THE ENGLISH DINNER-HOUR.
fr HERE is still hope, both for the hungry and the dyspeptic. 'The Prince of Wales," writes the correspondent of the Leeds Mercury—and what the Leeds Mercury says must be true —" intends to introduce a reform in the dinner-hour. The fashionable hour of dining has in recent years been getting later and later, and it is now generally half-past 8, and often 9 o'clock." It is, indeed, and the dinner none the better. "The Prince will, it is said, fix the hour for dinner at 8, and, of course, what the Prince does, society in the exclusive sense will follow." Of course they will,—enthusiasti- cally. But why society in the exclusive sense? Are we not all loyal and hungry subjects, and may we not all dine earlier ? "In all probability, in the ensuing season the hour for dinner will be 8 or half-past 7 o'clock." 0, brave Leeds Mercury ! brave herald of good tidings ; good ringer of the early dinner-bell ! With good reason thou wert called the messenger of the gods ! Have we not suffered from that retreating dinner-hour ? With what pangs of hunger have we not seen it crawling on steadily into the later hours of the night ? With what ill-concealed rage of impatience have we not sat and sulked in our friends' drawing-rooms ? After all, to be asked to dine at 9 o'clock is nothing compared with the villainy of extending the proverbial mauvais quart d'heure into an infamous three-quarters ; and that extension is only too often made when a few privileged guests choose to be rude and fashionable at the expense of their fellow-creatures' comfort. Trolf-past 9 is not at all too late for these night-birds, who, like the " Snark,"—
" Frequently breakfast at five o'clock tea, And dine on the following clay."
And to see their entrance at that hour, with bland and smiling faces, when the rest of the company have been biting their thumbs for the last twenty minutes to stave off the pangs of famine, is enough—, well, it is enough to convert on the spot a roomful of decent Christians into homicidal cannibals.
It is not the hour for which one is invited, but the hour at which the guests arrive, that it is important to change. If his Royal Highness—we make the suggestion to the Leeds Mercury, ambassador of gods and demi-gods—would kindly turn his attention towards making it fashionable for guests to arrive at the hour for which they are invited, the reform would be far more complete and efficacious. We believe, however, that the Prince of Wales does set a good example in the way of punctuality; so we are driven to accept the sad conclusion that in this matter fashion is and will continue to be incorrigible, with the forlorn result that though society may set back the dial for the ensuing season, we shall soon see the hand that points to the dinner-hour creeping forward again to half-past 8 and 9. That is the secret cause of our lateness and our discontent. By some perverse method of reasoning, fashion has decided that it is fashionable to be a little late. Once upon a time—some hundred years ago—we dined at 5 o'clock ; that is to say, our ancestors dined at that hour ; we never did. But even then it was considered that the first arrival was an unfashionable person who committed a solecism in coming when he was bid, and that those guests who respected them- selves should take care to arrive five minutes late. When everybody arrived five minutes late, it was necessary for some to postpone their coming for ten minutes, and so on for a quarter of an hour, and even more, until the hosts, in self-defence, were forced to make the dinner- hour itself a quarter of an hour later. Then the process began again da c,apo, and again the dinner-hour was changed. And so through all the ringing changes of time, the dinner-hour has crept on, from 5 o'clock in the afternoon to 7 o'clock in the evening, and from 7 in the evening to 9 o'clock at night. In another century, if this process only continues, our great-grandchildren will be dining at 3 o'clock in the morning; but then our great-grandchildren will do so many strange and curious things, that one more or less need hardly concern us. But we wonder greatly whether the Prince of Wales, the deus ex machind which our Mercury has invoked, will succeed in reconciling the struggle between comfort and fashion. That he would do so for the sake of comfort and at the expense of fashion, we have not a doubt, for he probably cares as much for the first as he does little for the second. Unfortunately, the quarrel is a very ancient one, and not to be easily appeased ; dating, far back, from those dark ages when our ancestors first painted themselves blue, and stuck the fashionable bone of their enemies through the hole that they fashioned in their own noses. Even in those days, society, "in the exclusive sense," as the Leeds Mercury has it, had its fashionable usages and customs of
-extreme discomfort. Unpunctuality, however, was hardly likely to have been one of them ; for to arrive late at the cave of their host would have meant finding nothing left to eat, the politeness of waiting being an invention of a much more recent date. On the whole, we are inclined to think, now that -unpunctuality has become fashionable, that, like other fashions, it is past praying for, past reconciliation with comfort, and -only to be put down with the strong hand of force. And with this idea we make the following suggestion to all intending hosts,—namely, that they should consider that to keep their -dinner waiting for unpunctual guests is to do a grievous wrong to those who have already arrived; and that, come who may, and whoever it may be that has not come, they should make a stern and rigid practice of sitting down to dinner within five minutes of the stipulated hour. Doubtless the practice would be attended at first with many disagreeable incidents—some guests would perhaps not arrive until the very last course, and in doing so would get no more than their -deserts—but in the long-run, and if steadily persevered in, the practice would, we believe, bear good fruit, and common- sense and common politeness would once more prevail. If people would only realise how extremely damaging it is to the dinner, and how much worse than damaging it is to the cook's temper, to be kept waiting for more than half-an-hour, we are sure that they would refrain from spoiling two things which -are so essential to our comfort and well-being.
What is the proper hour for dinner? The proper hour for -dinner is that for which one has been invited. Apart from that, we should not like to give an opinion. Our grand- mothers said that it was between 6 and 7 o'clock ; our grand- mothers also asserted that supper was a dangerous and a. harmful meal, but they ate it notwithstanding,—a want of -consistency on their part which also proved a want of con- sideration for their grandchildren's digestions which were thereby damaged. Some wise man, whose name we cannot remember, remarked that the best hour for dinner varied according to the diner's means : for a rich man, it was best to dine when he was hungry ; for a poor man, to dine whenever he -could,—a very sensible axiom, but one that hardly meets the -case of dining together in order to show good-fellowship. From the point of view of health, it is impossible to come to any con- clusion; for who shall decide when doctors disagree ? Some -doctors say it is best to go to bed fasting, and others recommend • a recent meal. From emptiness there arise cramps, sleepless- ness, restlessness, uneasy tossing, the thoughts of unpaid bills, uncomfortable pillows, and cold feet. From fullness there -comes many another evil, such as nightmares, bad dreams, the workings of bad consciences, the bad headache of the next morning, and the still worse temper. Let those who will, choose between these evils, or perhaps hit upon the happy mean that avoids both the Scylla of plenty and the Charybdis of want. We ourselves are prepared to dine at any hour, pro- vided that the dinner is a good one ; and as to supper, we are -entirely in sympathy with "Greedy Nan," of the nursery. rhyme, who wished to investigate the contents of the cooking- pan before she went to bed. But then, of course, we are blessed not only with a good conscience, but with a good -digestion also ; for those two terms are not, as some people insist, synonymous. As for the natural hour of dining, that -can only be the hour at which the natural, wild, uncivilised man takes his food. But the natural man dines when he pleases. "What a blessed thing it is," as Mr. Squeers said," to be in a state of nature !" Some savages, uncivilised men, dine -once in three days, spending some thirty hours after their dinner in a comatose state, like boa-constrictors,—a custom 'that is hardly suited to London society. According to the Leeds Mercury, London society—always in the exclusive sense -of the word—is going to dine at 8 for the future. Well, 8 o'clock is as good an hour as any other, and we are quite willing to dine at 8 also, if we are not excluded from that arrangement. Perhaps we have been mistaken in the term, and the society in question is only exclusive of unpunctual • guests. An excellent sense, a most sensible sense of the word, and one in which we most heartily concur ; in that case we shall always be delighted to dine even with the most exclusive society.
Seriously speaking, was not that paragraph, written pro- bably in all good faith, and copied into many another news- paper, rather a bitter satire upon a society that dare not even -choose its own dinner-hour ? Think of the uncivilised savage who dines when he likes, and then think of our civilised society that only dares to dine when it is fashionable. It gives quite a new meaning to that hackneyed quotation, "And, greatly daring, dined,"—probably the gentlemen in question dined at the unfashionable hour of 6. We have long been painfully aware that our countrymen and women only clothed them- selves according to some mysterious orders that emanated from the priests and priestesses of the goddess Fashion ; but that they should feed or starve themselves also according to her will, is really rather too much. They have now sacrificed their comfort, their sleep, and their food to her behests : what are they going to sacrifice next ?
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