dinners:—

PLATE LXIV

TALLOW-CHANDLER'S HALL: COURT ROOM

"Happy the man who is entertained by the Guild of the Body of Christ of the Skinners of London, as the company style themselves in all official documents. A beadle receives him with lofty courtesy and calls out his name as he ascends a handsome staircase. At the top the guest suddenly finds himself in the august presence of the master and wardens. They shake hands with him and bid him welcome as if he was the one guest who, long invited and never coming, had at last appeared and satisfied a lifelong wish on their part to see him.

"The guest seems to have entered into their very hearts, when suddenly he feels that they can smile on him no more, and that the absorbing attention with which they receive him is exchanged in an instant for total neglect. It is merely that these high functioners are receiving another guest, and so another and another, till the list is complete and dinner is served. All dinners of all companies are noble feasts, and the tables of the great companies are brilliant with splendid pieces of plate. Among the skinners' plate are some curious flagons made in form of beasts and birds. The skinners like to tell how these are used. On the day of election of master and wardens, the court, or governing body of the guild, is assembled in the hall, and ten blue-coat boys, with the almsmen of the company, the master and wardens, all in procession, preceded by trumpeters blowing blasts, march round the hall. Three great birds of silver are brought in and handed to the master and wardens. The birds' heads are screwed off, and the master and wardens drink wine from these quaint flagons.

"Three 'caps of maintenance' are then brought in. The old master puts one on. It will not fit him. He hands it to another, and he to another, and both declare that it does not fit. Then it reaches the skinner who is to be master for the year. Wonderful to relate it fits him to a nicety. The trumpeters flourish their trumpets, the skinners and the almsmen shout for joy. The wardens next find out whom the cap fits, with the other two caps of maintenance, and so the high authorities of the guild are installed for the year."

The most expensive and magnificent of the feasts ever given by the united companies was that given to the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia and the Prince Regent in 1814, in celebration of the end of the Napoleonic wars. The associated merchants of London, whose gold had made these wars possible, invited to their table the three most powerful monarchs in Europe, and spent upon a single entertainment the sum of £25,000, while the gold and silver plate upon which the food was served was valued at equal amount, the larger part of it being the gift of kings, and some of it the work of Benvenuto Cellini's own hands.

All of the most important of the companies possess halls of their own, and there are more than fifty of these halls in London, each of which contains something beautiful and curious. Most of them, as we have said before, were burned in the great fire, but were rebuilt upon the same sites. The fact that the interiors of these halls are so little known is due to the exclusiveness of the companies, which do not invite sight-seers.