english meals.—clumsy method of butchery.—lord somerville.—cruel manner of killing certain animals.—luxuries of the table.—liquors.
the english do not eat beef-steaks for breakfast, as lying travellers have told us, nor can i find that it has ever been the custom. the breakfast-table is a cheerful sight in this country: porcelain of their own manufactory, which excels the chinese in elegance of form and ornament, is ranged on a japan waiter, also of the country fabric; for here they imitate every thing. the mistress sits at the head of the board, and opposite to her the boiling water smokes and sings in an urn of etruscan shape. the coffee is contained 165in a smaller vase of the same shape, or in a larger kind of tea-pot, wherein the grain is suspended in a bag; but nothing is so detestable as an englishman’s coffee. the washing of our after-dinner cups would make a mixture as good; the infusion is just strong enough to make the water brown and bitter. this is not occasioned by ?conomy, though coffee is enormously dear, for the people are extravagant in the expences of the table: they know no better; and if you tell them how it ought to be made, they reply, that it must be very disagreeable, and even that if they could drink it so strong, it would prevent them from sleeping. there is besides an act of parliament to prevent the english from drinking good coffee: they are not permitted to roast it themselves, and of course all the fresh and finer flavour evaporates in the warehouse. they make amends however by the excellence of their tea, which is still very cheap, though the ministry, in violation 166of an explicit bargain, increased the tax upon it four fold, during the last war. this is made in a vessel of silver, or of a fine black porcelain: they do not use boiled milk with it, but cream in its fresh state, which renders it a very delightful beverage. they eat their bitter bread in various ways, either in thin slices, or toasted, or in small hot loaves, always with butter, which is the best thing in the country.
the dinner hour is usually five: the labouring part of the community dine at one, the highest ranks at six, seven, or even eight. the quantity of meat which they consume is astonishing! i verily believe that what is drest for one dinner here, would supply the same number of persons in spain for a week, even if no fast-days intervened. every where you find both meat and vegetables in the same crude and insipid state. the potatoe appears at table all the year round: indeed the poor subsist so generally upon this 167root, that it seems surprising how they could have lived before it was introduced from america. beer is the common drink. they take less wine than we do at dinner, and more after it; but the custom of sitting for hours over the bottle, which was so prevalent of late years, has been gradually laid aside, as much from the gradual progress of the taxes as of good sense. tea is served between seven and eight, in the same manner as at breakfast, except that we do not assemble round the table. supper is rather a ceremony than a meal; but the hour afterwards, over our wine and water, or spirits, is the pleasantest in the day.
the old refinements of epicurean cruelty are no longer heard of, yet the lower classes are cruel from mere insensibility, and the higher ones, for want of thought, make no effort to amend them. the butchers and drovers in particular are a savage race. the sheep which i have met on their way to the slaughter-house, have 168frequently their faces smeared with their own blood, and accidents from over-driven oxen are very common. cattle are slaughtered with the clumsiest barbarity: the butcher hammers away at the forehead of the beast; blow after blow raises a swelling which renders the following blows ineffectual, and the butchery is completed by cutting the throat. great pains have been taken by a nobleman who has travelled in spain, to introduce our humane method of piercing the spine; the effect has been little, and i have heard that the butchers have sometimes wantonly prolonged the sufferings of animals in his sight, for the pleasure of tormenting a humanity which they think ridiculous. oysters are eaten alive here. you see women in the streets skinning eels while the creature writhes on the fork. they are thought delicacies here, and yet the english laugh at the french for eating frogs! lobsters and crabs are boiled alive, and sometimes roasted! and carp, after having been scaled and gutted, 169will sometimes leap out of the stew-pan. if humanity is in better natures an instinct, no instinct is so easily deadened, and in the mass of mankind it seems not to exist.
roast beef has been heard of wherever the english are known. i have more than once been asked at table my opinion of the roast beef of old england, with a sort of smile, and in a tone as if the national honour were concerned in my reply. the loin of beef is always called sir, which is the same as se?or.[13] neither drunkenness nor gluttony can fairly be imputed as national vices to this people, and yet perhaps there is no other country where so much nice and curious attention is paid to eating and drinking, nor where the pleasures of the table are thought of such serious importance, and gratified at so great an expense. all parts of the world are ransacked 170for an englishman’s table. turtle are brought alive from the west indies, and their arrival is of so much consequence, that notices are immediately sent to the newspapers, particularly stating that they are in fine order, and lively. whereever you dine since peace has been concluded, you see a perigord pye. india supplies sauces and curry powder; they have hams from portugal and westphalia; reindeers’ tongues from lapland; caviar from russia; sausages from bologna; maccaroni from naples; oil from florence; olives from france, italy, or spain, at choice; cheese from parma and switzerland. fish come packed up in ice from scotland for the london market, and the epicures here will not eat any mutton but what is killed in wales. there is in this very morning’s newspaper, a notice from a shopkeeper in the strand, offering to contract with any person who will send him game regularly from france, norway, or russia.
13. d. manuel has mistaken the word, which is surloin, quasi super-loin,—the upper part of it.—tr.
the choice of inferior liquors is great; 171but all are bad substitutes for the pure juice of the grape. you have tasted their beer in its best state, and cider you have drank in biscay. they have a beverage made from the buds of the fir-tree and treacle; necessity taught the american settlers to brew this detestable mixture, which is introduced here as a luxury. factitious waters are now also become fashionable; soda-water particularly, the fixed air of which hisses as it goes down your throat as cutting as a razor, and draws tears as it comes up through the nose as pungent as a pinch of snuff. the common water is abominable; it is either from a vapid canal in which all the rabble of the outskirts wash themselves in summer, or from the thames, which receives all the filth of the city. it is truly disgraceful that such a city should be without an aqueduct. at great tables the wine stands in ice, and you keep your glass inverted in water. in nothing are they so curious as in their wines, though rather in the quality than the variety. they 172even send it abroad to be ripened by the motion of the ship, and by warmer climates; you see superior, london, picked, particular, east india madeira advertised, every epithet of which must be paid for.
