On the subject of domestic comfort, especially in their bed-rooms and staircases, the French have a great deal to learn;—on many points, in and out of doors, in which we are very scrupulous, they are not civilised, and at first they are quite startling.
*****
There is no table d’hôte in the Hôtel d’Ici Bas and the locataires dine where they like. I thought, at first, of living at a pension or boarding-house where everything is found,—bed, board, wines, and attendance—at prices varying from one hundred and fifty francs a month and upwards. But I could not face being obliged to dine for thirty days in succession with anybody, let alone people that I might not like, and it was not human nature—my nature at any rate—to feel myself bound dine anywhere for a month, and not long to dine somewhere else.
A dinner at a table d’hôte, even at the best hotels, is a tedious business, and to me not a very pleasing process. It generally struck me that the dinner would be more agreeable, if the dishes were a third less in number, of a little better quality, and not quite so cold. Besides there are few tables d’hôte at less than three francs, without attendance or wine, which last a guest is expected to drink for the good of the house.
This was more than I could afford, so there was nothing left for me but the Restaurants, establishments in which the French can give lessons to all nations. They are suited to all purses, and I can pay them the compliment of saying, that even when dining where the regular price for dinner was as little as two francs, I never received anything but the greatest civility, or saw anything but the utmost decorum.
Once or twice I found myself in the company of some young ladies who were rather gaily dressed, and had their hair parted on one side; but if they really were not ladies, they behaved as such in my presence, and their mode of life at home was the business of their parents and guardians, and not mine.
Sometimes even with my cosmopolitan palate—(and the best of everything is good enough for me),—I did not quite like the dishes, and the meat was not always of the best quality—(English beef and mutton rather spoil a fellow for the Continent),—yet a dish was seldom put before me at a Restaurant that was not well cooked, and delicately seasoned.
If a man has a delicate palate and knows how to order a dinner; if he has a stomach perhaps a little on the wane; if he wishes to leave the table without the feeling of being loaded, but with an inclination to dance, he ought to live in Paris.
The soups on the carte at a Restaurant may sometimes taste rather vapid, but they are never hot with pepper, nor do they taste as if they were made of glue and water, as one often finds in England. The French poultry is the best in the world; no game can excel a capon, or a well fed poularde. The veal is good—not so white as ours, for it is not killed till three or four months old, and then not bled to death. Above all, the puddings, the dishes made of sugar and cream, and everything in the shape of pastry, are delicious.
But there are some things to be avoided, and Rosbif is one of them. As soon as the garçon sees a customer is an Englishman (and we are easy to identify), he takes rather a wicked pleasure in asking him to take Rosbif: but avoid it. A French ox has generally seen long service in the plough before being sent to the butcher.
From this circumstance, and the want of good pasture, which does not exist in France, and also from the fact that meat is never kept for more than three or four days, even in winter, and then it is baked instead of being roasted, in consequence of the expense of fuel, I may be believed in saying that the beef is literally as hard as a board.
Young France, who delights in extremes, has lately taken it into his head that underdone meat makes muscle, and tends to the development of the biceps. At present he is dining at the English Restaurants, where there is beef cooked to suit his fancy. He asks for it saignant, and it is scarcely cooked at all.
Also avoid the vin ordinaire, particularly where the dinner is so many francs, “wine included.” Great efforts are made by Government to prevent adulterations in wine and other articles of consumption, but the manufacturers are too clever, and it is known that most of the vin ordinaire is made in Paris, and is not wine at all.
For the first month of my stay in Paris I dined at the different Restaurants, and probably would have continued to do so, if I had not for a few days felt rather unwell. Not wishing to leave the house, for the weather was as cold and bitter and changeable as it only can be in Paris, when it chooses, I asked Madame Blot if she would let me have some dinner in the hotel. I had noticed savoury smells at six o’clock, at which hour two or three of the guests dined with Blot and Madame.
“Would Monsieur dine with them in the kitchen?”
I did so, and never afterwards dined anywhere else, except on great occasions, or when I got my dinner for nothing. Madame did not leave the house more than twice during the winter. She took up her position early in the morning behind the counter, in a room about fourteen feet square, on the right of the entrance door. Here she sat from morning to night, with her feet on a chaufferette (a footstool containing a handful of live coals or charcoal), plying her needle at an endless border, which will be finished when Sisyphus has done with his rolling-stone. A glass door opened into the bedroom of Madame. This, in the daytime was nothing more than a passage to the kitchen, which was quite at the back. Here we dined, and dined well.
There was always either a soupe au gras, that is, with a gravy foundation, and containing vegetables, such as carrots or peas, or a soupe au maigre, which for simplicity and delicacy would have been a lesson to any English cook, plain or otherwise, that ever upset a pepper pot into a soup tureen. Then there came a small joint of mutton or veal, (what odd joints a French butcher does cut!), or a poulet; then an entrée, followed by a purée of peas or spinach, served by itself, and a salad of beet-root and Mars (query the spelling), which is