 | The Modern Orlando |  |
37
CANTO II.
THE CAFÉS—LA CUISINE—THE PALAIS ROYAL—THE MOB—THE JOURNEY—THE CHAPLAIN.
THE CAFÉS.
Paris, farewell! I take my final rounds,Among the “Restaurants:” adieu Vatel
Not the celebrated publicist of Dresden, but the celebrated cook, who, having omitted salt in one of the soups which he had sent up to his noble master's table, ran himself through the lungs, and died a sacrifice to the honour of the profession. (See Madame de Sévigné's condolences.) His fame has outlived that of many a hero:—it is fresh after a hundred years,—and flourishing in one of the most showy establishments of Paris.
('Tis true, one should be rather strong in pounds,
To touch him; but the very name's a spell;)
You have your oysters, perfect—in the shell;
Your “sixteen soups,”—your turbot à la crême;
Your custard, worthy of an abbot's cell;
Your venison, royale—ortolan, supreme.
Your Macedoine—the whole, as dulcet as a dream.
38
II
How very few on earth know how to dine!The vulgar take their dinners by the carte;
A meal, with them, is—“Meat washed down with wine,”
But dining rightly, is a mental art,
Or senti-mental,—an affair of heart!
Ah, quelle pâtisserie! the “Rose d'amour”
Gives the true flavour to your Mango tart;
Then comes your Mocha coffee, hot and pure:—
Call for your slice of Pine, and finish with Liqueur.
III
But, make the tour.—The Rocher de CancaleStill bears the bell for oysters, and champagne;
There no gilt gimcracks desecrate the salle,—
Its pride is to be, plainest of the plain.
Man there “knows better things,” than to be vain!
If gilded Cafés charm you, try the “Paris!”
You have it there on pillar, post, and pane.
Where at the bar, ('tis said,) once sat Dubarry ,
Too fond of liberty, old Louis Quinze to marry.
39
IV
Reserve for night the “Trois Frères Provenceaux,”The Palais Royal's glory; the Trois Frères
Rivals the world for rognons and noyeau.
There from the Opera rush prince and peer—
With every tongue of earth that splits the ear—
From the iced Wolga to the sunny Po;
Magyr and Yankee, Meinherr and Mynheer,—
The Polish sneeze, Greek scream, Turk, Esquimaux;
Babel let loose again, all jargons in full flow!
THE TUILERIES.
The Theatres?—They've long lost caste in France!They are canaille!—A Tuileries' Ball-night
(None but the Deputies, and badauds, dance)
Is, for mere “Spectacle,”—a prettier sight.
You see along the vista, left and right,
(As nurserymen arrange their hot-house blooms)
A thousand belles, all framed and glazed in light;
Dazzling your glance along the endless rooms,—
A Cytherean cloud of chaplets, pearls, and plumes!
40
VI
“Enter,—the king!”—(the signal for quadrilling)His Majesty comes, smiling upon all;
With (ball-room) love and loyalty all thrilling.
Then, sounds the trumpet—“Supper in the Salle!”
By Jove! the weakest then soon find the wall.
Nature is nature then; and life is life.
(One always feels so famished at a ball)
Nothing subdues Romance like, fork and knife:
Belles look on Beaux, and Beaux on Belles, like “man and wife.”
LA CUISINE.
Depend upon it, in all “leading” nations,The character is in the cookery.
Why do the British make such tough orations?
Why must the Frenchman chatter, skip—or die?
Why growls the honest German, like his sty?—
Beef-steaks, Frog-soup, and Sourkrout, are the cause!
His Olla swells the Spaniard's soul and sigh!
The Russ takes pattern by his own “bear's paws!”—
Trust me—the civilized are modelled by the jaws.
41
VIII
Cooking, the earliest of man's master-arts!So tells us the old gay Deipnosophist .
Kings first displayed their talents, in their tarts,
Long before pensions swamped the Civil List.
Old Ossian's breechless Monarchs of the Mist
Were famous hands at haggis and at haunch,—
Ere Jonathan (Earth's phœnix!) brewed “gin-twist;”
Ere Whigs were slippery dogs, or Tories staunch;
Or Frenchmen hunted frogs, upon thy shores, La Manche .
IX
Bless thy five finger-tips, old priest of Jove !The art's inventor—As, one day, he turned
The sacrifice, without his sacred glove;
It slipped, he caught it slipping, and was burned!
(Instinct, we know, is never to be spurned,)—
He sucked his scorching paw, the pang to cool,—
(His name in pyramids should be inurned)
The taste was rapturous!—he gave the rule—
“The priest, henceforth, who eats cold mutton,—is a fool!”
42
X
I wish I had thy dashing pencil, Homer;To paint those gallant demi-gods, the Greeks,
(To call them men, is clearly a misnomer,)
Thy groupe of chieftains
All the heroes of the Iliad cooked their own rations. Napoleon thought that “cooking was the true element of conquest.” Wellington said of Indian war:—“That bullocks and rice gained the battle.” Both high authorities. The roast-beef of Old England has been the root of many a laurel. It has a right to complain of not having a place in the National Arms.
Each, with resplendent eye and glowing cheeks,
Watching the sacred moment of the broil;
Old Nestor, dropping in the salt and leeks,
Achilles, butlering the wine and oil,
Till, round the golden dish, they laughed at Troy, and toil!
XI
Confucius potted lap-dogs—But, I hurry(I hate procrastination,) to the Roman.
(The East, besides, is weak, in all, but curry.)
Cæsar, 'tis known, would trust his soups to no man,
Mark Antony, though he “lost the world for woman,”
Was cautious of his Cleopatra's stews.
Rome, till she fell before the Northern bow-man,
Though, at her best, not equal to ragouts,
Challenged the world at shrimps, and wild-hog barbecues.
43
XII
Rome fell;—and France took charge of the cuisine;Monarchs may fade, but eating lasts for ever.
The crown of Europe lies in the tureen,
(So said Richelieu, who, for a priest, was clever.)
What's Fame?—a cheat! and Love?—a three-day fever!
Pass a few years, our passions slide away;
But never man shall break the sceptre, never!
Which La Cuisine waves o'er us, grave or gay;
So long as man is doomed to eat four meals a-day.
THE PALAIS ROYAL .
I have a passion for those huge old buildings,That bear their story stamped on every stone;
With all their sculptures, brasses, dusty gildings—
Reliques of knaves who made, or marred, a throne!
Monarchs and mistresses,—(some, fools full grown!)
Here ruled Richelieu; here scowled the Thirteenth Louis,
(Two craftier rogues the world has seldom known.)
Here danced, (by woman all his life ébloui,)
Old France's model-king; old Maintenon's saintly roué.
44
XIV
Quatorze! I've seen much better men henpecked;Heroes—who dared not call their souls their own!
Great orators—by one small whisper checked!
Stern Statesmen—mute as mice, before that throne,
Where sat supreme their wedded “flesh and bone!”
All, managed by the “weaker vessel's” glance,
The easy menace of the well-known tone.
Their haughtiest chivalry there drops its lance,
Long taught, that in such fields their chargers must not prance!
XV
Not, that the lady flogs, or starves, or kicks;—The thing is done by slow, but sure, degrees;
Just as your doctors their potations mix,
Or, like the Frenchman's recipe for fl---s.
“You tickle dem, dey laugh, and den, you seize,
And den you drop your powder in deir jaws!”—
Or, as the lawyer first “puts in his pleas,”
Then, for your hanging, gracefully “shows cause;”
Then, leaves you to the judge—who leaves you to the laws!
45
XVI
And here, too, had its throne the Sovereign Mob!Here, on the crown the rabble sabre clanged.
Rise, preachers of the “Rights of Man,”—to rob!
Rise from your dust, ye headless, and ye hanged!
Beneath these very lamps Marat harangued;
Upon this shattered bench stood bold Danton.
They trampled, and were trampled,—adders fanged!
France danced around them blackening in the sun!
I wonder, when its next galop will be begun.
XVII
Those were the days of business! Earth has slept,Wrapt up in furs and follies, since those times;
When pen and ink the trembling kingdoms swept;
When sabres sliced the globe, by zones and climes;
When Germany's old clocks all learned French chimes;
When patriot cobblers gave the world their “Codes;”
When “Vive le peuple!” was the rhyme of rhymes!—
Till Laureats prosed once more their “Birthday Odes,”
And came the humdrum age, of Czars and Nesselrodes!
46
XVIII
I always bet on thrones;—they fall, like cats,On their four paws!—they 'scape, like ducks, by diving!
Or, like your old cathedrals—spite of rats—
Ten centuries of purple deans surviving!
Nay, like your bankrupts, by their ruin thriving!—
While commonwealths, however free and furious,
Are smothered, once for all; like hornets hiving!
Paying for power an interest usurious,—
Blood, cent. per cent.! I leave the problem to the “curious.”
XIX
I think republics are, like London fires,Got up, to help your “men of parts” to rob!
The blaze burns out its fuel, and expires,
Just by the time the rogues have done the job,—
(A fact at which I have no heart to sob!)
Then, comes the Course of Nature, and a king!
As sure as Moslems love a hot kabob .
The lucky knaves get rich—the luckless swing!
Thus runs this mill-horse world, in one eternal ring!
47
THE JOURNEY.
'Tis morn, bright morn! Now rings the railway bell!(You always choose the first-class, if you're wise—
A sixpence less may lay you in your shell!)
The whistle screams,—away the convoy flies!
Dark forests, sunny hills, before me rise;
Still the fleet fire-horse gallops, snorts, and roars!
Plains vanish round me—flit above me skies!
I dart o'er rivers—plunge in tunnel-bores!
Counting the old slow leagues of lazy France, by scores!
XXI
Roads are a modern folly! your bold GreeksDashed right ahead,—up mountain and down dale;
Your ancient Britons, full of love and leeks;
Your Highland heroes, famed for war and kale;
Your grand Crusaders, strapped in holy mail,
All marched, and fought, and robbed by waggon-loads;
Before the world saw either road or rail!
Yet, what is life? says Lopè
Lopè de la Vega, the most voluminous author of Spain, the wittiest, next to Cervantes; and the most rapid in the world. He wrote a play a week, and a poem a day: with now and then a three volume novel, to fill up the time! Lopè presents a contradiction to the theory, that poets should begin young. He commenced authorship close on fifty; but he had the true education for a national poet. He had seen life in all its most showy varieties; had been familiar with the Spanish Court, at the time when, under Philip the Second, it led Europe; was traveller, soldier, seaman; but, at length, as if to see life in a totally different aspect, he turned Franciscan! then turned fool, and starved himself into saintship, and out of the world!
(I give the Spaniard's hints for Oxford's next “prize odes!”)
48
XXII
Love, (for example,) is a road of flowers;(A creed in which I am a true believer;)
Marriage, a sunshine road, with some few showers;
Philosophy, (a road I travel never!)
A palisadoed pathway for the “clever;”
Glory, an uphill road, with turnpikes many;
Ambition, a rough road, now frost, now fever;
Wealth, the sure road of every foreign zany,—
(Thy pickpockets, John Bull,—slim dancers and soprani!)
XXIII
Paris, adieu! I breathe free air, at last!I spare the “gentle reader” my reflections,
As round the “Grande Enceinte” my glance was cast,
With its fierce Fifteen cannon-mouthed erections—
Those fifteen charms for popular “affections!”
“After her fever” Paris will sleep well,
The St. Germains will have no more “detections,”
The St. Antoine will melt its tocsin-bell;
The mob turn monks, and France be one huge convent-cell!
49
XXIV
Adieu!—we fly by many a grim château,(Those things are showy, only in a novel,)
In front, of withered elms a scrambling row,
Where gipsy-donkeys graze, and beggars grovel—
The building's self half prison and half hovel;
A long, bare wall, a sloping shattered roof;
A porte cochère, forgotten by the shovel;
An avenue unmarked by wheel or hoof:—
It wants no rough gendarme, to bid me keep aloof!
XXV
Well may Old England boast her good old Mansion—Cheerful yet stately, on its lake's broad marge;
(All, on the old-world system of expansion,
Where everything, including hearts, was large;)
A lawn, where half the “household troops” might charge;
A court-yard filled with groom, and horse, and hound;
A fountain, where an Admiralty-barge
Might swim, or half the parish might be drowned—
Health, wealth, and plenty stamped on everything around.
50
XXVI
Of course, I had my share of fellow-travellers,Of every caste and colour, shape and stare!
(Women of all earth's riddles are unravellers:)
A widow at my elbow (passing fair!)
Whispered the secret story of a pair,
Who just had joined us, in a gay barouche,
The lady handsome, (with a sobered air;)
The man tall, thin, (a parson, by his slouch,)
Yet, with a humorous eye—a quiet scaramouch!
THE CHAPLAIN.
A Curate lived ten years in Lancashire,Preaching on Sundays, patching weekly strife;
Making his humdrum rounds from squire to squire,
Finding in every house a fork and knife,
But no one ever offered him a wife.
Though daily leading dozens to the altar,
His case was plain,—a bachelor for life!
Hymen for him twined not the “rose-wreathed halter!”
When lo!—a huge dispatch, one morning, from Gibraltar!
51
XXVIII
It told him, he was “Chaplain to the Rock,”The salary a “thousand pounds a year!”
As if the world had picked his patent-lock,
The tidings flew like wild-fire, far and near;
That he must marry, instantly was clear!
Parades, balls, picnic-parties, saffron skies,
Were instantly in every heart and ear!
The Curate, to his infinite surprise,
Found his lone state assailed by shoals of “pitying” eyes!
XXIX
Nothing could equal his astonishment,At this soft dissolution, or love-thaw!—
Where had this flood of feeling all been pent?
Why, wore young romps such looks of tender awe?
Why shrews, in velvet sheathed the cat-like claw?
Why, flirts grew timid?—faith was found in jilts?
Why, matrons' wills to maidens' wits gave law?
Why, rival belles, with hands upon their hilts,
Where'er the Curate came, abjured their mutual tilts?
52
XXX
Still, on he went, unconscious of the reason;Stuffing with books and shirts his old valise.
His cassock was the friend of many a season,
But, not a soul had played the aunt or niece,
To put on the old sarsenet a “new piece!”
His surplice, too, gave signs of many a rub;
His gown had nearly run out its long lease:
When hark! beside his door, a huge hubbub—
Babel in petticoats!—the “County Spinsters' Club!”
XXXI
The “President” performed a speech, all smiles;The “Secretary” sighed a—“Resolution”
That “as he soon must leave the British isles,
The ‘Spinsters,’ true to ‘Church and Constitution,’
Had voted him a general contribution!”—
A set of robes, of genuine mazarine;
A surplice, that would stand a life's ablution:
Never had country church such cambric seen;
The “trousseau” would have charmed a chaplain to the Queen!
53
XXXII
He bowed, they curtseyed, sighed, and slipped away;Each shooting from her eye a Parthian arrow.
The robes before the grateful Curate lay;
He thought his old valise was growing narrow.
Again, a knock!—a porter with a barrow;
Who hung forthwith upon his kitchen hooks
The youngest-born of Lady Bull's prize-farrow!
Another knock!—three belles, with three “blue” books,
(The rector's daughters,) begged his “photographic” looks.
XXXIII
Morn dawned in red, eve died in purple gloom;Still, at his cottage door were heard the knocks;
The presents now had scarcely standing-room.
In poured fresh pigs, fresh pullets, tamboured stocks;
The prettiest desks, with Cupids on their locks;
Jams, pickles, sea-sick nostrums, netted purses;
Landscapes, with worsted shepherds and their flocks;
Tracts for all sins—nay, patent-spoons for nurses!
(Hints of that state, where all—for “better, or for worse,” is.)
54
XXXIV
As time grew short, the presents came in quicker:Never ate Curate such a round of dinners;
Turtle his daily soup, champagne his liquor,
At whist, without a trump, his cards were winners!
Never did saint convert so many sinners!
Bright glances in Madonna caps were furled;
Pretty coquettes did penance in lawn pinners:
All round the county, ringlets were uncurled;
Girls “of all ages” cut this ultra-wicked world!
XXXV
The Curate much enjoyed this kind of life,Venison, says Grimod , “est de bonne comestion,”
But, still, he had not fixed upon a wife.
The point was, now, to make him “pop the question,”
Before his Reverence died of indigestion;
For, though in both the blue and red Professions,
An Alexander would have shot Hephæstion,
For tempting Spinster's eyes to—“indiscretions;”
The black are free of lead; steel mulets not their transgressions.
55
XXXVI
At length, came one, to whom the Curate's eyesHad raised, in earlier days, their distant glances;
(As boys will gaze on stars in evening skies.)
The lady-fair had laughed at all his trances;
Yet time had scarcely cooled his old romances.
The handsome girl was now a showy widow,
Well jointured, first at dinners, plays, and dances;
She dropped Queen Bess at once, took up Queen Dido;
Made up her mind, to wed—and pounced on “Pastor Fido.”
XXXVII
She owned—“she always wished to be his wife;Not that she cared an atom for the clime;
Where every sort of idleness was life,
And six battalions only killed the time;
In fact, she thought those things a kind of crime!”
The Curate whispered, “Wait for the Gazette,”
A thought with which “her feelings scorned” to chime.
(The spinsters at him making a “dead set,”)
They married!—“Rosebud Bower” was instantly, “to let!”
56
XXXVIII
She wrote to the Horse-guards; her pile of trunksLay ready-corded for the famous Strait,
Which sweeps with scornful surge the “Land of Monks;”
Her bandboxes had grown a steamer's freight!
“No answer yet! That Post was always late!”
The answer came; 't was courteously expressed:
“His Grace's compliments,”—“was grieved to state,
“That the appointment was some coxcomb's jest!”
Who made it, ne'er was known—perhaps the Curate guessed.
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