My forthcoming work in five volumes, “The Neglect of Cheese in European
Literature” is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it
is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such
a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these
pages. I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer. Poets
have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. Virgil, if I
remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman
restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese. The only other poet
I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the
point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says: “If all
the trees were bread and cheese”--which is, indeed a rich and gigantic
vision of the higher gluttony. If all the trees were bread and cheese
there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where
I was living. Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me
as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus. Except Virgil and this anonymous
rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese. Yet it has every quality
which we require in exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it
rhymes to “breeze” and “seas” (an essential point); that it is emphatic
in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities. For
their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often
say, “Cheese it!” or even “Quite the cheese.” The substance itself is
imaginative. It is ancient--sometimes in the individual case, always
in the type and custom. It is simple, being directly derived from milk,
which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with
soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought
of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale.
Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.
But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song.
Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an
eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even
illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive
days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they
had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should
want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it. In each inn
the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different. There was a noble
Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so
on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that
paltry and mechanical civilization which holds us all in bondage. Bad
customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs
are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both
the good and bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us
from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us
freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive. A
bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an
umbrella--artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but
uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and
the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom
of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese.
Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us
say, we compare cheese with soap (that vastly inferior substance), we
shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or
Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians
have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's
soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly
Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he
is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having
some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned
foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not
produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead
identity, never that soft play of slight variation which exists in
things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine,
or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every
outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders go mad. But
you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of
Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in
one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.
When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I
reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with
great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate
restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things besides bread and
cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get
it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left
England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up
into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that, instead
of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits--to one who had
eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits--to one who had
proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between
cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms. I
asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had
joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but
yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding
substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off
slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious
as to pray for his daily biscuits. He gave me generally to understand
that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore
resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern
Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.