“One meets the publishers one by one, Bentley, who did Mardi, Murray, who published Typee and Omoo, Mr. Longmans, Mr. Chapman, Mr. Bohn, Mr. Moxon, who was Charles Lamb’s crony; and when one can’t make the deal one had hoped for, one goes down the line; but the answer is always the same: the copyright is unsatisfactory, the work may be pirated in America; and they cannot risk two hundred pounds on the rights for the first thousand copies. The prospects are not too pleasant; but if the matter could be settled at once one wouldn’t have the excuse and the opportunity to visit the Dulwich Gallery, remote from London, but full of splendid treasures; one couldn’t sit with the Greenwich pensioners at Greenwich; one couldn’t spend a Sunday morning, a little too conspicuous for comfort, at the services in St. Bridget’s; nor could one discuss metaphysics with Dr. Adler at the Edinburgh Castle, dark-walled and like a beefsteak in colour, where the ale was so mellow and the waiters so polite. One absorbs a city by food and drink, as well as by sight and conversation: the Mitre--Johnson’s tavern--and the Cock and the Rainbow--Tennyson’s haunts: the little French hotel in Soho where one has morning coffee and a jelly omelette, or, to know the worst about life in London, a cup of brackish coffee, a dirty roll, an unappetizing piece of bacon, on a dank, foggy morning in a cheap eating-house: such depression of taste, sight, sound, feeling adds a new circle to life’s possible hells.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Currant or other tart jelly. 5 eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls cream, or the same of milk, thickened with a teaspoonful of rice-flour or arrow-root. 2 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar. 1 teaspoonful bitter almond or vanilla flavoring. Beat whites and yolks separately, adding to the latter the sugar and milk after they are thick and smooth. Next, chop in the seasoning; lastly, stir in the whites with a few swift strokes. Put a large spoonful of butter in the frying-pan, and, when it is hot, pour in the omelette. Spread upon it when done, which will be in a very few minutes, some nice jelly. Take the pan from the fire to do this, spread quickly, slip your knife or tin spatula under one-half of the omelette, and double it over. Turn over on a hot platter, sift powdered sugar upon it, and eat at once.
Sources: The passage is from Lewis Mumford, Herman Melville, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Harland, Common Sense in the Household of 1871, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — plum cloth, boar stamp.