The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

THE PRE S S, DECEMBER 18, 1858. put off those bodies once tormented by night mares and made a burden by dyspepsia. It is left to the New Zealander to re-enact their patriotic part if he likes, and to repeat to himself on that spot where he will one day stand, that thus have all nations perished who feed them selves on " kickshaws." In the meantime let us be thankful, like women, for our " small mercies," and pay due honour to that illustrious man who has spread among the people a taste for petits diners. The incidents of Soyer's life are almost too well known to need repetition here, but we will briefly run over the salient points in his career. He was born at Meaux-en-Brie in the year 1809, and was originally intended for the Church; hut, disliking the prospect, he contrived to get himself dismissed from school, and set out to join a brother who was settled at Paris. Here he at once became a cook; and his genius so rapidly developed itself that, at seventeen years of age, he was head cook at one of the most famous restaurateurs in the city. In June 1830 he was engaged at the French Foreign-office, and was employed in preparing a grand entertainment to be given by Polignac, when the Revolution not only broke out, but actually burst into his kitchen, and cut down two of his colleagues. Alexis, like other great French gentlemen, took refuge in this country. where he held situations under various of the nobility till finally installed at the Reform Club in 1837. In the interval, he had married; his wife's maiden name being Emma Jones, a young female artist, whom Soyer, according to his present biographers. had " fas " cinated by his conversation "—a means of con quest he may possibly have sought to strengthen by some such graceful offerings as Sir Francis Clavering s " chief " relied upon in " Pendennis." This, however, is mere conjecture. At the Reform Club, Soyer passed a few years of unclouded glory. We have tried to construct " a day with Soyer " out of the materials con tained in this volume, but they are so carelessly flung together that we have found it impossible to do so satisfactorily. We must suppose him to have reached the club at a reasonable hour in the morning, to have inspected the provisions sent in by the tradesmen, to have arranged the dinners already ordered, and to have procured any rare article that might be wanted. The afternoon, of course, would be devoted to the real business of the day, grievously interrupted by the shoals of visitors whom Soyer, however, would receive with perfect good humour, and occasionally inform them, with bated breath, that such and such a dish was for my Lord So-and-So at eight o'clock, sometimes adding to the delighted auditor, "Let us taste it." At four o'clock he was supposed to get a little rest, and at eight it seems that his labours ter minated, and Soyer became the man of fashion till the following morning—going to the opera, taking a "go" of brandy between the acts, at Dubourg's, and supping at the Hotel de Provence. Soyer left the Reform Club in 1850, in conse quence of the extended admission of strangers, which he thought would give him more to do than he could achieve with credit. His next spe culation was the Symposium at Gore House, which turned out a losing concern, and Alexis, on writing for advice to an old friend at the Clnb, received the following very sensible letter in reply :- 31st December, 1851. Dear Sayer,—l am sorry to receive so bad an account of your speculation at Gore House as that which you Lave sent me; but, to tell you the truth, I hardly expected much good, at any time, from that undertaking. When you left the Reform Club and asked me fur my advice, I recommended you strongly to take counsel from so expe• rienced a man and so undoubted a friend of yours as I know Mr. T. P— to be, and I quite coincided in the recmnmendation which, as I understood, Mr. P-- gave you, viz., to take a house and to give therein, without any clap trap, show, or external demonstration, the best dinners that a man co•tll get in London. Had you followed this advice you would have made your fortune, for your name atom! as high as possible at the time; the world had faith in Soyer, and you might have commanded your own terms. As it was, you pursued a course the very opposite to the one prescribed, and the consequence has been the vexation, disapptintment, and loss which you describe. However, do not think the chance has gone yet. If you will set aboot repairing past mischief at once, keep yourself in your own hands,take a quiet place, cook the very best dinners, give the very bi-at wines, people will still go to Suyer. But, as a sincere friend, I warn you, as you value your reqeetability and credit, and desire to Militallin your position, to 111Vid 44044 that has glo 1241 remotest resemblance to puff and charlatanism ; you stand in need of neither, and may get on well without them. Pray write to me at any time. If I can be of service to you I will do at all times icon pwgible. Do not forget, also, that Mr. T. is in London, and I am sure he will be glad, at any time, to give you advice if you want it. You cannot tind a better adviser in England.—Believe me, dear Soyer, faithfully yours, S. P-. The next thing that brought Soyer before the public was his famous soup kitchens in 1852, after which he rested on his laurels for awhile, till 1855, when he went out to the Crimea. His adventures there have already been related by himself, and reviewed in these columns, and the composition of the work in question seems to have occupied most of his time after his re turn home. The last work that he undertook was the model kitchen at the Wellington Barracks ; but before it was opened he was seriously ill, and soon afterwards he began to grow rapidly worse, and eventually expired on the sth of August last, a little before ten o'clock in the evening. We our selves have heard many anecdotes attesting his kindness of heart, as well as his bonhommie and humour. He has really, we believe, conferred some important benefits on the country, and is entitled both to the gratitude and the regret of a very numerous public. 2. " Curiosities of Food " rather strikes us as a good subject spoiled. Either this is so, or we have failed to catch the author's leading idea. We really can see nothing curious in pigs, sheep, larks, game, oysters, lobsters, and such like old friends. The peculiar dishes of barbarous nations are, of course, in one sense, "curiosities of food." But if Mr. Simmons resolved to make that the backbone of his work, he should have treated it in a philosophical spirit, and have striven to connect it with the great subject of physiology. The book, however, contains various useful hints for housewives, travellers, and sportsmen. The following receipt for testing eggs may be useful to some of our readers There is no difficulty whatever in testing eggs; the are mostly examined by a candle. Another way to tell good eggs is to put them in a pail of water, and if they are good they will he on their sides, always; if bail, they will stand on their small ends, the large ends always uppermost, unless they have been shaken considerably, when they will stand either end up. Therefore, a bad egg can be told by the ;say it rests in water—alway► end up, never on its side. Any egg that lies flat is good to eat, and can be depended upon. An ordinary mode is to take them into a room mode. rately dark and hold them between the eye and a candle or lamp. If the egg be pod—that is, if the albumen is still unaffected—the light will shine through with a reddish glow; while, it' affected, it will be opaque, or dark. To dress a partridge in a hurry : Expedition is the maxim of all sylvan cookery, and as plucking the feathers of a partridge would be too great a tax on the time and patience of the voyageur, the method most in vogue is to run your hunting knife round his throat and uncles and down his breast, when, taking a leg in each band, and pressing your thumb into his hack, you pop him out of his skin, as you would a pea from its pod. Then make a spread eagle of him on a forked twig, the other extremity of which is thrust into the ground, and after wrapping a rasher of bacon around his neck and under his wings, as lathes wear a scarf, you incline him to the fire, turning the spit in the ground, and you will have a result such as Soyer might he proud of. When your other avocations will not afford time even for the skinning process, an alternative mode is to make a paste of ashes and water, and roll up your bird therein, with the feathers, and all the appurtenances thereof, and thrust the per formance in the fire. In dire tine, on breaking the cemented shell (which is like a sugared almond ), the feathers, skin, Ste., adhere to it, and then you have the pure kernel of poultry within. We find, too, a fact with which we were before unacquainted concerning the Chinese birds'- nests, namely, that " the birds feed upon dif " ferent kinds of bloodless insects, hovering above " the stagnant waters, for which their wide " open beak is very useful. They form their " nests by vomiting the strongest and best frag " ments of the food which they have eaten." Of course we have plenty of details about the mode of preparing blubber among the Esqui maux, crocodile in the Nicobar Islands (where ever they may be), locusts among the Hottentots &c., &c., but we have found nothing of sufficient novelty or pungency to justify quotation. As a series of popular lectures the contents of this volume probably answered the writer's purpose. As a serious volume we esMlot lay very much in its praise, her royal spouse was well buried at Windsor ; others were " unqueened " by divorce, as the first and the fourth of henry VIII.'s Queens, the former of which, Katharine of Arragon, maintained to the day of her death the dignity of which she had been despoiled by a sentence of more than doubtful justice, while the latter, Anne of Cleves, meekly resigning herself to her fate, subsided into " the Lady Anne ";—the strange catalogue being closed by one whose case has no parallel in history, Maria Louisa, who, the daughter of one Emperor and the consort of another, thought the descent to the ducal throne of cheese-producing Parma not a sufficient humi liation, but was no sooner become her own mis tress by the death of the once all-powerful Con queror of Europe than she hastened to superadd the degradation of wedding a German officer of obscure position, whose only title to distinction was that of having been selected by her for the " strange bedfellow " of her day of calamity. A series of chapters is devoted to some remarkable specimens of the pious impostures of Romish idolatry, such as " the ungra cious rood of grace," at Boxley, in Kent ; the shrines of St. Rumbald or Grimbald at Sutton, Brackley, Buckingham, Boxley, and elsewhere ; the carved image (by St. Luke) of Our Lady of Boulogne, and the flowery legend of Our Lady of Guadaloupe.—the two latter—•with a side glance at the modern apparition of Our Lady of La Salette—not inaptly introduced by the pagan legend of the appearance of Venus to Aspasia. Some facts worth remembering in con nection with the origin and observance of the festival of the Nativity are thrown together under the heading " Pictures of Old and Young Christmas ; " a goodly array of romantic legends and ghost stories is drawn from the traditions of the Rhineland ; and much entertaining matter of a miscellaneous kind, chiefly of a critical cha racter, is collected together in " Pictures of England by Foreign Sketchers," " Foreign Scenes drawn by English llands," " llistorical Portraits by Romantic Painters," and a far from uninstructive chapter on " The things we don't know." A Such are, as far as they admit of classifica tion, the ingredients of the literary treat pro vided in this volume. The bill of fare is not deficient either in copiousness or in variety : we may add that the dishes are prepared and served up in Dr. Doran's best style, and will, we doubt not, be abundantly relished by those capable of enjoying " the feast of reason." 1. _Memoirs of Alexis Soger. IVritten by his Secretaries. London : Kent and Co. 2. Curiosities of Food. By Peter Lund Simmons. London : Bentley. THERE is something rather curious in the simultaneous publication of these two little volumes—the latter of which seems almost intended to remind us how limited after all is the sphere of mortal grandeur, and how little the greatest of us can do. If Alexander sighed for new worlds to conquer, it was only through his ignorance of geography; and the shade of Alexis may well utter a faint vagitus over the wide regions of edibles which yet remain to be brought under the dominion of the stew pan. The cook is the great civilizer. What can literature do for a race that habitually gorges it self into torpor ? What can missionaries accom plish for a man who has nothing better to eat than his spiritual adviser ? Even in communities which call themselves civilized, how frequently are the most primary institutions of all rendered useless for want of this beneficent artificer ! How often are men, to all appearance " tame and mild," like Enceladus converted into " perfect brutes " credite feeminis), by a deficiency in this human izing department ! And we have often fancied that the ancient badge of the fraternity, the white cap, may have been derived from that white fillet which Virgil tells us was bound round the temples of the first benefactors of mankind : inveutas ant qui Titan) exeoluere per arses Quique sui memores ulioa fecere merendn Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempura vitro. However, we trust that the cook is no longer in any danger of meeting with neglect in Europe. Our savage ancestors, who " deemed his harmless art a crime," the great raw-beef-eating English men, have long since gone to their account, and