The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-10 00:00:00

THE PROGRESS OF PASTRY.

"Titus Livy said, in speaking of Rome, `The great-
est things have small beginnings.' This applies equally to
pastry, which appears so unworthy of attention at the
commencement of the middle ages that nothing seems to an-
nounce its high destiny. At first, in the southern pro-
vinces, people simply mixed flour, oil, and honey. The
Roman school was still in force. The inhabitants of the
north had a mind to innovate ; they employed eggs, butter,
and salt. Then came the idea of inclosing within this
paste cooked meat, seasoned with bacon and spices ; and,
from progress to progress, they at last inclosed cream, fruit,
and marmalades."

Observe—how fine is the gradation! At first
they simply mixed flour, oil, and honey—then
came eggs, butter, and salt—then " the idea of en-
closing within this paste cooked meat, savoured
with bacon and spices"—and so from " progress to
progress," says the historian of food, in a burst of
allowable exultation, "they at last enclosed
cream, fruit, and marmalades. " A noble
and memorable consummation. How little did
the fabricators of that first mash of flour and
honey, dream of the approaching glories of that
inevitable cream and those unavoidable marma-
lades ! A tolerable notion may be formed of the
enthusiasm by which the illustrious innovators in
gastronomy were animated in their stately re-
searches, from M. Soyer's version of the old story
about Vatel, one of not by any means the least
distinguished of his predecessors. Our author has
been talking about some of the feats of the epicures
of the reign of Louis Quatorze ; and thus recounts
the

MELANCHOLY FATE OF VATEL.

"At this period we have the celebrated Vatel, one of
the most illustrious officers of the household that ever
flourished in the palaces of the Princes of Conde. This
inimitable major-domo understood that a dinner without
fish was a cheerless one. One day, when his noble master
entertained Louis XIV. at a royal banquet, at Chantilly,
which the genius of Vatel rendered more brilliant, the
fish from the coast failed ; he sent everywhere, but none
could be found. He was completely bewildered : he met
his august master, whose kind words, full of benevolence,
only served to increase his desperation ; he left him, ran
to his chamber, took his sword, and three times pierced
his heart. Shortly after fish arrived from all quarters.
Vatel was called—no Vatel ! He was sought for, and at
last discovered—Vatel was no more !"

Alas, for the glorious departed I But if, even ac-
cording to nature, a Vatel must, under any circum-
stances, by this time have vanished from the sub-
stantial regions of cookery, we may be consoled
under the sorrow of his departure by the possession
amongst us of a Soyer—a chef capable of presiding
over the fabrication of a thousand made-dishes

—vulgar English for the entremets—just as Doctor
Johnson was described as capable of grappling with
a whole library. Upwards of forty steel plate em-
bellishments lend to the text of our gustatory sage
the charm and pomp of illustration. Presiding
over these, of course, is the semblance of the
plump and comely Victua, the appetising goddess
of gastronomy. Conspicuous among the curiosities
engraved are representations of the kitchen
utensils of antiquity, classic spoons, and tri-
vets, and kettles, and gridirons. There are
the wine-skins, too, and the drinking-cups, and
the vessels for holding your choice falerian—the
dolium or the amphora. As worthy representa-
tives, moreover, of the more renowed gourmets of
ancient times, we are presented at p. 201, with
the heads of Apicius and Epicurus, and at p. 398,
with those of Nero and Heliogabalus. Speaking
of the last-mentioned personage, the Sardanapalus
of Rome, the precocious monster whose reign ex-
tended only from his accession to the imperial
throne at fourteen to his assassination at eighteen,
our author, inspired by a love of science, says with
becoming leniency after referring to his crimes,
" the gastronomic art is, however, indebted to the
odious Heliogabalus for some useful discoveries."
Enviable epitaph ! A funereal panegyric surely
little short of the glory of apotheosis.
It was observed by A. Soyer in 1846, in the
course of his production on cookery called " The
Gastronomic Regenerator," it was observed by
him, at page 650 of that renowned production that,
" if any author were to write a work on the History
of Food and Cookery, it would not only be very
interesting, but an extremely useful production."
Useful, undoubtedly, if only as illustrative, on a
gigantic scale, of the truth of that diction of Brillat
Savarin, in his Physiologie du Godt : " Dis-moi
ce que tu manges, je to dirai ce que tu es." Re-
ferring to this prophetic remark in the " Gastrono-
mic Regenerator," p. 650, M. Soyer observes, in
a Note to his new volume " Pantropheon," p. 476,
" No one, however, having entertained my sugges-
tion, I determined to undertake the task, and after
several years of deep study and perseverance, have
completed this voluminous work." It is accom-

plislied. The researches of the illustrious chef have
been rewarded in other particulars besides in that
of his discovery (p. 269) a the celebrated garum,
the most esteemed and expensive sauce of antiquity
—the sauce praised by Horace, and manufactured
at Byzantium. Those researches have now enabled
him to lay before the world something more deli-
cious even than Salades de grouses a la Soyer,
namely, Soyer's "Pantropheon." It was said by
Napoleon that he should go down to posterity
with his Code in his hand. Alexis will accomplish
that descent in a manner more savoury, and quite
as appropriate—with the bonnet blanc on his head,
a stewpan at his elbow, a tasting spoon between
his fingers, and on his knee the witnesses of his
magiric genius the " Regenerator " and the
" Pantropheon."

Audrey. A Novel. By Laura Jewry. 3 vols.
Newby.
Charliewood is the name of the little village
within the precincts of which the majority of the
incidents of this singular fiction are supposed to
occur—the interest of the tale sometimes extend-
ing as far as the neighbouring park of Crowhurst ;
sometimes carrying the reader to a seaport on the
coast of Yorkshire ; sometimes to Paris ; sometimes
to London ; and sometimes even to the snowy fast-
nesses of the mountains of Switzerland. Strictly
speaking, we take " Audrey" to be a curiosity—a
sort of phenomenon in imaginative literature. It
appears to us as though the authoress had deter-
mined to test her capacity for extracting a charm
solely from what to the general observer would ap-
pear to be in itself the most repulsive. To our
thinking, she seems to have resolved to try her skill
in fixing attention upon themes which the public at
large are usually disposed to deem the most unat-
tractive. It is in this particular sense that we
speak of the novel before us as a curiosity and a
sort of phenomenon in literature. Conspicuous
.among the figures in the foreground of the picture
are—a surly old sexton, Jonathan Dabney, intensely
selfish and profoundly ignorant—a shrewish little
milliner, Annette Skrimpton, who marries him
shortly after his becoming a widower—a half-witted
old woman, Dame Page, to whose friends it would
have been a blessing if she could possibly have been
got a little out of the way by being bedridden—a
fretful lameter, Johnnie, who is a genius in scrib-
bling verses, and a blunderer in falling in love
where his tenderness is not wanted—and a variety
of such like characters. Audrey Dabney is the
rustic heroine of the story, while the lady heroine
is Helen, the only daughter and heiress of the rich
Sir Philip Beaumont. Between these two—linking
their fates together—comes the hero of the tale, a
Tyrolese peasant, who travels through England as
a concert singer, and wins the heart of each of
these fair damsels, one Herr Basil Findelkind.
Audrey's excellence shines amiable enough
throughout the three volumes but Helen's
position as a heroine is not by any means agreeable
from first to last as a subject of contemplation.
How this may be the reader can easily conjecture
on hearing that Helen is twice refused—first by
Basil and afterwards by Vaux—Basil subsequently
marrying Audrey, and Vaux becoming entrapped
into wedlock by a horrid little designing dependent,
Louisa Delville, a faint reflection of Becky Sharp,
having all the viciousness, but none of the genius
of Clitemnestra. And what adds to the painfulness
of ileien's situation in Batfairg regard, is the cir-

cumstance of her having herself proposed to Herr
Findelkind. An episode in the narrative is of a
somewhat kindred description. Audrey's father
having at the commencement of the fiction sud-
denly and mysteriously disappeared from Charlie-
wood, ultimately, in the course of the story,
"turns up" again as a sailor, calling himself Tom
Taylor, though having no kind of resemblance
whatever to the comical Professor known as a con-
tributor to Punch, and as the editor of " Haydon's
Autobiography." Tom Taylor, otherwise Dabney,
going on a wild-goose chace after his long-neglected
daughter (supposed to have married one Fiddle-
skin, a foreign itinerant with white hair and a
barrel organ) is most egregiously deceived into the
belief that he has discovered her and her husband
in the persons of two most rascally and designing
vagabonds. He supports this knavish couple until
the woman dies, and, dying, discovers to him the
whole secret of the deception. What in this episode
surpasses even its improbability, is the unaccount-
able oddity of the circumstance that the authoress
endeavours by every device to excite our sympathy
for the woman, and to call forth in behalf of the
rogue, her husband, feelings of interest, or at least
of commiseration. Another testimony, we con-
ceive, that our suggestion is not altogether erro-
neous, namely, that the novel before us is a veri-
table curiosity or phenomenon in literature. As a
curiosity in this way it reveals a considerable
amount of ingenuity—ingenuity in the linking to-
gether of a series of the most unlikely incidents, and
in the grouping of some of the least attractive of all
conceivable characters. " Audrey," in these re-
spects, stands altogether alone among the writer's
productions. If contrasted as a work of art with
its predecessors from the same hand, it must rank
undoubtedly below both " The Cup and the Lip"
and "The Tide of Life." It cannot, consequently,
be brought for an instant into comparison with the
enthralling and picturesque romance of the " Forest
and the Fortress," much less be mentioned in the
same breath with the exquisite narrative of the
" Ransom," the first and incomparably the best of
all Miss Laura Jewry's varied compositions, a fic-
tion that carried us back to the days of the cru-
saders, a story that reminded one of Scott, a tale
that built up the authoz's reputation