The Vanished Pomps of Yesterday by Hamilton Frederic Lord

Author:Hamilton, Frederic, Lord [Hamilton, Frederic, Lord]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, New Age, Religion & Spirituality, History, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9781465637352
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2020-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Though Moscow may appear a dream-city when viewed from the Kremlin, it is an eminently practical city as well. It was, in my time, the chief manufacturing centre of Russia, and Moscow business-men had earned the reputation of being well able to look after themselves.

Another side of the life of the great city could be seen in the immense Ermitage restaurant, where Moscow people assured you with pride that the French cooking was only second to Paris. The little Tartar waiters at the Ermitage were, drolly enough, dressed like hospital orderlies, in white linen from head to foot. There might possibly be money in an antiseptic restaurant, should some enterprising person start one. The idea would be novel, and this is an age when new ideas seem attractive.

A Russian merchant in Moscow, a partner in an English firm, imagined himself to be under a great debt of gratitude to the British Embassy in Petrograd, on account of a heavy fine imposed upon him, which we had succeeded in getting remitted. This gentleman was good enough to invite a colleague and myself to dine at a certain "Traktir," celebrated for its Russian cooking. I was very slim in those days, but had I had any idea of the Gargantuan repast we were supposed to assimilate, I should have borrowed a suit of clothes from the most adipose person of my acquaintance, in order to secure additional cargo-space.

In the quaint little "Traktir" decorated in old-Russian style, after the usual fresh caviar, raw herrings, pickled mushrooms, and smoked sturgeon of the "zakuska," we commenced with cold sucking-pig eaten with horse-radish. Then followed a plain little soup, composed of herrings and cucumbers stewed in sour beer. Slices of boiled salmon and horse-radish were then added, and the soup was served iced. This soup is distinctly an acquired taste. This was succeeded by a simple dish of sterlets, boiled in wine, with truffles, crayfish, and mushrooms. After that came mutton stuffed with buckwheat porridge, pies of the flesh and isinglass of the sturgeon, and Heaven only knows what else. All this accompanied by red and white Crimean wines, Kvass, and mead. I had always imagined that mead was an obsolete beverage, indulged in principally by ancient Britons, and drunk for choice out of their enemies' skulls, but here it was, foaming in beautiful old silver tankards; and perfectly delicious it was! Oddly enough, the Russian name for it, "meod," is almost identical with ours.

Only once in my life have I suffered so terribly from repletion, and that was in the island of Barbados, at the house of a hospitable planter. We sat down to luncheon at one, and rose at five. The sable serving-maids looked on the refusal of a dish as a terrible slur on the cookery of the house, and would take no denial. "No, you like dis, sar, it real West India dish. I gib you lilly piece." What with turtle, and flying-fish, and calipash and calipee, and pepper-pot, and devilled land-crabs, I felt like the boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens after his monthly meal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.