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.

    152/188 page 136
    i;3(3 one evening in liis arm-chair, two or three hours after din- ner, is reported to have apologized, by saying : “ When one is alone, the bottle docs come round so often.” On a simi- lar occasion, Sir Hercules Langreish, on being asked “ Have you finished all that port, (three bottles), without assistance?” answered “ No—not quite that—I had the assistance of a bottle of madeira.” At large dinners in the City Halls, and on certain grand occasions at the Inner Temple, it is customary to pass huge silver goblets down the table, filled with a delicious composition immemorially termed “ sack,” consisting of sweetened and exquisitely-flavoured white wine: the butler attends its progress to replenish it, and each citizen and student is restricted to a sip. Yet, it chanced not long since, at the Temple, that though the number present fell short of seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were con- sumed. The silver vessels in the city are termed “ loving cupsand it is etiquette for each to apply his napkin to the brim of the goblet before he passes it to his neighbour. The late Sir William Aylett, a grumbling member of the Union Club, and a two-bottle man, one day observing Mr. James Smith furnished with half a pint of sherry, eyed his cruet with contempt, and exclaimed: “ So, I see you have got one of those d—d life preservers!”—N. Monthly May. Some people are very proud of their wine, and court your approbation by incessant questions. One of a party being invited by Sir Thomas Grouts to a second glass of his “ old East India,” he replied “ one was a dose—had rather not double the Cape .•” and, at the first glass of Champagne, he inquired whether there had been a plentiful supply of gooseberries last year. Mr. Madden relates in the Infirmities of Genius, that a baronet well known in the gay world was seized with paralysis, and found himself on his return from a con- vivial party, suddenly deprived of speech, and power of moving one side of his body. Either from desperation, or an impulse of mental aberration, the gentleman had a bottle of port wine brought to his bed-side, and having finished it, he turned with great composure on his side, and
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