PASSING OF LUNCH

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3264, 6 February 1926, Page 14

PASSING OF LUNCH

THE EXACTIONS OF BUSINESS. AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT IN PARIS. There comes from Paris the strange story that lunch is passing away, says the Daily Telegraph. The Parisian working day, like all else in Continental life, has ever been organised upon the basis of a large and a long midday meal. Whatever else was reformed, this, call it. dejeuner or Mittagesscn, seemed secure, and nowhere else safer than in Paris. The Parisian at least, we thought wo could rely upon to place the comforts of life above the base exactions of business, never for the sake of livelihood to sacrifice ■ what makes life worth living. The plea is that both the senses of comfort and business unite in voting for the abolition of the dejeuner. To go home to lunch was well enough white Paris was compact. Now that everybody has to live miles away from shop and office an unconscionable time, is wasted over lunch, to nobody’s satisfaction . The mere thought of going homo to lunch strikes the Londoner as antediluvian What he would say to the common Paris hours of a working day that begins at nine and ends at seven, with some two hours or more of a luncheon interval, 'is beyond imagination, but certalnily he would prefer his tea shosi to all the flesh pots of Paris. 1a number of large business shops in Paris have lately been making experiments with a working day on the London pattern, ending at five, broken' only by a short interlude for lunch. Everybody is said to bo pleased, and business people consider that the knell is sounded. We must suppose that they intend to fortify nature with a more substantial or English breakfast. So time offers us the prospect of an interesting experiment to prove whether the difference between Continental meals and our is mere chance or the expression of a natural incompatability of temperament. It is to) be observed that there is nothing permanent about the times of our meals or even the distribution of quantities between them. Not to go back into the dark ages, which would afford overwhelming examples of variety, let us be content with the food of one poor century . When Macaiilay went to breakfast at Holland House, a temple of luxury, there was nothing to eat but rolls and but. ter and boiled eggs, He used to work right on from breakfast to dinner. Sixty years later Mr. Gladstone complained that “Ilfs in a country house meant three dinners a day,” so much more luxurious had breakfast and lunch become. In the' days of Pickwick, middle-class people dined at five or six, and "if a man habitually sat down to luncheon and atd it through, he was regarded as indifferent to the claims of dinner, and. moreover, was condemned as an taler." The large midday meal came in again with the Prince Consort. "Prince Albert,” says the chronicler, “was notoriously fond of luncheon, and Queen Victoria humoured him.

The example, commuicated from the highest quarters, was soon followed in society” to establish the system of three dinners a day lamented by Mr. Gladstone. But for English peo. pie at work the midday meal dwindled long ago, and has been reduced to the bare necessity of sustenance. Will Paris be content to transpose its lunch and breakfast, and do as we do? A time may come when quicklunch counters will suffice for all her gastronomic needs. But we do not expect to see it. We believe the French mind has a better sense of relative values.