When, at a low prayer by the Cordelier mutter’d,
Their laughter was heard to change into a moan,
As the priest transform’d each to a figure of stone.
There motionless still do the revellers stand,
Misshapen, as turn’d from their sculptor’s rough hand;
Save one, who when moonlight pours down from above,
May be seen from the spot vainly trying to move.
Some affirm ’tis the bridegroom aroused from his trance,
Some declare ’tis the bride gliding forth to the dance.
But ’tis only the fiddler endeavouring to jerk
His bow arm o’er the once magic fiddle of Ferques.
THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS.
It may be seen from our last chapter, that the bill of fare of those
who dined in the desert was neither very long nor very varied. It was
otherwise with the better fed, but perhaps not better-taught gentlemen
of the church of later days. Thus, for instance, the Curé of Brequier
kept a very different table from that of the lean Amphitryons of the
desert. Brillat Savarin once called on the holy man just as he had
dismissed the soup and beef from the table. These were replaced by a
leg of mutton _à la royale_, a fat capon, and a splendid salad. The
hour was scarcely noon, and the curé had sat down to this saint’s fare
alone. He was not selfish, however, and he invited his guest to “break
bread” with him, but the guest, a prince of “gastronomers” in his way,
declined, and the curé, like Coriolanus, did it all alone! He finished
the “gigot” to the ivory, the capon to the bones, and the salad to the
polished bottom of the bowl. A colossal cheese was then placed before
him, in which he made a breach of ninety degrees, and having washed
down all with a bottle of wine, he, like the Irishman, thanked God “for
that snack,” and betook himself to digestion and repose. “Le pauvre
homme!”
The nuns were in no ways behind the priests. Madame d’Arestrel, lady
Abbess of the nuns of the Visitation at Belley, (_faustum nomen_!)
once told a secret to a visitor who feared she was going to expound a
chapter from the Prophets. “If you want a foretaste of Paradise in the
guise of good chocolate,” said she, “be sure to make it over-night, in
an earthenware coffee-pot. Its standing still for a night concentrates
it, and gives it a velvety taste, which is divine! And Heaven cannot be
angry with us for this little luxury, for is not Heaven too divine?”
How wide the distance between St. Paula, widow, and Madame d’Arestrel,
of the convent of the Visitation! I may add, that if the Visitandines
made good chocolate, the monks of the Feuillants, in Paris, were
renowned for their ratafie. But they too have superior authority for
good living. A dainty dish in Italy is commonly called a “mouthful for
a cardinal.”--_un boccone di cardinali._
The canons took the tone from the cardinals. When the French canon
Rollet became ill through excessive drinking, his doctor interdicted
all strong beverages, and was not a little wroth, on his next visit,
at finding the dignitary in bed indeed, but at his bed-side a little
table, neatly laid out with bottles and glasses. The canon met the
threatened storm by gently remarking:--“Doctor, when you forbade
me drinking wine, you did not wish to deprive me of the pleasure
of looking at the bottle!” It was such canons who were the best
customers of the nuns who distilled liqueurs, and of the Ursulines who
manufactured the daintiest drops flavoured by the daintiest essences!
But in the Archbishop of Paris himself, M. de Belley, the clergy
of France had example to which they might appeal as authority for
indulging in good cheer. The archiepiscopal face was wreathed in smiles
at the sight of a good dinner. The prelate lived to be a veteran among
gastronomers, and was, in other respects, not an unworthy archbishop.
But M. de Belley was at least a gentleman in his gastronomic
propensities. He was not, like a Russo-Greek “Papa,” a brandy-bibber.
The Russo-Greek priests sanctify drinking, in the minds of the people,
by their evil example. Monsieur Léverson Le Duc, a French diplomatist
in Russia, tells us that he knows of one parish in Muscovy where the
people lock up their pastor every Saturday night, in order that he
may not be too muzzy for mass on the Sunday. They occasionally find
him very drunk, nevertheless, when they have forgotten previously
to examine beneath his robe, under which the sinning sot sometimes
smuggles his quart of Cognac! Sir George Simpson crossed the Pacific in
a Russian vessel. The chaplain had been sent in her to sea, because he
was always too drunk to officiate on land. He was kept sober expressly
for the hour of service on Sundays, but at other times, he appears to
have realized the verse in the old song of Dibdin’s, wherein it is said
that
“’Tother day as our chaplain was preaching,
Behind him I curiously slunk;
And while he our duty was teaching,
As how we should never get drunk,
I show’d him the stuff, and he twigg’d it,
And it soon set his Rev’rence agog.
And he swigg’d, and Nick swigg’d,
And Ben swigg’d, and Dick swigg’d,
And we all of us swigg’d it,--
And we swore there was nothing like grog.”
These examples, however, must be understood as occurring mostly, if
not exclusively, among the lower classes of the clergy. There was a
time when “the Vicar and Moses” illustrated the sad doings of a similar
class among ourselves.
The Greek clergy in the South of Europe present us with something no
less curious of aspect. The hall-kitchen of the Greek Patriarch, at
Constantinople, is crowded with inferior clergy, who take their meals
there, and his All-Holiness himself is served with pipes and sweetmeats
by nothing less than gentlemen in Deacon’s orders. Fancy our Lord
Primate ringing his bell for cheroots for two! and having them brought
in on a silver tray by the Curate of St. Margaret’s!
The Greek usages however are classical. The stranger who dines with
the Patriarch has, previous to falling to, water poured over his hands
as he holds them over a basin with a perforated cover, and the napkins
for drying them are as delicate as rose-leaves. The guest reclines on
a low couch, in ancient fashion, and his repast is placed on a low
stool at his side. The same custom exists in the convents, but meat is
seldom to be found there by a guest who arrives unexpectedly. The monks
themselves never eat it at all. During half the year they have but one
meal a day, and that consists of vegetables and bread. On the other
days of the year they are permitted the more liberal, but sufficiently
eremitic fare of cheese, eggs, fish, wine, and milk; but even on these
gala days they are never allowed more than two meals. Poor fellows!
the majority of them pass their remarkably well-spent time, when not
at table, in tilling the ground or teaching wonderful feats to very
accomplished tom-cats!
A Greek monk’s idea of an Englishman is that he is a plum-pudding
eater. And no wonder, since the English are almost the exclusive
purchasers of the currant-grapes which are cultivated all along the
northern shores of the Peloponnesus, from Patra to Corinth. As the
Chinese think that we take their tea that we may live, so the Greek
monks conclude that we _must_ buy their currants, or die! At the
convent of Vestizza, the good fathers trouble their heads about nothing
but the produce and price of their great staple crop. If you ask how
many brethren there are in the convent, they will answer, “Three
hundred; and what was the price of currants in England when you left?”
Inquire if their books be in good order, and they will reply in the
negative, adding an assurance that they do their utmost to produce the
best currants in the country. And they will give you permission to see
their church, if you will only promise to recommend their dwarf grapes
to the English merchants who are catering for plum-pudding eaters
at home. The grounds of other convents in the peninsula are famous
for their nuts, in the exportation of which the brethren drive no
inconsiderable trade.
These worthy people are said to be a trifle more enlightened and a
degree less slothful than they were some thirty years ago. There
was ample room and verge enough for improvement; for at the period
mentioned, the Greek priests resisted the introduction of the potato
into the kitchen-garden, for the very satisfactory reason that the
_pomme de terre_ was the very identical apple with which Satan beguiled
Eve out of Paradise! Yes, these modern and orthodox saints very
generally held that the devil tempted Eve with an “ash-leaf kidney!”
If we cross over to Abyssinia, we shall find that the priests and
orthodox people there keep as poor tables, at least on fast-days,
as the Greeks. Above eight months in the year are assigned by the
Abyssinian Christians to abstinence! On these occasions an Abyssinian
neither eats nor drinks till long after noon. On festival days,
however, they make up for their moderation by unrestrained excess.
Mr. Mansfield Perkyns, a traveller who has given us the most recent
account of life in Abyssinia, tells us that, in honour of the festival
of the Elevation of the Cross, he gave an early breakfast to some dozen
guests, who were engaged to half-a-dozen other parties in the course
of the same joyous day, and that these guests whetted their appetite
for later meals by consuming at breakfast a fine fat cow, two large
sheep, and endless gallons of mead! On these occasions the mead is
pretty prolific of murder. The guests get dreadfully drunk in honour
of the day, exactly as many highly civilized Christian people in happy
England do on the yearly recurrence of “merry Christmas.” Indeed, a
feast of the Elevation of the Cross without plenty of quarrelling and
bloodshed would be as dull as Donnybrook fair now is without a row.
But the Abyssinian Christian is as clever in establishing a _casus
belli_ as a Donnybrook Romanist. If the latter sees the fair is likely
to end without a fight, he simply takes off his hat, draws a white
line round it with chalk, and declaring that he will break the head of
the first man who denies that such white line is silver lace, he has
speedily abundance of active work before him. So a pious Abyssinian at
an “Elevation” banquet, if he finds things dull, merely remarks to his
dearest friend and next neighbour, “You are a good sort of man, but you
are not so handsome as I am!” and thereupon out fly the knives of the
parties and their respective friends, which they proceed to clean by
plunging them into each other’s ribs!
The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage such pugnacious
propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of the slaughtering of oxen for
the kitchen, says:--“Almost before the death-struggle is over, persons
are ready to flay the carcase, and pieces of the raw meat are cut
off, and served up before this operation is completed. In fact, as
each part presents itself, it is cut off and eaten while yet warm and
quivering. In this state it is considered, and justly so, to be very
superior in taste to what it is when cold. Raw meat, if kept a little
time, gets tough; whereas, if eaten fresh and warm, it is far tenderer
than the most tender joint that has been hung a week in England. The
taste is perhaps, in imagination, rather disagreeable at first, but far
otherwise when one gets accustomed to it; and I can readily believe
that raw meat would be preferred to cooked meat, by a man who from
childhood had been accustomed to it.” Such fare, I may observe, may not
be out of place at the table of a patriarch who lives in such a climate
as that of Abyssinia, but we suspect that it would as much astonish a
dinner party at an episcopal palace in England, as Mr. Perkyns himself
would do were he to sit down to that dinner in his ordinary Abyssinian
fashion of--a bald head covered with butter!
I have spoken in another chapter of a Brahmin who stuffed himself
with sweetmeats until he was nearly suffocated, and who exclaimed, on
being recommended to swallow a little water, that if he had had room
for water he would have swallowed more sweetmeats! It is but justice,
however, to these saintly gentlemen to confess that they _can_ fast
when there is anything to be gained by it. Among the Mahrattas, when
a fast man attempts to cheat his creditors, a Brahmin is hired to sit
the _dhurna_, and this is the process--a process, by the way, which
Monsieur Dimanche tried on Don Juan, but unsuccessfully. The Brahmin
goes to the house or tent of the debtor, sometimes attended by numerous
followers, and he announces the _dhurna_, by which the debtor must not
eat until he has discharged his liabilities. The clerical bailiff sits
at his side and is bound to fast also, until the matter is arranged.
He who holds out longest wins the day, and if the debtor be famished
he will pay rather than die outright, for eat he dare not until his
creditor be satisfied; besides, if he were to starve the Brahmin to
death, the crime would be so heinous, that the debtor himself had
better have departed to the world of shadows. It ensues that sitting
_dhurna_ is more successful in certain districts than it would be in
Belgravia, even though the Archbishop of Canterbury himself were to
take his seat in the middle of the square, with a declaration that he
would neither move nor eat until every inhabitant in the parish had
paid his Christmas bills. Poor man! he would have to sit as long as
_infelix Theseus_.
The saints of our puritan days were great favourers of public fasts;
but these fasts were less numerous after they had consolidated their
power, than before. “In the beginning of the wars,” says Foulis, in
his “History of the wicked Plots of the pretended Saints,” “a public
monthly fast was appointed for the last Wednesday of every month, but
no sooner had they got the king upon the scaffold, and the nation fully
secured to the Rump interest, but they thought it needless to abuse
and gall the people with a multitude of prayers and sermons,” and so,
by a particular act of their worships (April 23, 1649), nulled the
proclamation for the observation of the former; all which verifieth the
old verses:--
“‘The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be.
The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’”
George Fox, the father of the Quakers, remarks in his Journal, of the
Puritans and their fasts:--“Both in the time of the Long Parliament,
and of the Protector, so called, and of the Committee of Safety, when
they proclaimed fasts, they were commonly like Jezebels, and there
was some mischief to be done.” Taylor, the Water-poet, compares their
fasts to hidden feasts. “They were like the holy maid,” he says, “that
enjoined herself to abstain four days from any meat whatsoever; and
being locked close up in a room, she had nothing but her two books to
feed upon; but the two books were two painted boxes, made in the form
of great Bibles, with clasps and bosses, the inside not having one word
of God in them; but the one was filled with sweetmeats, the other with
wine; upon which this devout votary did fast with zealous meditation,
eating up the contents of one book, and drinking as contentedly the
other.” Dr. South, in his Sermons, is equally severe. He observes
that “their fasts usually lasted from seven in the morning till seven
at night; the pulpit was always the emptiest thing in the church; and
there never was such a fast kept by them, but their hearers had cause
to begin a thanksgiving as soon as they had done.” Butler, in his
Hudibras, hints that the work of fasting was to be accounted to the
faster, righteousness:--
“For ’tis not now who’s stout and bold,
But who bears hunger best, and cold.
And he’s approved the most deserving,
Who longest can hold out at starving.”
The fasting of the civilians, however, was made to turn to the benefit
of the military gentlemen; and, in March, 1644, an ordinance was passed
for the contribution of one meal a week towards the charge of the army.
There was by far a more considerable liberality of spirit among some of
the clergy of the time of Louis XIV. than in the Puritan authorities,
inasmuch as they permitted others to follow clerical example rather
than precept. The celebrated preacher, Father Feuillot, for instance,
stood by while “Monsieur” was enjoying an uncanonical collation in
the middle of Lent. His Highness held up a _macaron_, and remarked,
“This is not breaking fast, is it?” “Nay,” said Feuillot, “you may eat
a calf, if you will only act like a Christian.” I am afraid that we
had not improved at home, in the last century. On one of the fasts of
that period, Walpole comments after his usual gay fashion. “Between
the French and the earthquakes,” he says, in 1756, “you have no notion
how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of
sackcloth, turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that
Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at White’s, said with a
sigh, ‘Lord! how the times are degenerated! Formerly, a fast would have
brought everybody hither; now it keeps everybody away!’ A few nights
before, two men were walking up the Strand, one said to t’other, ‘Look
how red the sky is! Well, thank God, there is to be no masquerade!’”
An ex-Capuchin has revealed some of the mysteries of the house of
which he was lately a member, and by this it would appear that the
Friars of the nineteenth century are as little for slender diet as
the fine gentlemen of the eighteenth. “These Capuchins,” he says,
“of squalid appearance, clothed in serge, with shaven heads and bare
feet, presenting the very type of humility and self-renunciation,
enjoy the luxuries of life with a prodigality unknown to you. The poor
friars have, with one exception, no enjoyment of the things of this
world, their only worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three
carnivals in the year, of two or three weeks’ duration each. These
are the only periods at which they can recruit their wasted strength,
to enable them to resist the mortifications of the rest of the year.
During these few weeks they have seven courses served at dinner, all
substantial and choice dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be
provided. At supper they have five courses. By that hour, in spite of
their plentiful dinner, they have regained their appetites; and their
digestion is again most active. These courses are as substantial as
those of the dinner, and are despatched with equal facility by these
men of iron frame and tranquil conscience.... _Lent_ is arrived! Well,
you must fast, you must mortify the flesh, but you must not die of
inanition. A good table is necessary, or you will suffer too much from
contrast with the past few weeks. You need double the supply that the
secular orders do when they fast, for your digestion is twice as active
as theirs. Supper is now a sadly scanty meal; it consists simply of
fish, bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish! not miserable as to
quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary dish during the
forty days of Lent, always excepting bread and wine _ad libitum_.
Fortunately, the friars are wise and provident; the slender supper is
foreseen and provided against at dinner, which consists of four dishes.
The bottle of good wine is valuable now, or they would be overcome with
weakness.” Such is the testimony of a living witness, who pledges his
reputation for the truth of his depositions.
I do not know that there is much that is exaggerated in this, for from
M. Saurin we hear that, in France, well-to-do priests mortify the
flesh on maigre days by very pretty eating. The bill of fare of these
saintly men has been known to include soup _au coulis d’écrevisse_,
salmon trout, an omelette _au Thon_, that would have called a dead
_gastronome_ to life; a salad, the very smell of which seemed to give
eternal youth; Semonal cheese, fruit, confectionary, a light wine, and
a cup of coffee. By such self-denial is heaven gained by modern saints,
in orders; having fair fortunes, and looks with the same characteristic.
The Dominicans of Italy are in no degree behind their brethren in
France. The “late prior and visitor of the order,” who recently
published his dealings with the Inquisition, thus describes his ancient
brethren. “They do nothing,” he says, “which they are bound to do by
their rules, if these are opposed to their inclinations. They profess
never to eat meat in the refectory, or room for their common meals; but
there is another room near it, which they call by another name, where
they eat meat constantly. On Good Friday, they are commanded by their
rules to eat bread and drink water. At the dinner hour they all go
together into the refectory, to eat bread and drink water, but having
done so for the sake of appearance, they go one after another into
another room, where a good dinner is prepared for them all. I do not
blame them for enjoying it; but I blame them for feigning an abstinence
which none of them intend to keep.” These Dominicans, honest fellows!
are more hungry than the gods of the old régime of whom it is said,--
“The Gods require the thighs
Of beeves for sacrifice;
Which roasted, we the steam
Must sacrifice to them,
Who, though they do not eat,
Yet love the smell of meat.”
But our poor friend the monk has witnesses in his favour, as well as
opposed to him. Some men call him a living mummy swathed in faith.
Another says he is “a moral gladiator who wrestles with his passions,
and either stifles them or is devoured by them.” A third, describes
him picturesquely as a sea-worthy vessel moored in a stagnant dock;
and a fourth dismisses him contemptuously as a coward who won’t fight.
Even allowing him to be all these, it does not follow that he is to
be deprived of his dinner. If _he_ pays homage with his body to the
saints, he has earned what has been called the mind’s daily homage to
the body. Dinner should be the peculiar privilege of the monk, for it
is as _he_ is, in some sense, “the open friend of poverty, the secret
foe of riches” and if dinner be “the breakfast of the poor and the
supper of the rich,” it is doubly due to the monk, who can claim it by
either title. And it must not be supposed that they do not know how to
enjoy pleasure like sensible men. The Abbé of St. Sulpice, a Bernardine
monastery in the south of France, once invited a party of merry
and musical gentlemen from the neighbouring town to come up to the
monastery, and give the monks a treat of good music on the _fête_ day
of their patron saint. A joyous company ascended at early dawn to the
monastery; the most remarkable incident connected with which is, that
it is seated at the edge of a pine forest, from which a hurricane swept
down, in one night, thirty-seven thousand trees. The visitors were
received by the cellarer, the abbé not being yet risen, who conducted
them to the refectory, where they found awaiting them a pâté as big as
a church; flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal; on the south
by a monster ham; on the east by a monumental pile of butter; and on
the west by a bushel of artichokes _à la poivrade_. All the necessary
adjuncts were at hand; and among others, a party of lay brethren ready
to wait upon the visitors, and very much astonished to find themselves
out of bed at so early an hour. An array of a hundred bottles of wine
bespoke the fathers’ idea of good cheer; and the cellarer, having
bidden them fall-to and welcome, deplored his inability to join them,
not having yet said mass,--and he then took his leave to go and sing
“matins.”
The breakfast was done ample justice to; after which the visitors
retired to take a short repose, subsequently repairing to the church,
where they performed a musical service with the usual zeal and energy
of amateurs, and received modestly the showers of thanks that descended
upon them in return.
Monks and musicians then sat down to a dinner,--ample, admirably
cooked, excellently served, and thoroughly enjoyed. The abundance
that marked it may be judged of by the fact, that at the second
course there were not less than fifteen dishes of roasted meats. The
dessert would have made the eyes of a queen sparkle; the liqueurs were
choice, and the coffee redolent of Araby the Blest. The enjoyment was
long and perfect; and by the end of the repast, there was not man or
monk present who was not in charity with all the world. The “pious,
glorious, and immortal memory” of St. Bernard was not forgotten among
the toasts.