COOKER Y 257 



and when, in his ' Impressions de Voyage,' he went to 

 a duck-chase in the Camargue, he personally superin- 

 tended the dressing of the spoils. Walter Scott was no 

 gourmet : he could not even detect when a haunch 

 of venison had been overhung. But he tells sympa- 

 thetically how Counsellor Pleydell, when he dropped 

 in unexpectedly on the Mannerings at Woodburn, 

 arranged, while taking off his wrappings in the hall, 

 for a brace of Galloway wild ducks being added to 

 the supper. And afterwards Pleydell gave us all a 

 useful hint when he told the Dominie to tear off the 

 wing, in place of slashing at the pinion. Anthony 

 Trollope knew well how tenderly ducks should be 

 treated. Though ' The Claverings ' is a poor novel, a 

 single episode redeems it by an exquisitely natural 

 touch. Theodore Burton, a man whom his future 

 brother-in-law dislikes and despises because he dusts 

 his boots with his pocket handkerchief, retrieves his 

 reputation by the thoughtful care he bestows on the 

 dressing of a brace of wild ducks, ' preparing the 

 gravy with pepper and lemon, having in the room 

 a little silver pot and an apparatus of fire for the 

 occasion.' It is to be hoped that the pepper was 

 cayenne or Nepaul. 



In England of the Anglo-Saxons, and under the 

 Norman kings, wild-fowl rained down on the ceorls, 



s 



