performed than in the morning. And after vespers there was a division
of pleasures: some took to quiet games at cards, some chose a ramble
in the wood, and a few looked in again upon their friend the cellarer.
As night came on, all again drew together, but the discreet abbot
retired, willing to allow the brethren full liberty on a festival
which only came “once a year.” And to do the brothers justice, they
began to make a night of it as soon as the superior had disappeared.
Jokes and laughter and winged words flew about like wildfire, and the
exercise got thereby sharpened the general appetite for supper,--a
repast which was discussed with a vivacity as if the guests had been
fasting up to that very hour. Wit and wine, and wisdom and folly, were
all mingled together; and the oldest of the fathers present, with a
flush on the cheek and a light in the eye, joined _chorus_ in table
songs that were _not_ sung to the tune of _Nunc dimittis_. It was when
the fun was flying most fast and furious, that a voice exclaimed,
“Brother cellarer, where is your official dish?” “True!” answered that
reverend individual; “I am not cellarer for nothing;”--and therewith
he disappeared, but speedily returned accompanied by three servitors,
bearing piles of buttered toast and bowls of what worldly men would
have called “punch.” If the fun had waxed fast before, it grew fiery
now, and fervour for the patron saint glowed at the very fiercest heat
that punch could give it. In the midst of it all, the hour of midnight
was solemnly tolled out by the convent bell, and the revellers,
reverend and laic, swang merrily to bed, satisfied with the day well
spent in honour of St. Bernard.
I have now spoken of the Dominicans, Capuchins, and Bernardins. The
Franciscans are a not less lively fraternity. When the author of
Eöthen was at the Franciscan Monastery in Damascus, he asked one of
the monks to tell what places were best worth seeing, in reference to
their association with St. Paul. “There is nothing in all Damascus,”
said the good man, “half so well worth seeing as our cellars;” and
forthwith he invited the stranger to “go and admire the long range of
liquid treasures that he and his brethren had laid up for themselves
upon earth.” And, adds the author, “these I soon found were not as the
treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse; for day by
day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses
of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the friars, dear old fellows!
In the midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang loudly
and merrily. Their eyes kept flashing with joyous bonfires, and their
heavy woollen petticoats could no more weigh down the springiness of
their paces, than the filmy gauze of a _danseuse_ can cloy her bounding
step.”
Richard the First, as worthless a human being as ever lived, bankrupt
in every virtue save that of brute courage, in making legacy of his
vices, said he would bequeath gluttony to the priests. It was rather
a compliment than otherwise, for the inference was, that they lacked
what he was willing to surrender, when he could no longer enjoy it. St.
Augustin settled this vexed question as to what was “good living,” when
he said, that “the great fast was abstinence from vice.” And in the
true spirit of St. Augustin’s prose, rings the rich rhyme in Herrick’s
Noble Numbers. “Is this,” he says,
“Is this a fast, to keep
The larder leane
And cleane
From fat of veales and sheep?
“Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish?
“Is it to faste an houre?
Or ragged to go,
Or show
A downcast look, and soure?
“No; ’tis a fast, to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soule.
“It is to fast from strife,
From old debate,
And hate;
To circumcise thy life.
“To show a heart grief-rent,
To starve thy sin,
Not bin:
And that’s to keep thy Lent.”
This is better philosophy than that given on a similar subject by
Montesquieu, who only recommends moderation on the ground that it
lengthens the term of enjoyment. “I call moderation,” says Pythagoras,
“all that does not engender pain;” and by this maxim of the Hellenized
Hindoo, Buddha Ghooros, the saints both of the desert and the
dining-room may, perhaps, in their several ways be condemned.
In treating of the diet of more modern saints than those of the days
of martyrdom, I might have noticed the fact, that in not very remote
times, the parsonage-house at Langdale, in Westmoreland, was licensed
as an ale-house, the living being too poor to allow the incumbent to
make anything like one upon it for himself. The ale-cask became to the
priest, what the fruit of the amrite tree was to the Tibetians--the
spring of life. This Westmoreland ale was accounted a great
strengthener, but so have many less likely things. But enough of the
“saints,” good men and true the majority of them, earning their right
to enjoy the rich blessings of God, by fairer means, perhaps, than many
of their censurers. I know no set of men so well to contrast with the
saints, as the “Cæsars,” and we have yet time before supper to attend
that august company to table.
THE CÆSARS AT TABLE.
It is a well-ascertained truth, that the Cæsars at table by no means
generally conducted themselves as though they were under the influence
of a Roman Chesterfield, as regarded their behaviour; or a Roman
Abernethy, as regarded their moderation. Perhaps the great Julius
was as much of a gentleman in both the above respects as any of his
imperial successors; and even he could reform the calendar with far
more ease than he could reform himself.
When he was commanding in the Roman provinces, beyond the Italian
frontier, he kept two distinct tables. At one sat his inferior officers
and the Greeks who were in his service. The latter do not appear to
have expressed any discontent at not ranking with their Roman comrades.
At the other table sat none but Romans of high state, with such native
guests of quality as Cæsar chose to invite to meet them. He would watch
his servants as sharply as he did the enemy; and on one occasion,
having observed that his baker had put down to his guests a coarser
bread than that which he had served to Cæsar, he sent the knave to
prison, there to learn better manners.
Cæsar was as sober as Sir Charles Napier, who used to sign himself
“Governor of Scinde, because I was always a sober man.” Cato said
of Julius, that he was the only sober man who had ever attempted to
subvert a government; “a cutting sarcasm on all preceding patriots.”
As for sauces, the Duke of Wellington did not inspire Francatelli
with more despair upon that head, than Cæsar did _his_ cook. It was
immaterial to him whether he had sauce to his meat, or not; and as to
the quality, he never concerned himself about it. He ate, thankfully
perhaps, but thoughtlessly, certainly. His politeness was sometimes
ridiculously excessive, as when he ate up the ointment which had been
served instead of sauce, at a table where he was a guest, and where he
was courteously resolved to find everything excellent. But although
the great Julius was, according to Cato, the only man who came sober
to the subversion of his country, he had some unsoberly habits about
him. Thus, when invited to a feast, he used to whet his appetite by
taking an emetic. This is attested by Cicero, who says, in his letters
to Atticus, (lib. xiii. p. 52,) “Unctus est; accubuit; ἐμετικήν agebat.
Itaque edit et bibit ἀδεῶς et jucunde.” Suetonius agrees with Cato,
that Cæsar was moderate with regard to wine:--“Vini parcissimum ne
quidem inimici negaverunt.”
It is singular that a man who cared so little as he was reported to
have done for his stomach, should have cared so much about the outside
of his head. He could eat pomatum, and yet be ashamed of the baldness
which a proper application of the unguent might perhaps have cured.
Augustus Cæsar, who visited prisoners, like Howard, and cut off heads
like an Algerine Dey, was moderate in his cups, and endeavoured to make
the people so. When the latter once complained that wine was not only
dear, but scarce, he gravely proclaimed that his son-in-law Agrippa had
been looking to the aqueducts, and there was no fear of any one dying
of thirst.
There were seasons, however, when he could be more than imperially
extravagant. Witness the little supper he gave to chosen guests, all of
whom attended in the attire of gods and goddesses; and at which feast
he presided in the character of Apollo. The wits of the day, who were
not invited, denounced this supper as an orgy at which decent people
would not have been present, even if asked. Such stupendous iniquity
was said there to have been enacted, that the real gods who had at
first looked laughingly down from Olympus, withdrew one by one behind
their respective clouds. Even Jove himself, who sat gazing longest, at
length hurried away from the sight of men, who were greater beasts than
the privileged gods!
Like some of the extravagant and unclean banquets at Versailles, this
entertainment was given when there was a famine in the city. On the
following day, the people exclaimed in the streets, “It is the gods who
have devoured the food.” The less fearful than these raised an altar to
Augustus Phœbus, and there paid mock worship to the Emperor, under the
title of Apollo the Tormentor.
It was not every one that deemed himself entitled, that could find
access to the table of Cæsar Augustus. He was extremely nice with
regard to his associates, but he was not so nice with respect to
keeping his guests waiting for his company. It was the maxim of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, that it was far less courteous on principle to allow
hungry guests to be kept from table out of respect to one man, than it
was to go to dinner without him. So also Augustus thought that the many
should not be made to wait for one; and, accordingly, he frequently
did not appear at table till the repast was half over; and sometimes
departed even then, after tasting of from three to half-a-dozen dishes,
before it was concluded.
He was dignified and condescending, enjoyed the jokes of those who were
bold enough to make them, and encouraged the reserved to be bold and
jocund too. When jests lacked from either of those parties, the master
of the Roman world then laughed, as he sipped his moderate draught, at
the quips and cranks of the hired jesters, whose office it was to be
cheerful when the guests grew dull.
It has come down to us that he was a lover of brown bread, small fish,
green cheese and green figs. He was so far intemperate that he would
never let his appetite tarry till meal-time. He ate when he was hungry,
and perhaps he was right. And yet it was but an unedifying sight to see
him passing in his chariot through the public streets, returning the
greetings of the people with one hand full of bread, the other full
of dates, and his almost sacred mouth full of both. He was, in fact,
wayward in his attentions to his appetite, and would occasionally fast
till sunset if the caprice took him. As to what is said of him that he
sometimes rose from the most sumptuous banquets, leaving the viands
untouched,--this was perhaps because the edge of his appetite had been
altogether destroyed by brown bread and indigestible fruit.
In the day-time he quenched his thirst by eating of bread dipped in
water, by drinking water itself, or by taking a slice of cucumber,
lettuce, or unripe apple. His moderation in drinking, when he _did_
take up the goblet at the evening repast, is much spoken of, but as we
hear more of the quantity than of the strength of what he drank, it is
difficult to decide upon this point. Suetonius admiringly records that
“he never exceeded a quart for his share, or if he did, he was sure
to throw it up again.” This is but equivocal praise after all. He was
a very great man, no doubt, but, demi-god as he almost was, he spelt
after the “cacological” fashion of Lord Duberly; and he was more afraid
of lying awake in the dark than any little baron or squire in the
nurseries of Belgravia and the adjacent squares.
Tiberius, like his predecessor, treated his soldiers occasionally like
schoolboys, and when they displeased him, he used to put them on a
regimen of barley. Tiberius himself was not a profuse eater; he was
rather moderate than otherwise, and when gastronomic extravagancy had
reached a high pitch in Rome, he used to dine in public, like the kings
of France, but, unlike them, upon cold meat, as a reproof to the luxury
of the times. He was not, however, at all moderate in his cups, and the
Roman wits, who, like those of Paris, used to make merry epigrams on
the worst of their woes, punningly transformed his names of Tiberius
Claudius Nero, into _Biberius Caldius Mero_. He had a reverence too
for great draughts, and he once raised a common fellow to the office
of quæstor, simply because he could drink off a measure of three pints
of wine without drawing breath. Most of the Cæsars must have been very
unsatisfactory people to dine with, but none more so than Tiberius, who
loved discussion, but if he found himself worsted in it, he invariably
ordered his opponent to retire--and commit suicide. A hot bath and a
vein or two opened soon disposed of an inconvenient adversary. He used
to puzzle his guests with all sorts of strange questions, such as would
puzzle even the editor of _Notes and Queries_ to answer. One of these
interrogatory puzzles was “the name of the song chanted by the Syrens.”
He would not speak the fashionable Greek at table, but conversed in
Latin; and his favourite feat at dessert was to run his forefinger
through a hard green apple.
Caligula must have been a most unpleasant person to dine with. He
entertained himself and his guests with the sight of men tortured on
the rack, and he got up little private executions on those occasions
to enliven the scene. We read of Her Majesty’s private concerts, and
how “Mrs. Anderson” presided at the piano. But the Romans only heard
of their Emperor’s killing fun to frighten his guests with, and how
his Divinity’s private headsman, Niger Barbatus, performed, as usual,
with his well-known dexterity. His frolics were really of a frightful
character. It was after a banquet, when the capital jest of slaying
had failed to make him as merry as usual, that he rushed to the
sacrificial altar, attired in the dress of a victim-killer, that is,
with a linen apron for his sole costume. He seized the mallet as though
he were about to slay the appointed victim, but he turned suddenly
round on the resident official and butchered him instead. And thereat,
all who had witnessed the frolicsome deed of their master, declared
that “’Fore Jove, ’twas a more capital joke than the last!” His answer
to the Consuls who ventured to ask the cause of a sudden burst of
laughter in which he indulged at a crowded feast, is well known; “I
laugh to think,” said the amiable creature, “that with one wave of my
hand I can sweep all your stupid heads off!” His method of loving was
equally characteristic. He would fling his terrible arm round the fair
neck he professed to admire, and express his delight that he could cut
it off when he pleased. There was the brilliant Cesonia; “I cannot
tell,” said her imperial lover at a feast, “why it is that I am so fond
of that girl. I’ll have her put on the rack for a quarter of an hour,
that she may be compelled to tell me the reason.” Blue Beard was the
mildest of Quaker gentlemen compared with this Caligula. A lady might
as well have been wooed by a boa constrictor.
Claudius Cæsar has hardly had justice done him, as regards his general
character, but as my office is only to show how he looked at table,
I must be satisfied with making the remark, and pass on to Cæsar at
meat. He was no hero, undoubtedly, for he contemplated suicide, for
no better reason than having a pain in his stomach after a repast. In
this, however, he did not show less courage than Zeno, the father of
the Stoics, who having bruised his finger by a fall, went home and hung
himself.
He was largely hospitable, and sometimes entertained six hundred
guests at a time. He liked on these occasions to see his own children
and those of the nobility seated, according to the ancient fashion,
at the lower end of the table. It is to be hoped that they were out
of ear-shot of what was being said at the upper end. The jokes were
sometimes pleasant enough in their way. Thus a Roman nobleman having
carried home with him a gold plate from the imperial table, was gently
reminded of his theft when, on the next occasion of dining with
Claudius, he saw a reproachfully vulgar earthenware platter put down
before him.
He was a man of infinite capacity, was the divine Claudius,--that is,
in gastronomic matters. He was ever ready to devour, and always did
so greedily. He has been known to have suddenly jumped down from his
seat in the forum, allured by the smell of roast meat issuing from the
priest’s table, in the adjacent temple of Mars. And he would sit down
with the reverend gentleman, without waiting for an invitation. It must
have surely made the common-place spectators of the feat broadly smile,
just as if the twelve judges in Westminster Hall were to leap from
their benches, and racing across the churchyard, pour into the first
house in the cloisters where the dinner-bell was ringing loudest, and
the prandial odour was most savoury.
He ate like Baal, and drank like the beast in Fortunatus. He did both
to repletion; but his attendants would then tickle his throat with
a feather, and so, by exonerating his stomach, enable the imperial
animal to eat and drink again. He contemplated making a decree for the
benefit of guests at table, which was of a Rabelaisian indelicacy, and
which probably never presented itself to the minds of any other men but
Claudius and the Curé of Meudon.
Caligula had more affection for his horse than for anything human. He
fed him on gilded oats, and the animal was not a more beastly consul
than many who were appointed to that high office. The emperor’s dinner
parties must have presented a strange aspect, when the obsequious
senators stood, napkin in hand, to wait upon the guests. Fancy the
peers of all politics, and the commons of every shade of opinion, all
ranged behind the dinner-table at Windsor Castle, in the professional
uniform of dingy white waistcoats and napless black coats, with their
thumbs duly doubled up in napkins, and all offering anxious service,
and “dindon à la daube” to our Sovereign Lady and her guests,--fancy
this, I say, and you will have the very remotest idea possible of what
the sight was like when the senators changed the plates of Cæsar. The
personages and their qualities are all different, but the strangeness
of one spectacle could only be matched by that of the other.
Nero (who found sport in sitting in an upper gallery at the theatre,
and flinging down nuts upon the bald head of the prætor below) was a
very common-place individual at table, but he assembled guests about
him who were ever ready to consume his good things and applaud his good
sayings. Galba, his successor, was at once gouty and gluttonous. He
commenced eating at early dawn, and darkness came over him still with
appetite unsatiated. He was as mean, however, as he was voracious. He
did once so far whip up his liberal spirit as to compel himself to give
a dinner party; but when he read the bill of fare, he fairly burst
into tears at the idea of the extravagance and the expense. And yet
the most costly dish he could reprovingly point to, when his steward
challenged him, was a dish of boiled peas;--but perhaps they were out
of season, and Galba knew he should be asked for them at least a guinea
a quart! _He_ would never have been guilty of the prodigality of the
Emperor Otho, who daily wasted more bread and milk in making cosmetic
poultices to lay on his own face than would have served to keep body
and soul together in half-a-dozen families. The father of Vitellius
more gallantly, when he wished to look well at the centre of his table,
was wont to besmear himself with a mixture made up of honey and his
mistress’s saliva. He of course deemed it impossible to say which was
the sweeter of the two ingredients. This was even worse than Galba, who
was, however, essentially greedy; the latter emperor could not eat with
pleasure unless he had more before him than he could digest. When his
stomach cried, “Hold, enough!” he used it as the Somersetshire lad did
_his_. “Ah!” exclaimed the lad of Wincanton, to certain monitions,--“ye
may ake, but, ’vor I ha’ done, I’ll make ye ake worser.” Galba, when
no longer able to eat, lay and gazed at what he hoped to attack more
successfully after digestion had been accomplished.
Otho is remembered as being the complaisant gentleman who, when Nero
had determined to murder his mother, gave an exquisite little supper to
both parties by way of a pleasant preliminary. But Otho could at least
behave with outward decency, and of this Vitellius was incapable. If he
walked through the market-place, he snatched the meat roasting at the
cooks’ stalls, and greedily devoured it. He was not more reverent even
in the temple; where, taking advantage of his vicinity to the altar,
he would sweep the latter of the barley that was on it, consecrated to
the god, and swallow the same, like the sacrilegious heathen that he
was. When about to fly from the enemies who had overturned his throne,
he selected only his cook and his butler to be the companions of his
flight, and he took the former dear associate with him, in his own
covered chair.
The chief table trait which I can call to mind as connected with
Vespasian is, that once a month he went without dinner for a day. Such
an observance, he said, saved at once his health and his purse. He had
so much the less to pay to his purveyor; and in consequence of the
fast, less also perhaps than if he had feasted, to his physician. Both
the sons of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, were modest at the banquet.
The former had ceased to be a free liver before he put on the imperial
mantle; and as for Domitian, he could wash down his Malian apple with a
draught of water, and then address himself to sleep, as though he were
a virtuous anchorite, and not the most thirsty drinker of human blood
that ever disgraced his race.
* * * * *
The five succeeding emperors,--Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two
Antonines,--Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius,--governed the world
during the eighty years which are said, but questionably I think,
to have been the happiest years of the human race. There is little
on record as to how these potentates disported themselves at table.
Trajan, indeed, is known to have been a fearful drinker; but he loved
a quiet, unceremonious dinner at the house of a friend of modest
degree,--for there he tippled and talked to his heart’s content, and
willingly forgot that he was Cæsar. Hadrian is remembered as the first
Roman emperor who wore a beard. He had warts on his throat, and he did
not like that these should be seen by his guests at table. He once gave
an entertainment which cost upwards of two millions sterling, (when
Verus was made Cæsar,) and he was sorry for it through the remainder
of his life. Many a man of far humbler degree has committed the same
kind of extravagance, and experienced the same enduring repentance.
Antoninus kept the table of a country gentleman; and Marcus Aurelius
dined alone, while Commodus, his son, played at his knee. The board of
that son resembled that of Vitellius, and he fell from it one day, full
of drugged wine administered to him by a concubine, and was strangled
as he lay beneath the table, drunk, and deserving of his fate.
The modest Pertinax was less happy as emperor than when, as a simple
official, he had charge of the provisions of Rome. Didius Julianus
was deep in the luxuries of the table, and not nearly so deep in
wisdom, when he made a bid for the diadem, a few uneasy dinners in the
palace, and death. Septimius Severus, cared less for the splendour of
his table than the consolidation of his power, but his banquets were
choice things, nevertheless. His sons, Caracalla and Geta, exemplified
their fraternal unanimity by keeping different tables. They never
sat down together at the same board; and there were two factions in
the court, something like that of George the Second, at St. James’s,
and the son whom he hated, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Leicester
Square. Macrinus was a coarse feeder, and in everything he presented a
remarkable contrast with his successor Heliogabalus.