And a story which has lately appeared in Germany tells of a sensitive
palate in Goethe: “At a small party at the court of Weimar, the Marshal
asked permission to submit a nameless sample of wine. Accordingly, a
red wine was circulated, tasted, and much commended. Several of the
company pronounced it Burgundy, but could not agree as to the special
vintage or the year. Goethe alone tasted and tasted again, shook his
head, and, with a meditative air, set his glass on the table. ‘Your
Excellency appears to be of a different opinion,’ said the court
marshal. ‘May I ask what name you give to the wine?’ ‘The wine,’ said
the poet, ‘is quite unknown to me; but I do not think it is a Burgundy.
I should rather consider it a good Jena wine that has been kept for
some while in a Madeira cask.’ ‘And so, in fact, it is,’ said the court
marshal. For a more discriminating palate, one must go to the story
of the rival wine-tasters in ‘Don Quixote,’ who from a single glass
detected the key and leather thong in a cask of wine.”
But that great capacity means also discriminating palate could
hardly be true for Americans of the old stock and simple life. Judge
Usher, Secretary of Interior in Lincoln’s Cabinet at the time of the
President’s death, said that he had never heard Abraham Lincoln refer
to his food in any way whatever.
* * * * *
From a consideration of women’s cook-books springs another suggestion.
Heaped upon one’s table, the open pages and appetiteful illustrations
put one to thinking that if women of intelligence, and of leisure
except for burdens they assume under so-called charity or a faddish
impulse, were to take each some department of the household, and give
time and effort to gaining a complete knowledge of that department--a
knowledge of its evolution and history, of its scientific and hygienic
bearings, of its gastronomic values if it touched upon the table--there
would be great gain to the world at large and to their friends. For
instance, if a woman skilled in domestic science and the domestic
arts were to take some fruit, or some vegetable, or cereal, or meat,
and develop to the utmost what an old author-cook calls, after those
cook-oracles of ancient Rome, the “Apician mysteries” of the dish,
her name would deserve to go down to posterity with something of the
odor--or flavor--of sanctity. Hundreds of saints in the calendar never
did anything half so meritorious and worthy of felicitous recognition
from their fellow-men.
Take, for example, the democratic cabbage and its cousins german,
and their treatment in the average cuisine. What might not such an
investigation show this Monsieur Chou or Herr Kohl and his relations
capable of!--the cabbage itself, the Scotch kale, the Jersey cabbage,
and Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, and broccoli, and kohl-rabi, and
cabbage palms, and still other species! Looked at in their evolution,
and the part they have played in human history as far back as in old
Persia and the Anabasis of the Greeks, and so late as the famine times
of Ireland, these succulent and nutritious vegetables would be most
interesting. And, even if chemically their elements vary, the fact
that all the family are blessed with a large percentage of nitrogen
might be shown to have increased their usefulness long before chemists
analyzed their tissues and told us why men who could not buy meat so
carefully cultivated the foody leaves. Under such sane and beneficent
impulses every well-directed household would become an experiment
station for the study of human food--not the extravagant and rare after
the test and search of imperial Heliogabalus, but in the best modern,
scientific, economic, gastronomic, and democratic manner.
Since making this foregoing suggestion I find this point similarly
touched by the man who dissertated on roast pig. “It is a
desideratum,” says Lamb, “in works that treat de re culinaria, that we
have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours: as to show
why cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why
the haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder
civilly declineth it; why loin of veal (a pretty problem), being itself
unctious, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter--and why
the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the
French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points
to parsnips.... We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery.
We feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish
that is in us.”
In speaking of modern household books one cannot have done without
adding still one word more about the use of the word “servant” as
these books seem to speak of it. Owing to an attempted Europeanizing
of our ideas, and also to the fact that many of our domestics are of
foreign birth and habits of thought--or of the lowly, velvet-voiced,
unassertive suavity of the most loyal negro--the term has gradually
crept to a quasi acceptance in this country. It is a word not
infrequently obnoxious to Americans--employers--of the old stock, and
trained in the spirit which wrote the Declaration of Independence and
fought its sequent War. “From the time of the Revolution,” says Miss
Salmon in her “Domestic Service,” “until about 1850 the word ‘servant’
does not seem to have been generally applied in either section [north
or south] to white persons of American birth.”
The term indicates social conditions which no longer exist and
represents ideas which no longer have real life--we have but to
consider how the radical Defoe published, in 1724, “The Great Law of
Subordination consider’d; or, the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour
of Servants in England duly enquir’d into,” to be convinced of our
vast advance in human sympathy--and a revival of our American spirit
toward the word would be a wholesome course. In the mouths of many
who use it to excess--those mainly at fault are innocently imitative,
unthinking, or pretentious women--it sounds ungracious, if not vulgar,
and distinctly untrue to those who made the country for us and
desirable for us to live in; and untrue also to the best social feeling
of to-day. It is still for a genuine American rather hard to imagine
a person such as the word “servant” connotes--a lackey, a receiver
of tips of any sort--with an election ballot in hand and voting
thinkingly, knowingly, intelligently for the guidance of our great
government. It would not have been so difficult for the old δοῦλοι of
Athens to vote upon the Pnyx as for such a man to vote aright for
us. And not infrequently, in the ups and downs of speculation and the
mushroom growth and life of fortunes among us, the “servant,” to use
the old biblical phrase, is sometimes greater in moral, intellectual,
and social graces than his “lord.” The term belongs to times, and the
temperamental condition of times when traces of slavery were common,
and when employers believed, and acted upon the faith, that they hired
not a person’s labor but the person himself--or herself--who was
subject to a sort of ownership and control.
Let us remand the word to the days of Dean Swift and such conditions
as the tremendous satire of his “Directions to Servants” exhibited, in
which--except perhaps in Swift’s great heart--there was neither the
humanity of our times, nor the courtesy of our times, nor the sure
knowledge of our times--which endeavor to create, and, in truth, are
gradually making trained and skilful workers in every department, and
demand in return for service with perfectness as its aim, independence
of the person, dignified treatment and genuine respect from the
employer.
All these things the women’s household and cook-books will be, nay,
are, gradually teaching, and that which Charles Carter, “lately cook
to his Grace the Duke of Argyle,” wrote in 1730 may still hold good:
“’Twill be very easy,” said Master Carter, “for an ordinary Cook when
he is well-instructed in the most Elegant Parts of his Profession to
lower his Hand at any time; and he that can excellently perform in a
Courtly and Grand Manner, will never be at a Loss in any other.” When
this future knowledge and adjustment come we shall be free from the
tendencies which Mistress Glasse, after her outspoken manner, describes
of her own generation: “So much is the blind folly of this age,” cries
the good woman, “that they would rather be imposed upon by a French
booby than give encouragement to a good English cook.”
Economic changes such as we have indicated must in measurable
time ensue. The science and the art of conducting a house are now
obtaining recognition in our schools. Not long, and the knowledge
will be widespread. Its very existence, and the possibility of its
diffusion, is a result of the nineteenth century movement for the
broadening of women’s knowledge and the expansion of their interests
and independence--this wedded with the humane conviction that the
wisest and fruitfullest use of scientific deduction and skill is in the
bettering of human life. Behind and giving potence to these impulses is
the fellowship, liberty, and equality of human kind--the great idea of
democracy.
Already we have gone back to the wholesomeness of our English
forebears’ estimate that the physician and cook are inseparable.
Further still, we may ultimately retrace our ideas, and from the point
of view of economics and sociology declare that with us, as with the
old Jews and Greeks, the priest and the cook are one.
PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
And this I sweare by blackest brooke of hell,
I am no pick-purse of another’s wit.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
Yet these mine owne, I wrong not other men,
Nor traffique farther then this happy clime,
Nor filch from Portes, nor from Petrarchs pen,
A fault too common in this latter time.
Divine Sir Philip, I avouch thy writ,
I am no pick-purse of anothers wit.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
A thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it
his own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
PLAGIARIZING HUMORS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Among the jocularities of literature none is greater than Squire
Bickerstaff’s; and none has had greater results--with perhaps one
exception. The practicality of the Squire’s jest and the flavor of
it suited the century of Squire Western rather than our own. But its
excuse was in the end it served of breaking the old astrologer’s hold
upon the people.
Jonathan Swift is the writer to whom the original Bickerstaff squibs
are in the main to be ascribed. It is due to Swift’s clarity and
strength that they are among the best of literary fooling.
But Swift was not alone. He had the help of Addison, Steele, Prior,
Congreve, and other wits of Will’s Coffee-House and St. James’s.
Together they set all London laughing. Upon Swift’s shoulders,
however, falls the onus of the joke which must have been his recreation
amid pamphleteering and the smudging of his ecclesiastical hand with
political ink. It happened in 1708.
The English almanac was not in Swift’s day as in later times a simple
calendar of guesses about the weather. It was rather a “prognosticator”
in ambiguous phrase of war, pestilence, murder, and such horrors as
our yellow press nowadays serves up to readers, like in development to
the conning public of the old almanacs. It was at all times solemn and
dogmatic. What the almanac prognosticated was its philomath’s duty to
furnish. His science and pre-science builded a supposed influence of
the stars and their movements upon the moral life of man.
Squire Bicker staff’s jest had to do with almanac-makers, and was
directed against a chief pretender, Dr. Partridge, the astrologer and
philomath Pope refers to when he speaks of the translation of the raped
“Lock” to the skies:
“This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo’s eyes;
And hence th’ egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome.”
In the seventeenth century the ascendency of these charlatans had
become alarming. One of the most adroit and unscrupulous of their
number--William Lilly--had large following. They not only had the
popular ear, but now and then a man like Dryden inclined to them. Nor
did Sir Thomas Browne “reject a sober and regulated astrology.”
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the scandal of their
excesses was growing, and it was then that Swift came forward--just as
Swift was constantly coming forward with his great humanity, in one
instance to save Ireland the infliction of Wood’s halfpence, and again
in protest against English restriction of Irish trade; poor Swift’s
heart was always with the poor, the duped and undefended--it was then
that Swift came forward with “Predictions for the year 1708. Wherein
the Month, and the Day of the Month, are set down, the Person named,
and the great Actions and Events of next Year particularly related, as
They will come to Pass. Written to Prevent the People of England from
being farther imposed on by the vulgar Almanack-Makers.”
The surname of the signature, “Isaac Bickerstaff,” Swift took from a
locksmith’s sign. The Isaac he added as not commonly in use.
“I have considered,” he begins, “the gross abuse of astrology in this
kingdom, and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly
lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors, who set
up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that
the whole is a cheat; that it is absurd and ridiculous to imagine the
stars can have any influence at all upon human actions, thoughts, or
inclinations; and whoever has not bent his studies that way may be
excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that
noble art is treated by a few mean, illiterate traders between us
and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly,
and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the
planets, though they descend from no greater a height than their own
brains....
“As for the few following predictions, I now offer the world, I
forebore to publish them till I had perused the several Almanacks for
the year we are now entered upon. I found them all in the usual strain,
and I beg the reader will compare their manner with mine: and here I
make bold to tell the world that I lay the whole credit of my art upon
the truth of these predictions; and I will be content that Partridge
and the rest of his clan may hoot me for a cheat and impostor, if I
fail in any single particular of moment....
“My first prediction is but a trifle, yet I will mention it to show
how ignorant these sottish pretenders to astrology are in their own
concerns: it relates to Partridge, the Almanack-maker. I have consulted
the star of his nativity by my own rules, and find he will infallibly
die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging
fever; therefore I advise him to consider of it, and settle his affairs
in time....”
An “Answer to Bickerstaff by a Person of Quality,” evidently from the
hand of Swift and his friends, followed these “Predictions.”
“I have not observed for some years past,” it begins, “any
insignificant paper to have made more noise, or be more greedily
bought, than that of these Predictions.... I shall not enter upon the
examination of them; but think it very incumbent upon the learned Mr.
Partridge to take them into his consideration, and lay as many errors
in astrology as possible to Mr. Bickerstaff’s account. He may justly,
I think, challenge the ’squire to publish the calculation he has made
of Partridge’s nativity, by the credit of which he so determinately
pronounces the time and manner of his death; and Mr. Bickerstaff can
do no less in honour, than give Mr. Partridge the same advantage of
calculating his, by sending him an account of the time and place of his
birth, with other particulars necessary for such a work. By which, no
doubt, the learned world will be engaged in the dispute, and take part
on each side according as they are inclined....”
“The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions,
being an Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge, the Almanack-Maker,
upon the 29th instant in a Letter to a Person of Honour, written in the
year 1708,” continues the jocularity.
“My Lord: In obedience to your Lordship’s commands, as well as to
satisfy my own curiosity, I have some days past inquired constantly
after Partridge the Almanack-maker, of whom it was foretold in Mr.
Bickerstaff’s Predictions, published about a month ago, that he should
die the 29th instant, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.... I
saw him accidentally once or twice, about ten days before he died, and
observed he began very much to droop and languish, though I hear his
friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three
days ago he grew ill, ... but when I saw him he had his understanding
as well as ever I knew, and spoke strong and hearty, without any
seeming uneasiness or constraint [saying].... ‘I am a poor
ignorant fellow, bred to a mean trade, yet I have sense enough to know
that all pretences of foretelling by astrology are deceits for this
manifest reason: because the wise and the learned, who can only judge
whether there be any truth in this science, do all unanimously agree to
laugh at and despise it; and none but the poor, ignorant vulgar give it
any credit, and that only upon the word of such silly wretches as I and
my fellows, who can hardly write or read.’...
“After half an hour’s conversation I took my leave, being almost
stifled with the closeness of the room. I imagined he could not hold
out long, and therefore withdrew to a little coffee-house hard by,
leaving a servant at the house with orders to come immediately and tell
me, as near as he could, the minute when Partridge should expire, which
was not above two hours after.”
The burlesque next before the public, “Squire Bickerstaff detected; or,
the Astrological Impostor convicted, by John Partridge, student of
physic and astrology, a True and Impartial account of the Proceedings
of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against me,” was doubtless drawn up by
Addison’s friend Yalden, whom Scott speaks of as “Partridge’s near
neighbor.”
“The 28th of March, Anno Dom. 1708,” it begins, “being the night this
sham prophet had so impudently fixed for my last, which made little
impression on myself: but I cannot answer for my whole family; for my
wife, with concern more than usual, prevailed on me to take somewhat to
sweat for a cold; and between the hours of eight and nine to go to bed;
the maid, as she was warming my bed, with a curiosity natural to young
wenches, runs to the window, and asks of one passing the street who the
bell tolled for? Dr. Partridge, says he, the famous almanack-maker,
who died suddenly this evening: the poor girl, provoked, told him he
lied like a rascal; the other very sedately replied, the sexton had
so informed him, and if false, he was to blame for imposing upon a
stranger. She asked a second, and a third, as they passed, and every
one was in the same tone. Now, I do not say these are accomplices to
a certain astrological ’squire, and that one Bickerstaff might be
sauntering thereabout, because I will assert nothing here, but what
I dare attest for plain matter of fact. My wife at this fell into a
violent disorder, and I must own I was a little discomposed at the
oddness of the accident. In the mean time one knocks at my door; Betty
runs down, and opening, finds a sober grave person, who modestly
inquires if this was Dr. Partridge’s? She, taking him for some cautious
city patient, that came at that time for privacy, shews him into the
dining-room. As soon as I could compose myself, I went to him, and was
surprised to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule
in his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the room.
Pray, sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any business with
me?--Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring me a better light,
for this is a very dim one.--Sir, says I, my name is Partridge.--O!
the doctor’s brother, belike, cries he; the staircase, I believe, and
these two apartments hung in close mourning will be sufficient, and
only a strip of bays round the other rooms. The doctor must needs die
rich, he had great dealings in his way for many years; if he had no
family coat, you had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they
are as showish, and will look as magnificent, as if he was descended
from the blood royal.--With that I assumed a greater air of authority,
and demanded who employed him, or how he came there?--Why, I was sent,
sir, by the company of undertakers, says he, and they were employed
by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good doctor departed;
and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the
black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been
tacking up by this time.--Sir, says I, pray be advised by a friend,
and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife’s
voice (which, by the by, is pretty distinguishable), and in that corner
of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt before now;
if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about,
without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very
much to the detriment of your person.--Sir, cries he,
bowing with great civility, I perceive extreme grief for the loss of
the doctor disorders you a little at present, but early in the morning
I will wait on you with all the necessary materials....
“Well, once more I got my door closed, and prepared for bed, in hopes
of a little repose after so many ruffling adventures; just as I was
putting out my light in order to it, another bounces as hard as he
can knock; I open the window and ask who is there and what he wants?
I am Ned, the sexton, replies he, and come to know whether the doctor
left any orders for a funeral sermon, and where he is to be laid, and
whether his grave is to be plain or bricked?--Why, sirrah, say I, you
know me well enough; you know I am not dead, and how dare you affront
me after this manner?--Alackaday, sir, replies the fellow, why it is in
print, and the whole town knows you are dead; why, there is Mr. White,
the joiner, is fitting screws to your coffin; he will be here with
it in an instant: he was afraid you would have wanted it before this
time.... In short, what with undertakers, embalmers, joiners, sextons,
and your damned elegy hawkers upon a late practitioner in physic and
astrology, I got not one wink of sleep the whole night, nor scarce a
moment’s rest ever since....
“I could not stir out of doors for the space of three months after
this, but presently one comes up to me in the street, Mr. Partridge,
that coffin you was last buried in, I have not yet been paid for:
Doctor, cries another dog, how do you think people can live by
making of graves for nothing? next time you die, you may even toll
out the bell yourself for Ned. A third rogue tips me by the elbow,
and wonders how I have the conscience to sneak abroad without paying
my funeral expenses.--Lord, says one, I durst have swore that was
honest Dr. Partridge, my old friend, but, poor man, he is gone.--I
beg your pardon, says another, you look so like my old acquaintance
that I used to consult on some private occasions; but, alack, he is
gone the way of all flesh.--Look, look, look, cries a third, after a
competent space of staring at me, would not one think our neighbour,
the almanack-maker, was crept out of his grave, to take the other
peep at the stars in this world, and shew how much he is improved in
fortune-telling by having taken a journey to the other?...
“My poor wife is run almost distracted with being called widow
Partridge, when she knows it is false; and once a term she is cited
into the court to take out letters of administration. But the greatest
grievance is a paltry quack that takes up my calling just under my
nose, and in his printed directions, with N. B.--says he lives in the
house of the late ingenious Mr. John Partridge, an eminent practitioner
in leather, physic, and astrology....”
The astrologer, forgetting to refer to the stars for evidence,
indignantly declared himself to be alive, and Swift’s returning
“Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., against what is objected to
by Mr. Partridge in his Almanack for the present year, 1709, by the
said Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.,” complains: