landed proprietor. Mine host, I was told, spent twelve thousand pounds, i.e. $60,000 a year, on his establishment. He was an enthusiast in his way, an old sport. The women whom I was invited to meet looked like six-footers; the hall of the house and the sitting-rooms were filled with stuffed bull-terriers, prize dogs, that had done good service. We walked through beautifully laid-out grounds to a miniature ornamental villa which contained a rat pit, and there we saw a contest between what seemed to me a myriad of rats and a bull-terrier. The latter’s work was expeditious. We surrounded the pit, each one with his watch in hand timing the dog’s work, which he easily accomplished in the allotted time, killing all the rats, which called forth great applause. From this pit we went to another, where we saw the drawing of the badger, a very amusing sight. There was a long narrow box with a trap-door, by which the badger was shut in; up went the door, in went the terrier; he seized the badger by the ear and pulled him out of his box and around the pit, the badger held back with all his might; should the dog fail to catch the badger by the ear, the badger would kill him. Again, we assembled around a third pit, to see a dog-fight, and saw fight after fight between these bull-terriers, to me a disgusting sight, but the women shouted with delight, and kept incessantly calling “Time, sir; time, sir!” Large bets were made on the result. At midnight we went to supper. I sat next to the champion prize-fighter of England, who informed me that a countryman of mine had died in his arms after a prize-fight. Such drinking I never saw before or since; the host, calling for bumper after bumper, insisted on every one draining his glass. I skillfully threw my wine under the table. The host and all the company were soon intoxicated. The footmen in green and gold liveries never cracked a smile. The master, after a bumper, would fall forward on the table, smashing everything. His butler picked him up and replaced him in his chair. This was kept up until 3 A.M., when with pleasure I slipped out and was off in my hansom for London.
My visit to Windsor Castle, dining at the village inn with Her Majesty’s chef, and the keeper of her jewel room, was interesting. I saw the old, tall doorkeeper, with his long staff, sitting at the door of the servants’ hall. I saw Her Majesty’s kitchen and the roasts for all living in the castle—at least twenty separate pieces turning on a spit. Then I examined a large, hot, steel table on which any cooked article being placed would stay hot as long as it remained there. The chef told me a German prince, when informed of its price, said it would take all his yearly revenue to pay for it. Then I saw Her Majesty’s jewel room; the walls wainscoted, as it were, with gold plates; the large gold bowl, which looks like a small bath-tub, from which the Prince of Wales was baptized, stood in the dining-room. I saw Prince Albert and the Prince of Wales that morning shooting pheasants, alongside of the Windsor Long Walk, and stood within a few yards of them. I feel sure we ate, that day, at the inn, the pheasants that had been shot by Prince Albert. I visited Her Majesty’s model farm, and found that all the flax-seed cake for the cattle was imported from America. The simple cognomen, American Landed Proprietor, was “open sesame” to me everywhere, accompanied as I was by one of her Majesty’s pages. In London, of an evening, we went to Evans’s, a sort of public hall where one took beer and listened to comic songs. Jubber, a wine merchant, kept the hotel where I lodged. As a celebrated London physician was dining with me, I asked for the palest and most delicate sherry to be found in London, regardless of cost, to be served that day, at my dinner. He looked at me and smiled, seeing I was quite a young man, saying, “If I give it to you, you will not drink it.” “Send me the sherry,” I replied, “and you will see.” The result was I got a delicious Montilla sherry and sent a butt of it to America. This was my first acquaintance with Montilla sherry, the most delicate wine that I know of, to be served from soup to dessert.
Before getting through with my sporting friend, after paying all his expenses and remunerating him liberally for his services, as I was about to cross the Channel, he came up to me and said, “Mc, I want you to lend me some money.” I saw by his face he was in earnest, and thought that he was about to make a demand for a large amount. So, equally serious, I replied, “It is out of the question, my dear fellow; I am here in a strange country with my family and have no money to lend.” He roared, “Why, all I wanted was a shilling to pay for the Times,” which made me feel very sheepish. That was the last I saw of him. When two years later I returned to London, I found he had conscientiously paid no bills, and, strange to relate, his hotel keeper and tailors seemed fully compensated for the food and raiment they had furnished him, by his sending them a few valueless colored plates of sporting scenes in this country.
A WINTER IN ITALY.
CHAPTER IV.
A Winter in Florence and Rome—Cheap Living and Good Cooking—Walnut-fed Turkeys—The Grand Duke of Tuscany’s Ball—An American Girl who Elbowed the King—What a Ball Supper Should be—Ball to the Archduke of Tuscany—“The Duke of Pennsylvania”—Following the Hounds on the Campagna—The American Minister Snubs American Gentlemen.
I landed in France, not knowing how to speak the language, and only remembering a few French words learned in childhood. It was the year of the Paris Exposition of 1857; all the hotels were full. The Meurice Hotel people sent me off to a neighboring house, where we lodged in the ninth story. I saw the baptism of the Prince Imperial, and on that occasion, and later on in Rome, at the Carnival, saw the handsomest women I had yet seen in Europe. We then made for Florence, and there, getting a most captivating little apartment, on the Arno, kept house, and if it had not been for the terrible and incessant winds called the tramontana would probably have passed our days there. I had the most admirable cook, and had never lived as well. Then the economy of the thing; it cost nothing to live. I paid the fellow twenty-four pauls ($2.40) a day. For this sum he gave us breakfast and exquisite dinners. For each extra guest, at dinner, I paid a few pauls; if I gave a dinner party he hired for me as handsome a service of silver plate as I have ever seen. His whole kitchen seemed to consist of half a dozen pots and pans, and everything was cooked by charcoal.
His manner of roasting a turkey was indeed novel; he placed his bird on a spit, put it in an iron pot, covered it with hot coals top and bottom, and then kept turning the spit incessantly and basting the bird. Such a perfect roast I have never before or since eaten. I shall speak later on of the Newport turkey and the Southern barnyard-fed turkey, but they are not a circumstance to the Florentine walnut-fed turkey. In Florence, at the markets, all turkeys and fowls were cut up and sold, not as a whole, but piece by piece. For instance, you saw on the marble slabs the breasts of chickens, the wings of chickens, the legs of chickens; the same with turkeys. To get an entire bird, you had to order him ahead, so that a few days before Christmas, as we came home from our drive, we found a superb turkey strutting through the drawing-room, the largest creature I had ever seen, weighing twenty-five pounds. When he was served, the walnuts he had eaten could be seen all over his back in large, round yellow spots of fat. As he came on the table, he was indeed a sight to behold; the skin, as it were, mahogany color and crisp, his flesh partaking of the flavor of the walnut, would have satisfied Lucullus.
At that period I worshipped doctors; my theory then was that you owed your existence to them, that they kept you in the world, and not to have a doctor within call was to place yourself in danger of immediate and sudden death; so the first man I cultivated in Florence was the English doctor. He came to see me every day; it was indeed a luxury; his fee was two dollars. We became great friends, and as he was the Court physician, he got me invitations to all the balls. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, then the richest sovereign in Europe, gave a ball every fortnight at the Pitti Palace. It was said that the Italians lived on chestnuts and air between these suppers, and, like the bear, laid in such a supply of food at them as comfortably to carry them through from one entertainment to the other. Certainly such feasting I had never before seen. The number of rooms thrown open really confused one, it was hard
