The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-09-20

soup and sherry. Indeed the everyday
English dinner is the keynote to all that is
best In the English character. An English
man wishes to eat in company.
How unlike the Spaniard, who never
asks you to dinner. However courtly and
hospitable he may be at other times, and
other hours of the day, he likes to drag his
bone into corner alone and knaw it by /
himself.
The Frenchman, elegant and finished and /
| witty, invites you to the best cooked din
ner in the world, but there is not much of
it, He prefers to entertain you at cafe
that in his own house.
Country life in France is delightful, but
there is not that luxuious open handed en-
tertainlng which obtains il England.
In Italy one is seldom admitted to the
privacy of the family dinner. 1t is patrl-
archal affair. But when one is Admitted
they find much that is simpdticG.
The cookery is good, the service is per- |
feet the dinner is short, the conversation |
gay and easy.
In making up dinner with a view to its
Intellectual components avoid those tedious !
takers who having theme, a system or a /
fad to air always contrive to drag the con-
versation around to their view, and with |
the intention of concentrating the whole at |
tention upon themselves.
One such man, called appropriately the
"bore constructor of conversation" in q
certain city really
DROVE PEOPLE AWAY
from every house to which he was invited,
IS they grew tired of hearing him talk of
that particular science in which he was an
expert
Such talker could make the planet Jupi-
ter bore, and if the talker be of the fem
mime gende how one shuns her verbosity.
81 called on Mrs. Maioribauks yester
day." said free lance once, land we had
little gossip about Coperhicus."
We do not care to have anything quite so
erudite, for if people are really very init
mate with Copernicus they do not mention
it at dinner.
II is as impossible to say what makes the
model diner out as to describe the soil which
shall grow the best grapes Wefeel it, and
we enjoy it, but we can give no receipt for
4 the production of the same.
But as history, with exemplary truthful
y ness, has always painted man as throwing
off all the trouble of giving dinner on his
j, wife, why have not our clever women ap-
2 preciated the power of dinner giving in poll
{ tics? Why are not our women greater poll
ticians: Where is our Lady Jersey, our
g Lady Palmerston, our Princess Belgioso!
o The Princess Lieven, wife to the Russian
d ambassador in London, was said to have
i held the peace of Europe in the conduct
e of her entrees,'' and a countrywoman of
: our own Is to day supposed to influence the
S From the polished and versatile memoirs of
: the Ornaments, Walpoles, D'Azelios, Sid
f ney Smith and Lord Houghton how many
q an anecdote brings on tae efficacy of din
ner in reconciling foes and in The making
J., of friends. How
MANY CONSPIRACY WAS MATCHED,
: no doubt, behind an ''aspic of plovers' eggs"
C or uol du rent de UoIGuIe. How many bud
l. ding ministry, according to Lord Lamming
:, ton, was brought to full power over we'll
|, considered table cloth! How many war
cloud dispelled by the proper temperature
e of the Burgundy! 1t is related of Lord
g Lindhurst, when somebody asked him how
q to succeed in life, he answered: give good
wine.' A French statesmen would have
g answered: Give good dinners" Talley-
rand kept the most renowned table of his
9 day, quite as much for political as hygienic
l. reasons. AT eighty years of age he still
spent an hour every morning with his chef,
IS discussing the dishes to be served at din l.
Z ner. The Emperor Napoleon, who was no
!, epicure, nor even connolsseur, was never
theless pleased with Tallcyrand's luxuri-
GUS and refined hospitality, in consequence
), of the impression it made on those who
u were so fortunate as to partake of it. On
the other hand, one hesitates to contem-
y plate tue indigestious and bad cookery
/ which must have Matched an Oliver Crom-
lie well, or still earlier, that decadence of
s, Italian cookery which made a Borgie
/, possible.
al Social leaders in all ages and countries
: have thus studied the tastes and the intel
r lectual aptitudes and capabilities of those
whom they have gathered about their
a boards, and the pathological would suggest
~ that the petite Soupers, on high Olympus en-
- liveued by the 'inextinguishable laughter
-, of the gods, had much to do with the poll
y tics of the Greek heaven under Jupiter
Ion ind hn
the same connection, may not
r: THE VAGUE AND AWFUL CONCEPTIONS OF
" COOKERY
40 which seem to have filled the northern
m mind have had something TO do with the
opera of "Siegfried,n and to have entered
10 into all the northern mythology
Even the music of Wagner seems to have
is been inspired by draught from the skull
of his enemy. 1t mas the fascination Of
ST changing steel, and the mighty rustling Of
"a armor. The wind signs through the forest
M and the ice blast freezes the nearer. The
chasms OF earth seem to open before US
"a But it has also the terror of an indigestion
n and the brooding horror of a nightmare
Is, evidently from drinking metheglia, and eat
ing lf-roasted kid. The political aspec
of Scandinavian heaven was always
Y stormy. Listen to the trilogy. Bad cook
~ cry explains the libretto of the "Valkyrie'
to but IN America, hostess sure OF hel
% soups ana her entrees. with such takers AZ
al she can command, could influence Ameri-
- can political movements-she might in
N fiuence its music-by her dinners, and be
- core an enviable Lady Palmerston.
&C Old people are apt TO say, that there is {
% . decay in the art of conversation, that it i.
"a one of the lost arts No doubt this is in {
:" measure true ell over the world. A French
~ salon would be to-day an impossibiity fol
y, - that very reason. 1t is no longer the fash.
= ion to tell anecdotes or to try to be amusing
II A person is considered a prig, who sits vi
=, TO amuse the company. All this is bad, ii
is reactionary, after the drone of the bore
;. constructor. 1t is going on all over the
-. world. 1t is part of that hurry which ha:
y, made US talk slang, which is the jelly Of
~ speech, speech condensed, and boiled down
-, easily trans ported and warranted to keen il
~ all climates, like canned soup.
4 But there is a very pleasant juste milien
"a between the stately (perhaps slarchy) an
- ecdotist of the past aud
THE EASY AND WITTY TALKER
ne of to. daX who may occasionally drop int