“Leading men in both cities contributed largely to the design, and my friend Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester has lately sent me some letters not more characteristic of the energy of Dickens in regard to it than of the eagerness of every one addressed to give what help they could. Making personal mention of his fellow-sharers in the enterprise he describes the troop, in one of those letters, as "the most easily governable company of actors on earth;" and to this he had doubtless brought them, but not very easily. One or two of his managerial troubles at rehearsals remain on record in letters to myself, and may give amusement still. Comedy and farces are referred to indiscriminately, but the farces were the most recurring plague. "Good Heaven! I find that A. hasn't twelve words, and I am in hourly expectation of rebellion!"--"You were right about the green baize, that it would certainly muffle the voices; and some of our actors, by Jove, haven't too much of that commodity at the best."--"B. shocked me so much the other night by a restless, stupid movement of his hands in his first scene with you, that I took a turn of an hour with him yesterday morning, and I hope quieted his nerves a little."--"I made a desperate effort to get C. to give up his part. Yet in spite of all the trouble he gives me I am sorry for him, he is so evidently hurt by his own sense of not doing well. He clutched the part, however, tenaciously; and three weary times we dragged through it last night."--"That infernal E. forgets everything."--"I plainly see that F. when nervous, which he is sure to be, loses his memory. Moreover his asides are inaudible, even at Miss Kelly's; and as regularly as I stop him to say them again, he exclaims (with a face of agony) that 'he'll speak loud on the night,' as if anybody ever did without doing it always!"--"G. not born for it at all, and too innately conceited, I much fear, to do anything well. I thought him better last night, but I would as soon laugh at a kitchen poker."--"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already, and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not, as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such perfect success, for the company turned out at last would have done credit to any enterprise. They deserved the term applied to them by Maclise, who had invented it first for Macready, on his being driven to "star" in the provinces when his managements in London closed. They were "splendid strollers."[143]”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take a lobster being half boil'd, take the meat out of the shells, and mince it small with a good fresh eel, season it with cloves & mace beaten, some sweet herbs minced small and mingled amongst the meat, yolks of eggs, gooseberries, grapes, or barberries, and sometimes boil'd artichocks cut into dice-work, or boil'd aspragus, and some almond-paste mingled with the rest, fill the lobster shells, claws, tail, and body, and bake it in a blote oven, make sauce with the gravy and whitewine, and beat up the sauce or lear with good sweet butter, a grated nutmeg, juyce of oranges, and an anchove, and rub the dish with a clove of garlick. To this farcing you may sometime add almond paste currans, sugar, gooseberries, and make balls to lay about the lobsters, or serve it with venison sauce.
Sources: The passage is from John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from May, The accomplisht cook of 1660, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — moss cloth, pear stamp.