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.