SUPPER

"S is the Supper, where all went in pairs;
T is the Twaddle they talked on the stairs."

Though the merry muse of dear "C. S. C." may thus serve to introduce our subject, the repast which he has in view is only a very special and peculiar—one had almost said an unnatural—form of Supper. The Ball Supper, eaten anywhere between 12 o'clock and 2 a.m., is clearly a thing apart from the Supper which, in days of Early Dinner, made England great. Yet the Ball Supper had its charms, and they have been celebrated both in prose and in verse. Byron knew all about them:—

"I've seen some balls and revels in my time,
And stay'd them over for some silly reason."

One of those reasons was the prospect of supping with Bessie Rawdon,[9] the only girl he ever saw

"Whose bloom could after dancing dare the dawn."

In her society a fresh zest was added to "the lobster salad, and champagne, and chat" which the poet loved so well.

Fifty years had passed, and a Ball Supper was (and for all I know may still be) much the same. "The bright moments flew on. Suddenly there was a mysterious silence in the hall, followed by a kind of suppressed stir. Every one seemed to be speaking with bated breath, or, if moving, walking on tiptoe. It was the supper-hour—

'Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart.'

'What a perfect family!' exclaimed Hugo Bohun as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly. 'Everything they do in such perfect taste! How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!'" But, after all, Ball Suppers are frivolities, and College Suppers scarcely more serious; although a modern bard has endeavoured to give them a classical sanction by making young Horace at the University of Athens thus address himself to his new acquaintance Balbus:—

"A friend has sent me half-a-dozen brace
Of thrush and blackbird from a moor in Thrace.
These we will have for supper, with a dish
Of lobster-patties and a cuttle-fish."

And we may be sure that a meal where Horace was host was not unaccompanied by wine and song.

But the Supper which I have in mind is the substantial meal which, during the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, formed the nightly complement to the comparatively early dinner. "High Tea" such as Dickens loved and described—"Bagman's Tea," as I was taught to call it,—became popular as tea became cheaper. You dined, say, at one, and drank tea (and ate accompaniments) at seven. But Supper, eaten at nine or ten o'clock, was a more substantial affair, and the poison of Tea, so much deprecated by our modern Coroners, was never suffered to pollute it. In the account of a supper in 1770 I have read this exhilarating item: "A turtle was sent as a Present to the Company and dress'd in a very high Gout, after the West Indian manner;" and such a dish, eaten at bedtime, of course required vinous assistance. A forefather of my own noted in his diary for 1788, "The man who superintends Mrs. Cazalan's of New Cavendish Street suppers has a salary of £100 a year for his trouble;" and one may rest assured that Mrs. Cazalan's guests drank something more exhilarating than tea at her famous supper-table. "Guy Mannering" depicts the habits of Scotch Society at the close of the eighteenth century; and Counsellor Pleydell, coming hungry from a journey, suggests that a brace of wild ducks should be added to the "light family supper." These he ate "without prejudice to a subsequent tart," and with these viands he drank ale and Burgundy, moralizing thus: "I love the Coena, the supper of the ancients, the pleasant meal and social glass that washes out of one's mind the cobwebs that business or gloom have been spinning in our brains all day." On the point of precedent, the Counsellor, or rather Sir Walter Scott, is at issue with Lord John Russell, who said, in protesting against dinner at eight o'clock: "Some learned persons, indeed, endeavour to support this practice by precedent, and quote the Roman Supper; but those suppers were at three o'clock in the afternoon, and ought to be a subject of contempt instead of imitation in Grosvenor Square." Supper at three in the afternoon! I must leave this startling statement to the investigations of Dryasdust. At the same period as that at which the Whig Essayist, not yet statesman, was protesting against late dinners, Sydney Smith was bewailing the effects of supper on the mind and temper:—

"My friend sups late; he eats some strong soup, then a lobster, then some tart, and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The next day I call upon him. He is going to sell his house in London and retire into the country. He is alarmed for his eldest daughter's health. His expenses are hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can save him from ruin. All this is lobster; and, when over-excited nature has had time to manage this testaceous incumbrance, the daughter recovers, the finances are in good order, and every rural idea is effectually excluded from the mind."

I take due note of the word wine, but I believe it was usually mixed with water. Of Mr. Pitt, not a model of abstemiousness, it is recorded that he drank "a good deal of port wine and water at supper"; and Mr. Woodhouse, whom his worst enemy never accused of excess, recommended Mrs. Goddard to have "half a glass of wine, a small half-glass, in a tumbler of water," as an accompaniment to the minced chicken and scalloped oysters. Dr. Kitchener, who was a practising physician as well as a writer on Gastronomy, recommended for Supper "a Biscuit, or a Sandwich, or a bit of Cold Fowl, and a Glass of Beer, or Wine, and Toast and Water"; or for "such as dine very late, Gruel or a little Bread and Cheese, or Powdered Cheese, and a glass of Beer." They vaunt that medicine is a progressive science, but where is the practitioner to-day who would venture on these heroic prescriptions of 1825?

I am accused of quoting too often from Lord Beaconsfield; and, though I demur to the word "too," I admit that I quote from him very often, because no writer whom I know scanned so carefully and noted so exactly the social phenomena of the time in which he lived. Here is his description of Supper in the year 1835:—

"When there were cards there was always a little supper—a lobster, and a roasted potato, and that sort of easy thing, with curious drinks; and, on fitting occasions, a bottle of champagne appeared."

The Suppers cooked by the illustrious Ude at Crockford's Gaming House (now the Devonshire Club) were famous for their luxurious splendour; and, being free to all comers, were used as baits to inveigle ingenuous Youth into the Gambling-room; for you could scarcely eat a man's supper night after night and never give him his chance of revenge. But Suppers to be eaten amid the frantic excitements of a Gaming House were, of necessity, rather stimulating than substantial. For substantial Suppers we must turn to the life of a class rather less exalted than that which lost its fortune at "Crocky's". Dickens's Suppers, which may be taken to represent the supping habits of the Middle Class in 1837, are substantial enough, but rather unappetizing. Old Mr. Wardle, though the most hospitable of men, only gave Mr. Pickwick "a plentiful portion of a gigantic round of cold beef"—which most people would think an indigestible supper. Mrs. Bardell's system was even more culpable, according to Dr. Wynn Westcott, for she gave her friends a little warm supper of "Petitoes and Toasted Cheese," with "a quiet cup of tea." I do not exactly know what petitoes are, but I am sure that when stewed in tea they must be poisonous. When Mr. and Mrs. Kenwigs, in honour of their wedding-day, made a supper for their uncle, the Collector, they arranged the feast more hygienically, for their "pair of boiled fowls, large piece of pork, apple-pie, potatoes, and greens" were reinforced by a bowl of punch; and there is a quite delicious supper in the "Old Curiosity Shop," where a stew, worthy to rank with that which Meg Merrilies forced on the reluctant Dominie, is washed down with a pint of mulled ale.

Thackeray, though he excelled at a Dinner, knew also, at least in his earlier and Bohemian days, what was meant by a Supper. Mr. Archer, the journalist in "Pendennis," who was so fond of vaunting his imaginary acquaintance with great people, thus described his evening repast at Apsley House:—

"The Duke knows what I like, and says to the Groom of the Chambers: 'Martin, you will have some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of Pale Ale, and some brown Sherry ready in my study as usual.' The Duke doesn't eat supper himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a hearty meal, and he knows that I dine early."

But all this is fifty years ago and more. Do people eat supper nowadays? Of course the young and frivolous eat ball-suppers, and supper after the Theatre is a recognized feature of London life. But does any one eat supper in his own house? To be sure, a tray of wine and water still appears in some houses just as the party is breaking up, and it is called a "Supper Tray," but is only the thin and pallid ghost of what was once a jolly meal.

One more form of Supper remains to be recorded. In the circles in which I was reared it was customary to observe one day in the year as a kind of Festival of the Church Missionary Society or the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, according as the principles of the Incumbent were Low or High. The arrangements comprised a special service in church, with a sermon by that mysterious stranger "the Deputation from the Parent Society"; an evening meeting in the Town Hall; and a supper at the Rectory or the Squire's house. Bidden to such a festival, a friend of the Missionary cause wrote thus to the lady who had invited him: "I greatly regret that I cannot attend the service, and I very much fear that I shall not be in time for the meeting. But, d.v., I will be with you at Supper."