Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 695

'You shall have the sum you mention in about three weeks,' said Isaac.

Angela now came in dressed for a walk, so Herbert and Isaac broke up their conference, and the three went out together.

IMPORTED BEEF AND MUTTON

A resolute attempt was made a dozen years ago to import fresh beef in various forms from Buenos Ayres; and as the meat was sold at a comparatively low price, there arose high expectations on the subject. The well-meant attempt failed. It would not do. The meat presented an unpleasant appearance. The working classes in this country did not like the flavour, even if the appearance had been good; they would not buy, although the price was low; and thus the affair died out after a few months.

Soon after the failure of Buenos Ayres, our own Australian colony of New South Wales made a bid for the favour of English beef-eaters. Mr Mort, an enterprising citizen of Sydney, introduced Nicolle's freezing process for preserving fresh meat in an untainted state. He was sanguine that the same ship might convey beef and mutton from Australia to England and emigrants from England to Australia, thereby conferring a double benefit on the colonies. Queensland and Victoria were also on the qui vive, ready to find a market for their surplus live-stock in the old mother-country, if events presented favourable symptoms. The freezing process was not by any means the only one tried in Australia. One was an adaptation of Appert's plan of putting fresh meat into tins and drawing out all the air; a second was to exclude warmth by packing in ice; a third was to exclude moisture in such way as to pack the meat in as dry a state as possible. A large trade was gradually formed by a Sydney Company for preserving meat for the English market – not fresh joints in bulk, but partly cooked in tins. The oxen and sheep were slaughtered in abattoirs of improved construction, skinned, boned, and cut up on large tables; the meat was scalded by steam in large open trays, put into tins, and the tins exposed to a temperature of 230° F., in a bath containing chloride of lime dissolved in the water; then sealed up, exposed to a second bath somewhat hotter, and finally to a cold bath. Not only was steamed or parboiled beef and mutton prepared in this way, but the establishment also sent out tins of roasted, cured, spiced beef, haricot of mutton, and so forth. We cannot go into particulars, and have only to say that the efforts, however meritorious, have not been a commercial success.

It may be stated as a well-known fact that the people of Great Britain will not, as a general rule, buy inferior kinds of butcher-meat. They are all glad to purchase at a low price, but the quality must be good, the look of the meat good, the smell good. We should confidently say that no people on the face of the earth are such connoisseurs in good beef and mutton as the English, down even to the humblest classes. In point of fact, the working classes, as they are called, are more fastidious as regards quality and superior cuts than persons of distinction. Laying down this as a rule, it is throwing away trouble and capital to try to serve the English with anything short of the best fresh meat, as usually obtained from butchers. Frozen meat will not do, for it will not keep. Tinned meat half-cooked, and however well spiced, is also not the thing. One may regret the prejudices often entertained on this score. But for the sake of all parties it is best to acknowledge the fact.

The only expedient likely to be successful is that of importing fresh meat from the United States, owing to the comparatively short duration of the voyage and the several fleets of fine steamers belonging to capitalists, who are never slack in throwing themselves into any trade that promises to be fairly remunerating. The proceedings, in brief, are managed as follows. Live-stock, brought to New York by rail from the central and western states of America, are conveyed to well-arranged abattoirs, where they are quickly slaughtered, skinned, &c. Several hundred carcases are put at once into a large cool chamber, where they are kept for a day or two – the period depending on the state of the weather. They are then quartered, wrapped up in coarse canvas, and conveyed to the steamer, drawn up alongside a quay or wharf. A compartment is set aside for the reception of the meat, with an ice-chamber at one end. A current of fresh air, filtered through cotton-wool, is driven over the ice by a steam-worked fan or blast, and thence over the masses of meat. About forty tons of ice are shipped for keeping cool the carcases of a hundred and fifty cattle: reduced probably to a third or quarter of this amount by melting during the voyage. According to the quantity of fresh air forced through the ice-chamber, so is the degree of temperature produced. After many experiments, an opinion has been arrived at that a freezing temperature is neither necessary nor desirable; four or five degrees above that point are preferred, the meat arriving in a pure and fresh state at Liverpool. The quantity shipped at once is sometimes very large. The Wyoming steamer, for instance, brought over at one time in the middle of the recent month of February two thousand three hundred quarters of beef and the carcases of four hundred sheep. In one week a million and a quarter pounds of meat were brought from New York to Liverpool.

Glasgow, as opening direct by the Clyde to the Atlantic, with its fleet of steamers and enterprising traders, bids fair to be a rival to Liverpool in the American meat-traffic. Every week there are paragraphs in the newspapers announcing fresh arrivals. We quote the following as a specimen from the Scotsman of March 7: 'The extension of the American meat-trade at all the larger towns in Scotland has been very marked during the past month, and the import has been quite unequal to the demand. The steamers belonging to the Anchor line of weekly mail packets, which have been bringing from eight hundred to a thousand quarters of fresh meat each voyage, have been compelled to increase their cool-meat cell accommodation by fully one-half. The State line of weekly steamers are also being fitted up with the necessary apparatus for this traffic, and the first steamer of that line with fresh meat – six hundred quarters – was reported last night at the Clyde. The Anchor Line mail-steamer Anchoria also arrived yesterday. The latter vessel brings the largest cargo of fresh meat yet imported into Scotland, having on board one thousand six hundred quarters beef and two hundred carcases of sheep. The two consignments (two thousand two hundred quarters) are nearly equal to any previous fortnight's supply. About one-half of this quantity of fresh meat will be sold in Glasgow market, and the other half will be despatched to Edinburgh, Newcastle, Dundee, and other large towns. In Glasgow and Greenock there has been a further extension of shops for the sale of American fresh meat. The Glasgow butchers are now pretty extensive buyers of the imported beef, and they have again had to lower their prices for home-fed meat by 1d. per lb., making a total reduction on roast and steaks of 3d. per lb., and on other sorts of 2d. per lb. The American meat, however, is still from 1d. to 2d. per lb. cheaper than the medium home sorts. During February the American meat imports at Glasgow, which may be considered as the landing-place for Scotland, amounted to the following large aggregates: 4650 quarters fresh beef, 500 sheep, 2440 tierces salted beef, 1830 barrels salted pork, 1037 barrels hams, 700 barrels tongues, 9300 boxes bacon, and 20,500 cases of tinned (preserved) meat. In the previous month (January) the fresh meat imported aggregated 3728 quarters and 620 sheep; while in December the quantity was about one-half that of January. There is nearly as great an advance in the import of corned meat, bacon, and salted beef and pork. 950 barrels of tallow and 700 barrels of lard were imported last month. Butter and cheese also form an important item in the cargoes from New York; and last month there was an aggregate of 2500 boxes of cheese and 7050 packages of butter brought in six steamers.'

While Glasgow is the source of supply to various places in Scotland, Liverpool sends consignments by railways to London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, and other large centres of population. Some part of the conveyance is managed by aid of Acklom's patent refrigerating wagons. These vehicles, constructed and fitted to keep always cool in the interior, are drawn up to the ship's side at the docks, laden with meat, horsed through the streets to a railway depôt, placed upon trucks, conveyed to any other station, dismounted from the trucks, and driven to warehouses and storehouses. If there be continuous rail from the quay to the final warehouse, so much the better.

What do the butchers and the public think of this beef and mutton? It is now known that the meat should be cooked and eaten as soon as possible after being landed, else it loses somewhat of its good flavour. The newspapers stated that a consignment of two hundred quarters of beef to Edinburgh became deteriorated towards the last, by remaining too long in shops or stores unprovided with cooling appliances.

A remarkable enterprise has just been commenced in London in connection with this subject. An 'Australian Meat Agency Company' has existed for several years; it imports canistered provisions of all kinds from our antipodean colonies; but as Sydney and Melbourne have not yet surmounted the difficulties of establishing a profitable transmission of fresh joints of meat to England, the Company has laid itself open to the reception of such meat from any country. Underneath the vast Cannon Street terminus of the South-eastern Railway are ranges of brick vaults which the Meat Company has just taken at an annual rental. Fresh air from the river is admitted into a refrigerating chamber, whence, after being cooled down, it passes into other chambers where the meat is placed on broad open shelves; a small steam-engine forces the air over the ice in the refrigerating chambers, and thence into the several meat chambers. A sloping road leads up from the vaulted chambers to the railway level, and there are four landing-stages from the river – thus affording considerable facilities for the arrival and departure of large consignments of meat. The expectation is that the meat will keep cool and good for several days, instead of being forced occasionally on an unwilling market to avert spoiling; and if this expectation be realised, the same plan may be adopted for poultry, fruit, and dairy produce.

The retailing at present is a puzzle. We are told from time to time that the butchers cry down the American meat in order to keep up the high price of English and Scotch beef and mutton; that they sometimes sell slightly tainted English meat under the name of American, to bring down the fair fame of the latter; and that more frequently they buy the foreign meat and sell it again as English. The butchers deny these allegations, and the public are left to find out the truth for themselves the best way they can. At the Cold Stores, as they are called, of the Meat Agency Company, above described, the price for sides, quarters, and large joints varies from about sixpence-halfpenny to ninepence per pound – small joints being higher per pound than large, and meat for roasting higher than meat for boiling. The demand for the latter being much less than that for the former, a rapid sale for the whole is found to be difficult, unless buyers are tempted by a lower price for round, brisket, and other boiling-pieces. As a small joint of the best roasting beef is tenpence per pound, the reduction below the price for English beef is certainly not considerable, especially as the sellers do not send the meat to the consumers' houses. If the trade establishes itself on a firm footing, there will probably be retail stores in various parts of London (and other large towns) for the sale of American meat; or else the regular butchers will sell American as well as English meat, each at its own proper price. One thing is certain, as already hinted, that unless the Americans send first-rate qualities of meat, they need not send it at all. Another thing they must attend to is, that in cutting up the meat it must be neatly dressed. On this score we have heard serious complaints. The quarters of beef are too often not properly trimmed for market, at least not sufficiently so to please English wholesale dealers.

Other nations are striving to ascertain whether they can obtain a share in this new meat-trade. A French Company has built a ship called La Frigorifique, to ply between Buenos Ayres and Brest; it contains cool chambers which will keep meat at any desired temperature. The process adopted is that of M. Tellier. Methylic ether, like ammonia, evaporates rapidly, and absorbs heat from neighbouring bodies in so doing; the vapour passing through tubes in a cylinder cools down the air outside the tubes; the cooled air passes into chambers in the hold, where the meat is either hung up or put on shelves. The methylic ether can be used over and over again with only little waste. The hope of the Company is to be able to stow in the ship the meat of a thousand head of cattle, bring it from Buenos Ayres to Brest in a little over a month, and sell it at about two-thirds the price of French meat. At the time we are writing, the Frigorifique is making her first voyage; on the principle that 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating,' we must wait awhile to learn the result.

Some of the Liverpool steamers are, it is reported, being fitted up with refrigerating apparatus for bringing freshly killed meat from Spain. The continental railways are organising a plan to bring meat from Hungary in three days in refrigerating cars, at a freight-charge of a little over a halfpenny per pound, to Ostend or some port whence it could be shipped to England. Moscow is said to be able to buy fairly good beef at fourpence per pound, and is calculating whether London could obtain some of it at about sevenpence.

The new move certainly has some lively elements in it, and we shall watch with some interest its development. As yet, the introduction of huge cargoes of fresh meat has had no sensible effect in lowering the standard market prices. To some extent this may be explained by the suspended importation of live oxen from the continent, on account of the dreaded cattle disease. Unless, however, the importation of fresh meat from America or elsewhere attains a very gigantic scale, we do not anticipate any very marked reduction of prices. From the increasing wealth and population in the British Islands, the demand for meat will long far outrun the means of native supply. The agricultural interest may as yet keep itself tolerably at ease on the subject.

MOUNT PISGAH, LONDON, W

It is not much of a mountain, scarcely deserving the name of a hill in fact, but the name will indicate aptly enough the character of the inhabitants; for it is here that many look longingly into the social Promised Land which they cannot enter. Mount Pisgah is the region of struggling gentility; as Saffron Hill is of organ-grinders; as Brixton is of merchants; as Westburnia is of Hebrews and Anglo-Asiatics; as Brook Street is of doctors, and Islington of City clerks. From the centre and axis of the haut ton, which ends at Park Lane, respectability radiates in a north-westerly and south-westerly direction; but whereas South Kensington abruptly terminates in Brompton, the region of Hyde Park, properly so called, merges into Bayswater and Westburnia, the outer circle ending in Mount Pisgah. There is a general air of neglect about the neighbourhood, and although the houses are rather pretentious-looking buildings, they are rarely troubled with the hands of the painter or plasterer. Corinthian columns and stuccoed balustrades lose much of their effect when chipped and scribbled over and used as the vehicle for the artistic displays of youth – in chalks. The doorsteps are not always very clean; and in the street, if it is not dusty, it is muddy; and if scraps of paper are not flying about, orange-peel and broken crockery strew your path. But then this is also a great place for the 'slut of a servant,' who is cheap if nothing else; and for the streets, well, the vestry are not likely to be troubled with complaints from such birds of passage as the Pisgans all are – or all hope to be, I should say – for too often, alas, do they find their wings clipped and their stay involuntary. In Mount Pisgah, majors and colonels are as plentiful as blackberries; high-wranglers and ex-Indian judges jostle first classmen and 'late political residents.' Unbeneficed clergymen, who eagerly scan the Times advertisements each morning for pupils; unsuccessful doctors and disappointed barristers waiting for the patients and the briefs that are so long in coming; and others who are seeking to eke out a scanty income by that very poor crutch but passable walking-stick, as some one has aptly called literature – all these abound in this neighbourhood. The only prosperous people are the butchers and bakers and other trades-people. They nod familiarly their 'Good morning, Gineral,' or 'Wet day, Mister,' to the humble officer or tutor who shovels past with the weight of the remembrance of those rapidly increasing bills for inferior joints and alumed bread, which he must meet at the end of the quarter.

The commercial ethics of Mount Pisgah are not altogether peculiar to themselves; but if one rule meets with greater observance than another, it is, that as bills increase quality shall decrease; and after all, as Mr Undercut or Mr Crumpet will tell you, they are often 'took in dreadful.' How eagerly pay-day is looked forward to! the brief interval from the depressing pecuniary cares of their lives that comes to each four times a year. A 'social' then takes place. Ordinarily, old Mangosteen, of the – th Native Infantry, meeting Junglebird, C.S.I., who lived with him in the N.W.P., where they were as brothers, says 'How do?' and passes on. Each knows that the other has but one thought – his embarrassments: they respect one another's misfortunes, and avoid the hollow mockeries to which conversation must necessarily give rise. But towards the end of each quarter all this is changed; there is going to be a little dinner; or 'My womenkind are turning the house inside out for a dance;' or 'The boys are going to row us down to Richmond;' and then Junglebird and Mangosteen kill their tigers over again, and chuckle merrily over that roaring night at the – th mess; and Briefless and Exminus recall the old Combination Room jokes; and if, as they sip their cheap claret, they think with some regret of that mellow ruby nectar that the cellars of St Botolph's used sometimes to produce; they also remember how, when up last autumn for the election of a 'Silverpoker' (as the Esquire Bedel is irreverently called, from his emblem of office), they had found two fellows of their own time martyrs to gout and a nuisance to the whole college – for which that delicious 'old tawny' was doubtless responsible. The ladies in Mount Pisgah take quite a different tone too, at this eventful period. Although at other times not quite so 'solitary' in their habits as their husbands – for women find a comfort in talking over their common troubles – they have long discussions upon the chance of Charley getting a presentation to Christ's Hospital; or of Tommy's cadetship at Wellington; or how Mr Howling Hawley, the great singing-master, held out hopes of dear Amelia's voice being a fortune to her; and yet how dreadful it would be for the poor child to appear before the public; but then you know, my dear, things have altered so much since our time, and now you really find quite respectable people performing in public! But when they give their little dinners and dances and the rest, you shall see how the Pisgan ladies will rise to the occasion, and you shall not find in Grosvenor Square a more strict observance of the rules of etiquette. And if at times it is a little old-fashioned and somewhat more strict than Society demands in these loose times, it bears the right stamp, and might indeed be profitably imitated in many more pretentious houses.

Of course it is a long time since those Pisgans who have belonged to the Rag or the Oriental, or the Union or Junior, have ceased to be members of those institutions. Some have found that the seven or eight guineas required at the most critical period of the year could be spent to much better purpose; others have felt that the old associations would be too painful. But they have their clubs nevertheless. Within the last ten years clubs have become as plentiful as hotels nearly. And the enterprising City gentleman who fits up a big house with a dining and reading and smoking and morning and billiard room, and advertises the inauguration of the Pantheon Club, 'for the benefit of those gentlemen who are unable to enter the older clubs owing to their overcrowded condition,' requires names for his committee. Military Pisgans are admirably suited for this rôle. What a blessing too, that they have such a place to go to, instead of always pottering about at home, where they would be but too often in the way. There are more troublesome things than canaries and poodles, novel-reading and invitation cards, to be attended to by the mammas and daughters of Pisgan households. Committees of ways and means; arguing with the cook who 'hasn't been accustomed' to some obviously wise little economy; softening the anger of some brow-beating creditor; twisting and turning, and 'managing,' to make old appear like new, are all matters in which the presence of a male creature is worse than useless. So there is a vague sort of tradition that papa goes to his club to write letters, and to be there if anything should turn up. And he sometimes writes a few letters, and reads all the papers, and smokes a good many pipes, and takes a sandwich and moderate tankard of beer for his lunch, and saunters down Regent Street, or drops into the British Museum Reading-room or the National Gallery – or into the India or Colonial Office, to see if 'anything is turning up.' Besides, he will give you the particulars of a review in Hyde Park, or a boat-race on the Thames, or a 'demonstration' at the 'Reformers' Tree,' just as well as the evening papers, for these are all luxuries within his reach. And in the season you will see him on the wrong side of the Row looking into the Promised Land. Time was perhaps when he too had joined a knot of laughing youths at the Corner, or seated on horseback had tapped his lackered boot with infinite self-satisfaction, or trotted along at the side of some fair creature with whom he would dance an unconscionable number of dances that same evening. He was a sub or an undergraduate at the time, and saw Fortune within his grasp; but he missed his chance, or Fortune was unkind; and gall and vinegar were his portion instead of milk and honey.

Some of the inhabitants of Mount Pisgah are fairly off, and merely live there because they find the place cheap and they are not forced into any fashionable extravagances. But this is not the case with most. Their pleasures are negative – the mere temporary absence of care. The continually recurring question, 'How shall I pay?' or 'What will it cost?' crushes every sense of comfort and ease out of them. For them is none of the happy regularity of well-to-do respectability – the wiping off of unpaid bills as regularly as Mary Jane the housemaid dusts the escritoire with its dainty pieces of Japan-work and ormolu. Not for them the pleasant little morning duties; the list for Mudie's; the tending of the conservatory; the new waltz by Godfrey; the orders for tradesmen and for dinner (the one crumpled rose-leaf perhaps, this); the afternoon shopping or visiting; the drive to Pall Mall, or the Temple, or the City, to bring papa back from his club, or his chambers, or his office; the pretty frequent theatre and concert; the weekly 'at-homes;' the friendly dances, and more elaborate balls, that are of constant occurrence when town is full. Life is very hard and ugly in Mount Pisgah. Captain Burton the great traveller, says in one of his late works that he wonders how any poor man can ever think of living in England, or any rich one out of it. If England, perhaps more so London; and it is only necessary to know a little of Mount Pisgah to learn what a fascination is exercised over some men's minds by this dear foggy, hard and tender, rich and squalid, centre of an Englishman's world, yclept London.