Read Ebook: Royalty in All Ages The Amusements Eccentricities Accomplishments Superstitions and Frolics of the Kings and Queens of Europe by Thiselton Dyer T F Thomas Firminger

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Another bacchanalian story is associated with the Pavilion at Brighton. It seems that the Duke of Norfolk--now a very old man, and celebrated for his table exploits--had been invited by the Prince to dine at the Pavilion, who had concocted with his royal brothers a scheme for making the old man drunk. Every person at table was enjoined to drink wine with the Duke--a challenge which the old toper did not refuse. But "he soon began to see that there was a conspiracy against him; he drank glass for glass; he overthrew many of the brave. At last the first gentleman of the empire proposed bumpers in brandy. One of the royal brothers filled a glass for the Duke. He stood up and tossed off the drink. 'Now,' said he, 'I will have my carriage and go home.' The Prince urged him to remain, but he said 'No,' for he had had enough of such hospitality." The carriage was called, and he staggered in as best as he could, and bade the postillions drive to Arundel. They drove him for half-an-hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home: the liquor had proved too potent for him. And when he awoke that morning he was in bed at the Pavilion.

ROYAL EPICURES

Royalty in times past has had many an accomplished epicure, as learned in culinary lore as in the practice of the cuisine. Charlemagne took a warm personal interest in the management of his table, and Hardicanute, one of our Danish kings, was so great a gourmand that he was designated "Swine's Mouth"--his table, it is said, having been covered four times a day with the most costly viands that the air, sea, or land could produce. It was Henry de Valois who brought into fashion aromatic sauces and various spicy dainties, inheriting his taste for cooking from Catherine de Medicis, who introduced into France not only ices, but much of the culinary art from Italy; while the Prince de Soubise, immortalised by the sauce named after him, was a connoisseur of no mean order. He could boast of an excellent cook, but a man with princely notions of expenditure. One day the Prince announced his intention to him of giving a supper, and demanded an estimate. The first article on which the Prince cast his eyes was this: "Fifty hams;" whereupon he inquired, "Are you going to feast my whole regiment?"

"My lord," replied the cook, "you do not understand our resources; give the word, and these fifty hams which confound you, I will put them all into a glass bottle no bigger than my thumb." Accordingly the Prince nodded, and the article passed.

Charlemagne once ate cheese mixed with parsley seeds at a bishop's palace, and liked it so much that ever after he had two cases of such cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle--a device which Gay has noted:--

"Marbled with sage, the hardened cheese she press'd."

"I wrote you yesterday that Vatel had killed himself. I here give you the affair in detail. The King arrived on the evening of the Thursday; the collation was served in a room hung with jonquils; all was as could be wished. At supper there were some tables where the roast was wanting, on account of several parties which had not been expected. This affected Vatel. He said several times, 'I am dishonoured; this is a disgrace that I cannot endure.' He said to Gourville, 'My head is dizzy; I have not slept for twelve nights; assist me in giving orders.' Gourville assisted him as much as he could. The roast which had been wanting, not at the table of the King, but at the inferior tables, was constantly present to his mind. Gourville mentioned it to the Prince; the Prince even went to the chamber of Vatel and said to him, 'Vatel, all is going well; nothing could equal the supper of the King.' He replied, 'Monseigneur, your goodness overpowers me; I know that the roast was wanting at two tables.' 'Nothing of the sort,' said the Prince; 'do not distress yourself, all is going on well.' Night came; the fireworks failed; they had cost sixteen thousand francs. He rose at four the next morning, determined to attend to everything in person. He found everybody asleep. He meets one of the inferior purveyors, who brought only two packages of sea-fish; he asks, 'Is that all?' 'Yes, sir.' The man was not aware that Vatel had sent to all the seaports. Vatel waits some time; the other purveyors did not arrive; his brain began to burn; he believed that there would be no more fish. He finds Gourville; he says to him, 'Monsieur, I shall never survive this disgrace.' Gourville made light of it. Vatel goes upstairs to his room, places his sword against the door, and stabs himself to the heart; but it was not until the third blow, after giving himself two not mortal, that he fell dead. The fish, however, arrives from all quarters; they seek Vatel to distribute it; they go to his room, they knock, they force open the door; he is found bathed in his blood. They hasten to tell the Prince, who is in despair. The Duke wept; it was on Vatel that his journey from Burgundy hinged. The Prince related what had passed to the King with marks of the deepest sorrow."

Prince Henry of Cond?, in addition to his many other faults, was accused of being too fond of his ease, and when he was reproached with his immoderate taste for the pleasures of the table, he was wont to say, in a dull way, "They affirm that I am always at eating-houses since I left Paris; I have been there only twice."

The King kept at all times a sharp look out, and one day he remarked to his Minister of State, Von Herder, after reprimanding a servant who had put a bottle of wine in his pocket: "Have I not every reason to knock these ragamuffins on the head? Don't you see that if I let them have their own rascally way I should soon not have a penny left to assist my distressed subjects." His table was generally served with eight dishes--four French, two Italian, and two prepared according to his peculiar fancy, and from his own receipts. And it was one of his favourite maxims that "he who is not content with eight dishes will not be satisfied with eighty." One of the last bills of fare--August 5, 1786--twelve days before his death, was as follows:--

Name of the Cook.

Soup of veal with force meat balls of river pike, sorrel and chevril. Beef with white kale. Mutton-carbonade with green peas. River carp from the Spree, with cherry fool. Craw-fish with butter. Fricassee of young chicken. Pickled ox cheek and cow heel. Roast mutton with cucumber sauce.

He was just turned thirty when his confessor, Cardinal Loaysa, wrote to him to urge him to leave off eating fish, which always disagreed with him, and he added, "I am told that your chest can often be heard farther off than your tongue." Subsequent letters from the same honest counsellor contain many similar warnings, one of which closes with these words: "If your Majesty will give the reins to your appetite, I tell you that your conscience and bodily health must go down-hill."

But these gastronomic excesses brought on intense suffering, nor did experience teach him moderation. With few teeth and impaired digestion, he "continued to eat from as many dishes, and to empty as many flasks, as in the days when his powers were great, his health flourishing, and his exercise regular. His medical men were his abettors, for they allowed him to satisfy every appetite, without attempting to restrain him." And it was by a strange irony of fate that when Death began to close his jaws upon the Emperor, there were those in his vicinity "who were suffering from a worse vertigo than that which springs from old age and an abused stomach--the vertigo of famine. In their sufferings the hungry peasantry forgot their respect for him. They stripped his kitchen-garden, plundered his orchards, impounded his cattle, drew the fish from his ponds, and waylaid and rifled his mules which traversed the hunger-district laden with dainties."

Peter the Great was another very decided epicure, and one of his favourite dinners was the following: A soup with four cabbages in it, gruel, pig, with sour cream for sauce, cold roast meat, with pickled cucumbers or salad, lemons and lamprey, salt meat, ham, and Limburg cheese. And, it may be added, there is preserved in Ballard's Collection in the Bodleian Library the bill of fare of a breakfast and dinner, which the Czar and his party--twenty-one in number--partook of at Godalming on his return from a visit to Portsmouth, consisting at breakfast of half a sheep, a quarter of lamb, ten pullets, twelve chickens, seven dozen of eggs, and salad in proportion, three quarts of brandy and six quarts of mulled wine; at dinner, five ribs of beef, weight three stone; one sheep, fifty-six pounds; three quarters of lamb, a shoulder and loin of veal boiled, eight pullets, eight rabbits; two dozen and a half of sack, and one dozen of claret. But, as it has been remarked, some of our own countrymen have almost rivalled the Czar and his companions. At Godalming--probably at the same inn that Peter the Great patronised--two nobles, dukes, are reported to have stopped, as they intended, for a few minutes, while sitting in their carriages, to eat a mutton chop, which they found so good that they devoured eighteen chops, and drank five bottles of claret.

The story goes that on one occasion there appeared on the table of Stanislaus a large pie, and the guests were admiring its dimensions, beauty, and odour, when all of a sudden the almond cakes which covered it flew in all directions, and from beneath them leaped up B?b?, the ex-king's favourite dwarf, armed like a knight. The whole table was in a roar of laughter, with the exception of one noble guest, whose nose the dwarf had pricked with his lance, and who vowed vengeance for the two or three drops of blood which fell. But, it is said, Stanislaus loved his dwarf so well that he provided for his security by placing him under the care of two soldiers of his bodyguard.

Don Sebastian of Portugal, being no epicure himself, determined to train his people by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their meals; but he forgot that no decree could alter the daily life of his people.

Among our early kings who in some measure patronised the culinary art may be mentioned Richard Coeur de Lion, who loved venison, "the stealers of which he punished by the most horrible of mutilations;" while his brother John, who was equally fond of venison, is reported to have given great offence to certain clerical gentlemen by a joke at dinner upon a fat haunch, which, he said, "had come from a noble hart that had never heard mass," which was regarded as a reflection on their corpulency.

Anne Boleyn appears to have been very much of an epicure, and when staying, in the year 1527, at Windsor, Henry sent her by Heneage, who was the gentleman-in-waiting, a dish from his own table for supper; and yet even that did not content her, for all the time, it is said, she was hankering after Wolsey's dainties, and expressing her wish "for some of his good meat, as carpes, shrimpes, and other delicacies." And when in the year 1535 Viscountess Lisle, who was ambitious of obtaining appointments for two of her daughters in the royal household, sent her some dotterels, which were at that time esteemed a dainty dish, and calculated to tickle the palate of an epicure queen, she received from a friend the following note: "The Queen did appoint six of your dotterels for her supper, six for Monday dinner, and six for supper. My Lord of Rochford presented them himself, and showed her how they were killed new at twelve of the clock in Dover, of the which she was glad, and spake many good words towards your ladyship's good report, as I was informed by them that stood by."

As for the royal table of Elizabeth, nothing could surpass the solemn order in which it was laid out, or the number of triple genuflections which accompanied every movement of the noble waiters; but all this was only for show, as the meat was finally taken off the table into an inner room, where the Queen herself dined in the utmost privacy and simplicity. Her Sunday's dinner on the 19th of November 1576 consisted of beef, mutton, veal, swan, goose, capons, conies, friants, custards, and fritters for the first course. For the second, lamb, kid, herons, pheasant, fowls, godwits, peacocks, larks, tarts, and fritters.

Her average dinner was varied with plovers, veal pies, custards, boiled partridges, boiled beef, snipes, pheasants, chicken pies, and tarts, and cost on an average ?4 a dinner.

Her fish dinners were of great variety. The first course included long pike, salmon, haddock, whiting, gurnet, tench, and brill; the second, sturgeon, conger, carp, eels, lamperns, chine of salmon, perch, lobster, tarts, and creams; the side dishes were sturgeon, porpoise, fish collops and eggs, dories, soles and lampern pies, cod, boiled conger, bream, and red fish; the second course occasionally included warden pie, smelts, boiled veal, boiled mutton, pullets, partridges, and panado.

"Our Second Charles of fame fac?te, On loin of beef did dine; He held his sword, pleased, o'er the meat, Arise, thou fam'd Sir Loin."

"The entertainment was most superb, both as to the quantity and quality of the dishes. The supper was served up in eighty magnificent dishes, many of which were decorated with other smaller ones, filled with various delicious meats. To the service of fruit succeeded a most excellent course of confectionery, both those of Portugal and other countries famous for the choiceness of their sweetmeats. But scarcely was it set upon the table when the whole was carried off and plundered by the people who came to see the spectacle of the entertainment; nor was the presence of the King sufficient to restrain them from the pillage of these very delicate viands, much less his Majesty's soldiers, armed with carbines, who guarded the entrance of the saloon, to prevent all ingress into the inside, lest the confinement and too great heat should prove annoying; so that his Majesty, to avoid the crowd, was obliged to rise from the table and retire to his Highness's apartment."

A wild boar's head from the Black Forest would elevate the plainest dinner into dignity, and the late King of Hanover was clearly of this opinion, for he used to send one to each of his most esteemed friends in England every Christmas; and it was a test of political consistency to remain long upon his list, for "all who abandoned his Majesty's somewhat rigid creed of orthodoxy in Church and State were periodically weeded out."

Queen Victoria was most simple in her diet, luncheon being her favourite meal, at which we are told a sirloin of beef and a boiled chicken generally appeared on the bill of fare. Of Scotch cookery she was very fond, and was even known to partake of the national dish of "haggis."

CURIOUS FADS OF ROYALTY

It is recorded how a certain Spaniard, who once attempted to assassinate a king, Ferdinand of Spain, on being put on the rack could give no other reason for his strange conduct but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the King as soon as he saw him:--

"The cause which to that impelled him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him."

Although, happily, such an exceptional case as this is almost unique, yet in a minor degree it illustrates a phase of character which is of almost universal application. Thus, for instance, going back to an early period, the Emperor Heraclius at the age of fifty-nine was seized with an unconquerable terror at the sight of the sea. On his return from his Syrian expedition he sojourned in the palace of Herea, on the shore of the Hellespont, and the story goes that the princes of Constantinople were compelled to span the strait with a bridge of boats, and protect it on both sides with planks and branches of trees, so that one could pass over it without seeing the water. Likewise, the Emperor Augustus was terribly afraid of lightning, and as a safeguard not only carried about his person a seal's skin, but on the approach of a storm took shelter in an underground chamber.

"Spain gives us pride--which Spain to all the earth May largely give, nor fear herself a dearth."

Leopold the "Angel," second son of the Emperor Ferdinand, would rear the most odoriferous plants, but inflicted on himself the mortification of never going near enough to smell them, imagining that by this act of self-denial he was thereby adding a step to a ladder of good works, "by which he hoped to scale heaven!"

Numerous anecdotes have been told illustrative of Frederick William's other fads and eccentricities. Sometimes he would signify his rejection of what he considered an absurd petition by drawing on the margin an ass's head and ears. One day a baron of ancient patent having complained of another baron taking precedence of him, the King wrote on the petition: "Mere folly; whether a man sits above me or below me, my birth remains the same." Oftentimes he would ask people in the streets who they were, a peculiarity which made nervous people evade the royal presence. One day when a Jew saw the King approaching he took to his heels and ran; but Frederick William pursued him in hot haste, and when he overtook him, asked, "Why did you run away from me?" "From fear," answered the Jew, whereupon his Majesty gave him a heavy thwack with his cane, and said that he "wished himself to be loved, and not to be feared."

And even while distracted with the gout, his eccentricity showed itself; for, as a hymn was being sung to him, at the passage, "Naked shall I go hence," he interrupted the singers and said, "No--I shall be buried in my uniform."

His indolence so exasperated his wife Eleanor, that she said to her son Maximilian in a fit of anger, "On my word, if I thought you would be like your father, I should be ashamed of being the mother of such a king." Frederick was too lazy, it is said, to turn the handle of a door, but kicked till some one came to open it, or he burst it in. He paid the penalty of his stupidity, for by so doing he one day hurt his foot, and as mortification threatened the surgeons cut it off. "Ah me!" said Frederick, "a healthy boot is better than a sick Emperor." His exact opposite was Frederick the Great, who was wont to exclaim, "Nothing is nearer akin to death than idleness. It is not necessary that I should live, but it is necessary that whilst I live I be busy."

"Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore, Marched by their Charles to Dnieper's swampy shore; Faint in his wounds, and shivering in the blast, The Swedish soldier sank, and groaned his last."

DANCING MONARCHS

Catherine of Aragon excelled in Spanish dances, and at the festivities in honour of her marriage with Prince Arthur--her short-lived bridegroom--apparelled in Spanish garb, she gave an exhibition of her high proficiency in this mode of dancing. On this occasion, too, the dancing of Henry Duke of York and his sister, Lady Margaret, the young Queen of Scots, gave such satisfaction that it was renewed, when the young Duke, finding himself encumbered with his dress, "suddenly threw off his robe and danced in his jacket with the said Lady Margaret, in so good and pleasant a manner that it was to King Henry and Queen Elizabeth great and singular pleasure."

Another interesting instance of Court dances at this time is given by Hall, who tells how, on the King's visit to France with Anne Boleyn--lately made Marchioness of Pembroke--a magnificent reception was given by him at Calais in honour of the French sovereign, at which, after supper, "came in the Marchioness of Pembroke, with seven ladies, in masking apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold, slashed with crimson tinsel satin puffed with cloth of silver and knit with laces of gold. These ladies were led into the state chamber by four damsels dressed in crimson satin, with tabards of pine cypress. Then the lady marchioness took the French king, the Countess of Derby the King of Navarre, and every lady took a lord. In dancing, King Henry removed the ladies' vizors, so that their beauties were shown." It was then discovered by the French king that he had been dancing with an old acquaintance--no other than the lovely English maid-of-honour of his first queen; and having conversed with her some time apart, he sent her a present on the next morning of a jewel valued at 15,000 crowns.

Queen Elizabeth was a great patroness of the dance, which accounts for its having flourished in her reign. It is said that she bestowed the office of Lord Chancellor on Sir Christopher Hatton, not so much for his knowledge of the law, but because he wore green bows on his shoes, and danced the pavon to perfection, to whom mention is made in Gray's humorous lines:--

"Full oft within the spacious walls, When he had fifty winters over him, My grave Lord Keeper led the brawls, The seals and maces danced before him.

His bushy head, and shoe strings green, His high-crown'd hat and satin doublet, Moved the stout heart of England's queen, Tho' Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it."

Many notices occur, too, of Queen Mary's participation in the revelry of her father's court, and we find her figuring, in her young days, as a dancer in Court ballets. Some courtly adulator, who had been present at a ball at which many danced with her royal father, appears to have been much struck with her charms, making her appearance the subject of a poetic effusion, wherein he tells us:--

"Ravished I was, that well was me O Lord! to me so fain To see that sight that I did see, I long full sore again.

I saw a king and a princess Dancing before my face, Most like a god and a goddess; I pray Christ save their grace."

The last day of the year 1662 concluded with a grand ball at the palace of Whitehall, and Pepys tells us that he got into the room where the dancing was to take place, which was crowded with fine ladies. "By-and-by comes the King and Queen and all the great ones. After seating themselves, all rose again; the King took out the Duchess of York, the Duke the Duchess of Buckingham, the Duke of Monmouth my Lady Castlemaine, other lords other ladies, and they danced 'the brantle.' Afterwards the King led a lady a single coranto, and then the lords, one after another, other ladies; very noble it was, and pleasant to see. Then to country-dances, the King leading the first, which he called for by name as 'Cuckolds all awry,' the old dance of England. The manner was, when the King dances, all the ladies in the room, and the Queen herself, stand up; and, indeed, he dances rarely, and much better than the Duke of York." Pepys adds that it was reported the King reprimanded Lady Gerard as he was leading her down the dance, for having spoken against Lady Castlemaine to the Queen, and forbade her to attend her Majesty any more.

Pepys, too, gives a graphic account of a ball given at Whitehall, in the year 1666, to celebrate the Queen's birthday, on which occasion he contrived to climb up to a loft, where he obtained a view of the festive scene, which he thus describes: "It was indeed a glorious sight to see Mrs. Stuart in black and white lace, and her head and shoulders dressed with diamonds, only the Queen none , and the King in his rich vest of some rich silk and silver trimming; the Duke of York and all the other dancers wore cloth of silver. Presently, after the King was come in he took the Queen, and about fourteen more couple there were, and began the brantle. After the brantles a corant, and now and then a French dance: but that so rare, that the corants grew tiresome, and I wished it done, only Mrs. Stuart danced mighty fine; and many French dances, especially one the King called 'the new dance,' which was very pretty. But, upon the whole, the business of the dancing itself was not extraordinary pleasing. About twelve at night it broke up." Indeed, Queen Catherine is said to have been childishly attached to dancing, and in some verses, entitled "The Queen's Ball," published in the State Poems, she is styled:--

"Ill-natured little goblin, and designed For nothing but to dance and vex mankind."

In after years, when Mary assumed the burden of regal dignity, she was exposed to the malevolent misinterpretation of a Court to which she was almost as much a stranger as was her husband himself. She was considered too fond of the frivolous gaieties from which in truth she shrank, and she writes: "The world who cannot see the heart ... began to take notice of the change that was in my life, and comparing my way of living in Holland to that here, were much scandalised to see me grown so remiss." But this kind of criticism, which was unjust, did not prevent her pursuing the course she considered right; and although on the King's birthday in 1689 a ball was given at her desire, she tells us:--

"I really thought it no proper time, when war was round about, and my father himself engaged against us.... Yet such is the depravation of this age and place where I live, none seems to think of such things, and so, ill-custom prevailing, there was a ball, but by my writings may be seen how I endeavoured to spend that day as also the next, which was Gunpowder Treason, God be praised for it."

In the year 1798 a curious and most imposing ballet was given at Court in honour of the Czarina and the Grand Duke. It was called "The Conquered Prejudice," and was of a most elaborate character, the most imposing stage effects being introduced. And, coming down to recent years, Th?ophile Gautier, describing the opening of a Court ball in 1866, tells how the spectators in the ball-room of the Winter Palace separated so as to leave free a pathway of which they formed the hedges. Every one in position, the orchestra played a majestic air, and with slow steps the promenade began, led by the Emperor giving his hand to some lady whom he was desirous of honouring. They were followed by the rest of the Court, all according to precedence, and gradually "the cort?ge of brilliant uniforms goes on increasing: a nobleman leaves the hedge and takes a lady by the hand, and this new couple take their place in the procession, keeping step by step with the leader. And what adds to the originality of the Russian Court is, that from time to time a young Circassian prince in his fastidious Oriental dress, or a Mongolian officer, will join the cort?ge."

A romantic tale is told of Queen Joan of Naples, who, at a magnificent feast given in her castle of Gaeta, gave her hand to Galeazzo of Mantua for the purpose of opening the ball. At the conclusion of the dance the gallant knight knelt down before his royal partner, and, as an acknowledgment of the honour conferred upon him, he made a solemn vow not to rest until he had subdued two valiant knights, and had presented them prisoners at her royal footstool, to be disposed of at her pleasure. Accordingly, after a year spent in visiting various scenes of action in Brittany, England, France, Burgundy, and elsewhere, he returned and offered his two prisoners of rank to Queen Joan. The Queen received the gift very graciously, but, declining to avail herself of the right she had to impose rigorous conditions on the captives, she gave them liberty without ransom, in addition to bestowing on them several marks of liberality.

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