EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INNS
the sheets aired."[1] Beyond question, however, in French beds the lurking devourer was only too common, and made the unseasoned traveler writhe. Sterne went from Paris to Nîmes in 1762 and suffered the usual experiences of the stranger. "Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd, and carbonaded on one side or other all the way — and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were ate up at night by bugs, and other unswept out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at."[2]
But if French beds evoked occasional criticism, not much was to be urged against the French table — at its best. Then as now French cookery was famous and to most English tourists it came as a revelation. "The common cookery of the French," says Young, "gives great advantage. It is true they roast every thing to a chip, if they are not cautioned, but they give such a number and variety of dishes, that if you do not like some there are others, to please your palate. The desert at a French inn has no rival at an English one." [3]
Yet at the wayside inn in France the tourist not infrequently encountered gastronomic horrors, or what were such to him; and even at well-kept houses more than one English tourist longed for the fleshpots of his island home — the plain boiled greens, the plain boiled mutton, and the unadorned roasts of his native land, guiltless of sauces and naked in their simplicity, in preference to the most ambitious productions of the French chef.[4] Of such was Smollett, who, when complaints were to be made, rarely failed. "I and my family could not well dispense with our toast in the morning, and had no stomach to eat at noon. For my own part, I hate the French cookery, and abominate garlick, with which all their ragouts in this part of the country are highly seasoned."[5] But Smollett stood by no means alone. Horace Walpole writes to West from Paris in 1739: "At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with sallads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish."[6]
82
- ↑ Travels in France, p. 35.
- ↑ Cross, Life of Sterne, p. 301.
- ↑ Travels in France, p. 35.
- ↑ One critical Englishman in particular found the French "wines in good quantity, but without any flavor, and most of them tart and crabbed; provisions of no kind excellent, their poultrey lean, little or no fish, scarce any beef, mutton, nor veal that's good." Clenche, A Tour in France and Italy, p. 21.
- ↑ Travels, i, 129, 130.
- ↑ Letters, i, 17.
