He begins by saying : “ I should be false to the scheme which I laid down for myself many years ago, when I first thought of writing my life at all, were I not to say something about the great change that came over me when I had to work for some- body else besides myself ; and when my toil was requited by the devotedness and love of a young and intelligent partner. A bachelor must be, to a certain extent, selfish ; he cannot help it ; he thinks of himself in some shape or another from morning till night ; and selfishness begets self-indulgence and hard-heartedness. I-t is not so with a wid- ower ; he has enjoyed the bliss of wedded life. Is there a nobler passage in Johnson’s letter to Ches- terfield than that in which he says, ‘The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been de- 124 The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish, layed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and ca7inot impart it , till I am known and do not want it ’ ? To my mind it is impossible to be really happy unless you can impart at least one moiety of your happiness to others. Never mind what the moiety is — a ticket for the opera, a bunch a flowers, a new garment, a dinner at Greenwich, a drive in the park — it will not be thoroughly enjoyed unless you can share it with somebody you love. It was my great good for- tune to espouse a pious, charitable, and compas- sionate young woman ; and she did her best, during a union of five and twenty years, to weed out of me my besetting sin of selfishness, and to soften and dulcify a temper naturally violent and unreasoning. . . . During the dark days of the long night- mare of Bohemianism I did not forget how to cook, but my culinary faculty was in a state of suspended animation. After my marriage the cunning of the archimogeiros came back unbidden to me, and it was one of the earliest and most de- lightful of my experiences as a Benedict teaching Beatrice how to cook. I bought a very nice little batterie de cuisine made of brown Wedgwood ware ; and with the aid of a spirit lamp and some char- coal embers we managed to get up the most dainty little repasts imaginable. My wife’s capacity for L' Envoi. 125 cooking developed with surprising rapidity. She became in years, as she grew, a veritable cordon bleu ; and between 1875 and 1885, when we had a roomy old house in Mecklenburg Square, and I was prosperous, and could afford to be hospitable, we concocted a number of lunches and dinners which won the admiration of the most distin- guished gourmets in London. The manner of our procedure was as follows : I settled the menu. If there was any made dish or any sauces with which she was unacquainted she asked me for informa- tion and I gave it to her. Then she took three days to think out the dinner. Afterwards she would repair to her laboratory, which was a little room overlooking the garden, and which we had fitted up with shelves, on which she arranged all her condiments, her miniature stewpans and brais- ing-pans, and saucepans, and so forth. The place came to look at last like that gastronomic library which forms the frontispiece to one of the volumes of Reyniere’s ‘ Almanach des Gourmands,’ in which the articles on the shelves are not books, but hams, capons, pates de foie gras , pots of conserves, bottles of oil and vinegar, and other creature com- forts.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

He begins by saying : “ I should be false to the scheme which I laid down for myself many years ago, when I first thought of writing my life at all, were I not to say something about the great change that came over me when I had to work for somebody else besides myself ; and when my toil was requited by the devotedness and love of a young and intelligent partner. A bachelor must be, to a certain extent, selfish ; he cannot help it ; he thinks of himself in some shape or another from morning till night ; and selfishness begets self-indulgence and hard-heartedness. It is not so with a widower ; he has enjoyed the bliss of wedded life. Is there a nobler passage in Johnson’s letter to Chesterfield than that in which he says, ‘The notice you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind ; but it has been de- 124 The Bachelor and the Chafing-dish, layed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and cannot impart it , till I am known and do not want it ’ ? To my mind it is impossible to be really happy unless you can impart at least one moiety of your happiness to others. Never mind what the moiety is — a ticket for the opera, a bunch a flowers, a new garment, a dinner at Greenwich, a drive in the park — it will not be thoroughly enjoyed unless you can share it with somebody you love. It was my great good fortune to espouse a pious, charitable, and compassionate young woman ; and she did her best, during a union of five and twenty years, to weed out of me my besetting sin of selfishness, and to soften and dulcify a temper naturally violent and unreasoning. . . . During the dark days of the long nightmare of Bohemianism I did not forget how to cook, but my culinary faculty was in a state of suspended animation. After my marriage the cunning of the archimogeiros came back unbidden to me, and it was one of the earliest and most delightful of my experiences as a Benedict teaching Beatrice how to cook. I bought a very nice little batterie de cuisine made of brown Wedgwood ware ; and with the aid of a spirit lamp and some charcoal embers we managed to get up the most dainty little repasts imaginable. My wife’s capacity for L' Envoi. cooking developed with surprising rapidity. She became in years, as she grew, a veritable cordon bleu ; and between 1875 and 1885, when we had a roomy old house in Mecklenburg Square, and I was prosperous, and could afford to be hospitable, we concocted a number of lunches and dinners which won the admiration of the most distinguished gourmets in London. The manner of our procedure was as follows : I settled the menu. If there was any made dish or any sauces with which she was unacquainted she asked me for information and I gave it to her. Then she took three days to think out the dinner. Afterwards she would repair to her laboratory, which was a little room overlooking the garden, and which we had fitted up with shelves, on which she arranged all her condiments, her miniature stewpans and braising-pans, and saucepans, and so forth. The place came to look at last like that gastronomic library which forms the frontispiece to one of the volumes of Reyniere’s ‘ Almanach des Gourmands,’ in which the articles on the shelves are not books, but hams, capons, pates de foie gras , pots of conserves, bottles of oil and vinegar, and other creature comforts.

The bachelor and the chafing dish