The Doctor prepares an Entertainment in the Manner of the Ancients,
which is attended with divers ridiculous Circumstances.
In a word, our young gentleman, by his insinuating behaviour, acquired
the full confidence of the doctor, who invited him to an entertainment,
which he intended to prepare in the manner of the ancients. Pickle,
struck with this idea, eagerly embraced the proposal, which he honoured
with many encomiums, as a plan in all respects worthy of his genius and
apprehension; and the day was appointed at some distance of time,
that the treater might have leisure to compose certain pickles and
confections which were not to be found among the culinary preparations
of these degenerate days. With a view of rendering the physician's taste
more conspicuous, and extracting from it the more diversion, Peregrine
proposed that some foreigners should partake of the banquet; and the
task being left to his care and discretion, he actually bespoke the
company of a French marquis, an Italian count, and a German baron, whom
he knew to be egregious coxcombs, and therefore more likely to enhance
the joy of the entertainment.
Accordingly, the hour being arrived, he conducted them to the hotel
where the physician lodged, after having regaled their expectations with
an elegant meal in the genuine old Roman taste; and they were received
by Mr. Pallet, who did the honours of the house, while his friend
superintended the cook below. By this communicative painter, the guests
understood that the doctor had met with numerous difficulties in
the execution of his design; that no fewer than five cooks had been
dismissed, because they could not prevail upon their own consciences to
obey his directions in things that were contrary to the present practice
of their art; and that although he had at last engaged a person, by
an extraordinary premium, to comply with his orders, the fellow was so
astonished, mortified, and incensed at the commands he had received,
that his hair stood on end, and he begged on his knees to be released
from the agreement he had made; but finding that his employer insisted
upon the performance of his contract, and threatened to introduce him
to the commissaire if he should flinch from the bargain, he had, in the
discharge of his office, wept, sang, cursed, and capered for two whole
hours without intermission.
While the company listened to this odd information, by which they were
prepossessed with strange notions of the dinner, their ears were invaded
by a voice that exclaimed in French, “For the love of God! dear sir! for
the passion of Jesus Christ! spare me the mortification of the honey
and oil!” Their ears still vibrated with the sound, when the doctor
entering, was by Peregrine made acquainted with the strangers, to whom
he, in the transports of his wrath, could not help complaining of the
want of complaisance he had found in the Parisian vulgar, by which his
plan had been almost entirely ruined and set aside. The French marquis,
who thought the honour of his nation was concerned at this declaration,
professed his sorrow for what had happened, so contrary to the
established character of the people, and undertook to see the
delinquents severely punished, provided he could be informed of their
names or places of abode.
The mutual compliments that passed on this occasion were scarce
finished, when a servant, coming into the room, announced dinner; and
the entertainer led the way into another apartment, where they found a
long table, or rather two boards joined together, and furnished with a
variety of dishes, the steams of which had such evident effect upon the
nerves of the company, that the marquis made frightful grimaces, under
pretence of taking snuff; the Italian's eyes watered; the German's
visage underwent several distortions of features; our hero found means
to exclude the odour from his sense of smelling, by breathing only
through his mouth; and the poor painter, running into another room,
plugged his nostrils with tobacco. The doctor himself, who was the only
person present, whose organs were not discomposed, pointing to a couple
of couches placed on each side of the table, told his guests that he was
sorry he could not procure the exact triclinia of the ancients, which
were somewhat different from these conveniences, and desired they would
have the goodness to repose themselves without ceremony, each in his
respective couchette, while he and his friend Mr. Pallet would place
themselves upright at the ends, that they might have the pleasure of
serving those that lay along. This disposition, of which the strangers
had no previous idea, disconcerted and perplexed them in a most
ridiculous manner; the marquis and baron stood bowing to each other,
on pretence of disputing the lower seat, but in reality with a view of
profiting by the example of one another, for neither of them understood
the manner in which they were to loll; and Peregrine, who enjoyed their
confusion, handed the count to the other side, where, with the most
mischievous politeness, he insisted upon his taking possession of the
upper place.
In this disagreeable and ludicrous suspense, they continue acting a
pantomime of gesticulations, until the doctor earnestly entreated them
to waive all compliment and form, lest the dinner should be spoiled
before the ceremonial could be adjusted. Thus conjured, Peregrine took
the lower couch on the left-hand-side, laying himself gently down, with
his face towards the table. The marquis, in imitation of this pattern
(though he would have much rather fasted three days than run the risk of
discomposing his dress by such an attitude), stretched himself upon the
opposite place, reclining upon his elbow in a most painful and awkward
situation, with his head raised above the end of the couch, that the
economy of his hair might not suffer by the projection of his body. The
Italian, being a thin limber creature, planted himself next to Pickle,
without sustaining any misfortune but that of his stocking being torn
by a ragged nail of the seat, as he raised his legs on a level with the
rest of his limbs. But the baron, who was neither so wieldy nor supple
in his joints as his companions, flounced himself down with such
precipitation, that his feet, suddenly tilting up, came in furious
contact with the head of the marquis, and demolished every curl in a
twinkling, while his own skull, at the same instant, descended upon the
side of his couch, with such violence, that his periwig was struck off,
and the whole room filled with pulvilio.
The drollery of distress that attended this disaster entirely vanquished
the affected gravity of our young gentleman, who was obliged to
suppress his laughter by cramming his handkerchief in his mouth; for the
bare-headed German asked pardon with such ridiculous confusion, and
the marquis admitted his apology with such rueful complaisance, as were
sufficient to awake the mirth of a quietist.
This misfortune being repaired as well as the circumstances of
the occasion would permit, and every one settled according to the
arrangement already described, the doctor graciously undertook to give
some account of the dishes as they occurred, that the company might be
directed in their choice: and with an air of infinite satisfaction thus
began: “This here, gentlemen, is a boiled goose, served up in a sauce
composed of pepper, lovage, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies; I wish
for your sakes, gentlemen, it was one of the geese of Ferrara, so much
celebrated among the ancients for the magnitude of their livers, one
of which is said to have weighed upwards of two pounds; with this food,
exquisite as it was, did the tyrant Heliogabalus regale his hounds. But
I beg pardon, I had almost forgot the soup, which I hear is so necessary
an article at all tables in France. At each end there are dishes of the
salacacabia of the Romans; one is made of parsley, pennyroyal, cheese,
pine-tops, honey, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen livers; the
other is much the same as the soup-maigre of this country. Then there
is a loin of veal boiled with fennel and caraway-seed, on a pottage
composed of pickle, oil, honey, and flour, and a curious hachis of the
lights, liver, and blood of a hare, together with a dish of roasted
pigeons. Monsieur le baron, shall I help you to a plate of this soup?”
The German, who did not at all disapprove of the ingredients, assented
to the proposal, and seemed to relish the composition; while the marquis
being asked by the painter which of the silly-kickabys he chose, was,
in consequence of his desire, accommodated with a portion of the
soup-maigre; and the count, in lieu of spoon-meat, of which he said he
was no great admirer, supplied himself with a pigeon, therein conforming
to the choice of our young gentleman, whose example he determined to
follow through the whole course of the entertainment.
The Frenchman, having swallowed the first spoonful, made a full pause,
his throat swelled as if an egg had stuck in his gullet, his eyes
rolled, and his mouth underwent a series of involuntary contractions and
dilatations. Pallet, who looked steadfastly at this connoisseur, with a
view of consulting his taste, before he himself would venture upon the
soup, began to be disturbed at these motions, and observed, with some
concern, that the poor gentleman seemed to be going into a fit; when
Peregrine assured him, that these were symptoms of ecstasy, and, for
further confirmation, asked the marquis how he found the soup. It was
with infinite difficulty that his complaisance could so far master
his disgust as to enable him to answer, “Altogether excellent, upon my
honour!” and the painter being certified of his approbation, lifted the
spoon to his mouth without scruple, but far from justifying the eulogium
of his taster, when this precious composition diffused itself upon his
palate, he seemed to be deprived of all sense and motion, and sat like
the leaden statue of some river god, with the liquor flowing out at both
sides of his mouth.
The doctor, alarmed at this indecent phenomenon, earnestly inquired into
the cause of it; and when Pallet recovered his recollection, and swore
that he would rather swallow porridge made of burning brimstone, than
such an infernal mess as that which he had tasted, the physician, in
his own vindication, assured the company, that, except the usual
ingredients, he had mixed nothing in the soup but some sal ammoniac
instead of the ancient nitrum, which could not now be procured;
and appealed to the marquis, whether such a succedaneum was not an
improvement on the whole. The unfortunate petit-maitre, driven to
the extremity of his condescension, acknowledged it to be a masterly
refinement; and deeming himself obliged, in point of honour, to evince
his sentiments by his practice, forced a few more mouthfuls of this
disagreeable potion down his throat, till his stomach was so much
offended, that he was compelled to start up of a sudden; and, in the
hurry of his elevation, overturned his plate into the bosom of the
baron. The emergency of this occasion would not permit him to stay and
make apologies for his abrupt behaviour; so that he flew into another
apartment, where Pickle found him puking and crossing himself with great
devotion; and a chair, at his desire, being brought to the door, he
slipped into it more dead than alive, conjuring his friend Pickle to
make his peace with the company, and in particular excuse him to the
baron, on account of the violent fit of illness with which he had been
seized. It was not without reason that he employed a mediator; for when
our hero returned to the dining-room, the German got up, and was
under the hands of his own lacquey, who wiped the grease from a rich
embroidered waistcoat, while he, almost frantic with his misfortune,
stamped upon the ground, and in High Dutch cursed the unlucky banquet,
and the impertinent entertainer, who all this time, with great
deliberation, consoled him for the disaster, by assuring him that the
damage done might be repaired with some oil of turpentine and a hot
iron. Peregrine, who could scarce refrain from laughing in his face,
appeased his indignation by telling him how much the whole company, and
especially, the marquis, was mortified at the accident; and the unhappy
salacacabia being removed, the places were filled with two pies, one
of dormice liquored with syrup of white poppies, which the doctor had
substituted in the room of toasted poppy-seed, formerly eaten with
honey, as a dessert; and the other composed of a hock of pork baked in
honey.
Pallet, hearing the first of these dishes described, lifted up his hands
and eyes, and with signs of loathing and amazement, pronounced, “A
pie made of dormice and syrup of poppies! Lord in heaven! what beastly
fellows those Romans were!” His friend checked him for his irreverent
exclamation with a severe look, and recommended the veal, of which he
himself cheerfully ate, with such encomiums to the company, that the
baron resolved to imitate his example, after having called for a bumper
of Burgundy, which the physician, for his sake, wished to have been the
true wine of Falernum. The painter, seeing nothing else upon the table
which he would venture to touch, made a merit of necessity, and had
recourse to the veal also; although he could not help saying that he
would not give one slice of the roast beef of Old England for all the
dainties of a Roman Emperor's table. But all the doctor's invitations
and assurances could not prevail upon his guests to honour the hachis
and the goose; and that course was succeeded by another, in which he
told them were divers of those dishes, which among the ancients had
obtained the appellation of politeles, or magnificent. “That which
smokes in the middle,” said he, “is a sow's stomach, filled with a
composition of minced pork, hog's brains, eggs, pepper, cloves, garlic,
aniseed, rue, ginger, oil, wine, and pickle. On the right-hand side are
the teats and belly of a sow, just farrowed, fried with sweet wine, oil,
flour, lovage, and pepper. On the left is a fricassee of snails, fed,
or rather purged, with milk. At that end next Mr. Pallet are fritters
of pompions, lovage, origanum, and oil; and here are a couple of pullets
roasted and stuffed in the manner of Apicius.”
The painter, who had by wry faces testified his abhorrence of the
sow's stomach, which he compared to a bagpipe, and the snails which had
undergone purgation, he no sooner heard him mention the roasted pullets,
than he eagerly solicited a wing of the fowl; upon which the doctor
desired he would take the trouble of cutting them up, and accordingly
sent them round, while Pallet tucked the table-cloth under his chin,
and brandished his knife and fork with singular address: but scarce were
they set down before him, when the tears ran down his cheeks; and he
called aloud, in a manifest disorder, “Zounds! this is the essence of a
whole bed of garlic!” That he might not, however, disappoint or disgrace
the entertainer, he applied his instruments to one of the birds; and
when he opened up the cavity, was assaulted by such an irruption of
intolerable smells, that, without staying to disengage himself from the
cloth, he sprang away, with an exclamation of “Lord Jesus!” and involved
the whole table in havoc, ruin, and confusion.
Before Pickle could accomplish his escape, he was sauced with the syrup
of the dormouse pie, which went to pieces in the general wreck; and as
for the Italian count, he was overwhelmed by the sow's stomach, which,
bursting in the fall, discharged its contents upon his leg and thigh,
and scalded him so miserably, that he shrieked with anguish, and grinned
with a most ghastly and horrible aspect.
The baron, who sat secure without the vortex of this tumult, was not at
all displeased at seeing his companions involved in such a calamity as
that which he had already shared; but the doctor was confounded with
shame and vexation. After having prescribed an application of oil to
the count's leg, he expressed his sorrow for the misadventure, which he
openly ascribed to want of taste and prudence in the painter, who did
not think proper to return, and make an apology in person; and protested
that there was nothing in the fowls which could give offence to a
sensible nose, the stuffing being a mixture of pepper, lovage, and
assafoetida, and the sauce consisting of wine and herring-pickle, which
he had used instead of the celebrated garum of the Romans; that famous
pickle having been prepared sometimes of the scombri, which were a
sort of tunny-fish, and sometimes of the silurus, or shad-fish: nay, he
observed that there was a third kind, called garum haemation, made of
the guts, gills, and blood of the thynnus.
The physician, finding it would be impracticable to re-establish the
order of the banquet, by presenting again the dishes which had been
discomposed, ordered everything to be removed, a clean cloth to be laid,
and the dessert to be brought in. Meanwhile, he regretted his incapacity
to give them a specimen of the aliens, or fish meals of the ancients,
such as the jus diabaton, the conger-eel, which, in Galen's opinion, is
hard of digestion; the cornuta, or gurnard, described by Pliny in his
Natural History, who says, the horns of many of them were a foot and
a half in length, the mullet and lamprey, that were in the highest
estimation of old, of which last Julius Caesar borrowed six thousand for
one triumphal supper. He observed that the manner of dressing them was
described by Horace, in the account he gives of the entertainment to
which Maecenas was invited by the epicure Nasidienus:--
Affertur squillas inter muraena natantes, etc.
and told them that they were commonly eaten with the thus Syriacum,
a certain anodyne and astringent seed, which qualified the purgative
nature of the fish. This learned physician gave them to understand, that
though this was reckoned a luxurious fish in the zenith of the Roman
taste, it was by no means comparable, in point of expense, to some
preparations in vogue about the time of that absurd voluptuary
Heliogabalus, who ordered the brains of six hundred ostriches to be
compounded in one illness.
By this time the dessert appeared, and the company were not a little
rejoiced to see plain olives in salt and water: butt what the master of
the feast valued himself upon, was a sort of jelly, which he affirmed
to be preferable to the hypotrimma of Hesychius, being a mixture of
vinegar, pickle, and honey, boiled to proper consistence, and candied
assafoetida, which he asserted, in contradiction to Aumelbergius and
Lister, was no other than the laser Syriacum, so precious, as to be sold
among the ancients to the weight of a silver penny. The gentlemen took
his word for the excellency of this gum, but contented themselves with
the olives, which gave such an agreeable relish to the wine, that they
seemed very well disposed to console themselves for the disgraces they
had endured; and Pickle, unwilling to lose the least circumstance of
entertainment that could be enjoyed in their company, went in quest of
the painter, who remained in his penitentials in another apartment, and
could not be persuaded to re-enter the banqueting room, until Peregrine
undertook to procure his pardon from those whom he had injured. Having
assured him of this indulgence, our young gentleman led him in like a
criminal, bowing on all hands with all air of humility and contrition;
and particularly addressing himself to the count, to whom he swore in
English, as God was his Saviour, he had no intent to affront man, woman,
or child: but was fain to make the best of his way, that he might not
give the honourable company cause of offence, by obeying the dictates of
nature in their presence.
When Pickle interpreted this apology to the Italian, Pallet was forgiven
in very polite terms, and even received into favour by his friend the
doctor, in consequence of our hero's intercession: so that all the
guests forgot their chagrin, and paid their respects so piously to the
bottle, that in a short time the Champagne produced very evident effects
in the behaviour of all present.