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Title: Table traits, with something on them

Author: Dr. Doran

Release date: January 22, 2023 [eBook #69859]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: Richard Bentley

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TABLE TRAITS, WITH SOMETHING ON THEM ***

  TABLE TRAITS,

  WITH

  SOMETHING ON THEM.

  BY

  DR. DORAN.

  “Je suis aujourd’hui en train de conter; plaise à Dieu que cela ne
  soit pas une calamité publique.”--BRILLAT SAVARIN.

  LONDON:

  RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET;

  OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; HODGES & SMITH, DUBLIN;

  AND TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT THE RAILWAY STATIONS.

  1854.




  LONDON:

  R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.




  TO

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  HENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD,

  IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF BY-GONE

  HAPPY YEARS,

  THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED

  BY

  THE AUTHOR.




BILL OF FARE.


                                                                    PAGE

  The Legend of Amphitryon--a Prologue                                 1

  Diet and Digestion                                                   9

  Water                                                               14

  Breakfast                                                           26

      Materials for Breakfast                                         31

      Corn, Bread, &c.                                                36

      Tea                                                             48

      Coffee                                                          57

      Chocolate                                                       64

  The Old Coffee Houses                                               67

  The French Cafés                                                    80

  The Ancient Cook and his Art                                        86

  The Modern Cook and his Science                                     99

  Pen and Ink Sketch of Carême                                       114

  Dinner Traits                                                      123

  The Materials for Dining                                           136

  A Light Dinner for two                                             169

  Sauces                                                             190

  The Parasite                                                       219

  Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age                          230

  Table Traits of England in the Early Times                         244

  Table Traits of the Last Century                                   260

  Wine and Water                                                     282

  The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it                     287

  The Making and Marring of Wine                                     303

  Imperial Drinkers and Incidents in Germany                         312

      An Incident of Travel                                          313

  A few odd Glasses of Wine                                          324

  The Tables of the Ancient and Modern Egyptians                     341

  The Diet of Saints of Old                                          353

      The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques                              372

  The Support of Modern Saints                                       377

  The Cæsars at Table                                                394

  Their Majesties at Meat                                            412

  English Kings at their Tables                                      442

  Strange Banquets                                                   467

      The Castellan Von Coucy                                        473

  Authors and their Dietetics                                        487

      The Liquor-loving Laureates                                    508

  Supper                                                             513




TABLE TRAITS,

WITH SOMETHING ON THEM.




THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON.

A PROLOGUE.

“_Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne._”--MOLIÈRE.


Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have
been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is
a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head
of a table is among those “respectable” powers who find an alacrity
of worship at the hands of man. I say, “at the hands;” for what is
“adoration” but the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as expressed
by its components _ad_ and _os_, _oris_)? and what worship is so common
as that which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is
amiable, and his altar well supplied?

But such a solution of the question affords us, after all, no
enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality of Amphitryon himself,
whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside
at modern banquets. Was he real? is he a myth? was he ever in the
body? or is his name that of a shadow only, employed for purposes of
significance? If real, whence came he? What does classic story say of
the abused husband of Alcmena?

Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two nephews, fast young
men, who were slain by the Teleboans. This is a myth. They were
extravagant individuals, of the class of those who count the chimes
at midnight. Their father could not help them; and so the uncle, a
bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, spend his substance
for the benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks for
his trouble. His brother, however, had an article of small value,--a
daughter, named Alcmena; and this lady was given in marriage to her
uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the
ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the
Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented
himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a household with
the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the father of Hercules. When
Amphitryon returned, his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper
not to be wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a very
cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they who are curious may see
in the liveliest of the lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus.

An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphitryon, fond of
good living generally, and of beef in particular, made a razzia among
the Teleboan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen he found
amongst them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother Electryon,
when one of the animals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in
order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence,
that the weapon, falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon
Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have
no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion; for the Teleboan beef
was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboës themselves
were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their Ætolian homes, and
settled in the island of Capreæ.

The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast that his
dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his son, was among
the last-born of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero among
the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story of
Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard fate, belongs
to a more distant period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors
are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that the tale is to
be found in Dow’s “Hindostan;” but that is as much of a fable as the
legend itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as easily
“Indicized” as that of Pythagoras.

In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the title
of “plagiary;” and an instance of the latter is here before us. When
Plautus sat in his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his
lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted
all that he had been told of his hero’s birth and parentage. But the
classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home
is in the far East; and his history was calling up smiles upon the
faces of listeners by the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome
had been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo
Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is his story.

A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us,--but he was the
individual whom the Greeks stole, and called Amphitryon,--lived many
years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature; and
he not only found the former a good thing to possess, but he used it
_like_ a giant. He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile,
girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at sunset, “like Hebe
in Hercules’ arms.” It was not often, however, that such passages
of peace embellished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was
jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for
flatterers; and her monster of a husband had a stick, which showered
blows upon her when he detected her neglecting her household work.
Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the more modern,
and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and
finally there was much more of the first than there was of the last.
One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, assaulted
his wife so ferociously, that he left her insensible on the threshold
of their house, and threatened never again to keep up a _ménage_ with
so incorrigible a partner.

A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order,--not the King of gods and men,
as in the Grecian legend,--had witnessed the whole proceeding from
his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the husband
disappeared; and, gradually descending in his little palace to the
ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave a hurried
glance at the unconscious and thickly-bruised beauty, and then, in
testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his hands, and commenced
revolving on one leg, as D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led
the orchestra, and gave him strength.

The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and
speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused itself into a human
body, which was found without difficulty, and it clothed the whole
under the counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These feats
of transmutation were common among the eastern deities; and I take
for granted that my readers are aware that Pythagoras himself--who is
connected with Table Traits, on the subject of beans--was no other
than Buddha Goroos, who slipped into a vacant body, and taught the
metempsychosis to wondering Europe.

The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished, on recovering
herself, to find that she was seated, without any sense of pain, on
a bench in the little garden, with her apparent husband at her feet,
pouring out protestations of love and assurances of fidelity. She
accepted all, without questioning; for it was all too pleasant to be
refused. A new life commenced. The married pair became the admiring
theme of the village; and when a son was born to them, there ensued
such showers of felicitations and flowers as had never fallen upon
married lovers since the Hindoo world first started on its career, on
the back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon never ceased to
shed honey; and this was flowing, sweetly and copiously as ever, when,
one sultry noon, the vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting
the counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity of
women who indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche glasses. In
an instant, however, he was conscious that his other self was not
a reflection, but only the cause of many that began crowding into
the brain of the true man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit
irritated the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affray ensued,
in which the mortal got all the blows, and his rival all the advantage.
The wife was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning towards the
irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigantic original roar forth the
tale of his wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights; and it was only
during a lull in the storm that he heeded a suggestion made, to the
effect, that all the parties should submit their case to the judgment
of an inspired Brahmin.

This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the double-man that
stood before him, one was a dupe, and the other a deity,--something,
at all events, above humanity. The question was, how to discover the
divinity. After much cogitation, this was the judgment pronounced
by the dusky Solomon: “Madam,” said he to the perplexed lady, “your
husband was known as being the most robust man ever made out of the
red earth, of which was composed the father of us all. Now, let these
two litigants salute you on the lips; and we pronounce him to be the
true man who comes off with the loudest report.” The trial took place
forthwith in presence of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal
first approached the up-raised lips of his wife; and he performed
the required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred culverins
to the “pistol-shot” kiss recorded of Petruchio. The Judge and the
people looked curiously to the defendant, as wondering how, on the
pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note higher than his
rival. The Indian god addressed him to what seemed a rose-bud wet with
dew; and therewith ensued a sound as though all the artillery of the
skies were saluting, too, in honour of the achievement. The multitude
and the Brahmin looked, for all the world, as if they had lost their
hearing; and it was calculated that the astounding din might have
been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the antipodes. At length,
the assembly hailed the deity as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked
towards the Brahmin for confirmation of their award; but the Brahmin
merely remarked to them, with urbanity, that they were the sons and
fathers of asses, and were unable to distinguish between the almost
invisible seed which diets the bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palm
of the garden of the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent that an
earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it in fifty
millions of mortal-measured years. “Here is the true husband,” added
the Judge, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Indian, “who has
done all that human being, in the particular vocation required, could
do; and here,” added he, turning reverentially to the other, “is some
supreme being, who has been pleased to amuse himself at the expense of
his servants.”

The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the Judge’s
perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and somewhat operatic,
form. He ascended the cloud, which appeared in waiting for him like
an aërial cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade the
edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the deity appointed to
preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair;--and, “if these
have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege to avenge them according
to my good pleasure.” The ladies thereupon flung flowers to him as he
rose, and the husbands saluted his departure with rather faint cheers;
but throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never was a table
spread, but the master thereat, prince or peasant, invoked the Hindoo
deity to cast the beams of the sun of his gaiety upon the board.
Heresy, however, in this matter, has crept in; and, if Hindoo feasts
lack real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer
beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer present sharers
in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the god
came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when he perplexed the
household of Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, ensconced within
a rose; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and the finger on his
lip to discretion; and every docile guest whispers _sub rosâ_, and
acknowledges the present god.

It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who gave men diet,
but forgot digestion. It was like giving them philosophical lectures,
without power to understand them; and the case is still common enough
upon earth. These subjects demand brief notice, were it only by way of
appendix to this prolegomenical chapter.




DIET AND DIGESTION.

“No digest of law’s like the law of digestion.”--MOORE.


Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philosophers among them,
have asserted that the perfecting of man and his species depends upon
attention to diet and digestion; and, in a material point of view, they
are not far wrong; and, indeed, in a non-material point of view, it may
be said that the spirit, without judgment, is very likely to be exposed
to indigestion; and perhaps ignorance complete is to be preferred to an
ill-digested erudition. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all the
diseases of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other hand,
held that health purchased by rigorously watching over diet, was but a
tedious disease. But Walpole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was
not very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other things, must be
undertaken on common-sense principles; for, though there be multitudes
of mad people in the world, society generally is not to be put upon the
_régime_ of “Bedlam.”

We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest; and what one man
may digest, another would die of attempting. Rules on this subject are
almost useless. Each man may soon learn the powers of his stomach, in
health or disease, in this respect; and this ascertained, he has no
more business to bring on indigestion than he has to get intoxicated
or fall into debt. He who offends on these three points, deserves to
forfeit stomach, head, and his electoral franchise!

Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive power; and too
much nutritious food is the next evil to too little. Good cookery, by
developing flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, which bad
cookery would perhaps render indigestible. Hence a good cook rises to
the dignity of “artist.” He may rank with the chemists, if not with the
physicians.

Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than vegetable, and
fresh meats are preferable to salted. In the latter the salt is a
different composition from that which is taken at meals, and which
is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather than feeds; but there
are exceptions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing little to
maintain stamina; but there have been races and classes of men who
have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vegetables. The poor cannot
live upon “curry,” it is true; but in England, with less drink and
more vegetable food, they would be an improved race. Not that they
could live like a Lazzaroni on maccaroni and the open air. Layard says
the Bedouin owes his health and strength to his spare diet. But even
a Bedouin swallows lumps of butter till he becomes bilious; and were
he to live in England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his
strength by living on the dishes which support him in Arabia Felix.
The golden rule is “moderation and regularity.” He who transgresses
the rule, will pay for it by present suffering and a “check” after
Christmas.

A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false thirst to be
satisfied; for satisfaction here is only adding fuel to a fire that
would otherwise go out. On the other hand, the bilious and sedentary
man need not be afraid of beer; it is a better stomachic than wine.
For him, and for all lords of that heritage of woe, a weak stomach,
the common-sense system of cookery, as it is called, is most required.
It is something between the hard crude system of the English, and the
juice-extracting method of the French; with a leaning, however, towards
the latter, (with whom it is common to reduce food to a condition of
pulp,) but uniting with it so much of the English custom as allows the
gelatinous matter to be retained, especially in the meats. “_Festina
lente_,” is “_Latin de cuisine_,” for “Eat slowly,” and it is of
first-rate value. He who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle;
and that wanting, I should like to know where the _post-prandial_
enjoyment would be. Without it, digestion is not; and when digestion is
away, Death is always peering about to profit by his absence. “See to
it!” as the Chinese “chop” says.

There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the subject of
diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question till they are
driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions among the
doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains that
without it digestion is not. “_Quot homines, tot sententiæ_,” is as
applicable here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s book on
Diet is the safest guide I know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants
to cure himself, or simply to discover the definement of his degree
of suffering. On the other hand, every man may find comfort in the
reflection, that with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet,
but not too much of it, and occupation,--without which a worse devil
than the former enters on possession of the victim,--dyspepsia cannot
assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be the
easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as
much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride
in carriages. Exactly! and why? Because philosophers themselves, like
the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of living,
sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of down, with the suicidal
remark, that “_Le Luxe est une jolie chose._”

We must neither act unreservedly on the _dictum_ of books, nor copy
slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the digestion
in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may safely be
consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; for every man who
wakes with a headache most ungratefully blames that same monitory
“self.”

If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather
than of themselves, it is the “babies.” The Rajpoots do not slay half
so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting;
or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not more
foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her babe, in order to
make him a stern and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy
man. And Christian matrons have been quite as savage without intending
it. Brantome’s uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the
advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, and iron, (in
powders,) mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed
until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe)
it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull in full
course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have produced such
an effect. As soon might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed
tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race-horse by so doing.
I think that it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by
drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was
out fishing with a bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side,
when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under
Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrusting
his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort
to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed,
drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a
fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care
to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the
first King who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head on the table
of his young son, just crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church
dignitary who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale
to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this
ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans.

As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion;
and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it
behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much praised, and little
appreciated, _aqua pura_.




WATER.


A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of the great tables in an hotel
in the States, where the bill of fare was in French, after sorely
puzzling himself with descriptions which he could not comprehend,
“_cotelettes à la Maintenon_” and “_œufs à la braise_;” exclaimed, “I
shall go back to first principles: give me some roast beef!” So, after
speaking of the birth of him, whose putative father has lent a name
to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon first principles, and
contemplate the uses of water.

There is nothing in nature _more_ useful; but, commonly speaking,
you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get any article for it in
exchange. Adam Smith strikingly compares with it the uselessness and
the value of a diamond: the latter has scarcely any value in use, but
much that is valuable may be had in exchange for it. In the desert a
cup full of water is worth one full of diamonds; that is, in certain
emergencies. The diamond and the water illustrate the difference
between value in use and value in exchange.

If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend over the Bath
Pump-Room, the best of things, few things would attain to excellence
without it. Greek philosophy was not wrong which made it the principle
of life, and the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing in every
stream, spring, and fountain a resident deity. Water was so reverenced
by certain ancient nations, that they would never desecrate it by
purifying themselves therewith! The ancient Persians and Cappadocians
exemplified their devotion by personal dirtiness. In presence of
the visible power of the stream, altars were raised, and adoration
paid to the god whose existence was evidenced by such power. The
Egyptians gave their divine river more than prayers, because their
dependence on it was more absolute than that of other nations on their
respective streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food,
health, and therewith content on the Egyptians; and they, in return,
flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, and fruit. When human
sacrifices were made to rivers, it was probably because the river was
recognised as giving life, and was worthy of being paid in kind. We may
smile superciliously at this old reverence for the “liquid good,” but
there was connected therewith much that we might profitably condescend
to copy. Greece had her officers appointed to keep her streams pure.
Had those officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable
matter as we draw from the Thames, they would have been thrown into it
by popular indignation. In Rome, Ancus Martius was long remembered, not
for his victories, but for his care to supply the city with salubrious
and sufficient water; and if people generally cursed Nero for his
crimes, they acknowledged that he had at least not damaged the public
aqueducts; and that in his reign ice-houses were first built, the
contents of which enabled thousands to quaff the cool beverage which is
so commendably spoken of by Aristotle.

The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, as the crystal
_ampulla_, with its slender neck and its globular body, was of the
sideboards of private houses in Rome. The common people drank to
excess, both of hot water and cold: the former they drank in large
measures;--this was in winter, and in taverns where they fed largely
upon pork, and drank the water as a stimulant! The Emperor Claudius
looked upon this regimen as an immoral indulgence, and he closed the
taverns where proprietors injured the public stomach by such a diet.
Some Romans were so particular as to boil the water they intended to
drink, in vessels at their own table. They were like the epicures who
never intrust the boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice
that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and drinker. The
“faculty” were unanimous in recommending a similar use of it, and some
of these gentlemen made considerable fortunes by the various methods
of applying it. For instance, patients resorting to Charmis, to take
cold baths in winter under his direction, were required to pay him a
consulting fee of £800! He was the first “water-cure” Doctor that ever
practised, and he realized a fortune such as his successors may aim at
in vain.

Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before said, namely, that
diet and patience formed the universal panacea, declared that his
“great nostrum was the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on
all occasions, and that with disregard of precaution against catching
cold. I have often,” he continues, “had the gout in my face and eyes,
and instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures
it, and does not send it any where else.” And again, alluding to
another use of water, he says sneeringly, “Whether Christianity will be
laid aside I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms,
I think, signify very little. Surely, it is not an age of morality and
principle; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not?”

With regard to the sanitary application of water, as noticed by
Walpole, there can be no doubt but that diet and digestion proceed
the more perfectly, as the ablution of the body is general and daily,
and made with cold water. But discretion must be used; for there
are conditions of the body which cannot endure cold bathing without
palpitation of the heart following. In such case, tepid water should
be used for a time, when the palpitations will soon cease, unless the
heart be organically affected.

The same writer’s remarks on the Christian uses of water, remind me
of what is said of some such uses in Weever’s “Funeral Monuments.” He
cites the inscriptions that used to be placed over the holy water in
ancient churches. Some deposed that the sprinkling of it drove away
devils:--

  “_Hujus aquæ tactus depellit dæmonis actus._”

Others promised a blessing, as, for example:--

  “_Asperget vos Deus cum omnibus sanctis suis ad vitam æternam._”

Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use; namely,--

  ----“_Sex operantur aquâ benedictâ:
  Cor mundat, accidiam (?) fugat, venalia tollit,
  Auget opem; removetque hostem, phantasmata pellit._”

Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the sound of water
inspiring consolatory thoughts, in the passage where he describes one
“suffering cruel wounds from a diseased heart, but he found a remedy;
for, sitting down beneath a lofty rock, looking down upon the sea, he
began to sing.”

The dormitories of many of the old convents were adorned with
inscriptions recommendatory of personal cleanliness; but the inmates
generally were more content with the theory than the practice: they
were, in some degree, like the man at Bishop-Middleham, who died with
the reputation of a water-drinker, but who really killed himself by
secret drunkenness. He praised water in public, but drank brandy in
private, though it was not till after death that his delinquency was
discovered.

The use of water against the spells of witchcraft lingered longer in
Scotland than elsewhere. The Strathdown Highlander even now, it is
said, is not ashamed to drink “the water of the dead and living ford,”
on New Year’s Day, as a charm to secure him from sorcery until the
ensuing New Year.

St. Bernard, the Abbot, made application of water for another purpose.
Butler says of him, that he _once_ happened to fix his eyes on the face
of a woman; but immediately reflecting that this was a temptation, he
ran to a pond, and leaped up to the neck into the water, which was then
as cold as ice, to punish himself, and to vanquish the enemy!

There is a second incident connected with water, that will bear to be
told as an illustration, at least, of old times. When Patricius was
Bishop of Prusa, the Proconsul Julius resorted thither to the famous
baths, and was restored to such vigorous health thereby, that he not
only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Esculapius and Health, but
required the Bishop to follow his example. The Prelate declined, and
the Proconsul ordered him to be thrown into a caldron of boiling water,
by which he was no more affected than if he had been enjoying a bath of
tepid rose-water. Whereupon he was taken out and beheaded. The power
that kept the water cool did not interfere to blunt the axe.

We have seen the reverence paid by certain “ancients of old” to the
supposed divinities whose crystal thrones were veiled beneath the
waves. Men under a better dispensation have shown, perhaps, a worse
superstition. Bede makes mention of a Monk who thought he would purify
his sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He had, the church-historian
tells us, a solitary place of residence assigned him in the monastery,
adjacent to a river: into the latter he was accustomed to plunge, by
way of penance to his body. He went manfully to the bottom, and his
mouth was no sooner again in upper air, than it was opened to give
utterance to lusty prayer and praise. He would sometimes thus stand for
hours, up to the neck, and uttering his orisons aloud. He was in full
dress when this penance was performed, and, on coming from the stream,
he let his wet, and sometimes frozen, garments dry upon his person. A
Friar, once seeing him break the ice, in order that he might make his
penitential plunge, expressed shiveringly his wonder at the feat: “It
must be so _very_ cold,” said the Friar. “I have seen greater cold,”
was the sole remark of the devotional diver. “Such austerity _I_ never
beheld,” exclaimed another spectator. “_I_ have beheld far greater,”
replied the Monk. “And thus,” adds the historian, as simply as any
of them, “thus he forwarded the salvation of many by his words and
example.”

Connected with a pious man of our own time, I may mention an incident
touching water, which is rather remarkable:--the person to whom I
allude is Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in his last Annual
Letter, that he is building a school which will cost him about £600:
the school is not yet finished; but the water used for mixing the
mortar has already cost the enormous sum of £60. It is, in fact, a
luxury which must be paid for. Where it is so dear, it were well if the
people never were thirsty; and there were such people of old.

The late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot Shadwell, was as
indefatigable a bather as the Monk noticed by Bede. Every morning
throughout the year, during his residence at Barnes Elms, he might
be seen wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is said that, on one
occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunction, after looking
for the Judge in a hundred places where he was not to be found, at
length took boat, and encountered him as he was swimming in the river.
There he is said to have heard the case, listening to the details as
the astonished applicants made them, and now and then performing a
frolicsome “summersault,” when they paused for want of breath. The
injunction was granted, it is said; after which the applicants left the
Judge to continue his favourite aquatic sport by himself.

If the late amiable and able Vice-Chancellor was a water-lawyer, so
was the late Archdeacon Singleton a water-divine. When tutor to the
young Lords Percy, he, and the eldest of the sons of the then Duke
of Northumberland,--Hugh, Earl Percy,--were expert swimmers, and
often, by their achievements, excited the admiration of less daring
venturers. The Archdeacon was accustomed to float away for miles from
Sion, depending upon the tide to float him back again. At first, many a
boatman looked inquiringly at the motionless body carrying on with the
stream; but, when he was better known, his appearance thus excited no
more surprise than if he had been in an outrigger, calmly taking a pull
before the hour of dinner.

With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have abounded among the
good old Heathens, of whom so many stories are told that we are not
called upon to believe.

Aristotle, who, like Dr. Macnish, wrote an “Anatomy of Drunkenness,”
(Περὶ Mέθης,) states therein, that he knew, or had heard, of many
people who never experienced what it was to be thirsty. Archonides,
of Argos, is cited by him as a man who could eat salt beef for a
week without caring to drink, therewith or thereafter. Mago, the
Carthaginian, is famous for having twice crossed the Desert without
having once tasted water, or any other beverage. The Iberians,
wealthy and showy people as they were, were water-drinkers; and it
was peculiar to some of the Sophists of Elis, that they lived upon
nothing but water and dried figs. Their bodily strength, which was
great, is said to have been the result of such diet; but, it is added,
that the pores of their skin exuded any thing but a celestial ichor,
and that, whenever they went to the baths, all the other bathers
fled, holding their offended noses between their fingers! Matris,
of Athens, lived all his life upon myrtle-berries and water; but,
as nobody knows how long he _did_ live, it would be rather rash to
imitate him in hopes of obtaining extension of existence. Lamprus, the
musician, was a water-drinker, as were Polemon, the Academician, and
Diocles, of Peparethus; but, as they were never famous for any thing
else, they are hardly worth citing. It is different when we contrast
Demosthenes with Demades. Demosthenes states, in his second Philippic,
that he was a water-drinker; and Pytheas was right, when he bade the
Athenians remark, that the sober demagogue was, like Dr. Young, in
fact, constantly engaged in solemn Night Thoughts. “Not so your other
demagogue, Demades,” said Pytheas; “_he_ is an unclean fellow, who is
daily drunk, and who never comes into your assemblies but to exhibit
his enormous paunch.” Such was the style of election speeches in
Greece; and it has a smack of the hustings, and, indeed, of the market,
too, in Covent Garden.

To turn from old to modern mythology, I may notice that water entered
into the old sports of St. Distaff’s Day, or the morrow after Twelfth
Day. It is thus alluded to by one whose “mind was jocund, but his life
was chaste,”--the lyric Parson of Dean Priors:--

  “Partly work and partly play
  Ye must, on St. Distaff’s Day.
  From the plough soon free your team,
  Then come home and fother them.
  If the maids a-spinning go,
  Burn the flax, and fire the tow,
  Scorch their plackets, but beware
  That ye singe no maiden-hair.
  Bring in pails of water then,
  Let the maids bewash the men.
  Give St. Distaff all the right,
  Then bid Christmas sport ‘Good-night;’
  And next morrow ev’ry one
  To his own vocation.”

When Herrick wrote these lines, I do not know how it may have been at
Dean Priors, but London was but indifferently supplied with water.
But _now_ London is supplied with water from eight different sources.
Five of them are on the north, or Middlesex, side of London, three
on the Southwark and Surrey side. The first comprise the New River,
at Islington; the East London, at Old Ford, on the Lea; the West
Middlesex, on the Thames, at Brentford and Hammersmith; and the Chelsea
and Grand Junction, on the same river, at Chelsea. The south side is
entirely supplied from the Thames, by the Southwark, Lambeth, and
Vauxhall Waterworks, whose names are descriptive of their locality.

The daily supply amounts to about 35,000,000 of gallons, of which
more than a third is supplied by the New River Company. The original
projector of this Company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, who proposed to
supply the London conduits from the wells about Amwell and Ware. The
project was completed in 1613, to the benefit of posterity and the ruin
of the projector. The old hundred-pound shares are now worth ten times
their original cost.

In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were only supplied with
fresh water twice a week. Mr. Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,”
informs us that the old sources of supply were the Wells, or Fleet
River, Wallbrook and Langbourne Waters, Clement’s, Clerk’s, and Holy
Well, Tyburn, and the River Lea. Tyburn first supplied the City in the
year 1285, the Thames not being pressed into the service of the City
conduits till 1568, when it supplied the conduit at Dowgate. There were
people who stole water from the pipes then, as there are who steal gas
now. “This yere,” (1479,) writes an old chronicler of London, quoted
by Mr. Cunningham, “a wax-charndler in Flete Strete had bi craft
perced a pipe of the condite withynne the ground, and so conveied the
water into his selar; wherefore he was judged to ride thurgh the Citee
with a condite upon his hedde.” The first engine which conveyed water
into private houses, by leaden pipes, was erected at London Bridge,
in 1582. The pipes were laid over the steeple of St. Magnus; and the
engineer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an Englishman, erected a
second engine, at Broken Wharf. Previous to 1656, the Strand and
Covent Garden, though so near to the river, were only supplied by
water-tankards, which were carried by those who sold the water, or by
the apprentice, if there were one in the house, whose duty it was to
fill the house-tankard at the conduit, or in the river. In the middle
of the seventeenth century, Ford erected water-works on the Thames,
in front of Somerset House; but the Queen of Charles II.--like the
Princess Borghese, who pulled down a church next to her palace, because
the incense turned her sick, and the organ made her head ache--ordered
the works to be demolished, because they obstructed a clear view
on the river. The inhabitants of the district depended upon their
tankards and water-carriers, until the reign of William III., when the
York-buildings Waterworks were erected. The frequently-occurring name
of Conduit-street, or Conduit-court, indicates the whereabout of many
of the old sources whence our forefathers drew their scanty supplies.

Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a little earthy matter
in it; mineral, or animal, or vegetable matter held in it, by solution,
or otherwise, renders it decidedly unwholesome. Rain water is the
purest water, when it is to be had by its natural distillation in the
open fields. When collected near towns, it should never be used without
being previously boiled and strained.

The hardness of water is generally caused by the presence of sulphate
of lime. Horses commonly refuse to drink hard water,--a water that can
make neither good tea, nor good beer, and which frequently contains
many salts. Soft water, which is a powerful solvent of all vegetable
matters, is to be preferred for all domestic purposes. River water is
seldom pure enough for drinking. Where purest, it has lost its carbonic
acid from long exposure; and in the neighbourhood of cities it is
often a slow poison, and nothing more, scarcely to be rescued from the
name by the process of filtration. London is still supplied, at a very
costly price, with water which is “offensive to the sight, disgusting
to the imagination, and destructive to the health.” Thames water, as at
present flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal and aide-de-camp
of cholera. People are apt to praise it, as being the water from which
is made the purest porter in the world; but it is a well-known fact,
that the great London brewers never employ it for that purpose.

The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the water will become;
hence old wells furnish a purer water than those which are more recent;
but a well of soft water is sensibly hardened by a coating of bricks.
To obviate this, the bricks should be coated with cement. Snow water
deserves a better reputation than it has acquired. Lake water is
fitted only for the commonest household detergent purposes. But the
salubrity of water is converted into poison by the conveyances which
bring it almost to our lips; and we have not yet adopted in full the
recommendation of Vitruvius and Columella to use pipes of earthenware,
as being not only cheaper, but more durable and more wholesome, than
lead. We still convey away refuse water in earthenware, and bring fresh
water into our houses in lead! The noted choleraic colic of Amsterdam,
in the last century, was entirely caused by the action of vegetable
matter in the water-pipes.

Filtration produces no good effect upon hard water. The sulphate of
lime, and still more the super-carbonate of lime, are only to be
destroyed by boiling. Boiled water, cooled, and agitated in contact
with the atmosphere, before use, is a safe and not an unpleasant
beverage. It is essential that the water be boiling when “toast and
water” is the beverage to be taken.

Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man--in a natural state. It
is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst; and a small quantity is
sufficient for that effect. The other liquids are, for the most part,
palliatives merely. If man had kept to water, the saying would not be
applicable to him, that “he is the only animal privileged to drink
without being thirsty.” But, then, where would the medical profession
have been?

But he does well who, at all events, commences the day with water and
prayer. With such an one we go hand in hand, not only in that service,
but, as now, to Breakfast.




BREAKFAST.


Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses partaking of it,
when he said, in illustration of modern Epicureanism, that “the world
must be encompassed before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast.”

Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions
into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in
which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with
Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” It is an unpleasant
division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it goes.
On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that Disorder is the
favourite guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who has
described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity presiding, better
than another essayist, though one of a less matter-of-fact quality
than Franklin,--I mean Leigh Hunt. In the “Indicator” he invites us
to a “Breakfast in Cold Weather.” “Here it is,” he says, “ready laid.
_Imprimis_, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter;
fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly,
bread, salt, mustard, knives, forks, &c. One of the first things that
belong to a breakfast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of
the lively and the snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a
cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared for us,--a blazing grate,
a clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed
heads of a set of good-humoured urchins; and the sole empty chair,
at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone,”
he adds, “we could not help reading at meals; and it is certainly a
delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly
interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s elbow, and a
piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. The first look at the page,
accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the head
of ‘intensities.’” Under the head of “&c.” in the above list, I should
be disposed to include “sunshine;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room
in winter, is almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. It is
a positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and
promotes digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well-disposed
persons who have gardens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,”
and amid flowers. Breakfasts _al-fresco_ are all the more intensely
enjoyed, because so few may be discussed in the open air in a country
whose summer consists of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in
a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people should not leave off
their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same the next
morning when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and Boerhaave are
right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraordinary severity.

The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required a
strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. If
Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need
wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in
the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid
meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appetites, and
these could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. They were
accounted peculiarly coarse people who consumed three. The Romans were,
in this respect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little
or nothing before the hour when they compensated for a long fast by
a daily meal, where they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as
they awoke, of “bread and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but
good authority assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with
much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the breakfast of
Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry for his morning
repast long before day-break. This was in winter time. He took the
meal in bed, and was probably induced to do so by indisposition; for
he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater,--eating much, leaving more, and
ordering the remains to be divided among the attendants, who duly,
rather than dignifiedly, scrambled for the same.

Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the dishes
half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast; but potentates of our
own days have made their first meal upon very questionable matter.

When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the Sultan
of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on the banks
of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a large grilled
water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The company were
much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted the stranger to
choose fish and rice in preference to those savoury viands. The Prince,
who gave this public breakfast in honour of a foreign commoner, was
disgusted at the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last
century, our commoners used to give similar entertainments in honour of
Princes.

“Ælia Lælia” Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who was
still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy
entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers
will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert
and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s
birthday. The _scene_ is admirably painted by Walpole. “The house
is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable
varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes,
riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures,
filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed
is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full
of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and
all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings.
Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases
of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all
curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany
projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it
was the loosest family I ever saw.”

There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole
dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called
“the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the
frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death,
when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few
prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in
November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his
hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian
philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were
joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a
person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without
a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if
an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility
with which he departed.” There was neither convulsion, shock, nor
stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This
was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger
Berthollet,--although in the latter there was something heroical,
too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a
sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his
life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he
began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which
were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;--“a pause, and
then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen
dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”

I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse
to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast
for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about,
with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will
not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the
sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford
more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this
breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of
it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed
coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter
to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and
pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water;
add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and
keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of
the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper
consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from
the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into
a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft,
thin, jellied cake; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new
milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I
may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the
instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the
dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being
easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very
long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he
is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the
various


MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.

And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast
of,--a birth-right,--the least disputable article of that class, is
their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds
from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.

It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most
ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and
are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at
ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he
was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother,
let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be
one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child
to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not
have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this
vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and
the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger
can only be next in intensity to that of having him----but let us keep
to “Table Traits.”

Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that
is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm,
that produces what fresh medical students call the _aqua pumpaginis_,
has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids
are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if,
indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was
a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who
loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.

In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage.
Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress
Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying
strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in
Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent
took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.

“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,--a
substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until
comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew
it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which
it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern
Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves,
captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks
beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.

There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been
burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of
the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having
been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions
to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of
the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence
in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with
money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at
half-a-crown a ticket!

Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk
towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high
on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been
the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on
the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have
owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’
milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian
cheese was equal to our Stilton,--which, by the way, is not made _at_
Stilton,--and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the
addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on
bread and cheese,--principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the
same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People
in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people
_must_, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own
system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.

I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not;
but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human
milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine
matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by
mere repose.

Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites
to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to
create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both
these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the
milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more
than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as
sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in
feeble stomachs.

Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and
both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce,
and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the
people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat
eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance,
that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the
altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question,
without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that
Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so
unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man
is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or
not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could
hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those
which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their
profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six
feet high, and men at all points.

If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the
Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a
singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid
them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto,
that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air
through which they passed!

Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just
before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the
sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger.
In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every
banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking
them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which,
according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five
ways to dress eggs!

Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a
whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was,
that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of
that very interesting personage, her future husband!

There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by
the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not.
He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man
passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by
the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He
could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried
off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place.
The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed
with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only
reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to
win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was
as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that
they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a
month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away
as might, at first sight, appear.

Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking.
The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious.
It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice.
When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat,
its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is
more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a
hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled,
the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows
itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against
the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an
ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied
by bread;--of which I will now say a few words, and first of


CORN.

Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which
was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage
of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which
they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the
plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent
their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets
were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth
and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law
enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which
was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And
it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the
feeling which universally prevails,--that he alone is aristocratic, has
the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his
earthly tabernacle.

The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere;
her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of
many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings
showered down upon them by the Lord.

Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the
home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned.
Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million
bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually
poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could
hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and
touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would
be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice,
has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among
our Transatlantic cousins.

The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and
use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too,
acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King,
was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged
with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove
for yearly increase of harvests.

It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian
peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been
raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at
his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently,
and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,”
they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that
their district should be henceforth distinguished by its having _two_
harvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman”
smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he
was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not
alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year
in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And
therewith the simple people departed joyously.

The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language
bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in
connexion therewith, and their public treasury “_pascua_” showed,
by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in
minted coin enjoyed the _pecunia_, or “money,” for which “flocks”
(_pecus_) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (_locus_) was
_locuples_, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he
was in possession of a “salary,” who had his _salarium_, his allowance
of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he
lived.

The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The
labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked
the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman
plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the
inventive Gauls.

The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by
public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men
in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from
the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced
execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,--the
Emperor of China.

And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation
than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,”
says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places
the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as
he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European
Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising
no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a
more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly
declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting!--how
stimulating!--how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their
nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little
more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of
attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in
one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged
in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit
necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of
such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us,
that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with
which we endow _roué_ Members of Parliament, who have no excuse for
exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from
the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce
which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is
“further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the
absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s
lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare
the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose
mission it is to render it productive.

Wheat is a native of Asia,--some say, of Siberia; others, of Tartary;
but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found there growing
in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then asked its
protection. The powerful deity was called Robigus, and he was solemnly
invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The
Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was excepted from this
homage; and to threaten to put an offending soldier on rations of
barley, was to menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still
exists, if we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered
a basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper appellation
to be “_acqua crudele_.” He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that
it was detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry
man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet speaks
of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he described them
as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain,
however, found a good advocate in him who asked, “----where did you
ever see such horses and such men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a
heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too
exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad eating,--where
better is not to be procured,--though they are less attractive to the
palate than those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the
Romans not only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially.
The lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to
be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of provision was very
largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply; and nymphs
consumed as fast as swains presented.

If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden’s
affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to make
them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, and
suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid by
the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill
applied; and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other
imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on
an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was easily procured.
Sixty millions of bushels--twenty times that number of pounds’
weight--were supplied by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the
islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial granaries
an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is a fact, however, that
neither Romans nor Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the
method of making fermented bread.

Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the gods; the
first men existed on more bitter fare,--bread made from acorns. Ceres
has the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her
accordingly; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating the pig,
now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus
dispute the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The hand-mill
was one of the trophies which the Roman eagles bore back with them from
Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being
of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do
with this. It was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women,
selling bread, their customers; and, as he was the God of Eloquence,
it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are
endowed with shrewdness and loquacity.

The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our ladies
of the Gate, in Billing’s Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I
am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman
would surpass both. Let me cite an instance.

Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sisterhood was standing
at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She had a £10
Bank-of-England note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had
been nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she thought she
might venture to enter, and ask for gold for her note. She did so; but
it was at a time when guineas were worth five-and-twenty shillings
a-piece, and gold was scarce, and----in short, she met with a refusal.
The quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any disappointment,
thereupon asked the cashier to let her have ten of the bank’s £1 notes
in exchange for her “Bank-of-Englander.” The cashier was delighted to
accommodate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the old
lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the promise
engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. “Very good!” said she,
with a gleesome chuckle, “now gi’ me goold for _your_ notes, or I’ll
run to the door, and call out, ‘Bank’s broke!’” There was no resisting
this, and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her gold.
Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her better than she helped
herself, by means of her own sharp wit.

Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many years,
had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the
appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by
Numa, who also not only improved the very rude ideas which previously
prevailed with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker himself,
and sent his loaves to the ovens which he had erected, and to the
bakers whom he had raised into a “guild,” placed under the protection
of the goddess Fornax;--and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable,
deity she was! The public ovens were to the people of Rome what a
barber’s shop is to a village in war time,--the temple of gossip. It
had been well had they never been any thing worse! The vocation of
baker was hereditary in a family; the son was compelled to follow his
father’s calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered
a senatorship; but then he was required to make over his property,
realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour
was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the Governor
of the Bank of England.

If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were consigned
by the State, she suffered by the religious liberty exercised by the
bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the
very antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax; and the selection
of the former would seem to show, that the generally reviled bakers
could not only praise virtue, but practise it.

Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at Rome. There
was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the
athletæ; batter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of
stomach: and there were the prepared bread poultices, which people who,
like Pompey’s young soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion,
were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep.
Anadyomene so slumbering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed,
can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a
blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more _panis madidus_
than blushes on the cheeks of either.

Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He says that
oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man sows the one,
he is not sure that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates
the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced
“innumerable ears of corn; and that a bushel (twenty pounds’ weight)
of millet would make more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The
Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian
corn.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature,--and he was
himself one of the most artificial of characters,--knew very little
about her, or her productions. Some of our great men are described as
being in much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the last
century were one day walking through a field, promising a glorious
harvest of grain. One of them extolled the beauty of the wheat. “Nay,”
said the second, “it is rye.” “Not so,” remarked the third, “it is a
field of barley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the
triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentlemen,” said he; “those be
oats.” The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of people who go
through a country with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish
between its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, with a
very puzzled look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of Herne
Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was “teazle!”

These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “capricious.” They will
grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects; but where the
aspect is changed, although the land be chemically the same, the canary
will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities from Herne
Bay for London, where it is used for many purposes. None of its uses
are so singular as one to which corn was applied, some thirty years
ago, in the western settlements of America, namely, for stretching
boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made
secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed
for several hours in water; during which the leather was distended by
the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a
coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot
or shoe fit for wear.

A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illustrative
of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. The
Doctor, as is well known,--and he was ever ready to confess his
weakness,--occasionally let his warm temper get the better of his
excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how
Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence of human nature:
“Nov. 20th, 1812.--Was provoked with Thomas taking it upon him to ask
more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his administration of
corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appropriates it; and his
eagerness to have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying
anger to my servant and wife; and, though I afterwards got my feelings
into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles,
was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let
me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire
charity. O, my God, support me!” Was it not to Socrates that some one
said?--“To judge from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the
world.” “Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher; “I have the
worst possible temper, by nature; with the strongest possible control
over it, by philosophy.” Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but
the control over his stubborn infirmity had something better “than your
philosophy” for its support.

Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, according to
the Earl of Northumberland’s “Household-Book,” the corn was not thrown
loose into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been conjectured,
that the English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be no
question about it; and even at the present time it is no uncommon
sight, in some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding his
horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice therefrom for
himself.

There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the pigeon.
Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls pigeons
“voracious and insatiate vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England
and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “consuming 159,500,000
pints of corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. 10_s._” It is
impossible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons,
that they have an organ in the stomach for secreting milk. And it is
not alone in the way of devouring corn that they are destructive. In
the “Philosophical Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for
many ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung
spontaneously took fire, at last, and the church was consumed.

I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under the
influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vinegar. A
little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own legions in
the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require
a more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great
Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of Mark
set out as volunteers for the royal army,--the Hellengers in white, the
Sauerlanders in blue jackets,--each man with a stout staff in his hand,
and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with astonishment
when they presented themselves at his head-quarters. “Where do you
fellows come from?” said he. “From Mark, to help our King.” “Who
doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the better; we are here
of our own accord.” “Where are your officers?” “We have none.” “And
how many of you deserted by the way?” “Deserted!” cried the Markers
indignantly: “if any of us had been capable of _that_, we should not
be what we are,--volunteers.” “True!” said the King, “and I can depend
upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook
your hams by.”

When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the Leaguers, the want
most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that of bread.
The Guise party, who held the city,--and the most active agent of
that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri
of Guise,--endeavoured to keep life in the people by means that
nature revolts at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, the
Government within the walls distributed very diminutive rolls made of a
paste, the chief ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder.
The people devoured them under the name of “Madame de Montpensier’s
cakes;”--no wonder that they soon after exultingly welcomed the entry
of a King, who declared that his first desire was to secure to every
man in France his “_poule au pot!_” But enough of bread. Let us examine
briefly the subject of


BUTTER.

The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for
the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty
religions, and only one sauce,--melted butter. A French commentator
has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and
that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged
dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance
that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French
execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against
us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with
rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,”
with pheasant. But, to return to butter:--the spilling of it has more
than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old
_régime_, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted
butter fall upon the silken suit of a French _petit-maître_, the latter
indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.”
The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John
Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar accident
befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman
was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should
never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”

It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist
of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a
breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus
breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher
worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid
breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take
after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and
spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of
worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally
wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for
persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for
it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next
speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.


TEA.

The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian
mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China,
vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep,
and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his
eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of
tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the
juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been
first used in China as a corrective for bad water; and _that_ not at a
remote date.

In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published
treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most
moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be
drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth
century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then
had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so
earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous
opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin,
Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and
the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself
unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized
the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others
again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy
“hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its
dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about
the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul
as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither
useful nor agreeable.

The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of
the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake
of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of
barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or
four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring
its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.

Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland,
in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it
was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was,
as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertainty
rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original
importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it
is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded
with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.

It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to
the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in
Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be
more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood;
and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining
that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a
celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general
use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.

The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of
novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”)
and his _locale_, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a
medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made
up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels
for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his
house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11_s._
to 50_s._ per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic
circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and
Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an
occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to
lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.

Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on
the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry
medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the
first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He
“distilled some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous
and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen
and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal.
He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of
another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be
unwholesome”--to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such
experiments, however, are unsatisfactory. _Nux vomica_, for instance,
deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many
animals.

The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the
preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother
was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever
came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how
to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to
eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person
could like such a diet.”

Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not
inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the
juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”

What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay
thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph
Williams--“the Christian merchant” of the early and middle part of last
century, whose biography is well known to serious readers--did, when
he wrote to his friend Green upon the necessity of “setting the Lord
always before us.” When treating of this subject, the pious layman
adverts to a present of that new thing called “tea,” which Green had
sent him, and which had lost some of its flavour in the transit. There
is something amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which
worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon tea with one upon
human morals. “The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath lost
the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I
suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily
admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia
from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil communications
among men, which nothing will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but
taking to us the whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with
cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured with these
sweet spices; so ‘he that walks with wise men shall be wise.’ He that
converses with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven,
whose treasure and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from
their holy fire; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ I have
put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original
flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions
from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world,
by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent
prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.” The simile, however, limps
a little; for if every man canistered himself, and a good example,
from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example would never
seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It is by contact
we brighten, and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue
as Mr. Williams did his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A
guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the commerce of the world,
in the very centre of the chest of avarice; but what good does it do
there? Let it circulate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant
Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected by the
process. But good Joseph Williams would not have agreed with us, and he
_would_ take his saintly similes from traits of the table. “O that I
may walk humbly,” he says, “and look on myself, when fullest of divine
communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which,
consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put into
it.” A very tipsy-like simile!

I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved
stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition; and we
are told by the disgusted _Connoisseur_, that “persons of fashion
cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Ranelagh
were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion.” A remark
which shows how very poor a _connoisseur_ this writer was in matters of
propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be seated at
the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used
to be placed before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback,
set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, there was
a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the “Northern Ale-house
in St. Paul’s Alley,” every member of which was of the name of Adam. It
was formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour was
more than Adam deserved; for the first created man not only betrayed
his trust, but he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the
first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has managed to survive
even the memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long since
defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron posset,
which Arabella, in “The Committee,” recommends as “a very good drink
against the heaviness of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the
legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout,--an assertion which
would seem to indicate that the author of it was of Hibernian origin!

There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that “tea”
and “coffee” became, very early, fixed social observances. Pope,
writing, in 1715, of a lady who left town after the coronation of
George I., says that she went to the country--

  “To part her time ’twixt reading and Bohea,
  To muse, and spill her solitary tea;
  Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
  Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.”

At the same period, the more fortunate belles who remained in town made
of tea a means for other ends than shortening time. Dr. Young, in his
“Satires,” says of Memmia, that--

  “Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow,
  To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau;
  While one white finger and a thumb conspire
  To lift the cup and make the world admire.”

Dr. Parr’s delicate compliment is well known; but I may be pardoned,
perhaps, for introducing it here. He was not very partial to the _Thea
Sinensis_, though lauded so warmly by a French writer, as “_nostris
gratissima Musis_;” but once being invited to take tea by a lady, he,
with a mixture of wit and gallantry, exclaimed, “_Nec teacum possum
vivere, nec sine te!_” The Christchurch men at Oxford were remarkable,
at an early period, for their love of tea; and, in reference to it,
they were pleasantly recommended to adopt as their motto: “_Te veniente
die, te decedente notamus._” In 1718, Pope draws an illustration
from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby: “My Lady Scudamore,” he remarks
jocosely, “from having rusticated in your company too long, really
behaves herself scandalously among us. She pretends to open her eyes
for the sake of seeing the sun, and to sleep because it is night;
drinks tea at nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her
prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, of good books, and
has not seen Cibber’s play of ‘The Nonjuror.’” This is a pleasant
picture of the “good woman” of the last century. She drank tea at nine
in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to be aroused at last, like
Belinda, by--

  “Shock, who thought she slept too long,
  Leap’d up and waked his mistress with his tongue.”

Tea is little nutritious; it is often injurious from being drunk at
too high a temperature, when the same quantity of the fluid at a lower
temperature would be beneficial. It is astringent and narcotic; but its
effects are various on various individuals, and the cup which refreshes
and invigorates one, depresses or unnaturally excites and damages
the digestive powers of others. Green tea can in no case be useful,
except medicinally, in cases where there has been excessive fatigue of
the mind or body; and even then the dose should be small. Tea, as a
promoter of digestion, or rather, as a comforter of the stomach when
the digestive process has been completed, should not be taken earlier
than from three to four hours after the principal meal. Taken too
early, it disturbs digestion by arresting chymification, and by causing
distension. The astringency of tea is diminished by adding milk, and
its true taste more than its virtue is spoiled by the addition of sugar.

These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure state, and not to the
adulterated messes which come from China, or are made up in England.
If sloe leaves here are made to pass for Souchong, so also is many an
unbroken chest of “tea” landed, which is largely composed of leaves
that are not the least akin to the genuine shrub. Black teas are
converted into green, some say by means of a poisonous dye, others by
roasting on copper; but I do not think this process is extensively
adopted. At one time the chests were rendered heavy by an adulterated
mixture of a considerable quantity of tea, and a not inconsiderable
quantity of earthy _detritus_, strongly impregnated with iron. But our
searchers soon put a stop to this knavery. They just dipped a powerful
magnet into the chest, stirred it about, and, when drawn out, the iron
particles, if any, were sure to be found adhering to the irresistible
“detective.” I have heard that Lady Morgan’s tea-parties, in Dublin,
were remarkable for the excellent qualities both of the beverage and
the company; and also for her Ladyship’s stereotyped joke, of “Sugar
yourselves, gentlemen, and I’ll milk you all.”

Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not confined in China
to festive occasions. Tea is solemnly drunk on serious celebrations,
with squibs to follow. Thus, for instance, at the funeral of a Buddhist
Priest, there is thought taken for the living as well as for the dead,
for the appetites of mortals as well as for the gratification of
the gods. The latter are presented with various sorts of food, save
animal. It is placed on the altar, and it is eaten at night by the
deities, of course. While the ceremonies preliminary to the interment
are proceeding, a servant enters the temple, and hands tea round to
the reverend gentlemen who are officiating! The interment usually
takes place in the morning, and it is numerously attended; but if,
as the long procession is advancing, the hour of breakfast should
happen to arrive, the corpse is suddenly dropped in the highway, the
entire assembly rush to their respective homes, and not till they
have consumed their tea and toast, or whatever materials go to the
constituting of a Chinese _déjeûner_, do they return to carry the corse
to its final resting-place, and fire no end of squibs over it, in
testimony of their affliction. Which done, more refreshment follows;
and perhaps some of the mourners retire to Chinese taverns, where
inviting placards promise them “A cup of tea and a bird’s nest for
4_d._!”


COFFEE.

The English and French dispute the honour of being the first
introducers of coffee into Western Europe. The Dutch assert that they
_assisted_ in this introduction; and, although coffee was not drunk at
Rome, until long after it had been known to, and tasted by, Italian
travellers at Constantinople, the Church looked with pleasure on a
beverage, one effect of which was to keep both Priests and people awake.

An Arab author of the fifteenth century--Sherbaddin--asserts, that the
first man who drank coffee was a certain Muphti of Aden, who lived in
the ninth century of the Hegira, about A.D. 1500. The popular tradition
is, that the Superior of a Dervish community, observing the effects
of coffee-berries when eaten by some goats, rendering them much more
lively and skittish than before, prescribed it for the brotherhood, in
order to cure them of drowsiness and indolence.

It was originally known by the name of _cahui_ or _kauhi_,--an
orthography which comes near to that of the ingenious Town-Councillor
of Leeds, who, writing out a bill of fare for a public breakfast,
contrived to spell “coffee” without employing a single letter that
occurs in that word,--to wit, _kawphy_!

Sandys, a traveller of the seventeenth century, gives it no very
attractive character. Good for digestion and mirth, he allows it to be;
but he says that in taste as in colour it is nearly as black as soot.

The coffee-houses of England take precedence of those of France, though
the latter have more enduringly flourished. In 1652, a Greek, in the
service of an English Turkey merchant, opened a house in London. “I
have discovered his hand-bill,” says Mr. Disraeli, “in which he sets
forth the virtue of the coffee drink, first publiquely made and sold
in England, by Pasqua Rosee, of St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, at the
sign of his own head.” Mr. Peter Cunningham cites a MS. of Oldys in his
possession, in which some fuller details of much interest are given.
Oldys says, “The first use of coffee in England was known in 1657,
when Mr. Daniel Edwards, a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to
London one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who prepared this drink for
him every morning. But the novelty thereof drawing too much company to
him, he allowed his said servant, with another of his son-in-law’s, to
sell it publicly; and they set up the first coffee-house in London,
in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. But they separating, Pasqua kept in
the house; and he who had been his partner obtained leave to pitch a
tent, and sell the liquor, in St. Michael’s churchyard.” Aubrey, in
his Anecdotes, states that the first vendor of coffee in London was
one Bowman, coachman to a Turkey merchant, named Hodges, who was the
father-in-law of Edwards, and the partner of Pasqua, who got into
difficulties, partly by his not being a freeman, and who left the
country. Bowman was not only patronized, but a magnificent contribution
of one thousand sixpences was presented to him, wherewith he made great
improvements in his coffee-house. Bowman took an apprentice, (Paynter,)
who soon learnt the mystery, and in four years set up for himself. The
coffee-houses soon became numerous: the principal were Farres’, the
Rainbow, at the Inner-Temple Gate, and John’s, in Fuller’s Rents. “Sir
Henry Blount,” says Aubrey, “was a great upholder of coffee, and a
constant frequenter of coffee-houses.”

The frequenters of these places, however, were considered as
belonging to the idle and dissipated classes; and the reputation
was not altogether undeserved. Respectable people denounced the
coffee-drinking evils, illustriously obscure and loyal people dreaded
the politics that were discussed at the drinking, and tipsy satirists
hurled strong contempt and weak verse at the new-fangled fashion of
abandoning Canary wine for the Arabian infusion. The fashion, however,
extended rapidly; the more so, that cups were soon to be had at so low
a price, that the shops where they were sold went by the name of “Penny
Universities.” The ladies, who were excluded from public participation
in the bitter enjoyment, made some characteristic complaints against
the male drinkers, and intimated that the indulgence of coffee-drinking
would in time deteriorate, if not destroy, the human race; but the
imbibers heeded not the complaint, their answer to which was that of
Béranger’s gay marital philosopher:--

  “_Nous laisserions finir le monde,
  Si nos femmes le voulaient bien._”

While the ladies, through their poetical representatives, were
complaining, male philanthropists quickly discerned the social uses of
the cup; and Sir Henry Blount acknowledges, with grateful pleasure,
that the custom, on the part of labouring men and apprentices, of
drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, instead of their ordinary
matinal draught of beer or wine, was chiefly owing to Sir James
Muddiford, “who introduced the practice hereof first in London.”

The Government of the Stuarts, hating free discussion, and not
particularly caring for wit, watched the coffee-houses with much
jealousy, and placed as much restriction upon them as they possibly
could strain the law to. The vexatious proceeding did not secure the
desired result; and the coffee-house wits laughed at the Government.
The wits, however, were not always successful either in their praise
of, or satire against, coffee. Pepys, on the 15th of October, 1667,
went to the Duke’s House, to see the comedy of “Taruga’s Wiles; or,
the Coffee-House,” of which he says, “The most ridiculous, insipid
play that ever I saw in my life; and glad we were that Betterton had
no part in it.” But Pepys was probably not in the true vein to decide
critically that night; for his pretty maid Willett was sitting at his
side; and his wife, who was on the other, spoiled the effect of the
play by her remarks on the girl’s “confidence.” Perhaps one of the most
curious apologies for coffee-houses was that of Aubrey, who declared
that he should never have acquired so extensive an acquaintance but
for “the modern advantages of coffee-houses in this great city, before
which men knew not how to be acquainted but with their own relations
_and societies_.” And Aubrey, who has been called the small Boswell of
his day, “was a man who had more acquaintances than friends.”

Yemen is the accepted birth-place, if we may so speak, of the
coffee-tree. Pietro de la Vallé introduced it into Italy, La Royne
into Marseilles, and Thevenot brought it with him to Paris. In 1643,
a Levantine opened a coffee-house in Paris, in the Place du Petit
Chatelet; but it was Soleiman Aga, Turkish Ambassador in Paris, in
1689, who was the medium through which coffee found its way into the
realm of fashion. Had it been really what some have supposed it to
have been,--the black broth of the Lacedæmonians,--he could have made
it modish by his method of service. This was marked by all the minute
details of oriental fashion,--small cups and foot-boys, gold-fringed
napkins and pages, coffee wreathing with smoke, and Ganymedes wreathed
with garlands, the first all aroma, and the hand-bearers all otto
of roses: the whole thing was too dazzling and dramatic to escape
adoption. But the intolerable vulgar would imitate their betters, and
coffee became as common at taverns as wine, beer, and smoking. It
would have inevitably been abandoned to coarse appetites only, but for
François Procope, a Sicilian, who, in the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie,
exactly opposite to the old play-house in the Faubourg St. Germain,
opened an establishment expressly for the sale of coffee, but with such
innocent additional articles as ices, lemonade, and the like harmless
appliances, to make pleasant the seasons in their change. The _Café
Procope_ became the immediate resort of all the wits, philosophers, and
refined _roués_ of Paris. There Rousseau wrote or repeated the lines
which brought him into such frequent trouble. There Piron muttered
the verses with which the incitement of devils inspired him. There
Voltaire tried to rule supreme, but found himself in frequent bitter
contest with Palissot and Freron. The _Café Procope_ was the morning
journal, the foreign news-mart, the exchange,--literary, witty, and
emphatically charming. There Lamothe renewed the contest between the
ancient and modern, the classical and the romantic, drama. There the
brilliant Chevalier de St. Georges gave lessons in fencing to the
men of letters; and thence Dorat addressed his amorous missives to
Mademoiselle Saunier. There Marmontel praised Clairon, and the Marquis
de Bièvre tried his calembourgs; and there Duclos and Mercier made
their sketches of society, at once serious and sarcastic. The universal
favour in which coffee is still held in Paris, and the crowds which
still wait on “Andromaque,” sufficiently belie the famous prophecy of
Madame de Sévigné, that “coffee and Racine would have their day.” The
dark infusion reigns without a rival, the _demi-tasse_ follows dinner
oftener than “grace,” Rachel helps to keep Racine alive, and _café_, in
its turn, has the reputation of being _one_ of the favourite stimulants
of the great _tragédienne_.

With regard to the making of coffee, there is no doubt that the
Turkish method of pounding the coffee in a mortar is infinitely
superior to grinding it in a mill, as with us. But after either method
the process recommended by M. Soyer may be advantageously adopted;
namely, “Put two ounces of ground coffee into a stew-pan, which set
upon the fire, stirring the coffee round with a spoon until quite hot,
then pour over a pint of boiling water; cover over closely for five
minutes, pass it through a cloth, warm again, and serve.”

The chemist Laplace explained to Napoleon the results of various
methods of manipulation. “How is it, Sir,” said the Emperor, “that a
glass of water in which I melt a lump of sugar, always appears to me
to be superior in taste to one in which I put the same quantity of
powdered sugar?” “Sire,” said the sage, “there exist three substances,
whose elements are precisely the same; namely, sugar, gum, and starch.
They only differ under certain conditions, the secret of which Nature
has reserved to herself; and I believe that it is possible, that, by
the collision caused by the pestle, some of the portions of the sugar
pass into the condition of gum or starch, and thence arises the result
which has been observed.”

Medical men are widely at issue as to the merits of coffee. All,
however, are agreed that it stimulates the brain, and banishes
somnolency. Voltaire and Buffon were great coffee-drinkers; but I do
not know that we are authorized to attribute the lucidity of the one
or the harmony of the other to the habit in question. Ability would be
cheaply purchased if that were the case; and the “royal road” would
have been discovered where it had never been looked for.

The sleeplessness produced by coffee is not one of an unpleasant
character. It is simply a painless vigilance; but, if often repeated,
it may be exceedingly prejudicial. Brillat de Savarin illustrates the
power of coffee by remarking, that a man may live many years who takes
two bottles of wine daily; but the same quantity of strong coffee would
soon make him imbecile, or drive him into a consumption.

Taken immediately after dinner, coffee aids the dyspeptic, especially
to digest fat and oily aliment, which, without such stimulant, would
undoubtedly create much disturbance. The Turks drink it to modify the
effects of opium. _Café au lait_, that is, three parts milk to one of
coffee, is the proper thing for breakfast; but the addition of milk
to that taken after dinner is a cruelty to the stomach. A Dutchman,
named Nieudorff, is said to have been the first who ventured on the
experiment of mixing milk with coffee. When he had the courage to do
this, the two liquids together were considered something of such an
abomination as we should now consider brown sugar with oysters.

I must not omit to mention, that the favourite beverage of Voltaire,
at the _Café Procope_, was “_choca_,”--a mixture of coffee (with milk)
and chocolate. The Emperor Napoleon was as fond of the same mixture as
he was of Chambertin; and, in truth, I do not know a draught which so
perfectly soothes and revives as that of hot, well-frothed “_choca_.”

Substances mixed with coffee, or substitutes for the berry altogether,
have been tried with various degrees of success. Roasted acorns have
been made to pass for it when ground. There is more chicory than coffee
consumed at the present time in France; and the infusion of the lupin
does duty for it at poor hearths in Flanders; as that of roasted rye
(the nearest resemblance to coffee) does in America. Experimentalists
say, that an excellent substitute for coffee may be made from
asparagus; and Frankfort, alarmed lest the complications of the
“Eastern Question” should deprive it of the facilities for procuring
the berry as heretofore, is gravely consulting as to whether asparagus
coffee may be a beverage likely to be acceptable as a substitute for
the much prized “_demi-tasse_.”


CHOCOLATE.

Ferdinand Cortez went to Mexico in search of gold; but the first
discovery he made was of chocolate. The discovery was not welcomed
ecclesiastically, as coffee was. This new substance was considered a
sort of wicked luxury, at least for Monks, who were among the earliest
to adopt it, but who were solemnly warned against its supposed peculiar
effects. The moralists quite as eagerly condemned it; and in England
Roger North angrily asserted, that “the use of coffee-houses seems
much improved by a new invention, called ‘chocolate-houses,’ for the
benefit of rooks and cullies of quality, where gambling is added to
all the rest, and the summons of W---- seldom fails; as if the devil
had erected a new university, and these were the colleges of its
Professors, as well as his schools of discipline.” The Stuart jealousy
of these localities, where free discussion was amply enjoyed, seems
to have influenced the Attorney-General of James II.; for, although
they may not have been frequented, he says, by “the factious gentry
he so much dreaded,” he adds, “This way of passing time might have
been stopped at first, before people had possessed themselves of some
convenience from them of meeting for short dispatches, and passing
evenings with small expenses.” Of what chiefly recommended these
places, the stern official thus made a grievance.

Chocolate (or, as the Mexicans term it, _chocolalt_) is the popular
name for the seeds of the cocoa, or, more correctly, the _cacao_,
plant, in a prepared state, generally with sugar and cinnamon. The
Mexicans improve the flavour of the inferior sorts of cacao seeds by
burying them in the earth for a month, and allowing them to ferment.
The nutritious quality of either cacao or chocolate is entirely owing
to the oil or butter of cacao which it contains. Cacao-nibs, the best
form of taking this production, are the seeds roughly crushed. When
the seed is crushed between rollers, the result is flake cacao. Common
cacao is the seed reduced to a paste, and pressed into cakes. The cheap
kinds of chocolate are said to be largely adulterated with lard, sago,
and red-lead,--a pernicious mixture for healthy stomachs; but what must
it be for weak stomachs craving for food at once nutritious and easy of
digestion? The “patent” chocolates of the shops are nothing more than
various modes of preparing the cacao seeds.

The ladies of Mexico are so excessively fond of chocolate, that they
not only take it several times during the day, but they occasionally
have it brought to them in church, and during the service. A cup of
good chocolate may, indeed, afford the drinker strength and patience
to undergo a bad sermon. The Bishops opposed it for a time, but they
at length closed their eyes to the practice. I am afraid there is no
chance of the fashion being introduced into England. The advantages
would be acknowledged; but then there would be a savour of Popery
detected about it, that would inevitably cause its rejection. The
Church herself found a boon in this exquisite supporter of strength.
The Monks took it of a morning before celebrating Mass, even in Lent.
The orthodox and strong-stomached raised a dreadful cry at the scandal;
but Escobar metaphysically proved, that chocolate made with water did
not break a fast; thus establishing the ancient maxim, “_Liquidum non
frangit jejunium._”

Spain welcomed the gift of chocolate made her by Mexico with as
much enthusiasm as she did that of gold by Peru; the metal she soon
squandered, but chocolate is still to be found in abundance in the
Peninsula: it is an especial favourite with ladies and Monks, and it
always appears on occasions when courtesy requires that refreshments
be offered. The Spanish Monks sent presents of it to their brethren
in French monasteries; and Anne of Austria, daughter of Philip II.
of Spain, when she brought across the Pyrenees her hand, but not her
heart, to the unenergetic Louis XIII., brought a supply of chocolate
therewith; and henceforth it became an established fact. In the days
of the Regency it was far more commonly consumed than coffee; for it
was then taken as an agreeable aliment, while coffee was still looked
upon as a somewhat strange beverage, but certainly akin to luxury. In
the opinion of Linnæus it must have surpassed all other nutritious
preparations, or that naturalist would hardly have conferred upon it,
as he did, the proud name of _Theobroma_, “food for the gods!”

Invalids will do well to remember, that chocolate made with vanilla
is indigestible, and injurious to the nerves. Indeed, there are few
stomachs at all that can bear chocolate as a daily meal. It is a highly
concentrated aliment; and all such cease to act nutritiously if taken
into constant use.

We will now look into some of those famous resorts of by-gone days,
where coffee and chocolate were prepared, and wit was bright and
spontaneous.




THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES.


The “Grecian” appears to have been the oldest of the better-known
coffee-houses, and to have lasted the longest. It was opened by
Constantine, a Grecian, “living in Threadneedle-street, over against
St. Christopher’s Church,” in the early part of the last half of the
seventeenth century. Its career came to a close towards the middle of
the nineteenth century; namely, in 1843, when the Grecian Coffee-house,
then in Devereux-court, Strand, where it had existed for very many
years, was converted into the “Grecian Chambers,” or lodgings for
bachelors.

Constantine not only sold “the right Turkey coffee berry, or
chocolate,” but gave instructions how to “prepare the said liquors
gratis.” The “Grecian” was the resort rather of the learned than the
dissipated. The antiquarians sat at its tables; and, despising the
news of the day, discussed the events of the Trojan war, and similar
lively, but remote, matters. The laborious trifling was ridiculed by
the satirists; and it is clear that there were some pedants as well
as philosophers there. It was a time when both sages and sciolists
wore swords; and it is on record that two friendly scholars, sipping
their coffee at the “Grecian,” became enemies in argument, the subject
of which was the accent of a Greek word. Whatever the accent ought
to have been, the quarrel was acute, and its conclusion grave. The
scholars rushed into Devereux-court, drew their swords, and, as one
was run through the body and killed on the spot, it is to be supposed
that he was necessarily wrong. But the duel was the strangest method
of settling a question in grammar that I ever heard of. Still it was
rather the scholars than the rakes who patronized the “Grecian;” and
there were to be found the Committee of the Royal Society, and Oxford
Professors, enjoying their leisure and hot cups, after philosophical
discussion and scientific lecturing; and even the Privy Council Board
sometimes assembled there to take coffee after Council.

The “coffee-houses,” which were resorted to for mere conversation as
well as coffee, began on a first floor; they were the seed, as it
were, whence has arisen the political and exclusive “club” of the
present day. The advantages of association were first experienced in
coffee-houses; but at the same time was felt the annoyance caused by
intrusive and unwelcome strangers. The club, with its ballot-box to
settle elections of members, was the natural result.

William Urwin’s Coffee-house, known as “Will’s,” from its owner’s name,
and recognised as the “Wits’,” from its company, was on the first floor
of the house at the west corner of Bow-street and Russell-street,
Covent Garden. In the last half of the seventeenth century, it was at
the height of its good fortune and reputation. The shop beneath it was
kept by a woollen-draper.

Tom Brown says that a wit was set up at a small cost; he was made
by “peeping once a day in at Will’s,” and by relating “two or three
second-hand sayings.” It was at Will’s that Dryden “pedagogued”
without restraint, accepted flattery without a blush, and praised with
happy complacency the perfection of his own works. He was the great
attraction of the place, and his presence there of an evening filled
the room with admiring listeners, or indiscreet adulators. Dryden
had the good sense to retire early, when the tables were full, and
he knew he had made a favourable impression, which the company might
improve in his absence. Addison, more given to jolly fellowship, sat
late with those who tarried to drink. Pepys, recording his first visit,
in February, 1663-4, says that he stepped in on his way to fetch his
wife, “where Dryden the poet, (I knew at Cambridge,) and all the wits
of the town, and Harris the player, and Mr. Hoole of our College. And
had I had time then, as I could at other times, it will be good coming
thither; for there I perceive is very witty and pleasant discourse. But
I could not tarry; and, as it was late, they were all ready to go away.”

The reign of Dryden at Will’s was not, however, without its pains.
Occasionally, a daring stranger, like young Lockier, raw from the
country, would object to the _dicta_ of the despot. Thus, when Dryden
praised his “Mac Flecknoe,” as the first satire “written in heroics,”
the future Dean timidly suggested that the “Lutrin” and the “_Secchia
Rapita_” were so written; and Dryden acknowledged that his corrector
was right. The London beaux would have been afraid, or incapable,
of setting Dryden right; they were sufficiently happy if they were
but permitted to dip their fingers into the poet’s snuff-box, and,
at a separate table, listen to the criticisms uttered by the graver
authorities who were seated round another, at the upper end of the
room. Of the disputes that there arose, “glorious John” was arbiter;
for his particular use a chair was especially reserved; therein
enthroned, he sat by the hearth or the balcony, according to the
season, and delivered judgments which were not always final.

No man was better qualified to do so, for the “specialty” of Will’s
Coffee-house was poetry. Songs, epigrams, and satires, circulated from
table to table; and the wits judged plays, even Dryden’s, until the
playwrights began to satirize the wits. With Dryden, “Will’s” lost
some of its dignity. Late hours, card-playing, and politics; poets
more didactic in their verse, and essayists more instructive in their
prose, than in their daily practice; “dissipateurs” like Addison, and
peers who shared in Addison’s lower tastes, without either his talent
or occasional refinement,--spoiled the character of “Will’s,” where, by
the way, Pope had been introduced by Sir Charles Wogan, though, years
before, in his youth, he had been proud to follow old Wycherley about
from coffee-house to coffee-house; and then “Button’s” attracted the
better portion of the company, and left Will’s to the vulgar and the
witless.

“Button’s” Coffee-house was so named from its original proprietor, who
had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, the wife of Addison.
It was situated in Great Russell-street, on the south side, about two
doors from Covent Garden. What Dryden had been at “Will’s,” Addison was
at “Button’s.” There,--after writing during the morning at his house
in St. James’s Place, where his breakfast-table was attended by such
men as Steele, Budgell, Philips, Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett,
with some of whom he generally dined at a tavern,--he was to be found
of an evening, until the supper hour called him and his companions to
some other tavern, where, if not at Button’s, they made a night of
it. Pope was of the company for almost a year, but left it because
the late hours injured his health; and furthermore, perhaps, for the
reason, that his irritable temper had rendered him unpopular, and
that he had so provoked Ambrose Philips, that the latter suspended a
birchen rod over Pope’s usual seat, in intimation of what the ordinary
occupant would get if he ventured into it. The Buttonians were famous
for the fierceness of their criticism, but it appears to have been
altogether a better organized establishment than Will’s; for while
the parish registers show that the landlord of the latter was fined
for misdemeanour, the vestry-books of St. Paul (Covent Garden), prove
that Button paid “for two places in the pew No. 18, on the south side
of the north aisle, £2. 2_s._;” and charity leads us to conclude that
Daniel and his wife occupied the places so paid for, and were orthodox
as well as loyal. The “Lion’s Head” of the “Guardian,” which was put
up at Button’s, over the box destined to receive contributions for the
editor, is now at Woburn, in the possession of the Duke of Bedford.

Of coffee-houses that went by the name of “Tom’s” there were three. At
the one in Birchin-lane, Garrick occasionally appeared among the young
merchants; and Chatterton, before despair slew even ambition, more than
once dined. At the second house so called, in Devereux-court, many of
the scholars, critics, and scientific men of the last century used to
congregate. There Akenside essayed to rule over the tables as Dryden
had done at “Will’s,” and Addison at “Button’s;” but his imperious rule
was often overthrown by “flat rebellion.” _The_ “Tom’s” was opposite
“Button’s,” and stood on the north side of Great Russell-street, No.
17. It received its name from the Christian appellation of its master,
Thomas West, who committed suicide in 1722. If guests gained celebrity
in the latter days at “Will’s” for writing a “posie for a ring,” so at
“Tom’s” Mr. Ince was held in due respect, for the reason that he had
composed a solitary paper for the “Spectator.” It was a place where the
tables were generally crowded from the time of Queen Anne to that of
George III. Seven hundred of the nobility, foreign Ministers, gentry,
and geniuses of the age, subscribed a guinea each, in 1714, for the
erection of a card-room; and this fact, with the additional one that,
only four years later, an enlarged room for cards and conversation was
constructed, may serve to show by what sort of people, and for what
particular purposes, “Tom’s” was patronized.

At the time that White’s Chocolate-house was opened at the bottom of
St. James’s-street,--the close of the last century,--it was probably
thought vulgar; for there was a garden attached, and it had a suburban
air. At the tables in the house or garden more than one highwayman
took his chocolate, or threw his main, before he quietly mounted his
horse and rode slowly down Piccadilly towards Bagshot. Before the
establishment was burned down, in 1733, it was famous rather for
intensity of gaming than excellence of chocolate. It arose from its
ashes, and settled, at the top of the street, into a fixedness of
fashion that has never swerved. Gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment
were the characteristics of the place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield
there “gamed, and pronounced witticisms among the boys of quality.”
Steele dated all his love-news in the “Tatler” from White’s. It was
stigmatized as “the common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble
cullies;” and bets were laid to the effect that Sir William Burdett,
one of its members, would be the first Baronet who would be hanged. The
gambling went on till dawn of day; and Pelham, when Prime Minister,
was not ashamed to divide his time between his official table and the
picquet-table at White’s. Selwyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the room
with his wit. As a sample of the spirit of betting which prevailed,
Walpole quotes “a good story made at White’s.” A man dropped down
dead at the door, and was carried in; the Club immediately made bets
whether he was dead or not, and, when they were going to bleed him,
the wagerers for his death interposed, and said it would affect the
fairness of the bet!

Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in “table traits.” Thus,
in 1736, every member was required to pay an extra guinea a year
“towards having a good cook.” The supper was on table at ten o’clock;
the bill at twelve. In 1758, it was agreed that he who transgressed
the rules for balloting should pay the supper reckoning. In 1797
we find, “Dinner at 10_s._ 6_d._ per head, (malt liquor, biscuits,
oranges, apples, and olives included,) to be on table at six o’clock;
the bill to be brought at nine.” “That no hot suppers be provided,
unless particularly ordered; and then be paid for at the rate of 8_s._
per head. That in one of the rooms there be laid every night (from the
Queen’s to the King’s birthday) a table, with cold meat, oysters, &c.
Each person partaking thereof to pay 4_s._, malt liquors only included.”

Colley Cibber was a member, but, as it would seem, an honorary one
only, who dined with the Manager of the Club, and was tolerated
afterwards by the company for the sake of his wit. Mr. Cunningham
states, that at the supper given by the Club in 1814, at Burlington
House, to the Allied Sovereigns, there were covers laid for 2,400
people, and that the cost was “£9,849. 2_s._ 6_d._” “Three weeks after
this, (July 6, 1814,) the Club gave a dinner to the Duke of Wellington,
which cost £2,840. 10_s._ 9_d._” The dinner given, in the month of
February of the present year, to Prince George of Cambridge, was one
not to welcome a victorious warrior, but to cheer an untried, about to
go forth to show himself worthy of his spurs. White’s ceased to be an
open Chocolate-house in 1736, from which period it has been as private
an establishment as a Club can be said to be.

The politicians had their coffee-houses as well as the wits. The “Cocoa
Tree,” in St. James’s-street, was the Tory house in the reign of Queen
Anne. The “St. James’s” was the Whig house. It was a well-frequented
house in the latter days of George II., when Gibbon recorded his
surprise at seeing a score or two of the noblest and wealthiest in the
land, seated in a noisy coffee-room, at little tables covered by small
napkins, supping off cold meat or sandwiches, and finishing with strong
punch and confused politics.

The St. James’s Coffee-house ranked Addison, Swift, Steele, and,
subsequently, Goldsmith and Garrick, among its _habitués_. It had a
more solid practical reputation than any of the other coffee-houses;
for within its walls Goldsmith’s poem of “Retaliation” originated.
But politics was its “staple;” and poor politicians seem to have been
among its members, seeing that many of them were in arrears with their
subscriptions: but these were probably the outer-room men; for the
magnates, who were accustomed to sit and watch the line of Bourbon,
within the steam of the great coffee-pot, were doubtless punctual
in their payments ere they could have earned the privilege. And yet
their poetical acumen was often more correct than their political
discernment; for while the company at Button’s ascribed the “Town
Eclogues” to Gay, the coffee-drinkers at St. James’s were unanimous in
giving them to a lady of quality.

Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the “Bedford,” in Covent
Garden, was probably the first; but, for good-fellowship, it equalled
any of the more exclusive houses; for Garrick, and Quin, and Murphy,
and Foote, were of the company. Wit was the serious occupation of all
its members; and it never gave any of them serious trouble to produce
in abundance. Quin, above all, was brilliant in the double achievements
of Epicureanism and sparkling repartee. Garrick, in allusion to the
sentiments often expressed here by his brother actor, wrote the
epigrammatic lines, supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference
to a discussion on embalming the dead, and which will be found in
a subsequent chapter, under the head of “Table Traits of the last
Century.”

Æsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin was to George the
Third,--he “taught the boy to speak,”--Æsopus was as great an epicure,
in his way, as Quin himself. It is related of him, that one day he
dined off a costly dish of birds, the whole of which, when living, had
been taught either to sing or speak. Æsopus was as fond of such a dish
as his fellow-comedian, Quin, was of mullet; for which, and for some
other of his favourite _morceaux_, he used to say that a man ought to
have a swallow as long as from London to Botany Bay, and palate all the
way! When the fish in question was in season, his first inquiry of the
servant who used to awaken him was, “Is there any mullet in the market
this morning, John?” and if John replied in the negative, his master’s
reported rejoinder was, “Then call me at nine to-morrow, John.”

The Bedford Coffee-house had its disadvantages, as when bullies, like
Tiger Roach, endeavoured to hold sovereignty over the members. But
usurpers like the Tiger were deposed as easily by the cane as by the
sword; but such occurrences marred the peace of the coffee-house,
nevertheless. It was, indeed, a strange company that sometimes was to
be found within these houses. At Batem’s, the City House, patronized
by Blackmore, the brother of Lord Southwell was to be found enacting
the parasite, and existing by the aid of men who thought his wit
worth paying for. Child’s Coffee-house, St. Paul’s Church-yard,
was patronized by the Clergy, who assembled there, especially the
younger Clergy, in gowns, cassocks, and scarfs, smoked till they were
invisible, and obtained the honorary appellation of “Doctor” from the
waiters. Clerical visitants were also to be found at the “Smyrna,” in
Pall Mall. Swift was often there with Prior; and the politics of the
day were so loudly discussed, that the chairmen and porters in waiting
outside used to derive that sort of edification therefrom which is now
to be had in the cheap weekly periodicals. “Garraway’s” takes us once
more into the City. Garway, as the original proprietor was called,
was one of the earliest sellers of tea in London; and his house was
frequented by nobles who had business in the City, who attended the
lotteries at his house, or who wished to partake of his tea and coffee.
Foreign Bankers and Ministers patronized “Robin’s;” the buyers and
sellers of Stock collected at “Jonathan’s;” and the shipping interest
went, as now, to “Lloyd’s.” All these places were in full activity of
business and coffee-drinking in the reign of Queen Anne. Finally, the
lawyers crowded “Squire’s,” in Fulwood’s Rents; and there, it will be
remembered, Sir Roger de Coverley smoked a pipe, over a dish of coffee,
with the Spectator. But enough of these places, whose names are more
familiar to many of us than their whereabout, but whose connexion
with what may be called the table life of past times gives me warrant
for the notice of them, with which, perhaps, I have only troubled the
reader. I will only add, that the ceremony of serving chocolate was
never such a solemnity in England as in France. In the latter country,
as late as the days of Louis XVI., a “man of condition” required no
less than four footmen, each with two watches in his fob, according to
the fashion, to help him to take a single cup of chocolate. One bore
the tray, and one the chocolate-pot, a third presented the cup, and a
fourth stood in waiting with a napkin!--and all this coil to carry a
morning draught to a poor wretch, whose red heels to his shoes were
symbols of the rank which gave him the privilege of being helpless.

The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for the critics, the
politicians, and the fine gentlemen. Gay, writing to Congreve, in
1715, says, “Amidst clouds of tobacco, at a coffee-house, I write
this letter. There is a grand revolution at Will’s. Moira has quitted
for a coffee-house in the City; and Titcomb is restored, to the great
joy of Cromwell, who was at a great loss for a person to converse
with upon the Fathers and church history. The knowledge I gain from
him is entirely in painting and poetry; and Mr. Pope owes all his
skill in astronomy to him and Mr. Whiston.” Pope learnt his astronomy
by the assistance of what Moore calls, “the sun of the table;” for,
adding a postscript to Gay’s letter to Congreve, he says, “I sit up
till two o’clock, over Burgundy and Champagne.” Ten years before, the
coffee-house and London life had less charms for him. Witness the
paragraph in the letter to Wycherley, in 1705, to this effect: “I have
now changed the scene from town to country,--from Will’s Coffee-house
to Windsor Forest. I found no other difference than this betwixt the
common town wits and the downright country fools,--that the first are
partly in the wrong, with a little more flourish and gaiety; and the
last, neither in the right nor the wrong, but confirmed in a stupid
settled medium, betwixt both.” But, ten years later than the period of
Pope’s postscript to Congreve, in which he boasted of sitting over wine
during the “wee short hours ayont the twal’,” as Burns calls them, we
find the boaster stricken. Swift, writing to him, in 1726, remarks,
“I always apprehend most for you after a great dinner; for the least
transgression of yours, if it be only two bits and one sup more than
your stint, is a great debauch, for which you certainly pay more than
those sots who are carried drunk to bed.”

In England, the chocolate and coffee-houses were not confined to the
metropolis and its rather rakish inhabitants. The Universities had
their coffee-houses, as London had; and the company there, albeit
_alumni_ of the various Colleges, do not appear to have been remarkable
for refinement. Dr. Ewins, at Cambridge, in the last century, acquired
the ill-will both of Town and Gown for exercising a sort of censorship
over their conduct. According to Cole, the Antiquary, they needed
it; for he says, with especial allusion to the Undergraduates, that
“they never were more licentious, riotous, and debauched. They often
broke the Doctor’s windows,” he adds, “as they said he had been caught
listening on their staircases and (at their) doors.” The Doctor, like
his adversaries, was in the habit of visiting the Union Coffee-house,
opposite St. Radigund’s (or Jesus) lane,--a fashionable rendezvous. He
was there one night about Christmas, 1771, or January, 1772, “when some
Fellow-Commoners, who owed him a grudge, sitting in the box near him,
in order to affront him, pretended to call their dog ‘Squintum,’ and
frequently repeated the name very loudly in the coffee-house; and, in
their joviality, swore many oaths, and caressed their dog. Dr. Ewin, as
did his father, squinted very much, as did Whitefield, the Methodist
teacher, who was vulgarly called Dr. Squintum, from the blemish in
his eyes. Dr. Ewin was sufficiently mortified to be so affronted in
public. However, he carefully marked down the number of oaths sworn
by these gentlemen, whom he made to pay severely the penalty of five
shillings for each oath, which amounted to a good round sum.” The next
week, ballad-singers sang, in the streets of Cambridge, a ballad, which
they gave away to all who would accept a copy, and from which the
following verses are extracted. They will show--if nothing else--that
the University coffee-house poet was less elegant than Horace, and
that the “well of English” into which he had dipped was not altogether
“undefiled:”--

  “Of all the blockheads in the Town,
  That strut and bully up and down,
  And bring complaints against the Gown,
                  There’s none like Dr. Squintum.

  “With gimlet eyes and dapper wig,
  This Justice thinks he looks so big:
  A most infernal stupid gig
                    Is this same Dr. Squintum.

  “What pedlar can forbear to grin,
  Before his Worship that has been,
  To think what folly lurks within
                    This Just Ass Dr. Squintum?”

Old René d’Anjou used to say, that, as soon as a man had breakfasted,
it was his bounden duty to devote himself to the great business of the
day,--think of dinner. We will in some wise follow the instructions
given,--first, however, saying a word or two upon French coffee-houses,
and then upon those who naturally take precedence of “dinners,”--the
cooks by whom dinners are prepared.




THE FRENCH CAFÉS.


In the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than six hundred _cafés_
in Paris. London, at the same period, could not count as many dozens.
Under Louis Napoleon, the _cafés_ have reached to the amazing number of
between three and four thousand. All these establishments acknowledge
the _Café Procope_ as the founder of the dynasty, although, indeed,
there were coffee-vendors in Paris before the time of the accomplished
Sicilian. “_Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona._”

The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period of the breaking out
of the Revolution, was something enormous. The French West-Indian
Islands furnished eighty millions of pounds annually, and this
was irrespective of what was derived from the East. The two
sources together were not sufficient to supply the kingdom. Thence
adulterations, fortunes to the adulterators, and that supremacy of
chicory, which has destroyed the well-earned reputation of French
coffee.

I have already spoken of the _Café Procope_, and here I will only add
an anecdote illustrative of the scenes that sometimes occurred there,
and of the national character generally in the reign of Louis XV. One
afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was seated at his usual table, an
officer of the King’s Body-Guard entered, sat down, and ordered “a
cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll,” adding, “It will serve me for
a dinner!” At this Saint Foix remarked aloud, that “a cup of coffee,
with milk, and a roll, was a confoundedly poor dinner.” The officer
remonstrated; Saint Foix reiterated his remark, and again and again
declared, that nothing the gallant officer could say to the contrary,
would convince him that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was
_not_ a confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge was given and
accepted, and the whole of the persons present adjourned as spectators
of a fight, which ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in the arm.
“That is all very well,” said the wounded combatant; “but I call you
to witness, gentlemen, that I am still profoundly convinced, that a
cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!”
At this moment, the principals were arrested, and carried before the
Duke de Noailles, in whose presence Saint Foix, without waiting to
be questioned, said, “Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention
of offending the gallant officer, who, I doubt not, is an honourable
man; but Your Excellency can never prevent my asserting, that a cup
of coffee, with milk, and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner.”
“Why, so it is,” said the Duke. “Then I am not in the wrong,” remarked
Saint Foix; “and a cup of coffee,”----at these words Magistrates,
delinquents, and auditory, burst into a roar of laughter, and the
antagonists became friends. It was a more bloodless issue than that
which occurred to Michel Lepelletier, in later years, at the _Café
Février_. He was seated at dinner there, when an _ex-garde-du-corps_,
named Paris, approached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier who
had voted for the death of Louis XVI., and, receiving an affirmative
reply, drew forth a dagger, and swiftly slew him on the spot.

Before Procope, the Armenian, Pascal, sold coffee at the Fair of
St. Germain, at three-halfpence a cup; and the beverage was sung by
the poet Thomas in terms not exactly like those with which Delille
subsequently sang the virtues of the tree. The French coffee-houses at
once gained the popularity to which they aspired. To Pascal succeeded
Maliban, and then Gregoire opened his establishment in the Rue Mazarin,
in the vicinity of players and play-goers. At the same time, there
was a man in Paris, called “the lame Candiot,” who carried ready-made
coffee about from door to door, and sold it for a penny per cup,
sugar included. The _café_ at the foot of the bridge of Notre-Dame
was founded by Joseph; that at the foot of the bridge of St. Michel,
by Etienne; and both of these are more ancient than that of Procope,
who was the first, however, who made a fortune by his speculation. The
_Quai de l’Ecole_ had its establishment, (the _Café Manoury_,) which
I believe still exists, as does the _Café de la Régence_, which dates
from the time of the Regent Duke of Orleans, and where Rousseau used
to play at chess, and appear in his Armenian costume. It was also
frequented, _incog._, by the Emperor Joseph. The oldest _café_ in the
Palais Royal is the celebrated _Café de Foy_, so called from the name
of its founder. Carl Vernet was one of its most constant patrons. He
was there on one occasion, when some repairs were going on, and, in
his impatience, he flung a wet colouring brush from him, which struck
the ceiling and left a spot. He immediately ascended the ladder, and
with a touch of his finger converted the stain into a swallow; and
his handywork was still to be seen on the ceiling, when I was last
in Paris. It was before the _Café de Foy_ that Camille Desmoulins
harangued the mob, in July, 1789, with such effect, that they took up
arms, destroyed the Bastille, and inaugurated the Revolution.

The _Café de Valois_ will long be remembered for its aristocratic
character; that of Montansier, on the other hand, was remarkable for
the coarseness of its frequenters, and the violence with which they
discussed politics, especially at the period of the Restoration. The
_Café du Caveau_ was more joyously noisy with its gay artists and broad
songs. The Empire brought two establishments into popular favour, both
of which appealed to the lovers of beauty as well as of coffee. The
first was the _Café du Bosquet_, and the second the _Café des Mille
Colonnes_. Each was celebrated for the magnificent attractions of the
presiding lady,--the _belle limonadière_, as she was at first called,
or the _dame du comptoir_, as refinement chose to name her. Madame
Romain, at the _Mille Colonnes_, had a longer reign than her rival;
and the lady was altogether a more remarkable person. In the reign
of Louis XVIII., her seat was composed of the throne of Jerome, King
of Westphalia,--which was sold by auction on the bankruptcy of his
Majesty. Madame Romain descended from it, like a weary Queen, to take
refuge in a nunnery; and, curiously enough, the ex-King has recovered
his “throne,” which now figures, in the reduced aspect of a simple
arm-chair, in the _salon_ of his residence at the Palais Royal. After
the abdication of Madame Romain, the _Mille Colonnes_ endeavoured to
secure success by very meretricious means. Girls of a brazen quality
of beauty bore through the apartments flaming bowls of punch, usually
taken after the coffee; and the beverage and the bearers were equally
bad.

As the _Café Chrêtien_ was once thoroughly Jacobin, so the _Café
Lemblin_ became entirely Imperial, and was the focus of the Opposition
after the return of the Bourbons. It was famous for its chocolate,
as well as for its coffee. When the Allies were at Paris, it was
hardly safe for the officers to enter the _Café Lemblin_, and many
scenes of violence are described as having occurred there, and many
a duel was fought with fatal effect, after a _café_ dispute between
French and foreign officers,--and all for national honour. The Bourbon
officers were far more insulting in the _cafés_ to the ex-imperial
“braves,” than the latter were to the invading Captains,--and they
generally paid dearly for their temerity. Finally,--for to name all
the _cafés_ in Paris, would require an encyclopædia,--it is worthy of
notice that Tortoni’s, which is now a grave adjunct to the _Bourse_,
first achieved success by the opposite process of billiard-playing.
A broken-down provincial advocate, Spolar of Rennes, came to Paris
with a bad character, and a capital cue; and the latter he handled so
wonderfully at the _Café Tortoni_, that all Paris went to witness his
feats. Talleyrand patronized him, backed his playing, and gained no
inconsiderable sum by the cue-driving of Spolar, whose star culminated
when he was appointed “Professor of Billiards to Queen Hortense,”--an
appointment which sounds strange, but which was thought natural enough
at the time; and, considering all things, so it was.

There is one feature in the French _cafés_ which strikes an observer
as he first contemplates it. I allude to the intensity, gravity, and
extent of the domino-playing. A quartett party will spend half the
evening at this mystery, with nothing to enliven it but the gentlest
of conversation, and the lightest of beer, or a simple _petit verre_.
The Government wisely thinks that a grave domino-player can be given to
neither immorality nor conspiracies. But a British Government proudly
scorns to tolerate such insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen,
at the end of the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blasphemy, and
get as drunk as they please, in any London tavern, provided they
do not therewith break the peace; _but_, let the reprobates only
remain obstinately sober, and play at dominoes, then they offend the
immaculate justice of Justices, and landlords and players are liable
to be fined. So, on Sabbath nights, the working-classes have thrown
open to their edification the gin-palaces, which invite not in vain;
but if one of these same classes should, on the same Sunday evening,
knock at the religiously-closed door of a so-called free library, the
secretary’s maid who answers the appeal would be pale with horror at
the atrocity of the applicant. And what is the bewildered Briton to do?
He looks in at church, where, if there be a few free seats, they have a
look about them so as to make him understand that he is in his fustian,
and that he and the miserable sinners in their fine cloth are not on an
equality in the house of God; and so he turns sighingly away, and goes
where the law allows him,--to the house of gin.

But, leaving the further consideration of these matters to my readers,
let us now address ourselves to the sketching of a class whose most
illustrious members have borne witness to their own excellency, not
exactly according to the fashion spoken of by Shakspeare; namely, by
putting a strange face on their own perfection.




THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART.


It is an incontestable fact, that he who lives soberly does not depend
upon his cook for the pleasure which he derives from his repast.
Nevertheless, the cook is one of the most important of personages;
and even appetite, without him, would not be of the value that it is
at present. A great _artiste_ knows his vocation. When the cook of
Louis XVIII. was reproached, by His Majesty’s Physician, with ruining
the royal health by savoury juices, the dignitary of the kitchen
sententiously remarked, that it was the office of the cook to supply
His Majesty with pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the
doctor to enable the King to digest them. The division of labour, and
the responsibilities of office, could not have been better defined.

From old times the cook has had a proper sense of the solemn importance
of his wonderful art. The _Coquus Gloriosus_, in a fragment of
Philemon, shows us what these artists were in the very olden time.
He swears by Minerva that he is delighted at his success, and that
he cooked a fish so exquisitely, that it returned him admiring and
grateful looks from the frying-pan! He had not covered it with grated
cheese, not disguised it with sauce; but he had treated it with such
daintiness and delicacy, that, even when fully cooked, it lay on the
dish as fresh-looking as if it had just been taken from the lake. This
result seems to have been a rarity; for, when the fish was served
up at table, the delighted guests tore it from one another, and a
running struggle was kept up around the board to get possession of
this exquisitely prepared _morceau_. “And yet,” says the cook, “I
had nothing better to exhibit my talent upon than a wretched river
fish, nourished in mud. But, O Jupiter Saviour! if I had only had at
my disposal some of the fish of Attica or Argos, or a conger from
pleasant Sicyon, like those which Neptune serves to the gods in
Olympus, why, the guests would have thought they had become divinities
themselves. Yes,” adds the culinary boaster, “I think I may say that
I have discovered the principle of immortality, and that the odour of
my dishes would recall life into the nostrils of the very dead.” The
resonant vaunt is not unlike that of Béchamel, who said that, with the
sauce that he had invented, a man would experience nothing but delight
in eating his own grandfather!

Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the _genus coquorum_
of _his_ days. In a dialogue between Syrus and his chef, the master
declares that the culinary art appears to have reached its limit, and
that he would fain hear something novel upon the subject. The cook’s
reply admits us to an insight into ancient manners. “I am not one of
those fellows,” says the personage in question, “who are content to
suppose that they learn their art by wearing an apron for a couple
of years. My study of the art has not been superficial: it has been
the work of my life; and I have learned the use and appliances of
every herb that grows--for kitchen purposes. But I especially shine
in getting up funeral dinners. When the mourners have returned from
the doleful ceremony, it is I who introduce them to the mitigated
affliction department. While they are yet in their mourning attire,
I lift the lids of my kettles, and straightway the weepers begin to
laugh. They sit down with their senses so enchanted, that every guest
fancies himself at a wedding. If I can only have all I require,
Syrus,” adds the artist, “if my kitchen be only properly furnished,
you will see renewed the scenes which used to take place on the coasts
frequented by the Syrens. It will be impossible for any one to pass the
door; all who scent the process will be compelled, despite themselves,
to stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils
extended; nor will it be possible to make them ‘move on,’ unless
the police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent by
plugging their noses.”

Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing his pupils.
Leucon is the name of the teacher; and the first truth he impresses on
his young friend is, that the most precious sauce for the purpose of a
cook is impudence. “Boast away,” he says, “and never be tired of it.”
For, as he logically remarks, “if there be many a Captain under whose
dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor hare, why should not we, who kill
hares, pass for better than we are, like the Captains?” “A modest cook
must be looked on,” he says, “as a contradiction in nature. If he be
hired out to cook a dinner in another man’s house, he will only get
considered in proportion to his impudence and overbearing conduct. If
he be quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook.”

Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, that
in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely on those
who exercise the art; there must be others who possess the science of
enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who
keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before its
time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis professes.

The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, among the
Sybarites,--the people to whom the crumpling of a rose under the side
on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious
as though the world was made for them alone, and they and the world
were intended to last for ever. They would not admit into their city
any persons whose professions entailed noise in the practice of them:
the trunkmaker at the corner of St. Paul’s would have been flogged to
death with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for
an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to
wield the instrument of execution! The crowing of one of the proscribed
race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits; and, on
another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his nerves had been
shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring men in another country
strike against each other, at their work, the friend was so overcome,
that he merely exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fainted away.

Athenæus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the authors
whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruction of which
by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his “Finger of God,” is a
circumstance at which he is rather glad than sorry,--Athenæus mentions
the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of
the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very black broth, in
common, out of wooden bowls. Having tasted the national diet, he feebly
uttered the Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and convulsively
remarked, that “he no longer wondered why the Lacedæmonians sought
death in battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with
such broth!”

Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another quality.
The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the benefactors of their
country, and the cook who had distinguished himself was invested with
a golden crown, and an opera ticket; that is, free admission to those
public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted time and the
human form divine.

I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indifferent
reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. The comic
Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon
a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they were
hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor Fagan of
the Saffron-Hill University. “Whatever you can prig,” says the elder
rogue, “belongs to yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you
get past the porter into the street, it then becomes _my_ property. So
fake away! (Βάδιζε δεῦρ’ ἅμα,) and look out for unconnected trifles.”

And yet Athenæus asserts that nothing has so powerfully contributed
to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery! His proof
is, that when men devoured each other, they were beasts,--which is a
self-evident proposition; but that when they took to cooked meats, and
were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they began to
live cleanly,--which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. In
his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only needed the gift of Ceres
to Pandora,--a good appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These
are, doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity can do
without them,--which is questionable,--where they are not, comfort is
absent, and a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation.

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory.
They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children
were legally condemned to get spare again upon their gruel. The
Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper place in society. He
might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was
the confidant of his master, and there were not a few who would have
exchanged their liberty for such a post and chains. And who dare affirm
that the _coquus_ was not an officer of distinction? He who knows how
to prepare food for digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one
particular at least, than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary
science than turning the spit; than Ulysses, who could light fires and
lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter; or than Patroclus,
who could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to make a
stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier.

When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, who
first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, it is thereby
further intimated that good eating should be followed by good drinking.

We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations on eternal
flames by the heat of their own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes,
made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fashion
to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of
his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit of students.
Sicily especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and Mithœcus
wrote a treatise on the art; while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking
into causes and effects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces,
and first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on appetite.
Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid of the practical cook, and
gastronomists hit upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to
renewed enjoyments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the
tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than
other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly please the palate
than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that
it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing
it with a piece of rough fish-skin; and his taking up hot viands with
his hand, like that of Götz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is
cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons of the Romans
had a pointed end, at the extremity of the handle, for the purpose of
picking fish from the shell.

Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature’s making,
they were made for them by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were
crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, and had no
fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its
exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it had probably
been forgotten in something more novel discovered by a Sicilian
rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the Parisians of the last
century used to look on Languedoc,--as the only place on earth where
cooks were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The artists of
both countries, and of the opposite ages mentioned, were especially
skilled in the preparation of materials which were made to appear the
things they were not; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh,
and fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the
kitchen-garden. The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste
of which the diarists of the last century show the French to have been
guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed
upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an
artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be very intolerable
board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, who saw the seemingly
liberal fare, but who could make very little of the deal before them.

In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had her especial
altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in which the Sicilian cooks
were held, who prayed to her for inspiration. Her ministers were paid
salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. Something like £800 _per
annum_ formed the _honorarium_ of the learned and juicy gentleman. But
he was not always to be had, even at that price; and the disgusted
Languedocien who would not remain in the _cuisine_ of the Duke of
Richmond, when Governor of Ireland, for the sufficient reason that
there was no Opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his Sicilian
predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bondsman in Greek households
against the free cook from Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in
its results.

The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to whom his master
Antony gave a city, because he had cooked a repast which had called
forth encomium from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra.

But money was the last thing thought of by the wearied epicures of
Rome, especially when what they gave belonged to somebody else. When
Lucullus spent £1,000 sterling on a snug dinner for three,--himself,
Cæsar, and Pompey,--he doubtless spent his creditors’ money; at least,
extravagant people generally do. Claudius dined often with six hundred
guests, and the Roman people paid the cooks. The dinners of Vitellius
cost that sacrilegious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills
were discharged by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius ordered
several thousands sterling to be bestowed on the author of a piece
wherein every thing eatable was made to speak wittily, the author was
really paid out of the popular pocket; and when Geta insisted on having
as many courses at each repast as there were letters in the alphabet,
and all the viands at each course so named that their initials should
be the same as that of the course itself, he was the last person who
troubled himself about the payment for such extravagance.

The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, have been as
despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in the saloon. The slaves
there, who hurried to and fro, bearing their tributes of good things
from the market-place, or distributing them according to his bidding,
obeyed the cook’s very nod, nay, anticipated his very wishes. They
were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sovereign. The cook was their
Lord paramount. The stewards possessed no little power; but when the
fires were lighted, and the dinner had to be thought of, the head cook
was the kitchen Jupiter; and when he spoke, obedience, silence, and
trembling followed upon his word.

From his raised platform, the _Archimagirus_, as he was called, could
overlook all the preparations, and with his tremendous spoon of office
he could break the heads of his least skilful disciples, and taste the
sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The effect must have been
quite pantomimic; and to complete it, there was only wanted a crash
of discordant music to accompany the rapid descent of the gigantic
spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. The work was done in
presence of the gods, and scullions blew the fires under the gaze of
the _Lares_,--sooty divinities to whom, the legend says, inferior cooks
were sometimes sacrificed in the month of December. “But,” as Othello
says, “that’s a fable!”

Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and perhaps were as
often inspected by the curious and privileged, as that of the Reform
Club. “Order reigned” there quite as much as it did, according to
Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject slavery. Art and
costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but the human beings there
were exactly the things that were made the least account of.

No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook consisted in serving
up an entire pig at once roasted and boiled. The elder Disraeli has
shown from Archestratus how this was done. “The animal had been bled
to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after copious effusion,
the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and
hanged the animal by the feet. He crammed down the throat the stuffings
already prepared. Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of
barley thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on
a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due
care. When the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and then,
taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once boiled and
roasted.” And such was the way by which the best of cooks spoiled the
best of pigs.

According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in the old days to
carry knives in their girdles. In the “_Aulularia_,” old Euclio says to
Congrio, the cook, “_Ad tres viros jam ego deferam tuum nomen_,”--“I’ll
go and inform against you to the Magistrates.” “Why so?” asks Congrio.
“Because you carry a knife,”--“_Quia cultrum habes._” “Well,” says the
artist, standing on his rights, “_cocum decet_,” “it is the sign of my
profession.” From another of the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the
“_Menæchmei_,” that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was
reckoned as equivalent to that of eight guests; and when Cylindrus is
ordered to prepare a dinner for Menæchmus, his “lady,” and the official
parasite, “Then,” says the cook, “that’s as good as ten; for your
parasite does the work of eight:”--

              “_Jam isti sunt decem,
  Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur._”

The musicians would appear to have lived as pleasantly as the
parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in the “_Mostellaria_,” that he
lives on the best the cooks and vintners can procure for him,--a real
fiddler’s destiny:--

  “_Musice hercle agitis ætatem: ita ut vos decet.
  Vino et victu, piscatu probe electili,
  Vitam colitis._”

Stalino complains in the “_Casina_,” that, clever as cooks are, they
cannot put a little essence of love into all their dishes,--a sauce,
he says, that would please everybody. Their reputation in Rome for
stealing was much the same as that enjoyed by their Grecian brethren.
The scene of the “_Casina_,” indeed, is in Athens; but Olympio utters
a Roman sentiment when he says, that cooks use their hands as much
for larceny as cookery, and that wherever they are they bring double
ruin, through extravagance and robbery, upon their masters: “_Ubi sunt,
duplici damno dominos multant._” This is further proved by the speech
of _Epidicus_, in the comedy so called, where that slave-cook speaks of
his master’s purse as if it were game, to disembowel which, he says, he
will use his professional knife:--

  “_Acutum cultrum habeo, senis qui exenterem
  Marsupium._”

We learn something of the pay of a cook from a speech of one of the
craft, in the “_Pseudolus_.” Ballio, seeing a single practitioner
remaining in the square to be hired, asks how it is that he has not
been engaged. “_Eloquar_,” says the cook, “here is the reason:--

  “He who, now-a-days, comes here to hire cooks,
  No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest,
  But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works.
  Therefore you see me here alone to-day.
  A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased;
  But under a crown I cook a dish for no man.
  For ’twixt the common herd and me, you see,
  There is a diff’rence: they into a dish
  Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat, Sir,
  As though they were but oxen out at grass.
  Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with grass;
  And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel,
  Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks, and greens,
  All go together, with a pound of benzoin,
  And mustard ditto, that compels the tears
  From out the eyes of those that have to mix it.

         *       *       *       *       *

  “If men are short-lived now, the reason’s plain:
  They put death into their stomachs, and so
  Of indigestion and bad cookery die.
  Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder;
  Yet men will eat what asses would not bend to.

         *       *       *       *       *

  “Who of _my_ dishes eats, obtains at least
  Two hundred happy years of life renew’d.
  I season Neptune’s fishes with a juice
  Made up of Cicilindrum, Muscadel,
  Sipolindrum, and Sancapatides.
  The odour of my mutton, nicely stuffed
  With Cicimandrum, Nappalopsides,
  And of Cataractaria a pinch,
  Feeds Jupiter himself, who, when I rest,
  Sleeps on Olympus, sad and supperless.
  As for my potions, he who deeply drinks,
  Gulps with the draught the gift of endless youth.”

Finally, after inventing the above names unpronounceable of sauces that
do not exist, the boaster adds, that his fee is a crown, provided he is
not overlooked; but that if there be supervision to check him in his
perquisites, he is not to be hired under a mina:--

  “_Si credis, nummos; si non, ne mina quidem!_”

I do not know if cooks more especially used different fingers in
mingling their sauces, according as they were employed on wedding
banquets, martial feasts, senatorial entertainments, _al-fresco
déjeuners_, or commercial suppers; but certain it is, that the fingers
were sacred to diverse deities. The thumb was devoted to Venus, the
index finger to Mars, the longest finger to Saturn, the next to the
Sun, and the little finger to Mercury.

I conclude with a remark that I hope will be gratifying to all
culinary artists who respect themselves and their calling, and who
are anxious to prove that their vocation is of ancient and honourable
descent. Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, had formerly
been cook to the King of Sidon. Thus learning ascended to us from
the kitchen; and to the ex-cook of the King of Sidon we perhaps owe
all the epics that have ever been written. By this genealogy, even
“Paradise Lost” may be traced to the patties of Cadmus. But cooks in
England may boast of a _noblesse de cuisine_, which dates from the
Norman Conquest. When William, who wooed his wife Matilda by knocking
her down, had established himself in England, he gave a banquet, at
which his cook, Tezelin, served a new white soup of such exquisite
flavour, that William sent for the artist, and inquired its name. “I
call it _Dillegrout_,” said Tezelin. “A scurvy name for so good a
soup,” said the Conqueror; “but let that pass. We make you Lord of the
Manor of Addington!” Thus modern cooks may boast of a descent from the
landed aristocracy of the Conquest! Some of their masters cannot do as
much; and this, perhaps, accounts for the pride of the one, and the
simplicity of the other.




THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE.


If it were necessary that the cook of the ancient world should be a
Sicilian, and that the _cuisinier_ of the ancient régime should be of
Languedoc, (the native place of “_blanc manger_,”) so in these modern
times he alone is considered a true graduate in the noble science _de
la gueule_ who is a Gaul by birth, or who has gone through his studies
in the University of French Kitchens. In England, it must be confessed
that great cooks have formed the exception rather than the rule; and
that our native culinary literature, however interesting in certain
national details, is chiefly based upon a French foundation. And yet we
may boast of some native professors who were illustrious in their way.
Master John Murrel, for instance, wrote a cookery book in 1630, and
dedicated it to the daughter of the Lord Mayor. He starts by asserting
that cookery books generally mar rather than make good meats; and then
shows what good meats were in his estimation, by teaching how to dress
“minced bullock’s kidney, a rack of veal, a farced leg of mutton, an
umble pie, and a chewit of stockfish.” He is succulently eloquent on a
compound production, consisting of marrow bones, a leg of mutton, fowls
and pullets, and a dozen larks, all in one dish.

The Duke of Newcastle, in the last century, had a female cook of some
renown, named “Chloe.” General Guise, at the siege of Carthagena, saw
some wild fowl on the wing, and, amid the din of war, he thought of
“Chloe” and her sauces. She was famous for her stewed mushrooms, and
there is an anecdote connected therewith that will bear repeating.
“Poor Dr. Shaw,” writes Horace Walpole, “being sent for in great haste
to Claremont, (it seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair
of her own whisker getting up her nose, and making her sneeze,) the
poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out,
was taken so ill that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being
carried to the first apothecary’s, prescribed a medicine for himself
which immediately cured him. This catastrophe so alarmed the Duke of
Newcastle, that he immediately ordered all the mushroom-beds to be
destroyed; and even the toadstools in the park did not escape scalping
in this general measure. And a voice of lamentation was heard at Ramah
in Claremont, ‘_Chloe_’ weeping for _her_ mushrooms, and they are not!”
But, let us turn to trace lightly the genealogy of the cooks of modern
times.

The descent of the barbarians from the north was the ruin of cooks as
well as of Kings, of kitchens as well as constitutions. Many of the
cooks of the classic period were slain like the Druid Priests at the
fire of their own altars. A patriotic few fled rather than feed the
invader; and the servile souls who tremblingly offered to prepare a
_fricassée_ of ostrich brains for the Northmen, were dismissed with
contempt by warrior princes, who lived on under-done beef, and very
much of it!

But as sure as the Saxon blood beats out the Norman, so does good
cookery prevail over barbarous appetites. The old cooks were a sacred
race, whose heirs took up the mission of their sires. This mission was
so far triumphant, that, at the period of Charlemagne, the imperial
kitchen recognised in its _chef_ the representative of the Emperor. The
oriental pheasant and the peacock, in all the glories of expanded tail,
took the place, or appeared at the side, of coarser viands. The dignity
and the mirth of Charlemagne’s table were heightened by the presence
of ladies. Brillat de Savarin states, that since that period the
presence of the fair sex has ever been a law of society. But in this he
errs; for the Marquis de Bouillé, in his admirable work on the Dukes of
Guise, affirms that the good civilizing custom had fallen into disuse,
but that a permanent improvement was commenced in the reign of Francis
I., when the Cardinal of Lorraine induced that Monarch to invite ladies
to be present at all entertainments given at Court. Society followed
the fashion of the Sovereign; and as it used to be said, “No feast, no
Levite,” so now it was felt that where there was no lady, there was no
refined enjoyment.

At whatever period the emancipation of the ladies from their forced
seclusion took place, from that period the tone of social life was
elevated. They went about, like Eve, “on hospitable thoughts intent.”
The highest in rank did not disdain to supervise the kitchen; they
displayed their talents in the invention of new dishes, as well as in
the preparation of the old; and they occasionally well-nigh ruined
their lords by the magnificence of their tastes, and their sublime
disregard of expense. All the sumptuary laws of Kings to restrain this
household extravagance were joyously evaded, and banquets became deadly
destructive to men’s estates.

The French Kings granted corporate rights to the different trades
connected with the kitchen and the table; and perhaps the most valued
privilege was that conceded by Charles IX. to the pastrycooks, who
alone were permitted to make bread for the service of the Mass.

Montaigne, in his pleasant way, recounts a conversation he had with an
Italian _chef_ who had served in the kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa, up
to the period of the death of his gastronomic Eminence. “I made him,”
says the great Essayist, “tell me something about his post. He gave
me a lecture on the science of eating, with a gravity and magisterial
countenance as if he had been determining some vexed question in
theology. He deciphered to me, as it were, the distinction that exists
between appetites:--the appetite at fasting; that which people have
at the end of the second or third service; the means of awaking and
exciting it; the general ‘police,’ so to speak, of his sauces; and
then particularized their ingredients and effects. The differences of
salads, according to the seasons, he next discoursed upon. He explained
what sorts ought to be prepared warm, and those which should always be
served cold; the way of adorning and embellishing them, in order to
render them seductive to the eye. After this he entered on the order of
table-services,--a subject full of fine and important considerations;
and all this was puffed up with rich and magnificent terms; phrases,
indeed, such as are employed by statesmen and diplomatists, when they
are discoursing on the government of an empire.” We see by this what
the “_art de la gueule_” was in the days of Charles IX., whose mother,
Catherine de Medicis, had introduced it into France, as a science
whereby men should enjoy life. The same lady introduced also poisoning,
as a science whereby men might be deprived of life. Her own career was
full of opposing facts like these,--facts which caused a poetic cook to
write the epitaph upon her, which says:--

  “Here lieth a Queen, who was angel and devil,
  Admirer of good, and a doer of evil;
  She supported the State, and the State she destroyed;
  She reconciled friends, and she friendships alloyed;
  She brought forth three Kings, thrice endanger’d the Crown,
  Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down;
  Made many good laws, many bad ones as well,
  And merited richly both heaven and hell.”

The mention of Cardinal de Caraffa, by Montaigne, reminds me that, for
a gastronome, the Cardinal was singularly sanguinary in spirit. I know
no one to compare with him, except Dr. Cahill, who is not averse to
good living, and who has earned so gloomy a notoriety by his terrible
sentiment of the massacre of Protestants being “a glorious idea.”
Caraffa was enabled to enjoy both his propensities, of swallowing good
things and slaughtering heretics. “Having obtained leave from the Pope
to establish the Inquisition at Rome, at a time when the resources of
the State ran low, he turned his private property to the use of his
zeal, and set up a small Inquisition at his own expense.” Thus he could
dine within hearing of the groans of his victims; his cook could inform
him that the hares and heretics had both been roasted; and he _may_
have been occasionally puzzled to know whether that smell of burning
came from the patties or the Protestants.

The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable in France; but they
had a passion for poetry as well as for pies, and were given to let
their sauces burn while they recited whole pages of “Orlando Furioso.”
They were critics as well as cooks, and the kitchens resounded with
their denunciations of all who objected to the merits of the divine
Ariosto. But even the Papal ennobling of a cook could not compensate
for an indifferent dinner; and though Leo X., in a fit of modest
delight at a sauce made by his cook during Lent, named him from
that circumstance “Jack o’ Lent,” or “_Jean de Carême_,” the French
would not allow that such an event authorized the _artiste_ to be
dreaming over epics, when he should be wide awake to the working of
his proper mystery. But the mystery itself was much obstructed by
the political events of the times. There were the bloody wars of the
Guises, the troubles of the League, the despotic reign of Richelieu,
the cacochymical temperament (as the editor of the “_Almanach des
Gourmands_” would call it) of Louis XIII., and the ridiculous war of
the Fronde. The glory of the French kitchen rose with that of the
_Grand Monarque_, and Vatel and Louis XIV. were contemporaries. Vatel
slew himself to save his honour! The King had come to dine with Condé;
but the cod had not arrived in time to be dressed for the King, and
thereupon the heroic artist fell upon his sword, like an ancient Roman,
and is immortalized for ever by his glorious folly!

But there was nothing really heroic in the death of Vatel, whose sword
was pointed at his breast by wounded vanity. Far more heroic was the
death of the cook of the Austrian Consul, in the late cruel massacre,
by the cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. The Consul’s cook was a young
woman of thirty years of age. The Muscovite murderers were at the very
height of their bloody enjoyment, and sending shots into the town,
when the cook attempted to cross a garden, to procure some herbs; for
Consuls _must_ dine, though half the world be dying. She had performed
her mission, and was returning, when a thirty-six pounder shot cut her
completely in two. Rather than give up the parsley for her master’s
soup, she thus encountered death. What was Vatel and his bodkin, to
this more modern cook and the thirty-six pounder, loaded by the Czar
for her destruction?

The cooks “looked up” in the nights and suppers of the Regency,
and the days and dinners of Louis XV. It would be difficult to say
whether under the Regent, or under the King, the culinary art and its
professors most flourished. I am inclined, however, to think, that,
during the tranquil and voluptuous period of the reign of Louis XV.,
the cooks of France rose to that importance from which they have never
descended. They became a recognised and esteemed class in society,
whose spoiled children they were; and, in return, it was very like
spoiled children that they behaved. But how could it be otherwise,
when the noble, the brave, and the fair girded aprons to their loins,
and stood over stew-pans, with the air of alchymists over alembics? It
is to the nobility and other distinguished persons in high life, yet
not noble, in France, that gastronomy owes many a dish, whose very name
betrays to ecstasy. And here are a few of these droll benefactors of
mankind.

The Marquis de Béchamel immortalized his name, in the reign of Louis
XIV., by his invention of cream-sauce, for turbot and cod. Madame de
Maintenon imagined the “cutlets in curl-papers” which go by her name,
and which her ingenuity created in order to guard the sacred stomach
of the Grand Monarque from the grease which he could not digest. The
“_Chartreuse à la Mauconseil_” is the work, and the most innocent
one, of the free and easy Marchioness of that name. A woman more free
and easy still, the Duchess of Villeroy, (Maréchale de Luxembourg,)
produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known as the _poulets
à la Villeroy_. They were eaten with bread _à la Régent_, of which
the author was the _roué_ Duke of Orleans. His too “well-beloved”
daughter, the Duchess of Berry, had a gastronomic turn of mind, like
her illustrious father. She was an epicurean lady, who tasted of all
the pleasures of life without moderation, whose device was, “Short
and sweet,” and who was contented to die young, seeing that she had
exhausted all enjoyment, and had achieved a renown, that should embalm
her name for ever, as the inventor of the _filets de lapereau_. The
_gigot à la Mailly_ was the result of much study, on the part of
the first mistress of Louis XV., to rid herself of a sister who was
a rival. Madame de Pompadour, another of the same King’s “ladies,”
testified her gratitude for the present which the Monarch made her
of the Château de Bellevue, by the production of the _filets de
volaille à la Bellevue_. The Queen of Louis was more devout, but
not less epicurean, than his mistresses; and the _petites bouchées à
la Reine_, if they were not of her creating, were named in honour of
Maria Leczinzka. Louis himself had a contempt for female cooks; but
Madame Du Barry had one so well-trained, that with a charming dinner
of _coulis de faisans_, _croustades de la foie de lottes_, _salmis de
bécassine_, _pain de volaille à la suprême_, _poularde au cresson_,
_écrevisses au vin de Sauterne_, _bisquets de pêches au Noyau_, and
_crème de cerneaux_, the King was so overcome with ecstasy, that, after
recovering from the temporary disgust he experienced at hearing that it
was the handywork of a woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring
upon her the _cordon bleu_,--which phrase, from that time, has been
accepted as signifying a skilled female cook.

With respect to other dishes and their authors, the _vol au vent
à la Nèsle_ owns a Marquis for its father; and the _poularde à la
Montmorency_ is the offspring of a Duke. The _Bayonnoise_, or the
_Mabonnoise_ rather, recalls one of the victories of the Duke de
Richelieu; and _veau à la Montgolfier_, well inflated, was the tribute
of a culinary artist to the hero who first rode the air at the tail
of a balloon. The _sorbet à la Donizetti_ was the masterpiece of the
Italian confectioner of the late Duke of Beaufort. He had been to
the Opera; and one of the composer’s charming airs having given him
an idea, he brooded over it, till, an hour or so before dawn, it was
hatched into reality, when he rushed to the Duke’s bed-chamber, and,
“drawing Priam’s bed-curtains in the night,” announced to his startled
Grace the achievement of a new _sorbet_.

The _tendrons d’agneaux au soleil_, and the _filets de poulets à la
Pompadour_, were two of the dishes invented by the famous lady of
that name. The _carbonnade à la Soubise_, and the _carré de veau à
la Guemenée_, date--the first from the reign of Louis XV., the last
from that of Louis XVI.,--periods when the people were famishing.
The Pompadour was a great patron of the arts, and especially of the
culinary art; and the _cuisine des petits appartements_, during _her_
reign, was at the very height of its savoury reputation. The Prince of
Soubise was a poor General, but a rich glutton; and his son-in-law, the
Prince de Guemenée, was famous for his invention of various _ragoûts_,
his inordinate extravagance, and his bankruptcy, with liabilities
against him amounting to twenty-eight millions of francs. Madame la
Maréchale de Mirepoix was the authoress of _cailles à la Mirepoix_;
and her descendants live on the reputation acquired thereby by their
epicurean ancestress. The Bourbons vied with the aristocracy in taxing
their genius, and cudgelling their brains, in order to produce new
dishes. Thus, the _potage à la Xavier_ was the production of Louis
XVIII., in the days of his early manhood; while the _soupe à la Condé_
was a rival dish invented by his princely cousin,--a cousin, by the
way, who, when a refugee in England, used to pass his evenings at
Astley’s, with his pockets full of apples, which he gallantly presented
to ladies as highly, but not as naturally, coloured as the fruit.
Perhaps the reputation of the Maréchal de Richelieu rests more on his
_boudins à la carpe_, than on his battles and _billets-doux_. Finally,
a mysterious obscurity conceals from us the name of the inventor of
the _petites bouchées de foie gras_. He is the Junius of gastronomic
literature; but if he be guessed at in vain, he is blessed abundantly,
as one who has concentrated paradise, (an Epicurean’s paradise,) and
given an antepast thereof, in a single mouthful.

The Prince de Soubise was famous in the reign of Louis XV. for giving
great dinners, and paying nobody but his cooks, and the young ladies of
the opera. He once varied his extravagance by a splendid fête, which
was to terminate by a supper. His _chef_ waited on him with the bill
of fare for the banquet, and the first article which attracted his
attention was “fifty hams.” “Half a hundred hams!” said the Prince,
“that’s a coarse idea, Bertrand. You have not got to feed my regiment
of cavalry.” “Truly, Prince! and only one ham will appear on the table;
I want the remaining forty-nine for adjuncts, seasonings, flavourings,
and a dozen other purposes.” “Bertrand,” replied the Prince, “you are
robbing me, and I cannot allow this article to pass.” “Monseigneur!”
exclaimed the offended _artiste_, “you doubt my morals, and libel my
merit. You do not know what a treasure you possess in me; you have only
to order it, and those fifty hams which so terribly offend you, why, I
will put them all into a phial not bigger than my thumb!” The Prince
smiled, and Bertrand triumphed.

The cooks of the young King Louis XVI. remarked, with mingled terror
and disgust, that his appetite was rather voracious than delicate.
He cared little what he ate, provided there was enough of it; and he
looked to nutrition rather than niceness. A succulent joint with him
had more merit than the most singular of dishes, the invention of which
had perhaps caused three nights of wakefulness to its author. But the
aristocracy, the law, and finance, maintained tables which ought to
have been the pride of Versailles. Late dinners, or gorgeous suppers,
were indulged in to such a degree by the moneyed classes, that it
was familiarly said, that of an evening the chimneys of the Faubourg
Saint Honoré made fragrant with their incense the entire capital. It
was reckoned that, at this period, twenty thousand men had no other
profession than that of “diner-out,” which they carried on, like the
parasites of old, by retailing anecdotes and news in return for the
repast. It was a time when “Monseigneur” thought nothing of dispatching
his cook to London to procure a turtle; which, after all, was less
extravagant than the process of Cambacères, who had his Périgord
pies sent to him through the post, “On His Majesty’s Service.” The
Languedocien cooks in France were paid the quadruple of the salary of
the family tutor, good eating being so much more essential to life
than mere instruction; and, besides, could the family tutor have
accomplished any thing that could equal the achievement of the family
cook who could bring to table _entire_ a “_sanglier à la crapaudine_?”
The cooks of the age of Louis XVI. invented the “_bouillie_” and the
“_consommé_,” because mastication was considered by them a vulgar
process; and the royal cooks, during Passion Week, manipulated the
vegetables placed before the King into the forms of ocean-dwelling
fish, and gave to the semblance the taste of the reality for which it
passed to the eye.

The glory of gastronomy was again rising when it was suddenly quenched
by the revolutionary torrent, and the nation was put on a three years’
meagre dietary by the Jacobins and the Directory. But the Revolution,
which affected to hate cooks as aristocratic appendages that ought to
be suppressed, sometimes made, where it hoped to mar. The case of Ude
is one in point.

Monsieur Ude, like Prince Eugene, was originally intended for the
Church. At the breaking out of the French Revolution, he was residing,
for instruction, with an Abbé, and master and pupil had to fly before
the popular indignation, which, for a time, assailed the Church, and
all therewith connected. Ude’s life was in peril in the public streets,
and he just saved it, by rushing into the shop of a pastrycook, where
he found a permanent asylum. The “house of Ude,” like other great
houses, nearly perished in the great political shipwreck of the day,
and this particular scion thereof took to the study of practical
gastronomy, and became chief supreme in various great kitchens, from
that of royalty down to that of Crockford.

When the sluices of the French Revolution were opened, how diverse were
the fortunes of those who fled from before it! It was the same with
the gentlemen who had followed the fortunes of Napoleon. They were
scattered, like the Generals of Alexander, without being able, like
them, to retire upon independent sovereignties, and rear dynasties of
barbaric splendour. Some went to Greece to crush despotism, some went
to Lahore to aid it. A few, like Latour d’Auvergne, took to the Church;
but, saving that portly person himself, none had the good luck to reach
the archiepiscopate. Those who failed to procure employment in foreign
armies, and yet could not lay aside their propensity for killing, went
to the East, and prescribed as Physicians. Such of the rest as were
absolutely fit for nothing, and willing to do it, inundated England,
and undertook the light and irresponsible office of Private Tutors!

But it was the earlier Revolution that afforded examples of the
greatest contrasts. Many young men, intended for the Church, changed
their profession, and became popular, useful, and rich, in the
households of European royalty, as civilizers of the kitchen, who
raised cookery from its barbarous condition to a matter of science
and taste. Perhaps the most curious of the waifs and strays of the
Revolution flung upon our shores, was the Chevalier D’Aubigné, who
contrived to live, as so many French gentlemen of that time did, in
bitter poverty, without a sacrifice of dignity. He had one day been
invited by an English friend to dine with the latter at a tavern.
In the course of the repast, he took upon himself to mix the salad;
and the way in which he did this, attracted the notice of all the
other guests in the room. Previous to the period of which I am
speaking, lettuces were commonly eaten, by tavern frequenters at
least, _au naturel_, with no more dressing than Nebuchadnezzar had
to his grass when he dieted daily among the beasts. Consequently,
when D’Aubigné handled the preparation for which he had asked, like
a chymist concocting elixir in his laboratory, the guests were lost
in admiration; for the refreshing aroma of a _Mayonnaise_ was warrant
to their senses, that the French Knight had discovered for them a
new pleasure. One of them approached the foreign magician, and said,
“Sir, it is universally known that your nation excels all others in
the making a salad. Would it be too great a liberty to ask you to do
us the favour to mix one for the party at my table?” The courteous
Frenchman smiled, was flattered, performed the office asked of him,
and put four gentlemen in a state of uncontrollable ecstasy. He had
talked cheerfully, as he mixed gracefully and scientifically, and, in
the few minutes required by him to complete his work of enchantment,
he contrived to explain his position as emigrant, and his dependence
on the pecuniary aid afforded by the English Government. The guests
did not let the poor Chevalier depart without slipping into his hand
a golden fee, which he received with as little embarrassment, and as
much dignity, as though he had been the Physician De Portal taking an
_honorarium_ from the hands of the Cardinal de Rohan.

He had communicated his address, and he, perhaps, was not very much
surprised when, a few days after, he received a letter in which he
was politely requested to repair to a house in Grosvenor Square, for
the purpose of mixing a salad for a dinner party there to be given.
D’Aubigné obeyed the summons; and, after performing his mission,
returned home richer by a five-pound note than when he went out.

Henceforth he became the recognised “fashionable salad-maker;” and
ladies “died” for his salads, as they do now for Constantine’s
simulative bouquets. The preparer was soon enabled to proceed to his
responsible duties in a carriage; and a servant attended him, carrying
a mahogany case, containing the necessary ingredients for concocting
various salads, according to the respective tastes of his employers.
At a later period, he sold, by hundreds, similar mahogany cases, which
he had caused to be made, and which were furnished with all matters
necessary for the making an irreproachable salad, and with directions
how to administer them. The Chevalier, too, was, like old Carré,--whose
will was so cleverly made by the very disinterested friends who had
never before spoken to him,--a prudent and a saving man; and by the
period which re-opened France to the _émigrés_, he had realized some
eighty thousand francs, upon which he enjoyed a dignified retirement in
a provincial town. He invested sixty thousand francs in the Funds; with
the other twenty thousand he purchased a little estate in the Limousin,
and, if he lacked a “legend” to his device, I would have helped him to
one in “_Sal adfert_.”

A Knight over a salad-bowl is not a chivalrous picture; but the stern
necessity of the case gave it dignity, and the resulting profits
quieted the scruples of the gentleman. When Booth pounced upon Captain
Bath, sitting in a dirty flannel gown, and warming his sister’s posset
at the fire, the noble and gaunt Captain was taken something aback, and
said, in a little confusion, “I did not expect, Sir, to be seen by you
in this situation.” Booth told him “he thought it impossible he could
appear in a situation more becoming his character.” The compliment
was equivocal; but the Captain said, “You do not? By G-- I am very
much obliged to you for that opinion; but I believe, Sir, however my
weakness may prevail on me to descend from it, no man can be more
conscious of his own dignity than myself.” The apology of good Captain
Bath in Fielding’s “Amelia,” would have served the Chevalier who made
salads, had he needed one.

If a salad made the fortune of a Chevalier, it on one occasion made
that of a female cook, with whose dexterity in this respect a learned
English Judge was so enchanted, that he raised the lucky maiden to
the quality of wife. If we discuss the traits of life at table, we
have nothing to do with the secrets of household; but an incident,
illustrative of the consequences of this match, may be mentioned. The
Judge ever after was famous for protracting the sittings in court
beyond all precedent and patience; and when weary Barristers were
aghast at hearing a new cause called on, when the night was half spent,
and fairly remonstrated against the judicial cruelty, the learned
husband of his cook would remark with a sigh, “Gentlemen, we _must_ be
somewhere; we cannot be better any where than where we now are,”--the
half of which assertion was stoutly denied by his hearers.

Our aristocracy are not quite so famous for their invention of dishes
as that of France; but their love for good dinners, and their knowledge
of what they ought to be, are not inferior to the affection and science
of our neighbours. When Lord Marcus Hill officiated as whipper-in
to the Whig Government, it was part of his office to order the fish
dinner at which Ministers regale themselves when sessional cares no
longer molest them. The fish dinners of Lord Marcus are remembered with
satisfaction and gratitude; for they were first-rate in their way. The
reputation of the Carlton _cuisine_ and cellar is said to be chiefly
owing to Sir Alexander Grant, of whom a gastronomic critic says, “No
living Amphitryon has given better dinners in his time; and few can
boast of having entertained more distinguished guests.” His name, as a
patron, reminds me of that of Carême, as a practitioner.




PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CARÈME.


It would be as easy to compile a Dictionary of Cooks, as of Musicians
or Painters; but it would not be so amusing or so edifying, except
perhaps to those who think more of their stomach than of their mind.
But it _would_ then be attractive and useful to the majority of
readers; for the sages themselves are not unmindful of their stomachs,
and, according to a sage, they would be unworthy of the name if they
neglected that vital matter. Johnson, you know, lived in an age when
things were called by their real names. “_J’appelle un chat un chat_,”
was the device of the plain-spoken, when not only men, but ladies, bold
as the Thalestris of Young’s pungent satire, loudly dared to name what
nature dared to give. Dr. Johnson, then, says, “Some people have a
foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat.
For my part, I mind my _belly_ very studiously; for I look upon it that
he who does not mind his _belly_, will hardly mind any thing else!”

To the world, then, even a Biographical Dictionary of Cooks might be
captivating; but as my present mission is not to write an Encyclopædia,
but rather deferentially to offer my little sketches to gentle, and not
too critical, readers, with leisure half-hours at their command, so do
I offer them a sketch of Carême, as the knowledge of the individual may
stand for that of the class.

He was illustrious by descent; for one of his ancestors had served in
the household of a Pope, who himself made more sauces than saints, Leo
X. But Carême was one of so poor and so numerous a family, that when
he came into the world, he was no more welcome than Oliver Goldsmith
was: the respective parents of the little-cared-for babes did not know
what future great men lay in naked helplessness before them. One wrote
immortal poetry, and starved: the other made delicious pastry, and
rode in a chariot! We know how much Oliver received for his “Vicar;”
while Anthony Carême used to receive twice as much for merely writing
out a recipe to make a “_pâté_.” Nay, Carême’s untouched patties,
when they left royal tables, were bought up at a cost which would
have supported Goldsmith for a month; and a cold sugared _entremets_,
at the making of which Carême had presided, readily fetched a higher
price than the public now pay for the “Complete Works” of the poet of
Green-Arbour-court!

Carême studied under various great masters, but he perfected his
studies under Boucher, _chef des services_ of the Prince Talleyrand.
The glory of Carême was co-eval with that of Napoleon: those two
individuals were great men at the same period; but the glory of one
will, perhaps, be a little more enduring than that of the other. I will
not say _whose_ glory will thus last the longer; for as was remarked
courteously by the Oxford candidate for honours, who was more courteous
than “crammed,” and who was asked which were the minor Prophets, “I am
not willing to draw invidious distinctions!”

In the days of the Empire,--the era of the greatness, of the
achievements, and of the reflections of Carême,--the possession of him
was as eagerly contested by the rich as that of a nymph by the satyrs.
He was alternately the glory of Talleyrand, the boast of Lavalette,
and the pride of the Saxon Ambassador. In their houses, too, his
hand was as often on his pen as on the handle of his _casserole_;
and inspiration never visited his brain without the call being
duly registered in his note-book, with reflections thereon highly
philosophical and gastronomic.

But Carême was capricious. It was not that he was unfaithful, but he
was _volage_; and he passed from kitchen to kitchen, as the bee wings
from flower to flower. The Emperor Alexander dined with Talleyrand,
and forthwith he seduced Carême: the seduction-money was only £100
sterling per month, and the culinary expenses. Carême did not yield
without much coyness. He urged his love for study, his desire to refine
the race of which he made himself the model, his love for his country;
and he even accompanied, for a brief moment, “Lord Stewart” to Vienna;
but it was more in the way of policy than pastry: for Count Orloff was
sent after him on a mission, and Carême, after flying, with the full
intention of being followed, to London and Paris, yielded to the golden
solicitation, and did the Emperor Alexander the honour of becoming the
head of the imperial kitchen in whatever palace His Majesty presided.
But the delicate susceptibility of Carême was wounded by discovering
that his book of expenses was subjected to supervision. He flung up
his appointment in disgust, and hastened across Europe to England.
The jealous winds wished to detain him for France, and they blew him
back on the coast between Calais and Boulogne, exactly as they did
another gentleman, who may not be so widely known as Carême, but who
has been heard of in England under the name of William Wordsworth.
Carême accepted the omen, repaired to Paris, entered the service of
the Princess Bagration, and served the table of that capricious lady,
_en maître d’hôtel_. As the guests uttered ecstatic praises of the
fare, the Princess would smile upon him as he stood before her, and
exclaim, “He is the pearl of cooks!” Is it a matter of surprise that
he was vain? Fancy being called a “pearl” by a Princess! On reading it
we think of the days when Lady Mary Wortley Montague put nasty footmen
into eclogues, and deified the dirty passions of Mrs. Mahony’s lacquey.

The Princess, however, ate herself into a permanent indigestion, and
Carême transferred his services to the English Ambassador at the Court
of Vienna. There, every morning, seated in his magnificent kitchen,
Carême received the visit of “Milor Stewart,” who seldom left him
without presents and encouragements. Indeed, these rained upon the
immortal artist. The Emperor Alexander had consented to have Carême’s
projects in culinary architecture dedicated to him, and, with notice of
consent, sent him a diamond ring. When Prince Walkouski placed it on
his finger, the cook forgot his dignity, and burst into tears. So did
all the other cooks in the Austrian capital,--out of sheer jealousy.

Carême, two years before George IV. was King, had been for a short
period a member of the Regent’s household. He left Vienna to be present
at the Coronation; but he arrived too late; and he does not scruple to
say, very ungenerously, that the banquet was spoiled for want of his
presence, nor to insinuate that the colleagues with whom he would have
been associated were unworthy of such association,--an insinuation
at once base and baseless. After being the object of a species of
semi-worship, and yielding to every new offer, yet affecting to despise
them all, Carême ultimately tabernacled with Baron Rothschild in Paris;
and the super-human excellency of his dinners, is it not written in the
“Book without a Name” of Lady Morgan? And was not his residence there
the object of envy, and cause of much melancholy, and opportunity for
much eulogy, on the part of George IV.? Well, Anthony Carême would have
us believe as much with respect to himself and the King; but we do
not believe a word of it; for the royal table was never better cared
for by the royal officers, whose duty lay in such care, than at this
very period. George IV. is said to have tempted him by offering triple
salaries; but all in vain; for London was too _triste_ an abiding
place for a man whose whole soul, out of kitchen hours, was given to
study. And so Carême remained with his Jewish patron until infirmity
overtook his noble nature, and he retired to dictate his immortal works
(like Milton, very!) to his accomplished daughter. _Les beaux restes_
of Carême were eagerly sought after; but he would not heed what was
no longer a temptation; for he was realizing twenty thousand francs a
year from the booksellers, besides the interest of the money he had
saved. Think of it, shade of Milton! Eight hundred pounds sterling
_yearly_, for writing on kitchen-stuff! Who would compose epics
after that? But Carême’s books were epics after their sort, and they
are highly creditable to the scribe who wrote them from his notes.
Finally, even Antony Carême died, like cooks of less degree; but he
had been the imperial despot of European kitchens, had been “beringed”
by Monarchs, and been smiled on by Princesses; he had received Lords
in his kitchen, and had encountered ladies who gave him a great deal
for a very little knowledge in return; and finally, as Fulke Greville
had inscribed on his tomb that he had been the friend of Sir Philip
Sidney, so the crowning joy of Carême’s life might have been chiselled
on his monument, indicating that he had been the friend of one whom
he would have accounted a greater man than the knightly hero in
question,--namely, _il Maestro Rossini_! Carême’s cup was thereat full;
and he died, perfectly convinced that paradise itself would be glad at
his coming.

The celebrated Damvers was _chef_ to the as celebrated financier
Grimaud de la Reynière, in the last century. Grimaud died a martyr to
his epicurean tastes. He was dining on a _pâté de foies gras_, when he
allowed his appetite to overpower his digestion, and he died of the
excess. Barthe, the author of “_Les Fausses Infidélités_,” also fell on
the field of the dining-room. He was extremely short-sighted, and ate
of every thing on the table. He did not consult his appetite, but his
servant, asking him, “Have I eaten of that?” “Have I had any of this?”
It was after partaking too freely, both of “this” _and_ “that,” that
poor M. Barthe let his temper get the better of him in an argument, and
a stroke of apoplexy sent him under the table. His cook deplored in him
the loss of a man of taste.

The cook of the Count de Tessé, Master of the Horse to Marie
Antoinette, was famous for dressing artichokes. The great Morillian
surpassed him, however; but this feat did not save the artist from
ending his days in poverty. The elder Robert was, perhaps, equal to
either of them, in this or in any other respect connected with his
art. The great Carême, ignorant of every thing else, was at least an
accomplished cook. There is, as I have said, a tradition that his
_petits pâtés_, when they left the Regent’s table, were sold, like
the second-hand pies from the royal table at Versailles, for fabulous
prices. As I have before intimated, it was for Leo X. that Carême the
First invented those succulent, but orthodox, dishes, which pleased
the pontifical palate at a season when gratification by gravy would
have been scandalous! It was in the Baron Rothschild’s household that
Carême the Second invented his famous _sauce piquante_, the result of
his studies under Richaut, Asne, and the elder Robert. It was in and
for France that Carême published the learned and curious work of which
he is the reputed author, and which he may have dictated, but which
he could not have written. It is marked by philosophical inquiry,
instruction, and pleasant trifling; and neither book nor reputed author
has been excelled by any artist, or any sample of kitchen literature,
that has appeared since that period.

Before the age of Carême, the popular kitchen in France was not very
superior to our own; and the patrons of _tavernes_ and _traiteurs_ were
as coarsely fed as our frequenters of ordinaries. But as royalty fell,
the _restaurateurs_ rose; and when, in 1786, the cooks of Louis XVI.
began to augur badly of their prospects, three provincial brothers,
Barthélemy, Mannielles, and Simon, opened their famous _restaurant_,
“_Les Trois Frères Provençaux_,” in the Palais Royal, and constituted
themselves the cooks of another King,--the sovereign people. The new
establishment created an era in the history of cookery, and men of
all shades of politics, and Generals of all grades of reputation,
resorted to the tables of the Brothers. General Bonaparte and Barras
were to be seen there daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at
the theatre of Mlle. Montansier. During the wars of the Empire it was
the chosen stage for the farewell banquets of brethren in arms, and at
this period the receipts amounted to not less than £500 sterling daily.
The triumvirate of proprietors endured longer than any such union in
the political world; and it was not till the reign of Louis Philippe
that the establishment of “_Les Trois Frères_” descended, under a new
proprietary, into a more unpretending position than that which it
had proudly sustained during half a century. The _casseroles_ of the
savoury Brothers had remained unshaken, while Kings and constitutions
had fallen around them.

The fortune of the Provincial Brothers tempted another country cook
from his obscurity; and some four years after the former had set up
their tables in the Palais Royal, the immortal Véry thrust his feet
into wooden clogs, and trudged from a village on the Meuse up to the
capital, to give it a taste of his quality. He enchanted Marshal Duroc
with some of his _plats_, and henceforth his fortune was secure.
He married a beautiful woman, whose pen kept his books, whose face
attracted customers, and whose heart was devoted to her husband. A
quarter of a century sufficed to enable Véry to die immensely rich,
after working excessively hard, and to be magnificently entombed in the
_Cimetière Montmartre_, under a marble column, which bore the engraved
assurance that “his whole life was devoted to the useful arts.”

Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time as “the Three
Brothers;” he made and unmade his fortune three or four times, and died
poor, three years after Véry died so rich. Beauvilliers was the author
of “_L’Art du Cuisinier_,” a book almost as interesting as “The Art of
Dining;” and one cannot name either without standing mentally _chapeau
bas!_ before the author.

Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and heavy bill. The
_Veau qui tette_ was renowned for its sheep-trotters. The reputation of
others was built upon kidneys; that of Véry, on his _entrées truffées_.
The “Three Provincial Brothers” enjoyed a wide esteem for the way in
which they dressed cod with garlic. Baleine kept a house that was
crowded by the admirers of fish; while that of Robert was distinguished
for the graceful attention with which previously ordered dinners were
served; and that of Henneveu for the splendid _boudoirs_ in which
shy couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, could dine in
private, and cease to find their modesty oppressive. Beauvilliers’,
as I have intimated, was a costly house; but it was not _therefore_
the most excellent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not to be
determined by its price. Four years ago an illustrious party dined at
Philippe’s, in the Rue Montorgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a
far more exquisite fashion, than if they had joined the Epicureans of
the Clarendon, at £5 per head. The party consisted of Lords Brougham
and Dufferin, the Honourable W. Stuart, two other “Britishers,” and
Count D’Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The dinner on this occasion was
a _recherchée_ affair. It had been as anxiously meditated upon as an
epic poem; and it was a far pleasanter thing. “The most successful
dishes,” says the author of “The Art of Dining,” “were the _bisques_,
the _fritures à l’Italienne_, and the _gigot à la Bretanne_. Out of
compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord Brougham and Alexandre Dumas,
M. Philippe produced some _Clos de Vougeot_, which, (like his namesake
in ‘High Life Below Stairs,’) he vowed, should never go down the throat
of a man whom he did not esteem and admire; and it was voted first-rate
by acclamation.”

The French repasts are not always good, even when they are rather
costly. In 1807, a party of twenty-two sat down to a repast at the
younger “Robert’s,” in Paris. The Amphitryon of the feast was M.
Daolouis; and the bill, exclusive of wine, amounted to thirty louis.
There were but three or four great dishes, and two or three sauces.
The discontent of the guests was general, and the giver of the feast
allowed that the dinner was not near so good as that of the “_Société
des Mercredis_,” at _Le Gacque’s_, which cost only seven francs per
head, ordinary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. “_Mais, à dîner,
Messieurs, à dîner!_”




DINNER TRAITS.


“For these and all His mercies”----once began Dr. Johnson, whose good
custom it was always to thank Heaven for the good things set before
him; but he almost as invariably found fault with the food given. And
of this see-saw process Mrs. Johnson grew tired; and on the occasion
alluded to, she stopped her husband by remarking that it was a farce
to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, in two minutes, he
would pronounce to be as worthless as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs!
And so there was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied the
one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a dinner where she looked
inquiringly, but vainly, for a grace-sayer. “Well,” remarked the good
ancient dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like case, ‘God
be thanked!--nobody will say grace!’” It is seldom that “grace” is
properly said or sung. The last is a terribly melodious mockery at
public dinners; but then every man should silently and fervently make
thanksgiving in his own heart. He is an ungracious knave who sits down
to a meal without at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him,
without whom there could have been no spreading of the banquet. Such a
defaulter deserves to be the bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn
better manners. “Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, “eat, and
welcome!” It was all his grace; and had he said, “Come, gentlemen,
be thankful and eat,” it would have been more like the Christian
gentleman, and less like the “beau.”

It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of numbers at the
dinner-table, that the company should not be more than the Muses nor
less than the Graces. There was not always unlimited freedom of action
in the matter; for, by the _Lex Faunia_, a man was forbidden to invite
more than three strangers (not of his family) to dinner, except on
market days, (three times a month,) when he might invite five. The host
was restricted to spending only two and a half _drachmas_; but he might
consume annually one hundred and twenty Roman pounds of meat for each
person in his house, and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that
grew wild; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon vegetables at
all. One consequence was, that this law against luxury begot a great
deal of it, and ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the French
Mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark district to carry lanterns
at night, he forgot to say a word about candles, and the wits walked
about with the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the mistake
by ordering the candles; but as he omitted to say that these were to be
lighted, the public did not profit by the decree. So the _Lex Faunia_,
when it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to limit
sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten with such luscious aids to
which the name of “sauce” was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded
to the temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver complaint!
After all, it is said that only three Romans could be found who
rigorously observed the _Faunia_ Law, according to their oaths. These
were men more easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child,
when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about £250,000 sterling that
he could devote to gluttony; or than Lucullus, who never supped in the
“Apollo” without its costing him at least ten thousand pounds.

Notwithstanding this, the _Faunia_ Law was an absurd impertinence. It
was like the folly of Antigonus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras
in the camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, “O
Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the deeds of heroes while he
boiled fish?” “And you, O King,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that
Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by trying to find out who had
boiled fish for dinner in his camp?” The moral is, that it is best to
leave men at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong enough to
make laws on these matters for itself; and no one now could commit the
crime of the greedy Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for
himself, ἐνέπτυσεν εἰς αὐτήν, “spat in it;” and if my readers refer to
the chapter illustrating “Their Majesties at Meat,” they will find that
so dirty a trick was not the reserved privilege of Heathenism.

The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined daily on bread and honey.
On the smell of the latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died.
He had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down his allowance
to such small rations, that his death was expected daily. But the fun
and the festival of Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house
begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic by dying at such
a mirthful moment. He consented, asked for a pot of honey, and kept
himself alive by smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his
family hoped that he would die whenever he found it convenient. He
took one sniff more at the pot, and in the effort his breath passed
away for ever. There was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those
ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their times. I think worse
of Madam du Deffand, who went out to dine on the day her old lover
died, remarking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was that he had
expired before six o’clock, as otherwise she would have been too late
for the gay party expecting her. The brilliant society who played cards
by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de l’Espinasse, and counted
their tricks while they commented upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced
as being twice as Pagan as the ladies of the household of Democritus.

A small portion of soup is a good preparative to excite the digestive
powers generally for what is to follow. Oysters form a far less
commonly safe introduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which
even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather than arousing the
stomach. The French _bouilli_ after soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for
it is simply, as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all
but its nourishing juice.”

“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man who has been floating
over an uncertain and uneasy sea, like the first odour or sight of land
to the storm-beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render almost any
dish attractive to any and every quality of appetite. In this respect,
the French and Chinese cooks are really professional brethren; much
more so than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon!

The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and exhibit taste and
judgment in the selection of their food. With a few beans, and the meal
of rice and corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. They
eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. Why not? All these are
far cleaner feeders than pigs and lobsters. A thorough-bred horse is
so nice in his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has been
breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin birds’ nests eaten in China
may be described as young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris _grisettes_:
“Rather eatable things, those _grisettes_, by the bye!” So are the
birds’ nests, composed as they are of small shell-fish and a glutinous
matter, supplied by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. Bears’
paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in the sun, and subsequently
soaked in rice-water, and boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish
that would make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself.

There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. The Duke of
Wellington’s cook had serious doubts as to his master being a great
man,--he so loved simple fare. Suwarrow was another General who was the
despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, that he was at dinner
when Col. Hamilton appeared before him to announce an Austrian victory
over the French. The General had one huge plate before him, a sort of
Irish stew, with every thing for sauce, from which he ate greedily,
spitting out the bones, “as was his custom.” He was so delighted with
the message and the messenger, that he received him as Galba did
Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s death: with his unwiped mouth, he began
kissing the latter, (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once did the
bearer of some welcome intelligence,) and insisted on his sitting down
and eating from the General’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great
Coligny was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater; but he was more nice in his
diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, that he always used to eat his
tooth-picks!

According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied to within
four-and-twenty hours was deemed accepted; and from an invitation given
and accepted, nothing releases the contracting parties but illness,
imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by delay as dinner;
and if punctuality be the politeness of Kings, it should also be the
policy both of guests and cooks. Lack of punctuality on the part of
the former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of whom it is said
that they never saw soup and fish but at their own tables. The late
Lord Dudley Ward used to cite two brothers as startling examples of
want of punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, at seven, you
got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” On the other hand, an unpunctual
cook is scarcely to be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master
is not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be served at the
moment it has been ordered. The great “_artiste_” who dismissed his
patron because he never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it
waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with the dignity of his
profession.

At the beginning of the present century, it was the custom in France to
serve the soup immediately before the company entered the dining-room.
The resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on the part of
the guests. The innovation was introduced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the
actress; but it was tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same
period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten at dinner, to crush
the empty shell. To allow the latter to leave the table whole was a
breach in good manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have
never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost as famous for her
love of good cheer as our own Foote, and both were, equally often, “on
hospitable thoughts intent.”

It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was not famous for a
lavish hospitality. The old actor gave some glorious dinners to the
first people in the city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto
were intended to be highly satirical upon what he considered Scottish
parsimony. Every night, before retiring to bed, he used to paper the
curls of his wig with Scotch bank-notes,--promissory paper, as he
said, of no value. When his cook waited on him at breakfast-time for
orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his locks, flung the papers to the
attendant, as purchase-money for the necessary provisions, and sent
her to market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as eccentric and
ostentatious at his own table in London, as he was any where. When the
wines were placed on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a
shade of disgust, inquired, “If any body drank port?” As no one dared
to answer in the affirmative at his table, (though the owner took it
“medicinally,”) he would direct the servant to “take away the ink!”

If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, had a contempt for
claret, “which,” said he, “would be port, if it could!” The latter
individual was not like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his
glass of claret aloft, with a cry, “If this be war, may we never have
peace!”

Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern wine. Indeed, none
of the Bourdeaux wines were fashionable, that is, consumed in large
quantities out of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That
Sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were
“drinkable.” “From father to son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in
his incomparable work, “_Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV._,” ate and drank
with relish; and it was no jest that among the three talents attributed
by the old song to Henri IV., (their ancestor,) was numbered that of
a “good drinker.” “None of them, however, with the exception of the
Regent, carried it to excess; but what was not excess for them, would
have been so for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his glory,
and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailers, submitted equally to the
laws of their imperious appetite.”

When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bourdeaux wines were drinkable,
the Duke answered him in terms which I may cite, because of their
correctness. “Sire,” he replied, “they have, what they call, ‘white
Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as that of Monrachet,
or that of the little slopes in Burgundy, is still not to be despised.
There is also a certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint,
like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but keeps better. They
have besides, in Medoc and Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine,
of which they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, if
one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not comparable to the wine
of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour is not bad, however, and it has an
indescribable sort of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable.
Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts people to sleep,
and that is all!” “It puts people to sleep,” said the King: “send for a
pipe of it!” This is as just a description of good, healthy Bourdeaux,
as was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of Champagne: “It does not
enter,” he said, “and steal your reason; it simply makes a runaway
knock at a man’s head, and there’s an end of it!”

But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. Let us return to the
solids. Of the self-important personages who daily cross our path,
perhaps the most important circumstance of their life is, that they
have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. All men must, or
should; and sorrow of the saddest sort is subdued before the anguish of
appetite. As Jules Janin says, in his “_Gaietés Champêtres_,” “Nemorin
takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie
Eleison de Montauban, after running, all day long, after Mademoiselle
Blaisir de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the neighbouring
_château_, and asks to be invited to supper. Niobe herself, in the
‘Iliad,’ as afflicted as woman can be, does not forget, when night
comes, to take a little refreshment.” If Seneca derided such doings, it
was only after dinner, when appetite failed him. Human nature is made
up of sentiment and hunger; and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural
with his epicurean reminiscences, when he said,--

  “’Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase,--
    Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine;
  And I thought I had never beheld such a face,
    Or so noble a turkey and chine.”

This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is mixed up with all the
acts of most importance in our lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus,
and Diana be no longer the deities or the _beati_ of the earth, the
substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat Savarin asserts, under
the most serious of all beliefs, we celebrate by repasts not only
births, baptisms, and marriages, but even interments.

The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from the time when
men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took to flesh; for then the family
necessarily assembled to devour what had been slain and cooked. They
know the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of the animal
appetite; but the true, refined pleasures of the table date only from
the time when Prometheus fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which
sprang intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. A good
dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. A hungry man is as
slow at a joke as he is at a favour.

Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but when he was asked to
dine with a Mayor. He had a horror of great dinners generally: and he
was right; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. Horace,
with his modest repasts and fair wine, was something of the same
opinion as Horatio. Where the wine is indifferent, the guests too
numerous and ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the
repast too eagerly consumed, there is no dinner, in the legitimate
sense of the word. I never so much admired one of the most hospitable
of Amphitryons, my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one of
his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn smile, “_Mes amis, ne
nous pressons pas!_” I thought of Talleyrand and his advice to a too
willing Secretary:--“_Surtout, pas de zèle!_” The most accomplished
professor of his time has laid down, as rules for securing to their
utmost degree the prandial pleasures of table, that the guests do
not exceed twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they
be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that the lighting,
cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of the dining-room be carefully
considered; that the viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the
wines of first quality, each in its degree; the progression of the
former from the more substantial to the more light; of the latter,
from the more brilliant to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined
that there be no accelerated movement; all the guests are to consider
themselves as fellow-travellers, bound to reach one point at the same
time. The rules for the “after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those
more commonly observed in this country, with the exception that “punch”
expired when lemons ceased to be dear at the Peace; but the concluding
rule is worth noticing:--“That no one withdraw before eleven, and that
all be asleep by midnight.”

I have spoken of the aids which the French nobility have given to
table enjoyment. To them may be added the innovation introduced by
Talleyrand, of offering Parmesan with soup, and presenting after it
a glass of dry Madeira. Talleyrand had one thing in common with St.
Peter,--he was hungry at the hour of mid-day, the dinner-time of the
Jews; and he would have also come under the anathema in Ecclesiastes
which is levelled against the Princes who eat in the morning.

Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy who made two
substantial meals daily; and Seneca was satisfied with one meal,--a
dinner of bread and figs. The Roman Priests of Mars dined jollily and
sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, and they would not be
disturbed. They were like Baillie de Suffren, who, being waited on in
India by a deputation, just as he was sitting down to dine, sent out
word that his religion would not allow of his interrupting his repast;
and the delegates retired, profoundly struck by the strictness of his
conscience. The original dinner hour of the mediæval ages was, as I
have elsewhere stated, ten o’clock, the _dixième heure_; hence the
name. It was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that so late an hour as
noon was fixed for the repast. It is clear, however, that we have not
so much changed the hours as changed the names of our meals. A French
historian shows us how a Dauphin of France dined (at ten o’clock) in
the fifteenth century:--

“As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his dinner rice pottage,
with leeks or cabbage, a piece of beef, another of salt pork, a dish
of six hens or twelve pullets, divided in two, a piece of roast
pork, cheese, and fruit.” The supper was nearly as plentiful; but,
on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is added, that
the Barons of the Court had always the half of the quantity of the
Dauphin; the Knights, the quarter; and the Equerries and Chaplains, the
eighth. “Take pride from Priests, and nothing remains,” once remarked
an Encyclopædist to Voltaire. “Umph!” said Voltaire; “do you, then,
reckon gluttony for nothing?” Gluttony, at least, does not seem to have
characterized the Dauphin’s Chaplains, in the fifteenth century, seeing
that they took an eighth where a Baron had half.

But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined after a more singular
fashion than that of the Dauphins, his ancestors. I allude to the
Prince mentioned by Maurepas, and whose imagination was so sick, that
he fancied himself a hare, and would not allow a bell to be rung,
lest it should terrify him into the woods, where he might be shot by
his own game-keepers, and afterwards served up at his own table. At
another time, he had a fancy that he would look well dished up; and,
dreaming himself a cauliflower, he stuck his feet in the mould of his
kitchen-garden, and called upon his people to come and water him! At
length, he pronounced himself dead, and refused to dine at all, as an
insult to his spiritual entity. He would have died, had he not been
visited by two friends, who introduced themselves as his late father,
and the deceased Maréchal de Luxembourg; and who solemnly invited him
to descend with them to the shades, and dine with the ghost of Maréchal
Turenne. The melancholy Prince accepted with alacrity, and went down
with them to a cellar already prepared for the banquet of the departed;
and he not only made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made of
himself a ghost, he insisted every day on dining with congenial shadows
in the coal-cellar! In spite of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was
excessively shrewd in all matters of business, especially where his own
interests were concerned.

Thus much--briefly and imperfectly, I fear--for Dinner Traits. In the
next chapter we will put something on them. And as we have been drawing
examples from folly, let us end this section by adding a maxim full of
wisdom. “Be not made a beggar,” says _Ecclesiasticus_, “by banqueting
upon borrowing, when thou hast nothing in thy purse.” If this maxim
were generally adopted, there might be fewer dinners given, but there
would be more dinners paid for. But some people are like the ancient
Belgians, who borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repayment
in the world to come! Many a dinner-giver belongs to the class of
the borrowing Belgians of antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps,
more intended honesty in the compact than _we_ can distinguish. A
compact far less honest was made some years ago by an Irish Baronet,
who had given so many dinners for which he had not paid, that he was
compelled to pledge his plate in order to raise means to satisfy the
most pressing of his creditors. Some time subsequently, he induced
the pawnbroker to lend him the plate for one evening, on hire; the
pawnbroker’s men were to wait at the dinner in livery, and convey the
silver back as soon as the repast was concluded. The dinner was given
and enjoyed, and the company made the attendants drunk, helped the
Baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and épergnes, with which
he set off for Paris, where some of them afterwards visited him at the
little dinners he used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed over
the matter as a very capital jest.

I will only add here the record of the fact, that sitting at table to
drink, after dinner was over, was introduced by Margaret Atheling, the
Saxon Queen of Scotland. She was shocked to see the Scottish gentlemen
rise from table before _grace_ could be said by her Chaplain, Turgot;
and she offered a cup of choice wine to all who would remain. Thence
the fashion of hard drinking following the “thanksgiving.”




THE MATERIALS FOR DINING.


“All flesh is grass;” and grass has been the foundation of all feasts,
in a double sense. It was not only a part of the early repast, in
some shape or another, by derivation rather than immediately, but
it formed the most ancient seats occupied by primitive and pastoral
guests in very remote times. Dr. Johnson approved of asparagus being
called “grass.” Romulus thought grass a sacred emblem, or he would
not have suddenly converted his twelve lay foster-brothers into a
priesthood to look after it. When Baber had defeated the Afghans of
Kohat, they approached him in despair, and, according to their custom
when in extremities, with grass between their teeth, to signify, as
the imperial autobiographer says, “We are your oxen.” Baber treated
them worse than oxen; for the amiable savage says, “All that were taken
alive were beheaded by my order, and at the next halting-place we
erected a minaret of their skulls.” And the conqueror dined pleasantly
in front of the monument.

My friend, Captain Lionel da Costa, tells me, that on accompanying (_en
amateur_) a French force on a razzia against an Arab tribe in Algeria,
he witnessed the employment of grass as an emblem of defiance rather
than of submission. The French officers had assembled the Arab Chiefs,
and, telling them that the foreigners had filled up their wells,
carried off their cattle, and burned their dwellings, exhorted them to
submission, asking them what they would do further against a country
so powerful as France? The Arabs, as if impelled simultaneously,
stooped to the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass there growing,
and began chewing the same in angry silence: this was all their reply,
and by it they intimated that they would eat what the earth gave, like
the beasts that are upon it, rather than surrender. Their enemies could
not refrain from admiring and feeding such adversaries; their mute
eloquence was worth more than any thing uttered to tyrants by Power’s
statue of the Greek Slave, which, according to Mrs. Elizabeth Browning,
“thunders white silence,”--a silence that must have been akin to that
in the French Tragedy, “_silence qui se fit entendre_!”

Soup, as I have remarked, is not a bad preparation for the stomach.
Some one calls it the “preface of a dinner,” adding, however, that
a good work needs no preface. Soup is of very ancient date. Rebecca
and Jacob ate of a pottage, in which the meat was cut into small bits
_before_ the muscular fibres had cooled and become hardened, and stewed
in milk, thickened with meal and herbs. The famous French gastronomist,
the Marquis de Cussy, was orthodox in his gastronomy, fed well, but
heeded the church. His favourite soup in Lent was an onion soup,
composed of a score of small bulbs, well cleaned, sliced, and put into
a stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter and a little sugar. They were
turned over the fire till they became of a fine golden colour, when
they were moistened with broth, and the necessary quantity of bread
added. Before the soup was served, its excellence was perfected by the
addition of two small glasses of very old Cognac brandy. This Lent fare
was, however, only the preface to salmon and asparagus, with which the
orthodox epicure mortified his appetite.

The famous Carême did with the soups he discovered, what the most
famous navigators have done with the new territories on which they were
the first to land; namely, give them the names of the most illustrious
contemporaries then existing. Royalty was honoured in the “_Potage
Condé_;” music in that of “Boieldieu;” and the medical faculty, which
Carême generally despised, in the “_Soupes à la Broussais_, _Roques_,
and _Segalas_;” poetry was illustrated in the “_Lamartine_;” history
in the “_Dumesnil_;” and philosophy in the “_Potage Buffon_.” The
last name he thus bestowed, was to his last culinary inspiration just
before death, when he conferred on a vegetable soup the name of “Victor
Hugo.” It was after reading the “_Messéniennes_,” that he created the
“_Matelotte à la Delavigne_;” and he paid the doctor who had cured
him of an indigestion, by inventing the dish of fish which he called
“_Perche à la Gaubert_.” And with this record we will put the fish on
our own table.

“It is only the Arabs of the desert that affect to despise fish.” This
eastern proverb is tantamount to the more homely one of, “The grapes
are sour;” for the Arabs only affect to despise that which they cannot
readily obtain. The Jews were prohibited from eating fishes without
scales or fins. The Egyptian Priests cared not for fish of any sort,
but they generally allowed the people to eat with what appetite they
chose, of what the priesthood declined to taste. It is said in the
legend, that St. Kevin lived by the fish he caught in the Lake of
Glendaloch; and that when the celebrated beauty tempted him, she did it
by flattery and suggestion:--

  “‘You’re a rare hand at fishing,’ says Kate,
    ‘It’s yourself, dear, that knows how to hook them;
  But, when you have caught them, agrah!
    Don’t you want a young woman to cook them?’”

Gatis, Queen of Spain, was something like Mr. Lover’s “Kate;” for, if
her subjects caught fish well, she it was who first taught them how to
cook what they caught, and how to enjoy what they cooked.

When philosophers were occupied with inquiries touching the soul of
an oyster, fish was probably not a popular diet. It certainly was not
so in Greece, until a comparatively late period. Then fish became
fashionable: the legislature secured their freshness by decreeing that
no seller should sit down until he had sold his entire stock; sages
discussed their qualities, and tragic writers introduced heroes holding
dialogues on the qualities of fish-sauce. There was a Greek society at
that day “against cruelty to fish,” by devouring what also, allegedly,
made the devourer ferocious and inhuman; but general society did not
allow its appetite to be influenced thereby.

The Romans were enthusiastic for the mullet. It was for them _the_
fish, _par excellence_. It was sometimes served up six pounds in
weight, and such a fish was worth £60 sterling. It was cooked on the
table, for the benefit and pleasure of the guests. In a glass vessel
filled with brine made from water, the blood of the mackerel, and salt,
the live mullet, stripped of its scales, was enclosed; and as its
fine pink colour passed through its dying gradations, until paleness
and death ensued, the _convives_ looked on admiringly, and lauded the
spectacle.

The turbot was next in estimation; but as, occasionally, offending
slaves were flung into the turbot preserves for the fish to feed upon,
some gastronomists have affected to be horror-stricken at the idea of
eating a _turbot à la Romaine_; quite forgetting that so many of our
sea-fish, in their own domain, feed largely on the human bodies which
accident, or what men call by that name, casts into the deep. Our own
early ancestors in Britain were said to have entirely abstained from
fish. In later days, however, here as in France, the finny tribes were
protected by royal decrees; and certain fish were named--the sturgeon
was one--as to be caught for the royal table alone. In the same days
porpoises and seals were devoured by the commonalty, and the latter
knew not the art of the cooks of Louis XIV., who could so dress fish as
to give it the taste of any flesh they pleased to fix on as an object
of imitation. By this means, the King in Lent, while he obeyed the
church, enjoyed the gratification of feeling as though he were cheating
Heaven,--and with impunity, too!

The most curious fish of which I have ever read, were those of a lake
attached to a Burgundian convent, and which were always of the same
number as the monks. If one of these sickened and died, the same
circumstance occurred with the fish; and if a new brother appeared in
the refectory, there was also sure to be found a new denizen in the
pond. These fish were, of course, piously inclined; but they did not
come up, in that respect, to the parrot of Cardinal Ascanius, which
could not only repeat the Creed, but could maintain a thesis! I believe
that the Burgundian fish were principally perch; and they _are_ an
eccentric fish. Arthur Young says, that “about the year 1760, perch
first appeared in all the lakes of Ireland and in the Shannon at the
same time.”

As a singularity with respect to the cooking of fish, I may mention
that observed by the Romans with the _sepia_, or “cuttle-fish.” They
invariably took out the eyes before boiling it. It is in allusion to
this custom that Trachalion says, in the _Rudens_,--

            “_Age nunc jam,
  Jube oculos elidere, itidem ut sepiis faciunt coqui._”

I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle-fish was esteemed a
fitting sacrifice to the gods; but I do not know if pious people had
their pet _sepiæ_, as they had their pet lambs and pigs, (“_Sunt domi
agni et porci sacres_,” says the orthodox husband in the _Rudens_,)
reared for the purpose of being offered at the altars.

The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for the imperial
table. At those of Greece it was introduced by sound of trumpet, and
it was almost as esteemed a subject at those of Rome, until Vespasian
condescended not to care for it, and to bring other fish into fashion.
“It is _caviare_ to the general,” is a proverb which Shakspeare has
popularized. The _caviare_ is the roe of the sturgeon dried; that of
the larger sturgeon, which produces hundredweights of eggs, and tons
of oil, is _caviare_ for the general, and is not worth eating. The
delicate white _caviare_ is the produce of the smaller sturgeon, and it
is highly esteemed by gastronomists. It forms a great portion of the
food taken by the Greeks during their long Lent.

We have heard of an American who tried to tame an oyster. The Romans
were more successful with their sea-eels, which would come when called,
and feed from the hands of men, who occasionally fattened them upon
live slaves. Vedius Pollio would have grown sick and disgusted, if he
had been asked to eat one of these slaves; but he was particularly fond
of the fish that had been fed upon such fare; and so he only ate his
slaves at second-hand; for _their_ flesh was declared by him to have
greatly improved the taste of the eel. Epicures with less ferocious
appetites preferred the fish that had been fattened upon veal steeped
in blood. Vitellius put the fish altogether out of fashion by only
eating the roes, which were procured for him at a great expense; and
Heliogabalus caused even the roes to cease to be modish, by forcing
them upon the Mediterranean peasants, who got as sick of their
repasts as English servants in the Scottish Highlands grow weary of
the everlasting sameness of their dinners consisting of venison and
salmon. The Egyptians placed the sea-eel in their Pantheon; and even
the unorthodox cannot deny that he was as good a deity as any to be
found there; and we are told that among the Sybarites, the fishers
and vendors of the eel were exempt from taxation! The origin of these
honours is, however, unknown. Nearly as great were offered, even in
Rome, to the fish known as the sea-wolf, which abounded in the most
filthy parts of the Tiber, and which some epicures distinguished by
the appellation of “child of the gods.” The Romans paid high prices
for it, as they did for the regicide lamprey,--a fish which killed our
first Henry, and which Italian cooks used to kill, as the murderers did
maudlin Clarence, in his Malmsey butt, by plunging the victim, decked
for the sacrifice with a nutmeg in his mouth, and a clove in either
gill, into a pan of Candian wine; after which, covered with almonds,
bread crumbs, and spices, he was exposed to a slow fire, and then to
the jaws that impatiently awaited him. It was once as popular as the
tunny,--a fish, by the way, which once so enriched the city of Sinope,
that the coin minted there bore the figure of the fish. Where they are
found at all, it is generally in shoals; but these are never to the
extent which Pliny speaks of, when he says that they so obstructed
the fleet of Alexander, that the pilots of the Macedonian madman were
compelled to shape a different course; and though they are to be found
in something like abundance in the Mediterranean, yet tourists who
resort thither must not expect to see realized the gay picture of
Vernet. It does not appear, however, that the tunny was ever in such
favour at ancient tables as the eel, which was greedily eaten where
it was not devoutly worshipped, or where medical ordinances had not
been directed against it, as unfavourable to the weak of digestion,
and perilous to those affected by pulmonary diseases. The pike, emblem
of fecundity and example of lengthened years, was still less popular.
The carp, which even surpasses the pike in fecundity, and is a long
liver to boot, was, on the other hand, an especial favourite, but it
was served up with sauces that would certainly not tempt a modern
gastronomist to eat a fish which is seldom worth eating, and which is
almost defiant of digestion. Carp, reduced to a pulp, and served up
with sows’ paps, and yolk of egg, must have been as nasty as gold fish
with carrots and myrtle leaves,--the delight of the Roman loungers at
their “Blackwall,” on the Tiber. So the Greeks spoiled good cod by
eating it with grated cheese and vinegar; and the Romans made perch
more indigestible than it was before, by swallowing Damascus plums
with it. But the ancients had strangely accommodating stomachs; a
sauce of honey could induce them to eat cuttle-fish. Garlic and cheese
made the swordfish delicacies; the rhombus floated into Greek stomachs
on a sauce of wine and brine; the ladies of Rome ate onions with the
muzil, and pine-nuts with the pilchard. The more refined Greeks, on
the other hand, would not touch the pilchard; and the same difference
of taste existed with regard to the loach; while, again, both Rome
and Greece united in admiration of the gudgeon. To neither of these
countries was the herring known. The Scots found the fish, and the
Dutch bought, pickled, and sold, or ate them; and it is said that
Charles V., in 1536, ate a herring upon the tomb of Beuckels, the first
salter of that fish, and therewith friend of the poor, and enricher of
the State. The profit realized by Holland exceeded two millions and
a half sterling, annually. But neither Greece nor Rome felt the want
of the herring while there was an abundant supply of the favourite
oyster. This shell-fish was easily procured by the Greeks from Pelorus,
Abydos, and Polarea; by the Romans, from Brindés, the Lake of Lucrinus,
Armorica, and even from Britain. The Romans were hardly worthy of the
delicacy, seeing that they abused it by mincing oysters, mussels, and
sea hedgehogs together, stewed the whole with pine-almonds and hot
condiments, and devoured the mixture scalding! Others, however, ate
them raw, when they were opened at table by a slave; and the larger the
fish, the more the Roman epicures liked them. They were not only eaten
before a feast to stimulate the appetite, but during a banquet, when
the appetite began to be palled. They excited to fresh exertion, and it
was a cleaner custom (perhaps) than that imperial one of exonerating
the stomach by tickling the throat with a peacock’s feather. The
Bourdeaux oyster was the favourite fish of most of the Emperors. It is
very inferior to the Whitstable oyster, however, and also to that which
goes by the name of “Colchester,” and which is not caught there. The
passion for the savoury fish is well illustrated in the epitaph which
says,--

  “Tom ----
  Lies buried in these cloisters;
    If, at the last trump,
    He does not quickly jump,
  Only cry ‘_Oysters_!’”

If the Emperors affected oysters, the gods themselves patronized
mussels, a dish of which was contributed by Jupiter to the wedding
banquet of Hebe. The mythological sanction has, however, failed to
render the mussel popular, and for good reasons. It is often extremely
poisonous, and in certain conditions of the stomach they who eat
mussels may reckon upon being attacked by violent cutaneous disorders,
painfully participated in by the oppressed intestines.

It was otherwise with the tortoise, the blood of which was reckoned
good in cases of ophthalmia, and the flesh of which was eagerly
devoured. The natural history of the products of those early times
seems to have been written by philosophers with very poetical
imaginations. We read of shells of tortoises being converted into roofs
of cottages, as we are told by Pliny of crawfish measuring four cubits
in length. It was then that men ate lobsters _au naturel_, and crabs
converted into sausages. But this latter dish was a more dainty one
than that afforded by the frog,--the abhorrence of early gastronomists,
but the delight of many French and German epicures, who first find
delight in angling for these unclean beasts with a bait of yellow soap,
and then swallowing, with delight more intense, the hind-quarters of
the animal they have caught. But if the moderns swallow frogs, the
ancients ate the polypus,--and which were the nastiest even I could not
tell! The Romans were especially fond of fish; and some “fast” epicures
among them not only had preserve ponds of fish on the roofs of their
houses, but little rivulets stocked therewith around the dinner-table,
whence the guests selected their fish, and delivered them to be cooked.

It was once thought that the prawn, or shrimp, was somehow necessary to
the production of soles, acting, it was believed, as a sort of nurse,
or foster-parent, to the spawn. But this I suppose to be about as true
as that soles always swim in pairs, with three-pennyworth of shrimps
behind them, ready for sauce.

I remember two anecdotes connected with fish at table, which a guest
may retail when he is next at that period of the repast. Talleyrand
was dining, in the year 1805, with the Minister of Finance, who did
the honours of his house in the very best style. A very fine carp was
on the table opposite to Talleyrand, but the fish was already cold.
“That is a magnificent carp,” said the financier: “how do you like it?
It came from my estate of Vir-sur-Aisne.” “Did it?” said Talleyrand,
“but why did you not have it cooked _here_?” This reply was not as
fatal to the utterer of it, as a remark once made by Poodle Byng at
Belvoir Castle. “Ah, ah!” he exclaimed, as he saw the fish uncovered at
the Duke of Rutland’s board, “my old friend Haddock! I have not seen a
haddock, at a gentleman’s table, since I was a boy.” The implication
shut the gates of Belvoir on the unlucky Poodle from that day forward.
He was never again the Duke’s guest.

Some French writers have asserted, after tracing the “vestiges of
creation” according to a fashion of their own, that man originally
sprang from the ocean; and that his present condition is one of
development, the consequence of life ashore, and exposure to
atmospheric air! According to this theory, I suppose, Venus Anadyomene
was the Eve of our fishy generation, and mermaids show the transition
state, when our ancestors were of both land and sea, and yet properly
of neither!

As judges of fish, the moderns are inferior to the ancients. A Greek
or Roman epicure could, at first sight, tell in what waters the fish
before him had been caught. This sort of wisdom is, however, not
uncommon to oyster-eaters, who swallow so greedily what contains
little nourishment, but what may be easily digested. It was not
unusual, some years ago, in France, for a gourmand to prepare for
dinner by swallowing a gross, or a dozen dozen, of oysters! Twelve of
them, including the liquor, will weigh four ounces; and the gross,
four pounds (Troy)!--a pretty amount of ballast whereupon to take in
freight. The skin of such a feeder had need be in a good condition; but
so, indeed, ought that of every one who cares for his digestion. When
we remember that a person in health, who takes eight pounds of aliment
during twenty-four hours of his wakefulness, discharges five of the
eight pounds solely through the pores by perspiration, it will at once
be seen that to hold the skin clean, and keep the pores unobstructed,
is of first-rate necessity for the sake of digestion and comfort.

There are sea-board populations who live almost exclusively on fish.
They feed their domestic animals upon it, and with it manure their
ground; so that the pork they may occasionally indulge in, acquires
a fish-like flavour, and their bread is but a consequence of the
plentiful rottenness of sprats. Such populations are usually lean and
sallow, but they are strong-muscled and active-limbed; and altogether
they afford good testimony in favour of the efficacy of a fish diet,
when no better is to be had. As a diet, fish is only so far stimulating
that it augments the lymph rather than renews the blood. It is a puzzle
to many gastronomic philosophers that fish was so constant a diet of
the monkish orders. Its heating quality hardly suited men who were
required to be ever coolly contemplative. But this matter I leave to
the philosophers to determine. One of them,--that is, a gastronomic
philosopher,--M. Fayot, says, that “if you would have a dinner composed
altogether of fish,” the meal should consist of “a turbot, a large
salmon done in a _court-bouillon_, flanked with aromatic herbs, and
covered with a fresh winding-sheet of delicate seasoning. In such
dinners, sea-fish have, undoubtedly, the first rank; and among them
the Cherbourg lobster, the shrimp of Honfleur, the cray-fish of the
Seine, and the smelts of that river’s mouth, and numerous fresh-water
fish mingle agreeably. Salmon and turbot should be done briskly;
drink afterwards a glass of those old wines which give a digestive
action to the stomach.” With M. Fayot, the turbot is “the king of
fish, especially in Lent, as it is then of most majestic size. You may
serve up salmon with as much ornament as you will, but a turbot asks
for nothing but aristocratic simplicity. On the day after he makes
his first appearance, it is quite another affair. It may be then
disguised; and the best manner of effecting this is, to dress him _à
la Béchamel_,--a preparation thus called from the Marquis de Béchamel,
who, in the reign of Louis XIV., for ever immortalized himself by this
one _ragoût_.”

The _Almanach des Gourmands_ speaks of a Lorraine carp which was fed on
bread and wine, and which was twice sent to the Paris market, in the
care of a courier who travelled by the mail. It returned to its native
waters in default of a purchaser willing to give thirty _louis-d’ors_
for the monstrous delicacy. This was when fish dinners were much in
vogue in Paris. There was then a _table d’hôte_ for a fish repast only,
held at a house profanely called, “The Name of Jesus.” This house
stood in the “Cloître St. Jacques de l’Hôpital,” and every Wednesday
and Friday it was crowded by the Clergy, who dined magnificently on
_maigre_ fare, for about 2_s._ a head. It is of one of these that
Fayot recounts a pleasant story, the locality, however, of which was
the _Rocher de Cancale_. A certain Abbé dined there so copiously off
salmon, that a fit of indigestion was the consequence. Some days
afterwards, when celebrating Mass, the savoury memories of the fish
flocked into his mind; and he was heard to murmur, not the _meâ culpâ_
of the “_Confiteor_,” but, as he quietly beat his breast, “Ah! that
capital salmon! that capital salmon!”

Of the more nutritive species of fish, turbot, cod, whiting, haddock,
flounder, and sole, are the least heating. Of these, the cod is the
least easy of digestion, though turbot is quite as difficult of
digestion when much lobster sauce is taken with it. The crimping of
cod facilitates the digesting of the fish. Sole and whiting are easily
digested. Salmon is nutritive, but it is oily, heating, and not very
digestible; far less so than salmon trout. The favourite parts of
most of these fish are the least fit for weak stomachs, and the most
trying to strong ones. Salmon, caught after the spawning season has
commenced, is almost poisonous; and eels are objectionable at all
seasons, from their excessive oiliness. Shell-fish generally may be put
down as “indigestible,” particularly the under-boiled lobsters of the
London market. The mussel is especially so; and these are not rendered
innocuous by the removal of the beard, which is not more hurtful than
any other part. Shell-fish, and, indeed, fish generally, affects the
skin, by sympathy with the stomach. The effect is, sometimes, as if a
poison had been generated: at others it very sensibly affects the odour
of the cutaneous secretions. This effect was thoroughly understood when
the Levitical Priests, like those of Egypt, were prohibited from eating
fish. The prohibition was based upon a just principle.

The Egyptian and Levitical Priests were more obedient to such
prohibitions than St. Patrick, who once, overcome by hunger, helped
himself to pork chops on a fast-day. An angel met him with the
forbidden cutlets in his hand; but the saint popped them into a pail
of water, pattered an Ave-Mary over them, and our indulgent Lady
heeded the appeal by turning them into a couple of respectable and
orthodox-looking trout. The angel looked perplexed, and went away,
with his index finger on the side of his nose. And see what came of
it! In Ireland, meat dipped into water, and christened by the name of
“St. Patrick’s Fish,” is commonly eaten there even on fast-days, and
to the great regret of all those who eat greedily enough to acquire an
indigestion.

St. Patrick’s fish ought to have fetched as high a price as the four
cod which formed the sole supply in Billingsgate-market on one of the
great frost-days in January, 1809; they were sold to one dealer for
fourteen guineas. During the same month, salmon was sold at a guinea
a pound! When fish is so high-priced, it is time to have done with
it. So, _enlevez_! and let us to the succeeding courses of viands more
substantial. While the fish is being removed, I will merely relate
that it was the practice of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who gave plentiful
dinners to admirable men, in his house in Leicester Square, always to
choose his own fish, of which he was a capital judge. He was, on those
occasions, ever the first visitor to the fish-shop still existing, in
its primitive simplicity, in Coventry-street. He selected the best;
and later in the day, his niece, Miss Palmer, used to call, dispute
the price, and pay for the fish. Sir Joshua’s table is said to have
been too crowded, both as to guests and dishes, while there was scant
attendance, and a difficulty of getting served; but the hilarity
compensated for all. The guests enjoyed themselves with a vulgar
delight that would have very much ruffled the dignity of such a pompous
president at repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and bepowdered Sir
Peter Lely.

With the introduction of animal food is dated the era of professional
cooks; and that era itself is set down by M. Soyer, a competent
authority, as having commenced in the year of the world 1656. Other
authorities give 2412 as the proper date, when Prometheus, or
Forethought, as his name implies, taught men the use of fire, and
cooked an ox. But I think that both dates and mythology are somewhat
loose here, and that the period is easier of conjecture than of
determination. Ceres killed the pig that devoured her corn, Bacchus
the goat that nibbled at the tendrils of the vine, and Jupiter the
ox that swallowed his sacred cakes; and the animals slain by deities
were roasted and eaten by men. Another tradition is, that roast meat
originally smoked only on the altars of the gods, and that the Priests
lived on the pretended sacrifices, until some lean and greedy heretic,
having wickedly pilfered the sacred viands, so improved under the diet,
that his example was promptly followed, and men took to animal food,
in spite of the thunder of gods and the anathemas of Priests. I need
not say where there is better authority than all these pretty tales
for man’s subduing to his use and service the beasts of the earth, the
birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea.

A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristocrat in his way.
The gods looked after his herds, and the law gave its protection where
Olympian divinity so often proved worthless. Bubona sat the watchful
goddess of their fattening; and it was she who blessed the cabbages
steeped in vinegar, the straw and wheat-bran, and the bruised barley,
wherewith the oxen were prepared for the cattle-show or the market. In
the latter, the office of the Roman Prefect fixed the selling price:
the breeder could neither ask more nor take less than according to
the official tariff. There was a singular custom at one time in Rome,
which proves, however, that the seller had a voice in declaring the
value of his stock. Purchaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and
then suddenly opened, one of their hands, or some of the fingers. If
the number of fingers on both sides was even, the vendor obtained the
price which he had previously asked for his meat; but if the number was
uneven, the buyer received the viands for the sum he had just before
tendered. This was as singular a custom as, and a more honest one than,
that adopted by the first Dutch settlers in America. In their trading
with the Indians a Dutchman’s fist was established as the standard of
weight, with this understanding, that when a Dutchman was selling to an
Indian his fist weighed a pound, but that it should only be half that
weight when the Hollander was a purchaser!

The Roman markets were well supplied, and the pig seems to have been
the national favourite. The Emperors used to distribute thousands
of pounds of pork to the poor, as on festive occasions we, less
magnificently, divide among the needy our time-honoured English roast
beef. There was even an edict against making sausages of any thing
_but_ pork,--an edict which is much needed in some of our suburbs,
where “pork sausages” are made of any thing but pig;--and, after all,
they could not be made of a dirtier animal. But the grave Romans
strangely reverenced this unclean beast. Pliny places him only one
degree below humanity; and certainly the porcine and human stomachs
are very much alike! In the East, our ancient friend was a Pariah, and
his position among the unclean was fixed by a Jewish doctor, who said,
that if ten measures of leprosy were flung into the world, nine of them
would naturally fall to the execrated pig. There is no doubt that the
eating of the flesh of the pig in hot climates would bring on diseases
in the human system akin to leprosy; and this fact may have tended to
establish the unpopularity of the animal throughout the East, and to
account also for the prohibition. Galen, however, prescribed it as good
food for people who worked hard; and there are modern practitioners
who maintain that it is the most easily digested of all meats. It is
certainly more easy of digestion than that respectable impostor, the
boiled chicken, which used so cruelly to test, and defy, the feeble
powers of invalids.

Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until they had attained
nearly the bulk of the elephant. These fetched prices of the most
“fancy” description; and they were served up whole, with an entire
Noah’s-ark collection of smaller animals inside, by way of stuffing.
A clever cook could so dress this meat as to make it have the flavour
of any other viand; and the first culinary _artistes_ of the day
prided themselves on the preparation of a _ragoût_ composed of young
pigs stifled before they were littered. The mother would have had no
difficulty in performing this feat herself for her own young, if sows
generally had been as huge as the one mentioned by Varro, and which he
says was so fat as to be incapable of movement, and to be unconscious
that a mouse, with a young family, had settled in the folds of her fat,
where they lived like mites in cheese.

In another page, I have spoken of what were called “the sacred pigs
and lambs.” Menæchmus, in Plautus, asks the price of the “_porci
sacres, sinceri_.” “_Sacres_” was applied to all animals intended
for immolation. The _sinceri porci_ were the white and spotless pigs
offered to the Lares on behalf of the insane. The merchant who gives
instruction, in the _Pseudolus_, to his servant, as to the splendid
repast that is to be served up on his birthday, is very particular
on the subject of pork; and he shows us what parts formed a dish
that might tempt princes,--the ham, and the head: “_Pernam, callum,
glandium, sumen, facito in aquâ jaceant_.”

If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of pork, the reason,
perhaps, was, that the ox was religiously reverenced, because of his
use to man, whereas the pig was really of no value at all but for
consumption. The excellence of the ox as food was, nevertheless, very
early ascertained, and acted on by some primitive people. The Jews were
permitted to eat of that of which Abraham had offered a portion to
angels; and calf and ox were alike an enjoined food. The Greeks, too,
devoured both with much complacency, as they also did tripe, which was
deemed a dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for tripe there was an ancient
and long-standing propensity among the early nations. It formed the
chief dish at the banquets of men who met to celebrate the victory of
mortals and gods over the sacrilegious Titans.

The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine altars and humble tables.
The Greeks were especially fond of both, and the Romans were like them
in this respect; but the Egyptians religiously abstained from the kid;
and more than one Eastern nation held, as of faith, that the lamb was
more fitting as an offering to the gods than as a dish for men. On
the other hand, there were people who preferred the flesh of the ass,
which was not an uncommon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, were
served as a dainty; for Hippocrates had recommended them as a refined
food; and the Greeks swallowed the diet thus authoritatively described.
The Romans, however, are said to have eaten the dog out of vengeance.
The curs of the Capitol were sleeping, when the sacred and watchful
geese saved it by their cackling; and thence arose, it is believed, the
avenging appetite with which puppies, dressed like hares, were tossed
into the stomachs of the unforgiving Romans. They were also sacrificed
to the Dog-star.

It is worthy of remark, that Mexico was partly conquered by aid of the
pig. Cortez was in need of supplies of fresh meat on his march, and he
took with him a large herd of swine,--sows as well as pigs,--“these
animals being very suitable for a long journey, on account of their
endurance of fatigue, and because they multiply greatly.” The Indians,
on most occasions, however, appear to have been able to have supplied
him plentifully: for we read, that at Campeche, for instance, in return
for his presents, they placed before him partridges, turtle-doves,
goslings, cocks, hares, stags, and other animals which were good to
eat, and bread made from Indian corn, and fruits. It was, for all the
world, like meeting a burglar at your dining-room door, and asking him
to stay and take breakfast, before he went off with the plate!

When the uncle of Job entertained his heavenly visitors, the dish he
placed before them was “roasted veal,” of a freshly killed calf. It
was tender, because the muscular fibres had not had time to become
stiff; and its pleasant accompaniments were melted butter, milk,
and meal-cakes. Veal is the national dish of Germany, where mutton
is scarce, and calves abundant. It is poor food at any time; but
the German veal is the most tasteless of meats. There, indeed, is
applicable the smart saying of that ardent young experimentalist, who
declared that eating veal was as insipid an enjoyment as kissing one’s
sister! Cardinal Zinzendorf used to denounce pork quite as strongly.
He deemed pigs to have been of no use but for their blood, of which
he himself used to make a bath for his legs, whenever he had the
gout. Quixote Bowles, on the other hand, held pig, in any form, to
be the divinest of meats, and the animal the happiest of all created
things. With true Apician fervour, he would travel any distance to
feast on the sight of a fatted porker; and a view of that prize pig
of Prince Albert’s, which was so uniformly huge that, at first sight,
it was difficult to distinguish the head from the tail, would have
made him swoon with gentle ecstasy. Bowles was an epicure in bacon;
and, whenever he went out to dinner, he took a piece of it, of his
own curing, in his pocket, and requested the cook to dress it. The
people of the Society Islands carry respect for pigs even beyond the
compass of Bowles. They believe that there is a distinct heaven for the
porcine souls; and this paradise of pigs is called by them “Ofatuna.”
The Polynesian pig is certainly a more highly favoured animal than his
cousin in Ireland; for, in a Polynesian farm household, every pig has
his proper name, as regularly as every member of the family. Perhaps,
the strangest cross of pigs ever heard of, was that of Mr. Tinney’s
famous breed for porkers,--Chinese, crossed by a half-African boar;
the meat was said to be delicious. Finally, with respect to pigs,
they are connected with a popular expletive, with which they have, in
reality, nothing to do. “Please the pigs!” is shown, I think by Southey
in his “Espriella,” to be a corruption of “Please the pyx!” The pyx is
the receptacle which contains the consecrated wafer on Romish altars;
and the exclamation is equal to “Please God!” The corruption is as
curious a one as that of “tawdry,” from “’t Audrey,” or St. Audrey’s
fair, famous for the sale of frippery,--showy, cheap, and worthless.

They who are half as particular about mutton as Quixote Bowles was
about pork, would do well to remember, that sheep continue improving
as long as their teeth remain sound, which is usually six years; and
that, at all events up to this time, the older the mutton, the finer
the flavour. A spayed ewe, kept five years before she is fattened, is
superior to any wether mutton. Dr. Paris, however, states that wedder
mutton is in perfection at five years old, and ewe mutton at two years
old; but he acknowledges that the older is the more digestible. It is
the glory of one locality, famous for its sheep, that the rot was never
known to be caught upon the South Downs. It is further said, that a
marsh, occasionally overflowed with salt water, was never known to rot
sheep. A curious fact is stated by Young, in his “Survey of Sussex;”
namely, that Lord Egremont had, in his park, three large flocks of
the Hereford, South-Down, and Dishley breeds; and that these three
flocks kept themselves perfectly distinct, although each had as much
opportunity of mixing with the others as they had with themselves.

I have alluded, in another page, to a circumstance first noticed, I
believe, by Madame Dacier,--that there is no mention of boiled meat,
as food, throughout Homer’s Iliad. The fair commentator is right; but
“boiling” is, nevertheless, used by the poet as a simile. When (in the
twenty-first book) Neptune applies his flames to check the swelling
fury of Scamander,--

  “The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound,
  As when the flames beneath a caldron rise,
  To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice.
  Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires
  The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires:
  So boils th’ imprison’d flood, forbid to flow,
  And, choked with vapours, feels his bottom glow!”

This is not a very elegant version of the original, it must be
confessed, albeit the translation is Pope’s. It is, however, the only
reference to boiling to be found in Homer, and here the fat of the
sacrifice boiled down is that of a pig.

  Κνίσσῃ κελδόμενος ἁπαλοτρεφέος σιάλοιο.

I do not know that I can take leave of mutton and the meats by doing
them greater honour than by mentioning that Napoleon ate hastily of
mutton before he entered on the contest at Leipsic, and he lost the
triumph of the bloody day through a fit of indigestion.

Before the era of kitchen gardens, scurvy was one of the processes by
which the English population was kept down. Cabbages were not known
here until the period of Henry VIII.; and turnips are so comparatively
new to some parts of England, that their introduction into the northern
counties is hardly a century old. A diet exclusively of animal food is
too highly stimulant for such a climate as ours; and an exclusively
vegetable diet is far less injurious in its effects. No meat is so
digestible as tender mutton. It has just that degree of consistency
which the stomach requires. Beef is not less nutritious, but it is
rather less easy of digestion, than mutton: much, however, depends
upon the cooking, which process may, really not inaptly, be called
the first stage of digestion. The comparative indigestibility of lamb
and veal arises from the meat being of a more stringy and indivisible
nature. Old laws ordained that butchers should expose no beef for sale,
but of an animal that had been baited. The nature of the death rendered
the flesh more tender. A coursed hare is thus more delicious eating
than one that has been shot; and pigs whipped till they die, may be
eaten with relish, even by young ladies who pronounce life intolerable.
A little vinegar, administered to animals about to be killed, is said,
also, to render the flesh less tough; and it is not unusual to give
a spoonful of this acid to poultry, whose life is required for the
immediate benefit of the consumer. Some carnivorous animals have been
very expert at furnishing their own larder. Thus we read, that the
eagles in Norway exhibit as much cunning in procuring their beef as can
well be imagined; and more, perhaps, than can well be believed. They
dive into the sea, we are told, then roll in the sand, and afterwards
destroy an ox by shaking the sand in his eyes, while they attack him.
I think the French eagle tried a similar plan with the English bull,
during the wars of the Empire, and very ineffectually. It dived into
the sea, and rolled itself in the sand at Boulogne, and shook abundance
of it across the Channel; but the English bull more quietly shook it
off again from his mane, and the eagle turned to an easier quarry in
Austria. Animals not carnivorous have sometimes been as expert. There
have been horses, for instance, who have had their peculiar appetite
also for meat. Some twenty years ago, we heard of one at Brussels,
which, fond of flesh generally, was particularly so of raw mutton,
which it would greedily devour whenever it could get, as it sometimes
did, to a butcher’s shop.

The Jews, it is said, never ate poultry under their old dispensation;
and French gastronomists assert that this species of food was
expressly reserved to enrich the banquets of a more deserving people.
About the merits of the people the poultry, and winged animals
generally, would perhaps have an opinion of their own, were they
capable of entertaining one; for nowhere, as in France, have those
unfortunate races been so tortured, and merely in order to extract
out of their anguish a little more exquisite enjoyment for the palled
appetites of epicures. The turkey has, perhaps, the least suffered
at the hands of the Gallic experimentalists, though _he_ has not
altogether escaped. The goose has been the most cruelly treated,
especially in the case of his being kept caged before a huge fire, and
fed to repletion until he dies, the Daniel Lambert of his species,
of a diseased liver, which is the most delicious thing possible in a
pie. But it is ignoble treatment for the only bird which is said to be
prescient of approaching earthquakes. The goose saved Rome, and was
eaten in spite of his patriotism. He is skilled in natural philosophy,
and his science does not save him from death and sage-and-onions. Nay,
even a female Sovereign of England could not hear of the defeat of the
Spanish Armada without decreeing “death to the geese,” until the time
comes when Mr. Macaulay’s Huron friend shall be standing on a fragment
of Blackfriars’ Bridge, sketching the ruins of St. Paul’s.

It must be allowed, however, that the scientific ladies of farm-yards
have improved upon the knowledge of their ancestresses. Formerly, of
turkeys alone, full one-half that pierced the shell perished; but now
we rear more than fifteen out of twenty. I do not know, however, that
that fact is at all consolatory to the turkey destined to be dined upon.

Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be yearly commemorated
by a cock-fight; and the bird itself was eaten out of honour, as
dogs in Rome were for reasons of vengeance. At Rome, the hen was
the favourite bird; but hens were consumed in such quantities, that
Fannius, the Consul, issued a decree, prohibiting their being slain
for food, during a certain period; and, in the mean time, the Romans
“invented the capon.” The duck was devoured medicinally, that is, on
medical assurance that it was good diet for weak stomachs; and there
were great sages who not only taught that duck, as a food, would
maintain men in health, but that, if they were ill, the ample feeding
thereon would soon restore them again. Mithridates, it is alleged, ate
it as a counter-poison; other people, of other times and places, simply
because they liked it. The goose was in as much favour as the duck
with the digestion-gifted stomachs of the older races. It was _the_
royal diet in Egypt, where the Monarch did not, like Queen Elizabeth,
recommend it to the people, but selfishly decreed that it was only to
be served at his own table. Gigantic geese, with ultra-gigantic livers,
were as much the delight of epicures in Rome, as the livers, if not the
geese, are now the _voluptas suprema_ of the epicure of France, and
of countries subject to the French code of diet. A liver weighing as
much as the rest of the animal without it, was a _morceau_, in Rome,
to make a philosopher’s mouth water. This was not proof of a more
depraved taste than that exhibited by a Christian Queen of France, who
spent sixteen hundred francs in fattening three geese, the delicate
livers of which alone Her Majesty intended to dine upon. The pigeon and
guinea-hen never attained to such popularity as the goose and duck;
while the turkey, and especially the truffled turkey-hen, has its value
sufficiently pointed out by the saying of the gastronome, that there
must be two at the eating of a truffled turkey,--the eater and the
turkey! The turkey, originally from the East, was slowly propagated
in Europe, and the breed appears to have gradually passed away, like
the bustard in England. It was brought hither again from America, and
its first re-appearance is said to have been at the wedding-dinner of
Charles IX. of France.

The turkey was not protected, as the peacock was by Alexander, by a
decree denouncing death against whomsoever should kill this divine
bird, with its devilish note. The decree did not affect Quintus
Hortensius, who had one served up at the dinner which celebrated his
accession to the office of Augur. Tiberius, however, preserved the
peacock with great jealousy, and it was only rich breeders that could
exhibit this bird at their banquets.

A man who passes through Essex may see whole “herds” of geese and
ducks in the fields there, fattening without thought of the future,
and supremely happy in their want of reflection. These birds are
“foreigners;” at least, nearly all of them are so. They are Irish by
birth, but they are brought over by steam, in order to be perfected by
an English education; and when the due state of perfection has been
attained, they are, like many other young people partaking of the
“duck” or the “goose,” transferred to London, and “done for.”

Some gastronomic enthusiasts, unable to wait for their favourite
birds, have gone in search of them. This was the case with the oily
Jesuit, Fabi, who so loved beccaficoes. “As soon as the cry of the
bird was heard in the fields around Belley,” says the author of the
“_Physiologie du Goût_,” “the general cry was, ‘The beccaficoes are
come, we shall soon have Father Fabi among us.’ And never did he fail
to arrive, with a friend, on the 1st of September. They came for
the express purpose of regaling themselves on beccaficoes, during
the period of the passage of the bird across the district. To every
house they were invited in town, and they took their departure again
about the 23rd.” This good Father died in our “glorious memory” year
of 1688; and one of his choice bits of delirium was, that he had
discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey!

And now do I not hear that gentleman-like person at the lower end of
the table remark, that the circulation of the blood was a conceived
idea long before Harvey? You are quite right, my dear Sir; and your
remark is a very appropriate one, both as to time and theme, for
the circulation of the blood is one of the results of cooking. As
for preconception of the idea, it is sufficient for Harvey, that he
demonstrated the fact. The Doctors of ancient Roman days supposed that
the blood came from the liver; and that, in passing through the _vena
cava_ and its branches, a considerable quantity of it turned about, and
entered into the right cavity of the heart. What Harvey demonstrated
was, that the blood flows from the heart into all parts of the body,
by the arteries, from whence it is brought back to the heart again, by
the veins. Well, Sir, I know what you are about to remark,--that Paolo
Sarpi, that pleasantest of table-companions, claimed to have made the
demonstration before Harvey. True, Sarpi used to say, that he did not
dare publish his discovery, for dread of the Inquisition; but that he
confided it to brother Fabi da Aqua-pendente, who kept it close for
the same reason, but told it in confidence to Harvey, who published it
as his own. Well, Sir, Sir George Ent exploded all that, by proving
that Sarpi himself had first learned the fact from Harvey’s lips.
The Italians have the same right in this case, as they have to their
boast of having produced what old Ritson used to style, “that thing
you choose to call a poem, ‘Paradise Lost.’” It was an invention or
discovery at second-hand.

What conceits Cowley has in his verses on Harvey! He makes the
philosophical Doctor pursue coy Nature through sap, and catch her at
last in the human blood. He speaks, too, of the heart beating tuneful
marches to its vital heat; a conceit which Longfellow twisted into
prettiness, when he said, that our “muffled hearts were beating funeral
marches to the grave.” You will remember, Sir, that Shakspeare makes
Brutus say, that Portia was to him “dear as the drops that visit this
sad heart.” Brutus himself would, perhaps, have said “liver;” and, by
the way, how very much to the same tune is the line in Gray’s “Bard,”
wherein we find,--

  “Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes.”

But there is in tuneful Edmund, in our ever-glorious friend Spenser,
a stanza which contains something that may pass for the circulation
theory. You remember, in the first canto of the Second Book, where the
bleeding lady is found by the good Sir Guyon:--

  “Out of her goréd wound the cruel steel
    He lightly snatch’d, and did the flood-gates stop
  With his faire garment; then ’gan softly feel
    Her feeble pulse, to prove if any drop
    Of living blood yet in her veynes did hop;
  Which when he felt to move, he hopéd faire
    To call back life to her forsaken shop.
  So well he did her deadly wounds repaire,
  That at the last shee ’gan to breathe out living aire.”

And now, Sir, I shall be happy to take a glass of wine with you,
obsolete as that once honoured custom has become. And allow me to send
you a slice of this venison. A little more of the fat? Certainly;
but, if you _will_ take currant jelly with it, the sin be upon your
own head. It has always been the approved plan, you say. Ah, my dear
Sir! think what the approved plan was, for years, in the treatment of
small-pox. That was not a gastronomic matter, you say? I am not so
sure of that; for the patient, swathed in scarlet cloth, had to drink
mulled port wine. But, on a question of diet, time and numbers, you
think, may be taken for authority. Alas, my dear Sir! did you ever
try the once popular receipt of Apicius for a thick sauce to roasted
chicken? Never! of course you have not; for, in such case, your young
widow would already have touched that pretty life-assurance we wot
of. English tastes, you urge? Ah! in that case, if old rule be good
rule, you must camp in Kensington Gardens, and eat acorns. In Germany,
where venison is a national dish, the idea of currant jelly would ruin
the digestion of a whole company. But I see you are incorrigible, and
William is at your elbow with the doubtful sauce.

Galen could not appreciate venison as the early Patriarchs and the
Jewish people did, and as the Roman ladies did, who ate of it as a
preserver of youth, as well as a lengthener of life. A roebuck of
Melos would have brought tears of delight into the eyes of Diogenes.
The deer was preferred to the roebuck at Rome; but the wild boar was
also a favourite; and the Sicilian slave, _chef_ to Servilius Rullus,
cooked not less than three of different sizes in one. The largest had
baskets of dates suspended to its tusks, and a litter of young ones in
pastry lying in the same dish. Within the first was a second, within
the second a third, and within the third some small birds. Cicero, who
was _the_ guest for whom the dinner was got up, was as delighted with
the culinary slave, as Lucullus had been a few days before, when he
had eaten a dish of sows’ paps prepared by the same artist; and the
enraptured gastronome thought that all Olympus was dissolving in his
mouth!

A wild boar was at marriage feasts what our wedding cakes are at those
dreadful destroyers of time and digestion,--wedding breakfasts,--an
indispensable accompaniment. Caranus, the Macedonian, has the
reputation of having exceeded all others in his nuptial magnificence;
for, instead of one boar at his banquet, he had twenty. But I have seen
more than that at many a breakfast in Britain.

The ancient Britons abstained from the hare, like the Jews. Hippocrates
held that, as a food, it thickened the blood, and kept people from
sleep; but Galen--and such instances among the faculty are not
uncommon--differed from his professional brother. People followed the
advice of Galen; and though few, like Alexander Severus, could eat a
whole hare at every repast, yet many ate as plentifully as they well
could, accounting such diet profitable both to health and good looks.

Hares were nearly as injuriously abundant in Greece as rabbits were
in Spain, where the latter animals are said to have once destroyed
Tarragona, by undermining it in burrowing! Nay, more: the Balearic
Isles were so overrun with them, that the inhabitants, afraid of being
devoured, sent an embassy to Rome; and Augustus dispatched a military
force, which not only slaughtered the enemy, but ate the half of them!
The more refined gluttons of Rome did not dine on the rabbit after this
fashion. They only picked a little of the young taken alive from the
slaughtered mother, or killed soon after birth. They were preferable to
the rabbits of the Parisian _gargottes_, where _fricassée de lapins_
is invariably made of cats. And these, perhaps, are as dainty eating
as the hunch of the camel, or the feet of the elephant,--pettitoes for
Brobdignagian lovers to sup upon.

But we _almost_ as villanously disguise our poultry. The latter, if not
_now_, used--according to Darwin--to be fed for the London market, by
mixing gin, and even opium, with their food, and keeping them in the
dark; but “they must be killed as soon as they are fattened, or they
become weak and emaciated, like human drunkards.”

Game was almost as sacred to the Egyptian Priests, as eggs to the
sacerdotal gentlemen of some of the modern tribes of Africa. Under the
head of “game,” we no longer admit the birds which, according to Belon,
figured at the gastronomic tables of France in the sixteenth century.
These were the crane, the crow, and the cormorant, the heron, the swan,
the stork, and the bittern. The last-named bird was in high estimation,
although the taste for it was confessedly an “acquired” one. The larger
birds of prey were not then altogether despised by epicures, some of
whom could sit down with an appetite to roast vulture, while they
turned with loathing from the plump pheasant.

This eastern bird, however, has, with this exception, enjoyed a
deserved reputation from the earliest ages. The Egyptian Kings kept
large numbers of them to grace their aviaries and their triumphs.
The Greeks reared them for the less sentimental gratification of the
stomach; and a simple Athenian republican, when giving a banquet,
prided himself on having on his board as many pheasants as there were
guests invited.

Pheasants’ brains were among the ingredients of the dish that Vitellius
invented, and which he designated by the name of “Shield of Minerva.”
They were greedily eaten by many other of the Cæsars; and an offering
of them to the statue of Caligula was deemed to be propitiatory of
that very equivocal deity. The Emperors generally esteemed them above
partridges, which were trained for fighting, as well as fattened for
eating. Roman epicures fixed on the breast as the most “eatable”
portion of the gallant bird. The Greeks thought of it as we do of the
woodcock; and with them the leg of the partridge was the part the most
highly esteemed. At a Greek table would not have occurred the smart
dialogue which is said to have taken place at an English dinner. “Shall
I send you a leg or a wing?” said a carver to a guest he was about to
help. “It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” was the reply;
and it is _not_ a courteous one. “It is a matter of equal indifference
to me,” said the first speaker, at the same time resuming his own knife
and fork, and going on with his dinner.

Quails are variously said either to have recalled Hercules to life, or
to have cured him of epilepsy. The Romans, however, rather feared them,
as tending to cause epileptic fits. Galen thought so; Aristotle took a
different view, and the Greeks devoured them as readily as though they
had Aristotle’s especial authorization; and the Romans were only slowly
converted to the same way of thinking. Quails, like partridges and the
game-cock, were long reared for the arena; and legislators thought that
youth might learn courage from contemplating the contests of quails!

The thrush was perhaps the most popular bird at delicate tables in
Greece. They were kept from the young, lest the taste should give
birth to permanent greediness; but when a girl married, she was sure
of a brace of thrushes, for her especial eating at the wedding-feast.
They were still more popular in Rome, where patrician ladies reared
thousands yearly for the market, and made a further profit by selling
the manure for the land. The thrush aviary of Varro’s aunt was one of
the sights of Rome, where men ruined themselves in procuring dishes
composed of these birds for their guests. Greatly, however, as they
abounded, there was occasionally a scarcity of them; for when the
physician of Pompey prescribed a thrush, by way of exciting the wayward
stomach of the wayward soldier to enjoyment, there was not one to be
found for sale in all Rome. Lucullus, indeed, had scores of them; but
Pompey, like many other obstinate people, chose rather to suffer than
put himself under an obligation; and he contrived to get well on other
diet.

The diet was, nevertheless, held to be exceedingly strengthening; and
blackbirds, also, were prescribed as fitting food for weak digestions.
It was perhaps for this reason that the celebrated

  “Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,”

were the dainty dish set before the legendary and, presumedly,
dyspeptic King! In later times, we have had as foolish ideas connected
with them. The oil in which they were cooked was said to be good
for sciatica, or hip-gout; and Vieillot says that freckles might be
instantaneously removed from the skin, if----but ladies would never try
what Vieillot recommends.

The blackbird was not imperially patronized. The stomachs of the
gastronomic Cæsars gave more greedy welcome to the flamingo. Caligula,
Vitellius, and Heliogabalus ruined their digestions by _ragoûts_ of
this bird, the tongues of which were converted into a stimulating
sauce. Dampier ate the bird, when he could get nothing else; and
thought the Cæsars fools for doing so when they could get any thing
beside. The ancients, whether Greeks or Romans, showed more taste
in eating beccaficoes,--that delicate little bird, all tender and
succulent, the essence of the juice of the fruits (especially the
fig) on which it feeds. The only thing to be compared with it is the
ortolan. Had Heliogabalus confined himself to these more savoury birds,
instead of acquiring indigestion on ostrich brains and flamingoes,
his name would have held a more respectable place in the annals of
gastronomy. But master and people were alike barbarous in many of
their tastes. Who now would think of killing turtle-doves for the
sake of eating their legs “devilled?” And yet _we_ eat the lark, that
herald of the skies, and earliest chorister of the morn. We eat this
ethereal bird with as little compunction as we do the savoury, yet
unclean, of the earth, earthy, duck. And this thought reminds me of a
story, for which I am indebted to a friend, himself the most amiable
of Amphitryons, the good things at whose table have ever wit, wisdom,
mirth, and good-fellowship attendant, as aids to digestion.[1]


A LIGHT DINNER FOR TWO.

Many years ago, when railways were things undreamt of, and when the
journeys from Oxford to the metropolis were inevitably performed on
that goodly and pleasant high road which is now dreary and forlorn, a
gentleman and his son, the latter newly flushed with College fame and
University honours, rode forth over Magdalen Bridge and the Cherwell,
purposing to reach London in a leisurely ride. A groom, their only
attendant, carrying their scanty baggage with him on a good stout cob,
had been sent on in advance to order dinner at a well-known road-side
hostelry, where Oxford nags baited, and where their more adventurous
riders frequently caroused, out of reach of any supervision by
Principals or Pro-Proctors.

Pleasant is the spot, well approved by past generations of Freshmen,
picturesque and charming to an eye content with rich fields, luxuriant
meadows, and pretty streams, tributaries of the now adolescent Thames,
whose waters had not at that date been polluted by barge or lighter at
that point of its course. The neighbourhood is famous for its plump
larks; and whether in a savoury pudding, swimming with beefsteak gravy,
or roasted, a round half-dozen together, on an iron skewer or a tiny
spit, those little warblers furnished forth a pretty adjunct on a
well-spread table, tempting to an appetite somewhat appeased by heavier
and more substantial viands. Mine host at our road-side quarters had a
cook who dressed them to a nicety; contriving to produce or develope a
succulency and flavour which meaner practitioners would scarcely have
deemed practicable. Now Martin, pursuant to his master’s instructions
for securing a repast of ducks and the dainty lark, finding the
landlord brought out from his shady porch by the clatter of the horse’s
hoofs on the well-beaten road, announced the approaching arrival, and
ordered dinner. “My master wishes to find a couple of larks, and a
dozen of ducks, well roasted, on his arrival at four o’clock.” “Did
I understand you rightly, young man?” said Boniface. “O!” said the
varlet, pettishly, “in Oxford no landlord needs twice telling;”--and
betook himself to the stables, looking forward to the enjoyment of a
tankard of good house-brewed ale,--no brewer’s iniquitous mixture,--and
the opportunity of shining with some lustre in the tap, or the kitchen,
before country bumpkins, eager to listen to a man like himself, who
had seen racing at Newmarket and Doncaster, and high life at Bath and
Cheltenham. Meantime, his masters came leisurely along the road, nor
thought of applying a spur, until the craving bowels of the younger
horseman, whose digestive organs were unimpaired by College theses and
examinations, suggested a lack of provender; and, their watches, when
consulted, indicating the near approach of the dinner hour, they broke
off their chat, and soon drew rein at their place of temporary sojourn.

Finding the cloth laid, and the busy waiter’s preparations nearly
complete, they glanced with satisfaction at a table of somewhat
unnecessary dimensions, considering the limited extent of the party,
which our young Hellenist would have described as a “duality.” Just as
our travellers were growing impatient, the landlord, having previously
satisfied himself, by obsequious inquiry, that his guests were quite
ready, re-entered, bearing a dish with bright cover, and heading as
good a procession of domestics, each similarly laden, as the limited
resources of his modest establishment admitted. The large number
of dishes rather surprised the elder of the twain, whose mind was
less absorbed by the suggestions of appetite; and, having dispatched
the sole attendant left for a bottle of the best Madeira the cellar
could supply, and a jug of that malt liquor for which the house had
obtained some notoriety, he proceeded to look under the formidable
range of covers. Seeing under the first a couple of ducks, he said,
“Come, this is all right!” but finding the next, and the next, and
still the next, but a repetition of the same, either with or without
the odour of seasoning, he fairly stood aghast, when six couple of
goodly ducks stood revealed before him. The young collegian’s mirth
was great, his laugh hearty, at the climax of two pretty little chubby
larks which closed the line of dishes. Apple sauce and gravy, broccoli
and potatoes, stood sentries, flanking the array. Upon his ringing
the bell with no gentle hand, the landlord himself stepped in from
the passage, where he appeared to have awaited a summons; and, in
answer to a question the reader may easily anticipate, replied that
the servant’s order was precise, and that it was impatiently repeated
upon his own hesitation in accepting it. The respectability of the
landlord, and the evident truthfulness of his manner, stayed all
further questions. But the elder gentleman said firmly, that he should
not pay for what had been so absurdly provided; alleging, that no two,
or even three, persons could be found who would do justice to such
provisions. The landlord, like Othello, “upon that hint spake;” for he
saw a faint chance of righting a somewhat difficult matter. “O, Sir,”
said he, “I think I could find a man hard by, who would not consider
the supplies too much for his own appetite.” “Produce him,” said the
guest, “and settle the point; for, if you do, I will pay for the
whole.” The anxious landlord said no more; but, bowing, left in search
of a neighbouring cobbler, whose prowess with the knife and fork was
pre-eminent in the vicinity. Meantime, our hungry travellers sat down
to dinner with such good will, that each of them disposed of one of
the regiment; and, in a joint attack, a third fell mutilated, leaving
but fragmentary relics. A lark a-piece was a mere practical joke; and
cheese, with celery, left nothing farther wanting to appease those
cravings which had prompted them to action. While these little matters
were in progress, the landlord had found the shoemaker, and told his
story. “Well,” said Lapstone, “this is plaguy unlucky, for I’ve just
had a gallon of broth! Such a famous chance, too; for if there is any
thing I am particularly fond of, certainly ducks is a weak point, Sir.”
Boniface, thinking it his only chance, urged him to try; and the man
of bristles, nothing loth, consented. On being duly introduced, orders
were given for setting-to on the spot, to insure fair play, and defeat
any supplementary aid, or a deposit in any other pocket, save that with
which the savage in a nude state finds himself provided,--the stomach.
While the travellers sipped their wine, and trifled with their dessert,
the voracious cobbler fell heartily to work on the row of eight ducks
before him: one having been sent down for the undeserving groom, whose
blunder had proved a godsend to the man of leather. Wisely eschewing
vegetables, and eating scantily of bread, the _disjecta membra_ of the
doomed ducks rapidly yielded up their savoury integuments. But flesh
is weak, and cobblers’ appetites are not wholly unappeasable; so that
while the fifth victim was under discussion, a stimulant, in the shape
of “a little brandy,” was requested; and when the sixth was but slowly
and more slowly disappearing, poor Lapstone, who began to think farther
progress impossible, was seen whispering to the landlord. The gentleman
loudly demanded what the fellow was saying. “Sir,” said the landlord,
promptly and cunningly, “he says, he wishes there were half-a-dozen
more; for he is just beginning to enjoy them.” “Confound the rascal’s
gluttony,” cried the travellers; “not a bit more shall he have. Put
the remaining couple by for our supper; for we shall not leave your
house till to-morrow:”--an arrangement affording much relief to the
shoemaker, and entire satisfaction to the innkeeper.

       *       *       *       *       *

To return to the lark. It is worthy of notice, that London is annually
supplied, from the country about Dunstable alone, with not less
than four thousand dozen of these succulent songsters. At Leipsic,
the excise on larks, for that single city, amounts to nearly £1,000
sterling yearly. The larks of Dunstable and Leipsic are, I presume,
“caught napping.” They are not, then, like the nightingale, who is said
to sing all night, to keep herself awake, lest the slow-worm should
devour her.

And this reminds me of a remark which I once heard made by one who
disputed the fact, that every thing had its use. Mr. Jerdan could
not conjecture what use there could be in the _cimex_, that domestic
“B flat,” which may be found in old beds and old parchments. So
my friend could not divine the utility of a slow-worm, or of that
unclean parasite, the “louse,” which, by the way, infects birds as
well as dirty humanity, and even reaches these same aspiring larks.
For the use of the slow-worm I referred him to natural history; for
that of the _pediculus_, I could only state that it is swallowed by
some country-people as a cure for jaundice! At Hardenberg, in Sweden,
it held a position of some importance. When a Burgomaster had to be
chosen, the eligible candidates sat with their beards upon the table,
in the centre of which was placed a louse; and the one in whose beard
he took cover was the Magistrate for the ensuing year. After the
ceremony, the company supped upon ducks, and sang like larks.

The household of Job was of a hospitable cast. “His sons went and
feasted in their houses, every one on his day;” (which is explained as
being the _birth_-day;) “and sent and called for their three sisters
to eat and drink with them.” We know what materials the joyous family
had to make a superb feast; and doubtless he who presided thereat was
as proud as the Knight who, by virtue of triumphing in the tournament,
alone had the right to carve the peacock which was placed before
him--plumage, tail, and all--by the fairest “she” to be found in the
vicinity. After all, the peacock was inferior to the succulent and
sweet-throated thrush. The proper time for eating thrushes, and,
indeed, much other of the small game of the bird species, is towards
the end of November. The reason assigned by a French epicure is,
that, after they have been fattened in the fields and vineyards,
they then give a biting, bitter aroma to their flesh by feeding on
juniper-berries. The Romans fed them on a paste made up of figs, wheat,
and aromatic grains. The Roman epicures were as fond of them as the
Marquis de Cussy was of red partridges, one of which he ate on the
day of his death, and after a six months’ illness. It was his last
act; and, in gastronomic annals, it is recorded, as Nelson’s calling
for sealing-wax amid the thunders of Copenhagen, or his writing to
Horatia before he went to meet death at Trafalgar, is noticed by the
biographers of our naval heroes. Statistics, which are as pleasantly
void of truth as poetry, generally speaking, set down the enormous
total of nearly fifty-two millions of francs as the sum expended
yearly in France for fowls of all species. Taking the amount of
population into consideration, this would prove that France is a more
fowl-consuming nation than any other on the face of the globe.

In a dietetic point of view, it would be well for weak stomachs to
remember, that wild birds are more nutritious than their domesticated
cousins, and more digestible. But the white breast or wing of a chicken
is less heating than the flesh of winged game. Other game--such as
venison, which is dark-coloured, and contains a large proportion of
fibrine--produces highly stimulating chyle; and, consequently, the
digestion is an easy and rapid affair for the stomach. But, though
the whiter meats be detained longer in the stomach, furnish less
stimulating chyle, and be suffered to run into acetous fermentation,
their lesser stimulating quality may recommend them when the general
system is not in want of a spur. Meats are wholesome, or otherwise,
less with reference to themselves than to the consumer. “To assert
a thing to be wholesome,” says Van Swieten, “without a knowledge of
the condition of the person for whom it is intended, is like a sailor
pronouncing the wind to be fair, without knowing to what port the
vessel is bound.”

Cardinal Fesch would have made an exception in the case of
“blackbirds.” His dinners at Lyons were reverenced for the excellence
and variety of these dishes. The birds were sent to him weekly from
Corsica; and they were said to incense half the archiepiscopal city.
They were served with great form; and none who ate thereof ever forgot
the flavour which melted along his palate. The Cardinal used to say
that it was like swallowing paradise, and that the smell alone of his
blackbirds was enough to revivify half the defunct in his diocese.

Quite as rich a dish may be found in the pheasant which has been
suspended by the tail, and which detaches himself from his caudine
appendage, by way of intimation that he is ready. It is thus, we are
told, that a pheasant hung up on Shrove Tuesday is susceptible of being
spitted on Easter-day! It is popularly said in France of the pheasant,
that it only lacks something to be equal to the turkey! A wise saying,
indeed! but, the truth is, the two cannot be compared. Our own popular
adage regarding the partridge and woodcock has far better grounds for
what they assert:--

  “If the partridge had but the woodcock’s thigh,
  ’Twould be the best bird that ever did fly.
  If the woodcock had but the partridge’s breast,
  ’Twould be the best bird that ever was dress’d.”

The partridge is much on the ground, the woodcock ever on the wing; and
these parts, and the immediate vicinity of them, acquire a muscular
toughness, not admired by epicures.

The vegetarians may boast of a descent as ancient as that claimed
by the Freemasons. In ancient days, if, indeed, flesh-meat was not
denounced, unmeasured honour was paid to vegetables. Monarchs exchanged
them as gifts, wise men and warriors supped on them after study
and battle, Chiefs of the noblest descent prepared them with their
own hands for their own tables, agricultural chymists tended their
planting, and pious populations raised some of them to the rank of gods.

The Licinian Law enacted their use, while it restricted the consumption
of meat; and the greatest families in Rome derived their names from
them. Fabius was but General _Bean_, Cicero was Vice-Chancellor _Pea_,
and the house of Lentulus took its appellation from the slow-growing
_Lentil_.

The kitchen-garden of Henry VIII. was worse supplied than that of
Charlemagne, who not only raised vegetables, but, as Gustavus Vasa’s
Queen did with her eggs and milk, made money by them. He was a royal
market-gardener, and found more profit in his salads than he did in
his sons. A salad, by the way, was so scarce an article during the
early part of the last century, that George I. was obliged to send to
Holland to procure a lettuce for his Queen; and now lettuces are flung
by cart-loads to the pigs. Asparagus and artichokes were strangers to
us until a still later period.

The bean has, from remote times, held a distinguished place. Isidorus
asserts that it was the first food used by man. Pythagoras held that
human life was in it. By others the black spot was accounted typical
of death; and the _Flamen_ of Jupiter would neither look upon it nor
pronounce its name. The Priests of Apollo, on the other hand, banqueted
on a dish of beans at one of the festivals of their god. Those of
Æsculapius taught that the smell of beans in blossom was prejudicial
to health; and farmers’ wives, in the days of Baucis and Philemon,
maintained that hens reared on beans would never lay eggs.

The “bean” was once the principal feature in the Twelfth-Night cake;
and he to whose share fell the piece containing the vegetable was
King for the night. The last Twelfth Night observed, with ancient
strictness, at the Tuileries, was when Louis XVIII. was yet reigning.
Among his guests was Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who was lucky
enough to draw the bean, and thereby became Monarch for the nonce. “My
cousin,” said Louis XVIII., “is King at last!” “I will never accept
such title,” answered the over-modest Duke; “I acknowledge no other
King in France but your Majesty, and will not usurp the name even in
jest!” Excellent man! he was at that very moment intriguing to tumble
from his throne that very King, loyalty for whom he expressed with so
much of unnecessary and enforced ceremony.

The _haricot blanc_, or white kidney bean, deserves to be introduced
more generally into our kitchens. There are various methods of
dressing them; but the best is to have them softened in the gravy of
a leg of mutton; they are then a good substitute for potatoes. They
are nearly as good, dressed with oil or butter; and Napoleon was
exceedingly fond of them, dressed as a salad. Of course, we allude here
to the bean which, in full maturity, is taken from the pod, and eaten
in winter. In England we eat the pod itself, (in summer,) split, and
served with roast mutton and venison. The mature bean, however, makes
an excellent dish.

And, _à-propos_ to Monarchs, it is to Alexander that we are indebted
for the Indian “haricot;” and the vegetable had a fashion in Greece
and Rome worthy of its distinguished introducer. But this fashion was
not a mere consequence; for grey peas were as universally eaten. The
people were so fond of these, that political aspirants bought votes of
electors in exchange for them. They formed the principal refreshment of
the lower citizens at the circus and the theatre, where, instead of the
modern cry of “Oranges, biscuits, porter, and bill of the play!” was to
be heard that of “Peas! peas! ram peas! grey peas! and a programme of
the beasts and actors!”

Green peas were not known in France until the middle of the sixteenth
century. They were grown, but people no more thought of eating them
than we do the sweet pea. The gardener Michaux was born, and he it was
who first sent green peas to a Christian table.

When Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, wished to keep all the beans that grew
in the Thesprotian Marsh for his own eating, the gods dried up the
marsh, and beans could never be made to grow there again. So, when King
Antigonus put a tax on the healing spring that flowed at Edessa, the
waters disappeared; and the people were not, in either case, benefited.
What lumbering avengers were those heathen deities!

The cabbage has had a singular destiny,--in one country an object of
worship; in another, of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god; and
it was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and
Romans took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation.
Cato said that in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man.
Erasistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis; Hippocrates
accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic; and
Athenian medical men prescribed it to young nursing-mothers, who wished
to see lusty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to
the cabbage, both as food and as medicine,--in the latter case, as a
vermifuge. The same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, but
as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing the sore-throat
at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to see it, has
derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original “grass” was from
twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have been
served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus
were raised of three pounds’ weight,--heavy enough to knock down a
slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions,
or would have eat them, but that the publishing doctors of their day
denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also
said, that a slice or two of boiled pumpkin would re-invigorate the
sight which had been deteriorated by asparagus. “Do that as quickly as
you should asparagus!” is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and
illustrative of the mode in which the vegetable was prepared for the
table.

The gourd does not figure at our repasts as commonly as it did in
the east of Europe in mythological times, when it was greedily
eaten, boiled hot, or preserved in pickle. The readers of Athenæus
will remember, how a party of philosophers lost their temper, in a
discussion as to whether the gourd was round, square, or oblong,--how a
coarse-minded doctor interrupted the discussion by a very incongruous
remark,--and how the venerable sage who was in the chair called the
rude man to order, and then bade the disputants proceed with their
argument.

A still more favourite dish, at Athens, was turnips, from Thebes.
Carrots, too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables.
Purslain was rather honoured as a cure against poisons, whether in
the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it
asserted in France, that if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which
have been previously rubbed with purslain, or parsley, the glass will
certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but only to find that the
glass resisted the pretended charm.

Broccoli was the favourite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily
thereof; and, as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the
master of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly
quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between
them. Artichokes grew less rapidly into aristocratic favour; the
_dictum_ of Galen was against them; and, for a long time, they were
only used by drinkers, against headache, and by singers, to strengthen
their voice. Pliny pronounced artichokes excellent food for poor people
and donkeys! For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber,--the
Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue touching the merits of
the cucumber. Not so, regarding the lettuce, which has been universally
honoured. It was the most highly esteemed dish of the beautiful
Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it cured
Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of
Belgium,--_hypochondriasis_. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce,
and philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who
not only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them
with wine, in order to increase their flavour.

But we must not place too much trust in the stories either of sages or
apothecaries. These Pagans recommended the seductive, but indigestible,
endive, as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as
admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a
prescription for rustic swains and nymphs,--the higher classes, in
town or country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of
Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this
reason, perhaps, was the leek accounted, not only as salubrious, but
as a beautifier. The love for melons was derived, in similar fashion,
probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even more than he did
for broccoli. The German Cæsars inherited the taste of their Roman
predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them,
as may be seen in another page, submitted to die after eating melons,
rather than live by renouncing them.

I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could
vie with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the
hollow of one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred
pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes as these that were
employed by seditious mobs of old, as weapons, in insurrections. In
such case, a rebellious people were always well victualled, and had
peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but to eat
their own arms. The horse-radish is, probably, a descendant of this
gigantic ancestor. It had, at one period, a gigantic reputation. Dipped
in poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and, rubbed on the hands,
it made an encounter with venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was
celebrated as being a cure for every evil in life,--the only exception
being, that it destroyed the teeth. There was far more difference
of opinion touching garlic, than there was touching the radish. The
Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the Greeks
devoted it to Gehenna,--and to soldiers, sailors, and cocks that were
not “game.” Medicinally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if
the root used were originally sown when the moon was below the horizon.
No one who had eaten of it, however, could presume to enter the Temple
of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess; and
a Knight of Castile, “detected as being guilty of garlic,” suffered
banishment from the royal presence during an entire month.

Parsley has fared better, both with gods and men. Hercules and Anacreon
crowned themselves with it. It was worn both at joyous banquets and
funeral feasts; and not only horses, but those who bestrode them, ate
of the herb, in order to find the excitement to daring which otherwise
lacked. In contrast with parsley stood the water-cress, a plant
honoured and eaten only by the Persians. It was, indeed, medically
esteemed as curative of consumption, and, by placing it in the ears,
of toothache. But the wits and Plutarch denounced its use in any case;
and few cared to affect love for a plant which was popularly declared
to have the power of twisting the noses of those who put it into their
mouths!

Parsley was as popular in what may be called “classical” times, as the
asparagus has invariably been with a particular class in France. This
vegetable has ever been, I know not wherefore, a favourite vegetable
with the officials of the Gallican Church. One day, Monseigneur
Courtois de Quincy, Bishop of Belley, was informed that an asparagus
head had just pierced the soil in His Eminence’s kitchen-garden, and
that it was worth looking at. Cardinal and _convives_ rose from table,
visited the spot, and were lost in admiration at what they saw. Day by
day the Bishop watched the growth of the delicious giant. His mouth
watered as he looked at it, and happy was he when the day arrived in
which he might with his own hands take it from the ground. When he did
so, he found, to his disappointment, that he held a wooden counterfeit,
admirably turned and painted by the Canon Rosset, who was famous for
his artistic abilities, and also for his practical jokes. The joke on
this occasion was taken in good part, and the counterfeit asparagus was
admitted to the honour of lying on the Bishop’s table.

I have noticed, that asparagus has been suggested as one of the
substitutes for coffee. In this case, the seeds are taken from the
berries, by drying the latter in an oven, and rubbing them on a sieve.
When ground, the seeds make a full-flavoured coffee, not inferior, it
is said,--but that is doubtful,--to the best Mocha.

It was the opinion of Pliny, that nature intended asparagus to grow
wild, in order that all might eat thereof. That was esteemed the
best which grew naturally on the mountain-sides. The famous Ravenna
asparagus was cultivated with such perfection, that three of them
weighed a pound. Lobster surrounded with asparagus was a favourite
dish; and the rapidity with which the latter should be cooked, is
illustrated, as I have said, by a proverb: “_Velocius quam asparagi
coquuntur!_” There is a story told of an intrusive traveller forcing
his company at supper on another wayfarer, before whom were placed
an omelette and some asparagus. The intruder had not before seen any
“grass,” and inquired what it was. “O, it is very well in its way,”
said the other, “and we will divide both omelette and asparagus;” and
therewith, after carving the first, he cut the bunch in two, and gave
the white ends to the importunate visitor. The greatest indignation
ever experienced by Carême, was once at hearing that some guests had
eaten asparagus with one of his new _entremets_, and mixed it in their
mouths with iced champagne.

There is an opinion current in some parts of England, that they who eat
of old parsnips that have been long in the ground invariably go mad;
and on this account the root is called “mad-nip.” On some such “insane
root,” it is said, the Indians, named by Garcilasso, whetted their
appetites before they ate their dead parents. Such form of entombment
was accounted most dignified and dutiful. If the defunct was lean,
the children boiled their parent; but obesity was always honoured by
roasting. Fathers and mothers were religiously picked to the very
bones, and the bones themselves were then consigned to the earth. This,
however, is not an exclusively Indian custom. The Indians only devoured
their deceased parents; but I have seen, in Christian England, many a
son devouring father and mother, too, during their lives, swallowing
their very substance, and _then_, like the Indians, committing their
bones to the bosom of a tender mother,--earth.

Perhaps there is nothing, in the vegetable way, more insipid than
parsnips; but these are sometimes as mischievous as insipid persons.
This is the case, if the above-named tradition be worthy of credit,
wherein we are told, that _old_ parsnips are called “mad-nips,” and
that the maids who eat of them invariably become more like Salmacis
than the youth she wooed, and are as much given to dancing as though
they had been bitten by a tarantula. I fear the “mad-nip” is too much
eaten in many of our rural districts, and perhaps by the _acerba virgo_
of metropolitan towns and episcopal cities also. But let us look at our
ancient friend, the potato.

It has been well said, that the first art in boiling a potato, is to
prevent the boiling of the potato. “Upon the heat and flame of the
distemper sprinkle cool patience;” for without patience, care, and
attention,--extreme vigilance being implied by the latter, a potato
will never come out of the pot triumphantly well boiled.

The potato has been found in an indigenous state in Chili, on the
mountains near Valparaiso and Mendoza; also near Monte Video, Lima,
Quito, in Santa Fé da Bogota, and on the banks of the Orizaba, in
Mexico. Cobbett cursed the root as being that of the ruin of Ireland,
where it is said to have been first planted by Raleigh, on his estate
at Youghal, near Cork. Its introduction into England is described as
the effect of accident, in consequence of the wrecking of a vessel on
the coast of Lancashire, which had a quantity of this “fruit” on board.

The common potato (_solanum tuberosum_) was probably first brought
to Spain from Quito by the Spaniards, in the early part of the
sixteenth century. In both of those countries the _tubers_ are known
by the designation of _papas_. In passing from Spain into Italy,
it naturalized itself under the name of “the truffle.” In 1598, we
hear of its arrival at Vienna, and thence spreading over Europe.
It certainly was not known in North America in 1586, the period at
which Raleigh’s colonists in Virginia are said to have sent it to
England; and in the latter country it was not known until long after
its introduction, as noticed above, into Ireland. In Gerard’s Herbal
(1597) the _Batata Virginiana_, as it is called, to distinguish it
from the _Batata Edulis_, or “sweet potato,” is described; and the
author recommends the root, not for common food, but as “a delicate
dish.” The sweet potato was the “delicate dish” at English tables long
before the introduction of its honest cousin. We imported it from Spain
and the Canaries, and in very considerable quantities. It enjoyed
the reputation of possessing power to restore decayed vigour. This
reputation has not escaped Shakspeare, who makes Falstaff exultingly
remark, in a fit of pleasant excitement, that “it rains potatoes!” The
Royal Society of England, in 1663, urgently recommended the extensive
cultivation of the root as a resource against threatened famine; but as
late as the end of that century, a good hundred years after its first
introduction, the writers on gardening continued to treat its merits
with a contemptuous indifference; though one of them does “damn with
faint praise,” by remarking, that “they are much used in Ireland and
America as bread, and may be propagated with advantage to poor people.”
As late as 1719, the potato was not deemed worthy of being named in the
“Complete Gardener” of Loudon and Wise, and it was not till the middle
of the last century that it became generally used in Britain and North
America. The “conservatives of gulosity” of that day continued long to
disparagingly describe it as “a root found in the New World, consisting
of little knobs, held together by strings: if you boil it well, it
_can_ be eaten; it _may_ become an article of food; it will certainly
do for hogs; and though it is rather flatulent and acid in the human
stomach, perhaps, if you boil it with dates, it may serve to keep soul
and body together, among those who can find nothing better.”

Some sixty years since, the Dutch introduced the potato into Bengal.
The produce was sold in Calcutta at 5_s._ a pound. The English tried
to raise them, and all their plants grew like Jack’s bean-stalk, but
lacked its strength. The Hollanders continually cut the swiftly-growing
plant, and so compelled it to produce its fruit beneath the ground.
The secret was as well worth knowing as that other touching potatoes
during frost. The only precaution necessary is, to retain the potato
in a perfectly dark place, for some days after the thaw has commenced.
In America, where they are sometimes frozen as hard as stones, they
rot if thawed in open day; but if thawed in darkness, they do not
rot, and lose very little of their natural odour and properties. So,
at least, they assert, who profess to have means of best knowing. The
potato is said to have been first planted, in England, in the county
of Lancashire, which was once as famous for the plant as Lithuania
is for beet-root. It is not much more than a century since cabbages
reached us from Holland. They were first planted in Dorsetshire, by the
Ashleys; and I may add here what I have omitted in speaking of it in
earlier times, namely, that the Athenians administered the juice of it
in cases of slow parturition. Let me farther add, that such terms as
“cow-cabbage,” “horse-radish,” “bull-rush,” and the like, do not imply
any connexion between the article and the animal. The animal prefix is
simply to signify unusual size. The prefix was commonly so applied by
the ancients: hence the name of Alexander’s charger; and a not less
familiar illustration is afforded us in the case of the “horse-leech.”
Cabbage used to have said of it what Lemery, physician of Louis XIV.,
more truly said of spinach; namely, that “it stops coughing, allays
the sharp humours of the breast, and keeps the body open.” Spinach,
to be truly enjoyed, should never be eaten without liberal saturation
of gravy; and French epicures say, “Do not forget the nutmeg.” This
vegetable goes excellently with swine’s flesh in every shape, but
especially ham, the stimulating flavour of which it strongly modifies.

Rice, as an article of food, has something remarkable in it. Its
cultivation destroys life; and when the grain is eaten, its value as
a supporter of strength is very uncertain. The cultivation of this
production, where it does not destroy life, does destroy comfort, and
slaves may be compelled, but freemen will not go voluntarily, to raise
the “paddy crop.” In India, where the people of many districts depend
upon it entirely as a chief article of food, famine is often the
result, simply because the failure of one crop leaves the unenergetic
people without any other present resource.

And now, by way of a concluding word to those who read medicinally, I
would say, on the best authority, first, that of the haricot-bean I
have nothing to add to what I have already stated. With regard to peas,
they are, like many other things, most pleasant and wholesome when
young. Old, they are the fathers of gaseous colic; and, when swallowed
with the additional tenacity of texture derived from being made into
pudding,--why, then the unhappy consumer is a man to be pitied.
Potatoes are best baked, or roasted lightly. In the latter case, they
are scarcely less nutritious than bread; but the potato must be in
full health, and the cooking unexceptionable. There is many a cook
who could execute, to a charm, the _fricandeau_, invented by Leo X.,
who has not the remotest idea of cooking a potato. When the Flemings
sent us the carrot, in the reign of Elizabeth, it is a pity they could
not have deprived it of its fibrine texture, the drawback to be set
against its saccharine nutritiveness. As the Romans waxed strong upon
the turnip, we may allow that it has some virtues, and that Charles the
First’s Secretary, Lord Townshend, did good service by re-introducing
it to his countrymen. Like the Jerusalem artichoke, it requires a
strong accompaniment of salt and pepper, to counteract its watery and
flatulent influences. As for radishes, he who eats them is tormenting
his stomach with bad water, woody fibre, and acrid poison; and if his
stomach resents such treatment, why, it most emphatically “serves him
right.” As for cucumber, in the days of Evelyn, it was looked upon as
only one remove from poison, and it had better be eaten and enjoyed
with that opinion in memory. It is a pity that what is pleasant is
not always what is proper. Thus the cucumber is attractive, but not
nutritive; while the onion, at whose very name every man stands with
his hand to his mouth, like a Persian in the act of _ad-oration_,
is exceedingly nourishing and wholesome. But I can never think of
it, without remembering the story of the man who, having breakfasted
early on bread and onions, entered an inn on a bitterly cold morning,
with the remark, that for the last two hours he had had the wind in
his teeth. “Had you?” said the unfortunate person who happened to be
nearest to him: “then, by Jove, the wind had the worst of it!”

An onion is all very well as an ingredient in a sauce, but to make
a meal of it! Well! it is on record that a dinner _has_ been made,
at which nothing was served but sauces. A dinner of sauces must have
been quickly prepared; but, for quick preparation, I know nothing that
can vie with a feat accomplished, on the 18th of March of the present
year, at the Freemasons’ Tavern. The “Round-Catch-and-Canon Club” were
to dine there at half-past five P.M. An hour previously, the active
Secretary, Mr. Francis, Vicar-Choral of St. Paul’s, arrived, to see
that “all was right.” He found all wrong. Through some mistake, no
company was expected; and, there being no other dinners ordered for
that day, the weary proprietors, and their chief “aids,” were enjoying
a little relaxation. Not only were the high priestesses of the kitchen
“out,” but the sacred fires of the altars had followed their example.
Great was the horror of the able counter-tenor Secretary; but the
difficulty was triumphantly met by the accomplished officers of the
establishment; and, at six o’clock precisely, forty-two of us sat
down to so perfect a banquet, that the shade of Carême might have
contemplated it with a smile of unalloyed satisfaction. This house may
boast of this _tour de force_ for ever!




SAUCES.


The donor of the sauce dinner, mentioned in the last page, was an
eccentric old Major. He invited three persons to partake of this unique
repast. The soup consisted of gravy sauce, and oyster and lobster
sauce were handed round instead of _filet de sole_. Then came the
sirloin in guise of egg sauce, on the ground, I suppose, that an egg
is proverbially “full of meat.” There was no pheasant, but there was
bread sauce, to put his guests in mind of the flavour; and if they had
not plum-pudding, they had as much towards it as could be implied by
brandy sauce; just as Heyne says, that Munich is the modern Athens in
this far,--that if it has not the philosophers, it has the hemlock,
and has Alcibiades’ dog, as a preparation towards getting Alcibiades.
The sauce-boats were emptied by the guests. The wine was well-resorted
to after each boat, and a little brandy settled the viand that was
represented by the egg sauce. Half the guests, between excess of
lobster sauce and Cognac, were all the worse for the banquet; but that
proved rather the weakness of their stomachs, than the non-excellence
of the feast. It is said that the Major, when alone in the evening,
wound up with a rump-steak supper,--a process rather characteristic of
the “old soldier;” but I have heard, in a provincial town, of large
parties to “tea,” followed by a snug family party, when the guests were
all departed, to a hot supper, with the usual _et cæteras_. But let
_us_ get back from the supper to the matter of seasonings.

Seasonings may be said to form an important item in the practice and
results of cookery. The first, and most useful and natural, is salt.
The ancients did not allow, at one time, of its use in sacrifices; but
Homer called it “divine,” and Plutarch speaks of it as acceptable to
the gods. Its value was not known to men until the Phœnicians, Selech
and Misor,--so, at least, says an ancient legend,--taught mankind the
real worth of this production as a condiment, and thereby gave to
meat increased flavour, and to the eaters of it increased health and
improved digestions.

The Roman soldiers received their pay in _salarium_, or “salt-money.”
The Mexican rulers punished rebellious provinces by interdicting the
use of salt; and Holland, some years since, cruelly took vengeance
on the breakers of the law, by serving them with food, without salt,
during the term of their imprisonment. The poor wretches were almost
devoured by worms, in consequence of this inhuman proceeding.

Of course, the salt-money of the soldiery was, like the pin-money of
a married lady, employed in other ways than those warranted by its
appellation. For above three centuries, soldiers served _gratis_, and
supported themselves. Then came “salt-money,” or _salarium_, in the
shape of a couple of _oboli_ daily to the foot, and a _drachma_ to
the cavalry. This was to the common men. The Tribunes were, however,
exorbitantly paid, if Juvenal’s allusion may be trusted, wherein he
says that,--

  ----“_alter enim, quantum in legione Tribuni
  Accipiunt, donat Calvinæ vel Catienæ_;”

or, as it may be translated,--

  “Such sums as a full Colonel’s coffers swell,
  He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell!”

But this must have been in very late times, previous to which
frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay were ever the Tribune’s share
of the national virtues and their consequences, lauded by Livy. The
first Cæsar doubled the _salarium_ of the army, and decreed that
it should never be reduced. His successors followed the example of
increase. Augustus fixed the salt-money at ten _asses_ a day, and by
the time of Domitian it was considerably more than double that amount.
From that period, the soldiery fed better, and fought worse, than ever.
Up to the time of the Empire they had been frugal livers, and were not
above preparing the rations of corn allowed them with their own hands:
some ground it in hand-mills, others pounded it between stones, and the
hastily-baked cakes were eaten contentedly upon the turf, with nothing
better to wash them down than pure water, or, at best, _posca_, which
was water mixed with vinegar,--and a very wholesome beverage, too, in
hot weather.

The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early Olympian theology,
enforced the use of salt in all sacrificial ceremonies. That of the
Dead Sea was abundant; and Galen pronounced it as the most favourable
for seasoning, and for promoting digestion. The Greeks learned to call
it “divine,” and at last consecrated it to their gods. Spilling salt
was accounted as unlucky in the days when “young Time counted his
birthdays by the sun,” as in these modern times when the schoolmaster
is abroad,--sometimes too much abroad.

Ancus Martius was the first of the Roman Kings who levied a duty on
salt. He was not visited by the gods--as legends say other Kings were
who created such imposts--by some dire calamity. The bad example of
Ancus Martius has continued over nearly the whole of Europe; and a
slave cannot eat salt to his bread without paying tribute to the King.

The word “salt” was often used for life itself. When Dordalus says
to Toxilus, in the “_Persa_,” “_Eodem mihi pretio sal præhibetur quæ
tibi_,”--“I get my salt at the same price as you do,”--he simply
means that his manner of life is as good as that of Toxilus, and that
a slave-merchant is as respectable as the very best-fed of slaves
themselves. Catullus employs the word to denote beauty; other poets
use it to signify virtues of various kinds; and in Terence we find a
man without salt to mean a man without sense. Plutarch was not wrong
when he styled salt “the condiment of condiments.” I do not know that
it has ever been used to point a proverb with a contemptuous meaning,
except in Greece, where he who had nothing to dine upon was called
a “salt-licker.” Rome, where it was of such commercial importance,
honoured it more by giving to the road along which it was conveyed the
name of “the Salarian Way.”

There were people who never knew its use, as in Epeiros; some who have
steadily rejected it, as the Bathurst tribe in Australia. The Peruvians
delighted in it, and ate it mixed with hot pepper and bitter herbs, as
a sort of “sweetmeat.” How sacred it is in Arabia, we all know; and,
in illustration of it, I have heard of an Arab burglar accidentally
letting his tongue come in contact, as he was plundering a house by
night, with a piece of salt. He instantly deemed he had partaken of the
owner’s hospitality, and he departed without booty. Could Christian
thieves be so influenced, we should salt our plate-baskets and
cash-boxes nightly!

In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, and hardens in
water. At Utica, one of the great salt suppliers of the ancient world,
it lay about in such huge mounds, hardened by the sun and moon, that
the pickaxe would scarcely penetrate it. In Arabia whole cities were
once built of it, the blocks of salt being cemented by water. It is
still procured with most difficulty in Abyssinia, where the clouds are
supposed to deposit the crystal in sandy plains, of heat so furious,
that it is only during one or two hours of the night that the seekers
of it dare dash into the locality, and carry off, as hastily as
possible, what they seek. It is procured far more pleasantly in those
parts of Chili where it is found deposited on the leaves of plants.
Off the warmer coasts of South America, and the still hotter shores of
Africa, blocks weighing from one to two hundred weight have been picked
up. Some writers tell us that lakes are nothing more than salt plains
in solution; and others, that salt plains are merely lakes congealed.
However this may be, it is known that generally four gallons of water
produce one of salt; but there is great difference of result in various
localities, some water yielding a sixth, other only a sixteenth. The
deep sea-water is the most highly productive. There are various strange
ingredients, too, used in different places to make the salt “grain”
properly. White of egg, butter, ale, and even blood, are employed
to produce the desired result. In its fossil or mineral state it is
nowhere seen to such great advantage as in the mines of Williska, in
Poland. I have seen those near Salzburg, in southern Austria; but these
are mere salt-cellars, compared with the Polish mine, which forms a
large subterranean city, has its streets, citizens, and coteries, and
is an underground republic, many of the natives of which die without
seeing a blade of grass, or a gleam of sunlight, upon the bosom of the
upper earth.

Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the digestive organs;
but it should be remembered that too much of it is _almost_ as bad
as too little. The lowering of the price of salt, a consequence of
the abolition of the duty, was beneficial to the poor, and ruinous to
the worm-doctors. It is a singular production. In small quantities it
is a stimulating manure; in large quantities it begets sterility. A
little of it accelerates putrefaction, while a large quantity prevents
it. Farther, it is to be remembered,--and I have mentioned the fact
in another page,--that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever it
may once have been) the table salt, the use of which is so favourable
to digestion. In the meat it undergoes a chymical change, by which
it deteriorates itself as well as the object to which it is applied.
“Sweet salt” was the name once given to sugar; and in reference to this
latter production, it may be safely averred, that its introduction
worked a considerable change in society. And it appears to have been
early added to that “significant luxury,” wheat. In Isaiah xliii. 24
there is an allusion made to it in these words: “Thou hast bought me
no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of
sacrifices.” And again, in Jeremiah vi. 20: “To what purpose cometh
there to me incense from Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country?” It
would seem, however, that though the sweet cane may have been known,
its uses were not very speedily appreciated, or, if they were, that
they were for a long time forgotten. Thus, as late as the thirteenth
century of our era, a writer speaks of a novel sort of salt that has
been discovered, the flavour of which was sweet, and, as he suggests,
might be found acceptable to sick persons, because of its soothing and
cooling properties. “Honey out of the rock,” which was the sweetener
most early noticed in Scripture, fell into comparative disuse, after
sugar had become a necessary of life, after being first a medicine,
and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it from the Arabs, and
familiarized it in Europe. Its first settlement beyond the Continent
was in Madeira, and at length it found a congenial soil in the islands
of the Western Indies. God gave the gift, but man has discovered how
to abuse it to his own destruction; and, from the sweet food offered
by an angel, he has distilled the fire-water, which slays like the
pestilence. But to return, for a moment, from the sweets to the salts,
and especially to the latter in the form of brine.

The Romans were fond of brine,--water in which bay-salt had been
dissolved,--as a seasoning; and after dinner, those who could not guess
the riddles that were put to them, were punished, like the refractory
gentlemen at the Nightingale Club, by being compelled to swallow a
cupful, without drawing breath. Apicius invented a composition made up
of salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, celery, rocket, and anise-seed, with
lamoni, wild marjoram, holy thistle, spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as
a specific to be taken, after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They
who could digest the remedy need not have been afraid of the dinner.

That universal seasoning of the classical world, the _garum_, was
originally a shrimp sauce; but it was subsequently made of the
intestines of almost any fish, macerated in water, saturated with salt;
and when symptoms of putrefaction began to appear, a little parsley
and vinegar were added; and there was the famous _garum_, of which
the inventors were so proud,--and particularly of a _garum_ which was
prepared in Spain. Flesh instead of fish was occasionally used, with no
difference in the process of preparation; and it would be difficult to
say which was the nastier. But, perhaps, if we could see the witchery
of preparing any of our own flavouring sauces, we should be reluctant
ever to allow a drop of the polluted mixture to pass our lips. There
_is_ a bliss in ignorance.

Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of seasonings, when he
took to eating nothing but honey wherewith to flavour his bread.
Hybla sounds sweet, the very word smells sweet, from its association
with honey. Aristæus, who is said to have discovered its use, merited
the patent of nobility, whereby he was declared to have descended
from the gods; and the placing the honeycomb and its makers under the
protection of Mellona, expressly made by men for this purpose, was a
proof of the value in which they were held. Theophrastus placed sugar
among the honeys,--the honey of reeds,--or the “salt of India,” as some
strangely called it. The Greek physicians recommended its use, both as
food and as flavourer. It was at one time as scarce as cinnamon,--that
precious bark of which the phœnix made its nest, and which the Cæsars
monopolized. Cinnamon and cloves were not employed in seasoning until a
comparatively modern period. The good people of earlier days preferred
verjuice, in certain cases prescribed by Galen. They seemed to have a
taste for acids: hence the admiration, both in Greece and Rome, for
vinegar and pickles. Vinegar figured in the army statistics of Rome
especially; but it once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable
way in the statistics of the French army, in the time of Louis XIII.,
when the Duc de la Meilleraye, Grand Master of the Artillery of France,
put down £52,000 as the sum expended by him in cooling cannons. How hot
the war must have been, and at what a price the fever must have been
maintained, when the merely refrigerating process cost so much!

French epicures maintain that the pig was born to be “ringed,” and that
his mission was to rout at the foot of the yoke-elm trees, and turn up
truffles! Pliny gravely looked upon the truffle as a prodigy sown by
the thunderbolt in autumnal storms. However this may be, all lovers of
good things eat the truffle with a sort of devout ecstasy, in spite
of the wide differences of opinion which exist among the faculty of
guessers, as to whether the truffle be nutritious or poisonous, fit for
food, or monster sire of indigestion. The fact is, that they should be
delicately dealt with, like mushrooms; of which he who eats little is
wise, and he who eats not of them at all is safe from blaming them for
bringing on indigestion--as far as _he_ is concerned.

The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, described by
Archimagirus Soyer: “The truffle is a very remarkable vegetable,
which, without stems, roots, or fibres, grows of itself, isolated in
the bosom of the earth, absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form is
round, more or less regular; its surface is smooth, or tuberculous;
the colour, dark brown outside, brown, grey, or white within. Its
tissue is formed of articulated filaments, between which are spheric
vesicles, and in the interior are placed reproductive bodies, small
brown spheres, called ‘_truffinelles_.’ Truffles vegetate to the depth
of five or six inches in the high sandy soils of the south-west of
France, Piedmont, &c. Their mode of vegetation and reproduction is not
known. (?) Dogs are trained to find them, as well as pigs, and boars
also, who are very fond of them. They are eaten cooked under the ashes,
or in wine and water. They are preserved when prepared in oil, which is
soon impregnated with their odour. Poultry is stuffed with them; also
geese’s livers, pies, and cooked pork, besides numerous _ragoûts_. They
possess, as it is said, exciting virtues.” The latter, we suppose, is
a paraphrase for the sentiment of “Falstaff,” before cited, “It rains
potatoes!” Shell-fish had the same reputation in the olden time. “_Tene
marsupium_,” says Italius to Olympio, in the _Rudens_:--

  “_Abi atque obsonia propera; sed lepidè volo
  Molliculas escas, ut ipsa mollicula est._”

As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, it has been made
the vehicle of death. Agrippina poisoned Claudius in one, and Nero,
his successor, had a respect for this production ever after. Tiberius,
in Pagan, and Clement VII., in Papal, Rome, as well as Charles VI.
of France, are also said to have been “approximately” killed by
mushrooms. Seneca calls them “voluptuous poison,” and of this poison
his countrymen ate heartily, and suffered dreadfully. The mushroom was
not rendered harmless by the process of Nicander,--raising them under
the shadow of a well-irrigated and richly-manured fig-tree.

One of the most perfect illustrations of “sauce,” in its popular sense,
with which I am acquainted, is conveyed in the reply once given by a
French _Curé_ to his Bishop. It is a regulation made by canonical law,
that a Priest cannot keep a female servant to manage his household,
unless she be of the assigned age of, at least, forty years. It once
happened that a Bishop dined with a _Curé_, at whose house the Prelate
had arrived in the course of a visitation tour. On that occasion he
found that they were waited on at dinner by two quietly pretty female
attendants, of some twenty years each. When diocesan and subordinate
were once more alone, the former remarked on the uncanonical condition
of the household, and asked the _Curé_ if he were not aware that, by
rule of church, he could maintain but one _menagère_, who must have
attained, at least, forty years of age? “I am quite aware of it,
_Monseigneur_,” said the rubicund _Curé_; “but, as you see, I prefer
having my housekeeper in two volumes!”

With respect to the use of spices, it may be safely said, that the
less they are used, the better for the stomach. A _soupçon_ of them
in certain preparations is not to be objected to; but it must be
recollected that in most cases, however pleasant they may be to the
palate, the apparent vigour which they give to the stomach is at the
expense of the liver, and the reaction leaves the former in a worse
condition than it was in before.

The world probably never saw a second time such a trade in spices
as that which was carried on of old between Canaan and Egypt. The
Dutch and Amboyna was a huckstering matter compared with it. Egypt
sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen; and Canaan sent, in
return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, precious woods, and minerals. The
Ishmaelites were the carrying merchants; and, while each class of them
had its especial article of commerce, they all dabbled a little in
slave-dealing. Thus, the men of the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt
in spicery only,--a term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian demand
for the article was enormous. At the period of the sale of Joseph,
spicery was most extensively used, not only for the embalming of men,
but of sacred animals. In after times, this practice ceased to a great
extent, on account of a large failure in the supply.

There is something very characteristic of the “ancient nation” in
the transaction of the brethren with respect to Joseph. The general
proposal was to slay him; but it was Judah, first of his race, who,
with a strong eye to business, exclaimed, “What _profit_ to slay
our brother, and conceal his blood? Come, let us _sell him_ to the
Ishmaelites.” The opposition to fratricide, on the part of Judah,
was not on the principle that it was a crime, but that it brought
nothing. But, no sooner had he pointed out how they might get rid of
the troublesome brother, and put money in their purses to boot, than
the profligate kinsmen adopted the project with alacrity, preferring
lucrative felony to downright profitless murder.--Do I hear you remark,
Sir, that it has ever been thus with this rebellious Jewish people?
Well, let us not be rash in assertions. Judah was a very mercenary
fellow, no doubt; but it was better to sell a live brother into a
slavery which gave him the chance of sitting at the table of Pharaoh
Phiops, than to murder one for the mere sake of making money by the
sale of the body, as was done by a Christian gentleman of the name of
Burke.

There are some plants used in seasoning which have been esteemed for
other virtues besides lending a fillip to the appetite. Others of these
seasoning plants have acquired an evil reputation. Thus orach was said
to cause pallor and dropsy. Rocket had a double use: it not only was
said to remove freckles, but an infusion of it in wine rendered the
hide of a scourged convict insensible to the whip. Fennel was, unlike
asparagus, held to be good for the sight. Dill, on the other hand,
injured the eyes, while it strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in
great favour with the medical philosophers, who prescribed it to be
taken, fasting, in wine; and hyssop wine was a specific for cutaneous
eruptions, brought on by drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild
thyme cured the bite of serpents,--if the sufferer could only collect
it in time; and pennyroyal was sovereign for indigestion. Rue cured the
ear-ache, and nullified poisons; for which latter purpose it was much
used by Mithridates. Mint was gaily eaten, with many a joke, because
it was said to have been originally a pretty girl, metamorphosed by
Proserpine. The Romans, now and then, ate camomile at table, just as
old country ladies, when tea was first introduced, and sent to them as
a present, used to boil the leaves, and serve them, at dinner, like
spinach. Capers, in the olden time, were vulgar berries, and left for
democratic digestion. “I once saw growing in Italy,” said an Irish
traveller, fit to be “own correspondent” to one of the morning papers,
“the finest anchovies I ever beheld!” A listener naturally doubted the
alleged fact; and the offended Irishman not only called him out, but
shattered his knee-cap by a pistol-shot. As he was leaping about with
intensity of pain, the Irishman’s second remarked to his principal,
that he had made his adversary cut capers, at any rate. “Capers!”
exclaimed the Hibernian, “capers! ’faith, that’s it. Sure, Sir,”
he added, advancing to his antagonist, “you were right; it was not
anchovies, but capers, that I saw growing. I beg pardon: don’t think
any more about it.” Let us add, that, if the aristocratic ancients
deeply declined capers, they were exceedingly fond of assafœtida, as a
seasoning ingredient. Green ginger was also a popular condiment; and it
is commonly eaten in Madagascar at this day. I suppose that, in former
times, Hull imported this production in large quantities, and that
therefore one of her streets is called “the Land of Green Ginger.” The
Romans gave wormwood wine to the charioteers, perhaps considering that
the stomachic beverage would secure them from dizziness.

I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronized rue as a nullifier
of poisons. He was in the habit of swallowing poisons, as people in
the summer swallow ices; and he was famous for inventing antidotes, to
enable him to take them with impunity. One consequence is, that he has
gained a sort of immortality in our pharmacopœia; and “Mithridate,”
in pharmacy, is a compound medicine, in form of an electuary, serving
as either a remedy or a preservative against poisons, being also
accounted a cordial, opiate, sudorific, and alexipharmic. “Mithridate”
is, or rather, I suppose, was, one of the capital medicines in the
apothecaries’ shops. The preparation of it, according to the direction
of the College, is as follows; and I request my readers to peruse it
attentively, and to get it by heart, in case of necessity supervening.
Here is the facile recipe: “Take of cinnamon, fourteen drachms; of
myrrh, eleven drachms; agarick, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds of
treacle-mustard, frankincense, Chio turpentine, of each ten drachms;
camel’s hay, costus, Indian leaf, French lavender, long pepper, seeds
of hartwort, juice of the rape of cistus, strained storax, opopanax,
strained galbanum, balsam of Gilead, or, in its stead, expressed oil
of nutmegs, Russian castor, of each an ounce; poly-mountain, water
germander, the fruit of the balsam tree, seeds of the carrot of Crete,
bdellium strained, of each seven drachms; Celtic nard, gentian root,
leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, seed of Macedonian parsley, the
lesser Cardanum seeds freed from their husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum
Arabic, opium strained, of each five drachms; root of the sweet flag,
root of wild valerian, anise-seed, sagapenum strained, of each three
drachms; spignel, St. John’s wort, juice of acacia, the bellies of
scinks, of each two drachms and a half; of clarified honey, thrice the
weight of all the rest: dissolve the opium first in a little wine, and
then mix it with the honey made hot. In the mean time, melt together,
in another vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, and the balsam of
Gilead, or the expressed oil of nutmeg,” (I have no doubt that one will
do quite as well as the other; and this must be highly satisfactory for
sufferers to know,) “continually stirring them round, that they may
not burn; and, as soon as these are melted, add to them the hot honey,
first by spoonsful, and afterwards more freely. Lastly, when this
mixture is nearly cold, add by degrees the rest of the spices reduced
to powder,”----_and_, as the French quack used to say of his specific
for the toothache, if it does you no harm, it will certainly do you no
good. For my own part, I think the remedy worse than the disease; but a
gentleman just poisoned may be of another opinion; and I can only say,
that if, with prussic acid knocking at his pylorus, he has leisure to
wait till the above prescription is made up for him,--till the bellies
of scinks and the camel’s hay are procured, and till the ingredients
are amalgamated “by degrees,”--he will, _if_ he survive the poison, the
waiting, and the remedy, have deserved to be called, κατ’ ἐξοχὴν, the
“patient.” But here are the pastry and the fruits; and there ARE people
who are given to believe that pastry and poison are not very wide
asunder.

When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to labour, he cut down
their olive-trees. The Jews were forbidden to destroy fruit-trees, even
in an enemy’s country; and it used to be a law in France, and may be
so still, that when an individual had received permission to cut down
one of his trees, it was on condition of his planting two. The planters
of vineyards enjoyed many privileges under the Jewish dispensation,
and heathen governments placed both vineyards and orchards under the
protection of the most graceful of their deities, and these deities
were supposed to have an especial affection for particular trees. The
Romans were skilled in forcing their fruits, which were produced at the
third course, and not, as with the Greeks, at the second.

Minerva is popularly said to have given birth to the olive, which was
the emblem of Peace, the latter being naturally born of Wisdom. But
the poisoned shafts of Hercules were made of the olive, perhaps to
symbolize those armed neutralities which are generally so fatal to
powers with whom the neutrals affect to be at peace. The Autocrat of
Russia, for instance, has been dealing very largely in olive shafts,
tipped with death. But the olive was known to the world before Wisdom,
taking flesh, sprang in her bright panoply from the brain of her sire,
and was called Minerva. From Judea the olive was taken into Greece;
it was not planted within the territory of Rome until a later period;
and, finally, in Spain it found a soil as favourable to cultivation as
that of Decapolis, on holy ground. The Ancona olives were the most
highly esteemed by the Roman Patricians, at whose tables they opened
and closed the banquet. While the olives were greedily swallowed,
the expressed oil was distributed by way of largess to the people.
It was declared to possess, if not a vital principle, something
that stimulated and maintained vitality. Augustus, who was for ever
whiningly hoping that he might die easily, and for ever chanting the
prayer, “Euthanasia!” asked Pollio how he might best maintain his
health and strength in old age. “You have nothing in the world to
do,” said Pollio, “but to drink abundance of wine, and lubricate your
imperial carcase with plenty of oil!”--a prescription which does not
say much for the medical instruction of Pollio. Olive oil was so scarce
at one time, in Europe, that in 817 the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle
authorized the priests to manufacture anointing oil from bacon. With
regard to the fruit itself, it has not even yet undisputed possession
of the public approval; and I am very much of the opinion of the
farmer who, having taken some at his landlord’s table, expressed his
indignation on reaching home, that he had been served with gooseberries
stewed in----brine.

The palm-tree wine of the Hebrews inspired song, and thence, perhaps,
did the palm itself pass into the possession of the mythological Muses.
The palm-tree deserved to be a popular tree: its wood furnished man
with a house, its branches with fuel; its leaves afforded him garments,
and a bed; and from them he could manufacture baskets, wherein to
carry the fruit, bread, and cakes which he could make from its dates.
I am only astonished that tradition has not made the palm, rather than
the beech or the oak, the original tree which first fed, clothed, and
sheltered man.

The cherry, compared with the palm, is but as a rustic beauty,
compared with Cleopatra. Mithridates and Lucullus share the glory of
making men acquainted with its fruit. From Cerasus, in Asia, Lucullus,
no doubt, transplanted a cultivated fruit-tree, of a peculiarly fine
sort; but the fruit itself was not unknown to the Romans long anterior
to the time of Lucullus. It was slow in acquiring an esteem in Italy.
The most extraordinary species of cherry with which I am acquainted,
is the Australian cherry, which grows with the stone on the outside.
But Nature, in Australia, is distinguished for her freaks. There the
pears are made of wood, and salt-water fish abound in the fresh-water
rivers! The nastiest species I know of, grows in the vicinity of, and
some of them within, the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, at Paris. They are
magnificent to the eye, and are not ill-flavoured; but, at the heart of
each there is a maggot, as fat as one of Rubens’s Cupids, and, saving
a slight bitterness, with as much of the taste of the cherry in him as
a citizen of ripe Stilton has of the cheese of which he is so lively a
part. There is not a bad story told of an old and poor Spanish Grandee,
who used to put on spectacles when he sat down to his modest dinner of
bread and cherries, in order that the fruit might gain, apparently,
in magnitude. There was philosophy in this pleasant conceit! If the
poor nobleman had had a dish of our cherries, from Kent, Berks, or
Oxfordshire, he would not have stood in need of his merry delusion.

How grateful to the palate is the Armenian apricot, blushing, in its
precocity, like a young nymph; or the Persian peach, for a couple
of which the Romans would give a score of pounds! The peach has an
evil tradition with it. It is said to have been originally poisonous,
but to have lost its deadliness when it was transplanted. Perhaps
the peculiarly peachy odour of prussic acid may have contributed to
give currency to a very long-lived, but entirely foundationless,
tradition,--except, indeed, that poison may be extracted from the
kernel; but so may arsenic from a Turkey carpet, and, indeed, from
apple-pips also, as Sir Fitzroy Kelly told the jury, when endeavouring
to save from the gallows a man who had murdered his mistress, in
order that he might not put in peril his respectability! Perhaps the
plum-tree, whether of Africa or Asia, from Egypt or Damascus, has
been more fatal to health, if not to life, than any other of the
stone-fruits. When Pliny complained of their superabundant propagation
in Italy, he probably had in view the usual consequences of a very
plentiful plum season.

The apricot was not known in France till the eleventh century, and
then they were accounted dear at a farthing each. In the same century
cherries used to appear at the royal table in May. To effect this, lime
was laid at the roots of the tree, which was irrigated with warm water!
Louis XIII. was fond of early fruit, and he had strawberries in March,
and figs in June: this is more than the most expert fig-rearers in
Sussex ever accomplished! The fig used to be esteemed as only inferior
to that compound of luscious savours, the pine,--a fruit which, in the
seventeenth century, was religiously patronized by the Jesuits. The
same sort of sanction was given in the East to dates, though these were
fashionable in Rome, after a basket of them had been sent from Jericho
to Augustus. The Tunis dates are the best; but indulgence in them is
said to loosen the teeth, and produce scurvy. The Tunisian ladies,
however, were as fond of them as the French ladies were of sweet
citrons, before oranges were patronized by Louis XIV. The ladies used
to carry them about, and occasionally suck them, the operation being
considered excellent to produce ruby lips. The citron was hardly less
popular than the Reine Claude plum, which received its pretty name from
the Queen of Francis I., and daughter of Louis XII. I have noticed
the Sussex fig: the white fig of the Channel Islands is also highly
prized; and there is a tree at Hampton Court renowned for its fruit,
but they who eat had better not too curiously inquire as to where the
root of that productive tree penetrates, in order to accomplish its
productiveness. In Sicily, they acupuncture the tree, and drop into it
a little oil, and this is said to improve the flavour of the fruit.
To what I have previously said of the peach, I may add here what the
Chinese say of it; namely, that it produces eternity of life, and
prevents corruption until the end of the world. This species would be a
popular one in England.

Some writers assert that the apple was originally an African; but a
Negro with a red nose would be an anomaly; and the apple-tree does
not look as if it came from the country of the children of the sun.
Nevertheless, historians assert that it crossed the Mediterranean,
and reached Normandy through Spain and France. The apple has been as
productive of similes as of cider; and perhaps the prettiest is that
of Jeremy Taylor, who says, in his Sermon on the “Marriage Ring,”
that the “celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in
a perpetual sweetness; but sits alone, and is confined, and dies in
singularity:”--a figure of speech, by the way, not highly calculated
to frighten a bachelor. But, after all, the sentiment of Jeremy Taylor
is preferable to that of Gregory of Nazianzum, who calls a wife “an
acquired evil; and, what is worse, one that cannot be put away.”
However this may be, apples were once productive of matrimony in Wales.
When the fruit-dealers there could not find a market, they proclaimed
a dance. The revellers paid entrance-money, and received apples in
return. These meetings were called “apple lakings;” and the fruit was
sauce for many a consequent wedding-dinner. The finest used to be
kept for accompaniment to the roast goose eaten on St. Crispin’s Day.
Brides, in remote times, used to carry a love-apple in their bosoms;
as fond thereof as the pitman’s wife of Northumberland was of the
two lambs which she suckled, after their dams had been killed in a
storm. This was a more creditable affection than that of Marc Antony’s
daughter for a lamprey, which she adorned with ear-rings, and which she
exhibited at dinner; as Lord Erskine did the leeches which had cured
him of some complaint, and which, enclosed in a bottle, he sent round
with the wine. He called one “Cline” and the other “Home,” from the
great surgeons of those names; and noble guests, before filling their
glasses, gravely inspected the leeches, and then duly passed on the
reptiles and the wine.

This is what a Frenchman would have called a “_triste plaisanterie,
à l’Anglaise_;” and, by the way, I may remark, that Théophile de
Garancières imputes the alleged melancholic nature of Englishmen to the
great use which we make of sugar. Our sires used to make one curious
use of sugar, undoubtedly; namely, when they put it into the mouth
of the dying, in order that their souls might pass away with less
bitterness!

There is a German proverb which says, that “it is unadvisable to eat
cherries with potentates.” In English this might mean, “Do not make too
free with your betters.” Few royal families, however, have given their
inferiors more frequent opportunities to “eat cherries” with them,
than that of Prussia. I am reminded of this while upon the subject of
pine-apple, a slice of which was once given by Frederick William III.
to a lad employed in the gardens at Sans Souci. “Here,” said the King,
pleasantly, “eat, enjoy, and reflect while thou art eating. Now, what
does it taste like?” The boy looked puzzled, as he munched the pine;
thought of all the most delightful things that had ever passed over
his palate and clung to his memory, and, at last, with a satisfied
expression, exclaimed, “I think,--yes, it does,--it tastes like
sausage!” The courtiers laughed aloud; and the King, philosophizing on
the boy’s answer, said, “Well, every one has his own standard of taste,
guiding his feelings and judgment, and each one believes himself to be
right. One fancies he discovers in the pine-apple the flavour of the
melon; another, of the pear; a third, the plum. Yon lad, in his sphere
of tastes, finds therein his favourite food--the sausage.”

The lad’s answer was as much food for mirth at Sans Souci, as was that
of the Eton boy who was invited by Queen Adelaide to dine at Windsor
Castle, and who was honoured with a seat at Her Majesty’s side. The boy
was bashful,--the Queen encouraging; and, when the sweets were on the
table, she kindly asked him what he would like to take. The Etonian’s
eyes glanced hurriedly and nervously from dish to dish; pointing to
one of which, he, in some agitation, exclaimed, “One of those twopenny
tarts!” His young eye had recognised the favourite “_tuck_” he was in
the habit of indulging in at _the_ shop in Eton, and he asked for it
according to the local phrase in fashion. Reverting to the lad who
compared pine-apple to German sausage, I may remark, that pine-apple
is most to be enjoyed when the weather is of that condition which made
Sydney Smith once express a wish, that he could “slip out of his fat,
and sit in his bones.”

The quince is a native of Cydon, in Crete; and first Greece, and then
Rome, Gaul, and Spain, learned to love the fruit, and drink a quince
wine, which was said to be excellent either as a stomachic or as a
counter-poison.

Galen recommended the pear as an astringent, which is more than a
modern practitioner will do. St. Francis de Paul introduced one sort
into France when he paid a medical visit to Louis XI. The species was
named from the saint, “_le bon Chrétien_.”

The apple may lay fair claim to antiquity of birth. The fruit has
been diversely estimated by divers nations; but the general favour
has usually awaited it. In ancient times, both in Greece and Persia,
it was the custom for a bridegroom at his nuptial feast to partake
of a single apple, and of nothing else. The origin of the custom is
said to arise from a decree issued by Solon. It was the sight of an
apple that always put Vladislas, King of Poland, into fits. It is the
best fruit that can be taken as an accompaniment to wine; and the
best sorts for such a purpose are the Ribstone Pippin and the Coster
Pearmain. The golden apples stolen by Hercules were lemons; and they
are suspected to have been the “Median apples” of Theophrastus. The
Romans, at first, employed this Asiatic fruit only as a means for
keeping moths out of garments; from this household use it passed into
the ancient pharmacopœia, and it took rank among the counter-poisons.
Its acknowledged reputation in scurvy and punch, if I may so express
myself, was not made until a much later period of civilization. The
orange disputes with the lemon the honour of being the “Hesperides
apples,”--which is a dispute of a very Hibernian character. China
was probably its native place; and the Portuguese oranges are merely
descendants of the original “Chinaman.” It was not known in France
until introduced there by the Constable de Bourbon. In England, an
orange, stuck full of cloves, was a fitting New Year’s present from a
lover,--being typical of warmth and sweetness.

The fig-tree appears to have been, like the vine, very early used as a
symbol of peace and plenty. It was a tree of Eden; yet the Athenians
claimed it as a native tree, asserting, by way of proof, that it had
been given them by Ceres,--not reflecting that Ceres _may_ have brought
it from a region farther east. If it be commonly employed in Scripture
as a symbol, so an American poet has taken it, with its scriptural
allusions, to illustrate worldly marriages, of which he says, that--

  ----they are like unto
    Jeremiah’s figs:
  The good are very good indeed;
    The bad, not fit for pigs.

The authorities of Attica were so fond of _their_ figs, that they
passed a law against the exportation of the fruit. The advocates of
free trade in figs broke the law when they could do so with profit;
and the men who affected to be on friendly terms with them, in order
to betray their proceedings to the Magistrates, were called by a
name which is now given to all fawning traitors,--they were styled,
_sycophants_, or “fig-declarers.” Even the philosophers in Greece
became greedy in presence of figs; and with figs famished armies have
been braced anew for the fight. The _athletæ_ ate of them before
appearing in the arena; and more than one invasion has been traced to
the taste of the invader for figs. Medical men were divided in opinion
as to the merits of this fruit. It was considered indigestible; but, to
remedy that, almonds were recommended to be eaten with it! The Romans,
perhaps, were wiser, who took pepper with them, as we do with melon;
and Dr. Madden says that we should never eat figs at all, if we could
only spend half an hour in Smyrna, and see them packed. So, as I have
before said, a sight of the kitchen, just before dinner, would take
away appetite; but as people do not commonly go to Smyrna, or sit with
their cooks, why, figs and dinners will continue to be eaten. Modern
professors have resembled ancient philosophers in an uncontrollable
appetite for figs. Who has not heard of the famous Oxford fig, which,
in its progress to luscious maturity, was protected by an inscription
appended to it, conveying information to the effect that “this is the
Principal’s fig!” which a daring Undergraduate one day devoured, and
added insult to injury by changing the old placard for one on which
was written, “A fig for the Principal?” The felonious fig-stealer
must have been more rapid in his sacrilege, than the poet Thomson
was in his method of enjoying his own peaches in his garden at Kew.
Attired in the loosest and dirtiest of morning-gowns, the author of the
“Castle of Indolence” used to watch his peaches ripening in the sun.
When he saw one bursting with liquid promise, he was too lazy to take
his unwashed hands from his well-worn pockets, and pluck the blushing
treasure. No; “Jamie” simply sauntered up to it, contemplated it for a
moment with a yawn, and finished his yawn by biting a piece out of the
fruit,--leaving the ghastly remains on the branch for wasps and birds
to divide between them.

As the Athenian rulers kept their figs, so did the Persian Kings
their walnuts,--and more selfishly; for no one but their most sacred
Majesties dared eat any; but one would think that even they would find
it hard to digest all the walnuts that the country could produce. It
is averred, that walnuts entered largely into the Mithridatic recipe
against poison. The modern recipe, called “Mithridate,” I have given
elsewhere; but that which Pompey is said to have found in the palace of
the King whom he had overthrown, was as follows: “Pound, with care, two
walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of rue, and _a grain of salt_.”
Yes, we should say it must be taken _cum grano_. Howbeit, the royal
physician goes on to say, “Swallow this mixture,--precipitate it with a
little wine,--and you have nothing to fear from the action of the most
active poison, for the space of four-and-twenty hours.” There would,
probably, be less to fear after that time had elapsed than before.

Nuts have not had respectability conferred on them, even by Nero,
who was wont to go _incog._ to the upper gallery of the theatre, and
take delight in pelting them on the bald head of the Prætor, who
sat below. That official knew the offender, and was rewarded for
bearing the attack good-humouredly; and thence, perhaps, the proverb
which characterizes something falling, at once sudden and pleasant,
by the term, “That’s nuts!” Of course, nuts were in fashion; not so
chestnuts,--these were as much disliked by the Patricians as the
filbert and hazel were said, in France, to be hated by the sun. When
they were ripening, the inhabitants used to issue forth at sunrise,
and endeavour to frighten the luminary out of the firmament, by making
a horrid uproar, with pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. And
this was done under a Christian dispensation. The people were not
heathen Chinese, trying to cure an eclipsed planet by attacking the
dragon that was supposed to be swallowing it, with a _tintamarre_ of
caldron, kettle, tongs, and trivet.

The Athenians were great hands at dumplings, consisting of fruit,
covered with a light and perfumed paste; and Rhodes, verifying the
proverb, that “extremes meet,” was as famous for its gingerbread as
for its Colossus. The Roman wedding-cake was a simple mixture of sweet
wine and flour; and the _savilum_ pie, made of flour, cheese, honey,
and eggs, was a dish to make all sorts of guests jubilant. It was,
in short, the national pie; and if there were a dish that was more
popular, it was the _artocreas_, a huge mince-pie, and the imperial
pie of Verus, compounded of sow’s flank, pheasant, peacock, ham, and
wild boar, all hashed together, and covered with crust. If Emperors
invented pies, so did philosophers create cakes; and the _libuna_ of
Cato was a real cheesecake, that gave as much delight as any of the
same author’s works in literature. Cheese was a favourite foundation
for many of the Roman cakes; but he was a bold man who added chalk, and
so invented the _placenta_. Yet the _placenta_ was eaten as readily
as Charles XII. swallowed raspberry-tarts, Frederick II. Savoy cakes,
or Marshal Saxe--who loved pastry, pastrycooks, and pastrycooks’
daughters--macaroons.

The Church honoured pastry,--or would so pious a King as St. Louis have
raised the pastrycooks to the dignity of a guild? The Abbey of St.
Denis, long before this, stipulated with the tenant-farmers, that they
should deliver a certain quantity of flour, to make pastry with; and,
in some cases, in France, portions of the rent for lands was to be paid
in puff pastry. This was at a time when fennel-root tooth-picks used to
appear at table, thrust into the preserved fruits, and every one was
expected to help himself. Certainly our refined neighbours had some
questionable customs. See what L’Etoile says: (1596) “_Les confitures
sèches et les massepains y étaient si peu épargnés que les dames et
demoiselles étaient contraintes de s’en décharger sur les pages et
laquais, auxquels on les baillait tout entiers._”

Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne, was never
suspected of intermeddling with the foreign policy of the kingdom;
but he was something renowned for his appetite, and for the bent of
it towards pastry. I think it is Archdeacon Coxe, in his “Life of the
Duke of Marlborough,” who says of this illustrious Prince, that he
would leave the battle-field, in the very heat of action, and come into
camp, with the hungry inquiry, if it were not yet dinner-time. This
was something worse than drawing off the hounds, or unloading the
fowling-pieces, because the “Castle bell” was peremptorily ringing to
luncheon. Prince George was just the sort of man--fond of good living,
and able to entertain others with the same predilection--who was
likely to be surrounded by parasites; and the remembrance of this fact
suggests that, while the wine is passing round, I may venture to give a
sketch of that ancient and remarkable gentleman, “the Parasite.” It is
better than getting upon controversial subjects, which are productive
of any thing but unanimity. I remember one of the very pleasantest
of “after-dinners” being marred by a guest, who, having slipped into
the assertion that the Jews were the earliest of created people, was
indiscreet enough to try to maintain what he had asserted, and weak
enough to be angry at finding it summarily rejected. Why, Father
Abraham himself was but a foreign Heathen, from Ur of the Chaldees;
and to claim primeval antiquity for the Jews is only as absurd as if
one were to say, that Yankees and mint julep were anterior to Alfred’s
cakes and the Anglo-Saxons.

But many a hasty assertion has been simply the effect of an antagonism
between imperfect chymification and the oppressed intellect. Mind
and matter have much influence on each other; and, for the guidance
of those interested in such questions, I may, while on the subject
of dinner, notice, that from Dr. Beaumont’s “Table,” drawn out to
show the mean time of digestion in the stomach (or _chymification_)
of various articles of food, we learn that boiled tripe ranks first
in amiable facility, being disposed of in about one hour. Venison
steak requires some half-hour more. Boiled turkey and roast pig are
classed together, as requiring two hours and twenty-five minutes for
the process of digestion; while roast turkey and hashed meat demand
five minutes more. Fricasséed chicken is not more facile of digestion
than boiled salt beef, both requiring two hours and three-quarters.
Boiled mutton, broiled beefsteak, and soft-boiled eggs, take three
hours; while roast beef and old strong cheese trouble the stomach for
some three hours and a half. Roast duck, and fowls, whether boiled or
roasted, are alike slow of digestion: they require four hours as their
mean time of chymification, and are only exceeded by boiled cabbage,
which requires full half-an-hour more. I borrow these details from an
article in the “Journal of Psychological Medicine,” for January, 1851,
a periodical edited by Dr. Forbes Winslow. I believe I do not err in
attributing the article in question (“Mental Dietetics”) to the able
pen of the accomplished Editor himself, than whom no man has a better
right to speak _ex cathedrâ_ on the subject in question. It will be
seen, by the following extract from this article, that diet influences
the mind as well as the body. “The nutritive particles of the food,”
says Dr. Winslow, “being in the form of chyle, mixed with the blood,
and supplying it with the elements which enable it to repair the waste
of the animal system, it is obvious that the health, both of the body
and of the mind, must depend on the quality and quantity of the vital
stream. According to Lecanu, the proportion of the red globules of the
blood may be regarded as a measure of vital energy; for the action of
the serum and of the globules on the nervous system is very different.
The former scarcely excites it, the latter do so powerfully. Now those
causes which tend to increase the mass of blood, tend also to increase
the proportion of red globules; whilst those which tend to diminish the
mass of blood, tend to diminish the proportion of the globules. The
result is obvious. A large quantity of stimulating animal food, without
a proper amount of exercise, augments the number of the red globules,
and diminishes the aqueous part of the blood. Hence the nervous system
becomes oppressed, the brain frequently congested, and the intellectual
faculties no longer enjoy their wonted activity. In the mean time, the
system endeavours to relieve itself by throwing a counter-stimulus upon
certain other organs, the functions of which are morbidly increased.
The blood, in such cases, becomes preternaturally thickened, and its
coagulum unusually firm. On the other hand, if the system be not
supplied with the requisite amount of nutrition, the blood becomes,
by the loss of its red corpuscles, impoverished in quality, and, in
cases of extreme abstinence, diminished in quantity. In these cases the
powers of the mind soon become enfeebled.”

But we will pass from these scientific matters, to seek the company of
one who, if ignorant of science, was, generally, a great man in the
profession of his peculiar art,--the ancient parasite.




THE PARASITE.

  ----“Pity those whose flanks grow great,
    Swell’d by the lard of others’ meat.”--HERRICK.


Para, “near,” and _sitos_, “corn,” pretty well explain what the Greeks
understood by the word “parasite.” As the worthless weed among the
wheat, so was this classical Skimpole in the field of society. As the
weed hung for support to the substance that promised to yield it, so
did the parasite cling to the side of those who kept good tables, and
lacked wit to enliven them.

The parasite was too delicate a fellow to allow of invidious
distinctions. He supped or dined wherever he was invited, and at
marriage feasts waited for no invitation at all. _There_ he was in his
glory. He was the cracker of jokes, and of the heads of those who did
not agree with every word that fell from the lips of the Amphitryon of
the hour. He usually, however, got his own skull bruised by the watch,
when staggering home through the dark, “full of the god,” and without
a slave to direct his steps. But it was only with the morning that he
became conscious at once of pain from the bruises, and the necessity of
providing, at the cost of others, for his own breakfast.

These professional “livers out” were, however, not always unattended.
The victims whom they flattered sometimes lent them a slave. Their
wardrobe seldom extended beyond two suits, one for the public, and
one for wear at home. They looked abroad for dupes, just as our
ring-droppers used to do, and for the same purpose. The parasite
generally attached himself to the first simple-looking personage he
encountered, provided he bore with him proofs of being a man who could
afford to live well. _Simplex_ usually swallowed with complacency all
the three-piled flattery with which the parasite troubled him; and if
he were expecting friends to dinner, the gastronome, who wanted one,
was probably invited. But there was always an understanding, that, in
return for the invitation, he was to maintain, for the diversion of the
company, a continual fire of jokes. If he proved but a sorry jester,
he was promptly scourged into the street, down which he ran, nothing
abashed, to look for hearers whom indifferent jests could move to ready
laughter.

The parasite looked upon the fortune and table of others as a property
which was properly to be held in common. Monsieur Prudhon really
started a parasitical precept, when he tried to establish, that what
belonged to one man belonged to a great many others besides. But if, as
regarded his own share in property that was _not_ his own, the parasite
was so far a Communist, he was the most charitable of fellows, his
earnest prayer being, that none of his patrons might ever fall into
such distress as to be unable to give good dinners. The dinner-table
was his arena. If he got but one meal a day, he consumed enough thereat
to satisfy half-a-dozen appetites; and, as he ate, it was matter of
perfect indifference to him whether he was called upon to find wit
for the guests, or to be the butt of their own. You might buffet him
till he were senseless, provided the blows were afterwards paid for in
brimming glasses.

He was always first at a feast; and as he was as common an object at
a feast as the sauce itself, so “sauce” was the common name for a
parasite. There he was not only wit, butt, and bully, but porter also;
and his office was not merely to knock down the drunken, but to carry
them out when incapable of performing that office for themselves. The
parasites had a dash, too, of the “bravo” in their character, and
let themselves out for a dozen other purposes besides dining. The
stronger-bodied and the braver-souled let out their strength. “Do you
want a wrestler?” says the parasite, in Antiphæus, “here I am, an
Antæus. If you want a door forced, I have a head like a ram to do it;
and I can scale a wall like Capaneus. Telamon was not stronger than my
wrist; and I can wreathe into the ear of beauty like smoke.” Some of
these Bobadils are even said to have ventured into battle, and to have
especially distinguished themselves in the Commissariat department!

Others boasted of their powers of fasting,--always provided good pay
assured them of compensating banquets at the end of their service. “I
can live on as little as Tithymallus,” says one; and the individual
in question is said to have supported life on eight lupines a day,--a
hint to Poor-Law Commissioners. Another makes a merit of being as
thin as Philippides, who, like Hood’s friend, was _so_ thin, that,
when he stood side-ways, you could not see him! The merits of a third
are summed up by him in saying, that he can live on water, like a
frog; on vegetables, like a caterpillar; can go without bathing, like
Dirtiness herself, if there be such a deity; can live in winter with
no roof but the sky, like a bird; can support heat, and sing beneath a
noon-day sun, like a grasshopper; do without oil, like the dust; walk
bare-footed from break of day, like the crane; and keep wide awake all
night, like the owl.

Of such a profession the parasite was proud, and even declared that its
origin was divine; and that Jupiter Amicalis (Ζεὺς ὁ φίλιος) was its
patron saint! As Jove entered where he chose, ate and drank of what
most took his fancy, and, after creating an atmosphere of enjoyment,
retired without having any thing to pay; just so, it was argued,
was it with the parasite. In Attica, parasites were admitted to the
commemorative banquets that followed the sacrifices to Hercules; proof
enough that they were accounted as being of the same kidney as heroes.
In later times came degenerate men and manners; and then, instead of
honourable men sitting with gods and heroes, the office of parasite was
so degraded, that none but the hungry wits exercised it. Flattery to
mortals then took the place of praise to gods. The parasite was ready
to laud every act of the master of the feast,--

  “----_laudare paratus
  Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus_,”

and to eulogize a great number of other acts besides, as may be
found noted by those who are very curious, and not over-nice, in the
fragments of Diodorus of Sinope.

The fellows were witty, too, however degraded. When Chœrephon had,
uninvited, slipped into a vacant position at a wedding-dinner, the
gynæconomes, as inspectors of the feast, counting the guests, came upon
him last, and said, “You are the thirty-first: it is against the law;
you must withdraw.” “I do not dispute the law,” said the parasite, “but
I object to your manner of counting. Begin the numbering by me, and
your conclusions will be indisputable.”

The parasite, Philoxenus, happened to be supping with a host who
gave his guests nothing but black bread. “This is not a loaf, but a
spectre,” whispered the professional wit: “if we eat any more of it, we
shall soon be in the shades.”

There was more wit in Bithys, the parasite of the avaricious King
Lysimachus, who one day, at dinner, flung a wooden scorpion at the
flatterer. The latter affected great fright, but afterwards remarked,
“I will, in my turn, terrify you, O King; be good enough to give me a
talent.”

Clisophus, another of this strange brotherhood, either fooled or
flattered King Philip to the very top of his bent. The King having
lost an eye, Clisophus always sat down to dinner in his presence with
a bandage over one of his own; and when the Monarch limped, from a
wound in the leg, Clisophus went “halting at his side;” and if, by
chance, an ill odour affected the royal nostrils, Clisophus wore,
all day long, a grimace upon his features, as if he were sick with
disgust. However absurd this may appear, the parasites of Louis XIV.
flattered him as grossly as the original practitioners did the early
and heathen Kings. People shaved their heads and wore periwigs, because
the Monarch, having little hair of his own, wore long locks cropped
from other heads. So, when once at dinner he complained of having lost
his teeth, a young flatterer who sat next him swore, with a broad smile
which displayed his own incisors, that nobody had teeth now-a-days.
And again, when the King, on his seventieth birthday, inquired the age
of a person from whom he had received a petition, the reply was, that
the person was of everybody’s age,--about threescore and ten. Nay,
the Court preachers flattered the Sovereign quite as coarsely as the
mere courtiers, and would not have received invitations to dinner,
if they had not done so. “My brethren,” said one of these, “all men
must die;” and at that very moment he perceived the eye of the King
glaring uneasily upon him:--“that is to say, Sire, _almost all_ men!”
and the complaisant preacher was at the royal table that day. The same
parasitical spirit prevailed at the English Court, especially when
bolster neckcloths were worn, simply because the King was compelled to
wear one, in consequence of a disease in the glands of the neck. But,
to translate the sentiment of the French poet,--

  “From royal example slaves have never shrunk:
  When Auguste tippled, Poland soon got drunk.
  When the great Monarch breathed the air of love,
  Hey, presto, pass! Paris was Venus’ grove!
  But turn’d a Churchman and devout, alas!
  The courtiers ran and beat their breasts at mass.”

It is said by ancient writers that the species of flattery which
Clisophus paid Philip, was obligatory on all the guests and officials
in the ancient royal Courts of Arabia. There, if the King suffered
in any member, every courtier was bound to be in pain in the same
limb. This species of flattery was, in fact, a conclusion logically
arrived at; for the Arab lawgivers said that it would be absurd in
the courtiers to vie with one another for the honour of being buried
alive with the King defunct, if they did not suffer with him in all his
bodily pains when living.

The Celtic King of the Sotians maintained a body of men who were
called the “Eucholimes,” or the “Death Volunteers.” They amounted to
six hundred men; they were lodged, clothed, and tended like the King,
with whom they daily sat at meat; but they were also bound to die with
their master; and it is alleged that the chance was eagerly incurred,
and that no man ever failed, when called upon by the King’s decease, to
accompany His Majesty on a visit to his royal cousin, Orcus.

But your regular parasite preferred to live and flatter living
Monarchs. “See,” said Niceas, when he saw Alexander troubled by a
fly that stung him, “there is one that will be King over all flies;
for he has imbibed the blood of him who is King over all men.” The
flattery was not more delicate which Chirisophus once paid at dinner
to Dionysius the Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing the King smile at the
other end of the table, burst into a roar of laughter. The King
asked, “Wherefore?” seeing that the parasite could not have heard the
joke. “True,” said Chirisophus; “but I saw that Your Majesty had heard
something worth laughing at, and I laughed in sympathy.” This species
of parasite is not uncommon in English houses; but perhaps they do
their office more refinedly than Chirisophus.

The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far more disgusting in
their adulation. They were simply absurd, when they pretended to be
short-sighted, like him, and to be unable to see a dish, unless they
thrust their noses into it. But they were filthy followers when they
offered their faces for the King to “void his rheum” upon, and even
went to extremes of nastiness at which human nature shudders, but at
which Dionysius smiled. And yet Dionysius was hailed by some of them as
a god. It was the custom, we are told, in Sicily, for every individual
to make sacrifices, in his own house, before the figures of the nymphs,
to get devoutly drunk before the altar, and to dance round it as long
as the pious devotee could keep upon his legs. It was accounted as an
exquisite piece of flattery in Damocles, the parasite, that he refused
to perform such service before inanimate deities, while he went through
the whole duty before Dionysius as his god. The Athenians, it will be
remembered, were horror-stricken at such impious laudation as this.
They fined Demades ten talents for having proposed to award divine
honours to Alexander; and Timagoras, whom they had sent as Ambassador
to the King of Persia, they put to death for compromising the Athenian
dignity by prostrating himself before that King. And, indeed, let us do
justice to Alexander himself. He had more than misgiving touching his
own alleged divinity. He had once--“his custom in the afternoon”--eaten
and drunk so enormously, that in the evening he was forced to a
necessity which compels very mortal people,--take physic. He made
as many contortions, on swallowing it, as a refractory child; and
Philarches, his parasite, remarked, with a rascally hypocritical smile,
“Ah! what must be the sufferings of mortal man under such medicine, if
you, who are a divinity, feel it so much!” The idea of a deity drawing
health out of an apothecary’s phial, was too much even for Alexander,
who declined to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches an ass.

But Philarches was only giving the King a taste of the parasite’s
professional craft. The noble Nicostratus of Argos quite as impiously
flattered the Sovereign of Persia, when, for the sake of currying
favour with that majestic barbarian, he every night, in his own house,
prepared a solemn supper, richly provided, and offered to the genius of
the King, (τῶ δαίμονι τοῦ Βασιλέως,) for no better reason than that he
had learned that such was the custom in Persia. Whether he profited or
not by this delicate attention, Theopompus does not inform us.

The Anactes or Princes of the royal family of Salamis maintained two
distinct families, in whom, if I understand Athenæus rightly, the
office of flatterer (and of spy, I may add) was hereditary. These were
the Gerginoi and the Promalangai. The former did the dirty work of
circulating among the people, worming themselves into their confidence,
getting invited to their tables, and then reporting to the Promalangai
all they had heard. The last-named took such portions of the report as
were worth communicating to the Anactes, with whom they sat at table,
where such a dish of scandal was daily served as would puzzle the
social spies of Paris to set before their lord.

But the profession was not accounted vile; and the professors
themselves gloried in their vocation. They extolled the easiness of
their life, compared, for instance, with that of the painter, or the
labourer, or, in fact, with that of any other individual but those
of their own guild. “Truly,” says one, in a fragment of Antiphanes,
“since the most important business in life is to play, laugh, trifle,
and drink, I should like to know where you would find a condition more
agreeable than ours.”

Once, and once only, a faction of parasites contrived to get possession
of a kingdom; and the dinners they gave, and the government they
maintained, are matters to which description can hardly do justice.
The faction in question was headed by, and almost solely consisted
of, three men in Erythra, who stood, in regard to Cnopus, the King,
as “adorers and flatterers” (πρόσκυνες καὶ κόλακες). They murdered
their Sovereign, and, by a _coup-d’état_, possessed themselves of
his authority. Their names were Ortyges, Irus, and Echarus; and they
ruled with a triple rod of iron, held in very effeminate fingers.
They silenced all opponents by slaying them; and, when no one dared
utter a breath against them, they vaunted their universal popularity.
They administered a ferociously absurd sort of justice at the gates
of Erythra, where they sat decked out in purple and gold. They were
sandaled like women, wore ornaments only suitable to females, and sat
down to dinner in diadems that dazzled the company.

The guests were once free citizens, who were now compelled to bear the
litters of their _parvenu_ masters, to cleanse the streets, and then,
by way of contrast, to attend the banquet of the Triumvirs, with their
wives and daughters. If they objected to drag these latter to the scene
of splendid infamy, the objection was only made at the price of death.
The unhappy women were nothing the safer from insult by the decease of
their natural protectors; and the scenes at the palace were such as
only the uncleanest of demons could rejoice in. If the authorities had
reason to be grave, the whole city was compelled to affect sorrow; and
duly-appointed officers went round, with hard-thonged whips, to scourge
a sense of “decent horror” into the countenances of the bewildered
inhabitants. Things at last reached such a pitch of extravagant
atrocity, that the people took heart of grace, screwed up their courage
by Chian wine, and swept their oppressors into Hades;--and, for years
afterwards, commemorative banquets celebrated the restoration of the
people from the oppression of the parasites.

I would recommend those who would see the parasite in action, to
study the comedies of Plautus, wherein he figures as necessarily
as the impertinent valet in a Spanish comedy. Plautus calls the
parasites _poetæ_, as being given to lying; and it is singular that
the Gauls called their poets “parasites,” as being fond of good
living, and not being always in a condition to procure it. They had
their “dull season:” it was when the wealthy were at their villas;
at which time the parasites dined upon nothing, in town, with good
“Duke Humphrey.” When the city was again resorted to by the rich,
then the parasite might sometimes be seen purchasing, by order of his
patron, the provisions for the evening feast. We find one of these
gentry, in Plautus, boasting that he knows a story that will be worth
thirty dinners to him. Before the era of printing, the parasite, with
his jests and histories, was a sort of living Circulating Library.
Saturion (another of Plautus’s pictures of the parasite) is at peace
with himself, because, as he says, he can provide for his daughter by
bequeathing to her his rich collection of jokes and dinner-stories.
“They are all sparkling Attic,” he says; “and there is not a dull
Sicilian anecdote among them.”

If the race were, in some sense of the word, “literary,” they were
not at all in love with science, or the improvements wrought by
its application. Witness the bitterness with which Plautus makes
one denounce the sun-dial, then of recent introduction. Before that
tell-tale appeared, dinners used to be served when people were hungry;
but _now_ even hungry people wait for the appointed hour. In short,
throughout life, they worked but for the sake of the banquet and
wine-pot; and, even after death, they longed for libations, as appears
in the epitaph on the parasite, Sergius of Pola, who is made to say,
from the grave,--

  “_Si urbani perhiberi vultis
        Arenti meo cineri,
  Cantharo piaculum vinarium festinate._”

  “If you’ve any regard for this corpse here of mine,
  Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine.”

Finally, these diners-out by profession were essentially selfish; and
the fire of their attachment blazed up, or died away, according to that
in the kitchen of the Amphitryon by whom they were maintained.

A good specimen of the parasite of the last century may be found in the
Captain Cormorant of Anstey’s “Bath Guide;” but the race is by no means
extinct, though the individual be more rarely met with; and, be it said
as their due, they execute their office with something more of decency
than did their ancient predecessors. Modern flattery, like modern oils,
is “double refined.” Let us see if we can trace the course of this
refinement through the Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age.




THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE.


The good Archbishop Fénelon, in his “_Voyage dans l’Ile des Plaisirs_,”
cites some charming examples of the pleasant way in which people lived
in the Utopian Land of Cocagne, which he describes from imagination,
and where the laws were characterized by more good sense than
distinguishes the legislation of the Utopian authorities of More.

The “_Voyage_” of Fénelon was probably founded on a fragment of
Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how the
citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the golden age of its
lusty youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth of Saturn,
who says, “I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed to men in the
early ages of creation. In the first place, peace reigned universally,
and was as common as the water you wash your hands with. Fear and
disease were entirely unknown; and the earth provided spontaneously for
every human want. The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into the
valleys; and cakes disputed with loaves to get into the mouth of man,
as he walked abroad, supplicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of
excellent flavour and quality. The tables were covered with fish which
floated into the kitchens, and courteously put themselves to roast.
By the sides of the couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with
them joints of ready-roasted meat; while rivulets full of _ragoûts_
were near the guests, who dipped in, and took therefrom, according to
their fancy. Every one could eat of what he pleased; and all that he
ate was sweet and succulent. There were countless pomegranate seeds
for seasoning; little _pâtés_ and _grives_, done to a turn, insinuated
themselves into the mouths of the banqueters; and tarts got smashed in
trying to force their way into the throat. The children played with
sow-paps and other delicacies as they would with toys; and the men were
gigantic in height, and obese in figure.”

The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that delicious--

  ----“Land of Cocagne,
    That Elysium of all that is friand and nice,
  Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain,
    And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice.”

It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond of dealing as
Teleclides and others of the tuneful children of song, in the early
period when young Time counted his birthdays by the sun. It has been
well treated by Béranger, who thus describes, through my imperfect
translation, his own impressions of


A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF COCAGNE.

  Ho, friends, every one!
  Let us up, and be gone;--
  To where care is not known,
    Let us hasten away!
  Yes; fired with champagne,
  I reel o’er the plain,
  And see dear Cocagne
    In its sunny array.

  O! land full of glee,--
  Here long may I be,
  And laugh merrilie
    At Fate’s changeable way.
  For here--what a treat!--
  I may love, drink, and eat,
  And--this makes it more sweet--
    There is nothing to pay!

  My appetite’s great,
  And I see the huge gate
  Of a tower of state
    At my elbow, handy:
  The tower is a pie;--
  And tall guards, standing by,
  Carry spears ten feet high,
    All in sugar-candy.

  Ah! banquet of fun,
  It will please ev’ry one:
  Look, there is not a gun
    But of sugar is made!
  See the paintings, how grand!
  And the statues, they stand,
  All wrought by the hand
    Out of sweet marmalade.

  Here the people repair
  In gay crowds to the square,
  Where the jests of a fair
    With loud merriment shine;
  Where the fountains so gay
  Not with water do play,
  But are sparkling away
    With rich, rosy, old wine!

  Here, the baking’s begun;
  There, the baking is done;--
  See the folks how they run,
    With beef, mutton, and veal.
  And the eaters think fit,
  That the man who lacks wit,
  Shall be made a “turnspit,”
    And be bound to the wheel.

  To the palace I haste,
  With two Falstaffs I feast,
  (Twenty stone weighs the least,)
    And with them hob and nob.
  And here, too, I’ve found,
  Where such good things abound,
  Shy Venus quite round,
  And young Cupid a squab.

  No sadness of brow,
  No pedantic vain show,
  No pompous state-bow,
    Can be ever allow’d:--
  But with feasting and song
  We carry night on,
  Drink deep and drink long,
    And toast beauty aloud.

  Now, good-natured lasses,
  To the music of glasses,
  As the sweet dessert passes,
    Let’s laugh the time by.
  Let fools sigh and snuffle,
  And merriment muffle,
  But you, dears, shall ruffle
    Our pro--priety.

       *       *       *       *       *

  So, in this joyous way,
  With fresh loves ev’ry day,
  And with no debts to pay,
    We scamper time o’er;
  While between drinking deep,
  And light visions in sleep,
  Our young years will creep
    To a hundred or more.

  Yes, dear old Cocagne,
  It’s with thee,--free from pain,--
  But who checks my strain,
    In an accent so shrill?
  For, while singing, I thought,--
  But, my friends, we are caught,--
  ’Tis the waiter who’s brought
    His confounded long bill.

The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name from the Latin,
_coquere_, “to cook.” Duchat says, that its flocks and herds present
themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from the skies
ready roasted. For it is there alone--

  “Where so ready all nature its cookery yields,
  _Maccaroni au parmesan_ grows in the fields;
  Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint,
  And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.”

The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an imaginary
view of society in another extreme. The learned Chancellor, amid much
invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat
after the fashion of those of Crete and Lacedæmonia, especially with
regard to their common halls for their repasts,--a fashion, by the way,
which was partially followed in the club-rooms of Attica. Others of the
author’s ideas have been realized since he wrote; and, in this respect,
his Utopia may be said to have done good service; but there is a woful
residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful.

Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing
provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread,
fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural
slaughter-houses, well-furnished with running water, for washing away
the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom “was a
peculiar institution” of this happy republic,) the free citizens not
being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their
singularly tender characters. “In every street,” we are told by the
author, “there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from one
another, and are marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in
those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of
it, and as many on the other. In these they do all meet and eat. The
stewards of every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed
hour, and, according to the number of those that belong to their hall,
they carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than
of any others.... After the steward of the hospitals has taken for them
whatever the physician does prescribe for them, at the market-place,
then the best things that remain are distributed equally among the
halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they
serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors,
and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom,
and for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed,
when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper, the
Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, meets and
eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick
at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry
provisions home from the market-place, for they know none does that
but for some good reason; for, though any that will may eat at home,
yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent and foolish
thing for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill
dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for
him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these
halls are done by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their
meat, and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, which
goes round all the women of every family by turns. They sit at three
or more tables, according to their numbers; the men sit towards the
wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall
suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she
may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who
are there with the suckling children, where there is always fire and
clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may lay the young
children,” &c. But, to return from this public nursery to the public
dining hall, “all the children under five years of age dined with the
nurses: the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit
for marriage, do either serve those that sit at table; or, if they are
not strong enough for that, they stand by them in great silence, and
eat that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor have they
any other formality of dining.” The whole formality was bad enough, and
that last-mentioned was a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the
personal arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests
stood much upon their order of precedence: the syphogrant and his
wife, the _gnädige Frau Syphograntinn_, presided at the centre of the
cross-table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and
their mates, came the Priests and their ladies,--for More placed the
Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy was not
to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and gay were placed,
between flanking companies of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth,
and improve their manners; and this Spartan custom was occasionally
imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked with something
like contempt upon the institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes
were placed before the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty
bits to the young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if
not, they took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave, or
were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to them.

During this delectable process, the young could not have offended by
their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by conversation, seeing
that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an
Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same office performed at some of
their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian
lecture was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy to those
that heard it; and that after it, the elders not only wagged their
beards by “pleasant enlargements,” but encouraged the young to follow
them in the same track. This must have been after the supper, when it
was the law of Utopia, not to “run a mile,” but to “rest awhile.” The
dinners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, while
the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must
have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The only
pleasant feature in More’s Utopian banquets is, that wherein he says
that there was always music at supper, and fruit served up after meat,
(which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and
that as the repast proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about
sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are wanting in nothing
that may cheer up their spirits; for they give themselves a large
allowance in that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as
are attended with no inconvenience. Thus,” he adds, “do they that are
in towns eat together; but in the country, where they live at a greater
distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary
sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to
them that live in the towns.”

I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman dinners. These were
seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks or Romans,
the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who
became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and illustrious of
their class; and it was they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast
by reading livelier sallies than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians.
If their rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them many
privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading
slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the
witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was
a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a
Negro slave. Æsop the fabulist, Phædrus, his imitator, and the moral
philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was as low in
condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character of teacher
of mankind, was the slave of one who had been a slave,--a depth of
degradation than which there can be none deeper. But his mission was
a great one; for he appears to me to have been an instrument employed
to prepare men’s minds for a change from the vices of Paganism to the
virtues of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across the
dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably
calculated to enable men to go forward; not only to induce them to
make the first step out of infidelity; but, having made it, rather to
make a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in the
direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline Jove.

From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the next
condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteristically
paid their addresses to poetry;--and they were the “lions” at the
dinners and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not
in want, was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, and
subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of
equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he derived some portion
of nobility from his mother. Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a
poet,--a condition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt,--but
he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he
was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and
satirical in prose.

If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the same with the
philosophers. The proudest walks of philosophy were trodden by
Demosthenes, the blacksmith. Socrates was the ill-featured, but
original-minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was only rich in
a valueless boast of being descended from Ajax; and Isocrates, whose
father manufactured the musical ancestry from which are descended the
modern families of piano-forte and fiddle, was also one of the immortal
race of intellectual giants.... Of other writers we may remark, that
Quintus Curtius, whose “Alexander the Great” is the first historical
romance that ever was written, and contains the best description of a
Babylonian banquet that ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble
family. Celsus was, at least, not a Roman citizen, though resident at
Rome; and Plutarch was just “respectable,” and nothing more;--though
to be worthy of respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man
need sigh for.

But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters who made
Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the slave and his cousin the
beggar, wealth was by no means a synonymous term for either sloth
or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, who believed nothing; the two
Plinies, the soul of one of whom, “with a difference,” entered into
Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave Zozimus, as Walpole does
of his favourite servants; the tender and chivalrous Tibullus,--a
Latin Sir Philip Sidney; the profligate Sophocles; Æschylus, the
bottle-drainer; and the lofty Euripides: all these mounted Pegasus
with golden spurs, and gave glorious dinners to guests with whom they
could contend in the battle of brains. Some, like Martial, got their
mouths filled with the sugar-candy of imperial recompence. Cæsar, the
Commentator, was the descendant of the Sabine Kings, and the founder
of an empire. In Plato we see the double condition of aristocrat and
slave. From the latter condition he was rescued by his noble friends
at the cost of three thousand _drachmas_; more fortunate in this than
Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, and teach
his master’s sons to love virtue and liberty.

And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of a more modern
philosopher, who did not lack reverence for him,--I mean Bacon,--and
Bacon naturally brings me from my digression to the subject of
“Table Traits” in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, in his “New
Atlantis,” is even more infelicitous than More, both in the framing
of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a moral. The table laws
spoken of in Solomon’s house, have more of a jolly aspect than those
drawn by Sir Thomas More. For instance, “I will not hold you long with
recounting of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and kitchens, where are made
divers drinks, breads, and meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we
have of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of
roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and
decocted; also of the tears and woundings of trees, and of the pulp of
canes: and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least
of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots,
and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of
the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. So that
divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or
no meat or bread; and, above all, we strive to have drinks of extreme
thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting
sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of
your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet
taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that
fashion as they become nourishing, so that they are, indeed, excellent
drink, and many will use no other. Breads we have of several grains,
roots, and kernels, yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers
kinds of leavenings and seasonings, so that some do extremely move
appetites; some do nourish so as divers do live of them without any
other meat, who live very long. So, for meats, we have some of them so
beaten and made tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a
weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good chylus, as well as a
strong heat would meat otherwise prepared. We have some meats, also,
and breads and drinks which, taken by some, enable them to fast long
after; and some other that will make the very flesh of men’s bodies
sensibly more hard and tough, and their strength far greater than
otherwise it would be.”

In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not with much
attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before I conclude this section, I
may notice a more graceful fiction touching banquets, than any thing
to be met with among the philosophers. The inhabitants of the coast of
Malabar believe that the double cocoas of the Moluccas, annually thrown
on their shore by the waves, and joyfully welcomed by the expecting
inhabitants, are the produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless
recesses of the ocean; and that they arise from among coral-groves
endowed with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a detailed
account of this supposed phænomenon, and a very pretty illustration
of the theory of seeds transported by winds and currents, I refer all
curious inquirers to the “Annals of _My_ Village,” by a Lady. In the
mean time, I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which occurs
at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar:--

  ’Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree,
    In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove,
  Where slumber young sprites,--the gay elves of a sea
    Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above.
  There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave
    Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray,
  And laugh away time with their lovers at eve,
    And sing to those elves of the deep by the way.

  Ο! to see them at sunset, when down by the shore
    Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand,
  Like spirits of light shedding softness all o’er
    The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land!
  There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth,
  Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth,
  Drink the white wine of Kishna;--while some are at play,
    Flinging glances and handsfull of roses, in showers,
  That their lovers can’t tell, as they bend ’neath the fray,
    Which are falling the fastest,--the glances, or flowers.

  And then on the sands where these young people meet,
    What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee,
  As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet,
    The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea!
  There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar’s daughters,
  Half play, dip their white, sandal’d feet in the waters,
  To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again,
    As the wave washes over their small anklet bells,
  There are some, youths and maidens, who, link’d in a chain,
    Like pearls strung, and mix’d, here and there, with sea-shells,
  Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm,
    Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out;
  Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm
    With laughter and splashing the waters about.

  O, who would not like to pass summer away
    Amid scenes such as this? O, who would not love
  With Malabar’s daughters, at twilight, to play,
    And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove?

The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind that used to
afford holidays and banquetings to the people of the East, that is,
according to the poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the natives
somewhat unmusically call it, “_lanka dwipa_,” _was_, in the olden
time of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the banquet
it afforded was not of annual occurrence; for the tree never flowers
till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after producing its
fruit. The Kings of Candy used to bestow the rich gift of some of its
blossoms on the favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of
the Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to his painted
lips. It was, however highly esteemed, not such a present as Demetrius
Poliorcetes made to Lamia, after that accomplished courtezan had
erected at Sicyon a portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a book to
describe it; and poem and portico became the table-talk of all Greece.
The gift of Demetrius was a magnificent purse, containing two hundred
and fifty talents, which, by the way, he had compelled the reluctant
Athenians to contribute; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was
merely “for soap.” The extravagant lady spent it all in one single,
but consuming, feast! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that other
courtezan, Leæna, whose wit made guests forget that the feast was
frugal; and to whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a
tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out her own,
that torture might not make her betray the accomplices of her protector
Harmodius, in the murder of her tyrant Hipparchus!----

We have not found much of the refinement we looked for in these remote
periods and banquets. Let us see what may be discovered in the Table
Traits of England in Early Times.




TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES.


When Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the aboriginal inhabitants of
Britain, some fifty years before the Christian era, he described the
island as being thickly inhabited, ruled by many Kings and Princes, and
all living peaceably together,--though with war-chariots and strong
arms, to settle quarrels when they occurred. But if our ancestors
lived peaceably among themselves, they can hardly be said to have
lived comfortably. Their habitations were of reed, or of wood; and
they gathered in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These
ears they garnered in subterranean repositories, wherefrom they daily
culled the ripest grain; and, rudely dressing the same, had thence
their sustenance. Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far
removed from the cunning and wickedness of the rest of the world; and
other writers contrast them favourably with the Irish, who are said to
have fed on human flesh, to have had enormous appetites for such food,
and to have been given to the nasty habit of devouring their deceased
fathers; but it is not uncommon for others, as well as for Irish sons,
to devour, at least, their parents’ substance, even at the present day.
The food of an Irish child was certainly illustrative of character,--we
should rather say that the solemnity of offering the first food to a
child was characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a writer of the first
century, says, that “when a Hibernian mother gives birth to a male
child, she puts its first food on the point of her husband’s sword, and
lightly inserts this foretaste of meat into the mouth of the infant,
on its very tip; and, by family vows, desires that it may never die
but under arms.” In other words, the relations wished that the little
stranger might never be in want of a row, when disposed to distinguish
the family name!

In the days of Julius Cæsar, our stalwart sires supported their thews
and sinews on milk and flesh,--the diet of a pugilist. We see how much
progress was made by the time of Constantine,--the Constantine that was
crowned in Britain,--“when,” says a contemporary writer, “the harvests
sufficed alike for the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures
were covered with innumerable multitudes of tame flocks, distended with
milk, or laden with fleeces.”

I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the rather poetical accounts
of certain early writers, that our aboriginal ancestry were very little
superior to the New Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more uncivilized,
and quite as ignorant; and their abstinence from the flesh of hares and
poultry, and, in the northern parts of the island, from fish, bespeaks
a race who lacked, at once, industry and knowledge. Indeed, it is by no
means certain, that we do not wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting
their possible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter
are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the most revolting
cannibalism.

They were clever enough to brew mead and ale; but wine and civilization
were brought to them by their enemies, the Romans,--invaders whom, for
some reasons, they might have welcomed with a sentiment akin to the
line in Béranger:--

  “_Vivent nos amis! nos amis, les ennemis!_”

They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the more important one.
Their seats were skins, or bundles of hay, flung on the ground. The
table was a low stool, around which British Chiefs sat, and, even in
the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore their food with teeth
and nails, or hacked at it with a wretched knife, as bad as any thing
of the sort now in common use in Gaul. In short, they committed a
thousand solecisms, the very idea of which is sufficient to make the
Sybarites of Belgravia very much ashamed of their descent from the
savages of Britain.

It was characteristic of the sort of civilization which the
Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that they introduced the
rather vulgar custom of taking four meals a day. The custom was,
however, one solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility of the
Saxons. They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, boiled, baked, or
broiled. It would seem, that, in those days, cooks were not of such
an illustrious guild as that which they subsequently formed. A cook
among the Anglo-Saxons was little more accounted of than the calf
he cut up into collops. The cook, in fact, was a slave; and was as
unceremoniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter’s last will
and testament, as though the culinary artist had been a mere kitchen
utensil. At Saxon tables, both sexes sat together,--a custom refined
in itself, refining in its effects, and of such importance, that
half-a-dozen nations claim the honour of being the inventors of that
excellent custom. In Europe, Turkey alone has obstinately refused to
follow this civilizing example; and Turkey is falling to pieces. It
may, therefore, be logically proved, that where table rights are not
conceded to the ladies, nations slowly perish; and--“serve them right.”

It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table-cloths were features
at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as the long ends were used in place of
napkins, the delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, if the cloth
were made to serve at a second feast. There was a rude sort of display
upon the board; but the order of service was of a quality that would
strike the “Jeameses” of the age of Victoria with inexpressible
disgust. The meat was never “dished,” and “covers” were as yet unknown.
The attendants brought the viands into the dining hall on the spits,
knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his consideration; and,
the guest having helped himself, the attendant went through the same
ceremony with the next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these same
ceremonies; and even the monasteries were not exempt from the sins
of gluttony and drunkenness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the
Anglo-Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was in general use.
Water, for hands and feet, was brought to every stranger on entering a
house wherein he was about to tarry and feed; and, it is said that one
of the severest penances of the Church was the temporary denial of the
bath, and of cutting the hair and nails.

With the Normans came greater grandeur and increased discomfort. They
neither knew nor tolerated the use of table-cloths or plain steel
forks; but their bill of fare showed more variety and costliness
than the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an improvement on
that of their predecessors in the island, that Norman French, and
Norman dishes, flung the Saxon tongue and table into the annihilating
position of “vulgarity.” The art was so much esteemed, that Monarchs
even granted estates, on condition that the holder thereof should,
through his cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set
it before the King. It was under the Normans that the boar’s head
had regal honours paid it; and its progress from the kitchen to the
banquet was under escort of a guard, and behind the deafening salutes
of puffy-cheeked trumpeters. The crane was then what the goose is
now,--highly esteemed; yet labouring under the shadow of a suspicion
of being “common.” The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail
and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage was of a very
bilious character,--spicy and cordialed; namely, hippocras, piment,
morat, and mead. The drink of the humbler classes partook of a more
choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and ale. The Norman
maxim for good living and plenty of it, was to “rise at five, dine at
nine, sup at five, and bed at nine, if you’d live to a hundred all
but one.” _Dinner_ at nine is, however, a contradiction of terms; for
_dinner_, as I have said, is the abbreviation of _dixième heure_, or
“ten o’clock,” the time at which all people sat down to a solid repast
in the days of the first Williams.

In the two following centuries, cooks and Kings launched into far
greater magnificence than had ever, hitherto, been seen in England.
Richard II. entertained ten thousand guests daily at his numerous
tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of Leicester, grandson of the
equally slow Henry III., is said to have spent twenty-two thousand
pounds of silver in one year, in eating, alone. His thirsty household
retainers drank no less than three hundred and seventy-one pipes of
wine, in the same space of time. At great banquets, the dishes were
reckoned by thousands, and Kings in vain dictated decrees denouncing
such dinners; for cooks and _convives_ considered them with contempt.
As a show of moderation, the old four meals a day were now reduced to
two; but these two were connected by such a savoury chain of intermeats
and refections, that the board was spread all day long, and guests were
never weary:--

  “Their life like the life of the Germans would be,
  _Du lit à la table; de la table au lit_.”

To have things “brennying like wildfire,” was the characteristic of
the cookery of the period. Confectionery of the richest sorts were
the lighter materials of meals, which were abundantly irrigated by
hippocras, piment, or _claret_, or the simpler and purer wines of
France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. Thus might a host say:--

  “Ye shall have rumney and malespine,
  Both ypocrasse and vernage wine;
  Mountrasse and wyne of Greke,
  Both algrade and despice eke,
  Antioche and bastarde,
  Pyment also and garnarde,
  Wyne of Greke and muscadell,
  Both clary, pyment, and Rochelle.”

Ricobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300, of the Italian
social condition in the age of Frederick II., illustrates the former
rudeness of the Italian manners, by showing that in those days “a man
and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden-handled
knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of
wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper. The
clothes of men were of leather unlined; scarcely any gold or silver
was seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three times a
week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink wine in
summer. A small stock of corn seemed riches. The portions of women were
small; their dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride of men
was to be well provided with arms and horses; that of the nobility to
have lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But now,
frugality has been changed for sumptuousness; every thing exquisite is
sought after in dress,--gold, silver, pearls, silks, and rich furs.”

The Household-Book of the Earl of Northumberland admirably illustrates
the interior and table life of the greater nobles of the period of
Henry VII. In this well-known and well-kept record, the family is
described as consisting of one hundred and sixty-six persons, masters
and servants; and hospitable reckoning is allowed for more than half
a hundred strangers who are expected daily to partake of the Earl’s
good cheer. The cost for each individual, for board and fuel, is
settled at twopence halfpenny daily, about one and sixpence of our
present money, if we take into account the relative value of money,
and the relative prices of provisions. The Earl allots for his annual
expenditure £1178. 17_s._ 8_d._ More than two-thirds of this is
consumed in meat, drink, and firing; namely, £797. 11_s._ 2_d._ The
book carefully states the number of pieces which the carver is to cut
out of each quarter of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stockfish
and salmon; and supervising clerks were appointed to see that this
was carried into effect, and to make due entry of the same in their
registers. An absent servant’s share is to be accounted for, and not
to be divided among the rest. The absentee, if he be on “my Lord’s”
business, received 8_d._ per day, board wages, in winter, and 5_d._ in
summer; with 2_d._ additional daily for the keep of a horse. A little
more than a quarter of wheat, estimated at 5_s._ 8_d._ per quarter, is
allowed for every month throughout the year; with this, 250 quarters
of malt, at 4_s._, (two hogsheads to the quarter,) and producing about
a bottle and a third of intermediate beer to each person, does not say
much for the liberality of the Lord, though it may for the temperance
of his retainers. One hundred and nine fat beeves are to be bought at
All-Hallow’s Tide, at 13_s._ 4_d._ each; a couple of dozen of lean
kine, at 8_s._, are to be bought at St. Helen’s, to be fattened for
service between Midsummer and Michaelmas. All the rest of the year,
nine weary months, the family was on salted provisions, to aid the
digestion of which, the Earl, so chary of his liquor, allows the
profuse aid of one hundred and sixty-six gallons of mustard. 647 sheep
at 1_s._ 8_d._, to be eaten salted between Lammas and Michaelmas;
25 hogs at 2_s._, 28 calves at 1_s._ 8_d._, 40 lambs at 10_d._ or
1_s._,--are other articles which seem to have been reserved rather for
the upper table than for the servants, whose chief fare was salted
beef, without vegetables, but with mustard _à discretion_! There was
great scarcity of linen, and the little there was, except that for the
chapel, not often washed. No mention is made of sheets; and though
“my Lord’s” table had eight “table-cloths” for the year, that of the
Knights had but one, and probably went uncovered while the cloth was
“at the wash.” If the ale was limited, the wine appears to have been
more liberally dispensed; and ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gascony
wine, at £4. 13_s._ 4_d._ per tun, show the bent of the Earl’s taste.
Ninety-one dozens of candles for the year, and no fires after Lady-Day,
except half-fires in the great room and the nursery; twenty-four fires,
with a peck of coals daily for each, (for the offices,) and eighty
chaldrons of coals, at 4_s._ 10_d._, with sixty-four loads of wood,
at 1_s._ a load,--are the provisions made for lighting and firing.
It must have been cold work to live in the noble Earl’s house in
Yorkshire, from Lady-Day till the warm summer came; which advent is
sometimes put off till next year. The family rose at six, or before;
for Mass was especially ordered at that hour, in order to force the
household to rise early. The dinner hour was ten A.M.; four P.M. was
the hour for supper; and at nine the bell rang for bed. I have omitted
the breakfast, which took place at seven, after Mass; when my Lord and
Lady sat down to a repast of two pieces of salt fish, and half-a-dozen
red herrings, with four fresh ones, or a dish of sprats, and a quart
of beer, and the same measure of wine. This was on meagre days. At
other seasons, half a chine of mutton, or of boiled beef, graced
the board of the delicate Earl and Countess, who sometimes forgot
that they had to dine at ten. Capons, at 2_d._ each, were only on the
Lord’s table, and plovers, at a penny, (at Christmas,) were deemed too
good for any digestion that was not carried on in a “noble” stomach.
Game generally is specified, but without intimation as to limit of
the board. No doubt the fragments were not rejected at the servants’
table; but much certainly went in doles at the gate. My Lord maintained
between twenty and thirty horses for his own use. His mounted servants
found their own; but their keep was at the noble master’s cost. Of
mounted servants, not less than three dozen attended their Lord on
a journey; and when this journey was for change of residence from
one mansion to another, the illustrious Percy carried with him bed
and bedding, household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen utensils
generally. The baggage waggon bore these _impedimenta_; and before and
behind them went chiefs and serving men, including in the array eleven
Priests,--two hundred and twenty-three persons in all,--and only two
cooks to look after their material happiness! No notice is taken of
plate; but the “hiring of pewter vessels” is mentioned; and with these
rough elements did the Earl construct his imperfect social system, so
far taking care for his soul as well as his body, inasmuch as that he
contributed a groat a year to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham, and
the same magnificent sum to the holy blood at Hales, on the express
condition of the interest of the Virgin for the promotion of the future
welfare of the Earl in heaven. Such is an outline of a nobleman’s
household in the good old days of Henry VII.

In the reign of the same King, fish was a scarce article, and for a
singular reason; namely, people destroyed them at an unlawful season,
for the purpose of feeding their pigs or manuring the ground. The
favourite wine at table was Malmsey: it came from Candy; and there was
a legal restriction against its costing more than four pounds per butt.
In this reign our cooks wrought at fires made with wood imported from
Gascony and Languedoc, whence also much wine was brought, but, by law,
only in English bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir William
Stanley, into whose hands fell nearly all the spoil of Bosworth Field;
and therewith he maintained a far more princely house and table than
his master.

In Pegge’s “_Cury_” there is an account of the rolls of provisions,
with their prices, in the time of Henry VIII.; and we find that, at the
dinner given at the marriage of Gervase Clifton and Mary Nevile, the
price of three hogsheads of wine (one white, one red, one claret) was
set down at £5. 5_s._

The dining-rooms--and, indeed, these were the common living rooms in
the greatest houses--were still uncomfortable places. The walls were
of stone, partially concealed by tapestry hung upon timber hooks,
and taken down whenever the family removed, (leaving bare the stone
walls,) lest the damp should rot it. It was a fashion that had lasted
for centuries; but it began to disappear when mansions ceased to be
fortresses. The tapestry, it may be observed, was suspended on a
wooden frame projecting from the wall, between which and the hangings
there was a passage wide enough to kill a man, as Hamlet did Polonius,
“behind the arras.” It was not till the reign of Charles I. that houses
were built with underground rooms; the pantry, cellars, kitchens, and
store-rooms were, previous to this reign, all on the ground floor; and
the officials presiding in each took there, respectively, their solemn
post on great days of state-dinners. There were certain days when the
contents of these several offices, meat and drink, were bountifully
supplied to every applicant. To revert to tapestry: we see the time of
its change, in the speech of Falstaff, who wishes his hostess to sell
her tapestry, and adopt the cheaper painted canvas which came from
Holland.

At this time, and, indeed, long after, our English yeomanry and
tradesmen were more anxious to invigorate their bodies by a generous
diet, than to dwell in well-furnished houses, or to find comfort in
cleanliness and elegance. “These English,” said the Spaniards who came
over with Philip II., “have their houses made of sticks and dirt; but
they fare commonly as well as the King.”

Previous to the age of Elizabeth, even the Monarch, well as he might
fare, and gloriously as he shone in pageants, was but simply lodged.
The furniture of the bed-room of Henry VIII. was of the very simplest;
and the magnificent Wolsey was content with deal for the material
of most of the furniture of his palace. But the community generally
was, from this period, both boarded and bedded more comfortably and
refinedly than before. The hours for meals were eight, noon, and six;
but “after-meats,” and “after-suppers,” filled up the intervals. It was
chiefly at the “after-supper” that wine was used. The dinner, however,
had become the principal meal of the day. It was abundant; but the
jester and harper were no longer tolerated at it, with their lively
sauce of mirth and music. It was the fashion to be sad, and ceremonious
dinners were celebrated in stately silence, or a dignified _sotto
voce_. Each guest took his place according to a properly marshalled
order of precedence; and, before sitting down to dinner, they washed
with rose-water and perfumes, like the parochial boards of half a
century ago, who used also to deduct the expenses of both dinners and
rose-water from the rates levied for the relief of the poor; this, too,
at a time when men who were _not_ parish authorities were being hanged
for stealing to the amount of a few shillings.

By the reign of Elizabeth, napkins had been added to table-cloths. The
wealthy ate the manchet, or fine wheaten bread; the middle classes
were content with a bread of coarser quality called “_chete_;” and the
ravelled, brown, or _maslin_ bread was consumed by those who could
afford to procure no better. There was a passion for strong wines at
this time. Of this, France sent more than half a hundred different
sorts, and thirty-six various kinds were imported from other parts of
Europe. About 30,000 tuns were imported yearly, exclusive of what the
nobility imported _free of duty_. The compound wines were in great
request; and ladies did not disdain to put their lips to distilled
liquors, such as _rosa-solis_ and _aqua-vitæ_. Ale was brewed stronger
than these distillations; and our ancestors drank thereof to an extent
that is terrific only to think of. Camden ascribes the prevailing
drunkenness to the long wars in the Netherlands, previous to which, we
had been held, “of all the northern nations, the most commended for
sobriety.” The barbarous terms formerly used in drinking matches, are
all of Dutch, German, or Danish origin, and this serves to confirm
Camden’s assertion. The statutes passed to correct the evil were
disregarded. James I. was particularly desirous to enforce these
statutes; but his chief difficulty lay in the fact, that he was the
first to infringe them.

In Elizabeth’s reign the “watching candles” of Alfred (to mark the
time) were in use in many houses. This is a curious trait of in-door
life. We have an “exterior” one, in the fact that the Vicar of Hurly,
who served Maidenhead, had an addition of stipend on account of the
danger he ran, in crossing the thicket, when he passed to or from the
church--and his inn. It was not a delicate period, and if caraways
always appeared at dessert, every one knew that they were there for
the kind purpose of curing expected flatulence in the guests.

In James the First’s reign, the fashion of Malmsey had passed away,
and the Hungarian red wine (_Ofener_) had taken its place. It came by
Breslau to Hamburg, where it was shipped to England. It is a strong
wine, and bears some resemblance to port.

In country-houses in the seventeenth century, the Knight or Squire
was head of a host of retainers, three-fourths of whom consumed the
substance of the master on whose estate they were born, without
rendering him much other service than drinking his ale, eating his
beef, and wearing his livery. Brief family prayers, and heavy family
breakfasts, a run with the hounds, and an early dinner, followed by
long and heavy drinking, till supper-time, when more feeding and
imbibing went on until each man finished his posset, or carried it
with him to bed,--such was the ordinary course: but it admitted of
exceptions where the master was a man of intellect, and then the
country-house was a temple of hospitality rather than of riot; and good
sense and ripe wit took the place of the sensuality, obscurity, and
ignorance that distinguished the boards where the Squire was simply a
“brute.”

Of the table traits of this century, the best examples are to be found
in Pepys and Evelyn. In the Diary of the former, may be seen what a
jolly tavern life could be led by a grave official, and no scandal
given. Evelyn takes us into better company. We find him at the Spanish
Ambassador’s, when his Excellency, by way of dessert, endeavoured to
convert him to the Roman Catholic Church. We go with him to the feast
where the Envoy from the Emperor of Morocco figured as so civilized a
gentleman, while the representative of the Czar of Muscovy comported
himself like a rude clown; and we dine with him at Lady Sunderland’s,
where the noble hostess had engaged, for the amusement of the guests,
a man who swallowed stones, and who not only performed the feat in
presence of the company, but convinced them there was no cheat, by
making the stones rattle in his stomach. But, _nous avons changé tout
cela_, and not only changed in taste, but improved in manners.

Pepys gives a curious account of a Lord Mayor’s dinner in 1663. It was
served in the Guildhall, at one o’clock in the day. A bill of fare
was placed with every salt-cellar, and at the end of each table was a
list of “the persons proper” there to be seated. Here is a mixture of
abundance and barbarism. “Many were the tables, but none in the hall,
but the Mayor’s and the Lords’ of the Privy Council, _that had napkins
or knives_, which was very strange. I sat at the merchant-strangers’
table, where ten good dishes to a mess, with plenty of wine of all
sorts; but it was very unpleasing that we had no napkins, nor change
of trenchers, and drank out of earthen pitchers and wooden dishes.
The dinner, it seems, is made by the Mayor and two Sheriffs for the
time being, and the whole is reckoned to come to £700 or £800 at
most.” Pepys took his spoon and fork with him, as was the custom
of those days with guests invited to great entertainments. “Forks”
came in with Tom Coryat, in the reign of James I.; but they were not
“familiar” till after the Restoration. The “laying of napkins,” as
it was called, was a profession of itself. Pepys mentions, the _day
before_ one of his dinner-parties, that he went home, and “there found
one laying of my napkins against to-morrow, in figures of all sorts,
which is mighty pretty, and, it seems, is his trade, and he gets much
money by it.” The age of Pepys, we may further notice, was the great
“supping age.” Pepys himself supped heartily on venison pasty; but his
occasional “next morning” remark was like that of Scrub: “My head
aches consumedly!” The dashing Duchess of Cleveland supped off such
substantials as roast chine of beef; much more solid fare than that of
the Squires in a succeeding reign, who were content, with Sir Roger de
Coverley, to wind up the day with “good Cheshire cheese, best mustard,
a golden pippin, and a pipe of John Sly’s best.”

A few years earlier, Laud had leisure to write anxiously to Strafford
on the subject of Ulster eels. “Your Ulster eels are the fattest and
fairest that ever I saw, and it’s a thousand pities there should be
any error in their salting, or any thing else about them; for how the
carriage should hurt them I do not see, considering that other salted
eels are brought as far, and retain their goodness; but the dried fish
was exceeding good.” There was a good deal of error in the preserving
of other things besides eels, if Laud had only known as much.

It may be mentioned as something of a “Table Trait,” illustrating the
popular appetite in the reign of Charles II., that he sent sea stores
to the people encamped in Moorfields; but they were so well provisioned
by the liberality of the nation, that they turned up their noses at
the King’s biscuits, and sent them back, “not having been used to the
same.” There was some ungrateful impertinence in this; but there was
less meanness in it than was shown by the great ladies of Queen Anne’s
reign, who were curious in old china, and who indulged their passion by
“swopping” their old clothes for fragile cups and saucers, instead of
giving the former to the poor.

Dryden speaks, in the Preface to his “Love Triumphant,” of a remarkable
trait of the time of William III. “It is the usual practice,” he says,
“of our decayed gentry, to look about them for some illustrious family,
and then endeavour to fix their young darling, where he may be both
well educated and supported.”

Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George the First’s reign.
“In latter days,” he says, “it has become the fashion to eat with
less ceremony and method. Every one chooses to carve for himself. The
learned manner of dissection is out of request; and a certain method
of cookery has been introduced, by which the anatomical science of
the table is entirely set aside. _Ragoûts_ and _fricassées_ are the
reigning dishes, in which every thing is so dismembered, and thrown out
of all order and form, that no part of the mess can properly be divided
or distinguished from another.” But we have come to a period that
demands a chapter to itself; and even with that implied space, we can
hardly do justice to the Table Traits of the Last Century.




TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY.


When Mr. Chute intimated to Horace Walpole that his “temperance diet
and milk” had rendered him stupid, Walpole protested pleasantly against
such an idea. “I have such lamentable proofs,” he says, “every day, of
the stupifying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted
a most religious veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine
that I here, (Houghton,) every day, see men who are mountains of roast
beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into the outlines of human
form, like the giant rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them
brandish their knives, in act to carve, and look on them as savages
that devour one another. I should not stare at all more than I do, if
yonder Alderman, at the end of the table, was to stick his fork into
his jolly neighbour’s cheek, and cut a brave slice of brown and fat.
Why, I’ll swear I see no difference between a country gentleman and a
sirloin: whenever the first laughs, or the latter is cut, there run out
just the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the sirloin does not ask quite
so many questions. I have an aunt here, a family piece of goods, an old
remnant of inquisitive hospitality and economy, who, to all intents and
purposes, is as beefy as her neighbours.”

Certainly, I think it may be considered that, in diet and in
principles, we have improved upon the fashion of one hundred and
ten years ago;--and, perhaps, the improvement in principles is a
consequence of that in diet. There was a profound meaning in the point
of faith of some old religionists, that the stomach was the seat of
the soul. However this may be, the “beefy” men of Walpole’s time had,
occasionally, strange ideas touching honour. Old Nourse, for instance,
challenged Lord Windsor, who refused to fight him, either with sword or
pistols, on the plea that Nourse was too aged a man. Thereupon Nourse,
in a fit of vexation and indigestion, went home from the coffee-house
and cut his throat! “It was strange, yet very English,” says Walpole.
Old Nourse must have had Japanese blood in him. At Jeddo, when a
nobleman feels himself slighted, he walks home, takes the sharpest
knife he can find, and rips himself open, from the _umbilicus_ to the
_trachea_!

Quite as certainly, strong diet and weak principles prevailed among
our great-grandsires and their dames. Lady Townshend fell in love with
the rebel Lord Kilmarnock, from merely seeing him at his trial. She
forthwith cast off her old lover, Sir Harry Nisbett, and became “as
yellow as a jonquil” for the new object of her versatile affection.
She even took a French master, in order that she might forget the
language of “the bloody English!” She was not so afflicted, but that
she could bear the company of gay George Selwyn to dine with her; and
he, believing that her passion was feigned, joked with her, on what
was always a favourite topic with himself,--the approaching execution.
Lady Townshend forthwith rushed from the table in rage and tears, and
Mr. Selwyn finished the bottle with “Mrs. Dorcas, her woman,” who
begged of him to help her to a sight of the execution! Mrs. Dorcas had
a friend who had promised to protect her, and, added she, “I can lie
in the Tower the night before!” This is a pretty dining-room interior
of the last century. As for George Selwyn, that most celebrated of
the diners-out of a hundred years ago, he said the pleasantest thing
possible at dessert, after the execution of Lord Lovat. Some ladies
asked him how he could be such a barbarian as to see the head cut
off. “Nay,” said he, “if that was such a crime, I am sure I have made
amends; for I went to see it sewed on again!” “George,” says Walpole,
“never thinks but _à la tête tranchée_; he came to town t’other
day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man that he would drop his
handkerchief for the signal.”

Selwyn kept his powers bright by keeping good company; while Gray the
poet was but indifferent society, from living reclusely, added to a
natural turn for melancholy, and “a little too much dignity.” Young,
a greater poet than Gray, was as brilliant in conversation as Selwyn
himself, as long as, like Selwyn, he polished his wit by contact with
the world. When he dined with Garrick, Quin, and George Anne Bellamy,
he was the sprightliest of the four; but when he took to realizing
the solitude he had epically praised, Young, too, became a proser.
Quin loved good living as much as he did sparkling conversation; and
Garrick, the other guest noticed above, has perfectly delineated Quin
the epicure in the following epigram, as he subsequently did Quin, the
man and brother of men, in his epitaph in Bath Abbey:--

  “A plague on Egypt’s art! I say;
  Embalm the dead, on senseless clay
    Rich wines and spices waste!
  Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I,
  Bound in a precious pickle, lie,
    Which I shall never taste?

  “Let me embalm this flesh of mine
  With turtle fat and Bordeaux wine,
    And spoil th’ Egyptian trade.
  Than Humphrey’s Duke more happy I;
  Embalm’d alive, old Quin shall die,
    A mummy, ready-made.”

A good many female mummies were prepared during the last century after
a similar receipt. Witness Walpole’s neighbour at Strawberry Hill, “an
attorney’s wife, and much given to the bottle. By the time she has
finished that and daylight, she grows afraid of thieves, and makes
her servants fire minute-guns out of the garret windows. The divine
Asheton,” he proceeds, “will give you an account of the astonishment we
were in last night at hearing guns. I began to think that the Duke (of
Cumberland) had brought some of his defeats from Flanders.”

Young denounces, in his “Satires,” both tea and wine, as abused by the
fair sex of the last century. In Memmia he paints Lady Betty Germain,
in the lines I have quoted under the head of “Tea;” and then, hurling
his shafts of satire at that which another poet has described as “cups
which cheer, but not inebriate,” he adds,--

  “Tea! how I tremble at thy fatal stream!
  As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame.
  What devastations on thy banks are seen!
  What shades of mighty names which once have been!
  A hecatomb of characters supplies
  Thy painted altar’s daily sacrifice.
  Hervey, Pearce, Blount, aspersed by thee, decay,
  As grains of finest sugars melt away,
  And recommend thee more to mortal taste:
  Scandal’s the sweetener of a female feast.”

And then, adverting to the ladies who, like Walpole’s “attorney’s
wife,” were much given to the bottle, the poet exclaims,--

  “But this inhuman triumph shall decline,
  And thy revolting Naiads call for wine;
  Spirits no longer shall serve under thee,
  But reign in thy own cup, exploded Tea!
  Citronia’s nose declares thy ruin nigh;
  And who dares give Citronia’s nose the lie?
  The ladies long at men of drink exclaim’d,
  And what impair’d both health and virtue blamed.
  At length, to rescue man, the generous lass
  Stole from her consort the pernicious glass.
  As glorious as the British Queen renown’d,
  Who suck’d the poison from her husband’s wound.”

Manners and morals generally go hand in hand; but those of the ladies
satirized by Young were not so bad as those of the French Princesses
of a few years before, when they and Duchesses were so addicted to
drinking, that no one thought it a vice, since royalty and aristocracy
practised it. The Dauphine of Burgundy is indeed praised by her
biographers as not drinking to any great excess during the three last
years of her life. But this was exceptional. The Duchess of Bourbon
and her daughters drank like dragoons; but the latter were unruly
in their cups, whereas the old lady carried her liquor discreetly.
Henrietta, Madame de Montespan, and the Princess di Monaco, were all
addicted, more or less, to tippling. The Duchess de Bourbon and Her
Grace of Chartres added smoking to their other boon qualities; and the
Dauphin once surprised them with pipes which had been _cullotés_ for
them by common soldiers of the Swiss Guard! In France, devotion even
was made a means towards drunkenness. Bungener tells us, in his “_Trois
Sermons sous Louis XV._,” that Monsieur Basquiat de la House owned a
small estate in Gascony, which produced a wine which no one would buy.
Being at Rome, as Secretary of an Embassy, he procured a body from the
catacombs, which he christened by the name of a saint venerated in his
part of the country. The people received it with great pomp. A _fête_
was appointed by the Pope, a fair by the Government, and the wine was
sold by hogsheads! It was a wine as thin as the beverage which Mr.
Chute lived on when he had the gout, at which time, says Walpole, “he
keeps himself very low, and lives upon very thin ink.”

There was a good deal of latitude of observation and conversation at
the dinner-tables of the last century; and the letter-writer I have
just cited affords us ample evidence of the fact. John Stanhope, of the
Admiralty, he informs us, “was sitting by an old Mr. Curzon, a nasty
wretch, and very covetous; his nose wanted blowing, and continued to
want it; at last Mr. Stanhope, with the greatest good breeding, said,
‘Indeed, Sir, if you don’t wipe your nose, you will lose that drop.’”

A hundred years ago, Walpole remarked that Methodism, drinking, and
gambling were all on the increase. Of the first he sneeringly says,
“It increases as fast as any religious nonsense did.” Of the second he
remarks, “Drinking is at the highest wine-mark;” and he speaks of the
third as being so violent, that “at the last Newmarket meeting, in the
rapidity of both gaming and drinking, a bank bill was thrown down, and,
nobody immediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a man who was
standing by!”

There was a love of good eating, as well as of deep drinking, even
among the upper classes of the last century. What a picture of a
Duchess is that of her Grace of Queensberry, posting down to Parson’s
Green, to tell Lady Sophia Thomas “something of importance;” namely,
“Take a couple of beefsteaks, clap them together as if they were for
a dumpling, and eat them with pepper and salt: it is the best thing
you ever tasted! I could not help coming to tell you this;”--and then
she drove back to town. And what a picture of a Magistrate is that of
Fielding, seated at supper with a blind man, a Drury-Lane Chloris,
and three Irishmen, all eating cold mutton and ham from one dish, on
a very dirty cloth, and “his worship” refusing to rise to attend to
the administration of Justices’ justice! It is but fair, however, to
Fielding to add, that he might have had better fare had he been more
oppressive touching fees. And, besides, great dignitaries set him but
an indifferent example. Gray, speaking of the Duke of Newcastle’s
installation at Oxford, remarks, that “every one was very gay and very
busy in the morning, and very owlish and very tipsy at night. I make
no exceptions, from the Chancellor to Blewcoat.” Lord Pembroke, truly,
was temperate enough to live upon vegetables; but the diet did not
improve either his temper or his morals. Ladies--and they were not over
delicate a century ago--as much dreaded sitting near him at dinner, as
their daughters and grand-daughters dreaded to be near the late Duke
of Cumberland, who was pretty sure to say something in the course of
dinner expressly to embarrass them. The vegetarian Lord Pomfret was so
blasphemous at tennis, that the Primate of Ireland, Dr. George Stone,
was compelled to leave off playing with him. For Primates handled the
rackets then, as Pope and Cardinals do now the cue. Pio Nono and the
expertest of the Sacred College play _la poule_ at billiards, after
dinner, with the view of keeping down the good Pontiff’s obesity. This
is almost as curious a trait as that of Taafe, the Irishman, who,
conceiving himself to have been insulted at a dinner, and not being
then able, as a Roman Catholic, to wear a sword, changed his religion,
and ran his adversary through the body. The confusion of ideas which
prompted a man to follow a particular faith, in order that he might
commit murder, was something like that which influenced the poor woman
who, suddenly becoming pious, after hearing a sermon from Rowland Hill,
went to a book-stall, and stole a Bible.

I have noticed the love of good eating, and the coarseness connected
with it. There was also a coarse economy attendant on it. The
Duchess of Devonshire would call out to the Duke, when both were
presiding at supper after one of their assemblies, “Good God, Duke!
don’t cut the ham; nobody will eat any;” and then she would relate
the circumstances of her private _ménage_ to her neighbour: “When
there’s only my Lord and I, besides a pudding, we have always a dish
of roast,”--no very dainty fare for a ducal pair. Indeed, there was
much want of daintiness, and of dignity, too, in many of those with
whom both might have been looked for as a possession. Lord Coventry
chased his Lady round the dinner-table, and scrubbed the paint off
her cheeks with a napkin. The Duke and Duchess of Hamilton were more
contemptible in their pomposity than their Graces of Devonshire were
in their plainness. At their own house they walked in to dinner before
their company, sat together at the upper end of their own table, ate
together off one plate, and drank to nobody beneath the rank of Earl.
It was, indeed, a wonder that they could get any one of any rank
to dine with them at all. But, in point of dinners, people are not
“nice” even now. Dukes very recently dined with a railway potentate,
in hopes of profiting by the condescension; and Duchesses heard,
without a smile, that potentate’s lady superbly dismiss them with an
“_au reservoir_!”--an expression, by the way, which is refined, when
compared with that taught by our nobility, a hundred years ago, to
the rich Bohemian Countess Chamfelt; namely, “D--n you!” and, “Kiss
me!” but it was apologetically said of her, that she never used the
former but upon the miscarriage of the latter. This was at a time when
vast assemblies were followed by vast suppers, vast suppers by vast
drinking, and when nymphs and swains reached home at dawn with wigs,
like Ranger’s in the comedy, vastly battered, and not very fit to be
seen.

Pope, in the last century, moralized, with effect, on the deaths of
the dissolute Buckingham and the avaricious Cutler; and the avarice
of Sir John was perhaps more detestable than any extravagance that
is satirized by Pope, or witticized by Walpole. But Sir John Cutler
was ingenious in his thrift. This rich miser ordinarily travelled on
horseback and alone, in order to avoid expense. On reaching his inn at
night, he feigned indisposition, as an excuse for not taking supper.
He would simply order the hostler to bring a little straw to his room,
to put in his boots. He then had his bed warmed, and got into it, but
only to get out of it again as soon as the servant had left the room.
Then, with the straw in his boots and the candle at his bed-side, he
kindled a little fire, at which he toasted a herring which he drew from
his pocket. This, with a bit of bread which he carried with him, and a
little water from the jug, enabled the lord of countless thousands to
sup at a very moderate cost.

Well, this sordidness was less culpable perhaps than slightly
overstepping income by giving assemblies and suppers. At the latter
there was, at least, wit, and as much of it as was ever to be found at
Madame du Deffand’s, where, by the way, the people did _not_ sup. “Last
night, at my Lady Hervey’s,” says Walpole, “Mrs. Dives was expressing
great panic about the French,” who were said to be preparing to invade
England. “My Lady Rochford, looking down on her fan, said, with great
softness, ‘I don’t know; I don’t think the French are a sort of people
that women need be afraid of.’” This was more commendable wit than that
of Madame du Deffand herself, who, as I have previously remarked, made
a whole assembly laugh, at Madame de Marchais’, when her old lover was
known to be dying, by saying as she entered, “He is gone; and wasn’t it
lucky? He died at six, or I could not possibly have shown myself here
to-night.”

Our vain lady-wits, however, too often lacked refinement. “If I drink
any more,” said Lady Coventry at Lord Hertford’s table, “if I drink
any more, I shall be ‘muckibus.’” “Lord!” said Lady Mary Coke, “what
is that?” “O,” was the reply, “it is Irish for _sentimental_!” In
those days there were no wedding breakfasts: the nuptial banquet was
a dinner, and bride and bridegroom saw it out. Walpole congratulates
himself that, at the marriage of his niece Maria, “there was neither
form nor indecency, both which generally meet on such occasions. They
were married,” he adds, “at my brother’s in Pall Mall, just before
dinner, by Mr. Keppel; the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. Keppel
and Charlotte, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady Betty Waldegrave, and I.
We dined there; the Earl and new Countess got into their post-chaise
at eight o’clock, and went to Navestock alone, where they stay till
Saturday night.” Walpole gives instances enough--and more than
enough--where matters did not go off so becomingly. Lords and Ladies
were terribly coarse in sentiment and expression; and the women were
often worse than the men. “Miss Pett,” says the writer whom I have so
often quoted, “has dismissed Lord Buckingham: _tant mieux pour lui_!
She damns her eyes that she will marry some Captain: _tant mieux pour
elle_.” This is a sample of Table Traits in 1760; and it was long
before manners and morals improved. The example was not of the best
sort even in high places. The mistress of Alfieri dined at Court, as
widow of the Pretender; and Madame du Barry was publicly feasted by our
potential Lord Mayor.

Some of the women were not only coarse in speech, but furies in act,
and often sharpers to boot. Thus, when “Jemmy Lumley,” in 1761, had
a party of ladies at his house, with whom, after dinner, he played
whist, from six at night till noon the next day, he lost two thousand
pounds, which, suspecting knavery, he refused to pay. His antagonist,
Mrs. Mackenzie, subsequently pounced upon him in the garden of an
inn at Hampstead, where he was about to give a dinner to some other
ladies. The sturdy “Scotchwoman,” as Gray calls her, demanded her
money, and, on meeting with a refusal, she “horsewhipped, trampled,
bruised,” and served him with worse indignities still, as may be seen
by the curious, in Gray’s Letter to Warton. Lumley’s servants only with
difficulty rescued their master from the fury, who carried a horse-whip
beneath her hoop. The gentlemen do not appear to have been so generous,
in their character of lovers, as their French brethren, who ruined
themselves for “_les beaux yeux_” of some temporary idol. Miss Ford
laughed consumedly at Lord Jersey, for sending her (“an odd first and
only present to a beloved mistress”) a boar’s head, which, she says, “I
had often the honour to meet at your Lordship’s table before ... and
would have eat it, had it been eatable.”

The public are pretty familiar with the Household-Book of the Earl of
Northumberland; and have learned much therefrom touching the Table
Traits of the early period in which it was written. A later Earl did
not inherit the spirit of organization which influenced his ancestor.
“I was to dine at Northumberland House,” says Walpole, in 1765, “and
went there a little after hour. There I found the Countess, Lady Betty
Mackinsy, Lady Strafford, my Lady Finlater,--who was never out of
Scotland before,--a tall lad of fifteen, her son, Lord Drogheda, and
Mr. Worseley. At five” (which is conjectured to have been the hour of
extreme fashion a century ago) “arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the
Lords had commenced to read the Poor Bill, which would take, at least,
two hours, and, perhaps, would debate it afterwards. We concluded
dinner would be called for; it not being very precedented for ladies
to wait for gentlemen. No such thing! Six o’clock came,--seven o’clock
came,--our coaches came! Well, we sent them away; and excuses were,
we were engaged. Still, the Countess’s heart did not relent, nor
uttered a syllable of apology. We wore out the wind and the weather,
the opera and the play, Mrs. Cornely’s and Almack’s, and every topic
that would do in a formal circle. We hinted, represented--in vain.
The clock struck eight. My Lady, at last, said she would go and order
dinner; but it was a good half-hour before it appeared. We then sat
down to a table of fourteen covers; but, instead of substantials,
there was nothing but a profusion of plates, striped red, green, and
yellow,--gilt plate, blacks, and uniforms. My Lady Finlater, who never
saw those embroidered dinners, nor dined after three, was famished.
The first course stayed as long as possible, in hopes of the Lords;
so did the second. The dessert at last arrived, and the middle dish
was actually set on, when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay arrived! Would
you believe it?--the dessert was remanded, and the whole first course
brought back again! Stay--I have not done! Just as this second first
course had done its duty, Lord Northumberland, Lord Strafford, and
Mackinsy came in; and the whole began a third time. Then the second
course, and the dessert! I thought we should have dropped from our
chairs with fatigue and fumes. When the clock struck eleven, we were
asked to return to the drawing-room, and take tea and coffee; but I
said I was engaged to supper, and came home to bed!” This dinner may
be contrasted with another given, at a later period, by a member of
the same house. The Nobleman in question was an Earl Percy, who was
in Ireland with his regiment,--the Fifth Infantry; and who, after
much consideration, consented to give a dinner to the officers in
garrison at Limerick. The gallant, but cautious, Earl ordered the
repast at a tavern, specifying that it should be for fifty persons, at
eighteen-pence per head. The officers heard of the arrangement, and
they ordered the landlord to provide a banquet at a guinea _per_ head,
promising to pay the difference, in the event of their entertainer
declining to do so. When the banquet was served, there was but one
astonished and uncomfortable individual at the board; and that was
the Earl himself, who beheld a feast for the gods, and heard himself
gratefully complimented upon the excellence both of viands and wines.
The astonished Earl experienced an easily-understood difficulty in
returning thanks when his health was drunk with an enthusiasm that
bewildered him; and, on retiring early, he sought out the landlord, in
order to have a solution of an enigma that sorely puzzled him. Boniface
told the unadorned and unwelcome truth; and the inexperienced young
Earl, acknowledging his mistake, discharged the bill with a sigh on
himself, and a cheque on his banker.

A host, after all, _may_ appear parsimonious without intending to
be so. “This wine,” said one of this sort to the late Mr. Pocock of
Bristol, who had been dining with him, “costs me six shillings a
bottle!” “Does it?” asked the guest, with a quaint look of gay reproof,
“then pass it round, and let me have another six-penn’orth!”

But, to return to our Table Traits of the Last Century. In 1753, on
the 4th of June, there was an installation of Knights of the Garter,
at Windsor Castle, followed by a grand dinner, and a ball. It would
seem as if the public claimed the right of seeing the _spectacle_
for which they had to pay; for we read that “the populace attempted
several times to force their way into the hall where the Knights were
at dinner, against the Guards, on which some were cut and wounded, and
the Guards fired several times on them, with powder, to deter them, but
without effect, till they had orders to load with ball, which made them
desist.” This is an ill-worded paragraph from the papers of the day;
but it is a graphic illustration of the manners of the period.

These few samples of what society was in the last century, would
suffice alone to show that it was sadly out of joint. What caused it?
Any one who will take the trouble to go carefully through the columns
of the ill-printed newspapers of the early part of the last century,
will find that drunkenness, dissoluteness, and the sword hanging on
every fool’s thigh, ready to do his bidding, were the characteristics
of the period. People got drunk at dinners, and then slew one another,
or in some other way broke the law. Lord Mohun and Captain Hall dined
together before they made their attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle;
and when defeated in their Tarquin-like endeavour, they slaughtered
poor Will Montford, the player, in the public streets, for no better
reason than that Montford admired the lady, and Hall was jealous of the
admirer. But neither copious dining, nor copious drinking, could make
a brave man of Mohun. In proof of this, it is only necessary to state
that before he fought his butchering duel with the Duke of Hamilton,
he spent the previous night feasting and drinking at the Bagnio, which
place he left in the morning, with his second, Major-General M’Carty,
as the “Post-boy” remarks, “seized with fear and trembling.” “The dog
Mohun,” as Swift styled him, was slain, and so was the Duke; but it is
uncertain whether the latter fell by the hand of his adversary, or the
sword of that adversary’s second. A few years later we read of Fulwood,
the lawyer, going to the play after dinner, drawing upon Beau Fielding,
running him through, rushing in triumph to another house, meeting
another antagonist, and getting slain by him, without any one caring to
interfere.

In one of the numbers of the “Daily Post” for 1726, I find it recorded
that a bevy of gallants, having joyously dined or supped together,
descended from a hackney-coach in Piccadilly, bilked the coachman,
beat him to a mummy, and stabbed his horses. Flushed with victory,
they rushed into a neighbouring public-house, drew upon the gallants,
terrified the ladies, and laughed at the mistress of the establishment,
who declared that they would bring down ruin upon a place noted for
“its safety and secrecy.” The succeeding paragraph in the paper
announces to the public that the Bishop of London will preach on the
following Sunday in Bow-church, Cheapside, on the necessity for a
reformation of manners!

The Clubs, and especially the “Sword Clubs,” with their feastings and
fightings, were the chief causes that manners were as depraved as they
were. After supper, these Clubs took possession of the town, and held
their sword against every man, and found every man’s sword against
them. The “Bold Bucks,” and the “Hell-Fires,” divided the Metropolis
between them. The latter, a comparatively innocent association, found
their simple amusement in mutilating watchmen and citizens. The “Bold
Bucks” took for their devilish device, “Blind and Bold Love,” and,
under it, committed atrocities, the very thought of which makes the
heart of human nature palpitate with horror and disgust. No man could
become a member who did not denounce the claims both of nature and God!
They used to assemble every Sunday at a tavern, close to the church
of St. Mary-le-Strand. During divine service, they kept a noisy band
of horns and drums continually at work; and, after service, they sat
down to dinner, the principal dish at which was a “Holy-Ghost pie!”
Assuredly the sermon of the metropolitan Prelate was much needed; but,
when preached, reformation did but very slowly follow, especially in
high places. At the very end of the century we hear of the Prince of
Wales dining at the Duke of Queensberry’s, at Richmond, with the last
mistress of Louis XV.; and nobody appears to have been scandalized. And
this was the characteristic of the time: vice was not only general,
but it did not very seriously offend the few exceptional individuals.
For the first three quarters of the century the epitaph of that time
might have been taken from the eulogium passed by a May-Fair preacher
in his Funeral Sermon upon Frederick, Prince of Wales: “He had no great
parts, but he had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into vices:
he was very generous; but I hear his generosity has ruined a great many
people; and then his condescension was such, that he kept very bad
company.”

I have, elsewhere, spoken of some of the roystering Clubs of the last
century; but I cannot refrain from adding two other instances here,
as examples of the Table Traits of the same period. The Calves’-Head
Club established itself in Suffolk-Street, Charing Cross, on the
anniversary of the martyrdom of King Charles, in the year 1735. The
gentlemen members had an entertainment of calves’ heads, some of which
they showed to the mob outside, whom they treated with strong beer.
In the evening, they caused a bonfire to be made before the door, and
threw into it, with loud huzzas, a calf’s head, dressed up in a napkin.
They also dipped their napkins in red wine, and waved them from the
windows, at the same time drinking toasts publicly. The mob huzzaed, as
well as their fellow brutes of the Club; but, at length, to show their
superior refinement, they broke the windows; and at length became so
mischievous, that the Guards were called in to prevent further outrage.

The above was, no doubt, a demonstration on the part of gentlemen of
republican principles. Some few years later, a different instance
occurs. The “Monthly Review,” May, 1757, mentions, that “seven
gentlemen dined at a house of public entertainment in London, and
were supposed to have run as great lengths in luxury and expense, if
not greater, than the same number of persons were ever known to do
before at a private regale. They afterwards played a game of cards, to
decide which of them should pay the bill. It amounted to £81. 11_s._
6_d._; besides a turtle, which was a present to the company.” This was
certainly a heavy bill. A party of the same number at the Clarendon,
and with turtle charged in the bill, would, in our days, find exceeding
difficulty in spending more than £5 each. Their grandsires expended
more than twice as much for a dinner not half as good.

It is only with the present century that old customs disappeared;
and, with regard to some of them, society is all the better for
their disappearance. Even plum-porridge did not survive the first
year of this half century; when the more solid and stable dynasty
of plum-pudding was finally established. Brand relates, that on
Christmas-Day, 1801, he dined at the Chaplain’s table, at St. James’s,
“and partook of the first thing served and eaten on that festival, at
that table, namely, a tureen full of rich, luscious plum-porridge. I
do not know,” he says, “that the custom is anywhere else retained.”
The great innovation, after this, was in the days of the Regent, when
oysters were served as a prelude to dinner. This fashion was adopted
by the Prince on the recommendation of a gentleman of his household,
the elder Mr. Watier, who brought it with him from France, and added
an “_experto crede_” to his recommendation. This fashion, however,
like others, has passed away; and oysters and drams, as overtures to
dinner, are things that have fallen into the domain of history.

There is a custom of these later days, much observed at Christmas time,
which deserves a word of notice. I allude to the “Christmas-tree.” The
custom is one, however novel in England, of very ancient observance
elsewhere. Its birth-place is Egypt. The tree there used was the
palm; and the ceremony was in full force long before the days of
Antony and Cleopatra. The palm puts forth a fresh shoot every month.
Its periodical leaves appear as regularly as those of Mr. Bentley’s
“Miscellany.” In the time of the winter solstice, when parties were
given in ancient Misraim, a spray of this tree, with twelve shoots,
was suspended, to symbolize the completion of another year. The custom
passed into Italy, where the fir-tree was employed for the purposes
of celebration; and its pyramidal tips were decorated with burning
candles, in honour of Saturn. This festival, the _Saturnalia_, was
observed at the winter solstice, from the 17th to the 21st of December,
and, during its continuance, Davus was as good a man as Chremes. The
_Sigillaria_, days for interchanging presents of figures in wax, like
those on the Christmas-tree, followed; and, finally, the _Juvenalia_,
when men became “boys with boys,” matrons turned children once again,
and young and old indulged in the solemn romps with which the festival
closed, and which _used_ to mark our own old-fashioned festivities at
Christmas time. That the Egyptian tree passed into Germany, may be
seen in the pyramids which sometimes there are substituted for the
tree. But the antique northern mythology has supplied some of the
observances. The _Juel Fesi_ was the mid-winter “Wheel Feast;” and the
wheel represented the circling years which end but to begin again. The
yule-log, as we call it, was the wheel-shaped log; in front of which
was roasted the great boar,--an animal hateful to the god of the sun,
but the flesh of which was religiously eaten by his worshippers. At
this festival presents were made, which were concealed in wrappers, and
flung in at open windows, emblematical, we are told, of the good, but
as yet hidden, things which the opening year had in store.

The Church generally made selection of the heathen festivals for its
own holy-days. In the early days, this was done chiefly to enable
Christians to be merry without danger to themselves. It would not
have been safe for them to eat, drink, and rejoice on days when Pagan
Governments put on mourning. They were glad, then, when these were
glad, and feasted with them, but holding other celebrations in view.
Hence the German tree; only, for the sun which crowned the Roman tree,
in honour of Apollo, the Germans place a figure of the Son of God; and,
for the Phœbus and his flocks at the foot, they substitute “the Good
Shepherd.” The waxen figures are also the _sigillaria_, but with more
holy impress. The _Saturnalia_ have a place in the table joys that
attend the exhibition of the tree, in presence of which joy is supposed
to wither.

In conclusion, I cannot but notice one other table custom, which is of
Teutonic origin. I allude to the Cabinet dinners given by Ministers
previous to the opening of Parliament, and at which the Royal Speech
is read, before it is declared in the presence of collective wisdom.
This, at all events, reminds us of the ancient German custom, mentioned
by Tacitus, who tells us, that the Teutonic legislators and warriors
consulted twice touching every question of importance: once, by night,
and over the bowl; and once, by day, when they were perfectly sober. Of
course, I would not insinuate that Ministers could possibly indulge too
fondly over their cups, like the Senators of the Hercynian forest; and
yet Viscount Sidmouth’s vice, as Lord Holland tells us, “was wine;”
and we have heard even of grave Lord-Stewards so drunk as to pull
down the Monarchs they held by the hand, and _should_ have supported.
The last unfortunate official who so offended, should have craftily
qualified his wine with water; and the mention of that subject reminds
me of the origin of wine and water, of which I will say a few words,
after adding one or two more traits of table manners.

I have spoken, in another page, of the unlucky exclamation touching
haddock, which caused the perpetual exile of Poodle Byng from Belvoir.
There was, however, no offence meant. How different was the case with
that impudent coxcomb, Brummell, who managed to be the copper-Captain
of fashion in London, when the true Captains were fighting their
country’s battles! When Brummell was living almost on the charity of
Mr. Marshall, he was one of a dinner party at that gentleman’s house,
whither he took with him, according to his most impertinent custom, one
of his favourite dogs. The “Beau” had, during dinner, helped himself
to the wing of a roasted capon stuffed with truffles. He chose to
fancy that the wing was tough, and, delicately seizing the end of it
with a napkin-covered finger and thumb, he passed it under the table
to his dog, with the remark, “Here, _Atout_! try if you can get your
teeth through this; for I’ll be d--d if I can.” Not less ungratefully
impudent was this gentleman-beggar on another occasion. A French family
had given a dinner entirely on his account. It was perfect in its
way. The ortolans came from Toulouse, the salmon was from the waters
in the neighbourhood of Rouen, and the company most select. A friend,
encountering him next day, asked how the dinner had gone off. Brummell
lifted up his hands, shook his head in a deprecatory manner, and said,
“Don’t ask me, my good fellow; but, poor man! he did his best.”

The two most recent examples of Table Traits of the present century,
that I have met with, illustrate the two extremes of society; and as
they refer to a period of not above a month ago, they will serve, not
inaptly, to close this section of my series. The first example is
that afforded by a dinner given at Boston, in Lincolnshire, to twenty
aged labourers. At this dinner, one of the gentlemen donors of the
feast, gave “the Ladies,” and called on the octogenarian Chairman to
return thanks. The old President, however, shook his head, with a
mixed melancholy and cunning air, as if he too well knew there was
nothing to return thanks for. The venerable “Vice” was then appealed
to; but his reply was, that the least said about the subject of the
toast would be the soonest mended. At length, a sprightly old man of
threescore and ten was requested to respond, he having a gay look about
him which seemed warranting gallantry; but he surprised the toast-giver
by answering, that “as for t’leddies, he’d nowt to say; for his part,
he’d never liked ’em.” This unchivalrous sentiment awoke, at last, the
spirit of a strip of a lad who was only sixty-five; and he responded
to the toast, with a touch of satire, however, in his remarks, that
left it uncertain whether he were so much a champion of the fair sex,
as the company had expected to find in him. The second “Trait” of the
customs of this country is presented by the dinner given in February
of the present year, by Earl Granville, the guests at which were Lord
Aberdeen, the Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Bright. There were not such
startling contrasts at the reconciliation dinner which brought Wilkes
and Johnson together, as at Earl Granville’s unique banquet. The host
and the Premier represented--the first, smiling courtesy; the second,
the most frigid severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest
contrast was in the persons of the Bishop and the “Friend:”--Dr.
Wilberforce, highest of Churchmen, briefest of Preachers, and twice as
much curled as the son of Clinias himself; while Mr. Bright, with every
hair as if a plummet depended at the end of it, hating the Church, but
not indifferent to _petits pâtés à la braise_, must have looked like
the vinegar of voluntaryism that would _not_ mingle with the oil of
orthodoxy. To have made this banquet complete, there should have been
two more guests,--Dr. Cumming and Dr. Cahill, with appropriate dishes
before each:--a plate of sweetbreads in front of the gentle apostle
of the Kirk; and a bowl of blood-puddings opposite the surpliced
Priest who has gained a gloomy notoriety by the “glorious idea,” to
which I have referred, of a massacre of English heretic beef-eaters,
by the light-dieted holders of Catholic and continental bayonets. But
Dr. Cahill, it may be hoped, is something insane, or would he have
deliberately recorded, as he did the other day in the “Tablet,” that it
were much better for Romanists to read immoral works than the English
Bible? His excellent reason is, that “the Church” easily forgives
immorality, but has no mercy for heresy. Well, well; we should not
like to catch a Confessor of this school sitting next our daughter
at dinner, and intimating that Holywell-street literature was better
reading than the English version of the Sermon on the Mount.--But let
us sweeten our imagination with a little Wine and Water.




WINE AND WATER.


Early ages, and the oldest poets, confessed, that wine was the gift
of the gods to men. The latter would appear to have abused the gift,
if we may believe Philonides the physician, who wrote a treatise “On
Perfumes and Garlands” (Περὶ Μύρων καὶ Στεφάνων). In this treatise he
asserts, that, when Bacchus brought the vine from the Red Sea into
Greece, men drank to such excess, that they became as beasts, and
incapable of performing manly duties. A party of these revellers were
once drinking by the sea-shore, when a sudden storm drove them into a
cave for shelter. They do not seem, however, to have been inveterate
tipplers; for, according to Philonides, they left their cups on the
beach. When the shower had passed, they found the wine in them mingled
with rain water; and, very much to their credit, they liked the mixture
so well, that they solemnly thanked the “good genius” who had sent it.
Hence, when wine was served at Grecian repasts, the guests invoked
this good genius; and when the turn came for wine mixed with water,
they acknowledged the benevolent inventor by the name of _Jupiter
Saviour_. I may take this opportunity to state, that, at one period, it
was the fashion to attend these drinking entertainments in a pair of
“Alcibiades,” or boots which had been rendered popular by being first
worn by the curled son of Clinias. Thus we see, that in our fashion
of conferring on boots the authorities of great names, we are doing
nothing original; and that men used to call for their “Alcibiades,” as
they do now for their “Wellingtons,” “Bluchers,” or “Alberts.”

To revert, for a moment, to the question of wine and water, I would
state, that it has been discussed in its separate divisions by German
writers, the substance of whose opinions I will venture to give in
verse, without desiring, however, to be considered as endorsing every
sentiment in full. As French music-books say, it is an “_Air à faire_.”

      Do you ask what now glows
      In this goblet of mine?
        Wine! wine! wine! wine!
      To the stream, do ye ask,
      Shall my cup-bearer go?
        No! no! no! no!

  Let water its own frigid nature retain;
  Since water it is, let it water remain!
  Let it ripple and run in meandering rills,
  And set the wheels going in brook-sided mills.
  In the desert, where streams do but scantily run,
  If so much they’re allow’d by the thirsty old sun,
  There water _may_ be, as it’s quaff’d by each man,
  Productive of fun to a whole caravan.
                      But ask what now glows, &c.

  Yes, water, and welcome, in billows may rise,
  Till it shiver its feathery crest ’gainst the skies;
  Or in dashing cascades it may joyously leap,
  Or in silvery lakes lie entranced and asleep;--
  Or, e’en better still, in full showers of hope,
  Let it gaily descend on some rich vineyard’s slope,
  That its sides may bear clusters of ripening bliss,
  Which, in Autumn, shall melt into nectar like this,
                      Like this that now glows, &c.

  Let it bear up the vessel that bringeth us o’er
  Its freight of glad wine from some happier shore.
  Let it run through each land that in ignorance lies:
  It the Heathen will do very well to baptize.
  Yes, water shall have ev’ry due praise of mine,
  Whether salt, like the ocean, or fresh, like the Rhine.
  Yes, praised to the echo pure water shall be,
  But wine, wine alone is the nectar for me!
                    For ’tis that which now glows
                    In this goblet of mine.
                      Wine! wine! wine! wine!
                    No attendant for me
                    To the river need go.
                      No! no! no! no!

The various merits and uses of the respective liquids are fairly
allowed in the above lines; but I may observe, that wine apologists,
generally, are sadly apt to forget, that there are such things as
conscience and to-morrow morning. For their edification and use, I
indite the following colloquy, to be kept in mind, rather than sung, at
all festivities where the “_Aqua Pumpaginis_” is held in abhorrence:--

  See the wine in the bowl,
    How it sparkles to-night!
  Tell us what can compete
    With that red sea of light;
  Which breathes forth a perfume
    That deadens all sorrow,
  And leaves us bless’d now,
      (Conscience _loquitur_,)
  “With a headache to-morrow!”

  Where are spirits like those
    That we find in the bowl,
  Shedding joy round our brows,
    Breathing peace to the soul?
  Our tongues feel the magic,
    There our strains, too, we borrow:
  We’re Apollos to-night,
      (Conscience _loquitur_,)
  “To be songless to-morrow!”

  O, this rare inspiration!
    How gay are the dreams
  Of the thrice triple blest
    Who may quaff of thy streams!
  It expels from the heart
    Sulky care, that old horror,
  And tells laughter to-night
      (Conscience, ashamed of the rhyme)
  “To wake sadness to-morrow!”

  Drink deep, though there be
    Thirstless fools, who may preach
  Of the sins of the bowl,--
    Do they act as they teach?
  If we’re sinners, what then!
    As we’re not friends to sorrow,
  We’ll be glad ones to-night,
      (Conscience _loquitur_,)
  “To be sad ones to-morrow!”

  Ah! that was old Conscience:
    _Him_ we’ll drown in the wine!
  Plunge him in! hold him down!
    Ah! he dies!--now the Nine
  May, to write in his praise,
    From our Helicon borrow.
  He’s done talking to-night;
      (Conscience, from the bowl,)
  “You shall hear me to-morrow!”

Finally, being on Pegasus, and he ambling along through this chapter
of Wine and Water, I will take the opportunity, as connected with my
subject, of doing justice to a flower whose “capability,” as Mr. Browne
used very properly to say, has been overlooked,--I mean the tulip:--

  Praise they who will the saucy vine,
  With her thousand rings and her curls so fine!
              But I fill up
              To the tulip-cup,
  All looking as though it were bathed in wine.
              Ah, show me the flower,
              In vale or bower,
  That looks half so well as this bowl of mine!
    O, who this night will fail to fill up,
    Or to sing in praise of the tulip-cup?

  Praise they who will the willow-tree,
  With her drooping neck and her tresses free,
              That bend to the brink
              Of the brook, and drink
  Of a liquid that never will do for me!
              While the tulip-cup
              Is for ever held up,
  As though she could drink for eternity.
    And that is the very best bowl for me,
    Who hate the sickly willow-tree!

  The water-lily praise who will:
  Of water we know that she loves her fill.
              But what, pray, is she
              To the tulip, that we
  Have loved for so long, and love so well still?
              Ah! who doth not think her
              A mere water-drinker,
  That quaffs but such wine she can get from the rill?
    Then fill up to-night to the tulip tall,
    Who holds forth her cups, and can drain them all!

See how naturally we drop out of the subject of “Wine and Water,” into
that of “Wine,” to which we now, reverently, yet joyously, address
ourselves.




THE BIRTH OF THE VINE, AND WHAT HAS COME OF IT.


The birth of the vine was in this wise. On the day of the creation,
the trees vied with each other in boasting; and each exulted in the
enjoyment of his own existence. “The Lord himself,” said the lofty
cedar, “planted me, and in me has he united stability and fragrance,
strength and durability.” “Me,” said the shade-spreading palm, “hath
the beneficence of Jehovah appointed for a blessing, joining together
in me utility and beauty.” Then the apple-tree spoke: “As a bridegroom
among youths, so am I resplendent among the trees of the woods.” “And
I,” said the myrtle, “stand among the lowly bushes, like a rose among
thorns.” In this manner boasted they all, the olive and the fig; yea,
the pine even, and the fir exulted.

The vine alone, in silence, stooped to the ground. “It seems,” said
she to herself, “as if every thing were denied me,--stem and branch,
blossom and fruit; but, such as I am, I will hope and wait.” Thus
speaking, she sank to the earth, and her branches wept.

But not long did she thus wait and weep; for, behold, cheerful man, the
earthly god, drew nigh unto her. He saw a weak plant, the plaything of
the breeze, sinking under its own weight, and pining for assistance.
Touched with compassionate feeling, he upheld it, and trained the
delicate tree over his own bower. More freely now sported the air
among its branches. The warmth of the sun penetrated the hard green
berries, preparing therein the delicious juice,--a drink for gods and
men. Laden with clustering grapes, the vine now bowed herself before
her lord, and the latter tasted of her refreshing sweets, and named her
his friend, his own grateful favourite. It was now that the proud trees
envied her, but many of them lived on in sterility, while she rejoiced,
full of gratitude at her slender growth, and patient humility; and
therefore it is, that it is given to her to make glad the heart of
sorrowing man, to elevate the cast-down spirit, and to cheer the
afflicted.

“Despair not,” says Herder, who thus tells the old traditionary story
of the vine,--“Despair not, O thou that art deserted, but endure
patiently. Sweet streams issue from unlikely sources; and the feeble
vine affords the most potent draught in the world.”

Let us, however, turn from poetical tradition to prosaic reality. The
vine is, by birth, a Persian. Its cradle was on the sunny slopes of
the hilly regions on the south shores of the Caspian Sea. There, in
the Caucasus, and in Cashmere, the wild vine still climbs and clings
to the very necks of the most towering trees. Its life-blood in those
regions is seldom turned to evil purpose. In Caubul it is taken less
in potions than in powder. The Caubulese dry and grind it to dust, and
eat thereof, finding it a pleasant acid. This is half matter of taste
and half matter of medicine, just as over-wearied digestions in Germany
drive their wretched owners into vineyards, to abstain from meat, and
live, for a while, upon raisins. Indeed, the vine was never meant
entirely for enjoyment. It is one of the most perfect of chymists; and
if it offers grapes in clusters, its twigs afford carbonate of potash,
serviceable for many purposes, and, among others, for correcting the
acidity brought on by too free indulgence in the fruit, or in its
expressed liquid.

In the olden days, when the Patriarchs worshipped Heaven in the
“cathedral of immensity,” Palestine was renowned for the glory of
its grapes. There were none other to compare with them upon earth.
When the desert-treaders were waiting the return of their emissaries,
whom they had sent from Kadesh-Barnea to spy the Promised Land, their
thirsty impatience was exchanged for delight at beholding their agents
re-appear, bearing between them, upon poles, gigantic clusters,--the
near fountains whence their dried up souls might draw new life and
vigour. The grapes of Palestine are still remarkable for their great
size. Clusters are spoken of, each of which exceeds a stone in weight;
and vines are mentioned, whose stems measured a foot and a half
in diameter, and whose height reached to thirty feet; while their
branches afforded a tabernacle of shade, to the extent of thirty feet
square. But it could not have been from such a vine that the men from
Kadesh-Barnea collected the grapes which they could scarcely carry.
The Welbeck grapes which the Duke of Portland sent to the Marquess
of Rockingham, were of Syrian origin; and these--on a single bunch,
weighing nineteen pounds, and measuring three-and-twenty inches long,
with a maximum diameter of nearly twenty inches--were borne upon a pole
a distance of twenty miles, by four labourers; two to carry, and two
to relieve. So that the conveying grapes in this fashion may have been
more on account of their delicacy than of their weight. The Hampton
Court vine, too, produces clusters of great weight, and covers a space
of not less than 2,200 feet.

The vine has been figuratively employed as an emblem of fruitfulness,
of security, and peace; and no doubt can exist of its having been
cultivated at a very early period. Noah planted the vine immediately
after the Deluge; and, from the first thing planted, sin came again
into the world, bringing with it widely-extending consequences. Bread
and wine are mentioned in Genesis. Pharaoh’s chief butler dreamed
of a vine with three branches; and the Israelites (in Numbers)
complained that Moses and Aaron had brought them out of Egypt into a
dry and barren land, where there were neither figs nor vines. So, in
after-years, the companions of Columbus sailed tremblingly with their
calm Captain over trackless seas, and murmured at him for bringing them
from the olives and vines of Spain, to the very confines of creation,
where terror reigned, and death sat enthroned.

Jacopo di Bergamo gives a singular account of the reason which induced
Noah to plant the vine. The Patriarch did so, he says, because he saw
a goat in Sicily eat some wild grapes, and afterwards fight with such
courage, that Noah inferred there must have been virtue in the fruit.
He planted a vine, therefore, and--wherefore is not told--manured it
with the blood of a lion, a lamb, a swine, and a monkey, or ape. But
this, perhaps, only signifies that, by drinking wine, men become bold,
confiding or meek, filthy or obscene.

It is stated by Theodoret, that Noah himself, after pressing the
grapes, became intoxicated through inexperience, as he had been
a water-drinker for six centuries! The sin of Lot is supposed to
have been committed, not merely under the influences of wine, but
of a maddening and drugged draught. The evil power of wine is well
illustrated by the story of the Monk, to whom Satan offered a choice of
sins,--incest, murder, or drunkenness. The poor Monk chose the last, as
the least of the three; and, when he was drunk, he committed the other
two.

Commentators pronounce our rendering under the single word “wine,”
the thirteen distinct Hebrew terms used in the Bible to distinguish
between wines of different sorts, ages, and condition, as a defect
of great magnitude; and no doubt it is so. The knowledge of mixing
wines appears to have been extensively applied by the ancient people;
and it is said of the beautiful Helen, that she learned in Egypt the
composition of the exhilarating, or rather, stupefying, ingredients
which she mixed in the bowl, together with the wine, to raise the
spirits of such of her guests as were oppressed with grief. I may
notice, too, here, that our word _shrub_, or _syrup_, is an Eastern
word. In Turkey, a SHIRUB-JEE is simply a “wine-seller.”

Yes, despite the Prophet, the Turks drink wine more than occasionally,
and under various names. Tavernier speaks of a particular preparation
of the grape drunk by the Grand Seignior, in company with the ladies of
the seraglio; and a similar beverage, it is conjectured, was quaffed by
Belshazzar and his concubines out of the holy vessels, and was offered
in vain to the more scrupulous Daniel. It was a rich and royal drink,
made strong by the addition of drugs; and the object of drinking the
potent mixture was the same as that which induced Conrad Scriblerus
and the daughter of Gaspar Barthius to live for a whole year on goat’s
milk and honey. Either mixture was better than that of the Persians,
who “fortified” their wines, or syrup of sweet wines, by adding to them
the very perilous seasoning of _nux vomica_. But none of these were
so curious as the “wine-cakes” eaten by Mr. Buckingham: these were, I
suppose, made of wine preserves. But pure wine may be eaten, or rather,
be rendered harder than any of our common food. Thus we hear of Russian
troops being compelled, in very hard winters, to cut out their rations
of wine from the cask with a hatchet.

I think it is the renowned Dissenter, Toplady, who remarks, that the
only sarcastic passage in Scripture is to be found in the cutting
speech of Elisha to the Priests of Baal; “Is not Baal a god, seeing
that he eateth much meat?” There is, however, another ironical passage,
in reference to wine. “Give _Shechar_ unto him who is ready to
perish,” is the satirical speech of Lemuel’s mother, who warns her
royal son against the deceitful influences of intoxicating beverages,
representing them as especially destructive to those who are charged
with the government of nations; and then ironically points to the man
who foolishly concludes, that in the sweet or strong drink he may bury
all memory of the cares and anxieties brought upon him by his own
profligacy.

There is, however, a difference of opinion touching the spirit in which
the last words quoted from Scripture are used. The Rabbins interpret
the passage as a command to administer wine to the individual about to
suffer death. Thus wine mingled with myrrh was offered to One of whom
the Gospel records, that He refused what His enemies presented.

The custom of offering doomed criminals a last earthly draught of
refreshment is undoubtedly one of considerable antiquity. The right
of offering wine to criminals on their passage to the scaffold was
often a privilege granted to religious communities. In Paris, the
privilege was held by the convent of Filles-Dieu, the Nuns of which
kept wine prepared for those who were condemned to suffer on the gibbet
of Montfaucon. The gloomy procession halted before the gate of the
monastery, the criminal descended from the cart, and the Nuns, headed
by the Lady Abbess, received him on the steps with as much, perhaps
more heartfelt ceremony than if he had been a King. The poor wretch
was led to a crucifix near the church door, the feet whereof he humbly
kissed. He then received, from the hands of the Superior, three pieces
of bread, (to remind him of the Trinity,) and _one_ glass of wine
(emblem of Unity). The procession then resumed its dread way to the
scaffold.

Elie Berthet tells us of a poor wretch, who, on being offered the
usual refreshment, quietly swallowed the wine, and coolly put the
bread in his pocket. When again in the cart, his observant Confessor
asked him his reason for the act. “I suppose, Father,” answered the
moribund, “that the good sisters furnished me with the bread that it
may serve me in paradise; on earth, at all events, it can no longer
be of use to me.” “Be of good cheer,” said another Confessor, who was
encouraging a criminal on the _Grève_; “be of good cheer. To-night you
will sup in paradise.” “_Tenez, mon Père_,” answered the poor fellow;
“_allez-y-vous à ma place; car, pour moi, je n’ai pas faim_.” This
incident has been made good use of by the “ballad” writers both of
England and France.

“Bowl-yard,” St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, preserves in its name the
memory of a similar custom in England. This yard, or alley, adjacent
to the church, is a portion of the site of the old Hospital for
Lepers, the garden of which was a place of execution. Lord Cobham,
under Henry V., and Babington and his accomplices, for conspiring
against Elizabeth, were executed here. Stow tells us that, “at this
hospital, the prisoners conveyed from the city of London toward Tyburn,
there to be executed for treason, felonies, or other trespasses,
were presented with a great _bowl_ of ale, thereof to drink at their
_pleasure_, (?) as to be their last refreshment in this life.” In
later days, the criminals were sometimes supplied by their friends
from the public-houses on the line of road. In one case, a convict
happily tarried drinking for a longer space of time than usual. The
rope was just round his neck, when the arrival of a reprieve saved him.
Had he drunk a glass less, he would have been hanged a moment sooner;
and society would thus have been deprived of his valuable services.
He was a luckier man than the saddler in Ireland, who, on his way to
the gibbet, refused the ale and wine offered him on the road, who was
accordingly very rapidly dispatched, and for whom a reprieve arrived a
minute too late for him to profit by it. Hence the proverb, applied
by those who press reluctant people to drink, “Ah, now go away wid
you. Ye’re like the obs’inate saddler, who was hanged for refusing
his liquor.” It certainly was not a custom with Irish convicts to
decline the “thrink,” before trial or after. “The night before Larry
was stretch’d,” is a slang lyric, graphically illustrative of the
grace with which Irish criminals took leave of life. The most singular
thing, however, connected with the popular lay in question, is, that it
was written by a Clergyman. But, at the time of its production, such
authorship excited no surprise in the literary public. The “cloth”
was still of the quality of that in which Fielding’s Newgate Chaplain
walked; and he, it will be remembered, was a pious gentleman, who
candidly avowed that he was the rather given to indulge in punch, as
that was a liquor nowhere spoken against in Scripture!

But it was not English or Irish Chaplains, of the olden time, who stood
by themselves in their respect for good liquor. If that reverend and
rubicund gentleman, Walter de Mapes, wrote the best Latin drinking-song
that Bacchanalian inspiration ever produced, so did a German Prelate
preach the best sermon on the same text. I allude to the Bishop of
Triers, or Trèves. Here is an odour, caught by the way, of the full
bottle of counsel which he poured out to his hearers:--

“Brethren, to whom the high privilege of repentance and penance has
been conceded, you feel the sin of abusing the gifts of Providence.
But, _abusum non tollit usum_. It is written, ‘Wine maketh glad the
heart of man.’ It follows, then, that to use wine moderately is our
duty. Now there is, doubtless, none of my male hearers who cannot drink
his four bottles without affecting his brain. Let him, however,--if
by the fifth or sixth bottle he no longer knoweth his own wife,--if
he beat and kick his children, and look on his dearest friend as an
enemy,--refrain from an excess displeasing to God and man, and which
renders him contemptible in the eyes of his fellows. But whoever, after
drinking his ten or twelve bottles, retains his senses sufficiently
to support his tottering neighbour, or manage his household affairs,
or execute the commands of his temporal and spiritual superiors, let
him take his share quietly, and be thankful for his talent. Still, let
him be cautious how he exceed this; for man is weak, and his powers
limited. It is but seldom that our kind Creator extends to any one the
grace to be able to drink safely sixteen bottles, of which privilege
he hath held me, the meanest of his servants, worthy. And since no
one can say of me that I ever broke out in causeless rage, or failed
to recognise my household friends or relations, or neglected the
performance of my spiritual duties, I may, with thankfulness and a good
conscience, use the gift which hath been intrusted to me. And you, my
pious hearers, each take modestly your allotted portion; and, to avoid
all excess, follow the precept of St. Peter,--‘Try all, and stick by
the best!’”

The sermon is not a bad illustration of what was, and remains,
historical fact. The first Archbishop of Mayence was the Englishman
Boniface; and most of his successors might have been characterized by
his name. They were more powerful than the Emperors, and more stately
than Moguls. The Canons of the Cathedral, supported by its enormous
revenues, lived a jovial life. The Pope, indeed, reproved them for
their worldly and luxurious habits; but they uproariously returned for
answer, “We have no more wine than is needed for the Mass; and not
enough to turn our mills with!”

_Good_ living, as it was erroneously called, was certainly, at one
time, an universal observance in Germany, when the sole wish of man
was, that he might have short sermons and long puddings. When this
wish prevailed, every dining-room had its _faulbett_, or sot’s couch,
in one corner, for the accommodation of the first couple of guests
who might chance to be too drunk to be removed. Indeed, in German
village-inns, the most drunken guests were, in former days, by far
the best off; for, while they had the beds allotted them, as standing
in most need of the same, the guests of every degree, whether rich
or poor, the perfectly sober--wherever such phenomena were to be
found--and those not so intoxicated but they could stagger out of the
room, all lodged with the cows among the straw.

Probably, no country on the earth presented such scenes, arising from
excessive drinking, as were witnessed in Saxony and Bohemia, a few
generations back. These scenes were so commonly attended by murder,
or followed by death, that it was said to be better for a man to fall
among the thickest of his enemies fighting, than among his friends when
drinking. There were deadly brawls in taverns, deadly drunken feuds
in the family circle, and not less deadly contentions in the streets.
When the city-gates were closed at night, the crowds of drunkards,
issuing to their homes in the suburbs, were met by as dense and drunken
a crowd, returning from their revels in the country. And then came the
insulting motion, the provoking word, the hard blow, and the harder
stab. Then fell the wounded and the dead; then rose the shrieks of
women and of children, and, loud above them, the imprecations and
blasphemies born in the wine-sodden brains of men. Suddenly, a shot or
two is fired from the walls, right into the heaving mass below. And
then ensue the flying of the people, and the venting of impotent rage
from the rash and resolute. But, gradually, the two opposing streams
glide through each other, the gates are at length closed; and, by the
light of the moon, on the almost deserted esplanade, may be observed,
stretched on the ground, some half-dozen human forms. Some of these are
dead, some are still drunken and helpless, and both equally uncared for.

This is no overdrawn picture of an ancient German period. It is on
record that once, on the banks of the Bohemian Sazawa, a party of
husbandmen met for the purpose of drinking twelve casks of wine. There
were ten of them who addressed themselves to this feat; but one of the
ten attempting to retire from the contest before any of his fellows,
the remaining nine seized, bound him, and roasted him alive on a spit.
The murderers were subsequently carried to the palace for judgment; but
the Duke’s funeral was taking place as they entered the hall, and the
Princes who administered justice were all so intoxicated, that they
looked upon the matter in the light of a joke that might be compensated
for by a slight fine.

There was a joyous revelry at that time in every direction. A father
would not receive a man for a son-in-law who could not drink; and
in Universities the conferring of a degree was always followed by a
carouse, the length of which was fixed, by College rules, as not to
exceed eight hours’ duration. Yet, during this generally dissolute
period, a strange custom was prevalent at the tables of Nuremberg. In
all well-regulated households, there used to hang a little bell beneath
the dining-table; and this bell was struck by the master of the family,
if he were sober enough, whenever any one uttered an unseemly phrase.

Even so, in public, a voice of indignation was sometimes raised against
the profligacy of the period. The voice to the people at large was as
the bell to the guests at Nuremberg. Its effects who can tell? It may
have induced Luther to be content with dignified Virgil rather than
with unclean Plautus; it may have driven the Monk Schwartz from the
refectory to the alembic; and it may have called Gutenberg from the
brutalities of the camp to the wonders of the printing-press. In the
two latter cases, the consequences bear a very tipsy appearance; for it
was a soldier who invented printing, and a Monk who first manufactured
gunpowder!

Let us not hasten to condemn our fellows of the olden time and distant
land. Manners as fearfully outraging prevailed but very recently
among young Englishmen. M. de Warenne, a French officer in our Indian
army, describes the manners and customs there prevalent as any thing
but edifying. In his “_Inde-Anglaise_,” he describes himself, on one
occasion, as being disinclined for study, and consequently joining a
party of his comrades who were at the moment occupied in an unreserved
enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. They were from fifteen to
twenty in number, married and single, but all young, full of hope, good
prospects, and gaiety. Deep were the libations made by this riotous
company, seated at a festive board in the open air, looked down upon by
a brilliant moon, and gently fanned by the evening breeze.

“While the attendant servant,” says the author, “poured out, with
Indian profusion, fresh supplies of tea, coffee, beer, punch, and grog,
a dense vapour rose from our cigars, and joyous shouts rang from every
lip at the conclusion of songs, bacchanalian and anacreontic. Toasts
succeeded each other rapidly, alternately exciting the laughter or
approbation of the carousers. One of them caused in me, at the time,
a singular impression. A young, wild-brained fellow, in pouring out
a bumper, called on us to fill our glasses, in order to sanction the
strange wish of a rash ambition,--‘A bloody war, and a sickly season!’”

The blasphemous sentiment, as M. de Warenne rightly terms it, was
drunk with enthusiasm; and the gay and thoughtless drinkers had yet
the cup to their lips, when one of them was stricken with the cholera,
the presence of which in camp was hardly known;--the next day the
funeral salute was fired over his grave. The author adds, that the
music played on returning from the funeral was joyously and daily
hummed by the daily diminishing survivors. He says that there was a
mockery in the waltzes they continued to dance; for death was also
daily decreasing their orchestra. The stricken, we are told, felt
themselves relieved from further anxiety, recovered their temporarily
shaken self-possession, and died with indifference. The strong who
lived are described as, for the most part, diverting their thoughts,
outraging decency, and defying God, by composing or chanting songs
whose inspiration certainly savours of hell. Here is a specimen of one
of these devil’s canticles, roared over wine, to frighten away the
cholera:--


I.

  “We meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
    And the walls around are bare;
  As they shout back our peals of laughter,
    It seems as the dead were there.
  Then stand to your glasses!--steady!
    We drink ’fore our comrades’ eyes;
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


II.

  “Not here are the goblets glowing,
    Not here is the vintage sweet;
  ’Tis cold, as our hearts are growing,
    And dark as the doom we meet.
  But stand to your glasses!--steady!
    And soon shall our pulses rise;
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


III.

  “There’s many a hand that’s shaking,
    And many a cheek that’s sunk;
  But soon, though our hearts are breaking,
    They’ll burn with the wine we’ve drunk.
  Then stand to your glasses!--steady!
    ’Tis here the revival lies;
  Quaff a cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


IV.

  “Time was, when we laugh’d at others,
    We thought we were wiser then:
  Ha! ha! let them think of their mothers,
    Who hope to see them again.
  No! stand to your glasses!--steady!
    The thoughtless is here the wise;
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


V.

  “Not a sigh for the lot that darkles,
    Not a tear for the friends that sink;
  We’ll fall ’mid the wine-cup’s sparkles,
    As mute as the wine we drink.
  Come! stand to your glasses!--steady!
    ’Tis this that the respite buys;
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


VI.

  “Who dreads to the dust returning?
    Who shrinks from the sable shore,
  Where the high and haughty yearning
    Of the soul can sting no more?
  No! stand to your glasses!--steady!
    This world is a world of lies!
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!


VII.

  “Cut off from the land that bore us,
    Betray’d by the land we find,
  When the brightest are gone before us,
    And the dullest are most behind,--
  Stand! stand! to your glasses!--steady!
    ’Tis all we have left to prize!
  One cup to the dead already;
    Hurrah for the next that dies!”

After this, the most rigid examiner of public morals in all countries
need not exclusively frown on the old Germans, nor on _their_ profane
canticle, the burthen of which is:--

      “_Gaudeamus, igitur, juvenes dum sumus!
      Post jucundam juventutem.
      Post molestam senectutem.
  Nos habebit, nos habebit, nos habebit tumulus!_”

There is, however, more reason, and healthy sentiment, and pure
principle, in such lines as the following,--extracted from Walter
Savage Landor’s “Last Fruit off an Old Tree,”--than in reams of such
fiery invocations to quaff deeply as those cited above. Hear the old
man:--

  “The chrysolites and rubies Bacchus brings,
    To crown the feast where swells the broad-vein’d brow,
  Where maidens blush at what the minstrel sings,
    They who have courted, may court now.

  “Bring me a cool alcove, the grape uncrush’d,
    The peach of pulpy cheek and down mature;
  Where ev’ry voice, but bird’s or child’s, is husht,
    And ev’ry thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure.”

There was a Persian sage, whose philosophy was of a different
complexion from that of the eloquent moralist of “the old garden
near Bath.” “In what can I best assist thee?” demanded the Minister,
Nizam-al-Mulk, as he warmly greeted his friend, Omar Keyoomee. “Place
me,” said Omar, enamoured of poetry and ease, “where my life may pass
without care or annoyance, and where wine, in abundance, may inspire my
muse.” A pension was accordingly assigned him in the fertile district
of Nishapour, where Omar lived and died. His tomb still exists, and
Mr. J. B. Fraser, in his “Persia,” informs us that he heard Omar’s
story told over his grave by a brother rhymester, and a most congenial
spirit. The system of Omar was explained by himself, in something after
this fashion:--


  I ask not for much: let the miser seek wealth;
    Let the proud sigh for titles and fame:--
  All the riches I ask are a fair share of health,
    And the hope of a true poet’s name.
  Let the flatterer talk of his worth to the Shah,--
    Of his greatness, too, all the day long;--
  I envy them not, for I love better far
    To pay my poor tribute in song.

  A kaftan of honour! a gem from the King!
    To be gain’d in the field or divan?
  Ah! rather around me the bright mantle fling
    Of the poets of gay Laristan.
  Let the gems be for those of the glittering crowd,
    Who would die, the Shah Inshah to please;
  But _I’m_ not ambitious, I never was proud,
    I sigh but for sherbet and ease.

  Do I wish for command in dark history’s page,
    Do I long in fond record to shine?
  Yes, let me have sway, till the last sigh of age,
    Over cohorts of old Shiraz wine.
  And as for renown, it may be very well,
    But Keyoomee the honour will wave;
  Contented, if some brother rhymester will tell
    Keyoomee’s glad life, o’er his grave.




THE MAKING AND MARRING OF WINE.


It used to be said of the old learned and liquor-loving Germans, that
they did not care what Latin they spoke, so long as it _was_ Latin; nor
what sort of wine they drank, so long as it _was_ wine. I have read
somewhere of a feudal German Baron becoming intoxicated upon pious
principles. He was seated, with his wife at his side, at the centre
of his own table, presiding at a banquet. He had drunk till he had
scarcely power left to carry the goblet up to his ever thirsty lips.
The Frau Baroninn had repeatedly remonstrated, in whispers, with her
lord; who replied, that he must needs drink when toasts were given,
or his want of faith would be marked by his guests. He was about to
raise a full goblet to his beard, when his lady, overturning, as if by
accident, the cluster of lights which illuminated the board, begged of
her consort to fling his wine away upon the floor; adding, “It is dark;
nobody will see you.” “Nay,” said the orthodox Baron, solemnly, “God
sees me!” and therewith he finished his draught, and was soon after
conveyed to his couch, under such benison as the Chaplain could give,
who congratulated his master upon the flavour of his wine, and the
strength of his principles!

In no country in the world has more wine been drunk than in Germany;
and no where has adulteration thereof been practised so systematically.
“_Vaticana bibis, bibis venenum_,” says Martial, in the sixth book of
his Epigrams. For “_Vaticana_,” read “_Germanica_;” and the line had,
at one time, as fitting an application. The method pursued appears to
have been of classical derivation; and the Germans, like the Romans,
adulterated their wine with lead. It has been a matter of vexation to
Teutonic scholars, that they have never been able to discover the name
of the ingenious person who first realized the deadly idea of employing
lead in the adulteration of wine. All that they can say of him is, that
he was very wicked, but decidedly clever.

The Roman wine-merchants treated the matter in a business-like way.
Lead arrested the acetous fermentation of wine, did not alter its
colour, and did improve its taste. This was all that was desirable, as
regarded _them_ as merchants. If the beverage gave death, by slow or
speedy means, to those who drank, that was an affair which concerned
the imbibers, their medical men, and their families. They were ignorant
and godless Heathens, of course, who committed this crime; and as
nothing like it has ever been known as a characteristic of some of the
professors of a better dispensation,--why, our righteous indignation
may be intense. One excuse, indeed, may be offered for the old Romans.
“At lover’s perjuries,” as they were told, “Jove himself condescended
to laugh;” and, if so, they might feel canonically certain, that
Mercury would not call them to account, but rather applaud their
proficiency in cheating. But Galen was more just than the gods of
either the Greek or Roman mythology, and sternly denounces the tricks
at which the son of Maia would have smiled.

The same ancients were accustomed to boil new wine in metal vessels;
and, when the quantity had been reduced by the process, to add
sea-water and bad wine, and send the mixture to market as something
that would make the very eyes of Bacchus twinkle with delight. A
process not less distasteful, if less deadly, was that of boiling
lime and plaster of Paris in inferior wine. The former was supposed
to add an intoxicating quality to the mixture, which must have
been as detestable as “Masdeu.” To this day, certain wines of the
Mediterranean are subjected to a similar process; and, perhaps, if lime
be judiciously used, the results may not be very injurious. It corrects
acidity; but too much of it would enable the drinker to find out, as
Falstaff did, that there was “lime in the sack.” We are wise in our
generation, in employing carbonate of soda for this purpose, rather
than lime, slaked or unslaked; and we also do well to reject gypsum,--a
compound of sulphuric acid and lime, and which is seldom procurable
in a sufficiently pure state to authorize its being employed. The
rejection of plaster of Paris, for the purpose of improving wine, is,
however, more general than universal. After all, it is not worse than
calcined shells, and is innocuous when compared with the use of sugar
of lead.

The Roman law was not levelled against the adulteration of wine; it
no more controlled the sale or manufacture, than, in Thevenot’s days,
the Tunisian Government interfered with the sale of wine at Tunis,
which was left to slaves, who did with it as they liked, for their own
profit, and the destruction of infidel stomachs. It was otherwise in
Germany, where Diets were assembled to discuss what was, in truth, no
unimportant matter; the members of which began to think, that if wine
was worth having, it was worth providing for its purity. For centuries
Governments made laws, but bad wine was drunk in spite of them.

Beckmann gives it as his opinion, that wines cannot be poisoned by
gypsum; but _that_ is more readily said than proved. The ancients
clarified their wine with it; but they did so at the expense of
a portion of the spirituous part. Old ordinances against the
adulteration of wine, in Brussels, by vitriol, quicksilver, and _lapis
calaminaris_,--and in France, by lead and litharge,--may still be read
as curiosities, but they have no present application.

A German Monk, named Martin Bayr, is damned to everlasting fame, as
the first who adulterated wines within the territory of the Kaiser.
Pickheimer, the friend of Albert Durer, is particularly inveterate
against Bayr and his followers in evil. The indignation of the lover of
pure wine is carried to an incredible extent. He narrates, in a rapt
fury, the consequences of drinking injurious wines; beginning with
an assurance, that adulterated wine keeps the married childless, and
adding, by a sort of bathos, that it causes certain inward pains, “than
which none can be more excruciating.” He mentions many ingredients
employed, and adverts to some, “the names of which I should be ashamed
to mention;” and then he calls for vengeance on the offenders, both in
this world and the next. “You hang the counterfeiters of the public
coin,” says he; “do not these miscreants, whose misdeeds have caused
indignant Nature to check the growth of our grapes, deserve something
worse? Cast their accursed beverage, I say, into the sewers, and
themselves into the flames: and so may Martin Bayr and his disciples
perish in this world, and inherit everlasting damnation in the next!”

Adulteration, however, still went on, until the penalty of death,
and confiscation of property, was levelled against the employment of
sulphur and bismuth,--used by the most noble of wine-makers to sweeten
their spoiled and sour commodity. Offenders, however, again grew bold.
The tribunals treated them leniently. First, fines were levied; then
came confiscation of property, imprisonment, and hard labour; next,
banishment: and none of these courses meeting the evil, the Judges at
length cut off the head of an incorrigible criminal, Ehrni of Erlingen;
and, for a while, terrified the whole brotherhood of wine-spoilers into
a temporary observance of honesty.

The next struggle which occurred in Germany, was between those who
applied tests to detect the presence of metals, and those who invented
processes to defy them. It was a scientific struggle between two
species of assassins,--those who swiftly killed by brewing poisonous
wine, and the physicians who racked their brains to invent detective
tests, and save their patients for a slower process of extinction. This
was very rudely said by rude people, who looked upon themselves as the
victims sought for by two contending parties,--the distillers on one
side, and the doctors on the other.

The use of milk by the Greeks was, probably, not for adulterating, but
for refining, their wines. Isinglass is at present generally employed
for the last-mentioned purpose.

As it is the tendency of the world to improve, so the not
inconsiderable world of adulterators in England has profited, like
philosophers, by the discoveries of those who have preceded them. A
mixture of strong port, rectified spirit, Cognac brandy, and rough
cider, can be concocted into what is called “fine old crusted port.” It
costs the maker about sixteen shillings a gallon, and is sold retail
at five shillings a bottle. Sloe-juice is another ingredient, and
poisonous tinctures give it a seductive hue. Powder of catechu does
for it what hair-powder does for the individual,--gives a crust of
antiquity to secure for it the veneration of the ignorant. A decoction
of Brazil-wood, and a little alum, will impart to the corks the
requisite air of corresponding age; and these the credulous gaze at and
believe.

“Madeira, neat as imported,” is the definition of a beverage cleverly
manufactured much nearer Fenchurch-street than Funchal. Home-made
Madeira is a compound of bad port, Vidonia, that African nastiness
called “Cape,” sugar-candy, and bitter almonds; and the Vidonia, which
is an ingredient in itself, often adulterated with cider and rum; and a
little carbonate of soda, “to contumace the appetite’s acidities.” The
lowest and cruellest insult to human taste and stomachs is, perhaps,
the adulteration of Cape. It is bad enough in itself; but Cape, with
something worse in it, is only fit for the thirsty hounds of Pluto.
Gooseberry, passed off as Champagne, is an impostor, and even with
strawberries in it, to give it an aristocratic pinkness, it is still
a deception; but, compared with Cape, even in its best condition,
gooseberry _may_ be imbibed without very much disgust.

A _fracas_ between the waiters and their employers at the last Lord
Mayor’s dinner, betrayed another pleasant process regarding wine. The
attendants in question declared that, after many hours’ toil, they
had not had a glass even out of a _dovered_ bottle. They were as much
surprised when the Magistrate asked the meaning of “_dovering_,” as
the sailor was, when he stood before a Lord High Chancellor ignorant
of the signification of “’baft the binnacle.” A complaisant Ganymede
enlightened the darkened mind of the metropolitan Cadi: “_Dovering_,”
said he, “is the collecting of three-quarter emptied decanters from the
dinner-table, and re-decantering the same, serving it up as freshly
uncorked.” Dover has the bad reputation of being the locality where
this process was first invented.

One of the most ingenious--perhaps we should say, one of the
most scientific--tricks that we have heard of, in connexion with
wine-doctoring, proves that the modern chymical brewers of superior
beverages, which seem what they are not, are vastly superior to the
mere experimentalists of former days. In the royal cellars of Carlton
House, there was enshrined, if we may so speak, a small quantity of
wine which, like the gems worn by the Irish lady, was both “rich and
rare.” It was only produced by George IV. when he had around him his
most select and wittiest friends. The precious deposit gradually
diminished; year by year, as in the case of the famous sha-green
skin of the French novelist Balzac, it grew less; until, at last, a
couple of dozen bottles only were left, gleaming at the bottom of
their bins like gems in a mine, and full of liquid promise to those
who needed the especial comfort which it was their duty to impart.
These, however, were left so long unasked for, that the gentlemen of
the King’s suite who had the control of the grape department, deemed
them forgotten, and at their own mirthful table drank them all but
two, with infinite delight to themselves, and to the better health of
their master. They soon found, however, that there was “garlic in the
flowers,” as the Turkish proverb has it; and their embarrassment was
not small, when the King, giving his orders for a choice dinner on a
certain night, intimated his desire that a good supply of his favourite
wine should grace the board. In Courts, “to hear is to obey;” and the
officials who had drunk the wine, at once resorted to an eminent firm,
well-skilled to give advice in such delicate wine-cases. The physician
asked but for a sample bottle, and to be told the exact hour at which
the favourite draught would be asked for. This was complied with, and
in due time a proper amount of the counterfeit wine was forwarded to
Carlton House, and there broached and drunk with such encomiums, that
the officers who were in the secret had some difficulty in maintaining
an official gravity of countenance. The brewer of the new wine was
certainly a first-rate artist; and if he ever achieved knighthood
and a coat-of-arms, I would give him a “Bruin” for his crest, and,
“The drink! the drink! dear Hamlet!” for his device. This anecdote,
I may farther notice, has often been told, and nearly as often been
discredited; but I am assured by an officer of the household, who
speaks “_avec connaissance de fait_,” that it is substantially true.

One of the merits of the wine above mentioned consisted in its great
age. There has, indeed, always been a sort of mania for wine that
bears the load of years. But this rage is pronounced by Cyrus Redding
to be one of the most ridiculous errors of modern epicurism. The “bee’s
wing,” the “thick crust on the bottle,” the “loss of strength,” and so
on,--all these are declared by the best judges to be nothing more than
forbidding manifestations of decomposition, and the disappearance of
the very best qualities of the wine. Many years ago, I made a “note” on
this subject, but am now unable to recollect from what work, nor can I
say whether the following remarks on the qualities of wine were made by
the author of an original work, or by a reviewer commenting thereon.
Such as they are, however, they are not without value.

“The age of maturity,” says the writer, “for exportation from Oporto,
is said to be the second year after the vintage; probably sometimes
not quite so long. Our wine-merchants keep it in wood from two to six
years longer, according to its original strength, &c. Surely this
must be long enough to do all that can be done by keeping it. What
crude wine it must be to require even this time to ameliorate it! the
necessity for which must arise either from some error in the original
manufacture, or a false taste, which does not relish it till time has
changed its original characteristics.

“Port, like all other wines, ripens in a shorter, or longer, time,
according to its lightness, or its strength, the quality of the grapes,
according to the fermentation they have undergone, and the portion of
brandy that has been added to it. Also one cellar will forward wine
much sooner than another. Sound good port is generally in perfection
when it has been from three to five years in the wood, and from one to
three in bottle.

“Ordinary port is a very uncleansed fretful wine; and we have been
assured by wine-merchants of good taste, accurate observation, and
extensive experience, that the _best_ port is rather impoverished
than improved by being kept in bottle longer than two years; that is,
supposing it to have been previously from two to four years in the cask
in this country; observing that all that the outrageous advocates for
_vin passé_ really know about it is that sherry is _yellow_, and port
is _black_; and that if they drink (more than) enough of either of
them, according to the colours, it will make them drunk.

“White wines, especially sherry and Madeira, being more perfectly
fermented and thoroughly fined before they are bottled, if kept in a
cellar of uniform temperature, are not so rapidly deteriorated by age.

“The temperature of a good cellar is nearly the same throughout the
year. Double doors help to preserve this. It must be dry, and be kept
as clean as possible.

“The art of preserving wines is to prevent them from fretting, which is
done by keeping them in the same degree of heat and careful working,
in a cellar where they will not be agitated by the motion of carriages
passing. If persons wish to preserve the fine flavour of their wines,
they ought on no account to permit any bacon, cheese, onions, potatoes,
or cider, in the wine-cellars; for if there be any disagreeable stench
in the cellar, the wine will indubitably imbibe it; consequently,
instead of being fragrant, and charming to the nose and palate, it will
be extremely disagreeable.

“It must be well known that almost all our home-made wines, for public
sale, are made, and suffered to cool, in leaden vats. Nothing can be
more injurious or detrimental to health. Every chymist is aware that
any vegetable acid that comes in contact with lead, and is suffered
to remain only a few hours, produces what we call ‘sugar of lead,’--a
most deadly poison. How many there are that complain that cider will
not agree with them! and several who cannot take even a wine-glass full
without vomiting almost immediately. They know not the reason; and
thus many are prevented from taking a most delightful beverage in warm
weather; while others are labouring under its baneful influence. Often
do we see servants run for vinegar in a pewter or publican’s pot; and
the answer we receive when correcting them for the same is,--they have
often done the same without any serious consequence. May be so; but if
vinegar, or any other vegetable acid, as before said, be suffered to
remain in such vessels only a short time, the health and constitution
must suffer from the acid so taken; and we will venture to say that
almost all paralytic affections are caused by persons, predisposed to
such attacks, drinking water impregnated with lead. For if there be
any carbonic acid in the water, which there most assuredly is in every
kind, a carbonate is thus formed, just as injurious as the acetate
(sugar of lead); and where shall we find a cistern in London that is
not made of this pernicious, yet highly useful, material?”

The consideration of these subjects, when drinking home-made wines,
(if, indeed, there _be_ people bold enough to venture on such an
experiment,) or the other beverages mentioned above, might serve the
purpose of the custom observed among the ancient Egyptians. It was one
less barbarous than singular. A skeleton of beautiful workmanship, in
ivory, and enclosed in a small coffin, was carried round at a feast,
by a slave, who, holding it up to each guest, remarked, “After death
you will resemble this figure; drink, then, and be happy!” It must have
encouraged the mirth “consumedly.” But there was a grave wisdom in the
custom, notwithstanding.




IMPERIAL DRINKERS AND INCIDENTS IN GERMANY.


The stories of the gigantic drinkers of antiquity are startling; but I
think they may be accounted for. Natural philosophers inform us, that
objects seen through a mist are magnified to the senses; and so it is
with the feats which we are asked to contemplate through the mist of
ages: they are probably not so astounding as they appear. One may say
of each story, so venerable and enlarged by age, as the good Dominican
did to the congregation whom he had affected to tears by the warmth of
one of his legendary sermons. “Do not cry so, my brethren,” said the
Preacher; “for, after all, perhaps it’s not true.”

It must be allowed, however, that the stories of wine-bibbers of
later times than those when the son of Aristides gained his living by
singing ballads in the streets of Athens, or the heir of Cicero drank
draughts longer than his sire’s orations, lack nothing whatever of the
marvellous. And this reminds me of an incident, _quod alibi narravi_,
and which I will narrate here, by way of illustration of this portion
of my subject.


AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL.

It is now some twelve years ago that I was, in company with two
Norwegians, in Prague, loitering beneath the tower of that sacred
edifice dedicated to the fearful dancer, St. Vitus. The tower was the
same which the drunken Emperor Wenceslaus had caused to be shortened,
by some thirty or forty feet, because he took it into his head that
it would one day fall, and crush him as he lay on his uneasy couch in
the Hradschin. I remarked to my companions, that the empire, in its
palmy days, had often been well-nigh lost through the mad caprices of
tippling Kaisers.

“There was not a Kaiser of them all,” said Löwenskiold, “who
permanently injured either himself or his country by his devotion to
drinking.”

“What!” said I; “not even Maximilian?”

“Not even Maximilian,” remarked Knudtzen. “The people, indeed, were
occasionally a trifle startled at seeing their ruler proceed, either
to the camp or council, with as much white wine in him as might serve
the universe for sauces. They slightly objected, on hearing that he
walked rosy and reeling to confession; and they were not edified at
understanding that his private Almoner stirred up his punch with a
silver crucifix. They even remonstrated with Maximilian when he had
been once within an ace of destroying Ulm in a drunken frolic. And what
was his reply? He kept the deputation of remonstrants the whole night
in his palace, and invited the citizens to assemble, at day-break, on
whatever spots commanded a view of the towers of the cathedral. The
Emperor and the Committee of Moderates finished two hundred and ten
bottles of Rhine wine while they waited for sunrise. This, among a
temperate party of one score and one, was a tolerable allowance for
each individual. At dawn, all Ulm was up, and every eye directed to
the cathedral. The towers had scarcely flung back the first rays from
heaven, when a joyous procession issued from the imperial residence.
The whole party, the Emperor excepted, were as drunk as Æschylus. With
difficulty did they follow their Lord, who, at the very top of his
speed, and carrying a heavy waggon-wheel on his shoulder, ran to the
cathedral, ascended the stairs leading to the summit of one of the
towers, and appeared on the rampart, before his straggling followers
had reached the low-arched door beneath. With a light bound, he sprang
on one of the highest parts of the castellated portion, where there
was scarcely footing for him. In that position, however, he poised
the wheel aloft with his right hand, let it gently descend on to the
foot which he extended above the heads of the multitude, and, holding
it there for a moment or two, ended by hurling it into the air, and
catching it again, ere it fell on the astounded and admiring crowd
below.

“‘There, you calves!’ cried the Emperor, as he gazed tranquilly down
on the sea of heads below; ‘do you dare complain that Niedersteiner
touches your master’s nerves?’

“‘Never again!’ exclaimed the delighted mass. ‘What can we do to
testify our affection for Your Majesty?’

“‘Toss those gentlemen into a tub of Selzer-water,’ said Maximilian,
‘and send me half-a-dozen of Hochheimer, and half-a-dozen
blood-puddings, for breakfast.’”

I could _almost_ believe this tradition; for I had seen a nearly
similar feat once performed by a woman on a projecting mass of rock
in the Ahr Thal. The rock is, doubtless, well known to all who have
ascended that lovely Rhine-valley, at eve, to eat _Forellen_, and drink
Wallportzheimer. They who do so, generally return the next morning with
an inclination for nothing but the cooling mineral waters to be had at
Hippingen.

“Besides,” said Knudtzen, “_à-propos_ to cathedrals, sober principles
have done them more injury than jolly Emperors. Do you forget that
Caroline Bonaparte razed a cathedral in Italy to the ground?”

“I remember hearing of the deed as connected with a church,” said I;
“but I have forgotten the reason alleged for it.”

“It was a very sufficient reason for a Bonaparte. Her Highness lived
next door to the church; and she had it destroyed, because the noise of
the organ kept her awake, and the smell of the incense made her head
ache.”

“Royal minds,” I remarked, “cannot condescend to the weaknesses of
common people. According to our ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ the
pigeons at Pisa were as destructive as Caroline Bonaparte. Pigeons,
for many ages, built under the roof of the great church there. Their
dung spontaneously took fire at last; and the church was consumed.
But, to return to the old, defunct King of Saxony. He was afflicted
with a super-delicate attack of virtue; and, during the prevalence
of the disorder, he issued a decree for the expulsion, from his
picture-gallery, of all those master-pieces, the merit of which lay
in the glory of their flesh-colouring. He had grown as modest as the
Monk who declared that he had never seen any portion of his body save
his face and hands. He is worthy of going down to posterity arm in arm
with that old Polish King, who was a cleaner, but not a less delicate,
man than the Monk, and who boasted to his Confessor that his purity of
mind was so excessive, that he had never touched his own skin with an
ungloved hand. In short, the old King of Saxony admirably illustrated
the saying of Dean Swift, that ‘a nice man was a man of nasty ideas.’
He had not been a sparer of the wine-flask. Indeed, he had rather
sinned that way; and, in expiation thereof, he undertook to perform
a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre on foot. A fever of expectation
shook Dresden, all the china in it, and the whole line of road, at
the idea of again beholding a Christian King turning to the neglected
shrine. The expectation was not altogether fulfilled; but the Monarch,
nevertheless, performed the pilgrimage.”

“We never heard of it,” exclaimed the travellers, looking at each other
with some manifestation of surprise.

“That is to say,” I resumed, “that his Majesty performed it after
a fashion. He inquired the distance from his own country-house at
Pilnitz, to the Armenian Convent at the Holy City; and, in spite of
his education, he was nothing less than astonished, to find that it
was something more serious than a promenade to Töplitz. I do not know
if he had a vision of boiling his peas, as an English pilgrim did, of
whom I could tell you something; but he certainly experienced some
unpleasant sensations at the idea that, the way being so long, he might
chance to find himself without peas to boil. He wept at the reflection
that he might not only be a devout, but a hungry, King, while one-half
of Dresden were solacing their appetites on the terrace of Bruhl, and
the other, at the Baths of Link, or at the Bastei. He thought of the
dangers; but he _would_ be devout. The attendant pains were great; but
the resulting pleasures were not to be denied. In short, he would _not_
go to Jerusalem; but he _would_ perform the pilgrimage. Accordingly,
the exact distance having been ascertained, he started from his room,
and walked the entire number of leagues by pacing up and down a long
gallery, deducting from the distance the amount of water passage,
which was but fair. If admiration had been great at the commencement,
surprising fun was excited during the performance. Every evening the
citizens of Dresden knew how far their religious Ruler had proceeded
on his way, or how far he would have proceeded, if he had but set out.
_Now_, he was breakfasting, in imagination, at Breslau; sleeping (in
fancy) at Olmutz; and passing, by a pleasant fiction, through Buda.
During two days that his Majesty suffered from a real bilious attack,
the result, perhaps, of a Barmecidal repast at Essek on the Drave, the
King rested at Belgrade, while confined to his bed in Dresden. But his
zeal soon re-invigorated his liver; and, as he glided to and fro by his
palace windows, the mystified multitude below learned that the Monarch
was lodging in the house of the Saxon Legation at Istamboul. The
pilgrim-traveller suffered a little from the heat (of the room) as he
descended from the western coast of Asia Minor; but the inconveniencies
of the route were things beneath the thoughts of him who--whether at
Bursa, Smyrna, or any other locality on his way--could ring his bell
in the Desert, and order Champagne out of his own cellar. The King was
puzzled one mid-day, (he had by calculation just reached Beyrout,)
his progress being checked by the unexpected arrival of a portion of
the imperial family from Vienna. Visitors of such condition must be
attended to; nevertheless, his pilgrimage must be continued; and he,
like the clever and facetious palmer that he was, did both. He attended
his guests with much politeness, during their stay of two days; and he
put down the time thus spent, as consumed in a sea voyage from Beyrout
to Acre. The moment they left, the royal pilgrim went ashore again,
and happily accomplished the remaining distance to Jerusalem, through
Nassara and Nablous, without any other hinderance or obstruction than
his going one night to see a French _vaudeville_, while supposed to
be enjoying his well-earned repose at Rama or Muddin. And thus was
accomplished that royal pilgrimage that was never performed. The King
reached Jerusalem without going there; and the people saw _him_ return
who had never departed.”

“Well,” said Harold Knudtzen, “the Kings of Saxony are no longer such
simpletons. The present Monarch loves, indeed, good wine, ‘craftily
qualified;’ but he also, like Uzziah, King of Judah, loves husbandry.
Josephine herself had not half so frantic a passion for flowers as he;
and not for flowers alone in their beauty,--not for botany, either,
merely for amusement’s sake, but for phytology and pharmacy, as
connected with it.”

“He lisped Linnæus,” said Löwenskiold, “before he could speak plainly.”

“And, by reputation, he knew Tournefort better than he did Knecht
Rupert,” added Harold.

“He himself told us, when we met him in Dalmatia,” continued the
latter, “that he could spell _Dodecandria_ and _Trigynia_ before
he could read Grimm’s Story-Book; and that he knew the meanings of
_monopetalous_ and _campaniform_ before he was acquainted with the
languages from which the terms were derived. I never saw a man so
eager in pursuit of _apetalous amentaceous_ flowers; and as for
_carryophylous_”----

“Leave off your abominable phrases!” said I, “and begin by telling
me how you two very modest fellows introduced yourselves to the
acquaintance of the Sovereign of Saxony.”

“The introduction was effected through a very light-hearted and
intelligent fellow-botanizer, whom we met on our way from Zara up to
the mountains. We had all three lost our way while endeavouring to find
an _infundibuliform_”----

“Nay,” interrupted I, “I care not what you found, if you choose to tell
it in pentameters.”

“Well,” resumed Knudtzen, “we were in a wild part of the
country,--weary, hungry, cold, and in the dark. Wanderers could not
well be in a worse plight. We were as _flûté_ as Juno’s columns near
the church of St. Helia; and the skeleton doing duty there for that of
St. Simeon of Judæa, the pride and palladium of the people of Zara,
looked in far better condition, and in, especially, better raiment,
than could be boasted of by us humble pedestrians. We had walked many
leagues, when we reached a sorry inn kept by a Gipsy, where we hoped
to find rest and refreshment, but were permitted to enjoy neither. Our
swarthy host stood in his door-way, like Horatius Cocles at the head of
the bridge. Beds he did not even profess to find for travellers. He had
not slept in one himself for years, and was none the worse, he said,
for the privation. Leopold asked for wine.

“‘We have three sorts of wine,’ said the Gipsy, ‘which travellers like
yourselves once tasted and paid for. I have the very wines which the
seven Schwaben asked for in the Goldenes Kreutz at Ueberlingen.’

“‘What! old Sauerampfer?’ cried Löwenskiold.

“‘The same,’ said our singular host. ‘It is not quite so sour as
vinegar, but it will pierce the marrow of your bones like a sword;
and it will so twist your mouth, that you shall never get it straight
again.’

“‘We will try something better than this acid water,’ said I: ‘we
will’----

“‘Try the Dreimännerswein? I am sorry there are only women in the
house!’

“‘What, in the name of all your saints in Zara, have your women to do
with the refreshment we need?’

“‘Do! nothing in the world! that is precisely it! You will want three
men each of you. For Dreimännerswein is three times as rough and ten
times as sour as vinegar; and he who drinks it must be held fast by two
men, while a third pours the liquid down his throat!’

“‘And what of the third of these Olympic beverages?’ said I.

“‘It is called _Rachenputzer_, and has peculiar qualities too. He who
lies down to sleep with a flask of it in his body, must be aroused
every half-hour, and turned over. Otherwise a pint of Rachenputzer
would eat a hole right through his side!’

“The Gipsy laughed aloud as he uttered these words. We ourselves
laughed in despite of our vexation; and, somewhat startlingly, a fourth
voice took up the cachinnatory affection, and laughed even louder
than the original three. As the new-comer stood in the light of the
door-way, the landlord touched his cap, withdrew hastily into the
passage, and slammed the door in our faces, leaving us in Cimmerian
darkness, summer trousers, and a drizzling rain. The matter was no
longer risible, and we were beginning to be seriously annoyed, when the
mysterious stranger, whom we could but indistinctly see, invited us to
accompany him we knew not whither, and hospitably to partake of we knew
not what. We accepted the invitation most gratefully; and after a full
half-hour’s walk, we found ourselves on the skirts of a wood. In less
than half that time, we subsequently reached a neat little house within
the wood itself; and I do not think ten minutes had elapsed, ere we had
made such toilette as travellers may, and, with some doubts as to the
reality of the circumstance, detected ourselves in the act of eating
vermicelli soup, and wondering how it had reached us.

“Before our repast was entirely dispatched, our host, in whom we saw a
young, well-made, and exceedingly amiable personage, informed us that
he was on a botanizing expedition for the benefit of an establishment
in Northern Germany; that he had been two months settled in the house
in which we then were, and that he had already given temporary shelter
to three plant-explorers, who had resorted, in their need, to the house
of Djewitzki, the Gipsy, and who had found to their sorrow, that it had
nothing of the quality of an inn about it, except the sign.

“We talked of flowers that night,” continued Knudtzen, “as though they
were the foremost as well as the fairest things in all the world. But
we were sciolists in the science, and, contrasted with us, our host
was a sage. He knew that agrimony was under Jupiter, and angelica
under the Sun in Leo; that milfoil was under the influence of Venus,
and that garden basil was a herb of Mars. If every new idea be worth
the knowing, why, we gained knowledge by the information, that all the
dodders are under Saturn. We heard, for the first time, the virtues of
the plant enchusa.”

“But,” interrupted Löwenskiold, “we were enabled to remind our host of
what Dioscorides says about it,--that if any who have newly eaten of it
do but spit in the mouth of a serpent, the reptile instantly dies.”

“True,” said Knudtzen, “we have not been at Upsal for nothing.”

“We may all aid each other by turns,” I remarked to my two friends,
as we arrived, after descending from the cathedral, on the old bridge
over the Moldau. A large herd of cattle was crossing it at the time;
and some of the foremost black oxen of this herd had bunches of _amara
dulcis_ (or, “woody nightshade”) hung round their necks; a common
custom in Germany, as I told the young travellers, and employed as a
remedy against dizziness in the head.

“Of the owner or the ox?” said Harold, with a laugh.

“Of him who wears it,” I rejoined. “But I want to see the entry of your
King of Saxony,” I continued, “and not to listen to the description,
uses, and property of herbs, plants, and flowers; maiden-hair,
moon-wort, and _ornithogalum spicatum_.”

“So much the worse!” answered Knudtzen, “or Leopold and I had told
you what we learned from our entertainer of celandine; and what he
told us, from Pliny, of the anemone: how he recommended us, should we
ever visit Naples, never to retire to rest without strewing about our
bed-chamber some chopped leaves of arse-smart, a herb most murderous
to the numerous light troops cantoned in Neapolitan sleeping-rooms;
how balm was good for the bite of scorpions; how Pliny recommends
endweed for the quinsy;--and a thousand other matters touching leaves,
herbs, trees, flowers, roots, and barks. But I _will_ tell you that
our Amphitryon was light as well as learned, and loved fun as he did
flowers. He would discourse upon _ballets_ as well as battles; knew
all about logarithms and the new opera; told anecdotes; remembered
sermons; and, finally, lighted us to bed, with a Latin quotation, and
a brass candlestick. By day-break we were all out in the vicinity of
the house, looking for rare plants, with as much avidity as though they
equalled diamonds in value. We returned together to a breakfast exactly
adapted to our tastes and capacities; after which, our knapsacks were
once more on our shoulders, and, having made due acknowledgment for the
hospitality received, we begged to be permitted to know the name of our
entertainer.

“‘You might call me,’ said he, ‘the Dalmatian botanist, if I
particularly cared about maintaining my _incognito_. But I hope we
shall meet again; and, if you ever visit Dresden, come to me, and you
shall have better fare than I have been able to afford you here. Ask
for the King of Saxony,’ he added, observing our inquiring looks; ‘and
in the mean time write your names on these tablets, and you shall find
that in Dresden I have not forgotten the night in Dalmatia.’”

“And did you and the good Frederick Augustus ever meet again?”

“Twice,” said Harold. “We saw one another for a moment, a month
afterwards, in Zara. He was accompanying the Emperor of Austria,
followed by a brilliant staff, to a review, and he gave us a smile of
recognition as he passed.”

“The second time we met him,” added Leopold, “was in the gardens of the
Nymphenberg, near Munich. He was alone, amusing himself with feeding
the beavers. We spent a very agreeable hour with him in exploring that
pleasant retreat of the Kings of Bavaria; and, on parting, he repeated
his wish that we might meet again in Dresden,--a circumstance not very
unlikely, as we are now on our way to the Sächsische Schweitz.”




A FEW ODD GLASSES OF WINE.


The ancient people who loved the juice of the grape, kept in grateful
remembrance the names of the first planters of vines. Bacchus came
from India, through Egypt, into Europe; and he and his joyous company
made vineyards bloom amid many a desert. But the introduction of the
vine was not unopposed. The Chians accepted gratefully the rosy gift
from Œnopia; and the branch was hailed on its passage through Greece,
Sicily, and Italy. But in Greece the vines were destroyed wherever the
order of Lycurgus had force; and it was in Athens that, under King
Cranaus, men first diluted the potent draught with water. The gods
visited Greece with an inundation in consequence; but the Sicilians,
nothing daunted, adopted the temperance that was not sanctioned in
Olympus. Domitian did for the vines carried into Gaul, from Tuscany,
what Lycurgus did for those of Lacedæmonia; but Probus restored them to
the thirsty Gauls. Numa had taught his people to train the vine which
Janus had given them; and, by placing the statue of Minerva by the side
of that of Bacchus, he taught them a lesson which Domitian could not
comprehend. _He_ did _not_ know how to be merry and wise.

It was long before the Egyptians acknowledged, by grateful use, the
excellence of the vine. The Scythians, some of the Persians, and the
Cappadocians would not drink the delusive draught upon any account;
but then these were barbarians. The Cappadocians especially not only
refused wine, but liberty. When the latter was offered them by the
Romans, the reply of the water-drinkers was, “that they would neither
accept liberty nor tolerate it!” It is to be remarked, however, that
all these people tardily attained to a better taste, like the great
Hippocrates himself, who, after touching on the advisability of mixing
wine with water, finally decides, like the enthusiastic Athenians,
that it is much better to take the beverage neat. He thinks that, when
grief is at the heart, pure wine is a specific; and no doubt Ariadne
thought so too, or she would not have turned to Bacchus after Theseus
had abandoned her to a short-lived inconsolability. Rome long honoured
Bacchus even as Ariadne did; and he who stole a bunch of grapes from
a vineyard incurred the penalty of death. Italy was, indeed, proud of
her vines and their produce. Of the two hundred varieties of wine then
known in the world, only fourscore were declared to be “excellent;” and
of these fourscore, nearly thirty were said to be natives of Italy. The
Chian wines, however, maintained for ages a marked pre-eminence. It
was a vase filled with wine of Chios that the poet Ion gave to every
Athenian who was present at the representation of a tragedy, for which
the poet was publicly crowned. “_Pauper es, ut solent poetæ_,” was
therefore, evidently, a line that could not be universally applied to the
poets of Greece.

They loved old wine, too, did those old people. Wine, as old as the
years to which ravens are reported to attain,--a century, or even
two,--was served up at Rome. It was in consistency something like
the clotted cream of Devonshire. But there was wine of a more solid
consistency than this. I have elsewhere spoken of wine chopped in
pieces by an axe, before it could be used. This was because of an
accident which had happened to the wine; but the Romans had vinous
preparations which were served up in lumps; and we hear of wines being
kept in the chimney like modern bacon, and presented to the guests
“as hard as salt.” The ancients are also reported to have been able to
change red wine into white, by means of white of egg and bean-flour,
shaken together with the red wine in a flagon. It would require much
shaking before a degenerate modern could effect the mutation in
question. But if Cato could imitate the best Chian by means of his own
gooseberries, the other feat may hardly be disputed. It is certain that
the ancients could boldly swallow some questionable mixtures. Thus they
drank their wine with sea-water, in order to stimulate and whip up
energies exhausted by being over-driven the night before. Myrtle wine,
on the other hand, was copiously drunk at dawn by those who could not
sleep, but who could afford to remain in bed, and try to court Nature’s
soft nurse.

There were Roman ladies who were not born before nerves were in
fashion. These had their especial drinks, sovereign in their effects,
to calm a nervous system too sorely excited. The most efficacious of
these was the “_Adynamon_,” or “powerless wine;” that is, powerless
to intoxicate, but excellent as an invigorator. It consisted simply
of a mixture of water and white-wort; and when Julia or Lalage had
tremblingly sipped thereof, her nerves were so braced, that she could
stand by and look on while Geta was flogged for an hour.

On the point of secret drinking, the early Romans were quite as
particular and more merciless regarding their wives. When Micennius
detected his wife in the act of “sucking the monkey,” that is,
feloniously imbibing his wine through a straw at the bung-hole, he
then and there slew her. Complaint was made by her friends to Romulus;
but that chief and sole magistrate confined himself to the remark,
that she had been justly served. The wine-casks at home were for years
afterwards accounted sacred by the wives in the absence of their
lords. It would appear, too, by this incident, that wine was commonly
produced long before Numa introduced the improvement of training the
vine. There _were_ ladies who were rendered more cautious, but not
less bold, by the judgment pronounced by Romulus. We hear of one
caught in the fact by some members of her own family, who were so
disgusted with her immorality, that to preserve the respectability
of their house, they starved her to death. As years wore on, Judges
grew more good-natured, and only deprived tippling married women of
all right in their marriage portions. The Empire could hardly have
been inaugurated, before thirsty ladies adopted a custom that had been
denied them under the Commonwealth. Livia, the consort of Augustus, was
eighty-two when she died; and it was her boast that wine alone had made
her an octogenarian. What wine she drank is not stated. She may have
had a head that could bear old Falernian undiluted; but that was not
the case with many of her sex. The Roman ladies’ wine was, generally
speaking, little more than a sweet _tisane_, distilled from asparagus
or marjoram; from parsley, mint, rue, wild thyme, or pennyroyal. These
were sipped at breakfast-time; and the hour and the ingredient would
seem rather to point to Æsculapius than to Bacchus. They were, in fact,
medicinal drinks. The strong wines were drunk at other hours, and these
more innocent draughts were swallowed in the morning, with reflections
as bitter as the beverage. Wormwood wine, too, was a favourite morning
stimulant with intoxication; and it cannot be denied, that if modern
guests were condemned to a “pint of salt and water” with their wine,
the hilarity after dinner would not be of a very joyous aspect. Some of
the “sea-wines” of the Greeks, however, owed their name and reputation
chiefly to being immersed, in casks, in the ocean. Our Madeira may thus
be called a “sea-wine,” when it has been to the East Indies and back
for the benefit of its health.

“Chambertin” was the favourite wine of Napoleon. The “_vinum dulce_”
obtained after drying the grapes in the sun, during three days, and
crushing them beneath the feet, in the hottest hours of the fourth
day, was the drink for which Commodus had a predilection. It was after
draughts of this beverage that he used to fight in the Circus as the
“Roman Hercules,” as proud of his performance as Mr. Ducrow, when he
used to ride round it in the same character. Commodus, too, like the
great equestrian, was an artist in his way; but he ruined the managers
by the exorbitant salaries which he wrung from them, whenever he
condescended to appear in the arena!

For the games of the Circus, and for bread after the sport was over,
the Romans have been reproachfully pointed at as alone caring.
Considering the plight into which they had been plunged by their Rulers
and Priests, they seem to me to have been wise in their sentiment. One
circumstance is clear,--that they might dip their pennyworth of bread
into a deep cup of “sack” at the same price. Wine cost but sixpence a
gallon,--a sufficient quantity for half-a-dozen gentlemen just returned
from the Circus; or for half-a-dozen ladies, who had learned to break
through the total-abstinence principle of the women of the Republic.
There was much wine to be had for a trifling outlay of money. In
Greece, it was cheaper still. In Athens, wine was dear at fourpence per
gallon; and ordinarily, Davus, out on a holiday, might get drunk upon
four quarts of it, at a halfpenny per quart; but Chremes would nearly
flay him alive, if he caught him before he was sober.

I may add, that this was the price of wine, that is, of French wine, in
England, under John. A tun of Rochelle wine cost twenty shillings, and
it was retailed at fourpence per gallon. But taking the value of money
into consideration, this was rather a high price.

When Probus restored the vine to the Gauls, he sent cuttings of
the precious plant into Britain; and many localities in the south
part of the island produced a very respectable beverage, of which
the parent stock had no reason to be ashamed. “As sure as God is in
Gloucestershire!” was a common phrase when that picturesque county was
covered with monasteries; and many of the monastic gardens were famous
for their grapes and the liquor distilled from them. The little village
of Durweston, near Blandford, in Dorsetshire, was once as remarkable
for its peculiar grape and its product, as that restricted Rhenish
locality, whose grapes produce the Lieb Frauenmilch. Of the respective
merits of the English grapes, I will say nothing. The merits of French
wines have, however, occupied the attention of rival medical colleges,
whose professors have shed much ink, and cracked whole legions of
bottles, in order to discuss, rather than settle, the divers deserts
of Burgundy and Champagne. The question is yet an undecided one, as is
also that respecting the devotion of the Gauls to the grapes. Arnaud
de Villeneuve praises the mediæval people of France, who intoxicated
themselves monthly upon hygienic principles. While other writers
assert, that “in the middle ages, and in the sixteenth century,
intoxication was severely punished in France.” I am the more inclined
to believe in the latter assertion, as the laws against drinking and
drinkers, from Charlemagne to Francis I., have often been cited; and
they are marked by a severity--which Rabelais did not care for, a
button!

Our own wine-trade with France began after the Norman Conquest, and
was very considerable when our English Kings were proprietors of the
French wine districts. About the middle of the sixteenth century, the
_maximum_ price of wine was fixed at twelve-pence per gallon; but at
this time no one was allowed to have in his house a measure that would
contain above ten gallons, unless, indeed, he were of noble birth, or
could expend a hundred marks annually.

Of all French wines, that of Burgundy is the most difficult of
carriage. Some Burgundies cannot bear it at all; others are transported
in bottles covered with a cottony paper, or bedded in salt. Pure
Burgundy exhilarates without intoxicating; and there is not a liver
complaint in a hogshead of it. It is the alcoholic wines that massacre
the _jecur_.

The Burgundy vineyards were originally in connexion with the Burgundian
monasteries, and there were no better _vignerons_ than the monks. The
modern quality of the wine is inferior to its ancient reputation,
simply because modern proprietors are not artistical monks, but mere
money-makers. Napoleon adhered to the wine as long as he could; but at
St. Helena he took to Bordeaux,--Chambertin would have lost its best
qualities in the voyage thither.

The Emperor was, perhaps, the best judge of his favourite Chambertin
that France ever could boast of, except, probably, in the case of
the good Lindsay, of Balcarras, Bishop of Kildare. This Prelate long
resided at Tours, and was an excellent connoisseur in wine, though he
modestly used to say, “_If_ I know any thing, it is the management
of turnip crops and mangel-wurzel.” It is no disparagement of the
episcopal bench to say, that many of its members could not justifiably
make a similar boast. Lord Brougham, I believe, used to say, that “if
_he_ knew any thing, it was, that claret should always be drunk after
game.” There is an imperial authority in favour of Champagne. When
the Emperor Wenceslaus visited France in the fourteenth century, to
negotiate with Charles VI., it was impossible ever to get him sober
to a conference. “It was no matter,” he said; “they might decide as
they liked, and he would drink as _he_ liked; and thus both parties
would be on an equality.” There is something curious in the caprices of
Champagne; particularly of the _vin mousseux_, or effervescing wine. In
the same cellar, the same wine, all similarly placed, will _mousser_
in some bottles, and not in others. It will even, when poured from the
same bottle, _mousser_ in some glasses into which it is poured, while
in others it will fall as heavily placid as oil. In warm weather,
however, a great Champagne cellar is a very lively place; so lively,
that it is unsafe to walk through the serried hosts of bottles, without
a wire mask over the face.

There are one or two sorts of French wine which are considered to be
improved by letting a small portion of the stalk be trodden in with
the grape. But, probably, in the selection of the grape, there is no
where such care taken, as in the matter of imperial Tokay. The grapes
are selected with the greatest care; sometimes a second selection
is made from the first selected lot. No grape is chosen that is not
perfectly sound. The resulting wine is of a highly delicious flavour;
but I need not add, that the general public know but very little about
it. To them is vouchsafed the brewage from the damaged grape, or the
distillation of the refuse of the first grape. The product is an acid
one, resembling moderately good Rhine wine; but it is _not_ Tokay.

“Old Wortley Montague” was a great drinker of Tokay. He lived to the
patriarchal age of eighty-three. Gray, writing of him, says, that
it was not mere avarice, and its companion, abstinence, that kept
him alive so long. He imported his own wine from Hungary, in greater
quantity than he could use, and he sold the overplus,--drinking himself
a half-pint every day,--for any price he chose to set upon it. It was a
fashionable wine with the drinkers of the last century. Walpole records
its being offered at a supper given by Miss Chudleigh to the Duke of
Kingston, her then “protector.” “At supper she offered him Tokay, and
told him she believed he would find it good.” The entertainment was
splendid, and untidy. “The supper was in two rooms, and very fine; and
on all the sideboards, and _even on the chairs_, were pyramids and
troughs of strawberries and cherries; you would have thought she was
kept by Vertumnus!”

Our ancient acquaintance, “mustard,” was originally raised to the
character of “wine,” in common with some other of the seeds used at
ancient tables. Our warm friend mustard was the _mustum ardens_, or
“hot wine.” It was held as good for persons of bilious temperament, and
as being more beneficial in summer than in winter. Coriander was used
in the same season. It was mixed with vinegar, and poured over meat
to preserve its freshness. There are some men who faint at the smell
of linseed. A bread made therefrom was once, however, readily eaten
by various European and Asiatic people. Cakes made of it were placed
before the altars of gods,--men making willing sacrifice of what they
accounted as of small value. Similar sacrifices are made daily even
now; only they are not in the form of aniseed cakes.

It is said of the Arabs, that they manufactured an intoxicating wine
from linseed. This beverage was worthy of being served with that
strange dish at dessert,--fried hempseed,--a dish that would have been
appropriate enough at a highwayman’s last supper, the night before he
rode to Tyburn.

It used to be said of old, that wine was a sympathetic liquor; and
this is alluded to by more than one writer. Sir Kenelm Digby, in his
“Dissertation on the Cure of Wounds,” makes a singular remark with
respect to wine. “The wine-merchants observe every where, (where there
is wine,) that during the season the vines are in the flower, the wines
in the cellar make a kind of fermentation, and percolate forth a little
white lee (which I think they call ‘the mother of the wine’) upon the
surface of the wine, which continues in a kind of disorder till the
flower of the vines be fallen; and then, this agitation being ceased,
all the wine returns to the same state as it was in before.”

It was a custom with the ancients to swallow, to the health of their
mistresses, as many cups or glasses as there were letters in her name.
To this custom Martial refers:--

    “_Nævia sex cyathis, septem Justina bibatur, Quinque Lycas,
    Lyde quatuor, Ida tribus: Omnis ab infuso numeretur amica
    Falerno._”

It became us, as a more mechanical people, to drink upon pegs rather
than letters: the peg-tankards were said to be the invention of King
Edgar. The two-gallon measure had eight pegs; and the half-pint, from
peg to peg, was deemed a fitting draught for an honest man; but as
the statute, or custom, did not define how often the toper might be
permitted to indulge in this measure, people of thirsty propensities
got rather more inebriated than they had dared to be previously. As
the half-pint was roughly set down as the _maximum_ of their draught,
it was a point of honour with them never to drink less,--and to drink
to that extent as often as opportunity offered. The Council of London
(Archbishop Anselm’s “Canons,” A.D. 1102) expressly warned the Clergy
against the perils of peg-drinking; but the same Council looked upon
perukes as being quite as perilous as these pegged half-pints, and
denounced wigs with as much intensity as tankards,--and to about as
much purpose. Karloman understood the Ecclesiastics better; at least,
if traditionary history be worthy of any respect.

Among the legends of the Rhine connected with my present subject of
wine, there is one which is worth mentioning. The great Karloman, who
loved good liquor, bequeathed to the brotherhood of Monks at Rheinfeld
a marvellous and covetable butt of wine, which had not only the merit
of being of first-rate quality, but which never decreased, though it
was continually running at the spigot! This wine was for the use of
the brethren; but the good Emperor also left a sum of money which he
desired should be spent in treating visitors to the monastery with good
Rhenish wine. When a weary traveller claimed the hospitality of the
Monks, he was immediately conducted to an inner apartment. Here he was
invested with the collar of Karloman, and gravely informed that, it
being necessary that he should be baptized, he had only to say whether
he preferred that the ceremony should be performed with wine or with
water. If, like an honest fellow, he selected wine, he was gently
constrained to swallow three monster bumpers of Muscatel. He was then
crowned with a parcel-gilt coronet, and so became installed one of
the jolly Knaves of St. Goar. There were some privileges attached to
this dignity; among others, was the right to fish on the summit of the
Lurley Berg, where there is no water; and of hunting on the sand-banks
of the Rhine, where there is not safe footing for a sparrow. The poor
temperate wight, on the other hand, who preferred the modest medium of
water for the ceremony of his baptism, was proclaimed a blind Heathen,
and was immediately drenched to the skin, from outpouring buckets of
water that were showered upon him in all directions. Such was the
solemnity of the Hänsel, as instituted by Karloman. This Emperor’s
affection for the Rhine and its vicinity was as strong as that of an
old gastronomic English Bishop for his native island. The episcopal
attachment is exemplified in the story of the Prelate’s last moments,
when his faithful servant John endeavoured to encourage him. “Be
comforted, my Lord,” said John: “your Lordship is going to a better
place.” “Ah, John!” said the Bishop, “there is no place like old
England!”

There was a practice among the Romans with regard to wine, which
should win the respect of all our Inns of Court. All law business was
suspended during vintage time. “_Sanè_,” says Minucius Felix, “_et
ad vindemiam feriæ judiciorum curam relaxaverunt_;” and this was no
poor holiday: it was the Long Vacation of the Roman bar, extending,
as the Rev. Hubert Ashton Holden remarks, in his admirable edition of
the “_Octavius_,” from August 22nd to October 15th. And here let me
remark, parenthetically, how much preferable it would be to make a
school-book of the “_Octavius_” of Minucius Felix, so rich in early
Christian information, and so pure in its Latinity, rather than pursue
the old course of letting boys read Ovid and similar authors. The Abbé
Gaume, in his “_Ver Rongeur_,” traces all the evils by which society
is afflicted, to the study of erotic Latin and Greek authors. The
Abbé rushes from one extreme into its opposite, and wishes to confine
our sons to the mawkish Latinity of the Lives of the Saints, and the
Pastorals (so unlike the Eclogues) of Bishops. The work of Minucius
Felix just occupies the safe medium of the two remote points,--erotic
Heathenism, and Monkish mendacity, told with much violation of grammar.
It is a book that ought to be on the list of works to be studied in
every locality devoted to the education of “ingenuous youth.”

It is hardly necessary to write of the effects of wine on the bodily
economy. They are too familiarly known. There was an old adage that--

  “He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
  Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
  But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
  Lives as he ought to do, and dies a good fellow.”

This is poor poetry, worse sentiment, and deadly counsel. Half the
evils that torture men arise from intemperance; and, next to excess
in alcohol, immoderation in wine is the most fatal practice to which
humanity can bind itself slave. An Arab says of his horse, that the
horse’s belly is the measure of its corn. Men are too apt to allow a
similar metage with respect to themselves in the matter of wine. It
were safer to remember that we cannot drink too little, and that we
soon may be drinking too much. Panard very justly says,--

  “_Se piquer d’être grand buveur,
    Est un abus qui je déplore.
  Fuyons ce titre peu flatteur;
    C’est un honneur qui déshonore.
  Quand on boît trop, on s’assoupit,
    Et l’on tombe en délire:
  Buvons pour avoir de l’esprit,
    Et non pour le détruire._”

As good advice, more eloquently delivered, is given by our own Herbert,
a poet next to Shakespeare for felicity of expression. Our reverend
minstrel and monitor says,--

  “Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame
    When once it is within thee, but before
  May’st rule it as thou list; and pour the shame,
    Which it would pour on thee, upon the floor.
  It is most just to throw that on the ground,
  Which would throw _me_ there, if I keep the round.”

And again:--

  “If reason move not, gallants, quit the room;
    (All in a shipwreck shift their several way;)
  Let not a common ruin thee entomb;
    Be not a beast in courtesy, but stay,
  Stay at the third cup, or forego the place:
  Wine, above all things, does God’s stamp deface.”

This is admirable counsel, logic, and theology. The people who least
stood in need of such a triad of excellent aids to good living were the
Egyptians, at that particular period of their career when they confined
themselves to drinking

  “Beer small as comfort, dead as charity.”

And this may naturally lead us to look in, for a moment, on both the
ancient and the modern Egyptians, when seated at table. But, previous
to doing so, there is a little philological matter I would fain settle,
as far as so indifferent an authority may presume to do so, and which
may interest, not merely wine-bibbers, but etymologists, and zealous
correspondents to “Notes and Queries.” It may be very briefly discussed.

I have noticed, in another page, the fact that nearly all our
old-fashioned drinking phrases are but corruptions of foreign terms.
A “carouse,” for instance, is derived from “_gar aus_,” “altogether
empty,” sufficiently indicative of what a reveller was to do with
his full glass. There is one--a rather vulgar term--of the origin of
which, however, I have never heard any account. But I think I may have
discovered it in a little German poem, by Pfarrius, called “_Der Trunk
aus dem Stiefel_,” and which, thus roughly done into English, may serve
to show


THE ORIGIN OF “BOOSEY.”

  In the Rheingraf’s hall were of Knights a score,
  And they drained their goblets o’er and o’er,
  And the torches they flung a lurid glow
  On the Knights who were drinking there below.

  “Ho, ho!” said the Rheingraf, “Sir Knights, I find,
  Our courier has left a boot behind;
  He who can empty it off at a breath,--
  The Hufflesheim village is his till death.”

  Then laughing, he filled the boot to the rim,
  Till the bright red wine flowed over the brim;
  And said, as he mark’d their sparkling eyes,--
  “Good luck to you, Knights--you know the prize!”

  Then Johann von Sponheim sat silent by,
  But pushed his neighbour to rise and try;
  And Meinhart, his neighbour, could nothing do
  But scowl at the boot, and sit silent too.

  Old Florsheim, he nervously stroked his beard;
  And Kunz von Stromberg spoke never a word;
  And even the giant Chaplain stared
  At the monster boot, as though he were scared.

  Then Boos von Waldeck did loudly call,--
  “Here, hand me that thimble!” and “Health to all!”
  And then, in one breath, to the very last drain,
  He drank, and fell back on his seat again,

  And said, “O, Sir Rheingraf, it were my mind,
  Had the fellow his other boot left behind,
  To empty that, too, at a breath; and take
  For my prize Norheim village, near the lake.”

  Then loud laughed they all at Waldeck’s good jest,--
  Of all landless tipplers, till then, the best;
  But the Rheingraf, he kept his knightly word,--
  And Boos of the Boot was Hufflesheim’s lord!

If therein be not the origin of “boosey,” why, let the lexicographers
look to it. But my readers will have had enough of these uncouth names.
I have now to introduce them to hosts with names equally unmusical;
but, luckily, we have now to do more with acts than appellations,
and therewith pass we to golden Egypt, and her well-spread boards. I
will only first add another word respecting spirits, as a beverage.
All authorities are agreed, that reason has no more deadly foe than
alcohol. The effects of the latter are well described by Dr. Winslow,
whom we have previously quoted in the matter of mental dietetics,--a
gentleman who might, with justice, have given a plump denial to the
remark of Macbeth, had it been addressed to Dr. Winslow, when the
royal patient uncivilly told his medical adviser, “Thou canst not
minister to a mind diseased.” Dr. Winslow says: “The alcoholic elements
introduced into the blood, and brought into immediate contact with
the tissues of different organs, will derange the functions which
they are severally destined to perform; and the amount and character
of the mischief so produced will correspond with, and be modified by,
the peculiarities of their individual organic structure. With these
facts before us, when we consider the delicate structure of the brain,
as revealed to us by the progress of microscopic anatomy, we must be
prepared for the physical and mental derangement which must arise,
either from the alcohol itself, or its elements, being brought into
direct contact with the vesicular neurine or granular matter entering
into the composition of its white and grey substance. According to our
most recent physiological views, the vesicular matter is the source
of nervous power, and associated, as the material instrument of the
mind, with all its manifestations, whether in the simple exercise
of perception, or the more complicated operations of the thinking
principle. We are then to conceive the simple or organic structure
dedicated to this high function brought into contact with irritating
and noxious elements. The result must obviously be a disturbance in the
manifestations of the mind proportioned to the organic derangements so
produced; and without, therefore, taking a materialistic view of the
changes which take place, the obliteration of some, and the derangement
of other of the intellectual faculties, are hereby satisfactorily
accounted for. It is certain, that when the circulation in the grey
matter of the convolutions is retarded by congestion, or accelerated
by unwonted stimulation, there is a corresponding state of stupor or
mental activity, amounting even to delirium, produced; and, indeed, it
has been suggested, by some of our most eminent physiologists, that
every idea of the mind is associated with a corresponding change in
some part, or parts, of the vesicular surface.” And if they who sit
“amid bumpers brightening,” could only hold this truth in sober memory,
there would be less imbibed at night, and more sunshine in their souls
on the morrow. And now let us pass to the cradle of wisdom, the ancient
Misraim, where, despite the national boast, folly was, perhaps, as much
deified as in any locality upon earth.

Yes, let us now to ancient Egypt, where, as good old Herbert so finely
expresses it,--

                  “Men did sow
  Gardens of gods, which every year did grow
  Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost
  Who for a god clearly a sallet lost!
  O, what a thing is man devoid of grace,
  Adoring garlic with a humble face!
  Begging his food of that which he may eat,
  Starving the while he worshippeth his meat!
  Who makes a root a god, how low is he,
  If God and man be severed infinitely!
  What wretchedness can give him any room,
  Whose house is foul, while he adores his broom?”




THE TABLE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPTIANS.


If neither the grave of the Pharaohs nor physiology will, nor Dr.
Hincke nor Chevalier Bunsen can, reveal to us the secret of the
origin of the Egyptians, we, at all events, know that they were
majestically-minded with respect to the table. The science of living
was well understood by them; and the science of killing was splendidly
rewarded; seeing that the soldiery, besides liberal pay, allowance of
land, and exemption from tribute, received daily five pounds of bread,
two of meat, and a quart of wine. With such rations they ought not to
have been beaten by the Persians, when the latter had so degenerated,
that their almost sole national boast was, that they could drink deeper
than any other men, without seeming half so drunk. The Egyptians, too,
were tolerably stout hands, and heads to boot, at the wine-pot; and
there were few among even their Kings who, like the King of Castile,
would have choked of thirst, because the grand butler was not by to
hand the cup.

The pulse and fruits of Egypt, the fish of the Nile, the corn
waving in its fields, which needed neither sun nor rain to exhibit
productiveness,--all these were the envy, and partly the support, of
surrounding nations. The corn was especially prized; and a reported
threat of St. Athanasius to obstruct the importation of Egyptian corn
into Constantinople, threw the Emperor Constantine into a fit of
mingled fright, fever, and fury.

An Egyptian Squire commonly possessed a hundred or two cows and oxen,
three hundred rams, four times that number of goats, and five times
that number of swine, for the supply of his own little household. The
apartments in the mansions of these gentlemen were beautifully painted,
and were furnished with tables, chairs, and couches which have supplied
models for the upholstery of modern times. They were lovers of music,
and willingly suspended conversation at their feasts, in order to
listen to the “concord of sweet sounds.”

Cleopatra was but a febrile creature; but she sat down with good
appetite, and love in her eyes, to the banquet given by Antony, at
which fifteen whole boars smoked upon the board. But Cleopatra, frail
and fragile, like many thin people, ate heartily; and when she herself
treated Cæsar, it was with such a banquet that slaves died to procure
it, and the guests who were present wondered at the rarities of which
they partook. There was every thing there that gastronomy could think
of, except mutton,--an exception in favour of the divine Ammon with the
ram-like head. I believe that even roast beef and plum-pudding were not
lacking; for these delicacies were popular in Thebes, as was broiled
and salted goose, with good brown stout, strong barley-wine, to cheer
the spirits and assist digestion.

Excessively proud, too, were the old Egyptians of their culinary
ability. When the Egyptians, under their King, attacked Ochus,
Sovereign of Persia, the former were thoroughly beaten, and their
Monarch was captured. Ochus treated him as courteously as the Black
Prince did John of France, and invited him to his own table, at the
simplicity of which the Egyptian laughed outright. “Prince,” said
the uncourteous captive, “if you would really like to know how happy
Kings should feed, just let my cooks--if you have caught the rascals,
as you have me--prepare you a true Egyptian supper.” Ochus consented,
enjoyed himself amazingly at the banquet, and then, turning to his
Egyptian prisoner, punished him by saying, “Why, what a sorry fool
art thou, whose ambition has lost thee such repasts, and reduced thee
to henceforth envy, as thou wilt, the moderate meals that suffice us
honest Persians!” The implied threat was worse than the sentiment.

The dinner-table of the Egyptians was sometimes covered with a linen
cloth imitating palm-leaves, sometimes left uncovered. Plates and
knives, but not forks, were in common use. In place of the latter
were short-handled spoons of gold, silver, ivory, tortoise-shell, or
alabaster. The dining-table was circular: ornamented rolls of wheaten
bread were placed before each guest; and supplies of the same were
heaped in gay-looking baskets on the side-board, where also were kept
the wine, the water, ewer, and napkins, which slaves, fair or swarthy,
Greek or Negro, were ready to present at the bidding of the guests.

Previous to sitting down to the repast, the company put a spur to their
appetite, and a cordial to their stomach, in the shape of pungent
vegetables or strong _liqueurs_. Glasses for beer, decanters and
goblets for wine, appear among the ancient pictorial illustrations of
Egyptian table-furniture. It would seem, too, from the position of
those at table, that they rose from their chairs to challenge each
other to drink, to propose toasts or healths, or to inflict speeches
upon the vexed ears of compulsory listeners.

In these “counterfeit presentments” of Egyptian life may be seen the
entire science of epicureanism, and its practical application put into
action. The poultry-yard, the slaughter-houses, the markets and the
kitchen, are so graphically depicted, that we see at once, that the art
of making life comfortable was one most profoundly respected by the
ancient and mysterious people. The selecting, purchasing, and killing
are vividly portrayed. The cooking is carried on in a large bronze
caldron, on a tripod, over a fire, which is stirred by an under-cook,
with a poker that may have been bought any day at Rippon and Burton’s.
The butcher is there, too, in order decently to dissect the fowls;
and our ancient friend carries before him the identical steel for
sharpening his knife, which may be seen any day hanging from the waists
of the butchers of London. There is a pastrycook, also, in one of
these “civil monuments of Egypt,” who is carrying a tray of tartlets
on his head; and to the tray is appended the inscription signifying
“one thousand,” which probably means, that this “Birch, Pyramid-place,
Cairo,” drives such a trade, that he makes and sells a thousand tarts
or a thousand varieties of them daily.

A dinner _fresco_, in a tomb at Thebes, shows us an entertainment given
by a naval officer to some of his professional brethren. This _fresco_
is described as being in compartments, and, perhaps, the most curious
is that in which “you see on one side the arrival of an aristocratic
guest, in his chariot, attended by a train of running footmen, one
of whom hastens forward to announce his arrival by a knock at the
door, sufficient to satisfy the critical ear, and rouse the somnolent
obesity, of the sleepiest and fattest hall-porter in Grosvenor
Square. The other compartment presents you with a _coup-d’œil_ of the
poultry-yard, shambles, pantry, and kitchen; and is completed by a
side view of a novel incident. A grey-headed mendicant, attended by
his faithful dog, and who might pass for Ulysses at his palace-gate,
is receiving, from the hands of a deformed, but charitable, menial, a
bull’s head, and a draught of that beer, for the invention of which we
are beholden to the Thebans.”

The story of Mycerinus, the Egyptian King, is grandly told by Mr.
Arnold, in his popular volume of poems; and, succinctly, by Herodotus.
An incident of the story connects it with our subject. Mycerinus
was persecuted by the gods for rendering Egypt happy, instead of
oppressing it, like his predecessors, and as the oracles had declared
it should be oppressed for many years to come. In punishment for such
impious piety, as his offence may be called, poor Mycerinus was told by
the oracle at Buto, that he should live only six years longer. “When
Mycerinus heard this, seeing that his sentence was now pronounced
against him, he ordered a great number of lamps to be made, and, having
lighted them, whenever night came on, he drank and enjoyed himself,
never ceasing night or day, roaming about the marshes and groves,
wherever he could hear of places most suited for pleasure; and he had
recourse to this artifice for the purpose of convicting the oracle of
falsehood, that by turning the nights into days, he might live twelve
years instead of six.” Poor fool! He probably succeeded in his object,
but after a sorry fashion. It may be good poetry to say that--

    “The best of all ways
    To lengthen our days
  Is to take a few hours from night, my dear;”

but it is bad in principle, and universally unsuccessful in practice.

A recent describer of his travels in Egypt has said, that nothing is
so easy as to show that the Egyptians gave jovial banquets within the
sepulchral hall of tombs. I think that nothing would be so difficult
as to prove this. The nearest approach to it would be the case of the
skeleton that was carried about at Egyptian banquets, the bearer, at
the same time, warning the guests that, eat, drink, and laugh as they
might, to _that_ “complexion they must come” at last. The assertion,
however, was probably made, in part, to excuse a barbarous festival, at
which the writer was present, in the tombs of Eilythyias. The _locale_
was one of the huge halls, whose colossal columns serve to support the
huger mountain that is above. The dinner, we are told, was laid out
between the columns, with strings of small lamps suspended in festoons
over head.

The civilized and Christian ladies and gentlemen who were the guests
at this feast, broke up the coffins of the pagan and barbarian Kings
and Queens, in order to procure wood to boil their vegetables! They
laughed, joked, and sang joyous songs, and wondered what the buried
majesty of Misraim would say, could it burst its cerements, and see
northern men of unknown tongues drinking Champagne at its august
feet. And if, for a moment, a reflecting guest contrasted the savage
revelry with the ensigns hung out by the King of Terrors to intimate
his irresistible dominion over the company,--why, reflection was soon
banished by the appearance of the Awalim and Ghawazi girls, whom strong
coffee and more potent brandy had primed for their lascivious dancing.
“O Father Abraham! what these Christians are!”

These tombs are full of instruction to those who can read them. They
show us that the chief butler and cook--the “keeper of the drinks,” and
the Prince (_sar_) of his cooks--were probably Princes of the blood
of Pharaoh. In all pictorial representations of banquets, it is the
eldest son who hands the viands to his father, the eldest daughter to
the mother. The bill of fare of the trimestrial banquet of the dead,
held in the noble hall of the tomb of Nahrai at Benihassan, is still
extant. It is as long as that of a score of Lord Mayors’; and hundreds
of men were fed from what remained. All the retainers of Nahrai, who
was a Prince in Egypt a full century before the time of Joseph, were
buried in the vaults beneath the hall; and every one who could claim
kindred with them had a right to partake of the feast. The manner of
service appears to have been after this fashion:--The youngest children
of the house received the viands from the cooks, and those children
passed them on to the elder, until they reached the first-born,
who placed the dish at the feet of his sire, by whom a portion was
cut off, which the daughters, according to their age, transferred
from one to the other till it reached the separate table of their
mother. All remained standing, at these festival-dinners, until the
two seniors of the house had finished the first dishes of the repast.
Portions from these were then served to the children, when the whole
party sat down together; the children eating of the remains of the
first dish, while “the governor” and his lady partook of the integral
second; and so on, through a long service. On the wall of a tomb at
Ghizeh,--that of Eimei, one of the Princes of the Saphis,--the bill of
fare directs ninety-eight dishes to be placed, at once, on the table,
at the fortnightly banquets which glad survivors held in honour of the
departed, who appear to me always to enjoy an immense advantage over
those whom they leave behind them.

But now let us look in upon the modern Egyptian. If he be the master
of a house, while he is at ablutions and prayers, his wife is making
his coffee; and it is to be hoped that she is allowed the privilege
alluded to in the Augustinian sentiment, _orat qui laborat_. The cup
of coffee and pipe, taken early, generally suffice the Egyptian till
noon, at which hour comes the actual breakfast, usually consisting of
bread, butter, eggs, cheese, clotted cream, or curdled milk, with,
perhaps, a thin pastry, saturated with butter, folded like a pancake,
and sprinkled with sugar. A dish of horse-beans (terrific dish!)
sometimes adorns the table. They have been slowly simmering through
a whole night in an earthen vessel, buried up to the neck in the hot
ashes of an oven; and the sauce for this indigestible dish is linseed
oil or butter, and, perhaps, a little lime-juice. Those to whom butter
is difficult of procuring, or to whom good dinners are rarities, often
make a meal, and are content, upon dry bread dipped in a mixture of
salt, pepper, wild marjoram, with various other herbs, pungent seeds,
and a quantity of chickpeas. The bread is dipped into this _ragoût_,
and so eaten.

The supper is the principal meal in Egypt. The cooking is especially
for this repast; and what remains is appropriated for the next day’s
dinner, despite the apophthegm of Boileau, that--

  “_Un dîner réchauffé ne vaut jamais rien._”

It is only an amiable _paterfamilias_ that dines with his wives and
children; and, in truth, where the wife appears in the plural number,
the husband can hardly expect a quiet meal. The washing before eating
is almost of universal observation. The table is a round tray placed
low, so that the squatters on the ground may conveniently eat thereat.
Bread and limes are placed on the tray. The bread is round, as among
the ancient Egyptians, and often serves as a plate. The spoons, too,
are of the materials I have named in speaking of the older nation.
The dishes are of tinned copper or china; and several are put upon
the table at one time. Among the Turks, only _one_ dish appears at
a time. Twelve persons, with one knee on the ground and the other
(the right) raised, may sit round a tray three feet in diameter. Each
guest tucks up his right sleeve, and prepares for his work, after
imitating the master of the house in uttering a low _Bismillah_, “In
the name of God.” The host sets the second example of commencing
to eat; and the guests again follow the good precedent. Knives and
forks are not used; spoons only for food like soups and rice. The
thumb and two forefingers are the instruments otherwise employed; and
they are employed delicately enough. Generally, a piece of bread is
taken, doubled together, and dipped into the dish, so as to enclose
the morsel of meat which the guest designs for himself, or, if it be
a savoury bit, and _he_ be courteous, intended for presentation to
his neighbour. The food is suited to such practices. It consists of
stewed meats, with vegetables of endless variety, or of small morsels
of mutton or lamb, roasted on skewers: clarified butter compensates for
want of fat in the meat. A fowl is summarily torn asunder by two hands,
either of the same person, or the right hands of two guests. Dexterous
fellows, like our first-rate carvers, will “joint” a fowl with one
hand. The Arabs do not use the left hand at all at table, because it is
used for unclean purposes. The disjointing is easily done; and even a
whole lamb, stuffed with pistachio nuts, may be pulled to pieces much
more easily than we divide a chicken. Water-melons, sliced, set to
cool, and watched, lest serpents should approach, and poison the dish
by their breath, generally form, when in season, a part of an Egyptian
meal,--a meal which usually closes with a dish of boiled rice, mixed
with butter, salt, and pepper; but occasionally this dish is followed
by a bowl of water, with raisins that have been boiled in it, and sugar
added, with a little rose-water, to give it an odour of refinement. A
bottle of six-year-old port is preferable.

As soon as each person has satisfied his appetite, he ceases, murmurs,
“Praise be to God!” drinks his sweetened water, rises, and goes his
way. They who drink wine, do it in private, or with confidential
friends, call it “rum” to save their orthodoxy; and if a visitor call
while this process is going on, the ready servant informs him that his
master is abroad or in the harem. Sweet drinks and sherbets, approved
by the Law and _the_ Prophet, are in common use, and pipes and prayer
end “the well-spent day.”

Egyptian women have some little fancies connected with the table that
may be mentioned. In order to achieve that proportion of obesity
which constitutes the beautiful, they eat mashed beetles, and they
chew frankincense and laudanum, to perfume the breath. The Egyptian
peasantry live upon the very sparest of diets, not often being able to
procure even rice. They, like the Bedouins, are, however, remarkable
for strength and health; but an Egyptian or Bedouin diet would not
produce the same results in an English climate.

It will have been observed, that in Egypt each man says his own
“grace,” before and after meat, for himself. The same custom prevails
in Servia. At table, instead of one person asking for a blessing on the
food, each individual expresses, _in his own words_, (an improvement on
the Egyptian plan,) his gratitude to the Supreme Being. In drinking,
the toast or sentiment of the Servian is, “To the glory of God!” and
a very excellent sentiment, only the Servian is apt to get very drunk
over it. The Servian qualification for a chairman at a convivial party
is, that he should be able to deliver an extempore prayer; and a very
good qualification, provided it be not a mere formality, and that
the spirit of prayer be the strongest spirit there. The combination,
however, of Collects and conviviality reminds me of some strange
parties at old-fashioned houses in our provincial towns, where comic
songs are followed by discussions on the Millennium, and seed-cake and
ginger wine season both.

I have spoken more of the achievements of Egyptian cookery, than of the
quality of the cooks. The fact is, that it is far more easy to speak
decidedly of the former, than of the latter. Mr. St. John describes
the Arab cooks in Egypt as being great gastronomers, and serving up
“their dishes in a style which could not have displeased Elagabalus
himself!” Mr. Lane equally lauds their excellence, and the delicacy of
the manner of eating. Herr Werne, on the other hand,--and he is a man
of wide experience in this matter,--speaks very differently both of
Turkish eating and Arab cooking in Egypt. Werne, indeed, speaks of the
remote district of Bellad Sudam, rather than of Cairo and Alexandria;
but his observations have an extensive application, nevertheless. He
is disgusted with the general want of cleanliness; and he remarks,
that “the cooks are dirtier in themselves, and more filthy in their
dress, than any other class of people.” The dirty Arab cook is in a
dirty kitchen, a dirty pipe ever in his mouth, and with the dirtiest of
hands manipulating savoury preparations for the mouths of his masters.
He knows little more than how to boil or roast meat, boil beans, and
prepare vegetable dishes. Even the female slaves of the harem, who act
as cooks to their lords, are remarkable for uncleanliness. “All the
meat to be used for the dinner is sodden together in one huge caldron,
and separated for arrangement in various dishes, all of which partake
of general flavour, having been cooked together, and there is but scant
nourishment in any of them.” The vegetables are described by him as
being wretchedly cooked, and saturated with bad butter, or the water
in which they have been boiled. The dishes are not larger than our
plates; the plates, when such are used by the guests, about the size
of our saucers: but “each guest at once plunges his hand into any or
every dish that pleases him, and gropes about till he gets hold of the
best bits, pulls them out, and swallows them. Very often a bite is only
taken from the piece thus seized on, and the rest returned to the dish;
but, in spite of the clean treatment it has undergone, it is again soon
seized hold of by another, and, perchance, again similarly handled,
till all is finally bolted. The Turks eat incredibly rapidly, as they
bolt every thing, and keep cramming into the mouth more, ere the former
mouthful has been swallowed; while a smacking of lips, and licking of
sauce-dripping fingers, succeed, and proclaim their pleasure in the
meal. Bread is generally to be found on the table, but neither salt,
oil, vinegar, nor pepper; although, when they dine with Europeans,
they show no dislike to highly-seasoned dishes or strong drinks.
Although these dishes are numerous, they contain but little. If there
are many courses, or more dishes than the table will hold at one time,
the entertainer is ever busied making signs to the attendants which
are to be removed; and not seldom the guest finds, that the very dish
he was about to help himself from is carried off from under his very
nose. The Pasha used often to amuse himself by playing tricks on his
guests, by ordering off, with the utmost rapidity, those dishes he saw
their longing eyes fixed on, ere their outstretched hands could convey
any portion of them into their watering mouths. At first, in spite of
the _pilau_, we never were quick enough to get sufficient to eat, not
having been brought up to bolt our food; and that the Turks are so
quickly satisfied, and by so little, is wholly owing to this bolting
of their food, is undeniable; and this also produces the repeated
eructations they so loudly and joyfully give vent to, as proving their
high health and vigour.”

The Turks and Arabs of Egypt “chaw,” carrying their quid between
the front teeth and upper lip. The blacks of Gesira mix tobacco and
nitron, dissolving the latter in an infusion of the former. This they
call “bucca;” and they take a mouthful of it at a time, which they
keep rinsing over their teeth and gums, for, perhaps, a quarter of
an hour, before they eject it. They have “bucca” parties, as we have
tea-parties; and _then_ is the circle in the very highest state of
enjoyment,--imbibing, gurgling, gargling, and ejecting,--and not a word
uttered, except at the close, when the guests return thanks to their
host “for this very delightful evening!”

Egypt was the locality wherein the saints of old especially shone with
respect to their table arrangements, or their contempt for them; and
these gentlemen fairly claim a due share of notice at our hands. So,
now “for the Desert!”




THE DIET OF SAINTS.


Feasting, under certain circumstances, at certain seasons, and for
certain ends, is undoubtedly sanctified by apostolical recommendation.
The earlier fathers, however, say little on the subject. Clement of
Alexandria mentions weekly fasts at Easter; and Tertullian, in an
article especially recommending the observation, bitterly bewails that
it has fallen into a general disuse. The Church of Alexandria also
ordained a fast on Wednesdays and Fridays;--on Wednesday, because on
that day Christ was betrayed; on Friday, because on that day he was
crucified. In Alexandria too arose the saying, that the aspen-tree
shook because it was the tree from which the wood for the cross was
taken. The fasting generally consisted in abstaining from food until
three o’clock in the afternoon, but a religious liberty was allowed,
connected with its observance, until the sixth century, when a Council
of Orleans decreed excommunication against all who did not fast
according to the laws of the Church. Nor did the authorities stop
at this penalty; for, in later times the unlucky wight detected in
relieving hunger by eating prohibited meats, was punished by having all
his teeth drawn--the offending members were summarily extracted. The
prohibited food in Lent was flesh, eggs, cheese, and wine; subsequently
flesh alone was prohibited; and this tenderness of orthodoxy so
disgusted the Greek Church, that it lost its temper, flew off into
schism, and forgot charity in maintaining that the use of meat in Lent
was damnable.

The Xerophagia, or “dry eatings,” were the days on which nothing was
eaten but bread and salt. This was in very early times. Innovators
added pulse, herbs, and fruits--no unpleasant fare in hot countries.
The Montanists made this fast obligatory, and were very much censured
in consequence. The Essenes, who, whether as Jews or Jewish Christians
in Alexandria, were singularly strict observers of the Sabbath,
carrying their strictness to a point which my readers may find in
Jortin, if they are curious thereupon, observed also this fast very
rigidly, and on the stated days ate nothing with their bread but salt
and hyssop.

Most of the saints recorded on the canon roll of Rome, appear to have
maintained very indifferent tables, and to have considerably marred
thereby their strength and efficiency. Saint Fulgentius abstained from
everything savoury, and even drank no wine, says his biographer; which
looks as if the good men generally _did_ take some for their stomach’s
sake; and indeed Fulgentius himself took a little negus when he was
indisposed to plain water; and “small blame to him” for so harmless a
proceeding. St. Eugenius never broke his fast till sunset; and when a
bunch of grapes was sent to a sick monk of the desert, he forwarded it
to a second, and a second to a third, and so on to a twentieth, until
this health-inspiring offering, made for man by God, was withered and
nasty. These monks did not pray like Pope:--

  “The blessings thy free bounty gives
    Let me not cast away,
  For God is paid when man receives,--
    To enjoy is to obey.”

But this is a sentiment in the opposite extreme, or might be easily
carried in that direction. Palladius says of one of these desert monks,
St. Macarius, that for years together he lived only on raw herbs and
pulse; that during three consecutive years he existed on four or five
ounces of bread daily; and that he consumed but one small measure
of oil in a twelvemonth--a substitute for the gallons of sack with
which profaner men washed down their modicum of bread. St. Macarius,
however, surpassed himself in Lent; and an alderman might be excused
for fainting at the idea of a human being passing forty days and nights
in a standing position, with no more substantial support than a few
raw cabbage-leaves on a Sunday! St. Geneviève was hardly inferior in
austerity, and only ate twice in the week, on Sundays and Thursdays,
and then only beans and bread. When she grew old and infirm, and she
was prematurely both, she indulged in a little fish and milk. Simeon
Stylites surpassed both in culpable austerity. He spent an entire Lent
without allowing anything to pass his lips; and at other seasons this
slow suicidal saint never ate but on Sundays. His chief occupation
upon the pillar, which looks much more like a column of pride than a
monument of humility, was in praying and bowing. An admiring monk, who
must have had as little of active usefulness to employ his time with as
poor Simeon, exultingly records, that he did not eat once during the
day, but that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four bows of
adoration in that time. Oh, Simeon! well for thee, poor fellow-mortal,
if those reverences be not accounted rather as homage to thyself, than
to Him to whom homage is due.

It is extremely difficult for the human mind to realize the idea of a
Bishop of London never breaking his fast till the evening, and then
being satisfied with a solitary egg, an inch of bread, and a cup of
milk and water; such, however, is said to have been the daily fare of
St. Cedd, a predecessor of Dr. Blomfield in the metropolitan diocese.
“How unlike _my_ Beverly!” St. Severinus, an Austrian prelate, had a
more indifferent table than St. Cedd, especially in Lent, when he ate
but once a week. St. William of Bourges never tasted meat after he
was ordained. St. Theodosius, the Cenobiarch, was more frugal still,
and bread often lacked, we are told, even for the holy offices of the
Church. This would seem to intimate, however, that the officers of the
Church may have eaten it. Be this as it may, when bread was needed for
the sacrament, a string of mules miraculously appeared in the desert,
bearing the necessary provision. “Necessary provision,” may be well
said, for if the Cenobites consumed little themselves, they presided at
tables where occasionally sat a hundred hungry guests, who must have
much needed a dinner, seeing that they crossed the desert to obtain it.

Some of the most self-denying saints, like St. Felix of Nola, if they
declined wine in its liquid form, took it in pills,--swallowing grapes.
St. Paul, the first hermit, lived on the fruit of a tree which produced
a fresh supply daily, the bread to temper which was brought every
morning by a raven. The diet was sufficiently invigorating to give
strength to the modest man to bite off his own tongue, and spit it in
the face of a lady who tried to tempt him, as the Irish nymph tempted
the uncourteous St. Kevin of Glendalough. He was, in abstinence, only
second to St. Isidore, who, when hungry, burst into tears, not because
God had mercifully provided him wherewith to satisfy lawful appetite,
but because, sinful man that he was, he dared to eat at all!

I have spoken of the abstinence of a Bishop of London; there was a
Bishop of Worcester, Wulstan, who is worthy of being mentioned with
him. Wulstan was rather fond of savoury viands, but he was one day,
during mass, so distracted by the smell of meat roasting in a kitchen,
which must have been very close to his church, that he made a vow to
abstain from meat for ever. But I do not know if he kept his vow. St.
Euthymius was a more rational man, for he taught his monks that to
satisfy hunger was no crime, but that to abuse appetite and God’s gifts
too, _was_ an offence. St. Macedonius, the Syrian, did not discover
this truth until he had so impaired his powers by long fasts, that it
was impossible to restore them--as he tried to do on a diet of dry
bread. And yet he was so prematurely gifted, that his own birth is said
to have been the result of his own prayers!

The table kept by St. Publius for his monks was not of a liberal
character. He allowed them nothing but pulse and herbs, coarse bread,
and water. Nothing else! He prohibited wine, milk, cheese, grapes, and
even vinegar--which every sour brother might have distilled from his
own ichor. From Easter to Whitsuntide was accounted a holiday time,
and during that festive period, the brotherhood were allowed to grow
hilarious, if they could, upon a gill of oil a-piece. St. Paula, “the
widow,” subjected her nuns to the same lively fare, and she moreover
fiercely denounced all ideas of personal neatness and cleanliness, as
an uncleanness of the mind. She accounted herself wise in so doing, but
her nuns might fairly have put to her the question asked by Mizen, in
the Fair Quaker of Deal:--“Do’st thou think that nastiness gives thee a
title to knowledge?”

St. John Chrysostom was as severe as Paula, and it would not have cost
Olympias much to defray, as she insisted upon doing, the expenses of
his table. The table which the saint kept for guests was, however,
hospitably and delicately laden--and perhaps this was an inconsistency
in a man who censured what he also encouraged.

They who have made a saint of Charlemagne, aver that he broke his fast
but once a day, and that after sunset. I cannot believe this of a man
who dealt so largely in the eggs laid by his hens, and in vegetables
raised in his garden. Nor do I believe that St. Sulpicius Severus would
have written so capital a biography of St. Martin, had he lived, as it
is said, on herbs, boiled with a little vinegar for seasoning. Surely,
we have heard of the “kitchen” of gentlemen like Sulpicius, and if his
condensed Scripture History be as dry as the bread he ate during the
task, his letters to Claudia seem to have been written on more generous
food. Not that he was immoderate. He kept one cook, a very “plain
cook” indeed, as Sulpicius describes him, when he despatched the boy
to Bishop Paulinus with a letter which commences with a startling bit
of episcopal history, namely, that “_all_ the cooks in the kitchen of
Paulinus had left him without warning, because the prelate was getting
too careless about good living.” Some commentators say that the letter
was a joke; but the reply to it is extant, and therein it may be seen
how Paulinus did not look upon it as a joke.

Southey, in his “St. Romuald,” mirthful as the story is, has not
exceeded the truth, or rather has not departed from the narrative told
by the good man’s biographers:--

      “Then, Sir, to see how he would mortify
      The flesh! If any one had dainty fare,
          Good man, he would come there;
  And look at all the delicate things, and cry,
              O Belly! Belly!
  You would be gormandizing now, I know;
          But it shall not be so!--
  Home, to your bread and water. Home, I tell ye.”

And thus says Alban Butler of him:--“He never would admit of the
least thing to give a savour to the herbs or meal-gruel on which he
supported himself. If anything was brought him better dressed, he,
for the greater self-denial, applied it to his nostrils, and said,
‘Oh Gluttony, Gluttony! thou shalt never taste this! Perpetual war
is declared against thee!’” St. William of Maleval was of the same
opinion when he cried because he ate his dry bread with a relish,
and found that what he called “sensuality” was not inseparable from
the coarsest food. St. Benedict of Anian, on the other hand, did not
decline the use of a little wine, when it was given him; while St.
Martinianus, again, lived upon biscuits and water, brought to him twice
a-year--and very nasty fare it must have been towards the end of each
six months. It must have been worse than that of St. Peter Damian, who
prided himself on never drinking water fresh, and thought there was
virtue in having it four-and-twenty hours old. St. Tarasius must have
maintained a more decent table, for it is said of him that he used to
take the dishes from it and give of them to the poor; and honour be
to his name, because of his good sense and his charity! Our venerable
acquaintance of the principality, St. David, was not half so wise,
however well-intentioned; but St. Charles, Earl of Flanders, followed
the better course, and not only lived moderately well, but acted
better, by daily distributing seven hundred loaves to the poor. The
Welsh saints, generally, kept as austere a table as St. David. There
was, for instance, the cacophonous Winwaloe of Winwaloe, who kept his
monks at starving point all the week, recalling them to life on Sundays
by microscopic rations of hard cheese and shell-fish. His own fare was
barley-bread strewn with ashes, and when Lent arrived, the quantity
of ashes was doubled, in honour of the season! St. Thomas Aquinas was
so abstracted that he never knew, at dinner, what he was eating, nor
could remember, after it, if he had dined, which was likely enough.
St. Frances, Widow, foundress of the Collations, was in more full
possession of her wits; as, indeed, the lady saints were, generally.
She had her little fancies indeed, which were “only charming Fanny’s
way,” and her beverage at eve was dirty water, out of a human skull;
but she had no mercy for lazy devotees, and invariably told sighing
wives that they had active duties to perform, and that they had better
keep out of monasteries, at least till they were widows. She was a
good, humble woman; and, as a commentator says of the abstinence of St.
Euphrasia, without humility these facts would be but facts of devils!

Another gleam of good sense shines upon us from the person of St.
Benedict. He drank wine, and so did his monks of Vicovara, who liked
his wine better than either the toast or sentiment with which he passed
it round to them, and who tried to get rid of him by poisoning his
glass; but the saint, full of inspired suspicion, made over it the sign
of the cross, and away went the flask into fifty fragments. The taste
of the good saint was known after he left Vicovara, and a pious soul
once sent him a couple of bottles of wine by a faithless messenger, who
delivered but one. “Mind what you are about,” said St. Benedict, “when
you draw the other cork for yourself.” The knave was not abashed, but
when he did secretly open the other bottle for the solace of his own
thirsty throat, he found nothing therein but a lively serpent, which
glided from him after casting at him a reproachful look!

If St. Benedict was right in the ordering of his table, why St. John of
Egypt was wrong, for he never drank anything but stagnant water, nor
ate anything cooked by fire; even his bread he complacently swallowed
before it was baked;--and what his liver was like, it would puzzle any
but a physician even to conjecture.

There was infinitely more sense in the table kept by an abbot of the
compound Christian and Pagan title and name of St. Plato. He never ate
anything but what had been raised or procured by the labour of his own
hands; he was consequently never in debt with respect to his household
expenses, and if all men so far followed the example of St. Plato, who
was a better practical philosopher than his heathen namesake, what
a happy world we should make of it! There would be fewer Christmas
bills, and many more joyous dinners, not only at Christmas, but all
the year round!

St. Plato deserves our respect; he would not live on alms. He was more
useful in his generation than the men who, like St. Aphraates, were
content to exist on the eleemosynary contributions of the faithful, or
than those who, like Zozimus and his followers, wandered through the
desert, trusting to chance and calling it providence. What, compared
with our friend Plato, was that St. Droun, the so-called patron of
shepherds, who during forty years taught them nothing, and lived on the
barley-bread which they brought him in return for his instruction.

I have given one or two instances of the spare tables kept by a
few of our ancient bishops; I may here add to them the name of St.
Elphege, some time Bishop of Winchester, and subsequently Archbishop
of Canterbury. The smell of roast meat was never known in his palace
on any but “extraordinary occasions.” This, however, is a very
indefinite term, and the table of this primate may have been one to
make a cardinal give unctuous thanks for rich mercies, five days out
of the seven. There was certainly gastronomic work to do in some of
the ancient godly households, or St. James of Sclavonia would not
have passed so many years in one, as he did, in the capacity of cook,
“improving” the occasion, by drawing ideas of hell from his own fires,
which were for ever roasting savoury joints, like those which strike
the visitors with awe and appetite in the kitchens at Maynooth.

If in some houses there were busy kitchens, in others there were soft
couches, whereon digestion might progress. Thus Adalbert, Bishop of
Prague, was a Saint and Martyr; and it is said, that he had a most
comfortable bed in his dormitory, but that he never slept upon it!
Then, what was the bed for? It is added, that he fasted in private,
with great severity,--but it is no more “of faith” to believe this,
than it is that he slept every night on the floor, under, and not upon,
his own excellent feather-bed; for what says the old refrain?--

  “A notre coucher
  Un lit, des draps blancs,
  Une ----
          digue daine, bon!
  Voila la vie que ces moines font!”

But he may have been a profane fellow who wrote these rude rhymes; and
we will no more implicitly trust him, than we will the prose historians
of the doings and dealings of the saintly men.

It is not an unusual thing to find wine-bibbers mentioned among the
members of holy communities; where wine was generally supposed to be a
luxury never employed but for the service of the altar,--and perhaps of
the sick. The venerable Bede tells a story of a “brother,” whom he had
known, and whom he wishes to God he had never known, and who was given
to worship the spigot. Bede does not give his name, but certifies that
the too jolly friar lived ignobly in a noble monastery, where he was
often reproved for his acts of drunkenness, and only tolerated because
of his gifts,--not spiritual, but as a carpenter. He was a terrible
tippler, but a hard workman to boot, and would, at any time, rather
labour all day and all night at his bench than join the brethren in
chapel. Indeed, when he did go, his thoughts were running on something
else. He was like the profane Yorkshire farmer, who praised the
institution of the Sabbath because it not only brought roast beef with
it as a sacred observance, but it authorized him to attend in his pew
at church, where, said he, “I puts up my legs and thinks o’ nothing!”
Bede’s carpenter was characteristically punished for his bibbing; and
the story was made much of, by way of monition to others. It was to
this effect:--“He, falling sick, and being reduced to extremity, called
the brethren, and with much lamentation, and like one damned, began to
tell them that he saw hell open, and Satan at the bottom thereof, and
also Caiaphas, with the others that slew our Lord, by him delivered up
to avenging flames. ‘In whose neighbourhood,’ said he, ‘I see a place
of eternal perdition prepared for me, miserable wretch that I am!’
The brothers, hearing these words, began seriously to exhort him that
he should repent even then, while he was in the flesh. He answered in
despair,--‘I have no time now to change my course of life, when I have
myself seen my judgment passed.’ When he had uttered these words, he
died, without having received the saving _viaticum_; and his body was
buried in the remotest part of the monastery; nor did any one dare
to say masses, sing psalms, or even to pray for him.” Which seems a
very hard case; for if any one needed such service it was he; and the
Church’s ability to extricate him could not be denied, when she was
duly pre-paid for the service.

Curiously enough, St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustin, ranks among
the wine-bibbers. Her pious parents left their children to be brought
up by a servant-maid, who had more zeal than discretion, and who
would allow none of the children to drink, were they ever so thirsty,
except at meal-times, and then only a drop or two of water. “If you
cannot restrain your desire to drink now,” she would say, “what will
it be when you have wine at command?” Now, the effect of this speech
was exactly like that of the confessor to the hostler, when he asked
the latter, if he never greased the horses’ teeth in order to prevent
them eating their corn. It gave the young Monica a new idea. She was
accustomed to draw the wine for her father’s table, and she henceforth
began to drink a portion each time that she went to the cellar with
her pitcher. And I do not know that Mr. Millais, or any other of the
pre-Raphaelite gentlemen, could have a better subject for a picture,
than that representing the scene when the horrified nurse-maid beheld
her young charge indulging in her cups in the parental wine-vault.
The lecture she received worked her conversion, we are told; and she
married, and became the mother of St. Augustin, who so far followed the
maternal example that, in his earlier years, when, with his eyes upon
heaven, his heart was with the good things of the earth, his commonest
prayer used to be, “Lord, make me religious, _but not just yet_.”

The nurse-maid of Monica deserved to have been the wife,--and perhaps
she was,--of St. Theodotus, the vintner of Ancyra. He was a teetotaller
who kept a tavern, and who passed the live-long day in leaning over his
counter and begging his customers not to drink! Well, men have been
canonized for less useful service to their kind; and Theodotus was
more worthily employed in keeping drunkards from his wine-casks, than
St. Pius V. was when, every day before dinner, by way of mocking his
appetite, he resorted to the public hospitals, and kissed the ulcers
of the patients! Nay, biographers tell us that an English Protestant
gentleman was _suddenly converted_ to Romanism, by observing the
condescension and affection with which Pius kissed the ulcers on the
feet of some poor men! The pope, if he and the convert dined together
after this nasty ceremony, might have confessed that he had been sore
put to it for an argument that should carry conviction to an English
gentleman in search of a religion.

Let us contrast this pope in his pride with a cardinal in his fall.
“When Wolsey,” says Mr. Hunter the antiquary, “was dismissed by his
tyrannical master to his northern diocese, he passed many weeks
at Scrooby. It is a pleasing picture which his faithful servant,
Cavendish, gives of him at this period of his life:--‘Ministering many
deeds of charity, and attending on Sundays at some parish church in the
neighbourhood; hearing or saying mass himself, and causing some one of
his chaplains to preach to the people; and that done, he would dine
in some honest house of that town, where should be distributed to the
poor a great alms, as well of meat and drink, as of money to supply the
want of sufficient meat, if the number of the poor did so exceed of
necessity.’” Wolsey was no saint certainly, but he was as honest a man
as Pius, and a wiser when he fed the poor rather than kiss their ulcers.

But there is no accounting for taste; the Russian Boniface used to
roll himself among thorns and nettles, in order to get an appetite, or
to punish himself for indulging over much. St. Germanus, on the other
hand, commenced every repast by putting ashes into his mouth;--the
modern custom of beginning with oysters is certainly better both for
taste and stomach. St. Walthen took wine, but then he put spiders in
it. St. Dominic, too, was singular in his diet, and he sometimes spent
his half-hour before dinner in one of the most curious positions that
gentlemen could possibly fix upon. The Abbot of St. Vincent’s one day
desired his company at dinner, but at the usual hour the saint was in
church, and had forgotten the invitation. In the meantime the turkey
and chine were spoiling, and the hungry abbot despatched a monk in
quest of the loiterer; the messenger hurried to the church, where, to
his very considerable astonishment, he beheld St. Dominic “ravished in
an ecstasy,” whatever that may mean, “raised several cubits above the
ground, and without motion.” The Saint, on being told that dinner was
ready, graciously smiled at the intelligence, and gently descended to
the ground.

St. Laurence would have joked at this, as he did at his own grilling.
After he had lain for some time extended on his gridiron, he calmly
said to the executioner, “Will you have the kindness to turn me, as I
am quite done on the under side?” The executioner, a trifle astonished,
did as he was required, and soon after, the Saint, again speaking,
said, “I shall be obliged if you’ll take me up, as I am now fit for
eating.” This story reminds me of the remark made by an Irishman, when
first told that St. Patrick had crossed the ocean on a millstone:--“I
can’t contradict it! He was a lucky fellow!”

We are told of St. Bernard, who used to walk before dinner on the banks
of the Lake of Lausanne, that on hearing two of his monks speak of
the beauty of the lake, he declared that no such lake existed, or he
had been too much absorbed ever to have noticed it. So the Trappists
used to glory in not knowing where or how they dined, or recollecting
anything about it! All this shows less wisdom at table than was
exhibited by the royal St. Louis, who, when a certain friar began to
discuss doctrinal subjects with the pullets, stopped him with the
remark that “all things had their time, and joking was good sauce with
chickens!”

St. Laurence Justinian, the first patriarch of Venice, was far less
indulgent than the royal saint of France. He was so little so, that
when his thirsty monks sometimes asked for a little wine, declaring
that their throats felt as dry as the high road in summer, he used
quite as drily to remark, that if they could not bear parched throats
now, what would they do in the fires of purgatory? St. John the Dwarf,
Anchoret of Scete, cared as little for wine as St. Laurence, but he
was fond of fruit, and he obtained a supply from a strange source. An
old hermit bade him plant his walking-staff in the ground, and he not
only did so, but he watered it regularly for three years, when it
bore pippins, sweeter than those that grew at Ribstone up to the time
of the death of the late baronet. Before this miraculously-bearing
stick the little man used to read prayers as devoutly as Sir Hollyoak
Goodrick, the present Ribstone baronet, does to the villagers in his
own parish church, and for the same reason each had much to be thankful
for. It must be confessed that John the Dwarf had more taste than
his namesake of Cupertino, who not only ate nothing but vegetables,
but ate no vegetables that any other human being could be induced to
swallow. It was such garbage as only pigs would condescend to. _Arcades
ambo_--nasty creatures both!

St. Francis of Assisium exhibited something more of true humility at
his table, with a touch of the false metal notwithstanding. He ate
nothing dressed by fire, unless he were very ill, and even then he
covered it with ashes, or dipped it in cold water. His common daily
food was dry bread strewn with ashes; but this founder of the Friars’
Minors had the good sense not to condemn his followers to the rigorous
diet he observed himself; and “Brother Ass,” as he familiarly called
that self, was in his own opinion worthy of no better fare.

There was a founder of another community who exhibited more singularity
than St. Francis, who, despite some mistakes, was a man of whom
none other dare speak but with respect,--St. Ammon, founder of the
hermitages of Nitria. At the age of twenty-two this young Egyptian
noble married a fair girl of Memphis; and instead of a nuptial banquet,
he treated his bride to a reading of a particularly edifying chapter
from St. Paul, after which he withdrew to solitary meditation. During
eighteen years he occupied himself in training balsam-trees all day,
after which he returned home to a supper of fruit and herbs; then
came that terrible reiteration of advice from St. Paul, followed by a
separate solitary comment on the part of this exemplary pair. At the
end of the time above specified, he retired altogether from domestic
life, and settled alone on Mount Nitria, and his biographers naïvely
remark, this was “with his wife’s consent.” This saint was of such a
“complexion” of virtue, that one day, on accidentally catching sight of
an uncovered portion of his own body, he was so shocked that he fainted
away. If he had only read “Erasmus Wilson, on the Skin,” he would have
learned to look oftener at his own, and would have been a cleaner man,
a better husband, a more grateful feeder, and an improved Christian.

But St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, probably exceeded all
other originators of communities in the “fierceness,” so to speak,
of his dietetic laws; he never spared himself, nor his disciples. A
Carthusian is never permitted to eat meat under any pretence whatever.
In addition to this, they fast eight months in the year, and I suppose
they starve in Lent, for during that season they are forbidden to eat
what is called “white meats,” that is, eggs, milk, butter, and cheese.
Dry bread with water is their Lenten fare; and a peculiar law connected
with them is, that they can never change into another order, because
they would thereby profit a little in the way of better living; but
a brother of any other order may become a Carthusian, as thereby he
increases his mortifications and diminishes his diet. Of course from
these remarks the Carthusians of the “Charterhouse” are excepted. If
the thin spirit of St. Bruno ever scents the juicy viands that adorn
the well-spread table _there_, it probably melts into thin air by the
very force of disgust or ghastly envy.

The table kept by St. Bridget, when she married Ulpho, prince of
Nericia, in Sweden, was a very modest one for so princely a pair, but
what was spared thereby was given to the poor. Bridget and Ulpho, she
sweet sixteen, he two years more, read every evening the soothing
chapter from St. Paul, which formed the favourite study of St. Ammon
and his wife; but, as it would appear, with indifferent success. “They
enrolled themselves,” say their various biographers, “in the Third
Order of St. Francis, and lived in their own house as if it had been
a regular and austere monastery.” The biographers immediately add
without comment,--“They afterwards had eight children: four boys and
four girls;” and as the same paragraph goes on to state that “all
these children were favoured with the blessings of divine grace,” it
may be fairly concluded that a domestic observation of a monastic
regularity and austerity, is a course that will purchase blessings and
olive-branches.

The case of St. Gomer and his wife, the Lady Gwinmary, may perhaps be
cited as an exception. But this Gwinmary was an exacting lady at all
times, and when St. Gomer betook himself from her to live in the desert
on bitterness and biscuits, he fared as sumptuously and lived far more
quietly than he had done at home. He was one of the most placid of
saints, and it is a positive libel upon him for the French Admiralty
to have given his name to one of the most thundering steamers in the
service. Its broadsides far more nearly resemble the tongue of Gwinmary
than the tones of Gomer.

In charming contrast with this truculent Gwinmary do we meet and greet
the gentle St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The record of her good deeds would
fill a volume, but out of them I have only to select an exquisite table
trait--to register which is also to eulogize it. I do not allude to her
habitual temperance, to her dry bread and thimble-full of wine, when
she sat at meat with kings and queens, her equals in birth; nor to her
small feasts with her two maids, in the absence of her consort, Louis
the Landgrave; but I allude--and listen, O ye Benedicts, with grateful
rapture--to the fact “that the kitchen she kept out of her own private
purse, not to be the least charge to her husband.” If celibate priests,
who can hardly be supposed capable of appreciating such a fact,
canonized so rare a lady, all married men who love banquets but dislike
the butchers’ bills, will cry “Well done!” and recommend their wives to
read the instructive life of Elizabeth of Hungary.

Who would expect to hear good of a Borgia?--St. Francis Borgia was
virtuous enough to save his family name from entire infamy. Of no
other man or woman of his house could it be said that they gave up
suppers, in order to have more time for prayers. It was not Alexander
VI., the papal glory of his house and the shame of mankind, that
would have been content with one meal a day, and that meal--a mess
of leeks, or some pulse, with a piece of bread, and a cup of water.
At the same time, Francis Borgia kept a table becoming a man of his
rank, for the gratification of his guests of high degree. There, while
they ate their venison, and quaffed their _lachrymæ Christi_, he
nibbled his leeks, and sipped his water, “and conversed facetiously
with them, though at table his discourse generally turned on piety.”
It was very like a Borgia to make piety facetious, but if fun in
holiness be of the ingredients necessary to the making of a saint,
Sidney Smith has as good a right as Borgia to be on the roll of the
_beati_. Our reverend “joker of jokes,” indeed, would not have smiled
at the cook who put wormwood instead of mint into his broth; and I
doubt if Peter Plimley ever thought of doing what Francis Borgia
did,--namely, chewing his pills, and swallowing physic slowly, as
works of meritorious mortification, bearing compound interest to the
profit of the practitioner. St. Wilfrid, who taught the half-starved
South Saxons to catch the fish that swam at their feet, and thereby
live, seems to me to have performed a far more meritorious work than
if he had passed his life in gnawing leeks or masticating pills. Our
native saint, a good man at table, was often better employed than St.
Theresa, who is so eulogized because when serving at table, or carrying
the dinner from the kitchen, “she was often seen suddenly absorbed in
God, with the utensils or instruments of her business in her hands.”
The hungry and expectant monks might have quoted against the rapt maid,
the assertion of the royal sage, that there is a time to eat, as well
as to fast and pray. But St. Theresa, with all her good qualities,
was as obstinate as the Polish saint Hedwiga, who not only abstained
from meat till abstinence had nearly proved suicidal, but who refused
to save her life by eating any, until the Pope’s legate had issued a
very peremptory precept to that effect. St. Peter of Alcantara lost
all taste by his nearly total-abstinence principle, and when some one
gave him warm water with vinegar in it, he thought it was his usual
dinner of bean broth! That actively good saint, Charles Borromeo, was
only wisely moderate. “His austerities were discreet,” is the phrase
of one of his biographers; and his abstemiousness made his health
rather than marred it. This was so well known, that they who dieted
themselves in order to recover or preserve health, were said to have
adopted the remedy of Doctor Borromeo. St. Francis Xavier had something
of the discretion of Charles Borromeo,--and of the modesty too, for
he dressed his own dinners, even when he was apostolic legate; and
that St. Clement of Alexandria belonged to the same class of sagely
temperate men, is proved by his maintaining that a little wine taken
at evening, after the labours of the day, was good for the body, and
cheering for the spirits. So the sainted Archbishop of York had no
repugnance to a slice of roast goose, for, as he truly remarked, so
good a thing was not designed especially for sinners. And this recalls
to my mind a comment, similar in spirit, made by St. Thomas à Becket.
A monk once saw him eating the wing of a pheasant with much relish, and
the pharisaical fellow thereon affected to be scandalized, saying that
he thought Thomas was more of a mortified man. “Thou art but a ninny,”
said the Archbishop; “knowest thou not that a man may be a glutton upon
horse-beans; while another may enjoy with refinement even the wing of a
pheasant, and have nature’s aid to digest what Heaven’s bounty gave?”

This was good sense in the Archbishop, who perhaps had been reading
Epicurus, before he sat down to his repast. However this may be, it is
certain that the philosopher in question says something very like what
Becket said to the friar. “Is man,” he asks, “made to disdain the gifts
of nature? Is he placed on earth only to gather bitter fruits? For whom
then are the flowers that the gods strew at the feet of mortals?...
We please Providence when we yield to the divers inclinations which
Providence suggests; our duties have reference to His laws; and our
innocent desires are born of His inspirations.”

       *       *       *       *       *

There are few things more common in the Lives of the Saints, than to
find them, after spare banquets of their own, working penal miracles
at the banquets of others. St. Eloy was gifted with terrible power in
this way, and endless are the stories of revellers turned to stone
by the might of his magic right arm. Other saints had equal power
in turning the tables upon those who slighted them; and I will take
this opportunity of narrating one instance, and will set my Muse in
slippers, to detail what occurred at


THE BRIDAL AND BANQUET OF FERQUES.

Near the marble quarries of Ferques, adjacent to Landrecthun le
Nord, in the Boulonnais, may be seen a circular range of stones,
bearing a close resemblance in their shape, though little in their
magnitude, to those at Stonehenge; as also to the Devil’s Needles, near
Boroughbridge, and to the solitary block on the common at Harrogate.
Learned people recognise the stones at Ferques by the appellation of
the _Mallus_, a Druidical name for an altar; but the traditionary
folks, wiser in their generation, acknowledge no other title for these
remains of antiquity than _Neuches_, an old provincial word, the
corruption, I suppose, of _Noces_, and signifying a bridal, including
the banquet which followed it. According to them, the stones at Ferques
stand there as a testimony of divine vengeance, inflicted on a fiddler
and other individuals belonging to a wedding party who refused to kneel
before the Host, as it was being borne along by a priest to a dying
brother. Rabelais says, that a well-disposed and sensible man believes
all that he is told; (“Un homme de bien, un homme de bon sens, croit
toujours ce qu’on lui dit, et ce qu’il trouve par écrit;”) and _argal_,
as the logical grave-digger in _Hamlet_ has it, this story of a bridal
and banquet will be allowed to pass without question.

  Though around the bleak district there is not a grove
  That can boast of a shade, e’en in summer, for love,
  Nor a walk by the side of a murmuring stream,
  Where somnambulist lovers may talk as they dream;
  Nor a valley retir’d, nor sweet mossy dell,
  Where young hearts that are aching, their anguish may tell;
  Nor a wood where a maiden deserted may sigh,
  Or where youths, stripp’d of hope, may with decency die;--
  Though all it can boast be a desolate heath,
  Where ’twould puzzle young Cupid to find him a wreath,--
  Yet e’en here the Idalian has furnish’d full work
  For the hearts of the youths and the maidens of Ferques.

  Of these there were two in the good days of old,
  When the hard iron heel of the baron so bold
  Ground those to the dust whom the mere chance of birth
  Had deprived of the licence to lord it on earth.
  The maid was as light and as shy as the fawn,
  Her eyes dark as night, and her brow like the dawn;
  And her lips, twice as rich and as red as the rose,
  Were more warm than the sky at a summer eve’s close;
  While a music fell from them made only to bless;
  And her shape--nay! her shape I must leave you to guess.
  ’Twould require the power pictorial of Burke,
  To record how sublime was this beauty of Ferques.

  The swain was in manhood’s first op’ning bloom,
  In doublet, slash’d hose, martial bonnet, and plume;
  And he look’d, as he walk’d ’neath the moon’s silver light,
  Half hero, half mortal;--half _bourgeois_, half knight.
  If upward he gazed into heaven’s soft skies,
  He saw nothing there half so soft as her eyes;
  Or, at least, the young lover thus gallantly swore,
  As he ran the long roll of his soft nonsense o’er,
  And mincingly walk’d by the damosel’s side,--
  The latter all fondness, the former all pride;--
  With one arm round the maiden, one hand on his dirk,
  Irresistibly fine look’d this gallant of Ferques.

  These walkings, these gazings, the terrible sighing,
  With death, or at least earnest threat’nings of dying;
  These sinkings of spirit, these meltings away,
  With the watchings by night and the dreamings by day,
  What could such a mixture combustible bring,
  But a state of incendiarism, like Swing?
  When hearts are the haystack, and Love holds the torch,
  ’Tis odds but the haystack will soon get a scorch.
  And what else could arise from those meetings at eve,
  From those flaming assertions which maidens believe,
  And those vows warmly breath’d ‘’twixt the gloam and the murk,’[2]
  But a bridal and banquet to gladden all Ferques?

  Love’s eddying current, I say it in sooth,
  Ran, for this young couple, remarkably smooth;
  For the fathers paternally look’d on each child,
  While the mothers maternally wept as they smiled;
  Fraternally too a whole bevy of brothers
  Look’d on the alliance as fondly as mothers;
  And, if the young bride had possess’d but a sister,
  These lines would have told how she tenderly kiss’d her.
  Suffice it to say, that there never was seen,
  In valley, dale, hamlet, on moorland or green,
  An assembly so joyous as met at the kirk,
  To view and to envy the lovers of Ferques.

  For, the youthful, the aged, the ugly, the fair,
  The idle, the busy, grave and gay, all were there.
  Maids with prayers on their lips, for the weal of the bride,
  Some who long’d for her looks, some for _him_ by her side,
  And, though last, yet most certain, by no means the least,
  Stood his Rev’rence, who having been bid to the feast,
  Look’d as jocund and joyous, and beaming with smiles,
  As the fair Cytherean, when weaving her wiles.[3]
  For where is the priest, be he Pagan, Hindoo,
  Yellow Bonze from Japan, olive sage from Loo Choo,
  A Franciscan Friar, an opium-drench’d Turk,
  But loves a fair feast like this banquet at Ferques?

  ’Twould be tedious to tell, when the service was done,
  How that of the gallants was warmly begun,
  How, like the old suitors in Livy’s old story,
  By ‘Cupiditate’ (his words) ‘et Amore,’[4]
  The hearts of the damsels they ruthlessly task’d,
  And finally gain’d twice as much as they ask’d.
  Ah, sigh not to think that in Love’s stricken field,
  The maidens of Ferques were so ready to yield;
  For Livy declares that no maid can withstand
  The wooer who comes with such arms in his hand.
  They’re pleasant to talk of, but ’neath them doth lurk
  A peril not felt less at Rome than at Ferques.

  The banquet was sped, and the floor being clear’d,
  Terpsichore’s summons distinctly was heard,
  In the tuning Cremona that squeak’d forth its call,
  Inviting all those light of foot to the ball.

  Lovely dance! of thy charms how correct was the notion
  Of her who the Poetry, called thee, of Motion![5]
  When Beauty her features in smiles deigns to grace,
  What are those same smiles but the dance of the face?
  And when Dancing and Modesty happily meet,
  What is Dancing just then but the smiles of the feet?[6]
  I’d defy e’en a hermit the summons to shirk,
  Ask’d a measure to tread by the beauties of Ferques.

  When moonlight had risen to silver the scene,
  The party adjourn’d from the hall to the green,
  And their laughter was shaking the stars in the sky,
  When by chance, on the heels of their mirth, there pass’d by
  A Franciscan from Boulogne, Franciscanly shod,[7]
  Who ask’d them to kneel at the sight of their God,
  Whose presence mysterious he fully reveal’d.
  But the fiddler, he swore, he’d be hang’d if he kneel’d,
  And affirm’d--most irreverent charge ’gainst a monk--
  That the bare-footed priest was decidedly drunk.
  And the party applauded each quip and each quirk
  That fell from this vile Paganini of Ferques.

  But, oh, wonder! those ribalds their scoffs had scarce utter’d,
  When, at a low prayer by the Cordelier mutter’d,
  Their laughter was heard to change into a moan,
  As the priest transform’d each to a figure of stone.
  There motionless still do the revellers stand,
  Misshapen, as turn’d from their sculptor’s rough hand;
  Save one, who when moonlight pours down from above,
  May be seen from the spot vainly trying to move.
  Some affirm ’tis the bridegroom aroused from his trance,
  Some declare ’tis the bride gliding forth to the dance.
  But ’tis only the fiddler endeavouring to jerk
  His bow arm o’er the once magic fiddle of Ferques.




THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS.


It may be seen from our last chapter, that the bill of fare of those
who dined in the desert was neither very long nor very varied. It was
otherwise with the better fed, but perhaps not better-taught gentlemen
of the church of later days. Thus, for instance, the Curé of Brequier
kept a very different table from that of the lean Amphitryons of the
desert. Brillat Savarin once called on the holy man just as he had
dismissed the soup and beef from the table. These were replaced by a
leg of mutton _à la royale_, a fat capon, and a splendid salad. The
hour was scarcely noon, and the curé had sat down to this saint’s fare
alone. He was not selfish, however, and he invited his guest to “break
bread” with him, but the guest, a prince of “gastronomers” in his way,
declined, and the curé, like Coriolanus, did it all alone! He finished
the “gigot” to the ivory, the capon to the bones, and the salad to the
polished bottom of the bowl. A colossal cheese was then placed before
him, in which he made a breach of ninety degrees, and having washed
down all with a bottle of wine, he, like the Irishman, thanked God “for
that snack,” and betook himself to digestion and repose. “Le pauvre
homme!”

The nuns were in no ways behind the priests. Madame d’Arestrel, lady
Abbess of the nuns of the Visitation at Belley, (_faustum nomen_!)
once told a secret to a visitor who feared she was going to expound a
chapter from the Prophets. “If you want a foretaste of Paradise in the
guise of good chocolate,” said she, “be sure to make it over-night, in
an earthenware coffee-pot. Its standing still for a night concentrates
it, and gives it a velvety taste, which is divine! And Heaven cannot be
angry with us for this little luxury, for is not Heaven too divine?”
How wide the distance between St. Paula, widow, and Madame d’Arestrel,
of the convent of the Visitation! I may add, that if the Visitandines
made good chocolate, the monks of the Feuillants, in Paris, were
renowned for their ratafie. But they too have superior authority for
good living. A dainty dish in Italy is commonly called a “mouthful for
a cardinal.”--_un boccone di cardinali._

The canons took the tone from the cardinals. When the French canon
Rollet became ill through excessive drinking, his doctor interdicted
all strong beverages, and was not a little wroth, on his next visit,
at finding the dignitary in bed indeed, but at his bed-side a little
table, neatly laid out with bottles and glasses. The canon met the
threatened storm by gently remarking:--“Doctor, when you forbade
me drinking wine, you did not wish to deprive me of the pleasure
of looking at the bottle!” It was such canons who were the best
customers of the nuns who distilled liqueurs, and of the Ursulines who
manufactured the daintiest drops flavoured by the daintiest essences!
But in the Archbishop of Paris himself, M. de Belley, the clergy
of France had example to which they might appeal as authority for
indulging in good cheer. The archiepiscopal face was wreathed in smiles
at the sight of a good dinner. The prelate lived to be a veteran among
gastronomers, and was, in other respects, not an unworthy archbishop.

But M. de Belley was at least a gentleman in his gastronomic
propensities. He was not, like a Russo-Greek “Papa,” a brandy-bibber.
The Russo-Greek priests sanctify drinking, in the minds of the people,
by their evil example. Monsieur Léverson Le Duc, a French diplomatist
in Russia, tells us that he knows of one parish in Muscovy where the
people lock up their pastor every Saturday night, in order that he
may not be too muzzy for mass on the Sunday. They occasionally find
him very drunk, nevertheless, when they have forgotten previously
to examine beneath his robe, under which the sinning sot sometimes
smuggles his quart of Cognac! Sir George Simpson crossed the Pacific in
a Russian vessel. The chaplain had been sent in her to sea, because he
was always too drunk to officiate on land. He was kept sober expressly
for the hour of service on Sundays, but at other times, he appears to
have realized the verse in the old song of Dibdin’s, wherein it is said
that

  “’Tother day as our chaplain was preaching,
    Behind him I curiously slunk;
  And while he our duty was teaching,
    As how we should never get drunk,
  I show’d him the stuff, and he twigg’d it,
  And it soon set his Rev’rence agog.
    And he swigg’d, and Nick swigg’d,
    And Ben swigg’d, and Dick swigg’d,
    And we all of us swigg’d it,--
  And we swore there was nothing like grog.”

These examples, however, must be understood as occurring mostly, if
not exclusively, among the lower classes of the clergy. There was a
time when “the Vicar and Moses” illustrated the sad doings of a similar
class among ourselves.

The Greek clergy in the South of Europe present us with something no
less curious of aspect. The hall-kitchen of the Greek Patriarch, at
Constantinople, is crowded with inferior clergy, who take their meals
there, and his All-Holiness himself is served with pipes and sweetmeats
by nothing less than gentlemen in Deacon’s orders. Fancy our Lord
Primate ringing his bell for cheroots for two! and having them brought
in on a silver tray by the Curate of St. Margaret’s!

The Greek usages however are classical. The stranger who dines with
the Patriarch has, previous to falling to, water poured over his hands
as he holds them over a basin with a perforated cover, and the napkins
for drying them are as delicate as rose-leaves. The guest reclines on
a low couch, in ancient fashion, and his repast is placed on a low
stool at his side. The same custom exists in the convents, but meat is
seldom to be found there by a guest who arrives unexpectedly. The monks
themselves never eat it at all. During half the year they have but one
meal a day, and that consists of vegetables and bread. On the other
days of the year they are permitted the more liberal, but sufficiently
eremitic fare of cheese, eggs, fish, wine, and milk; but even on these
gala days they are never allowed more than two meals. Poor fellows!
the majority of them pass their remarkably well-spent time, when not
at table, in tilling the ground or teaching wonderful feats to very
accomplished tom-cats!

A Greek monk’s idea of an Englishman is that he is a plum-pudding
eater. And no wonder, since the English are almost the exclusive
purchasers of the currant-grapes which are cultivated all along the
northern shores of the Peloponnesus, from Patra to Corinth. As the
Chinese think that we take their tea that we may live, so the Greek
monks conclude that we _must_ buy their currants, or die! At the
convent of Vestizza, the good fathers trouble their heads about nothing
but the produce and price of their great staple crop. If you ask how
many brethren there are in the convent, they will answer, “Three
hundred; and what was the price of currants in England when you left?”
Inquire if their books be in good order, and they will reply in the
negative, adding an assurance that they do their utmost to produce the
best currants in the country. And they will give you permission to see
their church, if you will only promise to recommend their dwarf grapes
to the English merchants who are catering for plum-pudding eaters
at home. The grounds of other convents in the peninsula are famous
for their nuts, in the exportation of which the brethren drive no
inconsiderable trade.

These worthy people are said to be a trifle more enlightened and a
degree less slothful than they were some thirty years ago. There
was ample room and verge enough for improvement; for at the period
mentioned, the Greek priests resisted the introduction of the potato
into the kitchen-garden, for the very satisfactory reason that the
_pomme de terre_ was the very identical apple with which Satan beguiled
Eve out of Paradise! Yes, these modern and orthodox saints very
generally held that the devil tempted Eve with an “ash-leaf kidney!”

If we cross over to Abyssinia, we shall find that the priests and
orthodox people there keep as poor tables, at least on fast-days,
as the Greeks. Above eight months in the year are assigned by the
Abyssinian Christians to abstinence! On these occasions an Abyssinian
neither eats nor drinks till long after noon. On festival days,
however, they make up for their moderation by unrestrained excess.
Mr. Mansfield Perkyns, a traveller who has given us the most recent
account of life in Abyssinia, tells us that, in honour of the festival
of the Elevation of the Cross, he gave an early breakfast to some dozen
guests, who were engaged to half-a-dozen other parties in the course
of the same joyous day, and that these guests whetted their appetite
for later meals by consuming at breakfast a fine fat cow, two large
sheep, and endless gallons of mead! On these occasions the mead is
pretty prolific of murder. The guests get dreadfully drunk in honour
of the day, exactly as many highly civilized Christian people in happy
England do on the yearly recurrence of “merry Christmas.” Indeed, a
feast of the Elevation of the Cross without plenty of quarrelling and
bloodshed would be as dull as Donnybrook fair now is without a row.
But the Abyssinian Christian is as clever in establishing a _casus
belli_ as a Donnybrook Romanist. If the latter sees the fair is likely
to end without a fight, he simply takes off his hat, draws a white
line round it with chalk, and declaring that he will break the head of
the first man who denies that such white line is silver lace, he has
speedily abundance of active work before him. So a pious Abyssinian at
an “Elevation” banquet, if he finds things dull, merely remarks to his
dearest friend and next neighbour, “You are a good sort of man, but you
are not so handsome as I am!” and thereupon out fly the knives of the
parties and their respective friends, which they proceed to clean by
plunging them into each other’s ribs!

The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage such pugnacious
propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of the slaughtering of oxen for
the kitchen, says:--“Almost before the death-struggle is over, persons
are ready to flay the carcase, and pieces of the raw meat are cut
off, and served up before this operation is completed. In fact, as
each part presents itself, it is cut off and eaten while yet warm and
quivering. In this state it is considered, and justly so, to be very
superior in taste to what it is when cold. Raw meat, if kept a little
time, gets tough; whereas, if eaten fresh and warm, it is far tenderer
than the most tender joint that has been hung a week in England. The
taste is perhaps, in imagination, rather disagreeable at first, but far
otherwise when one gets accustomed to it; and I can readily believe
that raw meat would be preferred to cooked meat, by a man who from
childhood had been accustomed to it.” Such fare, I may observe, may not
be out of place at the table of a patriarch who lives in such a climate
as that of Abyssinia, but we suspect that it would as much astonish a
dinner party at an episcopal palace in England, as Mr. Perkyns himself
would do were he to sit down to that dinner in his ordinary Abyssinian
fashion of--a bald head covered with butter!

I have spoken in another chapter of a Brahmin who stuffed himself
with sweetmeats until he was nearly suffocated, and who exclaimed, on
being recommended to swallow a little water, that if he had had room
for water he would have swallowed more sweetmeats! It is but justice,
however, to these saintly gentlemen to confess that they _can_ fast
when there is anything to be gained by it. Among the Mahrattas, when
a fast man attempts to cheat his creditors, a Brahmin is hired to sit
the _dhurna_, and this is the process--a process, by the way, which
Monsieur Dimanche tried on Don Juan, but unsuccessfully. The Brahmin
goes to the house or tent of the debtor, sometimes attended by numerous
followers, and he announces the _dhurna_, by which the debtor must not
eat until he has discharged his liabilities. The clerical bailiff sits
at his side and is bound to fast also, until the matter is arranged.
He who holds out longest wins the day, and if the debtor be famished
he will pay rather than die outright, for eat he dare not until his
creditor be satisfied; besides, if he were to starve the Brahmin to
death, the crime would be so heinous, that the debtor himself had
better have departed to the world of shadows. It ensues that sitting
_dhurna_ is more successful in certain districts than it would be in
Belgravia, even though the Archbishop of Canterbury himself were to
take his seat in the middle of the square, with a declaration that he
would neither move nor eat until every inhabitant in the parish had
paid his Christmas bills. Poor man! he would have to sit as long as
_infelix Theseus_.

The saints of our puritan days were great favourers of public fasts;
but these fasts were less numerous after they had consolidated their
power, than before. “In the beginning of the wars,” says Foulis, in
his “History of the wicked Plots of the pretended Saints,” “a public
monthly fast was appointed for the last Wednesday of every month, but
no sooner had they got the king upon the scaffold, and the nation fully
secured to the Rump interest, but they thought it needless to abuse
and gall the people with a multitude of prayers and sermons,” and so,
by a particular act of their worships (April 23, 1649), nulled the
proclamation for the observation of the former; all which verifieth the
old verses:--

  “‘The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be.
  The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’”

George Fox, the father of the Quakers, remarks in his Journal, of the
Puritans and their fasts:--“Both in the time of the Long Parliament,
and of the Protector, so called, and of the Committee of Safety, when
they proclaimed fasts, they were commonly like Jezebels, and there
was some mischief to be done.” Taylor, the Water-poet, compares their
fasts to hidden feasts. “They were like the holy maid,” he says, “that
enjoined herself to abstain four days from any meat whatsoever; and
being locked close up in a room, she had nothing but her two books to
feed upon; but the two books were two painted boxes, made in the form
of great Bibles, with clasps and bosses, the inside not having one word
of God in them; but the one was filled with sweetmeats, the other with
wine; upon which this devout votary did fast with zealous meditation,
eating up the contents of one book, and drinking as contentedly the
other.” Dr. South, in his Sermons, is equally severe. He observes
that “their fasts usually lasted from seven in the morning till seven
at night; the pulpit was always the emptiest thing in the church; and
there never was such a fast kept by them, but their hearers had cause
to begin a thanksgiving as soon as they had done.” Butler, in his
Hudibras, hints that the work of fasting was to be accounted to the
faster, righteousness:--

  “For ’tis not now who’s stout and bold,
  But who bears hunger best, and cold.
  And he’s approved the most deserving,
  Who longest can hold out at starving.”

The fasting of the civilians, however, was made to turn to the benefit
of the military gentlemen; and, in March, 1644, an ordinance was passed
for the contribution of one meal a week towards the charge of the army.
There was by far a more considerable liberality of spirit among some of
the clergy of the time of Louis XIV. than in the Puritan authorities,
inasmuch as they permitted others to follow clerical example rather
than precept. The celebrated preacher, Father Feuillot, for instance,
stood by while “Monsieur” was enjoying an uncanonical collation in
the middle of Lent. His Highness held up a _macaron_, and remarked,
“This is not breaking fast, is it?” “Nay,” said Feuillot, “you may eat
a calf, if you will only act like a Christian.” I am afraid that we
had not improved at home, in the last century. On one of the fasts of
that period, Walpole comments after his usual gay fashion. “Between
the French and the earthquakes,” he says, in 1756, “you have no notion
how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of
sackcloth, turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that
Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at White’s, said with a
sigh, ‘Lord! how the times are degenerated! Formerly, a fast would have
brought everybody hither; now it keeps everybody away!’ A few nights
before, two men were walking up the Strand, one said to t’other, ‘Look
how red the sky is! Well, thank God, there is to be no masquerade!’”

An ex-Capuchin has revealed some of the mysteries of the house of
which he was lately a member, and by this it would appear that the
Friars of the nineteenth century are as little for slender diet as
the fine gentlemen of the eighteenth. “These Capuchins,” he says,
“of squalid appearance, clothed in serge, with shaven heads and bare
feet, presenting the very type of humility and self-renunciation,
enjoy the luxuries of life with a prodigality unknown to you. The poor
friars have, with one exception, no enjoyment of the things of this
world, their only worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three
carnivals in the year, of two or three weeks’ duration each. These
are the only periods at which they can recruit their wasted strength,
to enable them to resist the mortifications of the rest of the year.
During these few weeks they have seven courses served at dinner, all
substantial and choice dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be
provided. At supper they have five courses. By that hour, in spite of
their plentiful dinner, they have regained their appetites; and their
digestion is again most active. These courses are as substantial as
those of the dinner, and are despatched with equal facility by these
men of iron frame and tranquil conscience.... _Lent_ is arrived! Well,
you must fast, you must mortify the flesh, but you must not die of
inanition. A good table is necessary, or you will suffer too much from
contrast with the past few weeks. You need double the supply that the
secular orders do when they fast, for your digestion is twice as active
as theirs. Supper is now a sadly scanty meal; it consists simply of
fish, bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish! not miserable as to
quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary dish during the
forty days of Lent, always excepting bread and wine _ad libitum_.
Fortunately, the friars are wise and provident; the slender supper is
foreseen and provided against at dinner, which consists of four dishes.
The bottle of good wine is valuable now, or they would be overcome with
weakness.” Such is the testimony of a living witness, who pledges his
reputation for the truth of his depositions.

I do not know that there is much that is exaggerated in this, for from
M. Saurin we hear that, in France, well-to-do priests mortify the
flesh on maigre days by very pretty eating. The bill of fare of these
saintly men has been known to include soup _au coulis d’écrevisse_,
salmon trout, an omelette _au Thon_, that would have called a dead
_gastronome_ to life; a salad, the very smell of which seemed to give
eternal youth; Semonal cheese, fruit, confectionary, a light wine, and
a cup of coffee. By such self-denial is heaven gained by modern saints,
in orders; having fair fortunes, and looks with the same characteristic.

The Dominicans of Italy are in no degree behind their brethren in
France. The “late prior and visitor of the order,” who recently
published his dealings with the Inquisition, thus describes his ancient
brethren. “They do nothing,” he says, “which they are bound to do by
their rules, if these are opposed to their inclinations. They profess
never to eat meat in the refectory, or room for their common meals; but
there is another room near it, which they call by another name, where
they eat meat constantly. On Good Friday, they are commanded by their
rules to eat bread and drink water. At the dinner hour they all go
together into the refectory, to eat bread and drink water, but having
done so for the sake of appearance, they go one after another into
another room, where a good dinner is prepared for them all. I do not
blame them for enjoying it; but I blame them for feigning an abstinence
which none of them intend to keep.” These Dominicans, honest fellows!
are more hungry than the gods of the old régime of whom it is said,--

  “The Gods require the thighs
  Of beeves for sacrifice;
  Which roasted, we the steam
  Must sacrifice to them,
  Who, though they do not eat,
  Yet love the smell of meat.”

But our poor friend the monk has witnesses in his favour, as well as
opposed to him. Some men call him a living mummy swathed in faith.
Another says he is “a moral gladiator who wrestles with his passions,
and either stifles them or is devoured by them.” A third, describes
him picturesquely as a sea-worthy vessel moored in a stagnant dock;
and a fourth dismisses him contemptuously as a coward who won’t fight.
Even allowing him to be all these, it does not follow that he is to
be deprived of his dinner. If _he_ pays homage with his body to the
saints, he has earned what has been called the mind’s daily homage to
the body. Dinner should be the peculiar privilege of the monk, for it
is as _he_ is, in some sense, “the open friend of poverty, the secret
foe of riches” and if dinner be “the breakfast of the poor and the
supper of the rich,” it is doubly due to the monk, who can claim it by
either title. And it must not be supposed that they do not know how to
enjoy pleasure like sensible men. The Abbé of St. Sulpice, a Bernardine
monastery in the south of France, once invited a party of merry
and musical gentlemen from the neighbouring town to come up to the
monastery, and give the monks a treat of good music on the _fête_ day
of their patron saint. A joyous company ascended at early dawn to the
monastery; the most remarkable incident connected with which is, that
it is seated at the edge of a pine forest, from which a hurricane swept
down, in one night, thirty-seven thousand trees. The visitors were
received by the cellarer, the abbé not being yet risen, who conducted
them to the refectory, where they found awaiting them a pâté as big as
a church; flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal; on the south
by a monster ham; on the east by a monumental pile of butter; and on
the west by a bushel of artichokes _à la poivrade_. All the necessary
adjuncts were at hand; and among others, a party of lay brethren ready
to wait upon the visitors, and very much astonished to find themselves
out of bed at so early an hour. An array of a hundred bottles of wine
bespoke the fathers’ idea of good cheer; and the cellarer, having
bidden them fall-to and welcome, deplored his inability to join them,
not having yet said mass,--and he then took his leave to go and sing
“matins.”

The breakfast was done ample justice to; after which the visitors
retired to take a short repose, subsequently repairing to the church,
where they performed a musical service with the usual zeal and energy
of amateurs, and received modestly the showers of thanks that descended
upon them in return.

Monks and musicians then sat down to a dinner,--ample, admirably
cooked, excellently served, and thoroughly enjoyed. The abundance
that marked it may be judged of by the fact, that at the second
course there were not less than fifteen dishes of roasted meats. The
dessert would have made the eyes of a queen sparkle; the liqueurs were
choice, and the coffee redolent of Araby the Blest. The enjoyment was
long and perfect; and by the end of the repast, there was not man or
monk present who was not in charity with all the world. The “pious,
glorious, and immortal memory” of St. Bernard was not forgotten among
the toasts.

And then came vespers and more amateur music,--probably more vigorously
performed than in the morning. And after vespers there was a division
of pleasures: some took to quiet games at cards, some chose a ramble
in the wood, and a few looked in again upon their friend the cellarer.
As night came on, all again drew together, but the discreet abbot
retired, willing to allow the brethren full liberty on a festival
which only came “once a year.” And to do the brothers justice, they
began to make a night of it as soon as the superior had disappeared.
Jokes and laughter and winged words flew about like wildfire, and the
exercise got thereby sharpened the general appetite for supper,--a
repast which was discussed with a vivacity as if the guests had been
fasting up to that very hour. Wit and wine, and wisdom and folly, were
all mingled together; and the oldest of the fathers present, with a
flush on the cheek and a light in the eye, joined _chorus_ in table
songs that were _not_ sung to the tune of _Nunc dimittis_. It was when
the fun was flying most fast and furious, that a voice exclaimed,
“Brother cellarer, where is your official dish?” “True!” answered that
reverend individual; “I am not cellarer for nothing;”--and therewith
he disappeared, but speedily returned accompanied by three servitors,
bearing piles of buttered toast and bowls of what worldly men would
have called “punch.” If the fun had waxed fast before, it grew fiery
now, and fervour for the patron saint glowed at the very fiercest heat
that punch could give it. In the midst of it all, the hour of midnight
was solemnly tolled out by the convent bell, and the revellers,
reverend and laic, swang merrily to bed, satisfied with the day well
spent in honour of St. Bernard.

I have now spoken of the Dominicans, Capuchins, and Bernardins. The
Franciscans are a not less lively fraternity. When the author of
Eöthen was at the Franciscan Monastery in Damascus, he asked one of
the monks to tell what places were best worth seeing, in reference to
their association with St. Paul. “There is nothing in all Damascus,”
said the good man, “half so well worth seeing as our cellars;” and
forthwith he invited the stranger to “go and admire the long range of
liquid treasures that he and his brethren had laid up for themselves
upon earth.” And, adds the author, “these I soon found were not as the
treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse; for day by
day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses
of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the friars, dear old fellows!
In the midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang loudly
and merrily. Their eyes kept flashing with joyous bonfires, and their
heavy woollen petticoats could no more weigh down the springiness of
their paces, than the filmy gauze of a _danseuse_ can cloy her bounding
step.”

Richard the First, as worthless a human being as ever lived, bankrupt
in every virtue save that of brute courage, in making legacy of his
vices, said he would bequeath gluttony to the priests. It was rather
a compliment than otherwise, for the inference was, that they lacked
what he was willing to surrender, when he could no longer enjoy it. St.
Augustin settled this vexed question as to what was “good living,” when
he said, that “the great fast was abstinence from vice.” And in the
true spirit of St. Augustin’s prose, rings the rich rhyme in Herrick’s
Noble Numbers. “Is this,” he says,

  “Is this a fast, to keep
    The larder leane
    And cleane
  From fat of veales and sheep?

  “Is it to quit the dish
    Of flesh, yet still
    To fill
  The platter high with fish?

  “Is it to faste an houre?
    Or ragged to go,
    Or show
  A downcast look, and soure?

  “No; ’tis a fast, to dole
    Thy sheaf of wheat,
    And meat,
  Unto the hungry soule.

  “It is to fast from strife,
    From old debate,
    And hate;
  To circumcise thy life.

  “To show a heart grief-rent,
    To starve thy sin,
    Not bin:
  And that’s to keep thy Lent.”

This is better philosophy than that given on a similar subject by
Montesquieu, who only recommends moderation on the ground that it
lengthens the term of enjoyment. “I call moderation,” says Pythagoras,
“all that does not engender pain;” and by this maxim of the Hellenized
Hindoo, Buddha Ghooros, the saints both of the desert and the
dining-room may, perhaps, in their several ways be condemned.

In treating of the diet of more modern saints than those of the days
of martyrdom, I might have noticed the fact, that in not very remote
times, the parsonage-house at Langdale, in Westmoreland, was licensed
as an ale-house, the living being too poor to allow the incumbent to
make anything like one upon it for himself. The ale-cask became to the
priest, what the fruit of the amrite tree was to the Tibetians--the
spring of life. This Westmoreland ale was accounted a great
strengthener, but so have many less likely things. But enough of the
“saints,” good men and true the majority of them, earning their right
to enjoy the rich blessings of God, by fairer means, perhaps, than many
of their censurers. I know no set of men so well to contrast with the
saints, as the “Cæsars,” and we have yet time before supper to attend
that august company to table.




THE CÆSARS AT TABLE.


It is a well-ascertained truth, that the Cæsars at table by no means
generally conducted themselves as though they were under the influence
of a Roman Chesterfield, as regarded their behaviour; or a Roman
Abernethy, as regarded their moderation. Perhaps the great Julius
was as much of a gentleman in both the above respects as any of his
imperial successors; and even he could reform the calendar with far
more ease than he could reform himself.

When he was commanding in the Roman provinces, beyond the Italian
frontier, he kept two distinct tables. At one sat his inferior officers
and the Greeks who were in his service. The latter do not appear to
have expressed any discontent at not ranking with their Roman comrades.
At the other table sat none but Romans of high state, with such native
guests of quality as Cæsar chose to invite to meet them. He would watch
his servants as sharply as he did the enemy; and on one occasion,
having observed that his baker had put down to his guests a coarser
bread than that which he had served to Cæsar, he sent the knave to
prison, there to learn better manners.

Cæsar was as sober as Sir Charles Napier, who used to sign himself
“Governor of Scinde, because I was always a sober man.” Cato said
of Julius, that he was the only sober man who had ever attempted to
subvert a government; “a cutting sarcasm on all preceding patriots.”
As for sauces, the Duke of Wellington did not inspire Francatelli
with more despair upon that head, than Cæsar did _his_ cook. It was
immaterial to him whether he had sauce to his meat, or not; and as to
the quality, he never concerned himself about it. He ate, thankfully
perhaps, but thoughtlessly, certainly. His politeness was sometimes
ridiculously excessive, as when he ate up the ointment which had been
served instead of sauce, at a table where he was a guest, and where he
was courteously resolved to find everything excellent. But although
the great Julius was, according to Cato, the only man who came sober
to the subversion of his country, he had some unsoberly habits about
him. Thus, when invited to a feast, he used to whet his appetite by
taking an emetic. This is attested by Cicero, who says, in his letters
to Atticus, (lib. xiii. p. 52,) “Unctus est; accubuit; ἐμετικήν agebat.
Itaque edit et bibit ἀδεῶς et jucunde.” Suetonius agrees with Cato,
that Cæsar was moderate with regard to wine:--“Vini parcissimum ne
quidem inimici negaverunt.”

It is singular that a man who cared so little as he was reported to
have done for his stomach, should have cared so much about the outside
of his head. He could eat pomatum, and yet be ashamed of the baldness
which a proper application of the unguent might perhaps have cured.

Augustus Cæsar, who visited prisoners, like Howard, and cut off heads
like an Algerine Dey, was moderate in his cups, and endeavoured to make
the people so. When the latter once complained that wine was not only
dear, but scarce, he gravely proclaimed that his son-in-law Agrippa had
been looking to the aqueducts, and there was no fear of any one dying
of thirst.

There were seasons, however, when he could be more than imperially
extravagant. Witness the little supper he gave to chosen guests, all of
whom attended in the attire of gods and goddesses; and at which feast
he presided in the character of Apollo. The wits of the day, who were
not invited, denounced this supper as an orgy at which decent people
would not have been present, even if asked. Such stupendous iniquity
was said there to have been enacted, that the real gods who had at
first looked laughingly down from Olympus, withdrew one by one behind
their respective clouds. Even Jove himself, who sat gazing longest, at
length hurried away from the sight of men, who were greater beasts than
the privileged gods!

Like some of the extravagant and unclean banquets at Versailles, this
entertainment was given when there was a famine in the city. On the
following day, the people exclaimed in the streets, “It is the gods who
have devoured the food.” The less fearful than these raised an altar to
Augustus Phœbus, and there paid mock worship to the Emperor, under the
title of Apollo the Tormentor.

It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that could find
access to the table of Cæsar Augustus. He was extremely nice with
regard to his associates, but he was not so nice with respect to
keeping his guests waiting for his company. It was the maxim of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, that it was far less courteous on principle to allow
hungry guests to be kept from table out of respect to one man, than it
was to go to dinner without him. So also Augustus thought that the many
should not be made to wait for one; and, accordingly, he frequently
did not appear at table till the repast was half over; and sometimes
departed even then, after tasting of from three to half-a-dozen dishes,
before it was concluded.

He was dignified and condescending, enjoyed the jokes of those who were
bold enough to make them, and encouraged the reserved to be bold and
jocund too. When jests lacked from either of those parties, the master
of the Roman world then laughed, as he sipped his moderate draught, at
the quips and cranks of the hired jesters, whose office it was to be
cheerful when the guests grew dull.

It has come down to us that he was a lover of brown bread, small fish,
green cheese and green figs. He was so far intemperate that he would
never let his appetite tarry till meal-time. He ate when he was hungry,
and perhaps he was right. And yet it was but an unedifying sight to see
him passing in his chariot through the public streets, returning the
greetings of the people with one hand full of bread, the other full
of dates, and his almost sacred mouth full of both. He was, in fact,
wayward in his attentions to his appetite, and would occasionally fast
till sunset if the caprice took him. As to what is said of him that he
sometimes rose from the most sumptuous banquets, leaving the viands
untouched,--this was perhaps because the edge of his appetite had been
altogether destroyed by brown bread and indigestible fruit.

In the day-time he quenched his thirst by eating of bread dipped in
water, by drinking water itself, or by taking a slice of cucumber,
lettuce, or unripe apple. His moderation in drinking, when he _did_
take up the goblet at the evening repast, is much spoken of, but as we
hear more of the quantity than of the strength of what he drank, it is
difficult to decide upon this point. Suetonius admiringly records that
“he never exceeded a quart for his share, or if he did, he was sure
to throw it up again.” This is but equivocal praise after all. He was
a very great man, no doubt, but, demi-god as he almost was, he spelt
after the “cacological” fashion of Lord Duberly; and he was more afraid
of lying awake in the dark than any little baron or squire in the
nurseries of Belgravia and the adjacent squares.

Tiberius, like his predecessor, treated his soldiers occasionally like
schoolboys, and when they displeased him, he used to put them on a
regimen of barley. Tiberius himself was not a profuse eater; he was
rather moderate than otherwise, and when gastronomic extravagancy had
reached a high pitch in Rome, he used to dine in public, like the kings
of France, but, unlike them, upon cold meat, as a reproof to the luxury
of the times. He was not, however, at all moderate in his cups, and the
Roman wits, who, like those of Paris, used to make merry epigrams on
the worst of their woes, punningly transformed his names of Tiberius
Claudius Nero, into _Biberius Caldius Mero_. He had a reverence too
for great draughts, and he once raised a common fellow to the office
of quæstor, simply because he could drink off a measure of three pints
of wine without drawing breath. Most of the Cæsars must have been very
unsatisfactory people to dine with, but none more so than Tiberius, who
loved discussion, but if he found himself worsted in it, he invariably
ordered his opponent to retire--and commit suicide. A hot bath and a
vein or two opened soon disposed of an inconvenient adversary. He used
to puzzle his guests with all sorts of strange questions, such as would
puzzle even the editor of _Notes and Queries_ to answer. One of these
interrogatory puzzles was “the name of the song chanted by the Syrens.”
He would not speak the fashionable Greek at table, but conversed in
Latin; and his favourite feat at dessert was to run his forefinger
through a hard green apple.

Caligula must have been a most unpleasant person to dine with. He
entertained himself and his guests with the sight of men tortured on
the rack, and he got up little private executions on those occasions
to enliven the scene. We read of Her Majesty’s private concerts, and
how “Mrs. Anderson” presided at the piano. But the Romans only heard
of their Emperor’s killing fun to frighten his guests with, and how
his Divinity’s private headsman, Niger Barbatus, performed, as usual,
with his well-known dexterity. His frolics were really of a frightful
character. It was after a banquet, when the capital jest of slaying
had failed to make him as merry as usual, that he rushed to the
sacrificial altar, attired in the dress of a victim-killer, that is,
with a linen apron for his sole costume. He seized the mallet as though
he were about to slay the appointed victim, but he turned suddenly
round on the resident official and butchered him instead. And thereat,
all who had witnessed the frolicsome deed of their master, declared
that “’Fore Jove, ’twas a more capital joke than the last!” His answer
to the Consuls who ventured to ask the cause of a sudden burst of
laughter in which he indulged at a crowded feast, is well known; “I
laugh to think,” said the amiable creature, “that with one wave of my
hand I can sweep all your stupid heads off!” His method of loving was
equally characteristic. He would fling his terrible arm round the fair
neck he professed to admire, and express his delight that he could cut
it off when he pleased. There was the brilliant Cesonia; “I cannot
tell,” said her imperial lover at a feast, “why it is that I am so fond
of that girl. I’ll have her put on the rack for a quarter of an hour,
that she may be compelled to tell me the reason.” Blue Beard was the
mildest of Quaker gentlemen compared with this Caligula. A lady might
as well have been wooed by a boa constrictor.

Claudius Cæsar has hardly had justice done him, as regards his general
character, but as my office is only to show how he looked at table,
I must be satisfied with making the remark, and pass on to Cæsar at
meat. He was no hero, undoubtedly, for he contemplated suicide, for
no better reason than having a pain in his stomach after a repast. In
this, however, he did not show less courage than Zeno, the father of
the Stoics, who having bruised his finger by a fall, went home and hung
himself.

He was largely hospitable, and sometimes entertained six hundred
guests at a time. He liked on these occasions to see his own children
and those of the nobility seated, according to the ancient fashion,
at the lower end of the table. It is to be hoped that they were out
of ear-shot of what was being said at the upper end. The jokes were
sometimes pleasant enough in their way. Thus a Roman nobleman having
carried home with him a gold plate from the imperial table, was gently
reminded of his theft when, on the next occasion of dining with
Claudius, he saw a reproachfully vulgar earthenware platter put down
before him.

He was a man of infinite capacity, was the divine Claudius,--that is,
in gastronomic matters. He was ever ready to devour, and always did
so greedily. He has been known to have suddenly jumped down from his
seat in the forum, allured by the smell of roast meat issuing from the
priest’s table, in the adjacent temple of Mars. And he would sit down
with the reverend gentleman, without waiting for an invitation. It must
have surely made the common-place spectators of the feat broadly smile,
just as if the twelve judges in Westminster Hall were to leap from
their benches, and racing across the churchyard, pour into the first
house in the cloisters where the dinner-bell was ringing loudest, and
the prandial odour was most savoury.

He ate like Baal, and drank like the beast in Fortunatus. He did both
to repletion; but his attendants would then tickle his throat with
a feather, and so, by exonerating his stomach, enable the imperial
animal to eat and drink again. He contemplated making a decree for the
benefit of guests at table, which was of a Rabelaisian indelicacy, and
which probably never presented itself to the minds of any other men but
Claudius and the Curé of Meudon.

Caligula had more affection for his horse than for anything human. He
fed him on gilded oats, and the animal was not a more beastly consul
than many who were appointed to that high office. The emperor’s dinner
parties must have presented a strange aspect, when the obsequious
senators stood, napkin in hand, to wait upon the guests. Fancy the
peers of all politics, and the commons of every shade of opinion, all
ranged behind the dinner-table at Windsor Castle, in the professional
uniform of dingy white waistcoats and napless black coats, with their
thumbs duly doubled up in napkins, and all offering anxious service,
and “dindon à la daube” to our Sovereign Lady and her guests,--fancy
this, I say, and you will have the very remotest idea possible of what
the sight was like when the senators changed the plates of Cæsar. The
personages and their qualities are all different, but the strangeness
of one spectacle could only be matched by that of the other.

Nero (who found sport in sitting in an upper gallery at the theatre,
and flinging down nuts upon the bald head of the prætor below) was a
very common-place individual at table, but he assembled guests about
him who were ever ready to consume his good things and applaud his good
sayings. Galba, his successor, was at once gouty and gluttonous. He
commenced eating at early dawn, and darkness came over him still with
appetite unsatiated. He was as mean, however, as he was voracious. He
did once so far whip up his liberal spirit as to compel himself to give
a dinner party; but when he read the bill of fare, he fairly burst
into tears at the idea of the extravagance and the expense. And yet
the most costly dish he could reprovingly point to, when his steward
challenged him, was a dish of boiled peas;--but perhaps they were out
of season, and Galba knew he should be asked for them at least a guinea
a quart! _He_ would never have been guilty of the prodigality of the
Emperor Otho, who daily wasted more bread and milk in making cosmetic
poultices to lay on his own face than would have served to keep body
and soul together in half-a-dozen families. The father of Vitellius
more gallantly, when he wished to look well at the centre of his table,
was wont to besmear himself with a mixture made up of honey and his
mistress’s saliva. He of course deemed it impossible to say which was
the sweeter of the two ingredients. This was even worse than Galba, who
was, however, essentially greedy; the latter emperor could not eat with
pleasure unless he had more before him than he could digest. When his
stomach cried, “Hold, enough!” he used it as the Somersetshire lad did
_his_. “Ah!” exclaimed the lad of Wincanton, to certain monitions,--“ye
may ake, but, ’vor I ha’ done, I’ll make ye ake worser.” Galba, when
no longer able to eat, lay and gazed at what he hoped to attack more
successfully after digestion had been accomplished.

Otho is remembered as being the complaisant gentleman who, when Nero
had determined to murder his mother, gave an exquisite little supper to
both parties by way of a pleasant preliminary. But Otho could at least
behave with outward decency, and of this Vitellius was incapable. If he
walked through the market-place, he snatched the meat roasting at the
cooks’ stalls, and greedily devoured it. He was not more reverent even
in the temple; where, taking advantage of his vicinity to the altar,
he would sweep the latter of the barley that was on it, consecrated to
the god, and swallow the same, like the sacrilegious heathen that he
was. When about to fly from the enemies who had overturned his throne,
he selected only his cook and his butler to be the companions of his
flight, and he took the former dear associate with him, in his own
covered chair.

The chief table trait which I can call to mind as connected with
Vespasian is, that once a month he went without dinner for a day. Such
an observance, he said, saved at once his health and his purse. He had
so much the less to pay to his purveyor; and in consequence of the
fast, less also perhaps than if he had feasted, to his physician. Both
the sons of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, were modest at the banquet.
The former had ceased to be a free liver before he put on the imperial
mantle; and as for Domitian, he could wash down his Malian apple with a
draught of water, and then address himself to sleep, as though he were
a virtuous anchorite, and not the most thirsty drinker of human blood
that ever disgraced his race.

       *       *       *       *       *

The five succeeding emperors,--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two
Antonines,--Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius,--governed the world
during the eighty years which are said, but questionably I think,
to have been the happiest years of the human race. There is little
on record as to how these potentates disported themselves at table.
Trajan, indeed, is known to have been a fearful drinker; but he loved
a quiet, unceremonious dinner at the house of a friend of modest
degree,--for there he tippled and talked to his heart’s content, and
willingly forgot that he was Cæsar. Hadrian is remembered as the first
Roman emperor who wore a beard. He had warts on his throat, and he did
not like that these should be seen by his guests at table. He once gave
an entertainment which cost upwards of two millions sterling, (when
Verus was made Cæsar,) and he was sorry for it through the remainder
of his life. Many a man of far humbler degree has committed the same
kind of extravagance, and experienced the same enduring repentance.
Antoninus kept the table of a country gentleman; and Marcus Aurelius
dined alone, while Commodus, his son, played at his knee. The board of
that son resembled that of Vitellius, and he fell from it one day, full
of drugged wine administered to him by a concubine, and was strangled
as he lay beneath the table, drunk, and deserving of his fate.

The modest Pertinax was less happy as emperor than when, as a simple
official, he had charge of the provisions of Rome. Didius Julianus
was deep in the luxuries of the table, and not nearly so deep in
wisdom, when he made a bid for the diadem, a few uneasy dinners in the
palace, and death. Septimius Severus, cared less for the splendour of
his table than the consolidation of his power, but his banquets were
choice things, nevertheless. His sons, Caracalla and Geta, exemplified
their fraternal unanimity by keeping different tables. They never
sat down together at the same board; and there were two factions in
the court, something like that of George the Second, at St. James’s,
and the son whom he hated, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Leicester
Square. Macrinus was a coarse feeder, and in everything he presented a
remarkable contrast with his successor Heliogabalus.

Heliogabalus lay on couches stuffed with hare’s down, or partridge
feathers. Ælius Verus reclined on cushions of lily and rose-leaves.
The first-named monster had his funny moments; and sometimes he would
invite a certain number of bald men, or of gouty men, or grey-headed
men, and he was particularly amused at a company of fat men, so crowded
together that they could find room only to perspire. “One of his
favourite diversions consisted in filling a leathern table-couch with
air instead of wool; and while the guests were engaged in drinking,
a tap, concealed under the carpet, was opened, unknown to them,--the
couch sank, and the drinkers rolled pell-mell under the sigma, to the
great delight of the beardless emperor.” He was the first Roman emperor
who wore garments of pure, unmixed silk. He cared little for poets or
philosophers; but he gave liberal premiums to the inventors of new
sauces, provided these pleased his palate. If he disliked them, the
inventor was condemned to eat of nothing else, until he had discovered
a new condiment to win the imperial sanction. Heliogabalus and George
I. had this in common, that they both liked fish a trifle stale. Thus,
it is known that George never cared for oysters till their shells began
spontaneously to gape; and the Oriental master of the Roman empire,
who made a barber prefect of the provisions, would never eat sea-fish
except at a great distance from the sea, when they acquired the taint
he loved. His delight then was to distribute vast quantities of the
rarest sorts, brought at an immense expense, to the peasants of the
inland country. The table of his successor, Alexander Severus, was
that of a gentleman. Its master was the first Roman emperor to whom
that title can be incontestably given; and he loved to have around
him accomplished guests of all varieties of opinion; and this is much
more than can be said for that huge and hungry Goth, Maximin. The
Gordians brought back some of the elegances of social life, which the
uncleanness and severity of Maximin had banished; but at both the
private and public, the humble and the imperial, tables of Rome, there
must have been small ceremony and permanent fear during the brief and
troubled reigns of the foolish men who purchased the right of dining
in an imperial mantle by being speedily enveloped in a bloody shroud.
Gallienus, alone, shines out upon the list as the very prince of cooks;
and if Carême had possessed half the enthusiasm which he so warmly
affected, he would have named his son and heir after this imperial
inventor of _ragoûts_,--who was also the accelerator of the ruin of
Rome. All the temperance of the Gothic Claudius could not restore
the remnant of ancient moderation, which had been destroyed by that
imperial maker of stews, the ever hungry and cruel Gallienus. Aurelian
failed, like Claudius, but the emperor Tacitus was more successful,
and the descendant of the great historian, even during _his_ short
reign, roused the nobles to a sense of dignity, and honoured science by
inviting its disciples to his well-ordered table.

A subsequent emperor, Carus, was perhaps one of the most frugal, by
habit and inclination, that ever wore the imperial sword upon his
thigh. Carus was at once moderate and mirthful. He was seated on the
grass, supping on dry bread and grey peas, when the Persian ambassadors
came to him, suing for peace. “The matter just stands thus, gentlemen,”
said the emperor, opening his mouth widely, at the same time, to insert
a shovel-like spoonful of peas; “if your master does not acknowledge
the superiority of Rome, I will render Persia,”--and here he took off
the cap which he wore to conceal his entire baldness,--“I will render
Persia as destitute of trees as my head is of hair.” Having said which,
he resumed swallowing his peas, and left the delegates to digest his
remark.

We are accustomed to consider Diocletian dining at Salona, on the
cabbages he had reared there, as an emperor in reduced circumstances;
but the truth is, that the palace, gardens, and table of the ex-emperor
were all of a splendid character, and if his table was adorned by the
cabbages he had tended to a prize perfection, he was far too wise an
epicure to confine himself to that dish alone.

The great Constantine appears under a double aspect, and the least
favourable one is offered to us in his maturer years, when he
surrendered himself more unreservedly than before to good living, for
which he had peculiar facilities at Byzantium, took to wearing false
hair, and became altogether a ridiculous old dandy and _bon vivant_;
the ridicule of whom, by his clever and unscrupulous nephew, Julian,
I am not at all surprised at; for what is so eagerly seized upon by
affectionate nephews as the foibles of their indulgent uncles? Julian
was possessed just of that scampish sort of nepotism which leads the
modest young relative to eat an uncle’s dinners and deride the donor.
Julian’s own table would have gained the contempt of an editor of the
_Almanach des Gourmands_. Its frugality was frigidly parsimonious in
its character. The philosophic emperor was a vegetarian, and even of
vegetables he ate sparingly, but swiftly, leaping up, as it were, from
dining thereon, to hurry to his books or the public business, which
he quitted reluctantly when the hour of supper summoned him even to a
more frugal meal than the dinner, which he despatched with a celerity
not at all admired by those who dined with him. Nothing disgusted
him so much as a gross feeder, and probably nothing ever so greatly
surprised him as when, on taking possession of Constantinople, he found
one thousand cooks waiting to prepare the imperial dinner! A thousand
cooks for a man who could dine on a boiled turnip! The Constantines had
been accustomed to dine upon birds from the most distant climates, fish
from the most remote seas; to have a dessert of fruits out of their
natural seasons, and to drink foreign wines cooled in the summer snows
of the lofty hills. All this was as useless to a man who needed but
a crust and an apple to calm his appetite, as were the golden basins
and the jewelled combs to an emperor like Julian, who seldom washed
even his face, and who not only never cleaned his hair, but _felt_
the lively luxury of leaving it undisturbed. Julian in this respect
was like Anthony Pasquin, who was said to have died of a cold caught
by washing his face. There was a famous Irish member of Parliament,
who, unlike Julian, was a glutton at dinner, but who was remarkable
for his religious abstinence from all ablution. His son was one day
standing in the bow-window of White’s, when the sire was passing down
the opposite side of the street. I believe it was the noble lord who,
when Mr. Gunter in the hunting-field remarked that his horse was too
“hot” to ride comfortably, suggested to the equestrian pastrycook
that he should _ice_ him.--I believe it was the same noble lord who,
on the first occasion alluded to above, said to “Jack T----,” “Jack!
what _does_ make your father’s hands so dirty?” “Well!” said the old
Colonel’s affectionate son, “I believe it arises from a bad habit he
has of putting them up to his face!” And so of Julian we may say, that
if his hands were innocent of water, his famous beard was dirtier than
his hands, and that it was not pleasant to lie near the emperor at
dinner, unless guardedly ensconced to the leeward of his sacred and
dirty person.

If Gratian, who was the first Roman emperor who refused the pontifical
robe, had lived but as became the master of an imperial household, his
sacrifice would have had more merit; but the emperors of these times
had curious ideas as to duties. Thus the second Valentinian delighted
in giving splendid dinners, but at these entertainments he always,
himself, fasted;--a most discouraging course for the guests,--but
he thought there was merit in the work. But Theodosius was at least
as good a man, and we know that _he_ enjoyed the sensual and social
pleasures of the table without excess; and the same taste was shown by
that emperor Maximus, who is said to have espoused Helena, the daughter
of a wealthy Caernarvonshire lord, and to have renewed the popularity
of boiled leeks in Rome; and this was a better taste than that of
Honorius, who took to feeding poultry and eating them, while Stilicho
ruled the empire, and the eunuchs lived on the very fat of the land.
It was decidedly better too than the taste which led Valentinian the
third, after dining with Petronius Maximus and winning his money, to
carry off his wife; a Tarquinian insult, which he paid for, however,
with his life. Avitus could indulge in such freaks, however, with
impunity; and he not only seduced Roman matrons, but invited their
husbands to dinner, where the slaves smiled at the imperial raillery
directed against them while the courses were changing! His successor,
Majorianus, was a man of another stamp, and I would fain believe the
pleasant anecdote which says of him that he went to Carthage in the
disguise of his own ambassador, and dined with Genseric the king,
who was especially chafed when he afterwards discovered that he had
entertained, without knowing it, the Emperor of the Romans. Anthemius,
if he be famous for little else, is at least famous for the superb
wedding-dinner with which he celebrated the nuptials of his daughter
with Count Ricimer, a wicked son-in-law who devoured the dinners of
his “beau père,” and robbed him of his estate;--no uncommon course for
sons-in-law to take. The count placed on the uneasy and vacant throne
the epicurean Glycorius, who, having murdered Julius Nepos after a
banquet, was made Archbishop of Milan, as one of the recompenses of
the act. And then the empire fell into the delicate hands of the weak
and beautiful Augustulus, who could not find wherewith in the treasury
to maintain a decent table, and who was glad to accept clemency and
an annuity from Odoacer, whereby he was enabled, upon six thousand
pieces of gold annually, to keep such state in the Castle of Lucullus
in Campania, that the surrounding gentry visited him in shoals, and ate
his dinners by way of proof that they looked upon him as a man of the
highest respectability.

And this was the end of the “twelve vultures,” seen by Romulus,
foreshadowing the “twelve centuries,” more or less, that were to mark
the duration of the dominion which he founded; a dominion commenced
by a hungry adventurer, and which crumbled to nothing in the hand of
that Augustulus, who was but too rejoiced to take in exchange for it,
the bed, board, and six thousand a year with which he set up as a
hospitable country gentleman, in his rustic villa, on the slopes of
Campania.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for the Cæsars of the Eastern Empire, they were rather Oriental
despots than either Greek or Roman monarchs, just as the Byzantines
were ever more Asiatics than Europeans. The sovereigns, for the most
part, ate at golden tables, and were served like gods. Some of them,
like Romanus, were respectable cooks, and more than one was discussing
the merits of a new sauce or dish, when the Saracens were knocking at
the frontier gates of the empire. The sort of merry humour indulged in
by others may be judged of by a single trait of Michael the Drunkard.
This amiable sovereign started up, one day, from table, ere the
imperial dinner was well over, and assuming an episcopal dress, he
descended into the streets followed by his courtiers. The latter bore
the vinegar and mustard that had been on the monarch’s side-board,
and mixing the condiments together, they stopped all passers-by,
compelled them to kneel, and with horrible profanity and mock psalmody,
administered the Sacrament with the above-named horribly compounded
elements. Such was one of the Eastern Cæsars at and after dinner, and
the easy Byzantines were not much scandalized thereat. Indeed, they
troubled themselves very little about the affairs of the government, or
the doings of the governors; and it would never have entered the head
of a Byzantine subject to say of his son what the American citizen
once remarked, touching his heir, to Mrs. Trollope, namely, that he
would much sooner that his son got drunk three times a week than that
he should refrain from meddling with the politics of his times.

From the palaces of the Cæsars, let us now pass into the mansions of
miscellaneous majesties, and see how the first gentlemen of their
respective days comported themselves “at meat.” Yes, at _meat_; for “la
viande du Roi” was the consecrated phrase, and guards presented arms,
and courtiers bowed low, as the king’s “meat” was solemnly carried to
the royal table, or borne to the bed-side, where it remained under the
name of an _en cas_, “in case” the august appetite should be lively
before morning.




THEIR MAJESTIES AT MEAT.


There was an old custom at Pisa, the origin of which may be traced to
the anti-judaical days of persecution. On a certain day in the year,
I believe, Good Friday or Easter Sunday, every Jew discovered in the
streets, was hunted down by the populace. When the game was caught he
was weighed, and compelled to ransom himself by paying his own weight
of sweetmeats. It was an advantage, then, at Pisa for a Jew to be of a
Cassius cast. It was different in other days, and climes, with regard
to kings. Nations used to weigh their monarchs yearly, and if the
register showed an increase of dignified obesity, great was the popular
rejoicing thereat. If, on the other hand, the too, too solid flesh of
the potentate had yielded to irresistible influences, and the father
of his people exhibited a falling away in his material greatness, the
body of loyal subjects went into mourning and tears, and deplored the
evil days on which they had fallen, when monarchs could not be kept
up to the old monarchical standard of corpulency. Kings who cared for
the affections of their people were, accordingly, disinterestedly
solicitous to support their corporeal requirements; for to be fat was
to be virtuous, and he was really the greatest of monarchs who required
the greatest circumference of belt. You must understand, however, that
if kings encouraged their own increase, it was disloyal in the people
to imitate them. The monarchs of old, in this respect, were like our
Henry VIII, who never stinted his own appetite, but who imprisoned the
Earl of Surrey in Windsor Castle, for daring to touch a lamb chop on a
Friday.

The most gigantic of royal feeders placed on the record of ancient
history, was Thys, king of Paphlagonia, at whose table “the entire
animal” was served by hundreds. When he fell into the power of Persia
he exhibited more appetite than grief, and banqueted in such a style
that the courtiers spoke of it wonderingly to their king Artaxerxes.
He replied significantly, “Thys is making the most of the shortness of
life.”

The kings of Persia were but sorry hosts to dine with. Their table was
in a little recess divided from the outward hall by a low curtain. The
king sat alone in his alcove, and could behold, without being seen, the
guests in the outer hall. The latter were of the highest rank; mere
younger brothers, civilians, and undignified people of that sort, sat
at meat in the galleries. It was only on two or three high days that
the king sat at the same table with his subjects. The royalty of old
Persia had once a reputation for temperance, but to be “royally drunk”
was no uncommon characteristic of his majesty and the princes of the
blood. He generally made drinking parties of a dozen favourites. These
sat on the ground, while the king lay on a gold couch, and the conclave
drank like dragoons, and got infinitely more tipsy.

In the banquets of state there were a few singularities. Horses and
ostriches appear in the bill of fare, among a hundred other delicacies;
but no guest did more than just taste what was placed before him; and
what he did not eat, he carried home with him. A dainty bit from the
king’s table was a present meet for lover to make to his lady; and a
wooer who brought a rump-steak of horse-flesh in his hand, straight
from the regal banquet, was scarcely a man to be refused anything.

There was something of grandeur in the banquets of Cleopatra, when
Antony dined with her. The service was in gold, and she made a present
of it to her visitor. On the following day there was a new service,
and it was again presented to “the favoured guest.” Antony himself
exhibited infinitely less taste at Athens. He erected in the public
theatre a scene representing the grotto of Bacchus, dressed himself
like the god, and, with a party of followers as worthless as himself,
sat down at day-break, in presence of an admiring and crowded “house,”
and got dreadfully drunk before breakfast-time. And this knave aspired
to rule in Rome!

Alexander, and, as may be seen in another page, Augustus, was given
to this sort of theological masquerading. The first-named accepted
banquets from his great officers; and these exhibited their taste by
having all the fruit on the table covered thickly with gold, which,
when the fruit itself was presented to the guests, was torn off and
flung on the ground, for the benefit of the servants. The father of
Alexander had shown in his time a better example of economy. He had but
one gold cup, and to prevent that from being stolen, he placed it every
night under his pillow, and went to sleep upon it. The mad Antiochus,
of Syria, was of another kidney, for whenever he heard of a drinking
bout in his own city, he used to order his chariot, and taking with him
a measure of wine and a goblet, he would rush down to the place and
take a seat uninvited. He was such indifferent company, however, that
the guests could not be prevailed upon to tarry, and even the offer of
his golden goblet was unable to bribe a man to sit and get drunk with a
witless king.

But the most extraordinary meal I have ever heard of was that made by
Cambes, king of Lydia. He was a great eater, a great drinker, and of
insatiable voracity. It is told of him that he one night cut up his
wife and devoured her, and that he awoke the next morning, with one of
her hands sticking in his mouth. But I have little doubt that something
of an allegory lies under this royal story. Cambes probably had had an
argument with his consort,--a lady of the sort spoken of by Dr. Young
as one who

  Shakes the curtain with her good advice.

His logic “cut up” her assertions, and thereon he addressed himself to
sleep; but he no sooner awoke in the morning than her hand was upon his
mouth, to prevent his speaking while she reiterated her follies of the
previous night. Poor Cambes! he cut his throat in order to escape from
a too loquacious consort, of whom he is accused of being the murderer
by the libelling Xanthus.

I may add to the record of these exemplary persons, the name of
Dionysius of Heraclea, who, through good living, fell into such
a condition of obesity and somnolency that he could only be made
conscious by running fine gold needles into his flesh. What a droll
thing it must have been for his morning visitors who found the huge
mass fast asleep at table! Shaking hands with him, or any other
equivalent ceremony, would have been useless. They accordingly took
a gold needle from his girdle and tenderly run it into his fat. When
it reached a vital point, the uneasy monarch snorted and opened one
eye; and this being taken as an acknowledgment of their presence, he
straightway went to sleep again. Ptolemy, the seventh king of Egypt,
was in nearly as deplorable a condition, and Magas of Cyrene was
perhaps even worse. The Ephori, it will be remembered, had a horror
of the Lacedæmonians getting fat, and to prevent this undesirable
consummation, the youth were obliged to present themselves undraped
to the magistrates. Woe to the offenders with prominent stomachs, for
they had them punched till the owners hardly knew whether they stood
on their head or their heels, and could not digest a dinner for a month
afterwards.

They were beaten almost as badly as the unlucky official who went, in
Parthia, by the name of the king’s friend. It was the duty of this
minister to seat himself on the ground at the foot of the lofty couch
on which the king lay, and from which the sovereign flung refuse bits
to his “friend.” If the latter ate too voraciously, his meat was
snatched from him, and he was beaten with rods till he had hardly
strength left to thank his majesty for the entertainment. Of course, if
he ate too slowly, he was subject to similar castigation. The moral,
perhaps, is, that “fast” or “slow,” it is safer not to be “friends”
with the king--of the Parthians.

But let us turn from the ancient records of how the monarchs of old
deported themselves at their solemn boards, and contemplate a few brief
table traits in connexion with the sovereigns of more modern times.

Clovis was a Christian king, but his behaviour at dinner was not always
so exemplary as might have been desired. But the Chesterfields of his
time were not exacting, and they probably thought Clovis a gentleman
when, on Bishop (St. Gerome) taking leave of him after dinner, the
monarch pulled out a hair and placed it in the bishop’s palm; the civil
ceremony was imitated by the courtiers, and the prelate left the rude
palace with more hairs on his hand than he had on his head.

But dismissing the idea of running regularly through the “Tables of
the Sovereigns of Europe,” and elsewhere, I will simply relate such
incidents as are exemplary of royal table life, without pausing to be
very nice with regard to chronological order. Thus it occurs to me that
Russia, in modern times, exhibits as much barbarism as the court of
Clovis, where Christianity and civilization were, as yet, hardly known.

When Peter the Great and his consort dined together, they were waited
on by a page and the empress’s favourite chambermaid. Even at larger
dinners, he bore uneasily the presence and service of what he called
listening lacqueys. His taste was not an imperial one. He loved, and
most frequently ordered, for his own especial enjoyment, a soup with
four cabbages in it; gruel; pig, with sour cream for sauce; cold roast
meat, with pickled cucumbers or salad; lemons and lampreys; salt meat,
ham, and Limburgh cheese. Previously to addressing himself to the
“consummation” of this supply, he took a glass of aniseed water. At his
repast he quaffed quass, a sort of beer, which would have disgusted
an Egyptian; and he finished with Hungarian or French wine. All this
was the repast of a man who seemed, like the nation of which he was
the head, in a transition state, between barbarism and civilization;
beginning dinner with cabbage water, and closing the banquet with
goblets of Burgundy.

Peter and his consort had stranger tastes than these. This illustrious
pair once arrived at Stuthof, in Germany, where they claimed not only
the hospitality of the table, but a refuge for the night. The owner
of the country-house at which they sought to be guests was a Herr
Schoppenhauer, who readily agreed to give up to them a small bed-room,
the selection of which had been made by the emperor himself. It was a
room without stove or fire-place, had a brick floor, the walls were
bare; and the season being that of rigorous winter, a difficulty arose
as to warming this chamber. The host soon solved the difficulty.
Several casks of brandy were emptied on the floor, the furniture being
first removed, and the spirit was then set fire to. The czar screamed
with delight as he saw the sea of flames, and smelt the odour of the
Cognac. The fire was no sooner extinguished than the bed was replaced,
and Peter and Catherine straightway betook themselves to their repose,
and not only slept profoundly all night in this gloomy bower, amid the
fumes and steam of burnt brandy, but rose in the morning thoroughly
refreshed and delighted with their couch, and the delicate vapours
which had curtained their repose.

The emperor was pleased, because when an emergency had presented
itself, provision to meet it was there at hand. Napoleon loved to be
so served at his tables when in the field. He was irregular in the
hours of his repasts, and he ate rapidly and not over delicately. The
absolute will which he applied to most things, was exercised also
in matters appertaining to the appetite. As soon as a sensation of
hunger was experienced, it must be appeased; and his table service was
so arranged that, in any place and at any hour, he had but to give
expression to his will, and the slaves of his word promptly set before
him roast fowls, cutlets, and smoking coffee. He dined off mutton
before risking the battle at Leipsic; and it is said that he lost the
day because he was suffering so severely from indigestion, that he was
unable to arrange, with sufficient coolness, the mental calculations
which he was accustomed to make as helps to victory.

As Napoleon, the genius of war, was served in the field, Louis XV.,
the incarnation of selfishness and vice, was served in his mistress’s
bower. That bower, built at Choisy for Pompadour, cost millions; but
it was one of the wonders of the world. For the royal entertainments,
there were invented those little tables, called “servants” or
“waiters;” they were mechanical contrivances, that immortalized the
artist Loriot. At Choisy, every guest had one of these tables to
himself. No servant stood by to listen, rather than lend aid. Whatever
the guest desired to have, he had but to write his wish on paper, and
touch a spring, when the table sunk through the flooring at his feet,
and speedily re-appeared, laden with fruits, with pastry, or with
wine, according to the order given. Nothing had been seen like this
enchantment in France before; and nothing like it, it is hoped, will
ever be seen there or elsewhere again. The guests thought themselves
little gods, and were not a jot more reasonable than Augustus and his
companions, who sat down to dinner attired as deities. When kings ape
the majesty of gods, it is time for the people to shake the majesty of
kings.

Perhaps Louis XV. never looked so little like a king as when he dined
or supped in public,--a peculiar manifestation of his kingly character.
The Parisians and their wives used to hurry down to Versailles on a
Sunday, to behold the feeding of the beast which it cost them so much
to keep. On these occasions he always had boiled eggs before him. He
was uncommonly dexterous in decapitating the shell by a single blow
from his fork; and this feat he performed weekly at his own table, for
the sake of the admiration which it excited in the Cockney beholders.
But an egg broken by the king, or Damiens broken alive upon the wheel,
and torn asunder by wild horses,--each was a sight gazed upon, even by
the youthful fair, with a sort of admiration for the executioner!

The glory of the epicureanism of Louis XV. was his “magic table,”
and the select worthless people especially invited to dine with him
thereat. In 1780 the Countess of Oberkirch saw this table, even then
a relic and wreck of the past. She and a gay party of great people,
who yet hoped that God had created the world only for the comfort of
those whom He had honoured by allowing them to be born “noble,” paid
a visit “to the apartments of the late king” in the Tuileries. There,
among other things, she saw the celebrated magic table, the springs
of which, she says, “had become rusty from disuse.” The good lady,
who had not the slightest intention in the world to be satirical,
thus describes the wondrous article, at the making of which Pompadour
had presided:--“It was placed in the centre of a room, where none
were allowed to enter but the invited guests of Louis XV. It would
accommodate thirty persons. In the centre was a cylinder of gilt
copper, which could be pressed down by springs, and would return with
its top, which was surrounded by a band, covered with dishes. Around
were placed four dumb waiters, on which would be found everything that
was necessary.” In 1789 the Countess says,--“This table no longer
exists, having been long since destroyed, with everything that could
recall the last sad years of a monarch, who would have been good if he
had not been perverted by evil counsels.”

After all, the gastronomic greatness of Louis XV. was small compared
with that of his predecessor, Louis XIV. The “state” of the latter was,
in all things, more “cumbersome.” To be helpless was to be dignified;
and to do nothing for himself, and to think of nothing _but_ himself,
was the sole life-business of this very illustrious king. A dozen men
dressed him; there was one for every limb that had to be covered. Poor
wretch! His breakfast was as lumbering a matter as his _toilette_; and
he tasted nothing till it had passed through the hands of half-a-dozen
dukes. It took even three noblemen, ending with a prince of the
blood, to present him a napkin with which to wipe his lips, before he
addressed himself to the more serious business of the day.

Louis XIV. could not be properly got to the dinner-table, entertained
there, and removed, without a still more fussy world of ceremony,
and that of a very Chinese or Ko Tou character. The ushers solemnly
summoned the guard when the cloth was to be laid, and a detachment of
men under arms were at once spectators and guardians at the dressing
of the table. They stood by, exceedingly edified, no doubt, while
the appointed officers touched the royal napkin, spoon, plate, knife,
fork, and tooth-picks, with a piece of bread, which they subsequently
swallowed. This was the “trial” against poisoning. The dishes in the
kitchen were tried in the same way, and were then carried to table
escorted by a file of men with drawn swords. As the dishes were placed
on the table, the loyal officials bowed as though some saintly relics
were on the platter!

If there was ceremony at the coming in of the meat, how much more was
there at the coming in of him who was about to eat it! Unhappy wretch!
what splendid misery enveloped his mutton-chop! He was looked upon as
very august, but decidedly helpless. Did he wish to wipe his fingers;
three dukes and a prince only could present him with a _damp_ napkin;
but a dry one might be offered him at dinner, without insult, by a
simple valet. Philosophical distinction! Changing his plate required as
much attendant ceremony as would go to the whole crowning of a modern
constitutional king; and when he asked for drink, there was thunder
in heaven, or something like it. The cup-bearer solemnly shouted the
king’s desire to the buffet; and the buffeteers presented goblets
and flasks to the cup-bearer, who carried them to the thirsty but
necessarily patient monarch; and, when he finally received the draught
into his extended throat, all loyal men present seemed the better for
the sight.

But Louis XIV. was so well-used to this, and much more ceremony than I
have space to detail, that it interfered in nowise with the comfortable
indulgence of his appetite. He was a very gifted eater. The rough old
Duchess of Orleans declares in her Memoirs, that she “often saw him eat
four platesful of different soups, a whole pheasant, a partridge, a
platefull of salad, mutton hashed with garlick, two good-sized slices
of ham, a dish of pastry, and afterwards fruit and sweetmeats!” At the
end of such a repast as this, this “most Christian” king (very much
so, indeed!) must have been in something of the condition of the young
gentleman who went out to dine, and who, after taking enough for three
boys of his size, and being invited to take more, answered that he
thought he could, if they would allow him to stand!

The Duchess of Orleans, however, is by no means astonished at the
Baal-like ability of the king. Of her own performances in that way
she says, “I am not good at lying in bed; as soon as I awake, I must
get up. I seldom breakfast, and then only on bread and butter. I take
neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, not being able to endure those
foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits, and like nothing in eating
or drinking which is not conformable to our old customs. I eat no
soup but such as I can take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear
broth; whenever I eat anything of which it forms a part, I fall sick
instantly, my body swells, and I am tormented with colics. When I take
broth alone, I am compelled to vomit even to blood, and nothing can
restore the tone of my stomach but--_ham and sausages_!” Poor lady! she
reminds me of the converted cannibal Carib, who was once sick, and who
being asked by a missionary what he could eat, answered sentimentally,
that he thought he could pick a bone or two of a very delicate hand of
a young child!

At a later period even than that of the Duchess of Orleans above
mentioned, the German taste could hardly be said to have improved. For
instances of this, I need only refer to the Memoirs of the Margravine
of Bareuth. This lady was the daughter of that Frederic William of
Prussia, whose portrait is graphically drawn also by his own son, and
with additional light and shade by Voltaire. The Princess Frederica
subsequently married the Prince of Bareuth--a _mésalliance_ which did
not displease her easy parents;--they were not as proudly vexed at it
as Isaac and Rachel were at the marriage of their son Esau with the
daughter of Beeri the Hittite, which certainly sounds as if Esau’s
father-in-law had been a pugilistic publican;--the Princess Frederica,
I say, paints a portrait of her father in very broad style. He used to
compel her and his other children to come to his room every morning at
nine o’clock, whence they were never allowed to depart till nine in
the evening, “pour quelque raison que ce fût.” The time was spent by
the affectionate sovereign in swearing at them, and he added injury
to insult by half-famishing them. He begrudged them even a wretched
soup made of bare bones and salt. Occasionally, they were kept fasting
the whole day; or, if he graciously allowed them a meal at his own
table, the royal beast would spit into the dishes from which he had
helped himself, in order to prevent their touching them. At other
times he forced them to swallow compositions of the most disgusting
description--“ce qui nous obligeait quelquefois de rendre, en sa
présence, tout ce que nous avions dans le corps!” He would then throw
the plates at their heads; and, as his children rushed by him to escape
his fury, the paternal brute, whom it is too much flattery to himself,
and too much injustice to the brute creation so to name, would strike
fiercely at them with his crutch, and was eminently disappointed when
he failed to crack their little, hard, royal, but very dirty skulls.
It is known that this madman would have slain his own son, “the rascal
Fritz,” as he, “the great Frederic,” as the world afterwards was used
to call him; and little doubt can exist that the great Frederic owed
most of his great vices, and none of his great qualities, to the
education which he received at the knees of his infamous sire.

The history of the German courts abounds in traits connected with the
table, but I am compelled to go little beyond the announcement of such
a fact. One or two more, however, I may be permitted to notice before
finally leaving this section of my multifaced subject.

Ernest the “Iron” was, perhaps, the least luxurious of his race. He
married Cymburga of Poland, the lady who brought into the Austrian
family the thick lips, which to this day form a characteristic feature
in the imperial physiognomy. Cymburga cracked her nuts with her
fingers; and when she trained her fruit-trees, she hammered the nails
into the wall with her clenched knuckles! Their table was at once
copious and simple. Their son Frederic had less strength both of body
and judgment. At near fourscore years of age he suffered amputation of
the leg, in order to get rid of a cancerous affection. He was “doing
well” after the operation, when he resolved upon dining on melons. He
was told that such a diet would be fatal to him, as it had already been
to one Austrian archduke of his house. Frederic reflected that he would
probably die at all events, and that he had already reigned longer than
any emperor since the days of Augustus, namely, fifty-three years. “I
_will_ have melons,” said he, “betide what may!” He ate unsparingly,
and death followed close upon the banquet.

Frederic would neither drink wine himself, nor allow his consort to do
so, although physicians declared that, without it, she was not likely
to achieve the honours of maternity. She did abstain, and despite what
the oracular doctors had asserted, she became the mother of Maximilian,
a prince who drank wine enough to compensate for the abstinence of
both his parents. His second wife, Bianca of Milan, whom Maximilian
the “Moneyless” married for her dowry, was, like the lady in Young’s
Satires, by no means afraid to call things by their very broadest
names; and she died of an indigestion, brought on by eating too
voraciously of snails! They were of the large and lively sort, still
reared for the market in the field-preserves near Ulm. If my readers
should feel sick at the thought, let them remember their juvenile days,
and “periwinkles,” and be gentle in their strictures. Leopold the
“Angel,” the second son of the Emperor Ferdinand, surpassed even his
father in abstinence. He reared the most odoriferous of plants, but
inflicted on himself the mortification of never going near enough to
scent them; and, poor man! he thought that thereby he was adding a step
to a ladder of good works, by which he hoped to scale heaven!

The grandson of Ferdinand, Joseph I., was a somewhat free liver, and
his intemperate diet was against him when he caught the small-pox. But
the medical men were fiercer foes than his way of life; for when the
eruption was at its worst, they hermetically closed his apartment, kept
up a blazing fire in it, gave him strong drinks, swathed him in twenty
yards of English scarlet broadcloth, and then published, on his dying,
that his majesty’s decease was contrary to all the rules of art. His
brother and successor, Charles, did for himself what the doctors did
for Joseph. In 1740 he had the gout, and _would_ go out hunting in the
wet. He was subsequently seized with what would now be called incipient
cholera, and he _would_ eat--not melons, like some of his obstinate and
imperial predecessors, but that delicate dish for an invalid, mushrooms
stewed in oil! He ate voraciously, and the next day symptoms ensued
which, he was informed, heralded death. Charles, like Louis Philippe,
would not believe his own medical advisers; and there was some reason
in this, for they stood at his bed-side, disputing as to whether
mushrooms were a digestible diet or the contrary. The emperor dismissed
them from his presence, ordered his favourite mushrooms, ate the
forbidden “fruit” with intense gastronomic delight, and died in peace.

The table of the great Frederic of Prussia was regulated by himself.
There were always from nine to a dozen dishes, and these were brought
in one at a time. The king carved the solitary dish, and helped the
company. One singular circumstance connected with this table was,
that each dish was cooked by a different cook, who had a kitchen to
himself! There was much consequent expense, with little magnificence.
Frederic ate and drank, too, like a boon companion. His last work,
before retiring to bed, was to receive from his chief cook the bill
of fare for the next day; the price of each dish, and of its separate
ingredients, was marked in the margin. The monarch looked it cautiously
through, generally made out an improved edition, cursed all cooks
as common thieves, and then flung down the money for the next day’s
expenses.

The late King of Prussia was a sensible man with respect to his table
arrangements. On gala days, and when it concerned the honour of Prussia
that the royal hospitality should assume an appearance of splendour,
his table was as glittering and gastronomic as goldsmiths and cooks
could make it. But in the routine of private and unofficial life, it
was simply that of an opulent merchant, something, perhaps, like that
of Sir Balaam after he had grown rich. Even then he partook only of
the least savoury dishes, and it was seldom, indeed, that he exceeded
a third glass of wine. His example enforced moderation, but it did not
mar enjoyment, for he loved every man around him to be merry and wise.

His own wisdom he manifested by a characteristic trait in 1809. The
royal family had returned to Berlin for the first time since the war
had broken out in 1806. The court marshal, deeming that the piping
times of peace were going to endure for ever, waited on Frederic
William, and asked what amount of champagne he should order for
the royal cellars. “None,” replied the king; “I will drink neither
champagne nor any other wine, until all my subjects--even the very
poorest--can afford to drink beer again.” The incident was made
public, and the king’s poor neighbours were especially delighted. Many
of them testified their gratitude by sending from their gardens or
little farms various articles for his table. The king ate thereof with
pleasure, and did _not_ forget the givers.

I have spoken of his moderation, but here is an additional trait from
his table worth mentioning. When he came to the crown, the grand
marshal proposed a more extended list of viands for the royal table.
“Marshal,” said the king in reply, “I do not feel that my stomach has
become more capacious since I became king. We will let well alone, and
dine to-day even as we have done heretofore.”

In another page I have spoken of Bishop Eglert supping with the king.
Such a guest was not an unfrequent one at the royal dining-table. On
one occasion the bishop had preached before the court in the morning
from Luke xiv. 8-11: “When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit
not down in the highest room, lest a more honourable man than thou be
bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say unto thee,
Give this man place, and thou begin with shame to take the lower room,”
&c. &c.

The bishop profited by the opportunity to expatiate on the virtues of
diffidence and humility, insisting on their observance as necessary for
the preservation of our happiness. Now, many dignified officials were
present at the banquet in question, and the bishop, who had entered the
saloon last, (which does not say much for the courtesy of those who
preceded him,) meekly took his place at the lower end of the table.
There the king’s scrutinizing eye fell upon him; and “Eglert,” said
Frederic William, “I see you are self-applying the text from which you
preached to us to-day. But, if I remember rightly, it is also written,
‘Friend, go higher.’ Come, then, take this chair that is near to me!”
and the simple but highly embarrassed prelate walked blushingly to the
station appointed him, and all in his vicinity began to recognise a man
whom the king himself delighted to honour.

This anecdote reminds me, albeit it be “rue with a difference,” of
one told of the second of the seven Dukes of Guise, Duke Francis.
This celebrated individual was, during one part of his bloody career,
engaged in the service of the Pope, to fight the battles of the latter
against the King of Naples. He was not successful, and his holiness
showered down upon him mordant epigrams and invitations to dinner.
He had accepted one of the latter, and repaired to the sacro-regal
board, after a day in the course of which he had been engaged serving
as acolyte in the Papal chapel, and holding up the trains of very
obese cardinals. In the banqueting-hall of the descendant of the poor
fisherman, he meekly took the lowest seat. He had scarcely done so,
than a French lieutenant endeavoured to thrust in below him. “How now,
friend!” said the haughty enough Guise; “why pushest thou so rudely to
come where there is no room for thee?” “Marry!” said the soldier, “for
this reason, that it might not be said that the representative of a
king of France had taken the last place at a priest’s table!” It was a
bold piece of table-talk to so powerful a man as Guise, who recovered,
and added to his reputation when he subsequently regained, Calais from
the English. Previously to this last feat, when the occupation of
Calais formed the subject of conversation at social boards, there arose
the proverbial expression applied to the bravest of untried men, and
honourable to the reputation of our own ancestors,--“_He_ is not the
sort of man to drive the English out of France!” The proverb died out
of French society from the day when Guise drove old Lord Wentworth out
of Calais, and cheated his duchess out of the silks which he found
therein, and in which he attired the courtesans whom he invited to his
ducal but _not_ dignified table.

It may fairly be asserted that kings may wear as graceful an aspect as
guests at others’ tables, as they do when enacting the host at their
own. The Prince Regent, dining off the mutton which he had helped to
cook at Colonel Hanger’s, is indeed no very edifying spectacle. I
will introduce my readers to a royal guest of what Hamlet would call
“another kidney.”

When the Prussian general Koeckeritz had completed his fiftieth year
of service in 1809, he was residing in modest apartments, becoming
his celibate condition, near the Neustadt Gate at Potsdam. On the
dawn of the day of his martial jubilee, he was harmoniously greeted
by the bands of the garrison; but the hautboys did not discourse such
sweet music as was conveyed to him in a letter from the king, full of
expressions of gratitude for services rendered by him during a long
half century to the crown. At a grand review held in honour of the day,
the king embraced him in presence of the army, giving in his person the
accolade to every other faithful soldier who had served as long; and
when this had been done, Frederic William not only declared he would
escort the old warrior to his plainly furnished lodgings, but requested
to be invited to the _déjeuner à la fourchette_, which he assumed must
then be wanting. Koeckeritz had the pride of Caleb Balderstone, and he
turned pale at the idea of exposing his domestic economy to the eyes
of a king and court. He grew eloquent in excuses, protested that he
was unworthy of the honour designed for him, and piteously muttered
an apologetical phrase about “old bachelors.” “Then why are you a
bachelor?” asked the monarch: “I have often counselled you to marry,
and this very day you shall be punished for your disobedience.” “Well,”
said the general, with a sigh, denoting the resignation of despair,
“if it must be so, I trust your majesty will allow me a few hours in
order to make fitting preparation.” The spirit that possessed Caleb
Balderstone suggested this petition. “Not five minutes!” exclaimed the
sovereign; “you surely have a crust of bread and a glass of wine to
give to us who are your comrades, and we desire no more! Come along,
gentlemen!”

Of course, no further resistance was to be thought of, and the gay and
brilliant escort led the grave Koeckeritz along, looking very much like
a criminal who was about to be hanged with riotous solemnity at his own
gates.

But, when he reached those gates, his surprise was extreme. The
threshold was covered with flowers, the little hall was lined with
the royal servants in their state suits, and the space in front of
the house was partly occupied by a score of “trumpets,” who no sooner
perceived the approach of the hero of the day than they received him,
as our theatrical orchestras do stage kings, with a “flourish.” It
is hardly necessary to add, that when the old general conducted his
guests within, he found there such a banquet as Aladdin furnished his
widowed mother with by means of the lamp. Everything was there, whether
in or out of season; and the rare-looking flasks promised pleasure
less equivocal than that held out by a Calais Boniface upon his cards,
whereon his English visitors were told, that “the wine shall leave you
nothing to hope for!”

“Oh! oh!” exclaimed the king, “here is bachelor’s fare with a
vengeance! Let us be seated, and show that our appetites can appreciate
what our comrade Koeckeritz has provided for them.” Monarch and
servant, honouring and honoured, sat side by side; and so gay and so
prolonged was the festival, that the king surprised all those who knew
how strictly he lived by rule, by ordering the dinner at the palace to
be retarded for a couple of hours. At that banquet he entertained the
veteran, affecting to do so in return for the hospitality displayed
by the latter in the morning. The scene was not without its moving
incidents, for the king had contrived another surprise whereby to
gratify his old friend and servant. As the monarch led him by the hand
to the dining-room, there stood before him three of the surviving
friends of his youth who had fought with him in the Seven Years’ War,
and whom he had not seen for years. The king had got them together,
not without difficulty; the general joy that ensued was as unalloyed
as humanity could make it, and never did monarch sit at meat with
more right to feel pleased, than Frederic William on this day of
Koeckeritz’s jubilee. It was a day that Henri IV. of France would
have delighted in. That king is said never to have dined better than
one evening previous to the battle of Ivry, when he was sojourning
in a country-house under the name of a French officer. There were
no provisions there, but the solitary lady who was the chatelaine
intimated that there was a retired tradesman who lived near, who was
the possessor of a fine turkey, and who would contribute it towards
a dinner, if he were only invited to partake of it. “Is he a jolly
companion?” asked the supposed officer. The reply being affirmatively,
the citizen and turkey were invited together, and two merrier guests
never sat down with a lady to cut up a bird and crush a bottle. Henri
was in the most radiant of humours; and it was when he was at his
brightest, that the _bourgeois_ avowed that he had known him from the
beginning, and that after dining with a king of France, he trusted
that the monarch would not object to grant him letters of nobility.
Henri laughed, which was as good as consenting, and asked what arms his
countship would assume? “I will emblazon the turkey that founded my
good fortune,” answered the aspirant for nobility. “Ventre Saint-Gris!”
exclaimed the king, laughing more immoderately, “then you shall be
a gentleman, and bear your turkey ’en pal’ on a shield!” The happy
citizen purchased a territorial manor near Alençon, and le Comte Morel
d’Inde was _not_ a _conte pour rire_.

The Russian Empress Catherine used to affect the good-fellowship that
was natural to the first of the Bourbon kings of France. When she dined
with the highly honoured officers of the regiment of which she was
colonel, she used to hand to each a glass of spirits before the banquet
commenced. At her own table the number of guests was usually select,
generally under a dozen. The lord of the bed-chamber sat opposite to
her, her own seat being at the centre of one of the sides, carved one
of the dishes, and presented it to her. She took once of what was so
offered, but afterwards dispensed with such service. In her days, many
of the Russian nobility kept open tables. Any one who had been duly
introduced, and knew not where to dine, had only to call at a house
where he was known, and to leave word that he intended to dine there
in the afternoon. He was sure to be welcomed. At the present time, the
Russians are more civilized and less hospitable.

Jermann describes the imperial kitchen at St. Petersburg as good,
delicate, and “meagre,”--the latter being a consequence of the
continual eating that is going on, and the necessity which follows of
providing what is light of digestion. The imperial household tables in
the days of Paul were divided into “stations,” an arrangement which
took its rise from a singular incident. The late empress, like our own
Queen Adelaide, was given to inspect the “domestic accounts,” and she
was puzzled by finding among them “a bottle of rum” daily charged to
the Naslednik, or heir apparent! Her imperial Majesty turned over the
old “expenses” of the household, to discover at what period her son had
commenced this reprobate course of daily rum-drinking; and found, if
not to her horror, at least to the increase of her perplexity, that it
dated from the very day of his birth. The “bottle of rum” began with
the baby, accompanied the boy, and continued to be charged to the man.
He was charged as drinking upwards of thirty dozen of fine old Jamaica
yearly! The imperial mother was anxious to discover if any other of the
Czarovitch babies had exhibited the same alcoholic precocity; and it
appears that they were all alike; daily, for upwards of a century back,
they stood credited in the household books for that terrible “bottle
of rum.” The empress continued her researches with the zeal of an
antiquary, and her labours were not unrewarded. She at last reached the
original entry. Like all succeeding ones, it was to the effect of “a
bottle of rum for the Naslednik;” but a sort of editorial note on the
margin of the same page intimated the wherefore: “On account of violent
toothache, a teaspoonful with sugar to be given, by order of the
physician of the imperial court.” The teaspoonful for one day had been
charged as a bottle, and the entry once made, it was kept on the books
to the profit of the unrighteous steward, until discovery checked the
fraud,--a fraud, more gigantically amusing than that of the illiterate
coachman, who set down in his harness-room book, “Two penn’orth of
whipcord, 6_d._” The empress showed the venerable delinquency to her
husband, Paul; and _he_, calculating what the temporary toothache of
the imperial baby Alexander had cost him, was affrighted at the outlay,
and declared that he would revolutionise the kitchen department, and
put himself out to board. The threat was not idly made, and it was soon
seriously realized. A gastronomic contractor was found who farmed the
whole palace, and did his spiriting admirably. He divided the imperial
household into “stations.” The first was the monarch’s especial table,
for the supply of which he charged the emperor and empress fifty
roubles each daily; the table of the archdukes and archduchesses was
supplied at half that price; the guests of that table, of whatever
rank, were served at the same cost. The ladies and gentlemen of the
household had a “station,” which was exceedingly well provisioned, at
twenty roubles each. The graduated sliding scale continued to descend
in proportion to the _status_ of the feeders. The upper servants had
superior stomachs, which were accounted of as being implacable at
less than fifteen roubles each. Servants in livery, with finer lace
but coarser digestions, dieted daily at five roubles each; and the
grooms and scullions were taken altogether at three roubles a head. “A
wonderful change,” says Jermann, “ensued in the whole winter palace.
The emperor declared he had never dined so well before. The court,
tempted by the more numerous courses, sat far longer at table. The
maids of honour got fresh bloom upon their cheeks, and the chamberlains
and equerries rounder faces; and most flourishing of all was the state
of the household expenses, although these diminished by one-half. In
short, every one, save cook and butler, was content; and all this was
the result of ‘a bottle of rum,’ from which the Emperor Alexander, when
heir to the crown, had been ordered by the physician to take a spoonful
for the toothache.”

Herr Jermann, who was manager of the imperial company of German actors
in St. Petersburg, frequently dined at the table of the “second
station,” or officials’ table. There were six dishes and a capital
dessert. He describes the “drinkables” as consisting of one bottle of
red and one of white wine, two bottles of beer, one of kislitschi,
and quass _ad libitum_. The dinner he speaks lightly of, as inferior
on the point of cookery to that of the best restaurants in the
capital. The wine was a light Burgundy; the beer heavy and Russian.
The kislitschi must have been a powerful crusher of the appetite, it
being a sour-sweet drink, prepared from honey, water, lemon-juice, and
a decoction of herbs. Quass is a plain, cheap beverage, the better
sort of which is extracted from malt, while an inferior sort is an
extract of bread-crusts. It is the national drink of the lower orders.
A stranger finds it at first detestable; but he not only soon becomes
reconciled to it, but generally prefers it to any other beverage,
especially in the brief scorching summer of St. Petersburg, when the
cooling properties of quass are its great recommendation.

To talk of the fierceness of a Russian summer seems paradoxical, but it
is simple truth; and probably the court of Naples itself, throughout
its long season of heat, does not consume so much ice as their
imperial Muscovite majesties do in the course of their slow-to-come,
quick-to-go, and sharp-while-it-lasts summer. Nay, the whole capital
eats ice at this season. Ice is thought such a “necessary” of life,
that the first question in taking a house is, probably, touching the
quality and capability of the ice-cellar, wherein they pack away as
much of the Neva as they can in solid blocks. They eat it and drink
it, surround their larders with it, and mix it with the water, beer,
quass--in short, with whatever they drink. Nay, more, when there is
a superabundance of the material, they place it under their beds and
on their stoves to cool their apartments. So tremendous is the dust
and heat of a Russian summer, that, for inconvenience, it is only
the opposite extreme of annoyance to that experienced in the wintry
visitations of frost. The ice-tubs of the popular vendors in the
streets are enveloped and covered with wet cloths, to protect them
from the heat of the sun. I need not say that this is _not_ the season
at which a visitor should resort to the capital. St. Petersburg in
January, and Naples in July, are the respective times and places to be
observed by those who can bear the consequences.

I do not know what may be the case with regard to the fruit eaten at
the imperial table; but, generally speaking, fruit is never eaten by a
Russian until it has been blest by a priest. Jermann, alluding to this
custom, praises it on sanitary grounds, for, he says, the fruit has no
chance of earning a benediction unless it be ripe; but if it then be
taken to church, the blessing is granted with much attendant solemnity.

I do not believe that the czars were ever accustomed to dine in such
state as the kaisers. The old emperors of Germany, on state occasions,
were waited on at dinner by the two happy feudatory princes of the
empire. On one of these occasions, we are told that old General
Dalzell, the terrible enemy of the Scottish Covenanters, was invited
to dine with the kaiser, and the prince-waiter nearest to him in
attendance was no less a personage than the Prince of Modena, head of
the house of Este. Some years afterwards, the Duke of York (James II.)
invited Dalzell to dine with himself and Mary of Modena. That proud
lady, however, made some show of reluctance to sit down _en famille_
with the old general; but the latter lowered her pride by telling her,
that he was not unacquainted with the greatness of the princes of
Modena, and that the last time he had sat at table with the Emperor of
Germany, a prince of that house was standing in attendance behind the
emperor’s chair.

There were other good points about Dalzell’s character; in proof of
which may be cited his dining with Dundas, an old Covenanting Scotch
laird, who would _not_ forego his long prayers before dinner, and who
especially prayed that Dalzell and his royal master might have their
hard hearts softened towards the Covenanting children of the Lord. When
the prayer was ended, and dinner about to begin, Dalzell complimented
his host on his courage in fearing man less than God. The anecdote
reminds me of one in connexion with a dinner given by a gentleman of
one of our “Protestant denominations,” in honour of the presence of
a new minister and his bride. Prayer preceded the repast, and it was
given by the host, who, introducing therein the welcomed strangers,
said, “We thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast conducted hither in safety
thy servants, our new minister and his wife. It is thou, O Lord, who
preservest both man and beast!” This was more like a kick than a
compliment; but it only called up a smile on the pretty features of the
minister’s lady.

Let us now cross the Atlantic, with Cortez and his companions, and
contemplate Montezuma in his household and at his table. Barbarian
as the Spanish invaders accounted him to be, he was superior in many
respects to most of his royal contemporaries in Europe. He was not less
magnificent than Solomon, and he was far more cleanly than Louis XIV.

On the terraced roof of his palace, thirty knights could tilt at
each other, without complaining of want of space. His armouries were
filled with weapons almost as destructive as any to be found in the
arsenals of civilized Christian kings. His granaries were furnished
with provisions paid by tributaries; three hundred servants tended the
beautiful birds of his aviaries; his menageries were the wonder and
terror of beholders; and his dwarfs were more hideous, and his ladies
more dazzling, than potentate had ever before looked upon with contempt
or admiration. His palace within and without was a marvel of Aztec art.
It was surrounded by gardens, glad with fountains and gay flowers. One
thousand ladies shared the retirement of this splendid locality, with
a master more glittering than anything by which he was environed,--who
changed his apparel four times daily, never putting on again a garment
he had once worn, and who, eating off and drinking from gold, (except
on state occasions, when his table was covered with services of
Cholulan porcelain,) never used a second time the vessels which had
once ministered to the indulgence of his appetite.

It is said eulogistically of his cooks, that they had thirty different
ways of preparing meat,--a poor boast, perhaps, compared with that of
the Parisian _chefs_, who have six hundred and eighty-five ways to
dress eggs! Three hundred dishes were daily placed before the monarch;
and such as were required to be kept hot at table were in heated
earthenware stands made for the purpose. And it is even asserted, that
this autocrat occasionally killed time before dinner by watching the
cooking of his viands, a practice in which, according to Peter Pinder,
that honest old English king used to indulge, who dined off boiled
mutton at two, and to whom the funniest sight in the world was the
clown in a pantomime swallowing carrots.

The ordinary dishes of Montezuma consisted of very dainty fare;
namely, domestic fowls, geese, partridges, quails, venison, Indian
hogs, pigeons, hares, rabbits, and other productions of his country,
including--it is alleged by some and denied by others--some very choice
dairy-fed baby, when this choice article happened to be in season! In
cold weather enormous torches, that flung forth not only light but
warmth and aromatic odours, lent additional splendour to the scene;
and to temper at once the glare and the heat, screens with deliciously
droll devices upon them, framed in gold, were placed before the
brilliant flame.

The sovereign sat, like his links, also protected by a screen. He was
not as barbarous as the most Christian kings of France, who fed in
public; nor was he personally tended like them by awkward Ganymedes
of a middle age. Four Hebes stood by the low throne and table of
their master, and these poured water on his hands, and offered him
the napkin, white as driven snow, or as the cloth on which the four
hundred dishes stood waiting his attention. Women as fair presented him
with bread; but even these fair ministers retired a few steps, when
his sacred majesty addressed himself to the common process of eating.
Then a number of ancient but sprightly nobles took their place. With
these Montezuma conversed; and, when he was particularly pleased with a
sage observation or a sprightly remark, a plate of pudding bestowed by
the royal hand made one individual happy, and all his fellows bitterly
jealous. The pudding, or whatever the dish might be, was eaten in
silent reverence; and while an Aztec emperor was at meat, no one in the
palace dared, at peril of his life, speak above his breath. Montezuma
is described as being but a moderate eater, but fond of fruits, and
indulging, with constraint upon his appetite, in certain drinks which
were of a stimulating quality, such as are found in countries where
civilization and luxury are at their highest.

“One thing I forgot, and no wonder,” says Bernal Diaz, “to mention in
its place, and that is, during the time Montezuma was at dinner, two
very beautiful women were busily employed making small cakes, with eggs
and other things mixed therein. These were delicately white, and when
made, they presented them to him on plates covered with napkins. Also,
another kind of bread was brought to him on long leaves, and plates
of cakes resembling wafers. After he had dined, they presented to him
three little canes, highly ornamented, containing liquid amber, mixed
with a herb they call tobacco; and when he had sufficiently viewed
and heard the singers, dancers, and buffoons, he took a little of the
smoke of one of those canes, and then laid himself down to sleep. The
meal of the monarch ended, all his guards and attendants sat down to
dinner, and, as near as I could judge, about a thousand plates of those
eatables that I have mentioned, were laid before them, with vessels
of foaming chocolate, and fruit in immense quantities. For his women
and various inferior servants, his establishment was of a prodigious
expense, and we were astonished, amid such a profusion, at the vast
regularity that prevailed.”

What a contrast with the meal of this splendid barbarian is that of
princes of the same complexion, but of different race, the Arab! We
may fittingly include among sovereigns those Arab princes whose word,
if it be not heeded far, is promptly obeyed within the little circle
of their rule. Skins on the ground serve for table-cloths; the dishes
are, in their contents, only the reflection of each other, and in the
centre of the array whole lambs or sheep lie boiled or roasted. The
chief and his followers dine in successive relays of company. Sometimes
the skin is spread before the door of the tent, whether in a street or
in the plain, and the passers-by, even to the beggars, invited with
a “Bismillah,” In God’s name, fall to; and having eaten, exclaim,
“Hamdallilah!” God be praised! and go their way.

Not less may we include, in the roll of Majesty at Meat, those Pilgrim
Fathers who were the pioneers of civilization and liberty in America.
Scant indeed was the table of that “sovereign people,” until they found
security to sow seed, and reap the harvest in something like peace. The
first meal which they enjoyed, after long months of labour, disease,
and famine, was when they had constructed the little fort at Plymouth,
behind which they might eat in safety and thankfulness. “The captain,”
says Mr. Bartlett, in his “Pilgrim Fathers,” “had brought with him ‘a
very fat goose,’ and those on shore had ‘a fat crane, and a mallard,’
and ‘a dried neat’s tongue.’ This fare was, no doubt, washed down
with good English beer and strong waters; and thus, notwithstanding
the gloom that hung over them, the day passed cheerfully and sociably
away.” Such was the first official dinner of the “majesty of the
people” beyond the Atlantic.

And having got to the “majesty of the people,” I am reminded of a
“popular majesty,” the citizen king, Louis Philippe. He was a monarch
economically minded, and kept the most modest yet not worst furnished
of tables. His family often sate down before he arrived, detained as
he often was by state affairs. When all rose as he quietly entered the
dining-room, his stereotyped phrase was, “Que personne ne se dérange
pour moi,” and therewith ensued as little ceremony as when “William
Smith” and his household sate down to an uncrowned dinner at the little
inn at Newhaven.

They who are curious to see how admirably Louis Philippe was
constituted for making a poor-law commissioner, or a parochial
relieving overseer, should peruse the graphic biography of the king
written by Alexander Dumas. Therein is a list, made out by the monarch,
of what he thought was sufficient for the table of the princes and
princesses; and Louis of Orleans condescends to name the number of
plates of soup, or cups of coffee, that he deemed sufficient for the
requirement and support of the younger branches of his house. It shows
that the soul of a crafty “gargottier” was in the body of the citizen
king. But we have not yet contemplated the appearance and behaviour of
our own sovereigns at table, out of respect for whom we now allot a
chapter, but a brief one, to themselves.




ENGLISH KINGS AT THEIR TABLES.


The utilitarians of history have declared that half our treasured
incidents of story are myths. Rufus was not slain by Sir Walter
Tyrrell; Richard III. was a marvellously proper man; and the young
princes were not smothered in the Tower. They have laid their hands on
our legends, as Augustus did his on the nose of the dead Alexander,
and with the same effect,--under the touch it crumbled into dust. The
infidels refuse even to have faith in that table trait of Alfred, which
showed him making cakes, or rather marring them, in the neatherd’s
cottage. Mr. Wilkie may have prettily painted the incident, but its
existence, anywhere but on canvas and in the poet’s brain, they
ruthlessly deny. I do not know but that they are right.

We march into the bowels of more trustworthy ground, when we pass the
frontier of the Roman period. William the Norman we know had a huge
appetite for venison; and the Saxon chronicler says, that he loved the
“high deer” as if he had been their father, which is but an equivocal
compliment to his paternal affection. His table indulgences cost the
life of hundreds, and the ruin of tens of hundreds. It brought on
corpulency; his corpulency begot a poor joke in Philip of France;
and of this joke was born such wrath in the soul of William, that he
carried fire and sword into that kingdom, and was cut short in his
career, ere he had accomplished the full measure of his revenge.

Rufus was as fat as his father, and as majestic both in his oaths
and his appetites. To every passion he yielded himself a slave; and
he feasted, like so many who would affect to be disgusted at his
dishonesty, without troubling himself as to who “suffered.” He never
paid a creditor whom he could cheat; and again, like many of the same
class, he was most affable at table; his drinking companions were on
an equality with him; and in such fellowship, over gross food and huge
goblets mantling to the brim, he cut unclean jokes on his own unclean
deeds, at which his servile and drunken hearers roared consumedly, and
swore he was a god. There was some grandeur in his ideas, however,
for he built Westminster Hall, as a vestibule to a palace, wherein he
intended to hold high revel such as the world had never seen; and a
vestibule it has now become, but to a palace wherein sits a different
sort of dignity to that dreamed of by the low-statured, fat, fierce,
and huge feeding Rufus.

All the Norman kings were fearful objects at which to fling jokes; and
the appetite of Henry I. was ruined, and his sanguinary ire aroused,
by a derisive passage in a poem by Luke de Barré. The king made the
table shake as he declared that he would let wretched versifiers know
what they were to expect if they offended the King of England; and
Barré suffered the loss of his eyes. Henry ate and drank none the less
joyously for the dead. But _Beauclerc_ was a more refined _gastronome_
than his brothers, as befitted his name; and though in many respects
his court was horribly licentious, yet when he went from one demesne
to another, to consume its revenues upon the spot, the feasting there
seems to have been attended by as much moderation as merriment.

Stephen had more to do with fighting than feasting, and with keeping
castles rather than cooks; but he knew how to gain allies by the fine
science of giving dinners, and there was no more courteous host than
he. While the king and the barons kept high mirth, however, the people
were in the lowest misery. While the king gave political feasts, his
subjects were perishing of starvation by thousands.

His successor, the Second Henry, was but a poor patron of cooks, as
was to be expected of a monarch who had continually to defend himself
against the rebellions, not only of subjects, but of his own children.
Of the latter, the only one who loved him was his natural son Geoffrey.
It is no wonder that this melancholy king was the first to do away with
the old custom of having a coronation dinner thrice every year, on
assembling the States at the three great festivals. He was ever in the
midst of affrays; and once he fell among a body of monks, who checked
their turbulence to complain to the king; their complaint being that
their abbot, the Bishop of Winchester, had cut off three dishes from
their table. “How many has he left you?” said the king. “Good heavens!”
said the monks, “he has only left us ten.” “Ten!” said the monarch; “I
am content with but three; and I hope your bishop will reduce you to a
level with your king.” They, of course, were highly disgusted at the
remark.

Richard Cœur de Lion, that copper monarch, was too busy with mischief
to have leisure for much banqueting; but he loved one thing, and
that was venison, the poor stealers of which he punished by the most
horrible of mutilations. In his reign, an ox and a horse cost four
shillings each; a sow was to be bought for a shilling; a sheep with
fine wool, for tenpence, and with coarse wool, for sixpence; so that,
taking into account the difference in the valuation of money, people
who _had_ the money to purchase with, could procure mutton and pork
at a rate about a dozen times cheaper than the same articles can be
procured at now. The sovereign did not trouble himself about paying
anybody; and when he gave a banquet, the very last thing he thought of
was whether it were ever paid for or not.

Richard had no virtue but courage; and John resembled his worthless
brother in every thing _but_ courage. He had the same love for venison;
and a joke at dinner upon a fat haunch, which he said had come from a
noble beast that had never heard mass, was looked upon by the clerical
gentlemen present as a reflection upon their corpulency. They never
forgot it; and it was, perhaps, partly a consequence of their retentive
memory, that the monks of Swineshead poisoned the dish of which the
king partook on the occasion of almost his last dinner. He certainly
never _enjoyed_ another.

Henry III. was the first of our kings whose reign exceeded
half-a-century in duration. He was a moderate man, loved plain fare,
and cared more for masses than merriment. He was an easy, indolent
monarch, with troubles enough to have fired him to activity; but he
would have given half his realm for the privilege of daily dining in
peace and quietness, a boon seldom vouchsafed to him. His subjects must
have dined as ill as himself, if we may judge by the extraordinary
variation in the prices of articles of consumption during his reign.
Thus the price of wheat, for instance, varied from one shilling to
a pound a quarter. The royal statute upon ale rather displeased all
citizens of this period, for by it the price was fixed at a halfpenny
per gallon in cities, while in the country the same quantity might be
sold for a farthing. A gallon of ale for a halfpenny ought, however, to
have satisfied the most thirsty of drinkers.

The frugal Edward I. very little patronised either eating or drinking,
beyond what nature required. He was a very moderate wine-drinker,
but he exceedingly offended those who were otherwise, by imposing a
duty of two shillings a tun on all wine imported, over and above the
old existing duty. The unlucky Edward II. was to the first Edward,
what Louis XVI. was to Louis XIV., the scape-goat for the crimes of a
predecessor and tyrant too powerful to be resisted. The banqueting-room
of this Edward, however, was, as is often the case with such princes,
oftener used than the council-room, and the favourites feasted with
their weak lord until rebellion marred the festivity. There never was a
merrier reign (despite public calamity) closed by so terrible a murder
as that of this king, whose last dinner would have almost disgusted a
dog.

Edward III. was a gorgeous patroniser of the culinary art; the cooks
and his guests adored him; and Windsor Castle, which he built as a
fortress and a pleasaunce, is a monument of his power and his taste.
But his love for good cheer was imitated by his subjects to their ruin;
and king and parliament interfered to remedy by penalty, what might
have been obviated by good example. Servants were prohibited from
eating flesh, meat, or fish, above once a day. By another law, it was
ordained that no one should be allowed, either for dinner or supper,
above three dishes in each course, and not above two courses; and it is
likewise expressly declared that _soused_ meat is to count as one of
these dishes. And of these laws I will only observe, that if they were
obeyed, servants and citizens of the days of Edward III. were a very
different class of people from what they are at present.

When it is stated of Richard II. that two thousand cooks and three
hundred servitors were employed in the royal kitchen, we think we
become acquainted with the gastronomic tastes of that unhappy king. But
as he was one of those whose virtues were his own, and his vices were
of others’ making, so this Sardanapalian array of cooks was kept up by
those who ruled from behind the throne, and finally left the king to
starve, despite his counting cooks by thousands. His chief _cuisinier_
is known only by the initials C. S. S., under which he wrote a culinary
work in English, “On the Forme of Cury.” In this work, he speaks of
poor Richard, his royal master, as the “best and royallest viander of
all Christian kynges.”

Henry IV. kept a princely but not a profuse table. He was the first
king in England whose statutes may be said to have acted as a check
on the freedom of after-dinner conversation upon religious matters;
for in his reign took place the first execution in England, on account
of opinions connected with matters of faith. The household expenses
of this monarch are set down at something less than £20,000 per annum
of the money of the time; and this sum, moderate enough, appears to
have been fairly applied to the purposes for which it was intended. A
porpoise was a fashionable dish in the time of Henry V., who first had
it at the royal table, and thus sanctioned its use at tables of lower
degree. Loyal folks in those days copied the example set them by their
sovereign, as they did in the later days of George III. boiled mutton
and caper sauce, when country gentlemen “dined like the king, sir, at
two o’clock.” But Henry V. was oppressed with debts, and, like many
men in similar positions, his banquets were all the more splendid, and
his prodigality was equal to his liabilities. So extravagant a monarch
bequeathed but a poor inheritance to Henry VI., who was occasionally
as hard put to it for a dinner as ever the Second Charles was. When
Edward IV. jumped into poor Henry’s seat, he found a host of angry
persons who disputed his power, and these he took care to conciliate
by the most powerful, nay irresistible means that were ever applied to
the solution of a difficulty, or the removal of an obstruction. He
simply invited them to dinner; and, certainly, up to that time England
had never seen a king who gave dinners on so extravagantly profuse a
scale. They were marked, however, by something of a barbaric splendour;
and the monarch, gay and glittering as he was, dazzling in dress, and
overwhelmingly exuberant of spirits, was more like William de la Marck
than any more knightly host. In short, Edward was but a coarse beast
at table. “In homine tam corpulento,” says the Croyland chronicler,
“tantis sodalitiis, vanitatibus, crapulis, luxuriis et cupiditatibus
dedito,”--a sort of testimonial to character which neither monarch nor
man could be justified in being proud of. The young Edward V. is the
“petit Dauphin” of English history, but with a less cruel destiny, for
he was at least not starved to death, amid dirt, darkness, and terror,
but mercifully, if roughly, murdered, and so saved from the long and
yet unexpiated assassination of the innocent and helpless Louis XVII.
His murderer sought to make people forget the heinousness of his crime,
by the double splendour of his coronation dinners. The ceremony and the
festival took place, not only in London, but in York; and Richard hoped
he had feasted both the northern and southern provinces into sentiments
of loyalty. A curious incident preceded the first dinner,--the
anointing of himself and consort at the coronation. There is nothing
singular in the fact, but there _is_ in the manner of it. Richard and
his queen stripped themselves naked to the waist, in order that the
unction might be more liberally poured over them,--and in Richard’s
own case, perhaps for another reason, that the great nobles who were
present might see that they were not about to sit down to dinner with a
sovereign who was as deformed in body as his enemies declared him to be.

Almost all young readers of history take their first permanent idea
of Henry VII. from that gallant Richmond, in Shakspeare’s Tragedy, who
comes in like an avenging angel, at the beginning of the fifth act,
and has it all his own generous way, until he sticks “the bloody and
devouring bear,” and sends a note to Elizabeth to come and be married.
This Elizabeth, by the way, was the good mother of Henry VIII., and she
was the only woman for whom that capricious prince ever felt a spark of
pure affection. His love and respect for _her_ were permanent, and the
fact merits to be recorded. But to return to Henry VII., and to conduct
him to the dinner-table, where alone we have present business with him;
I do not know that I can find a better “trait” touching himself and his
times, than one connected with his royal visit to York.

He was received in the city with more than ordinary ceremony, and
loudly-expressed delight at the sight of his “sweet-favoured” face;
“some casting out of obles and wafers, and some casting out of
comfits in great quantities, as it had been hailstones, for joy and
rejoicing of the king’s coming.” But I must pass over the outward
show--how Augustans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Dominicans met him
at Micklegate, and how these, with priors, and friars, and canons of
hospitals, and priests, and knights, and noble, and gentle, and simple,
accompanied the monarch to the Minster, and thence to the archbishop’s
palace, where Henry resided during his stay in the northern capital.
The grandest banquet given to him during his sojourn, was in this
palace, on the eve of the festival of St. George: the great hall was
divided into a centre and two aisles. In each division there were two
tables, half-a-dozen in all. The king sat at the centre table, arrayed
in all the pomp and glory of a king;--George and garter, crown, and
England’s sceptre. One individual only was esteemed worthy of being
seated at the same table, namely, the Archbishop of York, who was
quite as powerful a man, in his way, as Henry Tudor himself. Knights
carved the joints, and earls waited upon prince and prelate. Lord
Scrope, of Bolton, _because_ he was a Knight of the Garter, served
the king with water; another member of chivalry handed the cup, and
the sovereign’s meat was especially carved for him by a Welsh cousin,
Sir David Owen. The distribution of the other tables exhibited a
judicious mixture of priest and layman. At the first table in the
centre of the hall (the cross-table at the top being occupied by
the king and the archbishop) sat two secular dignitaries, the Lords
Chancellor and Privy Seal, and with them, the Abbots of St. Mary and
Fountains, with the archbishop’s suffragans, other prelates, and the
royal chaplains; thus the chief members of the clergy were seated in
greatest numbers near the king. The second table was entirely occupied
by lay nobility, earls, barons, knights and esquires of the king’s
body. Of the two tables in the right aisle, the city clergy and the
Minster choir occupied one to themselves. At the upper end of the other
table were several knights of the garter, all sitting on one side,
“and beneath them a void space, and then other honest persons filled
that table.” We are glad to fall on the term “_other_ honest,” or we
might have been tempted to believe that a distinction was made between
honesty and nobility. The tables in the left aisle were occupied, one
by the municipal authorities and other citizen guests; the second
by the judges, “and beneath them _other_ honest persons,” again. At
the rear of the king’s table a stage was erected, on which stood the
royal officer of arms, who cried his “largesse” three times, in the
usual manner, and doubtless with something of the stentorian powers
made familiar to us by the late Mr. Toole, and the present loud and
lively Mr. Harker. “The surnape,” we are told, “was drawn by Sir
John Turberville, the knight-marshal; and after the dinner there was
a voide, when the king and his nobles put off their robes of state,
except such as were knights of the garter, who rode to even-song,
attired in the habit of their order;” and a very fitting close to a
feast,--and a good example is held forth therein to all who rise from
a festival without any more thought of being thankful for it, than
is implied by trying to find out the reflection of their nose in the
mahogany.

The following table story, cited by Southey, furnishes another
illustration of social, and, indeed, of political, life about this
time:--

“Henry (then Richmond), on his march from Milford, lodged one night
with his friend David Llwyd, at Matha’farn. David had the reputation
of seeing into the future, and Richmond, whether in superstition or
compliment, privately inquired of him, what would be the issue of
his adventure. Such a question, he was told, was too important to be
immediately answered, but in the morning a reply should be made. The
wife of David saw that her husband was unusually grave during the
evening; and having learnt the cause, she said, ‘How can you have any
difficulty about your answer? Tell him he will succeed gloriously. If
he does, you will receive honours and rewards. But, if it fail, depend
upon it, he will never come here to reproach you.’” Hence, it is said,
a Welsh proverb, “A wife’s advice without asking it.”

Henry VIII. loved to take a quiet dinner, occasionally, with his
chancellor, at Chelsea; and there he would walk in the garden, with
his arm round that neck which he afterwards flung beneath the axe
of the executioner. He was given to indulgences of all sorts, and
with respect to those of the appetite and palate, he was well served
by his incomparable clerk of the kitchen, honest and clever William
Thynne, who was not a _mere_ clerk of the kitchen, but a gentleman
and scholar to boot; loving poetry though he was no poet, and editing
Chaucer with as much zeal as that with which he regulated the accounts
of his kitchen clerkship. Henry ate not wisely, but too well; and this
huge feeding brought him at last to such a size, that he could not be
moved but by aid of “a machine.” In other words, I suppose, he could
not walk, and was compelled to submit to locomotion in a chair. Among
the sovereigns who assembled at the Congress of Vienna, and who were
as strangely there together as the half-dozen kings whom Candide met
at the _table d’hôte_ in Venice, was that monster of a man, the King
of Wurtemburg. This mountain of flesh dined daily at the imperial
table, where a semicircular piece was cut out of the mahogany, in order
that the stomach of the monarch might rest comfortably against the
table, when engaged in its appropriate work. He did not lack wit for
abounding in fatness, and to him, I believe, is properly attributed the
neat saying, when he saw Lord Castlereagh in simple civilian’s dress,
without a star, amid the gold lace, gems, jewels, ties, tags, and
glittering uniforms of the crowd around him. The king asked who he was,
and on being informed, he remarked: “Ma foi! il est _bien distingué_!”
He could not have paid the same compliment to the noble Stewart’s wife,
if it be true, as was reported, that at one of the state-dinners, or
state balls, she appeared with her husband’s jewelled garter, worn as a
_bandeau_, and “Honi soit qui mal y pense” burning in diamonds upon her
forehead.

May it not have been the unpleasant effects of Henry’s gastronomic
indulgences that made of him a dabbler in medicine? Many of his
prescriptions in his own handwriting are still extant, and some of
them are in the British Museum. He invented a plaister, and was
the concocter of more than one original ointment for the cure of
indigestion. He also prepared “a plaister for the Lady Ann of Cleves,
to mollify and lessen certain swellings proceeding from cold, and
to dissipate the boils on the stomach.” His majesty in some of his
after-dinner ruminations professed also to have discovered a remedy
for the plague; the prescription for which he sent to the lord mayor.
He was very tender of the health of Wolsey, when the cardinal little
regarded his own. His majesty, on one occasion, counsels his minister,
if he would soon be relieved from “the sweating,” to take light
suppers, and to drink wine very moderately, and to use a certain kind
of pill. I do not know if Henry’s cookery and kitchen at all smelt
of unorthodoxy before the Reformation, but it is a fact that, when
Cardinal Campeggio came over here on the business of the divorce of
Henry and Catherine, he was especially charged by the Pope to look into
the state of cookery in England generally, and in the royal palace in
particular.

The royal table of Elizabeth was a solemnity indeed. But it was all a
majestically stupendous sham. The attendants thrice bent their knee
as they approached to offer her the different dishes; and when these
ceremonies had been gone through, the queen rose and retired to a
private room, where the meats were placed before her, and she was left
to dine as comfortably as the citizens and their wives of Eastcheap and
Aldersgate.

Among the numerous new year’s gifts made to Elizabeth, and by which she
contrived to maintain a splendid wardrobe, gifts of good things for her
table were not wanting. One of her physicians presented her with a box
of foreign sweetmeats; another doctor with a pot of green ginger; while
her apothecaries gave her boxes of lozenges, ginger-candy, and other
conserves. “Mrs. Morgan gave a box of cherries and one of apricots.”
The queen’s master-cook and her serjeant of the pastry presented her
with various confectionary and preserves.

Elizabeth and her “maids” both dined and breakfasted upon very solid
principles and materials. Beef and beer were consumed at breakfast,--“a
repast for a ploughman!” it may be said. Alas! ploughmen are content,
or seem so, to strengthen their sinews as they best may of a morning
with poor bread and worse tea. Elizabeth made a truly royal bird of
the goose,--a distinction which her sister Mary failed to give to the
cygnet, the stork, and the crane. These no more suited the national
taste than that Crimean delicacy, a Russian oyster, and which all
Englishmen who have tasted thereof pronounce to be a poisonous dab
of rancid putty. Yet Russian princes are fond thereof, and Russian
sovereigns order them for especial favourites;--just as the Prince
Regent, whenever Lord Eldon was to dine at Carlton House, always
commanded the chancellor’s favourite dish to be placed near him,--liver
and bacon.

The household expenditure of James I. amounted to £100,000 sterling
yearly; double the sum required for the same purpose by Elizabeth; and
if “cock a leekie” and “haggis” were dishes to which his national taste
gave fashion, the more foreign delicacies of snails and legs of frogs,
dressed in a variety of ways, were readily eaten by the very daintiest
of feeders. The taste of the purveyors was, however, something clumsy.
What would now be said if a _chef_ sent up to table four huge pigs,
belted and harnessed with ropes of sausages, and all tied together to a
monstrous bag-pudding?

The court of James I. was uncleanly enough, but it was made worse by
the example of the Danish king and his courtiers, on the royal visit
to the Stuart. “The Danish custom of drinking healths was scrupulously
observed, and in a company of even twenty or thirty, every person’s
health was required to be drunk in rotation; sometimes a lady or an
absent patron was toasted on the knees, and, as a proof of love or
loyalty, the pledger’s blood was even mingled with the wine.” It is
well known that the ladies of the court, as well as the gentlemen, got
“beastly drunk,” in honour of the visit of the King of Denmark to his
sister, the consort of James I.

James, whose taste in gastronomy was not a very delicate one, used to
say that if ever he were called upon to provide a dinner for the devil,
his bill of fare should consist of “a pig, a poll of ling and mustard,
and a pipe of tobacco for digestion.”

There was more temperance under Charles I., and increased moderation
under the Commonwealth, when Cromwell’s table was remarkable for its
simplicity. The civic feasts of those days were also distinguished by
their decorous sobriety; and it is, perhaps, worth noticing that the
“show” followed, and did not precede the dinner.

Charles I. was served with a world of old-fashioned ceremony, not
unlike that which ought to have made Louis XIV. very uncomfortable. The
fact, however, is, that both monarchs were pleased with the cumbrous
solemnities of state, and nothing affected our English king more in his
fallen fortunes than the rude service which he received at the hands
of the Puritan servitors of whose masters he was the captive. When
he was in durance at Windsor, his meat was brought to him uncovered,
and carried without any observance of respectful form, by the common
soldiers. No trial or “say” of the meats was made; no cup presented on
the knee. This absence of ceremony wounded Charles to the very quick.
It chafed him more than greater sorrows did subsequently. It was, he
observed, the refusal to him of a service which was paid, according to
ancient custom, to many of his subjects; and rather than submit to the
humiliation, he chose to diminish the number of dishes, and to take his
meals in strict privacy.

There are few kings who had such variety of experience in matters
of the table as Charles II. The first spoonful of medicine that was
offered him he resisted with a determined aversion which never left him
for that sort of _pabulum_. His table was but simple enough during the
latter years of his father, but it was worse after the fatal day of
Worcester. He was glad then, at White Lady’s, to eat “bread and cheese,
such as we could get, it being just beginning to be day;” and “bread,
cheese, small beer, and nothing else,” sufficed him in the oak. Bread,
butter, ale and sack, he swallowed in country inns, and seemed rather
to look on the masquerade and the meals as a joke.

When he was lying hid in Spring Coppice, the goodwife Yates brought
to his most sacred majesty “a mess of milk, some butter, and
eggs,”--better fare than the parched peas which were found, in after
days, in the pocket of the fugitive Monmouth. The women provided for
him as tenderly in his hour of hunger and trial, as their ebony sisters
did for Mungo Park in his African solitude. When Charles arrived at
the house at Boscobel, he “ate bread and cheese heartily,” and (as an
extraordinary), “William Penderell’s wife made his majesty a posset
of fine milk and small beer, and got ready some warm water to wash
his feet, not only extremely dirty, but much galled with travel.” The
king, in return, called the lady “my dame Joan,” and the condescension
quickened her hospitality; for shortly after, she “provided some
chickens for his majesty’s supper, a dainty he had not lately been
acquainted with.” But the king and his followers not only longed for
more substantial fare, but were not very scrupulous as to the means of
obtaining it. Colonel Carlis, for instance, went into the sheepcot of a
farmer residing near Boscobel, and like an impudent as well as a hungry
thief “he chose one of the best sheep, sticks him with his dagger, then
sends William for the mutton, who brings him home on his back.” The
next morning was a Sunday morning, and Charles, having muttered his
prayers, went eagerly to the parlour to look after the stolen mutton.
It was hardly cold, but Will Penderell “brought a leg of it into the
parlour; his majesty called for a knife and a trencher, and cut some of
it into collops, and pricked them with the knife-point, then called for
a frying-pan and butter, and fried the collops himself, of which he ate
heartily.” Colonel Carlis, the while, being but under-cook (and that,
honour enough too), made the fire, and turned the collops in the pan.
“When the colonel,” adds the faithful Blount, who records this table
trait, “afterwards attended his majesty in France, his majesty, calling
to remembrance this passage among others, was pleased merely to propose
it, as a problematical question, whether himself or the colonel were
the master-cook at Boscobel, and the supremacy was of right adjudged to
his majesty.” Circumstances which made of the royal adventurer a king
were the spoiling of an excellent cook. When he was secretly sojourning
at Trent, his meat was, for the most part, to prevent the danger of
discovery, dressed in his own chamber; “the cookery whereof served him
for some divertisement of the time.” The king better understood cookery
as a science than the machinery of it. When he stood in the kitchen of
Mr. Tombs’s house at Longmarston, disguised as “Will Jackson,” the busy
cook-maid bade him wind up the jack. “Will Jackson” was obedient and
attempted it, but hit not the right way, which made the maid in some
passion ask, “What countryman are you, that you know not how to wind
up a jack?” Will Jackson answered very satisfactorily, “I am a poor
tenant’s son of Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire. We seldom have roast
meat, but when we have, we don’t make use of a jack;” which in some
measure assuaged the maid’s indignation. Never had the sacredness of
majesty been in such peril since the period when Alfred marred instead
of made the cakes of the neatherd’s angry wife. But Charles escaped to
his rather hungry exile in France;--and see, how sweet are the uses
of adversity! When this charming prince was restored to the throne,
he brought with him two gifts of which the nation had heard little
for some years;--one was the Church Liturgy, and the other, “God d--n
ye,”--a fashionable phrase which has tumbled from the court to the
alley.

It can hardly be said that Charles, when king, fulfilled the
requirement which Lord Chesterfield subsequently laid down, when he
insisted that a man should be gentleman-like even in his vices. When
William of Orange came to England as the suitor of the king’s niece,
the Princess Mary, Charles took an unclean delight in making the
Dutchman drunk. Evelyn says:--“One night, at a supper given by the
Duke of Buckingham, the king made him (William) drink very hard; the
heavy Dutchman was naturally averse to it, but being once entered, was
the most frolicsome of the company; and now the mind took him to break
the windows of the chambers of the maids of honour; and he had got
into their apartments had they not been timely rescued. His mistress,
I suppose,” adds Evelyn, and it is a strange comment for so sensible
a man, “did not like him the worse for such a notable indication of
his vigour.” The monarch who made his _paulo-post_ successor drunk
had little difficulty to bring the lord mayor of London into the same
condition; and the city potentate and his “cousin the king” had that
terrible “other bottle” together, in which men’s reason ordinarily
makes shipwreck, with their dignity. But his majesty, of blessed
memory, was a trifle devout after his drink, and on the “next morning”
he heard anthems in his chapel, and, by way of devotion, would lean
over his own pew and play with the curls of Lady Castlemaine, who
occupied the next seat to that of “our most religious and gracious
king.” When he was pouring the public money into the lap of that
precious lady, he was leaving his own servants unpaid; and, on one
occasion, when these could not obtain their salaries, they carried off
their royal master’s linen, and left him without a clean shirt or a
table-cloth!

The priests with whom Louis XIV. and Louis XV. used to transact their
religion were wont to excuse all the conjugal infidelities of those
anointed reprobates by remarking that they ever treated their consorts
with the very greatest politeness. The poets of Charles’s days went
further, and extolled his marital affection. Waller, for instance,
congratulates the poor queen, that if she were ill, Charles was by to
tend and weep over her:--

  “But, that which may relieve our care
  Is, that you have a help so near
  For all the evil you can prove;
  The kindness of your Royal Love.
  He that was never known to mourn
  So many kingdoms from him torn,
  His tears reserved for you; more dear,
  More prized, than all those kingdoms were!
  For when no healing art prevail’d,
  When cordials and elixirs fail’d,
  On your pale cheek he dropt the shower,
  Revived you like a dying flower.”

The illness referred to was a spotted fever; and here is Pepys’ plain
prose on the subject:--“20th October, 1663. This evening, at my lord’s
lodgings, Mrs. Sarah, talking with my wife and I, how the queen do,
and how the king tends her, being so ill. She tells us that the
queen’s sickness is the spotted fever; that she was as full of the
spots as a leopard, which is very strange that it should be no more
known; but perhaps it is not so; and that the king do seem to take it
much to heart, for that he hath wept before her; but for all that he
hath not missed one night since she was sick, of supping with my lady
Castlemaine; which I believe is true; for she says that her husband
hath dressed the suppers every night; and I confess I saw him myself
coming through the street, dressing up a great supper to-night, which
Sarah also says is for the king and her, which is a very strange
thing.” Oh, depth of royal grief, that required light suppers and light
ladies for its solace!

The _Spectator_ has preserved for us a pleasant story illustrative both
of royal and citizen good-fellowship, in the reign of Charles II., and
in the person of the king and that of his jolly lord mayor, Sir Robert
Viner. The merry monarch had been dining with the chief magistrate
and the municipality, at Guildhall, where he had not drunk so deeply
himself but he was aware that the jollity of his entertainers was
beginning to render them rather oblivious of the respect due to their
royal guest. He accordingly, with a curt farewell, slipped away down to
his coach, which was awaiting him in Guildhall-yard. But the lord mayor
forthwith pursued the runaway, and overtaking him in the yard, seized
him by the skirts of his coat, and swore roundly that he should not
go till they “had drank t’other bottle!” “The airy monarch,” says the
narrator in the _Spectator_, “looked kindly at him over his shoulder,
and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time, and do
now), repeated this line of the old song:--

  “‘And the man that is drunk is as great as a king!’

“and immediately turned back, and complied with his landlord.” This
anecdote, however, though it be given on the authority of an alleged
eye-witness, is probably over-coloured with regard to the conduct of
his worship the mayor. Mr. Peter Cunningham quotes (in his story of
Nell Gwyn) from Henry Sidney’s Diary, a letter addressed to Sidney by
his sister the Countess Dowager of Sutherland, and which refers to the
incident of the visit of Charles to Guildhall. The letter in question
was written five years after the mayoralty of Sir Robert Viner. “The
king had supped with the lord mayor, and the aldermen on the occasion
had drunk the king’s health, over and over, upon their knees, wishing
every one hanged and damned that would not serve him with their lives
and fortunes. But this was not all. As his guards were drunk, or said
to be so, they would not trust his majesty with so insecure an escort,
but attended him themselves to Whitehall, and, as the lady-writer
observes, ‘all went merry out of the king’s cellar.’ So much was this
accessibility of manner in the king acceptable to his people, that the
mayor and his brethren waited next day at Whitehall, to return thanks
to the king and duke for the honour they had done them, and the mayor,
confirmed by this reception, was changed from an ill to a well-affected
subject.”

But as this merry mourner lived, so may he almost be said to have
died. It will be remembered with what disgust Evelyn records the
scene at Whitehall, a week before the king’s decease:--“I can never
forget,” he says, “the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming
and all dissoluteness, and as it were total neglectfulness of God, it
being Sunday evening, which this day sennight I was witness of, the
king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleveland,
Mazarine, &c.; a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious
gallery; whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute
persons were at basset, round a large table, a bank of at least two
thousand pounds in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were
with me made reflections in astonishment. Six days after, all was in
the dust.”

There was more meanness, but not more decency, under James II., but his
queen more deeply resented, and that in public, at dinner, the insults
levelled at her. When Mrs. Sedly, in 1686, was created Countess of
Dorchester, the day on which the nomination passed the Great Seal, and
indeed on a subsequent occasion, the queen showed how she was touched
by the honours paid to a brazen concubine. “The queen,” says Evelyn,
“took it very grievously, so as for two dinners, standing near her, I
observed she hardly ate one morsel, nor spake one word to the king,
or to any about her; though at other times she used to be extremely
pleasant, full of discourse and good-humour.” Such is one of the table
traits of the time of James II.

There is little to be said of William III., save that he kept a
well-regulated table, and was excessively angry if he detected any
faults in the service. He is described as being kind, cordial, open,
even convivial and jocose. He would sit at table many hours, and would
bear his full share in festive conversation. Burnet, I think, somewhere
intimates, but I cannot recollect the precise words, that he was
something more than moderately given to Hollands. As much, indeed, has
been said of Queen Anne. But Anne _was_ inclined to indulge in good
living, and her doctor, Lister, had as many gastronomic propensities
as herself. Lister entered into the minutiæ of the kitchen with the
exactness of an apothecary weighing poison. On the subject of larks, he
says, for the benefit of the queen, and all who love such dainty food,
that if twelve larks do not weigh twelve ounces, they are scarcely
eatable; they are just tolerable if they reach that weight; but that if
they weigh thirteen ounces, they are fat and excellent! On such table
matters did royal physicians write, when Anne was queen.

The table of George, Prince Regent, was splendidly served. The court
language was French, as though the days of the Normans were come
again. But the son of George III., whether as prince or as king, and
despite his character of being the first gentleman in Europe, was _not_
naturally refined. He loved to have around him men like Humboldt,
who, when his guest, amused him with stories as broad as they were
long. He himself would tell similar stories, even in the presence of
his mother and sisters, and in spite of a sharp “Fie, George!” and
an indignant working of her fan on the part of Queen Charlotte. When
king, the female society which he assembled at the Pavilion was very
_décolleté_ indeed, both as regarded person and principles, and the
appearance of these brilliant looking and light dressed individuals
in the day-time gave to Brighton an aspect that put Rowland Hill into
fits. There were joyous evenings then at Virginia Water, on “tea
and marrow bones,” and there was everything there but refinement.
Refinement, indeed, was not the characteristic of any one prince
of the house. The Duke of Cumberland revelled in coarse jests, and
was delighted when they embarrassed the modesty that could not even
comprehend them. The Duke of Cambridge was perhaps the least offensive
of the family. He was the professional diner-out of the house; and in
his day very few public dinners took place without having the advantage
of his presence as president. He was, on such occasions, punctuality
itself, and could not tolerate being kept waiting. In such cases, he
sometimes wiled away the time by trying over music with the musical
gentlemen whose harmony was to relieve the toasts and tedium of the
evening, but his impatience sometimes got the better of his politeness
and of his reverence for serious things, and we shall not soon forget
the effect he produced at a “religious public dinner,” by exclaiming
aloud, “Where is the chaplain? d--n him! Why doesn’t he say grace?”
Before passing to the next reign, we may take notice of a fact that is
not generally known, but which nevertheless cannot be disputed. The
coronation banquet of George IV. was one of the most splendid upon
record. But there was a world of “leather and prunella” about it, in
spite of its reputed splendour. Thus, for instance, the king’s table
was one gorgeous display of gold plate, but the plates and dishes at
all the other tables, one only, I believe, excepted, were composed of
nothing more costly than good, honest pewter. The metal was indeed so
splendidly burnished that to the eye no silver highly polished could
have been more dazzling; but the truth remains that the peerage that
day dined off pewter. But the occasion gave value to the material,
and the dishes, in their character of relics of the glory of the last
coronation banquet in Westminster Hall, are as highly prized, and as
reverently preserved, as though they were composed of materials less
strange to Potosi than tin, antimony, and a trifle of copper.

Court life, in the reign of William IV., was but of a very sombre
aspect. The good old king used to indulge in giving toasts after
dinner, and he made long and somewhat prosy speeches. Of the latter
he was particularly fond, and he made the then young Prince George of
Cambridge his pupil, by giving the health of his father, the Duke, and
inducing the son to rise and return thanks for the honour conferred.
It was no bad discipline for one who intended to become a public man.
The young prince became a very fair speaker under the old king’s
instructions. William detested politics, and he invariably fell asleep
during the dessert. It would have violated etiquette to have awoke
him; and the queen and her ladies never thought of rising until the
royal eye-lids began again to give symptoms of returning wakefulness.
He was fond of talking, over the wine, of military details, and was
proud of two achievements connected therewith; first, that he had made
Colonel Needham shave off his cherished whiskers, according to the
new regulations; and that he had succeeded in having all the Waterloo
medals worn with the king’s head outwards. He frequently fell asleep
during these conversations; and then the guests quietly passed the
wine from one to the other, and, as they drank off their glasses, bowed
to or smiled at the sleeping sovereign the while. In the evening, there
generally was music, during which the Queen Adelaide was as generally
engaged in worsted work. The king usually honoured some one with an
invitation to sit by his side on the sofa. He then fell asleep again,
and the unlucky, honoured individual, did not dare leave his “coign of
’vantage” until the king awoke and gave the signal. William was a very
moderate joker, and he loved a joke from others. It is reported that,
when heir presumptive, he once said to a Secretary of the Admiralty
who was at the same dinner-table, “C----, when I am king, you shall
not be Admiralty Secretary! Eh, what do you say to that?” “All that I
have to say to that, in such a case, is,” said C----, “God save the
king!” I have heard it further said, that William never laughed so
loudly as when he was told of a certain _parvenu_ lady, who, dining at
Sir John Copley’s, ventured to express her surprise that there was “no
_pilfered_ water on the table.”

The dining-tables of deceased monarchs belong to history; and,
consequently, the limit of this imperfect record is to be found here.
One further illustration, however, of “household” matters may here be
not inaptly introduced. A few months ago a gentleman, who had been in
his early years the personal friend of the Duke of Kent, was desirous
of sending from Sicily a testimonial of his respect to the late Duke’s
daughter, our sovereign lady the Queen. His grateful remembrance took
the shape of some very rare and choice Sicilian wine, the proper
transmission of which was entrusted to the good offices of a friend
of the donor. This honorary agent proceeded to the proper office for
instructions, and there he was somewhat surprised at being informed
that, as soon as the duty had been paid upon the wine, the latter
would be forwarded to the “household.” At this strange intimation, the
friendly agent wrote to his principal for fresh instructions, and the
principal, who had not the slightest intention of showing his respect
for the memory of a sire by presenting wine to the “household” of that
sire’s royal daughter, at once directed the luscious tribute to be
divided among friends who had households of their own, and who could
appreciate the present. The rule, with regard to offerings like these,
was not in former times so ungraciously severe. When Mrs. Coutts used
to send her pleasant tributary haunches of venison to the Pavilion, she
was not informed that the “household” would condescend to dine upon
the venison: on the contrary, a graceful autograph note from the royal
recipient not only made cheerful acknowledgment of the gift, but also
gave hearty promise that it would be thoroughly enjoyed. There is more
independence, perhaps, in the present system, which discourages all
tributes, whatever may be their nature; but there is something very
ungracious in the method of its application.

Enough, however, of this matter, or we shall have little time to
discuss, even briefly, two other subjects, touching which I would say
something, before we are finally called to “supper.” The first of these
comes under the head of “Strange Banquets.”




STRANGE BANQUETS.


Under this title I was half inclined to include the records of the
achievements of those gastronomic heroes, whose spirit was something
like that of the boy’s who ate with two spoons, and cried because
he could not swallow faster. But, from Milo and his entire bull for
dinner, down to Dando and his peck of oysters for supper, there is a
sameness of very gross detail, and perhaps not very great truth, in
all. The rustic who was victor at an eating match, “by a pig and an
apple pie,” was on a level with the ancient kings, who were wont to
boast that they could carry more beneath their belts with impunity than
any other men. So the ardour of the two villages contemplating their
respective champions--gluttons employed for the honour of their several
birth-places--and the exultation of one party at finding its favourite
ahead “by two turkeys and a pound of sausages,” gave proof of as much
dignity of humanity as was given in _their_ case by those nations of
old who weighed their kings annually, and had a general illumination
when they found their monarchs growing fatter.

These illustrations of table manners, if indeed they deserve to be so
called, we leave to the perusal of those whose devotion is of that cast
that they would have reckoned Baal as a god, for no other reason than
the sufficient one given of old, namely, that he ate much meat. In more
modern times, we have had defunct kings who have been supposed capable
of consuming as much as Baal himself, or any of his lively followers;
for an illustration of which fact we must pass over, for a short time,
to the once kingdom of France.

The last banquet prepared by the culinary officers of Francis I. for
that royal personage, was one at which my readers would not have cared
to sit in fellowship with the king, nor was it one which that monarch
himself could be said to have perfectly enjoyed. He made, indeed, no
remark or complaint, but _that_ was for the natural reason that he was
dead when he presided at it! How this came to pass I will proceed to
relate.

On the 1st day of March, 1546, Francis I. died in the Château de
Rambouillet. The whole of the following day his body was in the hands
of the surgeon-embalmers, who vainly exercised their office to render
that sweet when dead which had by no means been so when living. During
six weeks the corpse was deposited at the neighbouring Abbey of
Haute-Bruyère. It was then transported to the house of the Archbishop
of Paris at St. Cloud, where there was a duplicate “lying in state.”
The dead king, extended on a couch of richly embroidered crimson satin,
was surrounded by a thickly-wedged mass of priests, who, night and day,
offered up prayers for the repose of his soul. In the adjacent chamber
was the “counterfeit presentment,” or effigy of the monarch, made
“after nature,” reclining on a bed of the most gorgeous description,
on and about which was displayed all that could lend additional solemn
glory to the scene. The waxen effigy, with hands joined, was decked
in a crimson silk shirt, covered by a light blue tunic powdered with
_fleurs de lis_. The royal mantle, of a deep violet, lay across the
feet; and near it were the orders, chains, and other “bravery” worn by
Francis in his lifetime. On the head was a violet velvet scull-cap,
and above that the crown. The legs were thrust into boots of cloth
of gold, with crimson satin soles,--but then they were not made for
walking in. In the room, and particularly near the bed, there was a
blaze of gold and jewellery, such as dazzled the sight only to look at
it. The upper portion of the bed was fashioned like a tent. Sentinels
guarded it from without, and priests kept watch with much prayer
within. They were of all grades, from cardinals and princes of the
Church down to bare-footed friars, who would have been more thankful
for a scarlet hat than for a pair of the newest sandals. These were the
guests at a banquet where the king was the highly honoured host.

We are told by old Pierre de Chastel, Bishop of Macon, that the
ordinary etiquette of service was rigorously maintained every day,
during eleven days, as if the king had been living and laughing in
the midst of them. The royal dinner-table was laid out at the side of
the bed; a cardinal blessed the viands; and a gentleman of various
quarterings presented to the unconscious image a full ewer, wherewith
to wash the hands which, folded as they were, seemed like those of
the father of Miss Kilmansegg, to be already washing themselves with
invisible soap in imperceptible water!

A second gentleman offered to the representative of the defunct king
a vase mantling with wine; and a third wiped his lips and fingers, as
if either could have been soiled by _not_ coming in contact with the
cates and the goblet! These functions, and others that may very well be
passed over, were performed amid a most death-like silence, and by the
fitful light of funereal torches,--the only dinner lamps in use while
the dead king was engaged in _not_ dining. And such were the clever
funeral banquets presided over by the waxen similitude of a defunct
king. And here it should be _my_ office to pass to other subjects more
immediately connected with Table Traits, but I may perhaps, be pardoned
if I add, that the royal corpse, after the copious feeding which its
effigy was mocked with, was raised with incredible pomp, and borne into
Paris with an attendant mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. It
was preceded by beggars, nobles, cavaliers, and cooks, (“officiers de
bouche,”) pages, surgeons, and valets de chambre, grooms, heralds, and
archbishops. The followers behind the car were of more uniform and
exalted rank; and when the procession reached Vaugérard, it was met by
the twenty-four town-criers of Paris, who took immediate precedence
of the five hundred beggars. The funeral service in the cathedral was
conducted with similar magnificence; but what is most singular is the
fact, that the solemn ceremony was no sooner concluded, than it was
recommenced with all gravity, for the benefit of the waxen effigy
that had been served for eleven days with an “omelette fantastique!”
and more than this, two of the sons of the deceased king, having
been previously interred, but with maimed rites, a newly organized
procession and service took place on this occasion, not only for
themselves, but for their effigies also! There was an ocean of holy
water scattered on these exaggerated dolls; the aspersion, however, was
borne with a calmness worthy of their dignity! And at these ceremonies
the English ambassador, with other Christian representatives, appeared
on horseback, each with a prelate mounted also at his side. The
union represented that which ought to exist between church and state
everywhere, but which does not even in the Duchy of Baden. When the
lengthened solemnities had come to a conclusion, the merry pages, as
hungry as they were joyous, scrambled for sweetmeats, and that was the
last of the feasting or fasting of Francis I.

All this seems barbarous and antique: it _is_ the former rather than
the latter. The custom, with some attendant exaggerations, is still
prevalent in China, where only two years ago the defunct aunt of the
sun and moon, mother to the reigning monarch, was feasted with a
solemn parade of magnificent nonsense, the details of which make those
of the banquet of the deceased Francis look extremely poor indeed. I
believe that the Chinese idea with regard to their poor dead princess
was, that she, or the immortal part in her, could not possibly
take flight upon the celestial dragon waiting to convey her to the
pagoda--paradise of Cathay--until this farewell banquet had been given
to her by those who had loved her upon earth.

It is the easiest thing in the world, and perhaps it is the most
natural, to smile superciliously at these customs, and dismiss them
with the definite remark, that they were heathenish and superstitious.
_But_ our grandmothers, or _their_ mothers rather, saw something very
like it in England. In the latter case, it was not the consequence of
a law that ruled in such matters, but a spontaneous act of a sublimely
ridiculous, or a ridiculously sublime, affection. Henrietta, Duchess
of Marlborough, we are told, demonstrated her affection for Congreve
in a manner indicative of absolute insanity. “Common fame reports,”
says Kippis, in the “Biographia Britannica,” “that she had his figure
made in wax, talked to it as if it had been alive, placed it at table
with her, took great care to help it with different sorts of food, had
an imaginary sore in its leg regularly dressed, and, to complete all,
consulted physicians with regard to its health.”

An invitation from the duchess to dinner, to meet her simulative
friend, who could hardly be said to have waxed wittier after his
metempsychosis, would not have been a lively thing. I am not sure
that I would not rather have been in the place of the Hetman of the
Zaparogue Cossacks, who was strangely treated and dieted when he was
elected to the chief command over his own wild hordes. His followers
besmeared (and the fashion is not yet obsolete) his face with mud,
placed a symbolic _baton_ in his hand, and a saucy-looking crane’s
feather in his bonnet. They then gave him a cupful of tar (a process
that would have delighted Bishop Berkeley), and after pitching
greatness into him in this manner, he was allowed a draught of mead by
way of purifying his palate. When Shakspere said, “Take physic, pomp,”
he was little aware of the custom to that effect among the Zaparogues.
It was sweetened, indeed, by the conclusive draught of mead, as
Berkeley’s dissertation on tar water was wound up by a sermon on the
Trinity; but I think I would have preferred swallowing the tar, with
nothing to qualify it but the title, rather than have sat down to the
most sumptuous of banquets, between the mad duchess and her wax lover
with an issue in his leg!

William Howitt tells of an old countrywoman whom he sought to initiate
into the simple elements of religion, and to whom he presented a
Testament. When the latter had been read through, the worthy teacher
asked her what she thought of the solemn record: “Ah, well!” was the
graceless comment, “it all happened so long ago, and so far off, that
I don’t believe a word of it!” Some such witticism may, perhaps, apply
to my stories just told, some of which have distant scenes for their
locality, and others distant periods for their times of actions. But,
in the way of barbarous banquets, examples may be cited less open to
this objection; and if the far-off Zaparogue chiefs have a cruelly
nasty inauguration into greatness, I do not know if the children in
the Scottish Highlands, to whom the wise women there administer a
mixture of whisky and earth as their first food, have not a nastier
inauguration into life. Having mentioned Scotland, I may, while on
the subject of strange banquets, show how they cooked and fed in the
days of Edward III. “Nor yet had they,” says old Joshua Barnes, “any
cauldrons or pans to dress their meat in; for what beasts they found
(as they always had good store in those northern parts), they would
seethe them in their own (the beasts’!) skins, stretched out bellying
on stakes, in the manner of cauldrons; and having thus sodden their
meat, they would take out a little plate of metal, which they used to
truss somewhere in or under their saddles, and laying it on the fire,
take forth some oatmeal (which they carried in little bags behind them
for that purpose), and having kneaded and tempered it with water,
spread that thereon. This being thus baked they used for bread, to
comfort and strengthen their stomachs a little when they eat flesh.”

Stomachs that needed no other comforting than this must have belonged
to men of irresistible arms. They devoured the bullocks, and afterwards
dressed themselves in the cauldrons. They remind us of those nomade
people of whom the poet asks,--

  “Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel
  Upon the strength of water-gruel?
  But who shall stand his rage and force,
  If first he rides, then eats his horse?”

And this metrical allusion to ancient banquets, and characteristic
prowess connected with them, recalls to my memory the singular story
touching the strangest of facts, which has been told in choice verse by
Ludwig Uhland. The German poet, in narrating it, has condemned himself
to execute a sort of double hornpipe in fetters, having set himself the
task to introduce one word, the subject of his poem, into every stanza
of his rhymed romance. “Done into English,” the legend runs thus:--


THE CASTELLAN OF COUCY, OR THE HEART.

  “How deeply young De Coucy sigh’d,
  How sad the feeling that came o’er him,
  And smote his heart, when first he saw
  The Lady of Fayal before him!

  “How suddenly his song assumed
  The strain of love’s impassion’d fire!
  How every measure clearly told
  His heart vibrated with his lyre!

  “But vain the sweetness of his song,
  In am’rous cadence softly dying!
  No hope had he to move the heart
  Of her who heeded not his sighing!

  “For even, when beyond his wont
  He fell on some inspirèd strain,
  The wedded lady’s heart scarce moved,--
  It warm’d but to be cold again.

  “Then was the Castellan resolved,
  The cross upon his cuirass’d breast,
  ’Mid toils in Palestine to seek
  The tumults of his heart to rest.

  “And there, in many a hot affray,
  Where perils threat, and dangers thicken,
  He stands till,--’spite his coat of mail,
  His noble heart with death is stricken.

  “‘Oh! hear’st thou me, my page?’ he cried,
  ‘When this fond heart has ceased its beating,
  To the fair Lady of Fayal
  Bear it, with De Coucy’s greeting.’

  “In cold and consecrated earth
  The hero’s corpse at length reposes;
  But o’er his heart, his broken heart,
  Hot so the tomb its portal closes.

  “The heart within a golden urn.
  Was laid; the page received the treasure,
  And quickly sped him o’er the main,
  To do his noble master’s pleasure.

  “Now whirlwinds tear, and waters dash,
  Now lightnings rend, and masts are falling;
  All hearts on board are struck with awe,
  One heart alone’s beyond appalling!

  “Now beams the golden sun again;
  Now France upon the bow’s appearing;
  All hearts on board with joy are cheer’d;
  One heart alone’s beyond all cheering!

  “And soon, through Fayal’s frowning wood,
  The page and heart their way are making,
  When winding sounds the lusty horn,
  With hunters’ cries the stillness breaking.

  “Then from the thicket bounds a stag,
  Through his heart an arrow flying,
  Checks his course, and strikes him dead,--
  At the page’s feet he’s lying.

  “And now the Ritter of Fayal,
  Who first the gallant stag had wounded,
  Gallops up with hunting train,
  Who soon the gentle page surrounded.

  “The golden urn had quickly fall’n
  To the Ritter’s knaves a welcome booty,
  Had not the boy stepp’d back a pace,
  And told them of his mournful duty.

  “‘Heart of a knightly Troubadour,
  Here is a warrior’s heart, I say,--
  The Castellan of Coucy’s heart;
  Let pass this heart its peaceful way!

  “‘Dying, my gallant master cried,
  When this heart has ceased its beating,
  To the fair Lady of Fayal
  Bear it, with De Coucy’s greeting.’

  “‘That dame I know full passing well!’
  Shouted the knight in deadly passion,
  As from the trembling page he tore
  The urn, in fierce uncourteous passion.

  “And with it, grasp’d beneath his cloak,
  Homeward sped the savage Ritter;
  The heart close press’d upon his breast,
  Fill’d it with thoughts of vengeance bitter.

  “Scarce at his castle-gate arrived,
  His madden’d thoughts intent on treason,
  Than straight his frighted cooks are charged
  The heart with condiments to season.

  “’Tis done! and richly strewn with flow’rs,
  And lain on golden dish withal,
  ’Tis placed before the Knight and Dame,
  When seated in their banquet-hall.

  “The Knight upon the Lady tended.
  Speaking in terms of feign’d delight--
  ‘Of all the produce of my chase,
  This heart is yours, fair dame, by right!’

  “But scarcely had the Lady tasted
  Of the dainty placed before her,
  When impulse, strong and strange, to weep,
  Irresistibly came o’er her.

  “On marking which the Ritter cried,
  With wild and savage laugh unholy,
  ‘Do pigeons’ hearts, my faithful Dame,
  Give tendency to melancholy?

  “‘Then how much more, O Lady mine,
  Must fare like this such passion raise--
  The Castellan of Coucy’s heart,
  Whose lyre was wont to sound thy praise?’

  “And when the Knight, with stern reproof,
  Had ceased thus sneering to upbraid, he
  Stood; while hand on heart too, thus
  With solemn action spoke the Lady:--

  “‘Thou’st done me foulest wrong to-day!
  Ne’er false was I, not e’en in thought,
  Till this poor heart I touch’d but now,
  Within my own mutation wrought.

  “‘The youthful Poet’s passion, told
  With sadden’d heart and anxious brow,
  I scorn’d while yet the Poet lived,
  But dead! I yield me to it now.

  “‘To death devoted, this weak frame,
  To which De Coucy’s heart hath lent
  A brief support, shall never more
  Partake of earthly nourishment.

  “‘May Heav’n its mercy show to all;
  Yes, e’en to thee may Heav’n show it!’

         *       *       *       *       *

  “Such is the story of a heart
  That once inspired a youthful Poet.”

The above story of the Castellan de Coucy is considered to be
one of Uhland’s most remarkable poems, as much from its general
sweetness, unhappily lost in translation, as from the wit with which
he continually keeps before the reader the one word which forms the
principal feature in the little romance. The tale is, however, by no
means new. There are few nations whose story-tellers do not celebrate
a lady who was forced by a jealous husband to eat the heart of her
lover. It is common to England, Ireland, and Scotland. In France, the
story exists nearly as Uhland has told it. In Germany, it is to be
met with in various forms. In one of these, the lady is shown to have
been more kind and less faithful than the Ritter’s wife of Fayal. But
above all it is, as the mad prince says, “extant, and written in very
choice Italian,” by the at once seductive and repulsive Boccaccio. It
is one of the least filthy of a set of stories, told with a beauty of
style, a choice of language, a lightness and a grace, which make you
forget the matter and risk your morals, for the sake of improving your
Italian. In Boccaccio’s narrative, the lady is of course very guilty;
and the husband also, of course, murders the lover in as brutal and
unknightly a fashion as can well be imagined. Nothing else could be
expected from that unequalled story-teller, (unequalled as much for the
charm of his manner, as for the general uncleanness of his details,)
who but seldom has a good word to say for woman, or an honest testimony
to give of man. Human nature presented nothing beautiful or estimable
to him; and yet it is undeniable that he had an acute perception of
beauty and honour. The characters he describes are scurvy, vicious,
heartless, debauched wretches; but he dresses them up in such dashing
bravery of attire, and endows them with such divinity of beauty, and he
writes of their whereabout with such witchery of pen, that his poor,
weak, ensnared readers have nothing for it but to go on in alternate
extremes of admiring and condemning. To revert to the German prose
story of the Heart, I may say that it is merely a bad translation from
the “Decameron,” telling in a very matter-of-fact way the history of a
Lady von Roussillon, “welches ihres geliebte Herz zu essen erhält, und
sich den Tod gibt.”

This strange banquet is not to be set down as positively apocryphal,
merely because it has fallen into the possession of the rhymers and
romancers. The old German barons were rather inclined to a barbarous
species of kitchen--something crude and cannibal of character--if we
may so far credit the extravagances of legend as to believe that they
are founded on fact. But we need not go to Germany and fairy periods
for illustrations of extraordinary banquets, or individual dieting.

Among eccentric gastronomists, I do not recollect one more remarkable
than Mrs. Jeffreys, the sister of Wilkes. At Bath, she slept throughout
the year beneath an open window, and the snow sometimes lent her bed an
additional counterpane. She never allowed a fire to be kindled in this
room, the chief adornment of which was a dozen clocks, no two of which
struck the hour at the same moment. She breakfasted frugally enough
on chocolate and dry toast, but proceeded daily in a sedan-chair,
with a bottle of Madeira at her side, to a boarding-house to dine.
She invariably sat between two gentlemen, “men having more sinew in
mind and body than women,” and with these she shared her “London
Particular.” Warner, in his “Literary Recollections,” says that some
mighty joint that was especially well-covered with fat, was always
prepared for her. She was served with slices of this fat, which she
swallowed alternately with pieces of chalk, procured for her especial
enjoyment. Neutralizing the _subacid_ of the fat with the alkaline
principle of the chalk, she “amalgamated, diluted, and assimilated the
delicious compound with half-a-dozen glasses of her delicious wine.”
The diet agreed well with the old lady, and she maintained that such a
test authorized use.

We may contrast with the lady who loved lumps of chalk, the people of
a less civilized time and place, who had a weakness for a species of
animal food, which is not to be found written down in the _menus_ of
modern dinners. Keating, in his “Narrative of an Expedition to the
Source of St Peter’s River,” gives some curious details, which may
be not inappropriately touched upon here, referring as they do to a
nation of dog-eaters. The custom at first sight strikes us as rather
revolting; but the animal in question, to say nothing of our stealthy
friend the cat, is eaten every day in “ragoûts,” that smoke on the
boards of the cheap _gargottes_ of Paris and the _banlieux_. After
all, custom and prejudice have much to do with the subject. “What
do you do with your dead?” once asked a member of a distant Asiatic
tribe of a Roman. “We bury them,” answered the latter. “Gracious
heaven!” exclaimed the “untutored Indian,” with disgust, “what filthy
and fiendish impiety!” “Why so?” inquired the other. “What do you and
your people with _your_ dead?” “We treat them,” replied the Indian
proudly, “with the decent forms that best become the dead; we _eat_
them!” To this day the nobles of Thibet are honoured after death with
a very valuable and enviable privilege. They are reverentially offered
to a body of hounds, maintained for the especial purpose of devouring
the defunct aristocracy. What remains at the end of the process is
cared for, like the ashes which were taken of old from beneath the
pile on which a loved corpse had lain. This exclusive honour is never
vouchsafed to the commonalty; it is the particular vested right of
greatness; and had Hamlet known of it when he traced great Cæsar’s clay
stopping a bung-hole, it would have afforded him another illustration
of the base uses to which mortality may return. Let _us_ return to the
dog-eaters. Mr. Keating shall tell what he saw among them, in his own
words: _Sua narret Ulysses_.

“As soon as we had taken our seats, the chief (Wanotau) passed his
pipe round; and while we were engaged in smoking, two of the Indians
arose, and uncovered the large kettles which were standing over the
fire. They emptied their contents into a dozen of wooden dishes which
were placed all round the lodge. These consisted of buffalo meat
boiled with _tepsin_; also the same vegetable boiled without the meat,
in buffalo grease; and, finally, the much-esteemed dog-meat--all
which were dressed without salt. In compliance with the established
usage of travellers to taste of everything, we all partook of the
latter, with a mixed feeling of curiosity and reluctance. Could we
have divested ourselves entirely of the prejudices of education, we
should, doubtless, unhesitatingly have acknowledged this to be one of
the best dishes that we had ever tasted. It was remarkably fat,--was
sweet and palatable. It had none of that dry, stringy character which
we had expected to find in it; and it was entirely destitute of the
strong taste which we had apprehended it must possess. It was not an
unusual appetite, or the want of meat to compare with it, which led
us to form this favourable opinion of the dog; for we had on our dish
the best meat which our prairies afford. But so strongly rooted are
the prejudices of education, that though we all unaffectedly admitted
the excellence of this food, yet few of us could be induced to eat
much of it. We were warned by our trading friends, that the bones
of this animal are treated with great respect by the doctors. We
therefore took great care to replace them in the dishes; and we are
informed that after such a feast is concluded, the bones are carefully
collected, the flesh scraped off them, and that after being washed,
they are burned on the ground; partly, as it is said, to testify to
the dog-species that in feasting on one of their number, no disrespect
was meant to the species itself; and partly also from a belief that
the bones of the animal will arise and reproduce another. The meat of
this animal, as we saw it, was thought to resemble that of the finest
Welsh mutton, except that it was of a much darker colour. Having so far
overcome our repugnance as to taste it, we no longer wonder that the
dog should be considered a dainty dish by those in whom education has
not created a prejudice against this flesh. In China it is said that
fatted pups are frequently sold in the market-place; and it appears
that an invitation to a feast of dog meat is the greatest distinction
that can be offered to a stranger by any of the Indian nations east
of the Rocky Mountains. That this is not the case among some of the
nations on the east of those mountains, appears from the fact that
Lewis and Clarke were called in derision by the Indians of Columbia,
‘dog-eaters.’”

It may be readily believed that the food above spoken of must be more
acceptable to the human appetite than the snails which are fattened
for the public markets in the meadows about Ulm. Two Edinburgh doctors
did indeed pronounce the prejudice against snails to be absurd, and
they showed the strength of their own convictions by sitting down to
a charmingly prepared little dish. The courage of each failed him at
the first taste, but neither liked to confess as much to the other.
They went on playing with their repast, until one ventured to say in a
remarkably faint voice, “Don’t you think, doctor, they are a _leetle_
green?” “D--d green, Sir! d--d green!” was the hearty confirmatory
rejoinder; “they are d--d green! take them away!”

But the Australians do not always exhibit this extreme nicety. If they
cannot, or once could not, eat biscuits, they have no such delicate
scruples about eating babies, even when those babies are their own. The
cannibalism of the Australians appears to be not so obsolete as those
who wish well to humanity would fain desire. This is settled by the
testimony of Mr. Westgarth, a member of the local parliament, and the
latest writer who has touched upon the subject. In his “Victoria, late
Australia Felix,” he says:--“In their natural state, the aborigines
stand out with a species of rude dignity. The precision and acuteness
of their observant faculties are not to be surpassed; and they exhibit
a surprising tact in their various modes of discovering and securing
food. The narrow compass of their minds is concentrated in a few
lines of vocation, in which, as in the exhibitions of a Blind Asylum,
there are displayed an extraordinary accuracy and skill. But to these
barbaric excellences, must be added the most degrading, superstitious,
and revolting customs. Civilized nations are still unwilling to believe
that infanticide and cannibalism are associated with the customs of
any race of human beings, or voluntarily practised, except in those
rare cases of necessity which have broken down the barriers of nature
alike to the white and the black; but nothing is better affirmed than
that cannibalism is a constant habit with this degraded race, who
alternately revel in the kidney fat of their slain or captured enemies,
and in the entire bodies of their own friends and relatives. Nor can
the infant claim any security from the mother who bore it, against
some ruthless law, or practice, or superstition, that on frequent
occasions consigns the female proportion, and sometimes both sexes, to
destruction. On authentic testimony, bodies have been greedily devoured
even in a state of obvious and loathsome disease; and a mother has
been observed deliberately destroying her youngest child, serving it
up as food, and gathering around her the remainder of the family to
enjoy the unnatural banquet.” It is certainly pleasant to turn from
such a spectacle as this to contemplate the wives of the King of Delhi,
who pass their time in spoiling, but not killing, their children, and
whose chief amusement, after matters of dress, consists in sitting and
cracking nutmegs in presence of the Great Mogul!

But there are worse things than these which necessity can render
acceptable to the palate. In Australia especially does nature appear
to indulge in strange freaks. Many of our salt-water fish there live
in fresh-water rivers; and, indeed, more than one inland river is
brackish if not salt. Yet of salt itself the natives had never tasted,
until the arrival among them of Europeans; they do not take kindly
to the condiment even to this day. They prefer their own unadorned
cookery; and they would especially have admired the late Dr. Howard,
who published quarterly his denunciations against the use of salt. In
Australia, the pears are made of wood, and the stones of the cherries
grow on the outside, and not within. The aborigines are satisfied with
very unsavoury diet. They have one fashion, however, in common with the
self-appointed leaders of civilization, the French; they eat frogs. In
France it is the pastime of the _bourgeois_, on a summer evening, to
resort to some pool with a rod and line, and a piece of red rag or bit
of soap for bait, and there catch the little people who could not agree
about their king by the dozen. In Australia the native ladies, in their
usual scantiness of costume, proceed to the swamps; and there, plunging
their long arms up to the shoulders into the mud, they draw up the
astonished frogs by handfuls. When caught they are cooked over a slow
fire of wood-ashes; the hinder parts only are eaten, as in France; and
there are worse dishes than the _fricasée_ of the edible frog. Indeed,
if the Australians devoured nothing more objectionable, their system of
diet would almost defy reproof. But, alas! I find upon their bills of
fare--grubs, raw and roasted, snakes, lizards, rats, mice, and weazels.
The mussel is deeply declined by some of the tribes, in consequence
of an opinion prevailing that the fish in question is the especial
property of sorcerers, whose amiable propensity it is to destroy
mankind by means of mussels. If all the world held the same opinion, I
have no doubt of great profit therefrom resulting.

One of our earlier captains who visited Australia observing a native
devouring some indescribable sort of food, offered him, in exchange
for a portion of it, a sound sea-biscuit. The exchange was effected,
and then it became a point of courtesy and honour that each should eat
what he had acquired by the barter. The trial was a severe one for both
parties. The Englishman swallowed slowly, and with a sickening sense
of disgust that cannot be told, the odious food of the aboriginal;
while the native, nibbling at the biscuit, appeared to grow more
horror-stricken at each bit which he tried to swallow. The tears came
into his eyes, he grew sick, faint, enraged; and at length, dashing the
biscuit on the ground, he as violently seated himself upon it with a
bounce that ought to have driven it to the very centre of the earth.
The Englishman, in the meantime, had flung away the remnant of _his_
“_pièce de résistance_,” and they remained gazing at each other, with
the inward conviction that, as regarded food, each had tasted that day
that which deserved to be designated as surprisingly beastly.

Keating’s Indians are not the only men of North America who have a
delicate fancy for the dog: the Dacotas are also that way given. Their
celebrated “dog-dance” is indeed a festival but of rare occurrence,
but it is held to show that that highly respectable people would eat
the hearts of their enemies with as little reluctance as the heart
of a dog. And this is the manner of the feast of “braves;” they cook
the heart and liver of a dog, cool them in water, and then hang the
dainties on a high pole, around which they assemble as grave and
silent as quakers. The spirit is literally supposed to move them, and
when one is thus influenced, he begins to bark, and jumps towards the
pole. Another follows his example. The jumping backwards and forwards,
and the chorus of barking become gradually universal, and the solemn
concert is then at its height. Every one does his best, according as
nature has gifted him. The children snap like French poodles; the girls
yelp like pugs; some snarl, others growl; the women “give tongue” as
musically as the Bramham Park hounds; and the fathers of the tribe run
through a scale of sounds that would highly astonish Lablache.

And thus, in the midst of it all, one becomes bolder than the rest,
looks about him grinningly defiant, and making a run and a leap at the
canine dainties suspended from the pole, he generally touches ground
again with a piece thereof in his teeth! This good example is also
followed universally, until the tempting prize is all consumed, and
then there is “a general dance of characters,” and the drama is done.
The Dacotas have an esteem for diminutive dogs; and, lest my readers
should deem the tribe to be wholly unacquainted with civilization and
its secrets, I will just mention that these Indians not only drink
whisky with as much profusion as it is drunken in godly Glasgow, but
they occasionally administer a little of it to their dogs, in order to
stunt their growth. Such prayers too as they have, are also marked by a
modern and civilized character; for example, they say, “Great Spirit!
Father! help us to kill our enemies, and give us plenty of corn!” This
is the very spirit of much of the prayer put up by the dwellers in the
regions of enlightenment. And the spirit, with its proper motives, is
not one to be blamed. These barbarous Indians do not, at all events,
insult their Great Spirit, by asking him to give peace in their time,
_because_ none other fighteth for them but him. This would sound to
their ear as though they needed peace, for the reason that their
defence in war was not to be relied upon; and, if it had slipped into
their formulary, they would at least amend it without delay.

But this is getting critical, and so to become reminds us of authors.
Now to treat of _them_, in reference to the table, is generally
speaking to fall upon the discussion of their “calamities,” and the
Encyclopædia of famished writers would be a very heavy work indeed.
We have yet time, however, before the chapter of “Supper” opens, to
take a cursory glance at a few of the brotherhood of the brain and
quill. It can be but of a few, and of _that_ few but briefly. “_Tanto
meglio!_” says the reader, and I will not dispute the propriety of the
exclamation.




AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS.


It is all very well for Mr. Leigh Hunt to write a poem on the “Feast
of the Poets,” and to show us how Apollo stood “pitching his darts,”
by way of invitation to the ethereal banquet. This is all very well in
graceful poetry, but the account is no more to be received, than the
new gospel according to _ditto_ is likely to be by the Lord Primate
and orthodox Christians. It is far more difficult to tell the matter
in plain prose; for, where there are few dinners, many authors cannot
well dine. It is easier to tell how they fasted than how they fed; how
they died, choked at last by the newly-baked roll that came too late to
be swallowed, than how they lived daily,--for the daily life of some
would be as impossible of discovery, as the door of the “Cathedral
of Immensities,” wherein Mr. Carlyle transacts worship. The soul of
the poet, says an Eastern proverb, passes into the grasshopper, which
sings till it dies of starvation. An apt illustration, but our English
grasshoppers must not be used for the illustrative purpose, seeing that
they are far too wise to do anything of the sort. A British grasshopper
no more sings till he dies, than a British swan dies singing: these
foolish habits are left to foreigners and poetry. Let us turn to the
more reliable register of our ever-juvenile friend, Mr. Sylvanus Urban.

More than a century ago, Mr. Urban, who is the only original “oldest
inhabitant,” gave a “Literary Bill of Mortality for 1752,” showing
the casualties among books as well as among authors. Touching the
respective fates of the former, we find the productions of the year
set down as, “Abortive, 7000; still-born, 3000; old age, 0.” Sudden
deaths fell upon 320. Three or four thousand perished by trunk-makers,
sky-rockets, pastrycooks, or worms; while more than half that number
were privily disposed of. If such were the fortunes of the works, how
desperate must have been the diet of the authors! So also was their
destiny. As a class, they are fixed, in round numbers, at 3000; and a
third of these are registered as dying of lunacy. Some 1200 are entered
as “starved.” Seventeen were disposed of by “the hangman,” and fifteen
by hardly more respectable persons, namely _themselves_! Mad dogs,
vipers, and mortification, swept off a goodly number. Five pastoral
poets, who could not live by the oaten pipe, appropriately died of
“fistula.” And, as a contrast to the multitude “starved,” we find a
_zero_ indicating the ascertained quantity of authors who had perished
by the aldermanic malady of “surfeit.”

There is, perhaps, more approximation to truth than appears at first
sight in this _jeu d’esprit_. It was only in Pagan days that authors
could boast of obesity. They dined with the _tyranni_, as Persian poets
get their mouths stuffed with sugar-candy by the Shah Inshah. And yet
Pliny speaks of poets feeding sparingly, _ut solent poetœ_. Perhaps
this was only an exception, like that of Moore, who smilingly sat
down to a broil at home when not dining with “right honourables;” or
contentedly thanked Heaven for “salt fish and biscuits” with his mother
and sister in Abbey Street, the day after he had supped with the ducal
viceroy of Ireland, and half the peerage of the three kingdoms.

Still, in the old times, authors took more liberty with their hosts.
In Rome they kept more to the proprieties; for a nod of the head of
the imperial entertainer was sufficient to make their own fly from
their shoulders. In presence of the Roman emperor of old, an author
could only have declared that the famous invasion of Britain, which
was productive of ship-loads of spoil, in the shape of sea-shells,
was a god-like feat. So, at the table of the czar, all the lyres of
Muscovy sing the ode of eternal sameness, to the effect that the
dastardly butchery at Sinope was an act that made the angels of God
jubilant! The Russian lyres dare not sing to any other tune. It was
not so of yore. Witness what is told us of Philoxenus, the ode writer,
whose odes, however, are less known than his acts. He was the author
of the wish that he had a crane’s neck, in order to have prolonged
enjoyment in swallowing. This is a poor wish compared with that of
Quin, elsewhere recorded, that he might have a swallow as long as from
here to Botany Bay in palate all the way! He was a greedy fellow,
this same Philoxenus. He accustomed himself to hold his hands in the
hottest water, and to gargle his throat with it scalding; and, by this
noble training, he achieved the noble end of being able to swallow the
hottest things at table, before the other guests could venture on them.
He would have conquered the most accomplished of our country bumpkins
in consuming hasty-pudding at a fair. His mouth was as though it was
paved, and his fellow-guests used to say of him, that he was an oven
and not a man. He once travelled many miles to buy fish at Ephesus;
but, when he reached the market-place, he found it all bespoke for a
wedding banquet. He was by no means embarrassed; he went uninvited to
the feast, kissed the bride, sang an epithalamium that made the guests
roar with ecstasy, and afforded such delight by his humour, that the
bridegroom invited him to breakfast with him on the morrow. His wit
had made amends for his devouring all the best dishes. It is a long way
from Philoxenus to Dr. Chalmers forgetting his repast in the outpouring
of his wisdom, and entering in his journal the expression of his fear
that he had been intolerant in argument. What a contrast, too, between
Philoxenus and Byron, who, when dining with a half-score of wits at
Rogers’s, only opened his mouth to ask for biscuits and soda-water, and
not finding any such articles in the bill of fare, silently dining on
vegetables and vinegar! The noble poet’s fare in Athens was often of
the same modest character; but we know what excesses he could commit
when his wayward appetite that way prompted, or when he wished to lash
his Pegasus into fury, as, after reading the famous attack on his
poetry in the Edinburgh Review, when he swallowed three bottles of
claret, and then addressed himself to the tomahawking of his reviewers
and rivals.

Philoxenus, however, had his counterpart in those abbés and poets who
used, in the hearing of Louis XV., to praise Madame de Pompadour. He
was writing a poem called “Galatea,” in honour of the mistress of
Dionysius of Sicily, when he was once dining with that tyrant. There
were a couple of barbels on the royal board, a small one near the
poet, and a larger near the prince. As the latter saw Philoxenus put
his diminutive barbel to his ear, he asked him wherefore, and the poet
replied that he was asking news of Nereus, but that he thought the
fish he held had been caught too young to give him any. “I think,”
said Philoxenus, “that the old fish near your sacredness would better
suit my purpose.” This joke has descended to Joe Miller, in whose
collection it is to be found in a modified form. But the story is
altogether less neat than the one told of Dominic, the famous Italian
harlequin and farce writer. He was standing in presence of Louis
XIV. at dinner, when the Grand Monarque observed that his eyes were
fixed on a dish of partridges. “Take that dish to Dominic,” said the
king. “What!” exclaimed the _farceur_, “partridges and all!” “Well,”
said the monarch, smiling with gravity, “yes, partridges and all!”
This reminds me of another anecdote, the hero of which is the Abbé
Morallet, whom Miss Edgeworth in her “Ormond” praises so highly, and
praises so justly. But Morallet, if he loved good deeds, loved not
less good dinners, and he shone in both. His talents as a writer,
and his virtues as a man, to say nothing of his appetite, made him
especially welcome at the hospitable table of Monsieur Ansu. The abbé
had learned to carve expressly that he might appropriate to himself
his favourite portions,--a singular instance of selfishness in a man
who was selfish in nothing else. It was on one of these occasions that
a magnificent pheasant excited the admiration of the guests, and of
the abbé in particular, who nevertheless sighed to think that it had
not been placed close to him. Some dexterity was required so to carve,
it, that each of the guests might partake of the oriental bird; and
the mistress of the house, remembering the abbé’s skill as a carver,
directed an attendant to pass the pheasant to M. l’Abbé de Morallet.
“What!” exclaimed the latter, “the whole of it? how very kind!” “The
whole of it?” repeated the lady; “I have no objection, if these ladies
and gentlemen are willing to surrender their rights to you.” The entire
company gave consent, by reiterating the words, “the whole of it!” and
the man, who might have gained the Montholon prize for virtue, really
achieved a prize of gluttony which hardly confers honour on a hungry
clown at a fair.

La Fontaine at table was seen in a better light than the Abbé Morallet.
A fermier-general once invited him to a dinner of ceremony, in the
persuasion that an author who excited such general admiration would
create endless delight for the select company, to entertain whom he
had been invited. La Fontaine knew it well, during the whole repast
ate in silence, and immediately rose, to the consternation of the
convives, to take his departure. He was going, he said, to the Academy.
The master of the house represented to him that it was by far too
early, and that he would find none of the members assembled. “I know
that,” said the fabulist, with his quiet smile and courteous bow; “I
know that, but I will go a long way round.” If this seemed a trifle
uncourteous--and it was so more in seeming than reality--it was not
so much so as in the case of Byron, who used to invite a company to
dinner, and then leave them to themselves to enjoy their repast. Noble
hosts of the past century used to do something like this when they gave
masquerades. Fashion compelled them to adopt a species of amusement
which they detested; but they vindicated personal liberty nevertheless,
for when their rooms were at their fullest, the noble host, quietly
leaving his guest to the care of his wife, would slip away to some
neighbouring coffee-house, and over a cool pint of claret enjoy the
calm which was not to be had at home. The late Duke of Norfolk used
habitually to dine at one of the houses in Covent Garden, out of pure
liking to it. He was accustomed to order dinner for five, and to duly
eat what he had deliberately ordered; but, as he one day detected a
waiter watching him in his gastronomic process, he angrily ordered his
bill, and never entered the house again.

It was a common practice with Haydn, like his Grace of Norfolk, to
order a dinner for five or six, and then eat the whole himself. He
once ordered such a dinner to be ready by a stated hour, at which time
he alone appeared, and ordered the repast to be served. “But where is
the company?” respectfully inquired the head waiter. “Oh!” exclaimed
Haydn, “_I_ am de gompany!” But if he ate all, he also paid for all.
Moore and Bowles, in their visits together to Bath, used sometimes to
dine at the White Hart, where, as Moore records, he paid his share of
the dinner and pint of Madeira, and then Bowles magnificently “stood” a
bottle of claret, at dessert. And a pleasant dinner the two opposite,
yet able, poets, made of it;--far more pleasant than Coleridge’s dinner
with a party at Reynolds’s, when he bowled down the glasses like
nine-pins, because they were too small to drink from copiously!

The name of Coleridge reminds me of Dufresny, an author of the time
of Louis XIV., who was full of sentiment and majestic sounds, but
who was content to live at the cost of other people, and who never
achieved anything like an independence for himself. After the death
of his royal patron, he was one day dining with the Regent Duke of
Orleans, who expressed a wish to provide for him. Caprice inspired
the author to say, “Your royal highness had better leave me poor, as
I am, as a monument of the condition of France before the regency.”
He was not displeased at having his petition refused. A guest at his
side did indeed remark, by way of encouragement, that “poverty was no
vice.” “No,” answered Dufresny, sharply, “but it is something very
much worse.” In act and spirit he was not unlike a prince of wits and
punsters among ourselves, who used to set up bottles of champagne on
his little lawn and bowl them down for nine-pins; and who, of course,
left his wife and children pensioners on the charity of the state and
the people.

I have spoken of La Fontaine; he was as absent at table as poor Lord
Dudley and Ward, whose first aberrations so alarmed Queen Adelaide.
La Fontaine was also like Dean Ogle, who, at a friend’s table, always
thought himself at his own, and if the dinner were indifferent, he
would make an apology to the guests, and promise them better treatment
next time. So La Fontaine was one day at the table of Despreaux; the
conversation turned upon St. Augustin, and after much serious discourse
upon that Christian teacher, La Fontaine, who had till then been
perfectly silent, turned to his neighbour, the Abbé Boileau, one of
the most pious men of his day, and asked him “if he thought that St.
Augustin had as much wit as Rabelais?” The priest blushed scarlet, and
then contented himself with remarking, “M. de la Fontaine, you have got
on one of your stockings the wrong side out;”--which was the fact.

The poet’s query to the priest was no doubt as startling as that put
by the son of a renowned reverend joker to the then Lord Primate. The
anxious parent had informed his somewhat “fast” offspring, that as the
archbishop was to dine with him that day, it would be desirable that
the young gentleman should eschew sporting subjects, and if he spoke at
all, speak only on serious subjects. Accordingly, at dessert, during a
moment of silence, the obedient child, looking gravely at his grace,
asked him “if he could tell him what sort of condition Nebuchadnezzar
was in, when he was taken up from grass?” The Lord Primate readily
replied that he should be able to answer the question by the time he
who had made it had found out the name of the man whom Samson ordered
to tie the torches to the foxes’ tails, before they were sent in to
destroy the corn of the Philistines!

Moore loved to dine with the great; but there have been many authors
who could not appreciate the supposed advantages of such distinction.
Lainez was one of these, and there were but few of his countrymen who
resembled him. One day the Duke of Orleans met him in the park at
Fontainebleau, and did him the honour of inviting him to dinner. “It
is really quite impossible,” said Lainez; “I am engaged to dine at a
tavern with half-a-dozen jolly companions; and what opinion would your
royal highness have of me if I were to break my word?” Lainez was not
like Madame de Sevigné, who, after having been asked to dance by Louis
XIV., declared in her delight that he was the greatest monarch in the
world. Bussi, who laughed at her absurd enthusiasm, affirms that the
fair authoress of the famous “Letters” was so excited at the supper
after the dance, that it was with difficulty she could refrain from
shrieking out “Vive le Roi!”

Had the famous “petit père André” kept down his impulses as
successfully as Madame de Sevigné did at the supper, where, after
all, she did _not_ exclaim, “Vive le Roi,” it would have been more to
his credit, and less to our amusement. The good father, like a better
man, H. Vincent de Paul, was excessively fond of cards, but he did not
cheat, like the saint, for the sake of winning for the poor. He had
been playing at _piquet_, and in one game had won a considerable sum by
the lucky intervention of a fourth king. He was in such ecstasy at his
luck, that he declared at supper he would introduce his lucky fourth
king into his next day’s sermon. Bets were laid in consequence of this
declaration, and the whole company were present when the discourse was
preached. The promise made at the supper was kept in the sermon, though
something profanely: “My brethren,” said the abbé, “there arrived one
king, two kings, three kings; but what were they?--and where should I
have been without the fourth king, who saved _me_, and has benefited
you? That fourth king was He who lay in the manger, and whom the three
royal magi came but to worship!” At the dinner which followed the
author of the sermon was more eulogised than if he had been as grand as
Bourdaloue, as touching as Massillon, or as winning as Fénelon.

There was more wit in a curé of Basse Bretagne, who was the author
of his diocesan’s pastorals, and who happened to hold invitations
to dinners for the consecutive days of the week. He could not take
advantage of them and perform his duty too, but he hit on a method of
accomplishing his desire. He gave out at church, an intimation to this
effect:--“In order to avoid confusion, my brethren, I have to announce
that to-morrow, Monday, I will receive at confession, the liars only;
on Tuesday, the misers; on Wednesday, the slanderers; on Thursday,
the thieves; Friday, the libertines; and Saturday, the women of evil
life.” It need not be said that the priest was left during _that_ week
to enjoy himself without let or hindrance. And it was at such joyous
dinners as he was in the habit of attending that most of the sermons,
with startling passages in them, like those of Father André, were
devised. Thus, the Cordelier Maillard, the author of various pious
works, at a dinner of counsellors, announced his intention of preaching
against the counsellors’ ladies,--that is, against their wives, or
such of them that wore embroidery. And well he kept his word, as the
following choice flowers from the bouquet of his pulpit oratory will
show. “You say,” he exclaimed to the ladies in question, “that you are
clad according to your conditions; all the devils in hell fly away with
your conditions, and you too, my ladies! You will say to me, perhaps,
Our husbands do not give us this gorgeous apparel, we earn it by the
labours of our bodies. Thirty thousand devils fly away with the labours
of your bodies, and you too, my ladies!” And, after diatribes like
these against the ladies in question, the Cordelier would dine with
their lords, and dine sumptuously too. The dinners of the counsellors
of those days were not like the Spanish dinner to which an author
was invited, and which consisted of capon and wine, two excellent
ingredients, but unfortunately, as at the banquet celebrated by Swift,
where there was nothing warm but the ice, and nothing sweet but the
vinegar, so here the capon was cold and the wine was hot. Whereupon,
the literary guest dips the leg of the capon into the flask of wine,
and being asked by his host wherefore he did so, replied, “I am
warming the capon in the wine, and cooling the wine with the capon.”

The host was not such a judge of wine, apparently, as the archbishops
of Salzbourg, who used not indeed to write books, nor indeed read
them, but who used to entertain those who did, and then preach against
literary vanity from those double-balcony pulpits which some of my
readers may recollect in the cathedral of the town where Paracelsus was
wont to discourse like Solan, and to drink like Silenus; and before
whose tomb I have seen votaries, imploring his aid against maladies,
or thanking him for having averted them! It is said of one of these
prince primates that when, on the occasion of his death, the municipal
officers went to place the seals on his property, they found the
library sealed up exactly as it had been done many years before at the
time of the decease of his predecessor. Such, however, was not the case
with the wine-cellars. What the archiepiscopal wine is at Salzbourg, I
do not know, but if it be half as good as that drank by the monks of
Mölk, on the Danube, why the archbishops may stand excused. Besides,
they only drank it during their leisure hours,--of which, as Hayne
remarks, archbishops have generally four-and-twenty daily.

But to return nearer home, and to our own authors:--Dr. Arne may be
reckoned among these, and it is of him, I think, that a pleasant story
is told, showing how he wittily procured a dinner in an emergency,
which certainly did not promise to achieve such a consummation. The
doctor was with a party of composers and musicians in a provincial
town, where a musical festival was being celebrated, and at which they
were prominent performers. They proceeded to an inn to dine; they were
accommodated with a room, but were told that every eatable thing in
the house was already engaged. All despaired in their hunger, save
the “Mus. Doc.” who, cutting off two or three ends of catgut, went
out upon the stairs, and observing a waiter carrying a joint to a
company in an adjacent room, contrived to drop the bits of catgut on
the meat, while he addressed two or three questions to the waiter. He
then returned to his companions, to whom he intimated that dinner would
soon be ready. They smiled grimly at what they thought was a sorry
joke, and soon after, some confusion being heard in the room to which
the joint which he had ornamented had been conveyed, he reiterated the
assurance that dinner was coming, and thereupon he left the room. On
the stairs he encountered the waiter bearing away the joint, with a
look of disgust in his face. “Whither so fast, friend, with that haunch
of mutton?” was his query. “I am taking it back to the kitchen, Sir;
the gentlemen cannot touch it. Only look, Sir,” said William, with his
nose in the direction of the bits of catgut; “its enough to turn one’s
stomach!” “William,” said Arne gravely, “fiddlers have very strong
stomachs; bring the mutton to our room.” The thing was done, the haunch
was eaten, the hungry guests were delighted, but William had ever
afterwards a contempt for musical people; he classed them with those
barbarians whom he had heard the company speak of where he waited, who
not only ate grubs, but declared that they liked them.

Martial was often as hardly put to it to secure a dinner as any of the
authors I have hitherto named. He was fond of a _good_ dinner, _ut
solent poetæ_; and he knew nothing better than a hare, followed by a
dish of thrushes. The thrush appears to have been a favourite bird in
the estimation of the poets. The latter, may have loved to hear them
sing, but they loved them better in a pie. Homer wrote a poem on the
thrush; and Horace has said, in a line, as much in its favour as the
Chian could have said in his long and lost poem,--“nil melius turdo.”
Martial was, at all events, a better fed and better weighted man than
the poet Philetas of Cos, who was so thin that he walked abroad with
leaden balls to his feet, in order that he might not be carried away
by the wind. The poet Archestratus, when he was captured by the enemy,
was put in a pair of scales, and was found of the weight of an obolus.
Perhaps this was the value of his poetry! It was the value of nearly
all that was written by a gastronomic authoress in France; I allude
to Madame de Genlis, who boasts in her Memoirs, that having been
courteously received by a certain German, she returned the courtesy
by teaching him how to cook seven different dishes after the French
fashion.

The authors of France have exhibited much caprice in their gastronomic
practice; often professing in one direction, and acting in its
opposite. Thus Lamartine was a vegetarian until he entered his teens.
He remains so in opinion, but he does violence to his taste, and eats
good dinners for the sake of conforming to the rules of society! This
course in an author, who is for the moment rigidly Republican when all
the world around him is Monarchical, is singular enough. Lamartine’s
vegetarian taste was fostered by his mother, who took him when a
child to the shambles, and disgusted him with the sight of butchers
in activity on slaughtering days. He for a long time led about a pet
lamb by a ribbon, and went into strong fits at a hint from his mother’s
cook, that it was time to turn the said pet into useful purposes,
and make _tendrons d’agneau_ of him. Lamartine would no more have
thought of eating his lamb, than Emily Norton would have dreamed of
breakfasting on collops cut from her dear white doe of Rylston. The
poet still maintains, that it is cruel and sinful to kill one animal in
order that another may dine; but, with a sigh for the victim, he can
eat heartily of what is killed, and even put his fork into the breast
of lamb without compunction,--but all for conformity! He knows that if
he were to confine himself to turnips, he should enjoy better health
and have a longer tenure of life; but then he thinks of the usages of
society, sacrifices himself to custom, and gets an indigestion upon
truffled turkey.

Moore, in his early days in London, used to dine somewhere in
Marylebone with French refugee priests, for something less than a
shilling. Dr. Johnson dined still cheaper, at the “Pine Apple,” in
New-street, Covent Garden--namely, for eightpence. They who drank wine
paid fourpence more for the luxury, but the lexicographer seldom took
wine at his own expense; and sixpenny-worth of meat, one of bread, and
a penny for the waiter, sufficed to purchase viands and comfort for
the author of the “Vanity of Human Wishes.” Boyce the versifier was of
quite another kidney; when he lay in bed, not only starving, but stark
naked, a compassionate friend gave him half-a-guinea, which he spent
in truffles and mushrooms, eating the same in bed under the blankets.
There was something atrociously sublime about Boyce. Famine had pretty
well done for him, when some one sent him a slice of roast beef, but
Boyce refused to eat it, because there was no catchup to render it
palatable.

It must have been a sight of gastronomic pleasure to have seen Wilkes
and Johnson together over a fillet of veal, with abundance of butter,
gravy, stuffing, and a squeeze of lemon. The philosopher and the
patriot were then on a level with other hungry and appreciating men.
Shallow with his short-legged hen, and Sir Roger de Coverley over
hasty-pudding, are myths; not so Pope with stewed regicide lampreys,
Charles Lamb before roast pig, or Lord Eldon next to liver and bacon,
or Theodore Hook bending to vulgar pea-soup. These were rich realities,
and the principal performers in them had not the slightest idea of
affecting refinement upon such subjects. Goldsmith, when he could get
it, had a weakness for haunch of venison; and Dr. Young was so struck
with a broiled bladebone on which Pope regaled him, that he concluded
it was a foreign dish, and anxiously inquired how it was prepared.
Ben Jonson takes his place among the lovers of mutton, while Herrick
wandering dinnerless about Westminster, Nahum Tate enduring sanctuary
and starvation in the Mint, Savage wantonly incurring hunger, and Otway
strangled by it, introduce us to authors with whom “dining with Duke
Humphrey,” was so frequent a process, that each shadowy meal was but as
a station towards death.

When Goldsmith “tramped” it in Italy, his flute ceased to be his
bread-winner as it had been in France; the fellow-countrymen of
Palestrina were deaf to “Barbara Allen,” pierced from memory through
the vents of an Irish reed. Goldsmith, therefore, dropped his flute,
and took up philosophy; not as a dignity; he played it as he had done
his flute, for bread and a pillow. He knocked at the gate of a college
instead of at the door of a cottage, made his bow, gave out a thesis,
supported it in a Latin which must have set on edge the teeth of his
hearers, and, having carried his exhibition to a successful end, was
awarded the trifling and customary honorarium, with which he purchased
bread and strength for the morrow. No saint in the howling wilderness
lived a harder life than Goldsmith during his struggling years in
London; the table traits, even of his days of triumph, were sometimes
coloured unpleasingly. I am not sure if Goldsmith was present at the
supper at Sir Joshua’s, when Miss Reynolds, after the repast, was
called upon as usual to give a toast, and not readily remembering one,
was asked to give the ugliest man of her acquaintance, and thereon
she gave “Dr. Goldsmith;” the name was no sooner uttered than Mrs.
Cholmondeley rushed across the room, and shook hands with Reynolds’s
sister, by way of approval. What a sample of the manners of the day,
and how characteristic the remark of Johnson, who _was_ present, and
whose wit, at his friend’s expense, was rewarded by a roar, that
“thus the ancients, on the commencement of their friendships, used to
sacrifice a beast between them!” Cuzzoni, when found famishing, spent
the guinea given her in charity, in a bottle of tokay and a penny
roll. So Goldsmith, according to Mrs. Thrale, was “drinking himself
drunk with Madeira,” with the guinea sent to rescue him from hunger
by Johnson. But let us be just to poor Oliver. If he squandered the
eleemosynary guinea of a friend, he refused roast beef and daily pay,
offered him by Parson Scott, Lord Sandwich’s chaplain, if he would
write against his conscience, and in support of government; and he
could be generous in his turn to friends who needed the exercise of
generosity. When Goldsmith went into the suburban gardens of London
to enjoy his “shoemakers’ holiday,” he generally had Peter Barlow
with him. Now Peter’s utmost limit of profligacy was the sum of
fifteen-pence for his dinner; his share would sometimes amount to five
shillings, but Goldsmith always magnificently paid the difference.
Perhaps there are few of the sons of song who dined so beggarly,
and achieved such richness of fame, as Butler, Otway, Goldsmith,
Chatterton, and, in a less degree of reputation, but not of suffering,
poor Gerald Griffin, who wrestled with starvation till he began to
despair. Chatterton _did_ despair, as he sat without food, hope, and
humility; and we know what came of it. Butler, the sturdy son of a
Worcestershire farmer, after he had astonished his contemporaries by
his “Hudibras,” lived known but to a few, and upon the charity or
at the tables of _them_. But he did not, like the heartless though
sorely-tried Savage, slander the good-natured friends at whose tables
he drew the support of his life. As for Otway, whether he perished
of suffocation by the roll which he devoured too greedily after long
fasting, or whether he died of the cold draught of water, drank when
he was overheated, it is certain that he died in extreme penury at the
“Bull” on Tower Hill,--the coarse frequenters of the low public-house
were in noisy revelry round their tables, while the body of the dead
poet lay, awaiting the grave, in the room adjacent.

The table life of Peter Pindar was a far more joyous one than that of
much greater poets. At Truro he was noted for his frugal fare, and he
never departed from the observance of frugality of living throughout
his career. He would sometimes, we are told, when visiting country
patients, and when he happened to be detained, go into the kitchen and
cook his own beefsteak, in order to show a country cook how a steak
was done in London,--the only place, he said, where it was properly
cooked. He laughed at the faculty as he did at the king, and set
the whole profession mad by sanctioning the plentiful use of water,
declaring that physic was an uncertain thing, and maintaining that in
most cases all that was required on the doctor’s part was “to watch
nature, and when she was going right, to give her a shove behind.”
He was accustomed to analyse the drugs which he had prescribed for
his patients, before he would allow the latter to swallow them, and
he gave a decided county bias against pork by remarking of a certain
apothecary that he was too fond of bleeding the patients who resorted
to him, and too proud of his large breed of pigs. The inference was
certainly not in favour of pork. Peter’s practical jokes in connexion
with the table were no jokes to the chief object of them. Thus, when
a pompous Cornish member of parliament issued invitations for as
pompous a dinner to personages of corresponding pomposity, “Peter,”
recollecting that the senator had an aunt who was a laundress, sent her
an invitation in her nephew’s name, and the old lady, happy and proud,
excited universal surprise, and very particular horror in the bosom of
the parliament-man, by making her appearance in the august and hungry
assembly, who welcomed her about as warmly as if she had been a “boule
asphyxiatre” of the new French artillery practice.

It is going a long way back to ascend from “Pindar” to Tasso, but both
poets loved roasted chestnuts,--and _there_ is the affinity. Peter
never drank any thing but old rum; a wine glass, (never beyond a wine
glass and a half,) served him for a day, after a dinner of the plainest
kind. The doctor eschewed wine altogether, at least in his latter days,
as generating acidity. Tasso, however, unlike our satirical friend, was
a wine-bibber. During the imprisonment which had been the result of
his own arrogance, he wrote to the physician of the Duke of Ferrara,
complaining of intestinal pains, of sounds of bells in his ears, of
painful mental images and varying apparitions of inanimate things
appearing to him, and of his inability to study. The doctor advised him
to apply a cautery to his leg, abstain from wine, and confine himself
to a diet of broth and gruels. The poet defended the sacredness of his
appetite, and declined to abstain from generous wine; but he urged the
_medico_ to find a remedy for his ills, promising to recompense him
for his trouble, by making him immortal in song. At a later period of
his life, when he was the guest of his friend Manco, in his gloomy
castle of Bisaccio, the illustrious pair were seated together, after
dinner, over a dessert of Tasso’s favourite chestnuts and some generous
wine; and there he affrighted his friend by maintaining that he was
constantly attended by a guardian spirit, who was frequently conversing
with him, and in proof of the same, he invited Manco to listen to
their dialogue. The host replenished his glass and announced himself
ready. Tasso fell into a loud rhapsody of mingled folly and beauty,
occasionally pausing to give his spirit an opportunity of speaking;
but the remarks of this agathodæmon were inaudible to all but the ears
of the poet. The imaginary dialogue went on for an hour; and at the end
of it, when Tasso asked Manco what he thought of it, Manco, who was the
most matter-of-fact man that ever lived, replied that, for his part, he
thought Tasso had drunk too much wine and eaten too many chestnuts. And
truly I think so too.

The greatest of authors are given to the strangest of freaks. Thus
one of the most popular of the teachers of the people presided at a
gay tavern supper the night before the execution of the Mannings.
The feast concluded, the party (supplied with brandy and biscuits)
proceeded to the disgusting spectacle, where they occupied “reserved
seats;” and when all was done, the didactic leader of the revellers
and sight-seers, thought he compensated for his want of taste, by
pronouncing as “execrable” the taste of those who, like George
Selwyn, could find pleasure in an execution. But there are few men
so inconsistent as didactic authors. Pope taught, in poetry, the
excellence of moderation; but he writes to Congreve in 1715, that he
sits up till two o’clock over burgundy and champagne; and he adds, “I
am become so much of a rake that I shall be ashamed, in a short time,
to be thought to do any sort of business.” But Pope’s table practice,
like Swift’s, was not always of the same character. The dean, writing
to Pope, in the same year that the latter tells Congreve (a dissolute
man at table, by the way) of his sitting over burgundy and champagne
till two in the morning, speaks of quite another character of life:
“You are to understand that I live in the corner of a vast unfurnished
house. My family consists of a steward, a groom, a helper in my stable,
a footman, and an old maid, who are all at board wages; and when I
do not dine abroad, or make an entertainment,--which last is very
rare,--I eat a mutton pie, and drink half a pint of wine.” Pope’s habit
of sleeping after dinner did not incline him to obesity; and it was a
habit that the dean approved. Swift told Gay that his wine was bad,
and that the clergy did not often call at his house; an admission in
which Gay detected cause and effect. In the following year to that
last named, Swift wrote a letter to Pope, in which I find a paragraph
affording a table trait of some interest: “I remember,” he says, “when
it grieved your soul to see me pay a penny more than my club, at an
inn, when you had maintained me three months at bed and board; for
which, if I had dealt with you in the Smithfield way, it would have
cost me a hundred pounds, for I live worse here (Dublin) upon more.
Did you ever consider that I am, for life, almost twice as rich as
you, and pay no rent, and drink French wine twice as cheap as you do
port, and have neither coach, chair, nor mother?” Pope illustrates
Bolingbroke’s way of living as well as his own some years later. The
reveller till two in the morning, of the year 1715, is sobered down
to the most temperate of table men, in 1728. “My Lord Bolingbroke’s
great temperance and economy are so signal, that the first is fit for
my constitution, and the latter would enable you to lay up so much
money as to buy a bishopric in England. As to the return of his health
and vigour, were you here, you might inquire of his haymakers. But, as
to his temperance, I can answer that, for one whole day, we have had
nothing for dinner but mutton broth, beans and bacon, and a barn-door
fowl;” after all, no bad fare either, for peer or poet! Swift too, at
this period, boasts no longer of his “French wines.” His appetite is
affected by the appalling fact, that the national debt amounts to the
unheard-of sum of seven millions sterling! and thereupon he says: “I
dine alone on half a dish of meat, mix water with my wine, walk ten
miles a day, and read Baronius.”

Such was the table and daily life of an author who began to despair of
his country! In 1732, however, the dean was again full of hope,--we
see it in the condition of his wine matters: “My stint in company,” he
writes to Gay, “is a pint at noon, and half as much at night; but I
often dine at home, like a hermit, and then I drink little or none at
all.” Was it that he despaired again, when alone; or that he only drank
copiously at others’ cost? Of his own cellar arrangements, though, he
thus speaks: “My one hundred pounds will buy me six hogsheads of wine,
which will support me a year, _provisæ frugis in annum copia_. Horace
desired no more; for I will construe _frugis_ to be wine. How a man
who drank little or none at home, and seldom saw company to help him
to consume the remainder, could contrive to get through six hogsheads
in a year, is a problem that will be solved when the philosophers of
Laputa have settled _their_ theories.” Literature is a pleasant thing
when its professors have not to write in order to live. Such was the
case in the last century, with poor De Limiers, who was permitted to
write in periodicals, on the stipulation that he “never told anybody.”
It is said of him that he would have been an exceedingly clever person,
if he had not always been hungry, but that famine spoiled his powers.
This was the bookseller’s fault, not his. The same might nearly be said
of poor Gerald Griffin; but _he_ kept his ability warm even amid cold
hunger, and had the courage to write his noble tragedy “Gisippus” on
scraps of paper picked up by him in wretched coffee-shops, where he
used to take a late breakfast, and cajole himself into the idea that it
was dinner.

When Cervantes, with two friends, were travelling from Esquivias,
famous for its illustrious wines, towards Toledo, he was overtaken by
a “polite student,” who added himself and his mule to the company of
“the crippled sound one” and his friends, and who gave honest Miguel
much fair advice touching the malady which was then swiftly killing
him. “This malady is the dropsy,” said the student with the neck bands
that would _not_ keep in their place,--“the dropsy, which all the
water in the world would not cure, even if it were not salt; you must
drink by rule, sir, and eat more, and this will cure you better than
any medicine.” “Many have told me so,” was the reply of the immortal
Miguel, “but I should find it as impossible to leave off drinking, as
if I had been born for no other purpose. My life is well-nigh ended,
and by the beatings of my pulse, I think next Sunday, at latest, will
see the close of my career.” The great Spaniard was not very incorrect
in his prognostic. I introduce this illustrative incident for a double
reason; first, it is “germane to the matter” in hand, and secondly,
it reminds me of a fact with the notice of which I will conclude this
section of my imperfect narrative: I allude to


THE LIQUOR-LOVING LAUREATES.

It is incontrovertible that, with the exception of two or three,
all our laureates have loved a more pleasant distillation than that
from bay-leaves. In the early days, the “versificatores regis,”
were rewarded, as all the minstrels in Teutonic ballads are, with
a little money and a full bowl. The nightingales in kings’ cages
piped all the better for their cake being soaked in wine. From the
time of the first patented laureate, Ben Jonson, the rule has borne
much the same character, and permanent thirstiness seems generally
to have been seated under the laurel. Thus, Ben himself was given to
joviality, jolly company, deep drinking, and late hours. His affection
for a particular sort of wine acquired for him the nick-name of the
Canary-bird; and indeed succeeding laureates who, down to Pye, enjoyed
the tierce of Canary, partly owe it to Ben.

Charles I. added the wine to an increase of pay asked for by the bard;
and the spontaneous generosity of one king became a rule for those
that followed. The next laureate, Davenant, a vintner’s son, was
far more dissolute in his drinking, for which he did not compensate
by being more excellent in his poetry. The third of the patented
laureates, Dryden, if he loved convivial nights, loved to spend them
as Jonson did, in “noble society.” Speaking of the Roman poets of the
Augustan age, he says:--“They imitated the best way of living, which
was, to pursue an innocent and inoffensive pleasure; that which one
of the ancients called ‘eruditam voluptatem.’ We have, like them,
our genial nights, where our discourse is neither too serious nor
too light, but always pleasant, and for the most part instructive;
the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious
on the absent; and the cups only such as will raise the conversation
of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow.” The
genial nights, however, were not always so delightfully Elysian and
æsthetic. When Rochester suspected Dryden of being the author of the
“Essay on Satire,” which was really written by Lord Mulgrave, and
which was offensive to Rochester, the latter took a very unpoetical
revenge. As Dryden was returning from his _erudite voluptes_ at Wills’,
and was passing through Rose-street, Covent Garden, to his house in
Gerrard-street, he was waylaid and severely beaten, by ruffians who
were believed to be in the pay of Rochester. The conversation of _that_
night certainly _must_ have disturbed the business of the morrow!

And next we come to hasty Shadwell, who may be summarily dismissed
with the remark that he was addicted to sensual indulgence, and to any
company that promised good wine, and plenty of it. Poor Nahum Tate,
too, is described as “a free and fuddling companion;” but the miserable
man had gone through more fiery trials than genial nights. Of Rowe,
the contrary may be said. He was the great diner-out of his day; always
vivacious, dashing, gay, good-humoured, and habitually generous,
whether drunk or sober. He was but a poor poet, but he was succeeded
by one who wrote worse and drank more--Eusden, of whom Gray writes to
Mason that he “was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at
last he turned out a drunken parson.” Cibber loved the bottle quite
as intensely as Eusden did, and he was a gambler to boot; but there
were some good points about Colley, although Pope has so bemauled him.
Posterity has used Cibber as his eccentric daughter did when he went to
her fish-stall to remonstrate with her against bringing disgrace upon
his family by her adoption of such a course: the affectionate Charlotte
caught up a stinking sole, and smacked her sire’s face with it; but
Colley wiped his cheek, went home, and got drunk to prove that he was
a gentleman. With heavy Whitehead we first fall in with indisputable
respectability. He sipped his port, a pensioner at Lord Jersey’s table,
and wrote classical tragedies, for which I heartily forgive him,
because they are deservedly forgotten. His successor, slovenly Warton,
exulted over his college wine with the gobble of a turkey-cock; and
then came Pye, with his pleasant conviviality and his warlike strains,
which “roared like a sucking dove,” and put to sleep the militia, which
it was hoped they would have aroused. Pye was of the time of “Pindar,
Pye, and Parvus Pybus;” and it was during his tenure of office that
the tierce of Canary was discontinued, and the 27_l._ substituted.
With Southey, a dignity was given to the laureateship, which it had,
perhaps, never before enjoyed; and the poetic mantle fell on worthy
shoulders, when it covered those of the gentle Wordsworth. Not that
Wordsworth never was drunk. The bard of Rydal Mount _was_ once in his
life “full of the god;” but he was drunk with strong enthusiasm too,
and the occasion excused, if it did not sanctify the deed. The story is
well told by De Quincey, and it runs thus:--

“For the first time in his life, Wordsworth became inebriated at
Cambridge. It is but fair to add, that the first time was also the last
time. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is the occasion of
this drunkenness, which was the celebration of the first visit to the
very rooms at Christ College once occupied by Milton,--intoxication by
way of homage to the most temperate of men, and this homage offered
by one who has turned out himself to the full as temperate! Every
man, in the mean time, who is not a churl, must grant a privilege and
charter of large enthusiasm to such an occasion; and an older man than
Wordsworth, at that era not fully nineteen, and a man even without a
poet’s blood in his veins, might have leave to forget his sobriety
in such circumstances. Beside which, after all, I have heard from
Wordsworth’s own lips that he was not too far gone to attend chapel
decorously during the very acme of his elevation!”

De Quincey has told how pleasant, and cheerful, and conversational was
the tea-time at Wordsworth’s table; and there, no doubt, the poet was
far more, so to speak, in his element than when in the neighbourhood
of wine, whose aid was not needed by him to elevate his conversation.
But Wordsworth, gentle as he was, had nothing in him of the squire
of dames, whom he generally treated with as much indifference as the
present laureate, Tennison, was once said to feel for those very
poetical little mortals,--children. And here I end the record of a
few table traits of the patented laureates, adding no more of the
fourteenth and last, that is, the present vice-Apollo to the Queen,
than that he has said of his own tastes and locality to enjoy them in,
in Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock,--

  “O plump head waiter at ‘The Cock,’
    To which I most resort,
  How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.
    Go fetch a pint of port.

  “But let it not be such as that
    You set before chance-comers,
  But such whose father-grape grew fat
    On Lusitanian summers.”

And now all things must have an end; and the end of pleasure is like
the end of life,--weariness, satiety, and regret; and the end of a
well-spent day is _not_ of that complexion, for its name should be
“supper,” without which, however, a man had better go to bed, than with
it and arise in debt. But, as the moral does not apply to us, you and
I, Reader, if you will venture further with so indifferent a companion,
will go hand in hand, before we finally separate.




SUPPER.


The supper was the only recognised repast in Rome; if, indeed, we may
call that supper which sometimes took place at three in the afternoon.
It was then rather a dinner, after which properly educated persons
would not, and those who had supped over freely could not, eat again
on the same day. The early supper hour was favoured by those who
intended to remain long at table. “Imperat extructos frangere nona
toros,” says Martial. The more frugal, but they must also have been the
more hungry, supped, like the Queen of Carthage, at sunset; “labente
die convivia quærit.” All other repasts than this had no allotted
hour; each person followed inclination or necessity, and there was no
difference in the _jentaculum_, the _prandium_, or the _merenda_,--the
breakfast, dinner, or collation,--save difference of time. Bread, dried
fruits, and perhaps honey, were alone eaten at these simple meals;
whereat too, some, like Marius, drank before supper-time, “the genial
hour for drinking.” The hosts were, in earlier ages, cooks as well as
entertainers. Patroclus was famous for his Olla Podrida, and a Roman
general received the Samnite ambassadors in a room where he was boiling
turnips for his supper!

Sunset, however, was the _ordinary_ supper-time amongst the Romans.
“De vespere suo vivere,” in Plautus, alludes to this. In the time of
Horace, ten o’clock was not an unusual hour, and men of business supped
even later. At the period of the decadence of the empire, it was the
fashion to go to the baths at eight, and sup at nine. The repasts which
commenced earlier than this were called _tempestiva_, as lasting a
longer time. Those which began by daylight--_de die_--had a dissolute
reputation; “ad amicam de die potare,” is a phrase employed in the
_Asinaria_ to illustrate the great depravity of him to whom it is
applied.

There is no doubt, I think, in spite of what critics say, that, however
it may have been with the Romans, the Greeks certainly had four repasts
every day. There was the breakfast (άκφκάτισμα), the dinner (ἄριστον),
the collation (ἑσπέρισμα), and the chief of all, despite the term for
dinner, the supper (δεῖπνον).

Among the Romans the _Cœna adventitia_ was the name given to suppers
whereat the return of travellers to their homes was celebrated; the
_Cœna popularis_ was simply a public repast, given to the people by the
government; the _terrestris cœna_ was, as Hegio describes it in the
_Captivei_, a supper of herbs, _multis oleribus_. The Greeks called
such “a bloodless supper.” The parasite, in Athenæus, says that when he
is going to a house to supper, he does not trouble himself to gaze at
the architectural beauties of the mansion, nor the magnificence of the
furniture, but at the smoke of the chimney. If it ascends in a thick
column, he knows there is certainty of good cheer; but if it is a poor
thread of smoke, says he, why then I know that there is no blood in the
supper that is preparing: τὸ δεῖπνον ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ αἷμα ἔχει.

These repasts were gay enough when there was good Chian wine,
unmixed with sea-water, to set the wit going. The banquets of Laïs
were probably the most brilliant ever seen in Greece, for there was
abundance of sprightly intellect at them. It might be said of them, as
Sidney Smith says of what used to be in Paris under the ancient régime,
when “a few women of brilliant talents violated all the common duties
of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers.”

It is a well-ascertained fact that when the Greeks gave great
entertainments, and got tipsy thereat, it was for pious reasons.
They drank deeply in honour of some god. They not only drank deeply,
but progressively so; their last cup at parting was the largest, and
it went by the terrible name of the Cup of Necessity. There was a
headache of twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it. Their pic-nic
and conversation suppers were not bad things. Every guest brought his
own rations in a basket; but as the rich and the selfish used to shame
and tantalise the poorer guests by their savoury displays, Socrates,
that dreadfully didactic personage, imperious as Beau Nash in matters
of social discipline, insisted, that what each guest brought should be
common to all. The result was less show and more comfort. But I would
not have liked to have supped where Socrates was in the chair, for, in
spite of his talents, he was a horrid bore, watching what and how each
guest ate, and speaking to or at him whenever his acute eye discovered
a rent in the coat of his good manners. If he sometimes said good
things, he as frequently said sharp ones; and where he was president,
the guests were simply at school.

It is indeed seldom that the sages are desirable associates. “Come and
sup with me next Thursday,” said a French Amphitryon to a friend. “You
shall meet philosophers or literary men; take your choice.” “My choice
is soon made,” was the reply; “I will sup twice with you.” It was so
arranged, and the supper with the _literati_ was incomparably the
better banquet of the two.

The supper was the great meal of the Greeks; but neither at this, nor
at any other repast, does Homer ever make mention of boiled meat.
The Greeks, then, were not like our poor Greenwich pensioners, who,
up to the present time, have never been provided with meat cooked
in any other way. The result is that the men themselves look as if
they were half-boiled. But a new order of things, including ovens and
baked joints, has been introduced into the kitchen and refectory of
the hospital, and the ancient mariners will soon show the effects of
variety in diet and cooking, by a healthier and a happier hue on their
solemn and storm-beaten cheeks.

And this matter of boiled meat reminds me of the old Duke of Grafton,
who never ate any thing else at dinner or supper, (for it was in the
days of double meals,) but boiled mutton. Yet every day the cook was
solemnly summoned to his grace’s side, to listen to orders which he
knew by heart, and instructions which wearied while they vexed his
spirits. The duke must have been of the saddened constitution which
would have entitled him to sup with that nervous Duke of Marlborough,
who always joined with his invitation a request that his guest would
say or do nothing to make him laugh, as his grace could not bear
excitement.

At the supper-table the Romans did not decline the flesh of the ass,
nor that of the dog; and they were as fond of finely fatted snails as
the southern Germans are, who have inherited their taste. Macrobius,
describing the supper given by the epicurean pontiff Lentulus, in
honour of his reception, says that the first course was composed
of sea hedgehogs, oysters, and asparagus. After these provocatives
came a second course, consisting of more oysters, and various other
shell-fish, fat pullets, beccaficoes, venison, wild boar, and sea
nettles,--to digest the marine hedgehogs, I suppose. The third course
assumed a more civilized aspect, and the guests were only tempted
by fish, fowl, game, and cakes from the Ancona marshes. There is a
supper of Lentulus, as described by Becker. The supper was given to
Gallus, and the account of it is so little exaggerated as to afford
a tolerably correct idea of what those banquets were. Nine guests,
two of them “gentlemen from Perusia,” occupied the _triclinium_. The
pictures around represented satyrs celebrating the joyous vintage;
the death of the boar; fruit and provision pieces over the door, and
similar designs, calculated to awaken a relish for the banquet, were
suspended between the elegant branches occupied by living thrushes.
The lowest place in the middle sofa was the seat for the most honoured
guest. As soon as all were in a reclining posture, the attendant slaves
took off their sandals, and water in silver basins was carried round by
good-looking youths, and therewith the visitors performed their brief
ablutions. At a nod from the host, two servants deposited the tray
bearing the dishes of the first course in the centre of the table. The
chief ornament of this tray, which was adorned with tortoise-shell,
was a bronze ass, whose panniers were filled with olives, and on whose
back rode a Silenus, whose pores exuded a sauce which fell upon the
roast breast of a sow that had never fulfilled a mother’s duty, below.
Sausages on silver gridirons, with Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds
beneath them to simulate fire; and dishes, also of silver, containing
various vegetables, shell-fish, snails, and a reptile or two, formed
the other delicacies of this course. While the guests addressed
themselves thereto, they were supplied with a beverage composed of
wines and honey scientifically commingled. The glory of the first
course was, however, the carved figure of the brooding hen, which was
brought in on a separate small tray. The eggs taken from beneath her
were offered to the guests, who found the apparent eggs made of dough,
on breaking which with the spoon, a fat figpecker was seen lying in the
pepper-seasoned yolk, and strongly tempting the beholder to eat. This
delicacy, was, of course, readily eaten, and _mulsum_, the mixture
of Hymettian honey and Falernian wines, was copiously drunk to aid
digestion. A good deal of wine was imbibed, and numerous witch stories
told (a favourite supper pastime), between and during the courses, at
which the dishes were more and more elaborate and fantastic. A vast
swine succeeded to a wild boar at the supper of Lentulus, who affecting
to be enraged at his cook for forgetting to disembowel the animal
before preparing it for the table, that official feigns to tremble with
the energy of his repentance, and forthwith proceeds to perform the
office of gutting the animal in presence of the guests. He plunges his
knife into its flanks, when there immediately issues from the gaping
wound string after string of little sausages. The conclusion of the
supper is thus told:--“The eyes of the guest were suddenly attracted to
the ceiling by a noise overhead; the ceiling opened, and a large silver
hoop, on which were ointment bottles of silver and alabaster, silver
garlands with beautifully chiselled leaves, and circlets and other
trifles, descended upon the table; and after the dessert, prepared
by the new baker, whom Lentulus purchased for a hundred thousand
sesterces, had been served up, the party rose, to meet again in the
brilliant saloon, the intervening moments being spent, by some in
sauntering along the colonnades, and by others in taking a bath.”

In the description of the supper given by Siba to celebrate the
return of Nero to Rome, we find that the slaves, when they took off
the sandals of the guests, supplied them with others of a lighter
description, which were fastened by crossed ribands. Those who did not
come in “dress,” were furnished with variegated woollen vestments to
cover their togas. Siba’s banquet began to the sound of a hydraulic
organ, which, however, was only in place of our dinner-bell. When the
lime-wood tables were duly covered and flowered, the guests took their
places to the sound of flutes and harps, and said a sort of _grace_,
by invoking Jupiter; while a modest libation of wine was cast on the
floor in honour of the household gods. The first course consisted of
some remarkably strange dishes, but the guests reserved their appetite,
or provoked it with pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar
cattle. A master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was to
regulate how often the guests should drink; and the latter invariably
selected the most confirmed toper. _We_ leave this office to the master
of the house, and in well-regulated families that high official leaves
his guests to do according to their good pleasure. The garlands having
been duly encircled round the brows of Siba’s friends, the trumpets
announced the entrance of the second course. The second course was
duly discussed, its extraordinary dishes thoroughly consumed, and the
four cups were drained to Nero; being the number of letters in his
name; and a good deal of jollity began to abound, which was checked
a little by the arrival of a present from the emperor, sent to Siba,
and which consisted of a silver skeleton. As the guests feared to
interpret the meaning of the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and
then to singing, and philosophising; and then resumed their eating;
and when the force of nature could no further go, they called in the
jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, and having drawn as
much amusement from these as they possibly could, they whipped up their
flagging sensations by looking at the feats of Spanish dancing girls,
and these were succeeded by ten couple of gladiators, who slew one
another in the apartment for the pastime of the supremely indifferent
personages who lay half asleep and half drunk, and lazily applauded the
murderous play. The company were in the very midst of this innocent
amusement when the fire was lit up in Rome by Nero, and which did not
spare the mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape was not more furious
and selfish than that which took place at Prince Schwartzenberg’s ball
in Paris, at which the devouring flames had as little respect for some
of the guests as they had at the terrible supper of Caius Siba.

It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of
deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records of
the olden time. But this is not the case. They are fewer; but they
_do_ exist. We read in the modern history of Germany, that a man with
an uncontrollable appetite for bacon once presented himself at the
tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, before Prague, which he was
besieging. The man was a boor, and had sought access to the king, to
ask permission to perform before him a feat which he boasted of being
able to accomplish,--namely, devour a whole hog. General Koenigsmark,
who was present, and was very superstitious, warned the king not to
listen to a being who, if not the devil, was probably leagued with him.
“I’ll tell you what it is, and please your Majesty,” said the boor, “if
you will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and spurs, I’ll
eat him before I begin with the hog!” The general was no coward; but he
took to his heels, as though the man were serious, and left the king to
enjoy what pleasure he might from seeing a peasant eat a whole pig.

In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs for supper. When
Cailli was in that quarter of the world, a Bambere woman gave him some
yams, and what he thought was gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On
dipping his yams therein, however, he saw some little paws, and at
once knew that it was the famous mouse-sauce; but he was hungry, and
continued his repast. He often subsequently saw the women chopping up
mice for their suppers. When the animals were caught, they were singed
over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. A hungry man _might_
eat thereof without loathing. We have all partaken of far less clean
animals.

It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal is the very hour
for wit. I do not know how this may be, but Souwarow’s wit appears
to have been uncommonly alert at supper-time. When he returned from
his Italian campaign to St. Petersburg, in 1799, the Emperor Paul
sent Count Kontaissow to compliment him on his arrival. The count
had been originally a Circassian slave, and _valet_ to Paul, who had
successively raised him to the ranks of equerry, baron, and count. The
Circassian _parvenu_ found the old warrior at supper. “Excuse me,” said
Souwarow, pausing in his meal, “I cannot recall the origin of your
illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle procured for you
your dignity as count.” “Well, no,” said the ex-valet, “I have never
been in battle.” “Ah! perhaps you have been attached to an embassy?”
“No.” “To a ministerial office then?” “That neither.” “What important
post, _then_, have you occupied?”--“I have been valet-de-chambre to
the emperor,” “Oh, indeed,” said the veteran leader, laying down his
spoon, and calling aloud for his own valet, Troschka. “Here, you
villain,” said he, as the latter appeared, “I tell you daily to leave
off drinking and thieving, and you never listen to me. Now, look at
this gentleman here. He was a valet like you; but being neither sot
nor thief, he is now grand equerry to his majesty, knight of all
the Russian orders, and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow his
example, and you will have more titles than your master; who requires
nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his supper!”

It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was generally accounted
as the peculiar season of wit; but wit, often too daring at such an
hour, sometimes got chastised for its over-boldness.

At one of the _petits soupers_ of Paris, in this olden time, when wit
and philosophy had temporarily dethroned religion, a little abbé,
who had the air of a full-grown Cupid in a semi-clerical disguise,
or who was like Rose Pomaponne in a carnival suit at the Courtille,
took upon himself to amuse the assembled company with stories intended
to ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the philosophers styled
Christianity,) and its professors. He was particularly comic on
the subject of hell and eternal punishments, upon which questions
he dilated with a fulness that would have scarcely edified either
Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole of the amiable society
exploded in inextinguishable laughter at hearing this villanous abbé
speak of hell itself as his “feu de joie!” There was, however, one
face there that bore upon it no traces of a smile. It was that of an
old marechal-de-camp, who might have said, like the old beadle of St.
Mary’s, Oxford, “I have held this office, sir, for more than thirty
years, and, thank heaven, I am a Christian yet!” Well, the old maréchal
frowned as, looking at the infidel abbé, he remarked, “I see very
plainly, sir, by your uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it
seems to me that you must be a deserter.” “My dear maréchal,” answered
the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, “it may indeed be a little
as you say, but then, you see, I do not hold in my troop the rank which
you enjoy in yours. I am not a marechal-de-camp!” “Parbleu,” rejoined
the old soldier, “you never could have reached such a rank, for, to
judge by your conduct and sentiment, you would have been hanged long
before your chance came for promotion.”

At the _soupers_ of Paris, however, there were few men who were of the
character of our marechal-de-camp. Bungener, in his “Voltaire et son
Temps,” illustrates the confusion into which men’s ideas had got upon
the subject of things spiritual and things temporal, by noticing the
affair of the Chevalier de la Barre, in 1766. Amid the accusations
brought against him was one, according to which it was laid to his
charge that he had recited in public a certain filthy ode. He was
condemned to be broken on the wheel, on charges of irreligion, of which
this was one. But the part of the question that must have made Astræa
weep through the bandage with which poets have bound her eyes, was
this, namely, that the author of the obscene ode objected to, Piron,
was then in the reception of a pension from the court; and this pension
had been procured for him by Montesquieu, by way of compensation
for his having lost his seat at the Academy, in consequence of his
having been the author of this very ode. This confusion of rewards
and penalties was enough to make Justice dash her brains out with
her own scales. Piron would have been in no wise troubled by such a
catastrophe; the pension from the court enabled him to keep a joyous
table, and that was enough for him.

Duclos was a contemporary and a co-disciple with Piron, in the temple
of philosophy. In 1766, he was at Rome, where he gave such charming
little suppers, that the Sacred College gratefully extended to him the
privileged permission of reading improper books! The philosophers were
then in possession of considerable influence. Marmontel, who was one
of them, was sent to the Bastille, on a certain Friday, in the year
1760. Soon after his arrival, he was supplied with an excellent dinner
_maigre_, the which he ate without thinking of complaining. His servant
was just on the point of addressing himself to the scanty remains, when
lo! an admirable but somewhat irreligious repast, of meat and other
things which come under the denomination of _gras_, and are therefore
forbidden on fast-days, was brought in. The unorthodox banquet was
intended for Marmontel; the more lenten fare was intended for his
servant. For in those days, although philosophers were sent to prison,
their appetites were left to their heretical freedom.

This liberty was allowed by the state, but it was neither sanctioned
nor practised by the Church. The authority of the latter was great
previous to the Revolution. There was then a clerical police, which
looked into the dishes as well as the consciences of the people--of
all degrees. I have somewhere read of a body of this police coming
in collision, during Lent, with the officers of the household of
the Prince of Conti, who were conveying through the streets, from a
neighbouring _rotisseur’s_ to the ducal palace, a supper, through the
covers of which there penetrated an odour which savoured strongly of
something succulent and sinful, of gravy and gravity. Thereupon the
archbishop’s alguazils bade the prince’s men stand and deliver. The
followers of the house of Conti drew their swords in defence of their
rights and sauces. Much of the latter on the side of Conti, and a
little malapert blood on both sides, was spilt, to the edification of
the standers by. Finally, the transgressors of the Church law were
dragged to prison. The damaged repast remained on the pavé, for the
benefit of poor souls who assumed ecclesiastical licence to devour it
without fear of damnation; and the servants of Conti were left in damp
cells to meditate at their leisure upon the argument which Dean Swift
at another period had thus cast into verse:--

  “Who can declare, with common sense,
  That bacon fried gives God offence?
  Or that a herring hath the charm
  Almighty vengeance to disarm?
  Wrapt up in Majesty divine,
  Doth He regard on what we dine?”

To pass from cooks and church to courtesy and coachmen, I may here
speak of a certain Girard who was known in Paris, during the Terror,
for his love of what he called liberty and good living. In his early
days he was a very independent coachman, and was just on the point of
concluding an engagement with an aristocratic old countess, when he
remarked--“Before I finally close with madame, I should like to be
informed for whom madame’s horses are to make way in the streets.”
“For every one,” said the countess. “On questions of precedence, I am
not difficult; if it is yielded to me, I take it; if not, I wait.” “In
that case,” said the aristocratic John, “I shall not suit, madame, as
I myself never draw aside except for the princes of the blood!” Now
this great personage in livery was no other than the Girard who became,
in 1793, the “public accuser,” and who sent to the scaffold those same
nobles who had not been sufficiently noble for him in 1780.

Upon the matter of what became nobility, however, there was always
much confusion in the “aristocratic idea” of the highest continental
families. Thus who, in contemplating the famous Princess des Ursins,
seated among the most honoured at the table of the King of Spain, would
dream of her writing the following sentence in one of her letters to
Madame de Maintenon? “It is I who have the honour of taking from his
majesty his _robe de chambre_, when he gets into bed; and I am there to
give it to him again, with his slippers, when he rises in the morning.”

The flattery paid to royalty in France was never more prodigally
offered than at the period when “wit and philosophy” were beginning to
undermine the throne. We have an instance of this in what happened when
the queen of Louis XV. arrived, in 1765, at Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where
she intended to sup and sleep. She was met beneath an avenue of trees,
outside the town, by the authorities, who offered to her, according to
custom, bread and wine. The queen took a portion of the bread, broke
it in two, and ate thereof, as well as of some grapes, sipping also the
wine; to the delight and edification of the admiring multitude. The
authorities were so struck by the act of condescension on the part of
the royal personage, that they made record of the fact in the register
of the town council. And this they did in such terms as to cause a
commentator to remark, that they could hardly have said more, had her
majesty been a genuine goddess.

After all, this sort of homage had fallen off, in 1765, from what it
had been two centuries before. When Louis XII. encountered his bride,
Mary of England, outside Abbeville, he clapped his feeble hands, and
wished the devil might seize him (and he _did_ die soon after) if she
were not more beautiful than report had painted her! At the gates of
Abbeville, the ill-assorted pair were met by the Bishop of Amiens and
the municipal magistrates, to welcome them to the evening banquet ere
they betook themselves to repose. The bishop presented the new Queen of
France with a piece of the Real Cross. “The _mayeurs_ offered a gift,
the nature of which brings it within my subject.” The gift was usual
whenever king and queen appeared at the portals of the old monkish
city. It consisted of three tuns of wine, three fat oxen, and fifteen
quarters of oats, three pecks of which were presented to the astonished
lady on bended knee, and in a measure painted light blue, and covered
with golden fleurs-de-lys. A complimentary address to the king crowned
all. “Sire,” said the chief local magistrate, “you may now conclude
your marriage in this our good city, without any fear of committing sin
thereby; for, in the year 1409 were reformed, as abuses, those synodal
statutes by which men in our city were forbidden to live with their
wives, during three whole mortal days after the wedding!” The monarch
entered and sat down with his consort to a repast which rendered
both ill for more than double the period just mentioned. Louis had
well-nigh died, like La Matrie, the infidel philosopher at Berlin, of
an indigestion. Had he done so, it might have been said of him, as the
infidel Prussian king said of La Matrie: “He was a _gourmand_, but he
died like a philosopher; let us have no more anxiety about him.”

Frederic himself loved philosophy more than faith, and philosophical
though profligate kings, more than he did “Most Christian” or “Most
Catholic” monarchs. He was wont, therefore, to laugh at the story
of the famished beggar who, standing near the statue of Henri IV.
on the Pont Neuf, solicited charity of a friend of Voltaire who was
passing by. “In the name of God,” said the mendicant. The student of
philosophy was deaf. “In the name of the Holy Virgin!”--“In the name
of the saints!” The appeal was unheeded. “In the name of Henri IV!”
exclaimed the petitioned; and forthwith the Voltairean put his hand
in his pocket, giving a crown-piece, in the name of a philosophical
profligate, while he refused a sou when asked for in the name of God.
But, as Frederic used to say, “How divine is philosophy!” In his mouth
the exclamation was like the well-known cry of Marcel, the ecstatic
dancing-master: “Que de choses dans un minuit!”

There is a story told in connexion with this same great Frederic
which is a good table trait in its way. Joachim von Ziethen was one
of the bravest of the generals who stood by Frederic the Great in
victory or defeat. He was the son of a poor gentleman, and had little
education save what he could pick up in barracks, camps, and battle
fields, in all of which he figured in early youth. If his head was
not over-ballasted with learning, his heart was well freighted with
that love for God, of which some portion, as the dismissed lecturer
on Ecclesiastical History in King’s College tells us, is in almost
every individual without exception, and forms the sheet-anchor which
shall enable him to ride through the storms which keep him from his
desired haven of rest. He became the terror of the foes of Prussia;
but among his comrades, he was known only as “good father Ziethen.”
He was remarkable for his swiftness at once of resolve and execution,
and in remembrance as well as illustration thereof, a sudden surprise
is spoken of by an astonished Prussian as “falling on one like Ziethen
from an ambush.”

Now, old Ziethen, after the triumph achieved in the Seven Years’ War,
was always a welcome guest at the table of Frederic the Second. His
place was ever by the side of the royal master whose cause he had more
than once saved from ruin; and he only sat lower at table when there
happened to be present some foreign royal mediocrity, illustriously
obscure. On one occasion, he received a command to dine with the king
on Good Friday. Ziethen sent a messenger to his sovereign, stating that
it was impossible for him to wait on his majesty, inasmuch as that
he made a point of never omitting to take the sacrament on that day,
and of always spending the subsequent portion of the day in private
meditation.

A week elapsed before the scrupulous old soldier was again invited
to the royal dinner-table. At length he appeared in his old place,
and merry were the guests, the king himself setting an example of
uproarious hilarity. The fun was running fast and furious,--it was
at its very loudest, when Frederic, turning to Ziethen, smacked him
familiarly on the back, and exclaimed, “Well, grave old Ziethen! how
did the supper of Good Friday agree with your sanctimonious stomach?
Have you properly digested the veritable body and blood?” At this
blasphemy, and amid the thunders of pealing laughter, the saluting
artillery of the delighted guests, Ziethen leaped to his feet, and
after shaking his grey hairs with indignation, and silencing the
revellers with a cry, as though they had been dogs, he turned to the
godless master of the realm, and said--words, if not precisely these,
certainly and exactly to this effect:--

“I shun no danger;--your majesty knows it. My life has been always
ready for sacrifice, when my country and the throne required it. What
I was, _that_ I am; and my head I would place on the block at this
moment, if the striking of it off could purchase happiness for my
king. But there is One who is greater than I, or any one here; and
He is a greater sovereign than you who mock Him here from the throne
in Berlin. He it is whose precious blood was shed for the salvation
of all mankind. On Him, that Holy One, my faith reposes: He is my
consoler in life, my hope in presence of death; and I _will not_ suffer
His name to be derided and attacked where I am by, and have voice to
protest against it. Sir, if your soldiers had not been firm in this
faith, they would not have gained victories for you. If you mock this
faith, and jeer at those who cling to it, you only lend a hand to bury
yourself and the state in ruin.” After a pause he added, looking the
while on the mute king:--“What I have spoken is God’s truth; receive it
graciously.”

Frederic was the patron of Voltaire, who had dared to say at his own
table that what it had taken God and twelve Apostles to build up, one
man (Voltaire) would destroy. But Frederic was now, for the moment,
more deeply moved by what had been uttered by the unphilosophical
Ziethen than by anything that had ever fallen from the brilliant but
irreligious Voltaire. He rose, flung his left arm over Ziethen’s
shoulder, offered his right hand to the brave old Christian general,
and exclaimed:--“Ziethen, you are a happy man! Would that I could be
like you! Hold fast by your faith; and I will respect even where I
cannot believe. What has occurred shall never happen again.”

A deep and solemn silence followed, and the dinner was spoiled,
according to the guests, to whom the king gave the signal to disperse
long before their appetites had been satisfied. Ziethen was preparing
to withdraw with the rest, but Frederic, taking him by the hand,
whispered:--“You, my friend, come with me to my cabinet.”

This anecdote was told by Bishop von Eylert to Frederic William III.
That king, who had never heard of the incident, pronounced on it a
three-piled eulogium of “excellent, pleasing, and instructive,” adding
thereto a natural desire to know what passed between the king and
Ziethen in the cabinet. It were doubtless well worth knowing, but I
have sought for any notice of it, and all in vain. The good bishop, as
he deserved, was invited to remain at Sans Souci, to supper. “I excused
myself,” says the prelate, in his memoir of the king, “as having only a
common upper coat on.” The king replied, smilingly, “I know very well
that you have got a dollar and a dress-coat; you are the same person in
either. I want _you_, not your coat; so, go in.”

The Prussian soldiers, in the days of the great Frederic, used to be
allowed unlimited liberty in providing themselves with food in an
enemy’s country. The like permission, but somewhat enlarged, was given
to the Croat soldiers, under the name of foraging for “supper;” but
in that permission they included every meal. They are as ready at it
as Abyssinians; they cut a slice out of the first beast they fall in
with, salt it, put it between the saddle and the horse’s back, gallop
till it gets warm, and then eat it with Croat appetite. The sportsmen
of Dauphiny eat beccaficoes after much the same fashion; they pluck
the bird, sprinkle it with pepper and salt, carry it on their hat to
dry in the air, and eat it with relish for supper, without any further
cooking. They declare it is far better so than when roasted.

Celebrated as the “petits soupers” of the French were during the last
century, they were equalled in brilliancy, and perhaps surpassed in
popularity, by those given in Paris by the Duchess of Kingston. The
adventures of that very adventurous lady rendered her a favourite with
our lively neighbours. When a rustic Devonshire beauty,--wayward,
capricious, ignorant, and seductive, Elizabeth Chudleigh was suddenly
transplanted to the court of the Princess of Wales, as maid of honour.
She there captivated the youthful Duke of Hamilton, returned his
affection, and accepted the offer of his hand. They loved intensely,
quarrelled furiously, and were reconciled warmly; the enemies of both
toiled incessantly to prevent the marriage, and each was daily told of
the alleged infidelities of the other. One of these stories excited
the ardent beauty to such rage that she dismissed her ducal lover,
and in the whirlwind of her wrath gave her hand to Captain Hervey,
brother of the Earl of Bristol. She married in haste, and repented
quite as hastily. She hated her husband before they left the church
together; and after six months of the most active domestic warfare,
the ill-assorted pair separated by mutual consent. She went abroad to
find solace for her disappointment, and was heartily welcomed at the
courts of St. Petersburg, Prussia, and Saxony; she was the favoured
guest of Catherine II., and of the great Frederic, at Berlin; and
no electoral banquet took place at Dresden without being enlivened
by her presence and her wit. When she accepted the invitation to
resume her place at the English court, the reception she met with was
enthusiastic: she played whist with the men, and she drove four-in-hand
as if she had been the born daughter of a charioteer, brought up to her
father’s business. Her accomplishments won the heart of the simplest
of dukes and the gentlest of men, his grace of Kingston, and as an
ecclesiastical court, in 1769, pronounced her marriage with Captain
Hervey (now Earl of Bristol) null and void, she speedily espoused her
ducal admirer, while her former husband bestowed an earl’s coronet
on a second wife. The duke’s property was not entailed, and the
duchess spent it with such reckless prodigality, that his grace was
fairly frightened into consumption and death; and in 1773 she was a
beautiful widow, with the large remnant of the duke’s fortune in her
possession--as long as she did not marry again. Away she went to Rome,
sailed up the Tiber in her own yacht, entertained the pope (Ganganelli)
Clement XIV. at breakfast, dinner, and supper, and kept up such a state
that the world had never beheld such extravagant splendour since the
days of the most profuse and profligate of queens: the heirs of the
duke, seeing their inheritance fast melting away, instituted against
her the famous suit for bigamy, on the ground that the ecclesiastical
court which broke her first marriage had no power to do so. To meet her
accusers she hurried to England, where she considerably startled the
modest among our grandmothers by her Sunday amusements, and the daily
display afforded by the very lowest of dresses. But as she gave most
splendid dinners she had no lack of friends, and few men could find it
in their hearts to abandon a woman in distress, whose kitchen fires
were never extinguished, who gave her guests green peas at Christmas,
and whose commonest beverage was imperial tokay. The House of Lords
judged her case, heard her defence, and pronounced her second marriage
bigamy by overthrowing the decree of the ecclesiastical court with
regard to her first union. To avoid the vulgar penalty she immediately
fled, crossed the Channel in a storm, and proceeded to Munich, where
she was royally entertained, especially as the law could not touch the
property bequeathed her by the Duke of Kingston. The courtesy title of
duchess was still allowed her, and the Elector of Bavaria added to it
that of Countess of Warth. Great nobles gave entertainments in her
honour, which lasted, for days, and ended with a ball, a banquet, and,
instead of common-place fireworks, the storming of a town at midnight.
Poor nobles vied with each other for her smiles and the life-interest
of her possessions; but as she had once been nearly entrapped by a
Greek Prince Warta, who turned out to be the son of an ass-driver in
Trebizond, and who committed suicide in prison, she made and kept her
resolution to be her own mistress for the future, and not that of
either count or kaiser.

In France, where she ultimately resided, she purchased the estate
of St. Assize au Port, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of
Orleans, the father of “Egalité.” She paid down a million and a half
of francs for it, and sold seven thousand francs’ worth of rabbits
from it, during the first week of her residence there. A fricasee of
the duchess’s rabbits was, for a long time, the chief dish at all
the _guinguettes_ round Paris. Her own great suppers were famous for
their refinement and luxury. She was a lover of good living, a GOURMET
rather than a GOURMANDE; an epicure of taste, but not a glutton; and
the gastronomic art never could boast of a more liberal patronage than
that she bestowed upon it, especially in her Paris residence; where her
table, her wit, her dinners, and her diamonds, made of her, for a time,
the most remarkable personage in the capital. She died suddenly, of the
rupture of a blood-vessel, in 1788, and was completely forgotten before
that year had also expired.

I have mentioned that our eccentric countrywoman had purchased the
property of the Duke of Orleans; and that reminds me how fatal the
table, and particularly the supper-table, has been to the dukes of
that house. Thus Philippe, the brother of Louis XIV., quarrelled with
the latter touching the marriage which the king wished to conclude
between one of his own natural daughters and the duke’s son. Orleans,
fevered and flushed, went to sup “with the ladies of St. Cloud.” He
had not long before eaten heavily and drunk deeply at dinner; and at
this second meal he was fatally stricken with apoplexy. The king said
he was sorry, and having thus far given way to his grief, he sat down
with Madame de Maintenon to rehearse the overture of an opera. This
duke’s son and successor gave suppers, at which his infamous daughter,
the Duchess de Berri, presided, and admission to which was purchased
by the candidate making simple denial of his belief in a God! The fate
of both had something retributive in it. The Duchess de Berri, who had
privately married a profligate and ugly officer of her guards, named De
Riou, sought to overcome her father’s wrathful refusal to acknowledge
the union, by giving him a splendid supper _al-fresco_ on the terrace
of Meudon, on the 13th May, 1709. The evening proved cold and damp, and
the duchess caught there a fever brought on by a chill, over-feeding,
and deep drinking, of which she died. Fourteen years afterwards, the
sire who, at sixteen, had all the experience in vice of a man of sixty,
was dining with the Duchess of Phalaria, his last mistress, when he
was taken ill. The physician who was summoned enjoined abstinence
immediate and complete. “Wait till to-morrow,” said the duke, “I will
enjoy myself to-night.” And accordingly, the exemplary pair supped
together, and the lady was in the act of telling the duke one of her
lively stories. As she went on, the glass slid from his hand, and his
head sank upon her shoulder. She thought he was asleep, and went on
with her story; but he to whom she was telling it was stone-dead. The
son of the regent duke was in every respect unlike his father. He ate
_his_ last supper with the Jansenist fathers of the Geneviève,--symbol
of his general habits and the society he kept. _His_ son was the father
of _Egalité_, and at the time of his death (1785) was popular with the
lower classes at Paris for the nightly suppers which he distributed
to them, and which consisted of bread and wine, with medicine for
those who needed it. It was a distribution made not charitably, but
politically. Of the last meal of Egalité, before he went to execution,
I only know that it was a breakfast, and not a supper, and that he
both ate and drank heartily. Misfortune quite as little disturbed the
appetite of the Louis Philippe of our own days. During his flight from
Paris he never forgot the hour of supper or dinner; and when “William
Smith” landed at Newhaven, the first thing he asked for was--something
to eat. I notice these table traits, simply because the Orleanist
historians always speak contemptuously of Louis XVI. eating, with
appetite, in open court during his trial. The stomach of Orleans was
ever as ready as that of Bourbon.

The supper has been called the conversational meal, but to make it
so in perfection it requires a thorough professor of the science of
conversation--one who knows that its very spirit consists less in being
a good talker himself than in flinging about suggestive matter to
induce others to converse upon. The host who understands the science
will so do this that his guests will be satisfied with themselves.
Some French writer has said, in reference to this after-supper gossip,
that it should be like a game at cards, at which each player does his
best,--but I do not endorse this sentiment to its fullest extent,
although I allow that there is something in it. The wise generally,
and dyspeptics especially, will do well to avoid political subjects
after supper; and perhaps there is no more comprehensive remark to be
made on this matter than one advanced by a follower of La Bruyère,
a minor moralist, who has said that “la confiance fournit plus à la
conversation que l’esprit ou l’érudition.”

I recollect once seeing the dullest of evenings made suddenly bright
by an apt query modestly put by one who needed not to inquire, but who
quietly asked if anyone present could name the author of the line:--

  “Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.”

Many a wide guess was fired off prior to the successful naming. The
general opinion was in favour of Pope, and Pope has indeed written a
line very like it:--

  “Fine by defect, and delicately weak.”

The falling upon such coincidences are the very explosives of
after-supper discussions: thus, the very familiar line--

  “Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm,”

may be the text for a pretty dispute. It occurs in Addison’s
“Campaign,” and also in Pope’s “Dunciad.” The latter poet too has said--

  “Ye little stars, hide your diminish’d rays;”

but Milton, before him, had written--

  “At whose sight all the stars
  Hide their diminish’d heads.”

Schiller’s “Thekla” warbles melodiously her melancholy assurance--

  “Ich habe gelibt und geliebet;”

and Byron’s “Sardanapalus,” equally used up, mutters with a faint sigh
the same words--

  “I have lived and loved.”

We all know who tells us that

  “Gospel light first beam’d from Boleyn’s eyes;”

and Horace Walpole harped on the same tune, when he said--

  “From Catherine’s wrongs a nation’s bliss was spread,
  And Luther’s light from Henry’s lawless bed.”

Gray and Moss, too, afford instances of like coincidences of sound or
sentiment, or both. The first, in his “Elegy,” has--

  “And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”

The second, in his “Beggar’s Petition,” sings to the same air--

  “And left the world to wretchedness and me.”

I have noticed, in a former page, how Gray’s line of

  “Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,”

must necessarily remind one of Shakspeare’s words, in the mouth of
Brutus--

  “Dear as the drops that visit this sad heart.”

Demosthenes has truly said--

  Ἀνὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται,

so that Sir John Minnes is not even the original author of the
Hudibrastically sounding assertion--

  “He who fights and runs away,
  May live to fight another day.”

The lines in Hudibras are as the perfecting and comment on the above,
remarking as they do--

  “For he that runs may fight again,
  Which he can never do that’s slain.”

These coincidences are, no doubt, unintentional. For my own part, I do
not believe that Shakspeare, when he spoke in Hamlet, of

  “The undiscover’d country, from whose bourne
  No traveller returns,”

necessarily had in his mind the

  “Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
  Illuc unde negant redire quemquam,”

of Catullus; although the latter lines were quoted by Seneca the
philosopher, and were as familiar as household words among the
verse-loving ancients. Dr. Johnson’s remark on the similarity between
Caliban’s desire to sleep again, and the πάλιν ἤθελον καθεύδειν of
Anacreon, may apply to nearly all the passages in our national poet
which appear to have been derived from the ancients. If we judged them
by any other rule than that the ideas presented themselves naturally to
Shakspeare’s mind, without consideration whether any one before him had
sung to the self-same tune, we might soon turn _his_, and indeed any
poet’s works, into a thing of shreds and patches. For instance, again,
when the young Dane describes Osric as “spacious in the possession
of dirt,” we might accuse the author, yet wrongfully, perhaps, of
having stolen the idea from the “multa dives tellure” of Horace. We
might imagine that the “Id in summa fortuna æquius quod validius,” of
Tacitus, gave birth to

  “That in the captain’s but a choleric word,
  Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy,”

of Shakspeare, who would have been very much surprised had he been told
as much. Again, Corneille, because he said,

  “Qui commence bien ne fait rien s’il n’achève,”

is not to be accused of having written a pendant to the assertion of
Flaccus--

  “Dimidium facti qui cœpit habet.”

Neither has Beaumarchais rifled Otway, because “Désirer du bien à une
femme est ce vouloir du mal à son mari,” has a close resemblance to--

  “I hope a man may wish his friend’s wife well,
  And no harm done.”

If mere close resemblance establish a charge of plagiarism, then
Chaucer, when in speaking of maidens dark or fair he said--

  “Blake or white, I toke no kepe,”

stole the thought from the ancient Irish bard, who said--

  “Bohumilun a coolen dhuv no baun;”

a line which Chaucer could not have read, though his own is a
literal translation of it. Examples like these I might go on citing
_ad infinitum_. As Rosalind says, I could quote you so eight years
together, dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted. But I
will conclude with one more case in point between a well-known English
author and the French dramatist Molière. Thus writes the one--

  “What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
  In some starved, hackney’d sonneteer, or me!
  But let a lord once own the happy lines,
  How the wit brightens and the style refines!”

And thus sung the other--

  “Tous les discours sont des sottises,
  Partout, d’un homme sans éclat.
  Ce seraient paroles exquises,
  Si cé’tait un grand qui parla.”

If this be digressing, it is because after-supper conversation _does_
take a discursive character. In the last century, in Paris, the
majestic nonentities were invited to dinner; the talkers, be they who
they might, to supper. “La Robe dîne; Finance soupe,” was another of
these distinctions; and it was found that the supper was by far the
most agreeable meal of the day. The celebrated Duchess of Kingston
was especially celebrated for her Paris suppers. They were infinitely
more splendid than her English breakfasts, so pleasantly sneered at by
Horace Walpole. The wits assembled round her in gay clusters, and they
and the poets cudgelled their brains to prove one another plagiarists;
while the peers stood by, and marvelled at the extent and elasticity of
the human understanding. Nothing could well surpass the hilarity and
magnificence of these entertainments, where the philosophers were voted
as dull as the nobles, and no aristocracy was acknowledged but the
aristocracy of intellect. Another lady, remarkable for the elegance of
the little suppers over which she presided, was Madame Tronchin: but
the Reign of Terror came on, and her friends and relatives were daily
dragged from her to the guillotine; and Madame Tronchin, who had a most
feeling heart, used to say, that she never could have gone through such
horrors had it not been for her little cup of café à la crême. The
courtiers used to joke in like fashion, at the suppers of Versailles,
at national disgrace. When the Count d’Artois returned from the siege
of Gibraltar, to which he had gone with much boasting, and began to
talk of his batteries, the courtiers used to smile, and to whisper to
one another that he meant his “batterie de cuisine.”

With regard to the dietetics of supper, it may be taken for granted
that late, heavy meals are dangerous, and to be avoided. Chymification
and sleep may go on tolerably well together after it; but when the time
comes for chylification and sanguification, feverish wakefulness will
accompany the process. Dyspeptic patients, however, are authorized to
take a light supper before going to bed. It is said that the idle man
is the devil’s man; and it may also be said of the stomach, that if it
has nothing to do it will be doing mischief. It is especially so with
persons of weak digestion; for whom an egg, lightly boiled, or dry
toast and a little white-wine negus, is a supper _selon l’ordinance_.
But a wise man will hardly want a guide in this matter. Breakfast may
be the meal of friendship; dinner, of etiquette; and supper, the feast
of wit;--but, generally speaking, he will show most wit who takes the
least supper. Common sense should teach him the exact measure of his
capacity.

A whale swallows at a gulp more shrimps than would be required to make
sauce for the universe. That gentle songster, the canary, is like the
celebrated contralto songstress, who eats daily half a peck of saffron
salad;--the bird consumes nearly his own bulk weight of food. But he
is delicate compared with the caterpillar, which consumes five hundred
times its own weight before it lies down, to rise a butterfly. As
for the hyæna, he is popularly said, when hungry, and other food not
presenting itself, to eat himself; and probably, like Dr. Kitchener,
he carries his own sauce-box about with him! But the stomach of man is
not made to perform such feats as those accomplished by the whale, the
canary, or the caterpillar. He is especially to remember, that though
an animal, he is not a beast.

Man, it must be remembered, began with refinement. He was made perfect,
upright, and to him was given “every herb bearing seed, which is on
the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a
tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Here food is used as
the symbol of celestial blessings; as in the passage, “He should have
fed them also with the finest of the wheat, and with honey out of the
rock should I have satisfied them.” With the fall, civilization and
innocence also fell, and barbarism was the offspring of disobedience.
There was a time when men had sunk so low that they were like the
Troglodytes described by Pomponius Mela--“Troglodytæ nullarum opum
domini, strident magis quam loquuntur, specus subeunt, alunturque
serpentibus”--they had no property, shrieked rather than spoke, lived
in caves, and devoured serpents for food. The fine wheat and the
honey from the rock was not theirs. The Fenns, painted by Tacitus,
were only a shade less barbarous: “Mira feritas,” says the graphic
Caius Cornelius, “fœda paupertas; non arma, non equi, non penates;
victui herba, vestui pelles, cubili humus”--wonderful for their
wildness, their poverty filthy; they had neither horses, nor gods;
the grass was their food, skins their raiment, and the ground their
couch. The Helvetii were _progressistas_ in the race for the prize of
civilization; and, when planning an emigration project, they took two
years to thoroughly perfect the plan, laying up stores of provisions
the while. Whoever Ceres may have really been, it is clear that in her
is to be recognised the benefactress of mankind:--

  “Prima Ceres unco glebam dimovit aratro,
  Prima dedit fruges, alimentaque mitia terris,
  Prima dedit leges;”

she who taught them the uses of the plough, of agriculture, and of
fixed laws, and who gave them what God had intended for civilized and
innocent man, “the finest wheat,”--she must have been the renovator of
the earth, and of beauty upon it. Man, like the rudest saints of the
desert--so near may savagery be to undisciplined sanctity--had been
“feeding on ashes but now the finest wheat was again there to give
him strength and delight,”--wheat, where golden grain had, perhaps,
first yielded its abundance beneath the shade of the primeval tree of
knowledge.

The era of wheat, of the ploughshare, and of iron, was the era of the
second civilization. Man was no longer generally a wild savage, or a
cunning hunter. God again vouchsafed to him “the finest of the wheat;”
and, as civilization progressed, so also was widened the circle of
supply, upon which indeed much of civilization depends.

The subject of “Man and his Food,” with regard to the future, has been
ably discussed by Dr. Leonard Withington, of Newbury, Massachusetts.
He has moved the question, whether we have reached the terminus of all
our stores or not? He holds, that the forest, the field, the river,
and the sea may yield contributions to our table, in addition to the
known abundance for which our as abundant gratitude is now due. We
have not reached the line of our last inventions; and, doubtless, new
articles are to be discovered, which will have an equal influence on
virtue and happiness. “Boundless nature,” says Dr. Withington, “lies
before us, and undeveloped skill is wrapt up in the human breast. The
exuberance of our system is not exhausted,--her beasts, her birds, her
fishes, her plants, her growing trees and her copious grasses, her
pastures, her valleys, her lofty mountains and her rolling streams, are
all spread out to the hungry world. Nature is an image of God, and she
echoes, though she does not originate the words, ‘In my Father’s house
is bread enough, and to spare. Thou visitest the earth, and waterest
it; thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of
water; thou preparedst them corn when thou hadst so provided for it.
Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the furrows
thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the springing
thereof.’”

Dr. Cumming holds, not only that death is the most unnatural of
conditions, but that when the era of heavenly, everlasting life shall
be established, the heaven of man will be here upon earth. So Dr.
Withington thinks that the earth will not only be made more heavenly
beautiful than it now is, before the period of the new paradise, but
more abundant also. “The manna,” he says, “which is hereafter to be
provided, will not be rained down from heaven, but will spring up from
the earth.” And there is common sense in this last assertion, for in
it is implied that abundance will come by the proper application of
knowledge and labour, without which the earth, ever wise and prudent,
will yield but little. The increasing populations of that earth have
two objects before them which are of no small importance, and which
are thus defined by Dr. Withington:--“One is, to impart from the open
field of nature all those good and wholesome things which our Father
has laid up for us; and secondly, to train our taste and habits for
the using of those things which are nutritive and sweet, and which may
have the best influence on our moral character and social happiness.”
The training should begin from early childhood,--and early childhood
requires delicate training.

An American writer on dietetics is half afraid that people will smile
if he, in connexion with the subject, introduces dainty children; and
yet, as he justly remarks, “there is a mystery about this subject, on
which we may well bestow a passing thought.” There are children in all
the various classes of life who are “very difficult about their food.”
“These little connoisseurs,” says Dr. Withington, “cannot eat with the
rest of the family, and the mother and the son are often at issue in
an interminable controversy. The mother often says it is all whim and
caprice; and some severe matrons tell their children that they shall
not eat a morsel until the given lump is devoured. But the son would
say, if he could quote Shakspeare, ‘You cram these things into mine
ear against the stomach of my sense. I know I don’t love it. I can’t
eat it; it is not fit to be eaten.’” The doctor proceeds to inquire
if this turn of the appetite be a matter of caprice or necessity. He
examines whether the mother, or the boy be right. He acknowledges the
antiquity of a controversy which has been carried on for ages, and he
has no doubt “that Eve had it with Cain and Abel, the first supper
she gave them after they were weaned. We offer it,” he adds, “as a
profound conjecture, that Cain was a dainty boy, and probably doubled
up his fist at his mother.” With regard to the controversy itself, he
appears to think that it has much of the quality of that which marked
the dispute about the colour of the chameleon, and that “both parties
are partly wrong.” It is likely, as he remarks, that much depends on
the training and volition, and also on original nature and temperament.
“There are some things we were never made for, and they were never made
for us. There are some kinds of food which, though they may suit the
race, were never made for the _individual_. But this blinded appetite,
partly natural, partly artificial, follows through life.” And this is
leaving the controversy very much where the worthy doctor found it.

Finally, let them who fancy that man was made merely to enjoy, learn
truth from contemplating the portrait of one whose sole philosophy was
gastronomic enjoyment. If ever there was a man who had a gay celebrity,
and who taught in the porch, that life was only life at the tables in
the “salon,” it was the editor of the “Almanack des Gourmands.” He
taught not that _bibere est vivere_, but that _bibere_ was only the
half of _vivere_, and that to _live_ was emphatically to eat and drink.
He was a practical philosopher, it should be observed, and here is the
portrait of the man, at the end of his philosophical practice:--“The
author of the Almanack is still in the land of the living. He eats,
digests, and sleeps, in the charming valley of Longpons.... But how is
he changed! At eight o’clock, he rings for his servants, scolds them,
cries _Extravagantes!_ calls for his _soupe aux ficules_, and swallows
it. Digestion now commences: the labour of the stomach reacts upon
the brain, the gloomy ideas of the fasting man disappear, calmness
resumes her sway, he no longer wishes to die. He speaks, converses
tranquilly, asks for Paris news; and inquires for the old gourmands
still living. When digestion is finished, he becomes silent, and sleeps
for some hours. On awaking, complaints recommence; he weeps, he sighs,
he becomes angry, he wishes to die, he calls eagerly for death. The
hour for dinner comes; he sits himself down to table, dinner is served,
he eats abundantly of every dish, although he says he has no want of
anything, as his last hour is approaching. At dessert, his face becomes
animated; his eyes, sunk in their orbits, sparkle brightly. ‘How is
Marquis de Coussy, dear doctor?’ he exclaims: ‘how long will he last?
They say he has a terrible disease. Doubtless they have not put him
on regimen. You would never have suffered that, for one must eat to
live,--ah!’ At length, he rises from table. Behold him in an immense
arm-chair. He crosses his legs, supports his stumps upon his knees (for
he has no hands, but something resembling the flap of a goose), and
continues his conversation, which always runs on eating. ‘The rains
have been abundant,’ he cries, ‘we shall have plenty of mushrooms
this autumn. What a pity, dear doctor, that I cannot accompany you in
your walks to St. Geneviève! How fine our vines are! what a delicious
perfume!’ And then he falls asleep, and dreams of what he will eat on
the following day!”

Fancy, if the theory of guardian angels be a beautiful truth, what
the winged watcher of this animal, staggering over the supper of
life, must feel at contemplating the ward committed to his care. For
our own profit such examples may be employed, as the ancients showed
their slaves drunk in presence of their sons, that the latter might be
disgusted with inebriety. And this tail-piece should be engraved at the
end of every work professing to teach that there is even in this world,
a paradise for _gourmands_. The old heathen Socrates knew better, when
he said, “Beware of such food as persuades a man, though he be not
hungry, to eat; and those liquors that will prevail with a man to drink
them when he is not thirsty.” In the same spirit, the pious Dodsley
taught, that health sat on the brow of him only who had temperance
for a companion--temperance, which Sir William Temple styled as “that
virtue without pride and fortune without envy, which gives health of
body and tranquillity of mind, the best guardian of youth, and support
of old age.” So Jeremy Collier says, “Temperance keeps the senses clear
and unembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with more keenness
and satisfaction. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the
person; it gives you the command of your head, secures your health, and
preserves you in a condition for business.” What comment can I add to
texts of such philosophy, but to bid wise men welcome to the feast of
reason, where

  “May good digestion wait on appetite,
  And health on both!”


THE END.


R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.




FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry Holden Frankum, Esq.

[2] “’Twixt the gloaming and the murk,
    When the kye comes hame.”--HOGG.

[3] Φιλομμειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη. Iliad, iii. 414.

[4] After “Cupiditate et Amore,” Livy ungallantly adds, “quæ maxime ad
muliebre ingenium efficaces preces sunt.”

[5] Lady Morgan, I think, calls dancing, “the Poetry of Motion.”

[6] “Qu’est-ce que la danse? le sourire des jambes. Qu’est-ce que le
sourire? la danse du visage.”--_Bibliophile Jacob._

[7] The theatre at Boulogne stands on the site of the old convent
garden belonging to the Cordeliers, the sea formerly flowed close to
the spot. When Henry VIII. took Boulogne, he converted the convent into
a marine arsenal.




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.



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