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Sundry Guides to Good Cheer: Davis

To English guides, so far as the metropolis is concerned, should be added Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham Davis' recent volume-a veritable Murray to the table of London.¹ In this gossipy and sprightly 1 "Dinners and Diners, Where and How to Dine in London. By Lieut.- Col. Newnham Davis. A New En- ters LIII, pp. 376. larged and Revised Edition. London: Grant Richards, 1901." Chapmanual one may dine by proxy in nearly all the leading restaurants as well as in many of the more Bohemian resorts. The appointments and surroundings of each are picturesquely set forth, with the exact menu and price of each dinner, together with an occasional recipe of some distinguished foreign master of the range, or a dish for which a restaurant is especially renowned. And while one may marvel at the writer's facile receptivity for an almost unvaried round of vintage champagnes, and sympathise with him in the frequent iteration of certain dishes, one must recognise, nevertheless, that if the dinners he discussed as an official representative of the "Pall Mall Gazette" could be duplicated by the average diner, London were not to be despised as a stamping-ground for the accomplished gastronomer. The author does not hesitate to criticise, though his exceptions are usually in the nature of a sauce piquante, rather than a drastic condiment; and it is evident in the majority of the feasts he passes under review-now with a boon companion, and now with a pretty and well-gowned causeusethat the special resources of the chef and maître-d'hôtel, who are duly introduced to the reader, have been brought into Aladdin-like play for his special delectation. The Benedict will doubtless envy him his petitsdîners. with so varied a menu of charming women to stimulate his appetite and share his champagne and entremets de douceur; the bachelor will recognise how a prolonged series of such dinners with supplementary flowers, a loge at the theatre, and a concluding supper swell the addition, and render rising with the lark or any attention to business the following morning utterly beyond the compass of mortal power. To assist in a repast with Colonel Davis, however, is to be assured of dining excellently in London, with pleasant company and a double assurance of the truth of the aphorism, that one can never grow old at table.

Reference has already been made to numerous French minor writers on gastronomy; among whom should not be omitted the name of the eminent Dr.

Réveillé-Parise, author of several works on hygiene, whose dissertation on the oyster, presented with all the charm that a brilliant style and profound erudition may impart, is unrivalled in the language.¹ Much has naturally been said, both by English and by French writers, concerning the restaurant. The celebrated Dr. Véron, who was nearly always accustomed to dine at a restaurant in preference to dining at his own home, gave these as his reasons: "In your own home the soup is on the table at a certain hour, the roast is taken off the jack, the dessert is spread out on the sideboard. Your servants, in order to get more time over their meals, hurry you up; they do not serve you, they gorge you. At the restaurant, on the contrary, they are never in a hurry, they let you wait, and, besides, I always tell the waiters not to mind me; that I like being kept a long while that is one of the reasons why I come here. Another thing, at the restaurant the door is opened at every moment and something happens. A friend, a chum, or a mere acquaintance comes in; one chats and laughs: all this aids digestion. A man ought not to make digestion a business apart.