Text: N. P. Willis (?), Review of Miss Bunbury, How the English Live, Weekly Mirror (New York), November 7, 1844, vol. 1, no. 6, p. 84, col. 1

[page 84, column 1:]

HOW THE ENGLISH LIVE. — A Miss Bunbury, an English lady, has written a book called “Rides in the Pyrenees.[[”]] From Amiens to Pau her only companion was an old gentleman, lamed by rheu. matism, whom she met by chance; and all the rides in the Pyrenees were performed on mountain ponies, with no other attendant than a good-natured guide, searching those picturesque watering-places which lie hidden in the mountain barrier between France and Spain, one after another, in quest of a party of friends who engaged to meet her at Pau, but who, it subsequently turned out, had never left England. Her cheerfulness was unconquerable under every disappointment, and, to say truth, we believe she was so pleased with her gipsy-like and solitary wanderings, a carpet-bag containing all her luggage, that she was not half so vexed as she ought to have been at her friends’ nonappearance. She journeyed through the most sublime and beautiful scenery in nature in a perfectly independent manner, and seems never to have met with insult or unkindness, nor with any casualty, beyond an occasional drenching by a mountain shower, or an embrace in the arms of a Pyreneean cloud, or, worse still, a failure in the important matter of dinner or supper. The peasants’ huts gave her ready shelter, and a blazing fire and a mattress near it made amends for the chilling coldness or mist of the mountain atmosphere. Thus, roughing it, she had the opportunity of seeing more of the Pyrenees than falls to the lot of travellers in general; and as her pen possesses the mirror-like faculty of setting her impressions upon paper, and she is as intelligent as she is lively, it may be imagined that her account of her wanderings is both novel and engaging. In one of the houses where she lodged, a company assembled who were vastly edified by the description given by a voluble and vulgar Frenchwoman “of the way the English live:” —

Unless I had that woman's volubility and rapid utterance, her gesticulation, and the liberty of repeating her words in French, I never could do her description justice.

“Eh! the English do live well!” she began; “the commandant at Toulouse was a prisoner in England, and he has told me, he saw them, and he says he got to like it. First, for breakfast they take a great round of toast (and madame took the flat of her hand to represent the toast, drawing the other a little way above it to represent also the thickness,) and they spread it over with a quantity of butter; then they put on that slices of ham, and sausages, and — what do you call that other thing the English are so fond of, madame?”

“Ale,” said I, at a guess.

“Yes, oil; they put oil on that, and then they take another round of toast, covered with butter, and lay it on the top, and they eat that, and they drink tea, au lait, at the same time; they eat and they drink, and they drink and they eat, and that is an English breakfast — eh! they live well, these English!”

A little note of admiration went round, and, encouraged by the effect of her powers of description, madame went on to enlighten us further respecting English eating: —

“Then for dinner they take great cotelettes of beef (and here the hands were distended about three quarters of a yard apart, to designate the size of each piece of beef which formed the cotelette,) and they only just warm them at the fire; and eat them with great potatoes, boiled just as they are dug out of the earth, all entire; and they never have but one plate, and they eat the great whole potatoes and the cotelette of beef, tout sanglant, both together.”

Another little murmur of wonder, and a suffocated laugh, encouraged the dame to show her further knowledge of English life and eating: —

“Then,” turning to me, “you have what you call plomb puddin; and do you know how they make that? Ah, I know all that — Tenez! They take a great cauldron, and put it over the fire the first thing in the morning; and into that they pour a great quantity of milk and eau-de vie; and then take a vast deal of the fat of the beef, the pure fat, and put it in also; and they thicken it with flour — and — and — what else do you put in your plomb puddin, madame?”

“Eggs,” I replied, with much verity.

“Ah! yes, an enormous number of eggs they put to that; and then — what else, madame, do you put in your plomb puddin?”

“Fruit.”

“Ah! certainly; yes, fruits of all kinds; they chop them together, all kinds’ and put them into the cauldron, and they stir all up well together, and boil it from morning to evening, and then turn it out into a great basin; and they eat that at dinner with their great raw cotelettes (scribe) of beef and their whole potatoes, and they never have but one plate, eh! They live well, these English! The commandant learned all their customs when he was prisoner in England, and he told me himself he would be glad to have had their plomb puddin every morning for his breakfast. They live so well, these English!”