DEAR Manning,—I have been very unwell since I saw you. A sad depression
of spirits, a most unaccountable nervousness; from which I have been partially
relieved by an odd accident. You knew Dick Hopkins, the
swearing scullion of Caius? This fellow, by industry and agility, has thrust
himself into the important situations (no sinecures, believe me) of cook to
Trinity Hall and Caius College: and the generous creature has contrived with
the greatest delicacy imaginable, to send me a present of Cambridge brawn. What
makes it the more extraordinary is, that the man never saw me in his life that
I know of. I suppose he has heard of me. I did not
immediately recognise the donor; but one of
Richard’s cards, which had accidentally fallen
into the straw, detected him in a moment. Dick, you know,
was always remarkable for flourishing. His card imports, that “orders
(to wit, for brawn), from any part of England, Scotland, or Ireland, will
be duly executed,” &c. At first, I thought of declining the
present; but Richard knew my blind side when he pitched
upon brawn. ’Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He
might have sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumplets, chips, hog’s
lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously
replaced by a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, runaway
gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, tender effusions of laxative
woodcocks, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets’ ears, and such pretty
filchings common to cooks;
| 1805 | BRAWN | 303 |
Yours,
