MORE COOKS FOR THE POOR.
IE honour could allay the cravings of the stomach, the poor would suffer little from hunger this winter. College dignitaries and peers are rivals for the appointment of cooks in ordinary to the indigent; men of rank and men of learning desert their wonted pursuits to become caterers : one week Professor Buckland recites his bill of fare, and next the Duke of Norfolk, exchanging his coronet for the white nightcap, runs poking about in grocers' shops for stimulants to jaded and fastidious appetites to tempt "industrious labourers" to eat a little. What a pity that these learned and noble professors of gastronomy should all insist upon setting down their customers to a Barmecide's feast ! They are poetical cooks ; the triumph of art is their object : they will not allow the material to have any share in the applause bestowed upon the artist it is not enough to cook a savoury dinner, unless they can make it of nothing. They seek to rival Grumio when he advised Catherine to sup on the mustard without the beef; and they may earn much the same thanks that he received from the fair shrew— "GO, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave—(Beate him)— That feedst me with the very name of meat:
Sorrow on thee, and all the pack of you,
That triumph thus upon my misery."
But the exhibition of the Duke of Norfolk is past a joke. It is a melancholy sample of what human nature can be reduced to. Here is a staid elderly gentleman who being told that the poor are in danger Of being put upon short commons this winter, can think of no other substitute for their usual food than—curry- powder! His Grace has been told that with coach-horses the curry-comb is not less important than food—that a good rubbing down, for making them look fat and sleek, is worth a feed of oats at any time : having found it useful to curry the outsides of his horses, he proposes, by way of experiment, to curry the insides of his labourers. His suggestion is laughed at, and he goes to work with dogged pertinacity to prove that he is right. In his own ducal person he runs the gauntlet of the grocers' shops, till he accumulates two pounds of curry-powder, and heroically tries its effects upon himself. Confirmed in his previous opinion, he re- peats his prescription of curry-powder from the chair at an agri- cultural dinner, while proposing the health of "the industrious labourers." He proclaims its virtues with all the unction of a Doc- tor Rock in the days when physicians (of a certain class) did not disdain to recommend their medicines from the hustings. Like his erudite prototypes, he makes strange embroglio with facts; telling his audience that curry-powder is to the Hindoo what potatoes are to the Irishman,—entirely overlooking the rice. Curry-powder is, according to his account, a philosopher's stone that can trans- mute rotten fetid potatoes into a palatable mess. "A pinch" of this powder, mixed with warm water—his Grace has tried the experiment—warms the stomach indescribably ; and a man with- out food "can go to bed comfortably upon it." Oh, my Lord Duke, this compound of white ginger, coriander-seed, turmeric, and cayenne pepper, must sorely try the naked surface of the human stomach. The same warm and cherishing sensations will be produced if you mix ardent spirits with warm water; and ardent spirits will at least drown for a time the sorrows of memory. In the name of charity, my Lord Duke give the poor devils brandy, if you will dose them, instead of administering food. It is a melancholy spectacle to see a grave elderly gentleman thus expose himself. He can construct sentences grammatically [perhaps] and link one sentence to the tail of another ; his smile is bland, his bearing graceful and dignified—he looks the noble- man. Nay, he is probably master of the diplomacy of party, and any one who tries a fall with him in court intrigue may run a chance of being thrown. And yet he prattles the most empty and irritating nonsense without being aware of it. Hunger he knows only as a relish to a dinner; the inanition of want comes not within the range of his conceptions. So, with all the pla- cidity of a well-filled stomach, he talks about sauces and "pickles" to men who know by long experience what privation is, and are looking forward with apprehension to another severe trial. He simpered and talked, unconscious that every word he uttered was enough to awaken the wolf that slumbers in all human hearts. Has he no sons or daughters, to take the advice Hamlet gave Ophelia, and lock up their father that he may play the fool no- where but in his own house ?
Some gleams of the nobleman and gentleman lightened even through this melancholy exhibition of frivolous hebetude. Con- fident of being in the right, he could brave laughter—he said it, and he did it. He really meant to do a kind action, and with that intention put himself to some trouble. But there was a helpless lack of comprehension, that dashed this feeble glow of virtue with an air of the ludicrous. And worse than that, there was avarice and selfishness lurking in the recesses of the heart, striving to cloak itself with the raiment of benevolence. Dainties the Duke would give freely to the poor—" pickles" and spices of the East, to obtain a monopoly of which nations have waged fierce and relentless wars ; but corn he will not give them, be- cause there has been mucu capital invested in the improvement of land, which may be lost if foreign corn be admitted. This is the arriere pensee that mingles with all his pseudo-benevolence. He would fain persuade us that it is the farmers alone he cares for : but does he not take tithe of the farmer's gains in the shape of rent? He speaks of farmers' profits as Falstaff talked to Pistol about "the handle of Mrs. Bridget's fan " : with Pistol, the farmers may retort, " Didst thou not share ? hadst thou not fifteen pence ?" It is creditable to the frankness, at least, of the English cha- racter, that the Duke's speech was received with reiterated shouts of laughter. Though he addressed an assembly of corn-growers in the character doubly august in their eyes of an advocate of monopoly and a Duke, the silliness of his speech was more than their risible faculties could stand. They laughed "a gorge de- ploye " ; though they were farmers, and it was a landlord that spoke and spoke gravely. But, except for its uncompromising frankness, there was no virtue in their hilarity. They laughed loudly, though they must have been conscious that the object of their laughter was betraying their secret as well as his own. It was not his selfishness' but his weakness, that occasioned their mirth: the shabbiness he evinced in trying to tempt the poor by
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the promise of dainties to forego food, n order that his income might not be diminished, seemed all right and proper, for it was their own feeling. They only thought how much more cleverly they could have set about the same discreditable task. Their laugh was a triumphant expression of superior cleverness and equal dulness of conscience.
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