, it may be justly said of them, "Damnant quod non intelligunt." The magnifico Murray has his merry meetings, where new books are made palatable to certain tastes by sumptuous feastings, and a choice supply of old wines. Colburn brings his books into notice by first bringing his dinner coteries into close conclave; and Longman's monthly melange of authors and critics is a literary statute dinner, where every guest is looking out for a liberal engagement. Even the booksellers themselves feast one another before they buy and sell; and a trade sale, without a trade dinner to precede it, would be a very poor concern indeed. Fire companies and water companies, bubble companies and banking companies, all must be united and consolidated by a good dinner company. Your fat citizen, with a paunch that will scarce allow him to pass through the side avenue of Temple Bar, marks his feast days upon his sheet almanack, as a lawyer marks his term list with a double dash, thus, and shakes in his easy chair like a sack of blubber as he recapitulates the names of all the glorious good things of which he has partaken at the annual civic banquet at Fishmonger's Hall, or the Bible Association dinner at the City of London Tavern: at the mention of white bait, his lips smack together with joy, and he lisps out instinctively Blackwall: talk of a rump steak and Dolly's, his eyes grow wild with delight; and just hint at the fine green fat of a fresh killed turtle dressed at Birch's, and his whole soul's in arms for a corporation dinner. Reader, I have been led into this strain of thinking by an excursion I am about to make with Alderman Marigold and family, |