Concerning Peacock's Feathers.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5049, 9 July 1884, Page 3

Concerning Peacock's Feathers.

AN AMUSING CASE OF ASSAULT. (From the " Star's" London Correspondent.) An amusing case of assault, which resulted in the famous baritor"; singer Signor Foli recovering .£350 da/ ages and costs from a young barrister named Bradshawe, was tried before Lord Coleridge and a special jury in the Queen's Bench Division on Tuesday. The plaintiff, Mr Foley, or Signor Foli as he prefers to be called, is not only one of our greatest operatic baritones, but a warm-blooded Irishman, a regular " Paddy " in fact. Last spring he and his wife were at Monte Carlo. They stayed at one of the hotels, and at the table d'hote they met an English lady of position named Bradshawe. A discussion appears to have arisen one day between the ladies touching peacocks and their feathers, and there was a difference of opinion between THE PLAINTIFF'S WIFE AND THE DEFENDANT'S MOTHER. Signor Foli intervened in the discussion to resent what he thought to be an offensive impeachment of the veracity of his wife. " Can heavenly minds such high resentment show, Aud exercise their spite in human woe ?" Unfortunately the frame of mind in which the disputants treated the peacock controversy was not of a very heavenly order. There was not precisely " a fite," as Artemus Ward would say j but . there was an abundance of hard words all round. Mrs Bradshawe declared that subsequently, when she was peacefully consuming her soup in the hotel restaurant, Signor Foli shook his fist in her face and above her head. She even asserted at the trial that the Signor had on one occasion seized her by the shoulders with the view of accelerating her progress down a flight of steps. The parties came to England, and Mrs Bradshawe imparted her woes, or what she thought to be her woes, to her son, Mr George Paris Bradshawe, a barrister. The chivalrous apprentice of the law was moved to dire wrath by the maternal recital. " Cest ma more ; je la defende !" he cried with the poet in " Mourir pour la Patrie." I HE CHALLENGED SIGNOR FOLI TO FIGHT A I DUEL, j but the Signor did not see his way towards settling the affair by the arbitrament of sword or pistol. Mrs Bradshawe's son applied iv vain at more than one Police Court for a summons against Signor Foli for assaulting his mother at Monte Carlo ; and finally the high-tempered young gentleman, who is a son of a general officer deceased, went down, accompanied by a friend to see fair, one evening last May, to St James' Hall, just as a concert was about to commence, and, seeking out Signor Foli, " WHACKED " HtM, to use vulgar parlance, with a stick. There was only one blow, but it was on the face, and severe. The jury on Tuesday, without leaving the box, fouud a verdict for the plaintiff, with ,£350 damages. MR GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, chatting pleasantly about the case in the Telegraph, says :— At the table d'hote wrangle, it was incidentally mentioned, it seems, by Madame Foli, that "people who kept peacocks' feathers never had any luck as long as they lived." Then something was said about peacocks not being eaten, to which Signor Foli rejoined in an under tone, " They are eaten." Now if some guest of a mollifying and peacemaking disposition had only suggested that reference should at once be made to " Notes and Queries " for an explanation of the old and silly superstition that it is unlucky to keep peacocks' feathers, not only need there have been no feud between the houses of Capulet and Montague — \ we mean of Foli and Bradshawe — bat the correspondents of our " learned, chatty and useful " contemporary would have revelled for a while in peacock lore. It might have been pointed out that, if the keeping of peacocks' feathers be indeed unlucky, there has been a notable exception

to the rule in the case of the famous and amiable blue-stocking and entertainer of young chimney-sweeps, Mrs Montagu, who had good luck all her life long, for she married a gentleman of immense wealth, and did not die until she was eighty-six years old, and concerning the mural decoration of whose drawing-room Cowper wrote : " The birds put off their every hue To dress a room for Montagu ; The peacock sends his heavenly dyes, His rainbows and his starry eyes."

-AS EESPECTS THE EATING OF PEACOCKS, about which Signor Foli got into so much trouble, it might have been pointed out that Argus was a favourite dish with our ancestors. The skin of the bird, with the feathers adhering, was first carefully stripped off. Then Argus was roasted, and when partially cooked was sewn up again in his plumes ; his beak was gilt, and he was sent to table. Sometimes the " food for lovers and meat for lords " was stuffed with spices and sweet herbs, basted with yolk of egg, and served up with plenty of gravy. The noble creature was not served by common hands. It was brought into hall by the lady guest most distinguished for birth and beauty, music preceding, and other ladies following, the grand roast. At tournament banquets Pavo was served as a pie, his plumed crest protruding from one extremity of the crust, and his " train," in all its glory, from the other. There were Vows of the Peacock, as there were Vows of the Heron. The last English Prince of the Blood Royal who dined publicly on peacock was William IV., when Prince William Henry, but the banquet took place at Grenada, in the West Indies. The fact is that the peacock meat is, save during two months of the year, too tough for modern digestion. The birds are hatched about the beginning of November, and from January to the end of March, when the corn is standing, the flesh is remarkably juicy and tender. When, however, the dry season comes the birds feed upon insects and the seeds of weeds. Young peacocks still make an occasional appearance at country gentlemen's tables. All of which information, with much more besides, might have been published for the edification of the good people of Monte Carlo, if they had only referred to " Notes and Queries."