The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-02-16

scious Lovers" produced in 1922,
makes Tom, smart young servant
rallying an old servitor, say: you
talk as as If the world was now just
as it was when my old master and
you were in your youth; when you
went to dinner because it was so much
o'clock; when the great blow was
given in the hall at the pantry door,
and all the family came out of their
holes in such strange dresses and for
mai faces as you see in the pictures
in our long gallery in the country"
The great blow at the pantry door,
or the cooks thrice-repeated sum-
mons, was evidently quite out of fash
ion among smart, up-to-date folk.
Washington Irving, in his effectively
and carefully drawn picture of old
time ways and observances at that de-
lghtful mansion, Brace bridge Hall, re-
wives the old custom, and the merry
party are summoned to the Christmas
dinner in the great hall by the sound
of the rolling pin banged upon the
dresser by the cook.
Another odd way of announcing the
advent of dinner, which prevailed in
one family, at least, was by beat of
drum In Mrs. Charles Bagot's most
interesting volume of "reminiscences,
called Links With the Past" pub
lished a year or two ago, there are
given some notes by the Rev. F. E. Pa
get, on life in days gone by at Blith-
field, the staffordshire seat of the Ba-
got family. He mentioned that in his
time, the middle of the nineteenth CEN
fury, the custom was still maintained
of announcing meals by sound of drum,
and says that it is related that on
| one occasion during the Civil War,
when party of Royalist officers were
| Invited to dinner at Blithfeld, the
guests were thrown into a state
of great CONSERVATION by hearing the
drum beat, and until they were told
! of the old family custom of thus an
nouncing meals imagined that they
had been betrayed into the hands of
| Cromwell's Soldiery. But these curious
old methods of summoning guests to
the table-drum and rolling pin and
| thrice-repeated knock-are now prob
ably altogether extinct.
There remains only one rival to the
| Eell-the gong. If Sir Walter Scott
! may be trusted. the dinner gong came
! first into vogue about the end of the
/ eighteenth century. In the chapter of
/ the "Antiquary'' the action of which
is supposed to take place about the
| time named, which describes the ia
nous dinner party given by Monk
barns, we are told that Mr.. Oldbuck's
| ungallant abuse of "womankind' was
for dinner. Thereupon the antiquary
began to discourse about the
| doubt he had been in with
| regard to the dinner call
"Gongs." he said. "now in present use
seemed a new-fangled and heathenish
| invention, and the voice of the female
womankind l rejected as equally shrill
and dissonant and so he had deter
mined to resume the bell. The gong,
| however, notwithstanding it's heath
! enish" origin, has held it's own and is
| still largely used. A story of Tenny-
! son, told some time go in the Cen
| fury Magazine by Mr.. McCabe, shows
| that a gong was the method employed
| in the poets beautiful home at Aid
worth, on Black Down. Mr.. McCabe
was strolling with his host on the ter
race at Aldworth. when the first gong
sounded for dinner. II am off," he
said, ito get into my clothes Ten
| nyson stopped him for a moment, say
| ing, kindly, you must excuse my not
| dressing for dinner; 1 never dress for
anybody. My old friend Argyll was
here last week. and I said to him,
Argyll, l can't dress for you. never
dress for any one, and II made an
| exception and dressed for a Duke my
butler would set me down as a snob.
We must keep we'll with our buffers,
! you know"