Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/540

2, 1860.] blessings. Of the little Bakers—the issue of both marriages, whom the gods peculiarly loved, and who were therefore taken early from this wicked world, I will say nothing. They were numerous, for the Bakers are an abounding and prolific race. Let us hope that they passed without much ado to an Upper Baker Street of their own.

The second Mrs. Baker had somewhat lost the exquisite perfection of form which in days long since gone by had attracted the attention, and fixed the affections, of Mr. Thomas Wimpole, when, as Miss Martha Wigmore, she used to attend service at the Church of St. Mary-le-bone; and still more when he followed the young lady to Broadstairs, and took note of the impression of her then little feet upon the yellow sands which extend in front of that celebrated watering-place. The once fawn-like Martha Wigmore, since Mrs. Thomas Wimpole, and actually Mrs. John Baker, was, I fear, somewhat stout at the date of the dinner-party last week. Upon that memorable occasion she wore a green satin dress, made rather low, with a toque adorned with a bird of Paradise, and a large yellow topaz brooch. Golden bracelets of considerable value set off the rich proportions of her matronly arms; and altogether there was a Sultana-like idea prevailing throughout her costume. This lady, it would only be right to remark, had projects connected with her dinner-parties of somewhat graver moment even than a due celebration of the return-rites of hospitality. The Misses Lucy and Anna Maria Baker were, in her maternal opinion, somewhat long in “going off.” She was in the habit of attributing this result to the altered tone amongst the young men of the present day—and this alteration of tone, in last resort, she referred to the growth and progress of the London Clubs.

“What in the world,” so this lady was frequently in the habit of observing, “was the use of these establishments?” The chief result of them—as far as she saw—was that they furnished young men with standards of luxury which they would never be able to realise in after-life. The comforts of a home were essentially different from the comforts of a club; but in our time young men arrived at a combination of the two systems, which if they could not realise they for the most part gave up the Home, and adhered to the Club. She (Mrs. B.) trembled to think of what the results must be. As to marriages, there was no use thinking anything more about them. Of course they were at an end. It was not however so much the fate of the women she deplored, as that of the poor, lost, misguided men, who, with no loving eye to watch over them and restrain them in the path of duty, would gradually become worse and worse, and sink into a condition from which it would be impossible to extricate them, even if at the twelfth hour they should awake to a dim consciousness of their forlorn state. What had a parcel of boys to do with velvet sofas, and golden mirrors, and French cookery in place of honest English fare, consumed at the eating-houses which had been good enough for their fathers? She only hoped the sons would turn out half as well; but upon this matter she entertained the most serious doubts.

This was a very favourite theme with Mrs. John Baker; and although I do not affect to give her precise words, she used to handle it much in the way indicated above. An event which seemed to have aggravated her pre-conceived ideas up to a high point of aggravation, was the occurrence in “The Times” of the recent correspondence with regard to Middle-Class Dinners.

“There they are again!” the lady would remark. “My worst anticipations are realised. What! pretend that anything in the world can surpass a saddle, or it may be a haunch, of roasted mutton, and a pair of boiled chickens with a nice delicate tongue! Are we all to be turned into a set of nasty Frenchmen? A judgment will fall upon the country—I say—a judgment! The experience of ages has fixed the character of the entertainments which respectable English families should interchange; and are we to be deprived of our traditions by these silly young men, and reduced to the level of the railway-stage at Bullone? No, we prefer our good old English fare to bullied beef; and I, for one, decline to eat frogs, even although a penny bunch of violets should be put by the side of my plate to give them a flavour.”

Thus the lady would rail on, much in the style of the famous Lord Eldon of dilatory memory, in whose eyes “the sun of England was setting for ever,” and the Throne and the Altar “were ever in danger,” whenever a proposition was made for disfranchising a horse-trough in the Romney Marshes, and transferring the two members which represented it in Parliament to an upstart town in the manufacturing districts, containing half a million of inhabitants, or thereabouts. Better, however, than all argument, to convince the world that Mrs. John Baker was in the right, and these rash innovators of “The Times” in the wrong, will be a simple recital of the Baker ménu on the night in question.



The mock-turtle soup with the forced-meat balls was removed with a haunch of mutton; the pale turbot with its galaxy of smelts made way for a pair of boiled chickens with white sauce. When sufficient justice had been done to these delicacies the débris were removed by the hands of the ministering spirits, and the renovated board groaned under the following luxuries.