Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/181
and could himself cook an admirable dinner of many courses; he had studied the subject long and deeply; and finally, in his green old age, he set himself down to write this great dictionary, which proved to be the last of the thousand volumes which bear his name, and which was given to the world after his death in 1870.
In the introductory chapter, Dumas tells us a good deal about the restaurants of his day, which had increased so rapidly in Paris since their introduction in 1770, that at the beginning of this century there were more than five hundred of them. The most famous were those of Beauvilliers, the Rocher de Cancale, and Verys, the last of which supplied the table of the Allied Sovereigns in 1814 for the moderate sum of £120 a-day, exclusive of wine. On the death of one of the partners in this firm, a sumptuous monument was erected to his memory in Père-la-Chaise, recording the fact that “his whole life was consecrated to the useful arts.”
Later on, Dumas gives us a list of the restaurants most in vogue in the middle of this century: some of them are still flourishing, though in many cases their fame is a thing of the past. Among their names we read Verdier, Maison d’Or, Bignon, Brébant, Riche, Le Café Anglais, Peters, Véfour, Frères Provenceaux. But he adds (and every one who knows Paris will agree with him in this) that it is not always at the most famous restaurant that one gets the best dinner. “On dine mieux chez Maire, chez Philippe, ou chez Magny” (these were traiteurs in those days) que chez les premiers restaurateurs de Paris.” It was at Philippe’s that a historical dinner took place in 1850, the guests including Dumas, Count d’Orsay—who ordered the dinner—Lord Brougham, Lord Dufferin, and Mr Hayward. We are told that the banquet was worthy of the occasion, and was crowned with Clos Vougeot of almost priceless value.
From this date may be traced the decline and fall of French cookery, so far as the restaurants are concerned, which certainly did not maintain under the Second Empire the high standard of perfection which they had reached in the days of Caréme and Beauvilliers. Many of the best chefs were attracted to London by the high salaries offered by the English nobility and club committees; others were enticed by American millionaires. Fashion changed, and the school of great epicures like Brillat Savarin passed out of date: again, men dined more at home, or if they dined at a restaurant, they no longer cared to pay the fabulous prices which their grand-fathers had paid without a murmur. And as the demand for first-class dinners fell off, so the supply began to cease. Then came the Franco-German war, which ruined many of the chief restaurateurs and thoroughly demoralised the French cuisine. “The best tables,” writes Dumas, “have been overturned by death, or revolutions worse than death; cellars have been broken up, and the most celebrated wines sold by public auction.” Lastly, of recent years there have been the two great Exhibitions, and the plethora of visitors, the ceaseless crowd of hungry and unappreciative guests, filled the pockets of the restaurateurs, but at the same time gave a final blow to French cookery, from which it has never recovered.
No Englishman knows his Paris