CHAPTER VIII DINNER (_continued_) "The strong table groans Beneath the smoking sirloin stretched immense." A merry Christmas--Bin F--A _Noel_ banquet--Water-cress--How Royalty fares--The Tsar--_Bouillabaisse_--_Tournedos_--_Bisque_--_Vol-au-vent_--_Prè salé_--Chinese banquets--A fixed bayonet--_Bernardin salmi_--The duck-squeezer--American cookery--"Borston" beans--He couldn't eat beef. A Christmas dinner in the early Victorian era! _Quelle fête magnifique!_ The man who did not keep Christmas in a fitting manner in those days was not thought much of. "Dines by himself at the club on Christmas day!" was the way the late Mr. George Payne of sporting memory, summed up a certain middle-aged recluse, with heaps of money, who, although he had two estates in the country, preferred to live in two small rooms in St. James's Place, S.W., and to take his meals at "Arthur's." And how we boys (not to mention the little lasses in white frocks and black mittens) used to overeat ourselves, on such occasions, with no fear of pill, draught, or "staying in," before our eyes! The writer has in his mind's eye a good specimen of such an old-fashioned dinner, as served in the fifties. It was pretty much the same feast every Christmas. We commenced with some sort of clear soup, with meat in it. Then came a codfish, crimped--the head of that household would have as soon thought of eating a _sôle au vin blanc_ as of putting before his family an uncrimped cod--with plenty of liver, oyster sauce, and pickled walnuts; and at the other end of the table was a dish of fried smelts. _Entrées?_ Had any of the diners asked for an _entrée_, his or her _exit_ from the room would have been a somewhat rapid one. A noble sirloin of Scotch beef faced a boiled turkey anointed with celery sauce; and then appeared the blazing pudding, and the mince-pies. For the next course, a dish of toasted (or rather stewed) cheese, home-made and full of richness, was handed round, with dry toast, the bearer of which was closely pursued by a varlet carrying a huge double-handed vessel of hot spiced-ale, bobbing or floating about in the which were roasted crab-apples and sippets of toast; and it was _de rigueur_ for each of those who sat at meat to extract a sippet, to eat with the cheese. How the old retainer, grey and plethoric with service, loved us boys, and how he would manoeuvre to obtain for us the tit-bits! A favoured servitor was "Joseph"; and though my revered progenitor was ostensibly the head of the house, he would, on occasion, "run a bad second" to "Joseph." Memory is still keen of a certain chilly evening in September, when the ladies had retired to the drawing-room, and the male guests were invited to be seated at the small table which had been wheeled close to the replenished fire.