MRS. GLASSE AND HER HARE

Old myths die hard. Nevertheless, as we grow older and wiser and saner and duller, we drop the illusions of our youth, and one by one our cherished beliefs fall from us, argued away by force of circumstance, lack of substantiation, or sheer proof to the contrary.

In this last category we must perforce reckon the excellent Mrs. Hannah Glasse and her immortal saying, “First catch your hare, then cook it.” Alas and alack, Mrs. Glasse never existed—“there never was no sich person”—and, moreover, the cookery book bearing her name, in none of its many editions, contains the oft-quoted words.

The actual facts, although, indeed, these are open to a certain amount of dubiety, appear to be as follows. In Boswell’s “Johnson” there are several references to one Edward Dilly, who with his brother Charles carried on a flourishing book-shop in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson often dined with these estimable men, and at their table met most of the wits and scholars of the day. The great lexicographer referred to the brothers as his “worthy friends.” It is on record that Edward Dilly, in the presence of Boswell, Mayo, Miss Seward, and the Duke of Bedford’s tutor, the Rev. Mr. Beresford, said to Dr. Johnson, “Mrs. Glasse’s ‘Cookery,’ which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade knows this.”

Now this Dr. John Hill (not Aaron Hill, as assumed by Mr. Waller) was a rather interesting personality. He was a brilliant man in many directions, who misused his talents, and devoted his energies to so many various professions that it is not surprising to learn that he succeeded permanently in none. It is known of him that he was at different times apothecary, actor, pamphleteer, journalist, novelist, dramatist, herbalist, naturalist, and quack-doctor. He took a degree at St. Andrews, and his nickname was “Dr. Atall.” He married the sister of the then Lord Ranelagh, and by some manner of means got himself decorated with the Swedish order of the Polar Star, on the strength of which he paraded himself as Sir John Hill. No one, however, appears to have taken him at his own appraisement, for he was the general butt of wits, epigrammatists, and lampoonists. His death was attributed to the use of his own gout remedy, and these lines to him still survive:—

Well, this same John Hill, in his earlier and more obscure days, was doing hack-work for the booksellers, and also following the business of an apothecary in St. Martin’s Lane. This must have been in the year 1744 or 1745. He was struck (as who might not have been) by the ease with which a new cookery book might be compiled by extracting the best recipes from scores of old ones, and rehashing them with original remarks and new settings. He had plenty of material to work upon. The best-known cookery books prior to that date were, according to Dr. Kitchiner (who wrongly dates Mrs. Glasse 1757), Sarah Jackson’s “Cook’s Director,” La Chapelle’s “Modern Cook,” Kidder’s “Receipts,” Harrison’s “Family Cook,” “Adam’s Luxury and Eve’s Cookery,” “The Accomplish’d Housewife,” “Lemery on Food,” Arnaud’s “Alarm to all Persons touching their Health and Lives,” Smith’s “Cookery,” Hall’s “Royal Cookery,” Dr. Salmon’s “Cookery,” “The Compleat Cook,” and many more.

Hill accordingly made up his book, and his introduction was certainly ingenuous and modest; one phrase will prove this: “If I had not wrote in the high polite style, I hope I shall be forgiven; for my intention is to instruct the lower sort.” The sly dog knew his public, and this is further proved by his not putting his book to the world through a bookseller, but publishing it himself, and evolving an entirely new method of distribution. Among his friends he numbered the ingenious Mrs. Ashburn, or Ashburner, as it is spelt in some of the later editions. This good lady kept a glass and china shop in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar, and her customers came from the fashionable squares of Bloomsbury and St. James. Hill made an arrangement with Mrs. Ashburn, whereby she sold his book over her counter and recommended it warmly to all the ladies who called at her shop.

In order to make the illusion of authorship more complete, a female name was wanted for the title page. What could be more simple than “Mrs. Glasse,” seeing that Mrs. Ashburn kept a glass shop? The exact title of the magnum opus ran, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds anything yet published. By a Lady. Printed for the author and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a china shop, the corner of Fleet Ditch, 1745.” The actual name of Mrs. Glasse did not, however, appear on the title page until the issue of the third edition, for the book was a great success from the first; every one came to Mrs. Ashburn’s to buy it, and its popularity vastly helped the glass and china trade.

About fourteen years ago a lively discussion as to the authentic authorship of Mrs. Glasse filled several columns in the newspapers, the principal correspondents being Mr. W. F. Waller and Mr. G. A. Sala. It was suggested that “first catch your hare” was a misprint for “first case your hare.” Mr. Waller proved that neither of these passages occurred in any known edition of the book, although case, meaning “to skin,” would have been entirely legitimate and in place.

Shakespeare says in “All’s Well That Ends Well”:—

And a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Love’s Pilgrimage” gives the lines—

The actual phrase used is “First cast your hare,” or, in another edition, “Take your hare, and when it is cast.” This simply means flayed or skinned, and was commonly used at the time. The verb “to scotch” or “to scatch” is East Anglian, and has the same meaning. So much for the authenticity of the quotation.

Curiously enough, in the newspaper controversy above referred to, George Augustus Sala strongly supported the claims of Mrs. Glasse herself as the real author, and there certainly appears to be some circumstantial evidence as to a lady of that name who was “habit-maker to the Royal family” about that period, although her connexion with the culinary art is not to be traced. Incidentally Sala mentions a receipt from a cookery book written by “An ingenious Gaul” towards the middle of the seventeenth century, which begins with what he terms “A Culinary Truism,” since changed into “A proverbial platitude”—namely, the words “pour faire un civet, prenez un lièvre.” This is, however, of course merely a commonplace of the kitchen, and, according to the learned authority of Dr. Thudichum, the imperative of prendre has not the catching meaning apparently attached to it by Sala.

Abraham Hayward, Q.C., whose “Art of Dining,” a reprint of certain “Quarterly Review” articles, must always remain one of the greatest classics of English gastronomical literature, says that Mrs. Glasse’s cookery book was written by Dr. Hunter, of York. This is, of course, an egregious error. Dr. Hunter was the author of “Culina Famulatrix Medicinæ; or, Receipts in Modern Cookery” (1804, fourth edition), with the delightful dedication, “To those gentlemen who freely give two guineas for a Turtle Dinner at the Tavern, when they might have a more wholesome one at Home for Ten Shillings, this work is humbly dedicated”; and an exquisite frontispiece of a pig, by Carr, headed “Transmigration”; but he was in no way responsible for Mrs. Glasse.

The case is very fairly summed up by Mrs. Joseph Pennell in “My Cookery Books.” She says, speaking of Mrs. Glasse: “Her fame is due, not to her genius, for she really had none, but to the fact that her own generation believed there was no such person, and after generations believed in her as the author of a phrase she never wrote.” There really seems no more to be said on the matter.

It matters little, after all, whether Mrs. Glasse really existed or not; anyhow, some of her precepts are excellent and endure to this day. She preached thorough mastication as a primary rule for good digestion. This is thoroughly sound and praiseworthy.

“Most men dig their graves with their teeth,” so says an old Chinese proverb, meaning, no doubt, that we all eat too much, and too fast, and too often, and too promiscuously. The propriety of eating slowly ought always to be remembered. Mr. Gladstone’s thirty-two bites are historical. Napoleon was a terribly fast eater, and this habit is supposed to have paralysed him on two of the most critical occasions of his life, the battles of Leipzig and Borodino, which he might have converted into decisive and influential victories by pushing his advantages as he was wont. On each of these occasions he was known to have been suffering from indigestion. On the third day at Dresden, too, the German novelist Hoffmann, who was present in the town, asserts that the Emperor would have done much more than he did but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions.

It is a certain fact, although difficult to prove by statistics, that a large proportion of the drink consumed by the working-classes is directly due to the bad cooking which they have to endure in their homes. Improve the workman’s cuisine, and you will automatically lessen the drink bill. This is a point of view which philanthropists and temperance folk might adopt with immense advantage, and with practically immediate results.

Dr. Max Einhorn has recently written on the subject of correct eating, which he divides into three distinct headings: Tachyphagia, Bradyphagia, and Euphagia. The first of these is the common evil of hasty eating, in which the food is not sufficiently masticated, and hence enters the stomach without being properly insalivated and comminuted. Besides the deleterious mechanical effect, tachyphagia also encourages the taking of large quantities of food in too short a time, as well as its consumption too hot or too cold.

The rising generation is going to fight tachyphagia tooth and nail—especially tooth. It is being taught wisely and well by the disciples of the Cookery and Food Association how to improve the family digestion, and there is an old saying to the effect that digestion is the business of the cook, indigestion that of the doctor. It cannot be too often or too forcibly impressed upon the so-called working-classes, and upon a good many other classes of society also, that good cooking does not mean waste and extravagance, but, on the contrary, that it connotes economy and frugality. A daughter who can cook well is tantamount to possessing a Savings-Bank account.

Are you a Euphagist? Perhaps, like the immortal M. Jourdain, of Molière, you may have been one all your life—and never knew it. Anyhow, it is a question which is being bandied about at dinners just now a good deal, and as very few people know what a Euphagist really is, it may be as well to explain. Briefly then, Euphagists are the modern exponents of the old adage, “Laugh and grow fat.” As a sect, or a race, or a cult, or whatever they may please to call themselves, they refuse to take anything seriously at meal-times, which is an entirely sound and philosophical theory.

The learned German professor above referred to is the inventor, or discoverer, or resuscitator of the idea, and his doctrine is summed up in the brief instruction: Bite everything twenty times, don’t worry whilst eating, laugh at everything—and acquire sound health. After all, it is a tried truism that there is no digestive as efficacious as hearty laughter. A solemn diner, especially if he dine often alone, is almost invariably dyspeptic; whereas a bright, cheery man or woman, who has a keen sense of humour, and sees the comic side of most things, is rarely a sufferer from indigestion. “Even our digestion is governed by angels,” said William Blake, the artist-poet, and (if you will but resist the trivial inclination to substitute “bad angels”) is there really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned into brains, and jam into beauty?

Of course we do not laugh enough—at the utmost we giggle unmusically. Listen to the conversation in general at any restaurant, or even any dinner party; you will rarely hear a really hearty laugh. It is as extinct as silver épergnes or peacock-pie.

It is told of an American dining at the Carlton one night that, struck by the comparative silence of all the diners, he asked one of the waiters: “Say, does nobody ever laugh here?” The reply came pat enough: “Yes, sir, I believe there have been one or two complaints about it lately.” Are we too solemn, or too dull, or too afraid of shocking our neighbours?

It was not always so. According to that delightful work, “The Household of Sir Thomas More”: “What rare sport we had with a mummery we called ‘The Triall of Feasting.’ Dinner and Supper were brought up before my Lord Chief Justice, charg’d with Murder. Their accomplices were Plum-pudding, Mince-Pye, Drunkenness, and such-like. Being condemned to hang by ye neck, I, who was Supper, stuft out with I cannot tell you how manie pillows, began to call lustilie for a confessor, and on his stepping forthe, commenct a list of all ye fitts, convulsions, spasms, payns in ye head, and so forthe, I had inflicted on this one and t’other.”

In those days, no doubt, they did not require to adopt the tenets of Euphagism, they were well enough without it. To-day, however, as a change, and a delightful one too, from the hundred and one food-fads which abound, a general adoption of Euphagism would seem to promise brighter meals, more fun, and better health.

Among other aids to digestion which are flagrantly neglected is the taking of one’s food in the open air whenever the thermometrical conditions of our somewhat erratic climate render it possible.

Just exactly why we take every opportunity of dining in the open air when we are abroad, and carefully fight shy of it, under more or less similar circumstances, when we are at home, is one of those questions which are unsolved, and apparently unsolvable. Our distaste for British coal may be one answer to the conundrum, and another may be not unconnected with our national shyness at being seen eating our meals in public by our fellow-countrymen. Foreigners, of course, don’t count. Opportunity is not lacking, in London at any rate, for open-air dining. It can be done at several of the hotels, and in the summer there is Earl’s Court, where, despite certain obvious drawbacks of access and other things, it can be enjoyed without much discomfort.

But these are, after all, only town delights, and not comparable to a dinner on a July evening in the open air in the country. One such lingers most pleasantly in my memory. It was at a charming house in Hampshire. We dined on a marble terrace, on which soft rugs had been placed. The night was still enough for the candles on the table to burn without guttering. Below the terrace was a rose-garden, full of bloom, and in a shrubbery, not too close to the house, a Hungarian band played discreetly. The dinner, according to my recollection, was not extraordinarily good, but whatever it may have been, the surroundings, the mise en scène, were such that almost anything would have been appetizing and delightful. Why cannot more of this sort of thing be done? We cannot all possess marble terraces, rose-gardens, and Hungarian bands; but the permutations of the idea are innumerable, and I beg to present it to summer hostesses for development and improvement.

Exigencies of climate will probably never permit us to realize the al fresco meals suggested by a Watteau, a Boucher, or a Fragonard, and it is, indeed, more than questionable whether the French cuisine, which was flourishing round and about that period, was ever designed for the dîner sur l’herbe, which is, and was, an essentially bourgeois meal.

At any rate, a curious old book in four volumes, “Les Soupers de la Cour; ou L’Art de Travailler toutes sortes d’Alimens,” by Menon, which was published in Paris au Lys d’Or in 1755, contains many appallingly long menus, some comprising five services and forty or more dishes, expressly designed to be eaten out of doors. No less an authority than Carême, however, says that these menus (and they are certainly extraordinarily elaborate) were the result of pure imagination on the part of feu M. Menon, and were never actually carried out.

In our days even our shooting lunches tend to greater extent than can usefully be accommodated on the grass; and we are accordingly bidden to a farm-house, a tent, or sometimes a garnished barn. The lunch under a hedge, unloaded from the pony and spread temptingly on the grass, is almost a thing of the past, which, according to some old-fashioned fogies, is a pity.

Be that as it may, there is one open-air lunch which can never be altogether improved away. That is the river lunch, either in a punt or a skiff, with a table deftly made of the sculls and the stretchers. Moreover, it has this inestimable advantage: it is practically impossible for more than two to partake of a boat lunch with comfort. It can, of course, be done, but at a sacrifice of leg room—and other things. Of course the more dignified motor-launch lunches, served at a real table, do not count, for are they not the same as those eaten on dry land?

It was, I think, the late Sir William Vernon Harcourt who once remarked that “we are all Socialists now.” By the same token we may say to-day, “We are all motorists now,” and really, taking it by and large, the luncheon part of a motor trip is by no means the least interesting.

That British hotels, with very few exceptions, leave much to be desired is the tritest of truisms. Bad cookery, shocking attendance, and old-fashioned appointments, combined with disproportionate expense, are almost universal, and a big fortune awaits any Boniface who, with a good house on a much-frequented road, instals a really good cook, preferably a Frenchman and his wife, not necessarily a high-priced individual, and makes a speciality of well-cooked, daintily served, appetizing lunches and dinners.

We have all met, only too frequently, the miserable sham lamb, which is mere mutton saucily disguised with mint; the nearly raw cold beef; the maltreated chop; the apologetic steak; the absurd parody of a salad; the sad and heavy apple tart; and the anything but real Cheddar cheese. All these things are absurd and quite unnecessary.

It is really just as easy to cook a good dinner as a bad one. Experto crede.

The usual alternative for the foregoing bill of fare is a cheap and nasty imitation of a French menu, where nothing is true to name, and only the frills on the cutlets are what they pretend to be. It really should not be difficult to give a well-cooked fillet of sole, a tender chicken, an omelet aux fines herbes, and a dish of vegetables in season, sautés au beurre; but if you asked for a lunch of this sort at a wayside British inn you would be put down at once as a lunatic. Why?

The question of packing a motor lunch is one of some difficulty and niceness. Personally, I do not for one moment believe in those elaborate ready-fitted baskets, of which the makers are so inordinately proud. Such a basket seldom fits the lunch, and I find by experience that a good-sized empty basket of convenient shape is far more practical.

The cutlery, glass, and china may be fixed, as a matter of convenience, although I do not consider even that to be necessary, for in packing up one is always trying to fit a table-knife into the place made for a teaspoon.

My ideal basket or hamper is quite bare inside (to begin with), and the cates, bottles, knives, forks, and spoons are packed therein, tightly and carefully, so as to prevent shaking and rattling.

A good method of keeping a salad fresh and crisp, by the way, is to hollow out a loaf of bread, cut off a slice at the top in the form of a lid, and pack the salad inside. Japanese paper serviettes are useful; little and big cardboard plates and dishes are to be bought for a trifle; fruit travels best if surrounded with green leaves; Devonshire cream in pots is an appreciable luxury; coffee can be made in the cafetière gourmet, if boiling water be handy. And, lastly, don’t forget the corkscrew!

According to the calendar, spring begins officially on 21 March. But the restaurateurs can beat Dame Nature, who, presumably, edits the calendar (another lady’s paper!), by at least six weeks. For the season of primeurs commences six weeks earlier, and coming before their time, they are appreciated all the more for their vernal suggestion of the flavour of the real thing, arriving in due season when all the world and his wife may eat thereof.

Early green peas, for instance, which have hitherto been imported from Algiers, come from Nice, also the famous Lauris giant asparagus, white and succulent. This earliest open-air asparagus, of indubitable excellence, is to be had at about thirty-eight to forty-five shillings per bundle of fifty heads. It is worth the price.

Now too is the time to eat the real Pauillac lamb, reared on the salt marshes of Pauillac, young, fat, white, and so luscious that it melts in the mouth. The whole young lamb barely weighs fourteen pounds, and a cut of this veritable pré salé, so often badly imitated and misnamed, is worth a king’s ransom.

But perpend when you order the dish at a restaurant. The maître d’hôtel will recommend a leg, because it has the better appearance; the knowledgeable diner, however, will inevitably prefer the shoulder, which is the quintessence of delicacy.

According to M. Roche, of Duke Street, Adelphi, the greatest authority on primeurs in London, early spring is the time beyond all others to indulge in the toothsome crêtes de coq, or cockscombs, without which no self-respecting dish à la financière is complete. The haricots verts gris, from Spain, are also in excellent condition. They are not much to look at, but the flavour is just exquisite. They cost about three shillings a pound.

The far-famed poulet du Mans and equally attractive poularde de Bresse are on the market at about twelve and sixpence each, but there is, I regret to say, a deal of fiction attending the appearance of these plump and pleasing birds on the usual London restaurant bill of fare. Either of them forms an imposing line on the menu, but see that you get the real French bird, and not the ordinary Surrey barn-door fowl, which, however good in its way—and I should be the last to underrate the product of my own county—is of distinctly inferior flavour compared with its better-bred Gallic cousin.

The timely primeurs in the way of salads are numerous: the mâche is in excellent condition, and so is the barbe de capucin, duly blanched in cellars; the Chicorée de Bruxelles is a welcome change; and although the romaine at one and sixpence each are expensive, they are large-hearted and good of their kind.

The craze, however, for early vegetables may easily be overdone. A rather well-known gourmet, who has a place in the country, grows all his “early-out-of-the-season” stuff under glass. He was entertaining some friends in the month of May, and gave them very excellent new potatoes, boasting the while of their rarity. “My good man,” said a guest, “there is really nothing at all extraordinary in getting new potatoes in May, one can eat them anywhere.” But he had reckoned without his host. “Of course you can,” was the reply, “if you want ordinary new potatoes. These of mine are early potatoes of next season but one!”

“If I drink any more,” said Lady Coventry at Lord Hertford’s table, “if I drink any more, I shall be muckibus.”

“Lord!” said Lady Mary Coke, “what is that?”

“Oh,” was the reply, “it is Irish for sentimental.”

This was dinner-table conversation one hundred and fifty years ago, teste Horace Walpole. They were franker in those days.

“This wine,” said a notable host to one Mr. Pocock of Bristol, “costs me six shillings a bottle.”

“Does it,” asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay reproof; “then pass it round, and let me have another six penn’orth!”

In the eighteenth century, Sir Walter Besant tells us, people habitually ate and drank too much; citizens and aldermen grew portentously fat; well-bred people would gnaw bones with their fingers at public banquets; an imperial quart of ale was a day’s ordinary allowance, and a man would drink his six bottles of port at a sitting. Another illustration of a lusty appetite may be quoted from the Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott. He and his friend, Mr. Shortreed, on one of those Liddesdale raids when he was so brisk-hearted and jovial, rode over one morning from Clenchhead to breakfast with Thomas Elliott of Tuzzliehope. Before starting at six o’clock, just to lay their stomachs, they had a couple of ducks and some London porter, and were, nevertheless, well disposed on their arrival at Tuzzliehope for a substantial breakfast, with copious libations of whisky punch, which did not in any degree incapacitate them, for they were able to pursue their journey, picking up fragments of border minstrelsy as they went along. And it was not only on country excursions that meat and drink were consumed ad libitum; the ordinary diet of the men of the period was what we would call redundant, and their feasts were Gargantuan. A dinner given by James Ballantyne on the birth-eve of a novel is thus described:—

There is authority and to spare as to the comparative plethora of food which was piled on the table to incite, provoke and assuage the decidedly healthy appetites of our forbears. In No. 148 of “The Tatler,” Addison writes:—

In those days a sucking-pig was supposed to acquire greater succulence through flagellation. What with burning down a house (although only a Chinese one) to make roast pork, and flogging a baby, the pigs must have had rather a hard time. An eighteenth-century pig underwent various vicissitudes from which a twentieth-century pig is exempt.

Goethe has a story in his “Campaign in France” that, after a long and tiring fight, some of Prince Louis Ferdinand’s soldiers looted a heavy locked-up kitchen-dresser, in which they heard something heavy rolling about. They concluded it was food, and as they were well-nigh famished they took it out to the camp and broke it open. To their horror and disgust, all it contained was a weighty cookery book. However, they made the best of a bad job, and as they had no supper, they sat round the camp fire and one man after the other read out a succulent receipt from the book, and thus they tried to pretend that they were enjoying a gorgeous supper. This is, indeed, the true spirit of appreciative gastronomy, and the table-manners of these hungry but easily appeased warriors must have been the quintessence of simplicity and good taste. For, after all, a dinner in its diurnal regularity is the most perennial of delights. Bulwer Lytton, in “Pelham,” says:—

Speaking of the close of the Tudor period, William Harrison, a contemporary historian, writes:—

Very similar were the precepts taught to our remoter forefathers. In the “Accomplish’d Lady Rich’s Closet of Rareties, or Ingenious Gentlewoman’s Delightful Companion” (1653) ladies are told when carving at their own table to “distribute the best pieces first, and it will appear very comely and decent to use a fork.” The lady is also requested to sit at table “with a straight body,” and “even though she were an aunt,” to refrain from resting her elbows upon the table. She must not “by ravenous gesture display a voracious appetite,” and if “she talked with her mouth full, or smacked her lips like a pig, or swallowed spoon meat so hot that tears came to her eyes, she would be taken for an underbred person, even if she were really an Earl’s daughter.” But folk were almost exaggeratedly delicate in those days. It is related by the worthy Dr. Walker in his “Sufferings of the Clergy” that a pious parish priest was ejected from his cure by the Commonwealth Puritans because he was formally accused of “eating custard scandalously.” But the etiquette of the table dates back to the very earliest ages. Of the five hundred and sixty-five Chinese books on Behaviour, catalogued by a learned mandarin, no fewer than three hundred and sixty-one refer directly to the ceremonial of the Chinese dinner-table. It is remarkable too that among the Sybarites it was customary to invite ladies to dinner a year beforehand, ostensibly to give them time to beautify themselves.

In the year 1557 one Seager published his “Schoole of Vertue, a booke of good Nourture for Children,” wherein the following instructions are set forth in rhyme.

Finally, the following epitaph on a gourmand, written by an unknown poet, seems to sum up the true inwardness of the gastronomic ideal:—