St. Germain, at three-halfpence a cup; and the beverage was sung by
the poet Thomas in terms not exactly like those with which Delille
subsequently sang the virtues of the tree. The French coffee-houses at
once gained the popularity to which they aspired. To Pascal succeeded
Maliban, and then Gregoire opened his establishment in the Rue Mazarin,
in the vicinity of players and play-goers. At the same time, there
was a man in Paris, called “the lame Candiot,” who carried ready-made
coffee about from door to door, and sold it for a penny per cup,
sugar included. The _café_ at the foot of the bridge of Notre-Dame
was founded by Joseph; that at the foot of the bridge of St. Michel,
by Etienne; and both of these are more ancient than that of Procope,
who was the first, however, who made a fortune by his speculation. The
_Quai de l’Ecole_ had its establishment, (the _Café Manoury_,) which
I believe still exists, as does the _Café de la Régence_, which dates
from the time of the Regent Duke of Orleans, and where Rousseau used
to play at chess, and appear in his Armenian costume. It was also
frequented, _incog._, by the Emperor Joseph. The oldest _café_ in the
Palais Royal is the celebrated _Café de Foy_, so called from the name
of its founder. Carl Vernet was one of its most constant patrons. He
was there on one occasion, when some repairs were going on, and, in
his impatience, he flung a wet colouring brush from him, which struck
the ceiling and left a spot. He immediately ascended the ladder, and
with a touch of his finger converted the stain into a swallow; and
his handywork was still to be seen on the ceiling, when I was last
in Paris. It was before the _Café de Foy_ that Camille Desmoulins
harangued the mob, in July, 1789, with such effect, that they took up
arms, destroyed the Bastille, and inaugurated the Revolution.
The _Café de Valois_ will long be remembered for its aristocratic
character; that of Montansier, on the other hand, was remarkable for
the coarseness of its frequenters, and the violence with which they
discussed politics, especially at the period of the Restoration. The
_Café du Caveau_ was more joyously noisy with its gay artists and broad
songs. The Empire brought two establishments into popular favour, both
of which appealed to the lovers of beauty as well as of coffee. The
first was the _Café du Bosquet_, and the second the _Café des Mille
Colonnes_. Each was celebrated for the magnificent attractions of the
presiding lady,--the _belle limonadière_, as she was at first called,
or the _dame du comptoir_, as refinement chose to name her. Madame
Romain, at the _Mille Colonnes_, had a longer reign than her rival;
and the lady was altogether a more remarkable person. In the reign
of Louis XVIII., her seat was composed of the throne of Jerome, King
of Westphalia,--which was sold by auction on the bankruptcy of his
Majesty. Madame Romain descended from it, like a weary Queen, to take
refuge in a nunnery; and, curiously enough, the ex-King has recovered
his “throne,” which now figures, in the reduced aspect of a simple
arm-chair, in the _salon_ of his residence at the Palais Royal. After
the abdication of Madame Romain, the _Mille Colonnes_ endeavoured to
secure success by very meretricious means. Girls of a brazen quality
of beauty bore through the apartments flaming bowls of punch, usually
taken after the coffee; and the beverage and the bearers were equally
bad.
As the _Café Chrêtien_ was once thoroughly Jacobin, so the _Café
Lemblin_ became entirely Imperial, and was the focus of the Opposition
after the return of the Bourbons. It was famous for its chocolate,
as well as for its coffee. When the Allies were at Paris, it was
hardly safe for the officers to enter the _Café Lemblin_, and many
scenes of violence are described as having occurred there, and many
a duel was fought with fatal effect, after a _café_ dispute between
French and foreign officers,--and all for national honour. The Bourbon
officers were far more insulting in the _cafés_ to the ex-imperial
“braves,” than the latter were to the invading Captains,--and they
generally paid dearly for their temerity. Finally,--for to name all
the _cafés_ in Paris, would require an encyclopædia,--it is worthy of
notice that Tortoni’s, which is now a grave adjunct to the _Bourse_,
first achieved success by the opposite process of billiard-playing.
A broken-down provincial advocate, Spolar of Rennes, came to Paris
with a bad character, and a capital cue; and the latter he handled so
wonderfully at the _Café Tortoni_, that all Paris went to witness his
feats. Talleyrand patronized him, backed his playing, and gained no
inconsiderable sum by the cue-driving of Spolar, whose star culminated
when he was appointed “Professor of Billiards to Queen Hortense,”--an
appointment which sounds strange, but which was thought natural enough
at the time; and, considering all things, so it was.
There is one feature in the French _cafés_ which strikes an observer
as he first contemplates it. I allude to the intensity, gravity, and
extent of the domino-playing. A quartett party will spend half the
evening at this mystery, with nothing to enliven it but the gentlest
of conversation, and the lightest of beer, or a simple _petit verre_.
The Government wisely thinks that a grave domino-player can be given to
neither immorality nor conspiracies. But a British Government proudly
scorns to tolerate such insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen,
at the end of the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blasphemy, and
get as drunk as they please, in any London tavern, provided they
do not therewith break the peace; _but_, let the reprobates only
remain obstinately sober, and play at dominoes, then they offend the
immaculate justice of Justices, and landlords and players are liable
to be fined. So, on Sabbath nights, the working-classes have thrown
open to their edification the gin-palaces, which invite not in vain;
but if one of these same classes should, on the same Sunday evening,
knock at the religiously-closed door of a so-called free library, the
secretary’s maid who answers the appeal would be pale with horror at
the atrocity of the applicant. And what is the bewildered Briton to do?
He looks in at church, where, if there be a few free seats, they have a
look about them so as to make him understand that he is in his fustian,
and that he and the miserable sinners in their fine cloth are not on an
equality in the house of God; and so he turns sighingly away, and goes
where the law allows him,--to the house of gin.
But, leaving the further consideration of these matters to my readers,
let us now address ourselves to the sketching of a class whose most
illustrious members have borne witness to their own excellency, not
exactly according to the fashion spoken of by Shakspeare; namely, by
putting a strange face on their own perfection.
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART.
It is an incontestable fact, that he who lives soberly does not depend
upon his cook for the pleasure which he derives from his repast.
Nevertheless, the cook is one of the most important of personages;
and even appetite, without him, would not be of the value that it is
at present. A great _artiste_ knows his vocation. When the cook of
Louis XVIII. was reproached, by His Majesty’s Physician, with ruining
the royal health by savoury juices, the dignitary of the kitchen
sententiously remarked, that it was the office of the cook to supply
His Majesty with pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the
doctor to enable the King to digest them. The division of labour, and
the responsibilities of office, could not have been better defined.
From old times the cook has had a proper sense of the solemn importance
of his wonderful art. The _Coquus Gloriosus_, in a fragment of
Philemon, shows us what these artists were in the very olden time.
He swears by Minerva that he is delighted at his success, and that
he cooked a fish so exquisitely, that it returned him admiring and
grateful looks from the frying-pan! He had not covered it with grated
cheese, not disguised it with sauce; but he had treated it with such
daintiness and delicacy, that, even when fully cooked, it lay on the
dish as fresh-looking as if it had just been taken from the lake. This
result seems to have been a rarity; for, when the fish was served
up at table, the delighted guests tore it from one another, and a
running struggle was kept up around the board to get possession of
this exquisitely prepared _morceau_. “And yet,” says the cook, “I
had nothing better to exhibit my talent upon than a wretched river
fish, nourished in mud. But, O Jupiter Saviour! if I had only had at
my disposal some of the fish of Attica or Argos, or a conger from
pleasant Sicyon, like those which Neptune serves to the gods in
Olympus, why, the guests would have thought they had become divinities
themselves. Yes,” adds the culinary boaster, “I think I may say that
I have discovered the principle of immortality, and that the odour of
my dishes would recall life into the nostrils of the very dead.” The
resonant vaunt is not unlike that of Béchamel, who said that, with the
sauce that he had invented, a man would experience nothing but delight
in eating his own grandfather!
Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the _genus coquorum_
of _his_ days. In a dialogue between Syrus and his chef, the master
declares that the culinary art appears to have reached its limit, and
that he would fain hear something novel upon the subject. The cook’s
reply admits us to an insight into ancient manners. “I am not one of
those fellows,” says the personage in question, “who are content to
suppose that they learn their art by wearing an apron for a couple
of years. My study of the art has not been superficial: it has been
the work of my life; and I have learned the use and appliances of
every herb that grows--for kitchen purposes. But I especially shine
in getting up funeral dinners. When the mourners have returned from
the doleful ceremony, it is I who introduce them to the mitigated
affliction department. While they are yet in their mourning attire,
I lift the lids of my kettles, and straightway the weepers begin to
laugh. They sit down with their senses so enchanted, that every guest
fancies himself at a wedding. If I can only have all I require,
Syrus,” adds the artist, “if my kitchen be only properly furnished,
you will see renewed the scenes which used to take place on the coasts
frequented by the Syrens. It will be impossible for any one to pass the
door; all who scent the process will be compelled, despite themselves,
to stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, and nostrils
extended; nor will it be possible to make them ‘move on,’ unless
the police, coming to their aid, shut out the irresistible scent by
plugging their noses.”
Posidippus shows us a classical master-cook instructing his pupils.
Leucon is the name of the teacher; and the first truth he impresses on
his young friend is, that the most precious sauce for the purpose of a
cook is impudence. “Boast away,” he says, “and never be tired of it.”
For, as he logically remarks, “if there be many a Captain under whose
dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor hare, why should not we, who kill
hares, pass for better than we are, like the Captains?” “A modest cook
must be looked on,” he says, “as a contradiction in nature. If he be
hired out to cook a dinner in another man’s house, he will only get
considered in proportion to his impudence and overbearing conduct. If
he be quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook.”
Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, that
in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely on those
who exercise the art; there must be others who possess the science of
enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who
keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before its
time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis professes.
The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, among the
Sybarites,--the people to whom the crumpling of a rose under the side
on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious
as though the world was made for them alone, and they and the world
were intended to last for ever. They would not admit into their city
any persons whose professions entailed noise in the practice of them:
the trunkmaker at the corner of St. Paul’s would have been flogged to
death with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for
an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to
wield the instrument of execution! The crowing of one of the proscribed
race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits; and, on
another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his nerves had been
shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring men in another country
strike against each other, at their work, the friend was so overcome,
that he merely exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fainted away.
Athenæus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the authors
whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruction of which
by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his “Finger of God,” is a
circumstance at which he is rather glad than sorry,--Athenæus mentions
the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of
the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very black broth, in
common, out of wooden bowls. Having tasted the national diet, he feebly
uttered the Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and convulsively
remarked, that “he no longer wondered why the Lacedæmonians sought
death in battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with
such broth!”
Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another quality.
The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the benefactors of their
country, and the cook who had distinguished himself was invested with
a golden crown, and an opera ticket; that is, free admission to those
public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted time and the
human form divine.
I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indifferent
reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. The comic
Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon
a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they were
hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor Fagan of
the Saffron-Hill University. “Whatever you can prig,” says the elder
rogue, “belongs to yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you
get past the porter into the street, it then becomes _my_ property. So
fake away! (Βάδιζε δεῦρ’ ἅμα,) and look out for unconnected trifles.”
And yet Athenæus asserts that nothing has so powerfully contributed
to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery! His proof
is, that when men devoured each other, they were beasts,--which is a
self-evident proposition; but that when they took to cooked meats, and
were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they began to
live cleanly,--which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. In
his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only needed the gift of Ceres
to Pandora,--a good appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These
are, doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity can do
without them,--which is questionable,--where they are not, comfort is
absent, and a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation.
If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory.
They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children
were legally condemned to get spare again upon their gruel. The
Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper place in society. He
might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was
the confidant of his master, and there were not a few who would have
exchanged their liberty for such a post and chains. And who dare affirm
that the _coquus_ was not an officer of distinction? He who knows how
to prepare food for digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one
particular at least, than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary
science than turning the spit; than Ulysses, who could light fires and
lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter; or than Patroclus,
who could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to make a
stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier.
When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, who
first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, it is thereby
further intimated that good eating should be followed by good drinking.
We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations on eternal
flames by the heat of their own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes,
made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fashion
to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of
his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit of students.
Sicily especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and Mithœcus
wrote a treatise on the art; while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking
into causes and effects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces,
and first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on appetite.
Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid of the practical cook, and
gastronomists hit upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to
renewed enjoyments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the
tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than
other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly please the palate
than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that
it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing
it with a piece of rough fish-skin; and his taking up hot viands with
his hand, like that of Götz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is
cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons of the Romans
had a pointed end, at the extremity of the handle, for the purpose of
picking fish from the shell.
Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature’s making,
they were made for them by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were
crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, and had no
fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its
exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it had probably
been forgotten in something more novel discovered by a Sicilian
rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the Parisians of the last
century used to look on Languedoc,--as the only place on earth where
cooks were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The artists of
both countries, and of the opposite ages mentioned, were especially
skilled in the preparation of materials which were made to appear the
things they were not; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh,
and fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the
kitchen-garden. The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste
of which the diarists of the last century show the French to have been
guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed
upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an
artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be very intolerable
board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, who saw the seemingly
liberal fare, but who could make very little of the deal before them.
In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, had her especial
altars, and thence, perhaps, the estimation in which the Sicilian cooks
were held, who prayed to her for inspiration. Her ministers were paid
salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. Something like £800 _per
annum_ formed the _honorarium_ of the learned and juicy gentleman. But
he was not always to be had, even at that price; and the disgusted
Languedocien who would not remain in the _cuisine_ of the Duke of
Richmond, when Governor of Ireland, for the sufficient reason that
there was no Opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his Sicilian
predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bondsman in Greek households
against the free cook from Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in
its results.
The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal to whom his master
Antony gave a city, because he had cooked a repast which had called
forth encomium from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra.
But money was the last thing thought of by the wearied epicures of
Rome, especially when what they gave belonged to somebody else. When
Lucullus spent £1,000 sterling on a snug dinner for three,--himself,
Cæsar, and Pompey,--he doubtless spent his creditors’ money; at least,
extravagant people generally do. Claudius dined often with six hundred
guests, and the Roman people paid the cooks. The dinners of Vitellius
cost that sacrilegious feeder upwards of £3,000 each, but the bills
were discharged by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius ordered
several thousands sterling to be bestowed on the author of a piece
wherein every thing eatable was made to speak wittily, the author was
really paid out of the popular pocket; and when Geta insisted on having
as many courses at each repast as there were letters in the alphabet,
and all the viands at each course so named that their initials should
be the same as that of the course itself, he was the last person who
troubled himself about the payment for such extravagance.
The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, however, have been as
despotic in the kitchen as their lord was in the saloon. The slaves
there, who hurried to and fro, bearing their tributes of good things
from the market-place, or distributing them according to his bidding,
obeyed the cook’s very nod, nay, anticipated his very wishes. They
were, in fact, the ministers of an awful Sovereign. The cook was their
Lord paramount. The stewards possessed no little power; but when the
fires were lighted, and the dinner had to be thought of, the head cook
was the kitchen Jupiter; and when he spoke, obedience, silence, and
trembling followed upon his word.
From his raised platform, the _Archimagirus_, as he was called, could
overlook all the preparations, and with his tremendous spoon of office
he could break the heads of his least skilful disciples, and taste the
sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The effect must have been
quite pantomimic; and to complete it, there was only wanted a crash
of discordant music to accompany the rapid descent of the gigantic
spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. The work was done in
presence of the gods, and scullions blew the fires under the gaze of
the _Lares_,--sooty divinities to whom, the legend says, inferior cooks
were sometimes sacrificed in the month of December. “But,” as Othello
says, “that’s a fable!”
Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, and perhaps were as
often inspected by the curious and privileged, as that of the Reform
Club. “Order reigned” there quite as much as it did, according to
Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject slavery. Art and
costliness were lavished upon the vessels, but the human beings there
were exactly the things that were made the least account of.
No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook consisted in serving
up an entire pig at once roasted and boiled. The elder Disraeli has
shown from Archestratus how this was done. “The animal had been bled
to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after copious effusion,
the master-cook extracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and
hanged the animal by the feet. He crammed down the throat the stuffings
already prepared. Then, covering the half of the pig with a paste of
barley thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, or on
a heated table of brass, where it was gently roasted with all due
care. When the skin was browned, he boiled the other side, and then,
taking away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once boiled and
roasted.” And such was the way by which the best of cooks spoiled the
best of pigs.
According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged in the old days to
carry knives in their girdles. In the “_Aulularia_,” old Euclio says to
Congrio, the cook, “_Ad tres viros jam ego deferam tuum nomen_,”--“I’ll
go and inform against you to the Magistrates.” “Why so?” asks Congrio.
“Because you carry a knife,”--“_Quia cultrum habes._” “Well,” says the
artist, standing on his rights, “_cocum decet_,” “it is the sign of my
profession.” From another of the many cooks of Plautus we learn, in the
“_Menæchmei_,” that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was
reckoned as equivalent to that of eight guests; and when Cylindrus is
ordered to prepare a dinner for Menæchmus, his “lady,” and the official
parasite, “Then,” says the cook, “that’s as good as ten; for your
parasite does the work of eight:”--
“_Jam isti sunt decem,
Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur._”