Douglas Jerrold, and we went into the coffee-room to dine.
The coffee-room occupies one whole side of the edifice, and is provided
with a great many tables, calculated for three or four persons to dine
at; and we sat down at one of these, and Dr. ------ ordered some
mulligatawny soup, and a bottle of white French wine. The waiters in the
coffee-room are very numerous, and most of them dressed in the livery of
the Club, comprising plush breeches and white-silk stockings; for these
English Reformers do not seem to include Republican simplicity of manners
in their system. Neither, perhaps, is it anywise essential.
After the soup, we had turbot, and by and by a bottle of Chateau Margaux,
very delectable; and then some lambs' feet, delicately done, and some
cutlets of I know not what peculiar type; and finally a ptarmigan, which
is of the same race of birds as the grouse, but feeds high up towards the
summits of the Scotch mountains. Then some cheese, and a bottle of
Chambertin. It was a very pleasant dinner, and my companions were both
very agreeable men; both taking a shrewd, satirical, yet not ill-natured,
view of life and people, and as for Mr. Douglas Jerrold, he often
reminded me of E---- C------, in the richer veins of the latter, both by
his face and expression, and by a tincture of something at once wise and
humorously absurd in what he said. But I think he has a kinder, more
genial, wholesomer nature than E----, and under a very thin crust of
outward acerbity I grew sensible of a very warm heart, and even of much
simplicity of character in this man, born in London, and accustomed
always to London life.
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