The Squire--The Breakfast
Squire Headlong, in the meanwhile, was quadripartite in his locality;
that is to say, he was superintending the operations in four scenes of
action--namely, the cellar, the library, the picture-gallery, and the
dining-room,--preparing for the reception of his philosophical and
dilettanti visitors. His myrmidon on this occasion was a little
red-nosed butler, whom nature seemed to have cast in the genuine mould
of an antique Silenus, and who waddled about the house after his
master, wiping his forehead and panting for breath, while the latter
bounced from room to room like a cracker, and was indefatigable in his
requisitions for the proximity of his vinous Achates, whose advice and
co-operation he deemed no less necessary in the library than in the
cellar. Multitudes of packages had arrived, by land and water, from
London, and Liverpool, and Chester, and Manchester, and Birmingham,
and various parts of the mountains: books, wine, cheese, globes,
mathematical instruments, turkeys, telescopes, hams, tongues,
microscopes, quadrants, sextants, fiddles, flutes, tea, sugar,
electrical machines, figs, spices, air-pumps, soda-water, chemical
apparatus, eggs, French-horns, drawing books, palettes, oils and
colours, bottled ale and porter, scenery for a private theatre,
pickles and fish-sauce, patent lamps and chandeliers, barrels of
oysters, sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, beds, looking-glasses,
pictures, fruits and confections, nuts, oranges, lemons, packages of
salt salmon, and jars of Portugal grapes. These, arriving with
infinite rapidity, and in inexhaustible succession, had been deposited
at random, as the convenience of the moment dictated,--sofas in the
cellar, chandeliers in the kitchen, hampers of ale in the
drawing-room, and fiddles and fish-sauce in the library. The servants,
unpacking all these in furious haste, and flying with them from place
to place, according to the tumultuous directions of Squire Headlong
and the little fat butler who fumed at his heels, chafed, and crossed,
and clashed, and tumbled over one another up stairs and down. All was
bustle, uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance: while
the rage and impetuosity of the Squire continued fermenting to the
highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time,
by converting some newly unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a
ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head of some unfortunate
servant who did not seem to move in a ratio of velocity corresponding
to the intensity of his master's desires.
In this state of eager preparation we shall leave the happy
inhabitants of Headlong Hall, and return to the three philosophers and
the unfortunate divine, whom we left limping with a sprained ankle,
into the breakfast-room of the inn; where his two supporters deposited
him safely in a large arm-chair, with his wounded leg comfortably
stretched out on another. The morning being extremely cold, he
contrived to be seated as near the fire as was consistent with his
other object of having a perfect command of the table and its
apparatus; which consisted not only of the ordinary comforts of tea
and toast, but of a delicious supply of new-laid eggs, and a
magnificent round of beef; against which Mr Escot immediately pointed
all the artillery of his eloquence, declaring the use of animal food,
conjointly with that of fire, to be one of the principal causes of the
present degeneracy of mankind. "The natural and original man," said
he, "lived in the woods: the roots and fruits of the earth supplied
his simple nutriment: he had few desires, and no diseases. But, when
he began to sacrifice victims on the altar of superstition, to pursue
the goat and the deer, and, by the pernicious invention of fire, to
pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and premature death,
were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the correct
interpretation of the fable of Prometheus, which is the symbolical
portraiture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied fire to
culinary purposes, and thereby surrendered his liver to the vulture of
disease. From that period the stature of mankind has been in a state
of gradual diminution, and I have not the least doubt that it will
continue to grow _small by degrees, and lamentably less_, till the
whole race will vanish imperceptibly from the face of the earth."
"I cannot agree," said Mr Foster, "in the consequences being so very
disastrous. I admit, that in some respects the use of animal food
retards, though it cannot materially inhibit, the perfectibility of
the species. But the use of fire was indispensably necessary, as
AEschylus and Virgil expressly assert, to give being to the various
arts of life, which, in their rapid and interminable progress, will
finally conduct every individual of the race to the philosophic
pinnacle of pure and perfect felicity."
"In the controversy concerning animal and vegetable food," said Mr
Jenkison, "there is much to be said on both sides; and, the question
being in equipoise, I content myself with a mixed diet, and make a
point of eating whatever is placed before me, provided it be good in
its kind."
In this opinion his two brother philosophers practically coincided,
though they both ran down the theory as highly detrimental to the best
interests of man.
"I am really astonished," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, gracefully
picking off the supernal fragments of an egg he had just cracked, and
clearing away a space at the top for the reception of a small piece of
butter--"I am really astonished, gentlemen, at the very heterodox
opinions I have heard you deliver: since nothing can be more obvious
than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use
of man."
"Even the tiger that devours him?" said Mr Escot.
"Certainly," said Doctor Gaster.
"How do you prove it?" said Mr Escot.
"It requires no proof," said Doctor Gaster: "it is a point of
doctrine. It is written, therefore it is so."
"Nothing can be more logical," said Mr Jenkison. "It has been said,"
continued he, "that the ox was expressly made to be eaten by man: it
may be said, by a parity of reasoning, that man was expressly made to
be eaten by the tiger: but as wild oxen exist where there are no men,
and men where there are no tigers, it would seem that in these
instances they do not properly answer the ends of their creation."
"It is a mystery," said Doctor Gaster.
"Not to launch into the question of final causes," said Mr Escot,
helping himself at the same time to a slice of beef, "concerning which
I will candidly acknowledge I am as profoundly ignorant as the most
dogmatical theologian possibly can be, I just wish to observe, that
the pure and peaceful manners which Homer ascribes to the Lotophagi,
and which at this day characterise many nations (the Hindoos, for
example, who subsist exclusively on the fruits of the earth), depose
very strongly in favour of a vegetable regimen."
"It may be said, on the contrary," said Mr Foster, "that animal food
acts on the mind as manure does on flowers, forcing them into a degree
of expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine
a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical
meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work
itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood,
sugar-baker's scum, and other _unnatural_ ingredients of that rich
composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and
insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the
advantage of natural theory on its side that the most strenuous
advocate of the vegetable system could desire; but it would soon
discover the practical error of its retrograde experiment by its
lamentable inferiority in strength and beauty to all the auriculas
around it. I am afraid, in some instances at least, this analogy holds
true with respect to mind. No one will make a comparison, in point of
mental power, between the Hindoos and the ancient Greeks."
"The anatomy of the human stomach," said Mr Escot, "and the formation
of the teeth, clearly place man in the class of frugivorous animals."
"Many anatomists," said Mr Foster, "are of a different opinion, and
agree in discerning the characteristics of the carnivorous classes."
"I am no anatomist," said Mr Jenkison, "and cannot decide where
doctors disagree; in the meantime, I conclude that man is omnivorous,
and on that conclusion I act."
"Your conclusion is truly orthodox," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster:
"indeed, the loaves and fishes are typical of a mixed diet; and the
practice of the Church in all ages shows----"
"That it never loses sight of the loaves and fishes," said Mr Escot.
"It never loses sight of any point of sound doctrine," said the
reverend doctor.
The coachman now informed them their time was elapsed; nor could all
the pathetic remonstrances of the reverend divine, who declared he had
not half breakfasted, succeed in gaining one minute from the
inexorable Jehu.
"You will allow," said Mr Foster, as soon as they were again in
motion, "that the wild man of the woods could not transport himself
over two hundred miles of forest, with as much facility as one of
these vehicles transports you and me through the heart of this
cultivated country."
"I am certain," said Mr Escot, "that a wild man can travel an immense
distance without fatigue; but what is the advantage of locomotion? The
wild man is happy in one spot, and there he remains: the civilised man
is wretched in every place he happens to be in, and then congratulates
himself on being accommodated with a machine, that will whirl him to
another, where he will be just as miserable as ever."
We shall now leave the mail-coach to find its way to Capel Cerig, the
nearest point of the Holyhead road to the dwelling of Squire Headlong.