Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil InstitutionsSoyer, Alexis
History
Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions
Soyer, Alexis
Cooking for military personnel; Crimean War, 1853-1856
By the aid of an opera-glass, I plainly distinguished beneath us a large
pile of irregular stones, encircled by a railing. I, at first sight,
took this for the ruins of a kind of hippodrome which might have
succumbed to an earthquake, each stone having lost its perpendicular, as
though purposely to mock its fellow, and not making the slightest
attempt to perpetuate the grandeur of their solemn mission. Horses,
mules, and donkeys, were seen dragging loads of large planks to and fro,
six or eight on either side. The ends of the planks kept cutting rather
deep zig-zags into the soft ground, and were continually catching
against tombstones. The whole formed a kind of gigantic American
bagatelle board, where, when the ball is violently thrown to the top, it
descends by degrees, catching the points in every direction in its way
down. Next to it music was heard. Boys were romping, some playing with
marbles, or five para pieces, making use of the stones for their point
of departure. Lemonade, cakes, raki, and variegated bonbons, oranges,
lemons, &c., were briskly purchased by the promenaders, who, amongst
this _cohue-bohue_ of industry, were seen gaily crossing and recrossing
the green paths. Some reclined against the grave-stones, forming, as it
were, an arm-chair. Amongst them, however, were but few Mussulmans, some
turning Dervishes and Howlers, Greeks, Armenians, French, Perotes,
Smyrniotes, and here and there gazing with astonishing disapprobation,
some of the children of Albion. All excepting the latter might be seen
gaily fluttering from tombstone to tombstone, like busy bees from flower
to flower, in a perfumed pasture in summer. Here and there clumps of
cypress trees looked like the mournful guardians of this desecrated
spot. Some of the marble stones are still vividly stained with the blood
of the haughty and rebellious Janissaries, whose crumbling bodies lay
beneath. Such is the pious veneration of the Oriental population for the
remains of their ancestors in the Petit Champ des Morts at Pera.
The principal buildings which grace this foreign quarter are the
English, French, Austrian, Russian, Sardinian, and Prussian embassies.
The former, called the Palais d’Angleterre, now the residence of Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, interested me most, as I was in duty bound to
pay my humble respects to his lordship and her ladyship the next
morning. It brought to my mind from a distance the celebrated building
of the Reform Club, which gave Barry his high reputation as an
architect, and where your humble servant passed above two lustres of his
culinary career.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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