Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/363

Charles Dickens] tesque, executing strange and weird dances with excellent effect, was the chief feature in this entertainment. The Music Hall songs, the advertisements, the dances, the transformation scene, the maltreatment of Colonel Henderson's force, the Girl of the Period, and all the rest of it, were as per regulation.

Pantomime, at all events at the West-end, offered no special reason for your Laordship's animadversions. The dresses of the ladies of the companies, and of the ballets, appeared no scantier than they have ever been in Your Commissioner's recollection. There were plenty of ballets; for the matter of that there was plenty of dancing of all sorts; everybody danced; but there was nothing in any way offensive to any one not morbidly apprehensive of being shocked. With the exception of certain unsavoury business suggested by a recent notorious Old Bailey case, and indulged in more or less, as far as Your Commissioner's observations went, by every clown in London, there was nothing suggestive of coarseness. It was obvious that the causes of your Lordship's now famous circular must be sought for elsewhere.

SOFT SACKCLOTH AND ASHES.

public attention has been recently directed to wonderful observances prevailing in religious houses—such as the wearing of penitential dusters on the head, and remorseful boots round the neck—one is naturally anxious for more information with regard to similar usages and customs; and so it comes about that a certain interest attaches even to the smallest indications which are allowed to appear, under Roman Catholic sanction, concerning the practice of the faithful at special times and seasons. Under these circumstances, some amount of curiosity is developed in ourselves, the heretical uninitiated, by even so small, and apparently inconsiderable, a thing, as a Cookery Manual for Days of Fasting and Abstinence. There are certain special shops (their number has rather increased of late years in London and its suburbs), in the windows of which are exposed various mystic wares, such as china receptacles for holy water, brazen candlesticks of mediæval design, candles elaborately decorated with colour and gilding to fit the above, statuettes of saints, miniature censers for amateur swinging, small prints representing what are called devotional subjects, rosaries, crucifixes, little wreaths of immortelles, and other kindred objects; it is in emporiums of this kind that the Manual may be easily met with.

Of course the first and most natural impression, with which one approaches such a work as the Manual, is a conviction that it will contain all sorts of ingenious recipes for rendering the food which it is necessary that those who are going to fast should partake of, in order to keep body and soul together, as unpalatable, and, in short, as nasty, as possible. The act of fasting, or abstaining, can rationally be engaged in with but one object, and that object the mortifying and punishing of the flesh, by depriving it of what gives it pleasure and gratification, and so checking that tendency to self-indulgence to which humanity is prone to yield. "It is possible to render this dish exceedingly unpalatable without impairing its nutritious efficacy, by the introduction of a small amount of gum of assafœtida;" or "by mixing a salad with cod-liver oil instead of ordinary salad oil, its nutritive qualities will be increased, while all gratification in swallowing such an amount of uncooked vegetable matter as it is desirable to consume for the sake of purifying the blood, will be completely avoided." Suggestions of this kind one might expect to find in a work, on the preparation of food intended for use on days set apart for special mortification, and punishment of the flesh.

But any simple student approaching the Manual with such ideas, will be a good deal surprised after due examination of its contents. Indeed one would be almost disposed to think, after a thoughtful perusal of its pages, that the object with which the work was originally compiled was that of dodging and evading the obligation of celebrating certain seasons by engaging in acts of self-denial during their course.

In plain English, then, this Cookery Manual for Days of Fasting and Abstinence, contains a number of recipes for rendering the food—the consumption of which is allowed by the church during penitential seasons, simply because the consumption of some food or other must be allowed—exceedingly palatable and delicious. The Manual publishes among its contents a list of twenty-three soups, twenty-seven "made dishes," twenty-one "modes of cooking eggs," twenty vegetable preparations, thirty-four sauces, and no fewer than forty-three sweet dishes and puddings. In all of these cases the attempt is made to render the article of consumption as nice as—keeping within the letter of the law—is possible: while in some cases the directions given for the composing of certain special dishes are so suggestive of a delicious result as positively to make the mouth water. There is a recipe, for instance, for "a vegetable soup," which really reads like something so good that it should only be studied half an hour before dinner, and that with a certainty of having this very soup, and no other, at the beginning of the meal. It takes thirty-three lines of the Manual to describe the method of its construction, so intricate is it; and finally the soup, after having been seasoned with all sorts of delicious spices, coaxed into mellowness with previously fried vegetables, gently stimulated with cautious simmerings, and then revived with an influence of mushroom ketchup, is described as being "as well coloured, and nearly as good, as if made with gravy meat."