Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-10-03

Country life in France is delightful,
but there is not that luxurious open
handed entertaining which obtains in
England.
In Italy, one is seldom admitted to the
privacy of the family dinner. 1t is
patriarchal affair. But when one is ad-
mitted they find much that is ':st1a-
patica.'
The cookery is good, the service is
perfect, the dinner is short, the CONVEX
sation gay and easy.
1t is as impossible to say what makes
the model diner out as to describe the
soil which shall grow the best grapes.
| We feel it, and we enjoy it, but we can
give no recipe for the production of the
same.
But as history, with exemplary truth
| fulness, has always painted man as
throwing off all the trouble of giving a
dinner on his wife, why have not our
clever women appreciate the power Of
dinner giving in politics? Why are not
our women greater politicians? Where
is our Lady Jersey, our Lady Palmcrs-
ton, our Princess Belgioso? The Prin-
cess Lieven, wife to the Russian ambas-
sador in London, was said to have held
the peace of Europe in the conduct of
her entrees" and countrywoman of
our own is to-day supposed to influence
| the policy of Germany largely by her
dinners. From the polished and versa
tile memoirs of the Ornaments, Wal
poles, D'Azelios, Sidney Smith and Lord
Houghton how many an anecdote
brings on the efficacy of a dinner in
reconciling foes and in the making of
friends? How many a conspiracy was
Matched, no doubt, behind an ''aspic of
! plovers' eggs" or 'vol au vent de
volatile" How many budding minis
| try, according to Lord Huntington,
was brought to full power over we'll
ordered table cloth? How many war
cloud dispelled by the proper tempera-
ture of the Burgundy? 1t is related of
Lord Lyndhurst, when somebody asked
him how to succeed in life, he answered:
"Give good wine" A French states
man would have answered: "Give good
dinners" Talleyrand kept the most re-
nowned table of his day, quite as much
for political as hygienic reasons. AT
eighty years of age he still spent an
hour every morning with his chef, dis
cussing the dishes to be served at din
ner.. The Emperor Napoleon, who was
no epicure, nor even a cOnnOisSeur, was
nevertheless pleased with Tallcyrands
luxurious and refined hospitality, in
consequence of the impression it made
on those who were SO fortunate as to
partalc of it. On the other hand, one
hesitates to contemplate the indiges-
tions and bad cookery which must have
hatched an Oliver Cromwell, or still!
earlier, that decadence of Italian cook
cry which made Borgia possible.
Social leaders in all ages and coun-
tries have thus studied the tastes and
the intellectual aptitudes and capabili-
ties of those whom they have gathered
about their boards, and the mythology
would suggest that the petite coupers,''
on high Olympus enlivened by the Sin
extinguishable laughter of the gods"
had much to do with the politics of the
Greek heaven under Jupiter, and in
deed reading the northern Saga in the
same connection, may not the vague
and awful conceptions of cookery which
seem to have filled the northern mind
have had something to do with the
opera of Sicgfried, and to have entered
into all the northern mythology.
Even the music of Wagner seems to
have been inspired by a draught from
the skull of his enemy 1t has the fas-
cination of Changing steel, and the
mighty rustling of armor. The wind
signs through the forest, and the ice
blast freezes the nearer. The chasms
of earth seem to open before us. But
it has also the terror of an indigestion,
and the brooding horror of a nightmare
evidently from drinking metheglia, and
eating half-roasted kid.
But in America, hostess sure of her
soups, and her entrees, with such talk
ers as she can command, could infl-
ence American political movements
she might influence its music-by her
dinners, and become an enviable Lady
PalmerstOn.
Old people are apt to say, that there
is q decay in the art of conversation,
that it is one of the lost arts. No doabt
this is in measure true all over the
world. A French salon would be to-day
an imposssbility for that very reason.
1t is no longer the fashion to tell anec-
dotes or to try to be amusing. A per-
son is considered a p1ig, who sits up TO
amuse the company. All this is bad, it
is reactiOnary, after the drone of the
! bore constructor. 1t is going on all
over the world. 1t is part of that hurry
which has made US talk slang, which is
the jelly of speech, speech condensed,
and boiled down, easily transported and
warranted to keep in all climates, like
canned soup.
But there is a very pleasant 'Jasto
naaIien" between the stately (perhaps
starchy) anecdotist of the past and the
easy and witty tallzer of to-day, who
may occasionally drop into slang, and
what is more, may be permitted GER
tain slovenliness of speech.
There are certain mistakes in Eng
fish, soberly, advisedly and without
fear of Lindlay Murray, which make
one sigh for the proprieties of the past.
The trouble is that we have no standard.
Writers are always at work at the
English language, and yet many people
say that it is at present the most irreS
ular and least understood of all Ian
guages.
The intellectual components of sue