224 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE 



I extract this, as I found it, from the book in which 

 the orders and arrangen:ients for dinners were recorded. 

 From an old account-book I find the bill with wine 

 came to about one pound ten shillings a head. The 

 substantiality of the repast, and the hour at which it was 

 served, are worthy of note, and the boiled leg of pork 

 and pease-pudding ; but this was probably a favourite 

 dish of Lord Blaney's. In the same way, at the dinners 

 of the Royal Hunt Club, the standard dishes of " steak 

 and oyster pudding" and " Irish stew " were ordered to 

 be served every day, as Lord ErroU would insist upon 

 these dishes appearing at every dinner of the Hunt. 



I notice by an entry in the book I have referred to, 

 that one of the last of these old-fashioned dinners was 

 given by " Squire " Drake to about seventy gentlemen : 

 one of the courses consisted of twenty-six dishes of fish. 

 The dinner a la RiLsse gradually superseded the old 

 English style, even at the Tory White Hart. It had 

 obvious advantages, advantages both aesthetic and from 

 the point of view of practical comfort, but it entails in 

 waiting and decoration a larger degree of expenditure, 

 and lacks something of the hospitality of the former 

 method. It is possible that a combination of the two 

 styles might produce a yet happier result. 



The White Hart at Aylesbury being situated close 

 to the Assize Courts, that hostelry became the head- 

 quarters of the lawyers who attended what was at that 

 time the Norfolk Circuit. Most, if not all, the members 

 of the Bar had their lodgings at private houses ; but 

 when the railways began to bring all these gentlemen 

 of the legal profession in a crowd together into the 



