hostess, but suffered from attacks of pedigree. Her husband, whom society liked and laughed at, built her a superb house in the Champs Elysées (now the Club des Champs Élysées); a wit called it the "leading tavern for men of quality." One of the grand seigneurs who condescended to frequent it consoled his host on having to give up one or other of two jobs. "What matter, my dear man; it's only a million to write off, and that won't stop us from coming to dine with you."

In this household, or vaguely attached to it, Alexandre Balthasar Laurent Grimod de la Reynière grew up. His mother had no time to bestow on him; also, though clever and welllooking, this son of hers had a shocking disfigurement; his arms ended in mere stumps; he had to use artificial hands, and learnt not only to write, but to paint passably with them. His nature had much of that furious concentration which often goes with deformity. After a tour in Switzerland (but to the Switzerland of Voltaire and Rousseau, to see the Swiss and study their philosophic virtues), he came back, was petted by actresses, young and old, and took to writing dramatic criticism. Also, while living in his father's luxuriously appointed home, he gratified his taste for eccentricity by alliance with fantastic persons. One of these, a man of education and no character, had become a public letter-writer

They

in the streets : another, beginning as a butcher, had turned philosopher, supporting himself alternately by house-decorating and tavern-keeping. sponged on the rich youth, who preferred, he said, to have intimates about whose motives there could be no illusion. However, these oddities not satisfying him, he launched portentous invitations to a supper party. The actual guests were seventeen, including one lady dressed as a man. Guests were ushered in by armed retainers; a knight in full armour collected the invitation cards; a legal personage, in wig and gown, noted the names. At ten the supper room was opened, and the seventeen were marshalled by a herald-at-arms and two hundred domestics to a meal of fourteen courses. Hundreds of persons, admitted by separate invitation, contemplated the proceedings from the gallery. One course consisted solely of pork in various forms, and the host assured his guests that it was specially furnished by a pork butcher, his father's cousin - german. American legislators may applaud the fact that no drinks were permitted permitted except except tea, coffee, or chocolate; others will think that Grimod de la Reynière understood the art of self-advertisement better than that of dining, and was a great deal more queer than hospitable. At others of his entertainments there was an obligation on everybody to drink at least seventeen cups of coffee,

and one needy poet, brought in to declaim his verses, was overcome by thirst, and clamoured for a glass of Bordeaux, only to be rated furiously by his host. Grimod's conversion to a more judicious taste in dining had an odd origin. He was quarrelsome and an unbridled lampooner, and he was shut up by lettre de cachet, his family entirely consenting, if, indeed, they did not solicit the order. The place of his internment was a monastery near Nancy, and the good monks heaped attentions on their inmate. If the most persuasive of these attentions were not addressed to his palate, the monks of Merinville must have been very unlike other religious in the France of that date. None the less, Grimod was very anxious to get out, and expressed his willingness even to accept the post of magistrate which he had refused before (saying that if he were a judge he might have to hang his father, but that by going to the bar he could defend him without scruple of conscience).

1789 ended his exile. He had been a valiant Jacobin, and insulted persons of nobility openly in his father's house, but now he wanted to make a bonfire of those who upset the charming old order. "I should die of grief if it were not for the good appetite that saves me," he writes. He was not alone in finding this consolation: Mercier, who had been in six prisons, says that in all of them the best that could be

VOL. CCXVIII.—NO. MCCCXVIII.

bought was sent for, regardless of cost. Good food and good wine helped, he says, to overcome weariness, bad air, and solitude, and, he adds, "gave me courage to wait for justice to come."

La Reynière the elder did not find the moral stimulus of food sufficient; he died of fear, anticipating the guillotine, which swept off twenty-eight fermiers-généraux in a batch.

When Grimod got back to Paris in 1796, his first preoccupation was with the theatre and his organ the Censeur Dramatique.' Then he fell in love with an actress, but she thought him too old-at thirtynine; and in a formal renunciation he fell out of love with love, and in love with gastronomy. He had reached the age: de Cussy, whom he thought the chief of all authorities, says that love of the table never becomes a passion before forty, or at least that no younger man is fully versed in it.

There was a club which dined together weekly at the Rocher du Cancale, and from it Grimod evolved his new conception of a Jury Dégustatoire, which should pass verdict upon whatever dishes were submitted to it without knowing the name of the provider. Grimod himself became secretary, and recorded the proceedings with pedantic scrupulosity. Nothing could be taken more seriously. The jurors must not be more than twelve at a sitting; five was the quorum'; both sexes were admitted. A

I

an invitation failed to attend was fined Fr. 500 (it is true, in paper money). One lady, who excused her non-appearance by a plea of ill-health, and was seen that evening at the opera, suffered sentence of exclusion for three years. The only concession to the less robust sex was some modification of the rule that each juror should eat of every dish and drink of every wine submitted. To give authority to the verdicts, or légitimations, as they were called, an organ was essential, and in 1802 Grimod founded the Almanach des Gourmands.' Such a work is necessarily without continuous plan, but the materials for history and philosophy abound in it, as well as witty sayings. The French Revolution was not merely political, he tells us, it changed our habits: we have come down from four meals (déjeuner, diner, goûter, and souper) to two only. He adds that only dinner was important; but literature elsewhere makes it plain that the mid-day meal was always sérieux. The real change lay in the abolition of a huge supper served about nine or ten. Louis XIV. dined at noon, and dined enormously. Earlier than that the rule of a virtuous life was given in rhyme

"Up at six, dine at ten,
Sup at six, bed at ten,
Makes a man live ten times ten."

In Grimod's day the practice of serving each dish sepa

as a refinement to concentrate attention on a special delicacy. Ordinarily, in the time of these classics, a course consisted of several dishes put on together; fish, flesh, fowl, might all appear at once, to be replaced after an interval by what was really a second dinner. The dessert, or final course, comprised sweets, cheese, and fruit. Gourmands, says Grimod, "only eat the sweets out of politeness, but, as a rule, they are extremely polite."

Here are some of his detached observations quoted or condensed :

"In the provinces, specially in the south, a fine dinner is an affair of state, discussed for three months beforehand. The digestion of it occupies six weeks."

"A fatal indigestion of grilled sturgeon was the commonest death for princes of the Church ; and how could a gourmand die better?"

extraordinarily

Carp were sought after. A single monster might fetch up to thirty louis. One was sent from the Rhine, and went back to Strasbourg because nobody in Paris would pay its price; it made the two journeys successfully, living on bread soaked in wine.

"Pastry is to cookery what figures of rhetoric are to a set speech, its necessary ornament." A host must always have his eyes on plates and glasses. His nature should abhor a vacuum."

"While you can eat green

peas in Paris, you have no right to count yourself unhappy."

There was a Burgundian proverb, "Better a good dinner than a fine coat": it was so faithfully regarded that the people of Burgundy were said to have silk linings to their stomachs.

"The cellarer of a monastery of regulars said, 'There is more wine in the world than we need for masses, and not enough to turn the mills, so what should we do but drink it?

And here, finally, is a passage which Professor Saintsbury surely knows by heart :

"No man should renounce the duty of forming a good cellar. It may cost him thirty years of care, expense, and journeyings, and demand almost superhuman vigilance and activity: but what delights he is preparing for himself, and what an inheritance for the son who perpetuates his name!"

On occasion this wit could be admirably impertinent. Once, when he was brought to book on a charge of lèse-majesté, he wrote this apology to Napoleon's official :

"Nobody admires our great Emperor more than I do. But I may be permitted to deplore the use he makes of his talent. My lord, had he applied himself to the advancement of cookery, who can tell what point of perfection we might not have attained ? ”

But when dealing with ordinary people, no apologies tem

pered Grimod's insolence. Here is how the Almanach des Gourmands,' exercising what Grimod called la police gourmande, expressed its disapproval of a certain fruiterer's shop in les Halles :

"It is not because the widow Fontaine, formerly Marie de Livernois, is a bad woman, whose first husband died of vexation, and whose second hung himself in despair, that we point her out as a rock in the fairway: but simply because fraud and cunning seem to be her native element, and her daughter and her son march faithfully in her footsteps."

One is not surprised to learn that the costs of a libel action. occasioned the 'Almanach's disappearance after its eighth volume. Its author maintained his notoriety by new freaks, and the best known is the wittiest. At a given date all his friends received a card de faire part, in which Madame Grimod de la Reynière announced the melancholy news of her husband's death and fixed the hour of assemblage for the funeral procession in the late afternoon-just before dinner-time. Only a small number of the invited made the necessary sacrifice. They found the hearse in the courtyard, the bier in gloomy state, and during a prolonged waiting in a hall draped with black, they discussed the virtues of the departed, when suddenly the folding doors swung open, disclosing a brilliantly lighted dinner-table, at the head of

which sat gravely Grimod de la Reynière. "Gentlemen, dinner will be growing cold-pray take your places," he said, and so they fell to. "That night," he observes, "I can be sure that I dined with friends."

One of his eccentricities was to allow no looking-glass of any sort in the dining-room. In this the Marquis de Cussy, whom he called the most illustrious gastronomer of l'Europe gourmande," upheld him. "It is only before meals," before meals," said de Cussy," that one should study oneself in the mirror."

All that is left us of de Cussy's wisdom goes into fifty pages, and they, as he said himself, are merely notestalk, rather than writing; no subject is treated exhaustively. But no other of these classics contrives to convey such an impression of authority. The grand seigneur keeps all his prestige when he pontificates on matters of the table.

According to the usage of that time, de Cussy begins with a display of classical learning. "Rome," he says, "outdid Athens. The Romans ate skilfully and superbly, and they talked as well as the Greeks. It is easy to understand the charm which these harsh masters of the world, soured by ambition, overspurred by the difficulties of their vast enterprises, and made callous by long manipulation of men, could find in gatherings where public life with its violent clamour and annoyances sank out of consciousness, and

delight of the palate and of every sense gave an artificial return of youth's sensations. The table was the place where they could rest for a few moments, and evolve human philosophy out of their experience: it was at the table they could have enjoyment of their wealth, their wit, their beautiful women, their luxury, and by limiting their intimacy to this dazzling circle, could form a conception of the happiness it is in this world to be powerful, opulent, agreeable, and witty."

Was it only of the Romans that Napoleon's devoted adherent thought when he wrote this? Passing to more modern times, in the grand siècle of France, according to de Cussy, the Court ate well and brilliantly, but gave too much attention to display. It was the rich bourgeois with the men of letters and the artists who learnt to eat and drink and laugh with the perfection of taste, till at the culmination of the ancien régime exquisite cookery inspired the wit of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, and the rest. hours spent in peaceable debate between men of the highest learning and accomplishment after a perfect dinner did more," says this gourmand, "to advance the human mind than all the lectures of all the academies."

"The

A rich man's cook, he holds, is his real doctor. Carême cured George the Fourth of gout, and might have pro