Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon].

  • John Timbs
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints for the table: or, the economy of good living / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    dinner, to bring some “ maids of honour,” those cheese- cakes for which the place has, time out of mind, been cele- brated. The lady stared, then laughed, and asked, “ What do you mean by ‘ maids of honour “ Dear me!” said Daly, “ don’t you know that this is so courtly a place, and so completely under the influence of state etiquette, that every thing in Richmond is called after the functionaries of the palace ? What are called cheesecakes elsewhere, are here called maids of honour; a capon is called a lord cham- berlain ; a goose is a lord steward; a roast pig is a master of the horse; a pair of ducks, grooms of the bedchamber; a gooseberry tart, a gentleman-usher of the black rod; and so on.” The unsophisticated lady was taken in, and when she actually saw the maids of honour make their appear- ance in the shape of cheesecakes, she convulsed the whole party by turning to the waiter, and desiring him in a sweet but decided tone, to bring her a gentleman-usher of the black rod, if they had one in the house quite cold. One of Lord Byron’s odd fancies was dining at all sorts of odd out-of-the-way places. Somebody popped upon him in a coffee-house in the Strand, where the attraction was, that he paid a shilling to dine with his hat on. This he called his “ /if/<-house,” and lie used to boast of the comfort of being covered at meal-time. Lord Byron describes “ a largish party” as “ first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then un- intelligible, then altogethery, then drunk;” and mentions “ a d d corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however crooked, could possibly accom- modate themselves.” Q. What portion of astronomy is most attractive to the bnn-vivant ? A. The Jovial system. The ballad is a species of poetry peculiar to this country. Our forefathers excelled in it; but we moderns have lost the art. It is observed, that we have few good English odes. But, to make amends, we have many excellent bal- lads. What can be prettier than Gay’s ballad, or rather Swift’s, Arbuthnot’s, Pope’s and Gay’s, in the What do ve N
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