Wintering in the Riviera. William James Miller
of other Continental countries? Our box of figure-counters would soon be exhausted in vain attempts at the calculation. We should have to borrow largely from the astronomers.
The guests are, of course, expected to help themselves to only a small portion of each course. We once (in 1862) saw an Englishman in Paris, unacquainted with the customs either of France or of good society, appropriate to himself at one round nearly all that was in the dish, and we never could pass that untutored savage without thinking of the plateful of coarse beef which he had doomed himself to eat. But most Germans, Dutch and Spanish people feed very largely, and make no scruple as a practice to take double supplies, and the largest and best pieces of everything which comes round, leaving those who come after them wofully scant.[10] The waiters are well acquainted with this habit, and pander to it, possibly in hope of fees. At Biarritz, where we experienced a singular practice of the waiter doling out portions to the visitors (on the footing, perhaps, that some of them could not be trusted to leave even a wreck behind), they, as matter of course, placed upon the plates of the Spaniards of the company large quantities of each course, while when they came to ourselves we received often such small portions that we would occasionally complain and get more.
At many places in France and elsewhere, wine is included in the charge for dinner. In this case it is the vin ordinaire of the place, and is generally good if fresh; but as the practice is to put down a carafe to each two persons, much of it is often left. I have sometimes found the wine sour, evidently arising from having been kept from day to day, adding only what was necessary to replenish the carafes. The vin ordinaire costs the hotelkeeper very little, although he would charge from 1 franc to 2 francs per bottle for it if ordered. Everybody is expected to take wine, even children; and where wine is not included and set down, the waiter goes round, not asking whether you wish wine, but, ‘What wine will you take?’ and you have to select from the carte. I have been much surprised at the great differences in the price of wine at different places. The same kind of wine is charged at one place, it may be three, even four times as much as at another; and in general the price rises, and rises far out of reason, according to the distance from which the wine is supposed to come. Many lay it down as a rule to take the wine of the district in which they for the time being are; and it can, at all events, be had good of its kind and cheap, costing, some kinds, from 1 franc to 2 francs per bottle. This, which in the locality is called vin ordinaire, elsewhere becomes a high-priced wine. A fair quality of wine can in general be had at about 3 francs or 2s. 6d. per bottle, although it is observable that the bottles are so made as evidently to be incapable of containing a quart. If they be not small in size, they are sure deceptively to have a large hollow lump of glass in the bottom. Wine, with the exception of the better descriptions, is never drunk pure, but is poured into a tumbler and mixed with water, about half of each.
When dinner, lasting about an hour, is over, everybody is expected to rise and leave the room. At one hotel the waiters compelled retreat by opening all the windows. They have to clear the table and wash up, and are naturally anxious to have the room to themselves. Besides, in many places, the servants’ supper takes place at ring of bell immediately after dinner, and no doubt the waiters are anxious to join. Their dinner bell in like manner rings after lunch. Visitors are seldom aware of these internal arrangements, or alive to them if they be.
If one does not dine at table d’hôte, to dine à la carte, by selecting out of a list, is costly, and should if possible be avoided. When arriving too late for table d’hôte, we have found in some places that we could order a dinner for which the same regular charge was made as at table d’hôte, although perhaps this might not be done for a single visitor. At other places the better course, particularly in Italy, is to order a dinner at a given figure, leaving the hotel to supply what they choose. One is certain by doing so to be better off.
At table, various Continental practices may be noticed, and among others a very singular custom which the German gentlemen have of tucking their napkins under their chins, and spreading them over the breast like a row of babies with their bibs on. I never could look at a German so arrayed without thinking of the minister who,
‘Being wi’ the palsy tribbled,
In liftin’ spoonfu’s aften dribbled;
Sae, to prevent the draps o’ broth,
Prinn’d to his breast the tablecloth.’
Some explanation of this ludicrous practice is perhaps to be found in the painful habit which the generality of Germans have—occasionally ladies as well as men—of eating with their knives. English people cannot witness this fearful and wonderful operation without a nervous dread of the result. But there is this to be said for the Germans, that although some of their customs be peculiar, and not to be copied, they are great linguists, and enter agreeably in English into conversation; and I only mention such little foibles, that they may ‘see themselves as others see them.’ In many places—Switzerland particularly—there is put down upon the table here and there a case of what turns out to be toothpicks. One would think that those who choose to injure their teeth by means of such instruments and perform an odious cleansing, would prefer to keep their private pick, as much as their private tooth-brush, and use it in their private room.
We found the Dutch people ceremoniously polite. They never sat down and never rose from the table, never entered a room and never left it, without bowing to all round. It always kept us in a fidget lest they should not receive like courtesy; but it is a very pleasant trait of character in a people whom we found to be not merely externally polite, but kind and cordial at heart.
At the hotels, unless they be what I have called English hotels, one usually meets with people of all countries. In one hotel in France, I was informed we had representatives of eight different nations, counting English, Scotch, and Irish as one. It has struck me, however, that although the French language is so generally spoken, the French themselves, while found travelling in every part of their own land, are very seldom seen in other countries. I was on one occasion sitting next a bright Parisian young lady, and rather wickedly, I fear, was exalting Edinburgh so as to suggest its taking the palm from Paris. She was astonished, and having asked her when she was coming to see Edinburgh, she replied very decidedly, though in the very bewitching way in which the French girls speak, ‘Jamais, ne-verre,’ which honestly meant there was no probability she would, although the emphasis no doubt was intended as a delicate rebuke to the heretical presumption of my thought. La belle France is tout le monde to Frenchmen; nor do they get much encouragement to cross the English Channel, for I have noticed that they are, as a rule, most unhappy sailors.
One meets with all peoples and tongues and sorts at the dinner table. Now, much of comfort at that interesting time depends upon who sit next you. Dining at a long table with a large company is never so genial as dining round a smaller table in a party of six or eight. Intercourse is almost limited to those on the right and left, unless you and those opposite have strong voices and be both remarkably socially inclined. This, bad enough at home, is intensified abroad, not merely among strangers, but strangers who are foreigners, with whose language you may not be particularly acquainted. Everything, then, turns on the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ and in this respect one is all but entirely at the mercy of the waiters, who have not the grimmest idea of social assortment; and it may be that you are for weeks together placed next to those with whom you have no rapport or fellow-feeling or congeniality of tastes—nay, with whom you may be unable to exchange a word. When it is otherwise, and people are social, intelligent, well read, and without necessarily being clever are cheerful, the dinner hour becomes a pleasant episode of the day.
But it is often otherwise. It is bad enough to get placed beside a foreigner whose language, perhaps, you can read, but whose oral pronunciation is perfectly unintelligible; or beside a very stout and important lady whose ideas, if she have any, run on subjects with which you have no possible sympathy—who is too ponderous, or whose composite capital, perhaps stuck tenderly on with pins, is—it may, from the steadiness of her carriage, be supposed—considered by her too fragile to bear the shaking and jolting of a joke—or really, to confess the truth, one whom, it may possibly be, you cannot be bothered to entertain; or beside a young lady who speaks so low and so timidly, that in the din of dinner it is literally impossible to hear what she