still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy
entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers
will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert
and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s
birthday. The _scene_ is admirably painted by Walpole. “The house
is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable
varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes,
riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures,
filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed
is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full
of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and
all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings.
Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases
of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all
curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany
projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it
was the loosest family I ever saw.”
There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole
dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called
“the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the
frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death,
when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few
prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in
November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his
hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian
philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were
joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a
person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without
a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if
an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility
with which he departed.” There was neither convulsion, shock, nor
stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This
was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger
Berthollet,--although in the latter there was something heroical,
too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a
sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his
life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he
began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which
were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;--“a pause, and
then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen
dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”
I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse
to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast
for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about,
with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will
not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the
sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford
more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this
breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of
it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed
coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter
to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and
pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water;
add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and
keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of
the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper
consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from
the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into
a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft,
thin, jellied cake; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new
milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I
may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the
instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the
dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being
easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very
long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he
is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the
various
MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.
And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast
of,--a birth-right,--the least disputable article of that class, is
their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds
from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.
It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most
ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and
are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at
ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he
was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother,
let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be
one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child
to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not
have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this
vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and
the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger
can only be next in intensity to that of having him----but let us keep
to “Table Traits.”
Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that
is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm,
that produces what fresh medical students call the _aqua pumpaginis_,
has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids
are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if,
indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was
a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who
loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.
In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage.
Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress
Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying
strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in
Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent
took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.
“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,--a
substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until
comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew
it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which
it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern
Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves,
captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks
beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.
There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been
burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of
the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having
been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions
to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of
the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence
in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with
money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at
half-a-crown a ticket!
Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk
towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high
on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been
the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on
the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have
owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’
milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian
cheese was equal to our Stilton,--which, by the way, is not made _at_
Stilton,--and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the
addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on
bread and cheese,--principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the
same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People
in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people
_must_, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own
system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.
I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not;
but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human
milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine
matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by
mere repose.
Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites
to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to
create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both
these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the
milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more
than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as
sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in
feeble stomachs.
Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and
both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce,
and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the
people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat
eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance,
that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the
altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question,
without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that
Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so
unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man
is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or
not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could
hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those
which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their
profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six
feet high, and men at all points.
If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the
Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a
singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid
them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto,
that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air
through which they passed!
Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just
before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the
sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger.
In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every
banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking
them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which,
according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five
ways to dress eggs!
Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a
whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was,
that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of
that very interesting personage, her future husband!
There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by
the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not.
He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man
passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by
the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He
could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried
off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place.
The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed
with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only
reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to
win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was
as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that
they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a
month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away
as might, at first sight, appear.
Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking.
The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious.
It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice.
When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat,
its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is
more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a
hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled,
the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows
itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against
the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an
ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied
by bread;--of which I will now say a few words, and first of
CORN.
Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which
was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage
of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which
they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the
plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent
their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets
were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth
and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law
enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which
was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And
it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the
feeling which universally prevails,--that he alone is aristocratic, has
the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his
earthly tabernacle.
The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere;
her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of
many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings
showered down upon them by the Lord.
Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the
home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned.
Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million
bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually
poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could
hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and
touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would
be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice,
has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among
our Transatlantic cousins.
The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and
use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too,
acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King,
was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged
with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove
for yearly increase of harvests.
It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian
peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been
raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at
his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently,
and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,”
they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that
their district should be henceforth distinguished by its having _two_
harvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman”
smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he
was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not
alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year
in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And
therewith the simple people departed joyously.
The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language
bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in
connexion therewith, and their public treasury “_pascua_” showed,
by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in
minted coin enjoyed the _pecunia_, or “money,” for which “flocks”
(_pecus_) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (_locus_) was
_locuples_, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he
was in possession of a “salary,” who had his _salarium_, his allowance
of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he
lived.
The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The
labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked
the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman
plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the
inventive Gauls.
The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by
public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men
in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from
the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced
execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,--the
Emperor of China.
And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation
than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,”
says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places
the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as
he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European
Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising
no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a
more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly
declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting!--how
stimulating!--how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their
nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little
more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of
attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”
Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in
one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged
in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit
necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of
such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us,
that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with
which we endow _roué_ Members of Parliament, who have no excuse for
exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from
the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce
which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is
“further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the
absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s
lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare
the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose
mission it is to render it productive.
Wheat is a native of Asia,--some say, of Siberia; others, of Tartary;
but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found there growing
in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then asked its
protection. The powerful deity was called Robigus, and he was solemnly
invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The
Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was excepted from this
homage; and to threaten to put an offending soldier on rations of
barley, was to menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still
exists, if we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered
a basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper appellation
to be “_acqua crudele_.” He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that
it was detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry
man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet speaks
of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he described them
as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain,
however, found a good advocate in him who asked, “----where did you
ever see such horses and such men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a
heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too
exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad eating,--where
better is not to be procured,--though they are less attractive to the
palate than those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the
Romans not only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially.
The lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to
be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of provision was very
largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply; and nymphs
consumed as fast as swains presented.
If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden’s
affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to make
them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, and
suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid by
the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill
applied; and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other
imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on
an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was easily procured.
Sixty millions of bushels--twenty times that number of pounds’
weight--were supplied by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the
islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial granaries
an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is a fact, however, that
neither Romans nor Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the
method of making fermented bread.
Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the gods; the
first men existed on more bitter fare,--bread made from acorns. Ceres
has the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her
accordingly; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating the pig,
now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus
dispute the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The hand-mill
was one of the trophies which the Roman eagles bore back with them from
Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being
of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do
with this. It was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women,
selling bread, their customers; and, as he was the God of Eloquence,
it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are
endowed with shrewdness and loquacity.
The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our ladies
of the Gate, in Billing’s Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I
am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman
would surpass both. Let me cite an instance.