Chapter III b

After my marriage, my old malady rose to an insupportable height. The pleasures of the table were all that seemed left to me in life. Most of the young men of any ton, ³⁵ either were, or pretended to be, connoisseurs in the science of good eating. Their talk was of sauces and of cooks, what dishes each cook was famous for; whether his forte lay in white sauces or brown, in soups, lentilles, fricandeaus, bechemele, matelotes, daubes, &c. Then the history and genealogy of the cooks came after the discussion of the merit of the works; whom my lord C ‘s / cook lived with formerly – what my lord D— gave his cook – where they met with these great geniuses, &c. I cannot boast that our conversation at these select dinners, from which the ladies were excluded, was very entertaining; but true good eaters detest wit at dinner-time, and sentiment at all times. I think I observed that amongst these cognoscenti there was scarcely one to whom the delicacy of taste did not daily prove a source of more pain than pleasure. There was always a cruel something that spoiled the rest; or if the dinner were excellent, beyond the power of the most fastidious palate to condemn, yet there was the hazard of being placed far from the favourite dish, or the still greater danger of being deputed to carve at the head or foot of the table. How I have seen a heavy nobleman, of this set, dexterously manoeuvre to avoid the dangerous honour of carving a haunch of venison! ‘But, good Heavens!’ said I, when a confidential whisper pointed out this first to my notice, ‘why does he not like to carve? — he would have it in his power to help himself to his mind, which nobody else can do so well.’ — ‘No! if he carves, he must give the nice bits to others; every body here understands them as well as he — each knows what is upon his neighbour’s plate, and what ought to be there, and what must be in the dish.’ I found that it was an affair of calculation — a game at which nobody can cheat without being discovered and disgraced. I emulated, and soon equalled my experienced friends. I became a perfect epicure, / and gloried in the character, for it could be supported without any intellectual exertion, and it was fashionable. I cannot say that I could ever eat as much as some of my companions. One of them I once heard to exclaim, after a monstrous dinner, ‘I wish my digestion was equal to my appetite.’ I would not be thought to exaggerate, therefore I shall not recount the wonders I have seen performed by these capacious heroes of the table. After what I have beheld, to say nothing of what I have achieved, I can believe any thing that is related of the capacity of the human stomach. I can credit even the account of the dinner which Madame de Bavière ^a affirms she saw eaten by Lewis the Fourteenth; viz. ‘quatre assiettes des ^b différentes soupes; un faisan tout entier; un perdrix; une grande assiette pleine de salade; du mouton coupé dans son jus avec de l’ail; deux bons morceaux de jambon; une assi-ette pleine de pâtisserie; du fruit et des confitures! ³⁶ Nor can I doubt the accuracy of the historian, who assures us that a Roman emperor,*one of the most moderate of those imperial gluttons, took for his breakfast, 500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 100 beccaficoes, and 400 oysters. ³⁷