The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-07 00:00:00

DINING ON HORSEFLESH.

-
vn Thursday night a horseflesh banquet, or, to give it
finer title, a diner de cheval—or, still finer, a banquet
hippophagique—was held at the Langham Hotel, Portland-
place, under the presidency of Mr. W. Forsyth, Q.C.,
supported by Sir John Lubbock, Dr. Russell, Mr. Thomas
Hughes, M.P., Mr. Charles Dickens, jun., Mr. Herman
Merivale, Mr. Field, the celebrated V.S., General
Browning, &c.
Upwards of 160 gentlemen sat down to dinner in tne
magnificent banquet-room of the hotel. The fine room
was in some portions of it appropriately decorated for the
occasion. Approaching the centre of the apartment just
where the chairman sat, were equine masks—heads of
horses made of pasteboard ; and to those uninitiated in the
eating of horseflesh, as they passed by to their seats at the
banquet table, those gracefully-formed models were looked
at by them—and it must' be confessed that they could
not be blamed—as the prognostics of the doom to eat
something indigestible certainly, if not to suffer the
horrors of nightmare. That state of mind might be
come to after discussing the choicest amontillado,
vin du Rhine, champagne sec, Chateau Perayayne,
Volnay St. Peray, and the various liqueurs with
which purveyors of public dinners provide those who
patronise them, and which on Thursday, at the Langham,
were in quality unquestionably good. Anyone who looked
upon the company as they assembled in the anteroom
must have surmised that they felt that what they were
about to eat was good and wholesome, and that they were
determined to make a trial of it. It was possible to see
men who bad taken guinea-and-half tickets tremulous
about the first morsel they would touch, and there cannot
be a doubt that among many of the gentlemen partaking
of the banquet there were some who turned up their noses
and made faces before they had touched a morsel of the
equine food, which were enough to turn any u onkey
in the Royal Zoological Gardens from his daily
pubulum. But, as the time—or rather the hour after
the time—came on, people settle down, and thought they
would set their stomachs in proper fortified order by im-
bibing sherry, which beamed through a hundred decanters.
The dinner began, and, beef or no beef, horse or no horse,
it was a splendid banquet. Now, at- the top of the bill of
fare was the motto, I` Les prejuges sont des maladies de
l'esprit humain," a very appropriate- one -for such a ban-
quet, no doubt. Well, we first had two soups, "Le
consomme de chei'al ct l' A B C, or, in plain English,
clear horse soup, called by some name settled by the
owner and patentee—if there is one—A BC. There was
also soup "a la puree de destriers," which means the
soup—or rather the pure soup—of chargers. Well, it
must be stated that the thick and the thin soup made out
of the- horseflesh contrasted, in our opinion, very
remarkably—indeed in advance of that which at public
- dinners is supposed to come from the flesh of oxen. No
doubt the nausea which the very idea of horseflesh
created was made sedative by the amontillado sherry
which washed it down ; but there could be seen at the
table many and many a grave gentleman who had
without fear or trembling encountered his daily cut
-)f beef and two-pennyworth of vegetables in the
City, although he was the heir to a princely
fortune, who did not think his nobility could descend to
the eating of common horse. But they all settled down,
and, for very shame, " horse sausages," " loins of horse,"
"cutlets of horse," " roast ribs of horse," " horse tongue,"
" horse ribs," loin, shoulder, neck, legs, saddle, and every
part known to the butcher, were devoured by the gentle-
men who assembled for that purpose at the Langharn
Hotel. It must be expected that an opinion
would be given in these columns as to the actual
meat. Well, this is the truth : The horse soup
was so excellent and well-flavoUred that no one
could institute a damaging comparison between it and
that which at Willis's or the London Tavern one gets
a Julienne, or the soup that is called by some extraordinary
name, but which has neither within it extraordinary
flavour nor substance. It was a different thing with the
meat—the roast horse—very good to taste, of excellent
flavour, not one bit wilder in its flavour than the flesh of
oxen. It should be remarked here that the horseflesh
was evidently cooked too much—that it 'had been done
to " rags," as it is said, and that no flavour, on that
account; could be got off it. However, we were favoured
with an underdone cut off a sirloin of horse, and it is
but just to say that it eats as tenderly as any sirloin of
beef could. During the eveninc, a man dressed as a herald
entered the banquet-room, and: playing on a horn, " The
roast beef of 01(1 England," ushered in what the chairman
called the Earl or the Marquis of Horse—that which in ox
flesh would becalled the Baron of beef. lt must be re-
membered that this was not a dinner made from the ordi-
nary horse which one could catch in a field, or find quite
gone beyond his labour in a cab-master's yard. The
horses which supplied the main feature in this banquet
reorntre ivstasr,i
omu'shoguhiasdes tianstewdbitcliiie
gdaestlirg,,hntospillici.cf
h
were fed up for the occas!on. Many naturalists and
s ?)iresiel tfliefisch
gua sratl
French cooks can serve it up, determined that no
should be spared in doing justice to the horse cooked in all
conceivable Gallic modes. Paris being admittedly the
headquarters of hippophagy, an English commissioner
was despatched to the gay French capital, his mission
being to confer with the. Wading authorities there on the
introduction of the various preparations and condiments
which make horseflesh particularly palatable, and also to
procure, what cannot be obtained in England—a stock of
horse oil, which is made from the fat o the horse, care-
cllly refined.

RaILTVAY AND 02I1Elt COMPANIES.

LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN.

With a view of making the public aware, at the
earliest period practicable, of the dividend likely to
be declared by this company at the ensuing general
meeting, Mr. Stephen Reay, the secretary, states
that the accounts, though not yet finally audited,
or approved by the board of directors, show a ba-
lance sufficient to admit of a dividend for the past
half year at the rate of 61 per cent. per annum.