LUNCHEON

"Munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, dinner, supper, luncheon!"

So sings, or says, Robert Browning in his ditty of the Pied Piper, and it is to be remarked that he was not driven to invent the word "nuncheon" by the necessity of finding a rhyme for "luncheon," for "puncheon" was ready to his hand, and "nuncheon" was not a creation, but an archaism, defined by Johnson as "food eaten between meals." Let no one who perpends the amazing dinners eaten by our forefathers accuse those good men of gluttony. Let us rather bethink ourselves of their early and unsatisfying breakfasts, their lives of strenuous labour, their ignorance of five o'clock tea; and then thank the goodness and the grace which on our birth have smiled, and have given us more frequent meals and less ponderous dinners. Lord John Russell (1792-1878) published anonymously in 1820 a book of Essays and Sketches "by a Gentleman who has left his Lodgings." On the usages of polite society at the time no one was better qualified to speak, for Woburn Abbey was his home, and at Bowood and Holland House he was an habitual guest; and this is his testimony to the dining habits of society: "The great inconvenience of a London life is the late hour of dinner. To pass the day impransus and then to sit down to a great dinner at eight o'clock is entirely against the first dictates of common sense and common stomachs. Women, however, are not so irrational as men, and generally sit down to a substantial luncheon at three or four; if men would do the same, the meal at night might be lightened of many of its weighty dishes and conversation would be no loser." So far, Luncheon (or Nuncheon) would seem to be exclusively a ladies' meal; and yet Dr. Kitchener could not have been prescribing for ladies only when he gave his surprising directions for a luncheon "about twelve," which might "consist of a bit of roasted Poultry, a basin of Beef Tea or Eggs poached or boiled in the shell, Fish plainly dressed, or a Sandwich; stale Bread, and half a pint of good Home-brewed Beer, or Toast and Water, with about one fourth or one-third part of its measure of Wine, of which Port is preferred, or one-seventh of Brandy."

In Miss Austen's books, Luncheon is dismissed under the cursory appellation of "Cold Meat," and Madeira and water seems to have been its accompaniment; but more prodigal methods soon began to creep in. The repast which Sam Weller pronounced "a wery good notion of a lunch" consisted of veal pie, bread, knuckle of ham, cold beef, beer, and cold punch; and let it be observed in passing that, had he used the word "lunch" in polite society, the omission of the second syllable would have been severely reprehended by a generation which still spoke of the "omnibus" and had only just discontinued "cabriolet." The verb "to lunch" was even more offensive than the substantive from which it was derived; and Lord Beaconsfield, describing the Season of 1832, says that "ladies were luncheoning on Perigord pie, or coursing in whirling britskas." To Perigord pies as a luncheon dish for the luxurious and eupeptic may be added venison pasties—

"Now broach me a cask of Malvoisie,
Bring pasty from the doe,"

said the Duchess in "Coningsby." "That has been my luncheon—a poetic repast." And Lady St. Jerome, when she took Lothair to a picnic, fed him with lobster sandwiches and Chablis. Fiction is ever the mirror of fact; and a lady still living, who published her Memoirs only a year or two ago, remembers the Lady Holland who patronized Macaulay "sitting at a beautiful luncheon of cold turkey and summer salad."

But, in spite of all these instances, Luncheon was down to 1840 or thereabouts a kind of clandestine and unofficial meal. The ladies wanted something to keep them up. It was nicer for the children than having their dinner in the nursery. Papa would be kept at the House by an impending division, and must get a snack when he could—and so on and so forth. If a man habitually sate down to luncheon, and ate it through, he was contemned as unversed in the science of feeding. "Luncheon is a reflection on Breakfast and an insult to Dinner;" and moreover it stamped the eater as an idler. No one who had anything to do could find time for a square meal in the middle of the day. When Mr. Gladstone was at the Board of Trade, his only luncheon consisted of an Abernethy biscuit which Mrs. Gladstone brought down to the office and forced on the reluctant Vice-President.

But after 1840 a change set in. Prince Albert was notoriously fond of luncheon, and Queen Victoria humoured him. They dined late, and the Luncheon at the Palace became a very real and fully recognized meal. At it the Queen sometimes received her friends, as witness the Royal Journal—"Mamma came to luncheon with her lady and gentleman." It could not have been pleasant for the "lady and gentleman," but it established the practice.

"Sunday luncheon" was always a thing apart. For some reason not altogether clear, but either because devotion long sustained makes a strong demand on the nervous system or because a digestive nap was the best way of employing Sunday afternoon, men who ate no luncheon on week-days devoured Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding on Sundays and had their appropriate reward. Bishop Wilberforce, whose frank self-communings are always such delightful reading, wrote in his diary for Sunday, October 27, 1861: "Preached in York Minster. Very large congregation. Back to Bishopthorpe. Sleepy, eheu, at afternoon service; must eat no luncheon on Sunday." When Luncheon had once firmly established itself, not merely as a meal but as an institution, Sunday luncheons in London became recognized centres of social life. Where there was even a moderate degree of intimacy a guest might drop in and be sure of mayonnaise, chicken, and welcome. I well remember an occasion of this kind when I saw social Presence of Mind exemplified, as I thought and think, on an heroic scale. Luncheon was over. It had not been a particularly bounteous meal; the guests had been many; the chicken had been eaten to the drumstick and the cutlets to the bone. Nothing remained but a huge Trifle, of chromatic and threatening aspect, on which no one had ventured to embark. Coffee was just coming, when the servant entered with an anxious expression, and murmured to the hostess that Monsieur Petitpois—a newly arrived French attachÉ—had come and seemed to expect luncheon. The hostess grasped the situation in an instant, and issued her commands with a promptitude and a directness which the Duke of Wellington could not have surpassed. "Clear everything away, but leave the Trifle. Then show M. Petitpois in." Enter Petitpois. "Delighted to see you. Quite right. Always at home at Sunday luncheon. Pray come and sit here and have some Trifle. It is our national Sunday dish." Poor young Petitpois, actuated by the same principle which made the Prodigal desire the husks, filled himself with sponge-cake, jam, and whipped cream; and went away looking rather pale. If he kept a journal, he no doubt noted the English Sunday as one of our most curious institutions, and the Trifle as its crowning horror.

Cardinal Manning, as all the world knows, never dined. "I never eat and I never drink," said the Cardinal. "I am sorry to say I cannot. I like dinner society very much. You see the world, and you hear things which you do not hear otherwise." Certainly that Cardinal was a fictitious personage, but he was drawn with fidelity from Cardinal Manning, who ate a very comfortable dinner at two o'clock, called it luncheon, and maintained his principle. There have always been some houses where the luncheons were much more famous than the dinners. Dinner, after all, is something of a ceremony: it requires forethought, care, and organization. Luncheon is more of a scramble, and, in the case of a numerous and scattered family, it is the pleasantest of reunions. "When all the daughters are married nobody eats luncheon," said Lothair to his solicitor, Mr. Putney Giles: but Mr. Putney Giles, "who always affected to know everything, and generally did," replied that, even though the daughters were married, "the famous luncheons at Crecy House would always go on and be a popular mode of their all meeting." When Lord Beaconsfield wrote that passage he was thinking of Chesterfield House, May Fair, some twenty years before Lord Burton bought it. Mr. Gladstone, who thought modern luxury rather disgusting, used to complain that nowadays life in a country house meant three dinners a day, and if you reckoned sandwiches and poached eggs at five o'clock tea, nearly four. Indeed, the only difference that I can perceive between a modern luncheon and a modern dinner is that at the former meal you don't have soup or a printed menu. But at a luncheon at the Mansion House you have both; so it is well for Lord Mayors that their reigns are brief.

One touch of personal reminiscence may close this study. While yet the Old Bailey stood erect and firm, as grim in aspect as in association, I used often, through the courtesy of a civic official, to share the luncheon of the judge and the aldermen, eaten during an interval in the trial, in a gloomy chamber behind the Bench. I still see, in my mind's eye, a learned judge, long since gone to his account, stuffing cold beef and pigeon pie, and quaffing London stout, black as Erebus and heavy as lead. After this repast he went back into Court (where he never allowed a window to be opened) and administered what he called justice through the long and lethargic afternoon. No one who had witnessed the performance could doubt the necessity for a Court of Criminal Appeal.