THE OYSTER FAMINE IN FNGLAND.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 225, 27 February 1875, Page 3

THE OYSTER FAMINE IN FNGLAND.

On the middle-aged Briton few hardships have pressed so severely as the oyster famine. Before the famine, people ate oysters on the slightest provocation—because they met in the street, because they were not hungry and wanted an appetite, because they had no time for luncheon, because they had been to the theatre, because it was too late to get anything else—finally, because they liked them. The value of oyster eating as a mere pastime was fully recognised by the late Earl of Carlisle, who, after a lengthened sojourn in the United States, found himself one fine day on the point of departure homeward with about a quarter of an hour to spare. None of his friends could suggest any useful any practical apj lication of these fifteen minutes, but Lo’d Carlisle was equal to the occasion, rushed Jashore, and ate oysters up to the very last moment. Another great admirer of the oyster was the late professor

Wilson, In his grand Homeric style, Christopher North disdained to speak of dozens, but dealt boldly with hundreds and scores, pecks and bushels, and prescribed a vast consumption of oysters to those anxious to write for Maga. If not in intellect at least in oyster-eating the leonine Professor was not without rivals among the Southron. Most curious of all oyster-eaters was the irrepressible Dando, one in whom the love of oysters was so grandly developed as to stifle all sense of moral responsibility. This great but impecunious man became the terror of oyster vendors. Presenting himself at newly opened oyster-shop anxiously awaiting custom, he would proceed to set the whole oyster opening power of the establishment in operation. Dozen after dozen of delicious natives disappeared down his capacious throat until he had consumed some twenty or thirty dozen, when fatigued, but not yet satisfied, he confounded the oysterman with the terrible confession, “I am Dando,” whereupon he was at once consigned to the care of the police, and while undergoing his allotted term of punishment had leisure to sharpen his deathless appetite to be shortly wreaked remorselessly on a fresh victim. Few occupations are more painful to the gourmand of only moderate means than the perusal of the cookery books of happier days. Profuse notions once prevailed as to the employment of oysters. “ Take a couple of hundred oysters,” saiththe Gamaliel of the cuisine , “blanch them, beard them, &c.” Imagine the Sardanapalus, the Belshazzar, who would now devote a couple of hundred oysters to the preparatian of a tureen of soup or to the stuffing of a mighty turkey! The days of cheap oysters are over. The friend of our youth has become the rare companion of middle age, and when met with at all serves as the fitting herald to a costly banquet, and is accompanied, not by humble porter, but by Chablis and Hock, Sauterne or Still Moselle —for as a luncheon oysters are now unhappily dearer than turtle.