acceptable to the palate. In Australia especially does nature appear
to indulge in strange freaks. Many of our salt-water fish there live
in fresh-water rivers; and, indeed, more than one inland river is
brackish if not salt. Yet of salt itself the natives had never tasted,
until the arrival among them of Europeans; they do not take kindly
to the condiment even to this day. They prefer their own unadorned
cookery; and they would especially have admired the late Dr. Howard,
who published quarterly his denunciations against the use of salt. In
Australia, the pears are made of wood, and the stones of the cherries
grow on the outside, and not within. The aborigines are satisfied with
very unsavoury diet. They have one fashion, however, in common with the
self-appointed leaders of civilization, the French; they eat frogs. In
France it is the pastime of the _bourgeois_, on a summer evening, to
resort to some pool with a rod and line, and a piece of red rag or bit
of soap for bait, and there catch the little people who could not agree
about their king by the dozen. In Australia the native ladies, in their
usual scantiness of costume, proceed to the swamps; and there, plunging
their long arms up to the shoulders into the mud, they draw up the
astonished frogs by handfuls. When caught they are cooked over a slow
fire of wood-ashes; the hinder parts only are eaten, as in France; and
there are worse dishes than the _fricasée_ of the edible frog. Indeed,
if the Australians devoured nothing more objectionable, their system of
diet would almost defy reproof. But, alas! I find upon their bills of
fare--grubs, raw and roasted, snakes, lizards, rats, mice, and weazels.
The mussel is deeply declined by some of the tribes, in consequence
of an opinion prevailing that the fish in question is the especial
property of sorcerers, whose amiable propensity it is to destroy
mankind by means of mussels. If all the world held the same opinion, I
have no doubt of great profit therefrom resulting.
One of our earlier captains who visited Australia observing a native
devouring some indescribable sort of food, offered him, in exchange
for a portion of it, a sound sea-biscuit. The exchange was effected,
and then it became a point of courtesy and honour that each should eat
what he had acquired by the barter. The trial was a severe one for both
parties. The Englishman swallowed slowly, and with a sickening sense
of disgust that cannot be told, the odious food of the aboriginal;
while the native, nibbling at the biscuit, appeared to grow more
horror-stricken at each bit which he tried to swallow. The tears came
into his eyes, he grew sick, faint, enraged; and at length, dashing the
biscuit on the ground, he as violently seated himself upon it with a
bounce that ought to have driven it to the very centre of the earth.
The Englishman, in the meantime, had flung away the remnant of _his_
“_pièce de résistance_,” and they remained gazing at each other, with
the inward conviction that, as regarded food, each had tasted that day
that which deserved to be designated as surprisingly beastly.
Keating’s Indians are not the only men of North America who have a
delicate fancy for the dog: the Dacotas are also that way given. Their
celebrated “dog-dance” is indeed a festival but of rare occurrence,
but it is held to show that that highly respectable people would eat
the hearts of their enemies with as little reluctance as the heart
of a dog. And this is the manner of the feast of “braves;” they cook
the heart and liver of a dog, cool them in water, and then hang the
dainties on a high pole, around which they assemble as grave and
silent as quakers. The spirit is literally supposed to move them, and
when one is thus influenced, he begins to bark, and jumps towards the
pole. Another follows his example. The jumping backwards and forwards,
and the chorus of barking become gradually universal, and the solemn
concert is then at its height. Every one does his best, according as
nature has gifted him. The children snap like French poodles; the girls
yelp like pugs; some snarl, others growl; the women “give tongue” as
musically as the Bramham Park hounds; and the fathers of the tribe run
through a scale of sounds that would highly astonish Lablache.
And thus, in the midst of it all, one becomes bolder than the rest,
looks about him grinningly defiant, and making a run and a leap at the
canine dainties suspended from the pole, he generally touches ground
again with a piece thereof in his teeth! This good example is also
followed universally, until the tempting prize is all consumed, and
then there is “a general dance of characters,” and the drama is done.
The Dacotas have an esteem for diminutive dogs; and, lest my readers
should deem the tribe to be wholly unacquainted with civilization and
its secrets, I will just mention that these Indians not only drink
whisky with as much profusion as it is drunken in godly Glasgow, but
they occasionally administer a little of it to their dogs, in order to
stunt their growth. Such prayers too as they have, are also marked by a
modern and civilized character; for example, they say, “Great Spirit!
Father! help us to kill our enemies, and give us plenty of corn!” This
is the very spirit of much of the prayer put up by the dwellers in the
regions of enlightenment. And the spirit, with its proper motives, is
not one to be blamed. These barbarous Indians do not, at all events,
insult their Great Spirit, by asking him to give peace in their time,
_because_ none other fighteth for them but him. This would sound to
their ear as though they needed peace, for the reason that their
defence in war was not to be relied upon; and, if it had slipped into
their formulary, they would at least amend it without delay.
But this is getting critical, and so to become reminds us of authors.
Now to treat of _them_, in reference to the table, is generally
speaking to fall upon the discussion of their “calamities,” and the
Encyclopædia of famished writers would be a very heavy work indeed.
We have yet time, however, before the chapter of “Supper” opens, to
take a cursory glance at a few of the brotherhood of the brain and
quill. It can be but of a few, and of _that_ few but briefly. “_Tanto
meglio!_” says the reader, and I will not dispute the propriety of the
exclamation.
AUTHORS AND THEIR DIETETICS.
It is all very well for Mr. Leigh Hunt to write a poem on the “Feast
of the Poets,” and to show us how Apollo stood “pitching his darts,”
by way of invitation to the ethereal banquet. This is all very well in
graceful poetry, but the account is no more to be received, than the
new gospel according to _ditto_ is likely to be by the Lord Primate
and orthodox Christians. It is far more difficult to tell the matter
in plain prose; for, where there are few dinners, many authors cannot
well dine. It is easier to tell how they fasted than how they fed; how
they died, choked at last by the newly-baked roll that came too late to
be swallowed, than how they lived daily,--for the daily life of some
would be as impossible of discovery, as the door of the “Cathedral
of Immensities,” wherein Mr. Carlyle transacts worship. The soul of
the poet, says an Eastern proverb, passes into the grasshopper, which
sings till it dies of starvation. An apt illustration, but our English
grasshoppers must not be used for the illustrative purpose, seeing that
they are far too wise to do anything of the sort. A British grasshopper
no more sings till he dies, than a British swan dies singing: these
foolish habits are left to foreigners and poetry. Let us turn to the
more reliable register of our ever-juvenile friend, Mr. Sylvanus Urban.
More than a century ago, Mr. Urban, who is the only original “oldest
inhabitant,” gave a “Literary Bill of Mortality for 1752,” showing
the casualties among books as well as among authors. Touching the
respective fates of the former, we find the productions of the year
set down as, “Abortive, 7000; still-born, 3000; old age, 0.” Sudden
deaths fell upon 320. Three or four thousand perished by trunk-makers,
sky-rockets, pastrycooks, or worms; while more than half that number
were privily disposed of. If such were the fortunes of the works, how
desperate must have been the diet of the authors! So also was their
destiny. As a class, they are fixed, in round numbers, at 3000; and a
third of these are registered as dying of lunacy. Some 1200 are entered
as “starved.” Seventeen were disposed of by “the hangman,” and fifteen
by hardly more respectable persons, namely _themselves_! Mad dogs,
vipers, and mortification, swept off a goodly number. Five pastoral
poets, who could not live by the oaten pipe, appropriately died of
“fistula.” And, as a contrast to the multitude “starved,” we find a
_zero_ indicating the ascertained quantity of authors who had perished
by the aldermanic malady of “surfeit.”
There is, perhaps, more approximation to truth than appears at first
sight in this _jeu d’esprit_. It was only in Pagan days that authors
could boast of obesity. They dined with the _tyranni_, as Persian poets
get their mouths stuffed with sugar-candy by the Shah Inshah. And yet
Pliny speaks of poets feeding sparingly, _ut solent poetœ_. Perhaps
this was only an exception, like that of Moore, who smilingly sat
down to a broil at home when not dining with “right honourables;” or
contentedly thanked Heaven for “salt fish and biscuits” with his mother
and sister in Abbey Street, the day after he had supped with the ducal
viceroy of Ireland, and half the peerage of the three kingdoms.
Still, in the old times, authors took more liberty with their hosts.
In Rome they kept more to the proprieties; for a nod of the head of
the imperial entertainer was sufficient to make their own fly from
their shoulders. In presence of the Roman emperor of old, an author
could only have declared that the famous invasion of Britain, which
was productive of ship-loads of spoil, in the shape of sea-shells,
was a god-like feat. So, at the table of the czar, all the lyres of
Muscovy sing the ode of eternal sameness, to the effect that the
dastardly butchery at Sinope was an act that made the angels of God
jubilant! The Russian lyres dare not sing to any other tune. It was
not so of yore. Witness what is told us of Philoxenus, the ode writer,
whose odes, however, are less known than his acts. He was the author
of the wish that he had a crane’s neck, in order to have prolonged
enjoyment in swallowing. This is a poor wish compared with that of
Quin, elsewhere recorded, that he might have a swallow as long as from
here to Botany Bay in palate all the way! He was a greedy fellow,
this same Philoxenus. He accustomed himself to hold his hands in the
hottest water, and to gargle his throat with it scalding; and, by this
noble training, he achieved the noble end of being able to swallow the
hottest things at table, before the other guests could venture on them.
He would have conquered the most accomplished of our country bumpkins
in consuming hasty-pudding at a fair. His mouth was as though it was
paved, and his fellow-guests used to say of him, that he was an oven
and not a man. He once travelled many miles to buy fish at Ephesus;
but, when he reached the market-place, he found it all bespoke for a
wedding banquet. He was by no means embarrassed; he went uninvited to
the feast, kissed the bride, sang an epithalamium that made the guests
roar with ecstasy, and afforded such delight by his humour, that the
bridegroom invited him to breakfast with him on the morrow. His wit
had made amends for his devouring all the best dishes. It is a long way
from Philoxenus to Dr. Chalmers forgetting his repast in the outpouring
of his wisdom, and entering in his journal the expression of his fear
that he had been intolerant in argument. What a contrast, too, between
Philoxenus and Byron, who, when dining with a half-score of wits at
Rogers’s, only opened his mouth to ask for biscuits and soda-water, and
not finding any such articles in the bill of fare, silently dining on
vegetables and vinegar! The noble poet’s fare in Athens was often of
the same modest character; but we know what excesses he could commit
when his wayward appetite that way prompted, or when he wished to lash
his Pegasus into fury, as, after reading the famous attack on his
poetry in the Edinburgh Review, when he swallowed three bottles of
claret, and then addressed himself to the tomahawking of his reviewers
and rivals.
Philoxenus, however, had his counterpart in those abbés and poets who
used, in the hearing of Louis XV., to praise Madame de Pompadour. He
was writing a poem called “Galatea,” in honour of the mistress of
Dionysius of Sicily, when he was once dining with that tyrant. There
were a couple of barbels on the royal board, a small one near the
poet, and a larger near the prince. As the latter saw Philoxenus put
his diminutive barbel to his ear, he asked him wherefore, and the poet
replied that he was asking news of Nereus, but that he thought the
fish he held had been caught too young to give him any. “I think,”
said Philoxenus, “that the old fish near your sacredness would better
suit my purpose.” This joke has descended to Joe Miller, in whose
collection it is to be found in a modified form. But the story is
altogether less neat than the one told of Dominic, the famous Italian
harlequin and farce writer. He was standing in presence of Louis
XIV. at dinner, when the Grand Monarque observed that his eyes were
fixed on a dish of partridges. “Take that dish to Dominic,” said the
king. “What!” exclaimed the _farceur_, “partridges and all!” “Well,”
said the monarch, smiling with gravity, “yes, partridges and all!”
This reminds me of another anecdote, the hero of which is the Abbé
Morallet, whom Miss Edgeworth in her “Ormond” praises so highly, and
praises so justly. But Morallet, if he loved good deeds, loved not
less good dinners, and he shone in both. His talents as a writer,
and his virtues as a man, to say nothing of his appetite, made him
especially welcome at the hospitable table of Monsieur Ansu. The abbé
had learned to carve expressly that he might appropriate to himself
his favourite portions,--a singular instance of selfishness in a man
who was selfish in nothing else. It was on one of these occasions that
a magnificent pheasant excited the admiration of the guests, and of
the abbé in particular, who nevertheless sighed to think that it had
not been placed close to him. Some dexterity was required so to carve,
it, that each of the guests might partake of the oriental bird; and
the mistress of the house, remembering the abbé’s skill as a carver,
directed an attendant to pass the pheasant to M. l’Abbé de Morallet.
“What!” exclaimed the latter, “the whole of it? how very kind!” “The
whole of it?” repeated the lady; “I have no objection, if these ladies
and gentlemen are willing to surrender their rights to you.” The entire
company gave consent, by reiterating the words, “the whole of it!” and
the man, who might have gained the Montholon prize for virtue, really
achieved a prize of gluttony which hardly confers honour on a hungry
clown at a fair.
La Fontaine at table was seen in a better light than the Abbé Morallet.
A fermier-general once invited him to a dinner of ceremony, in the
persuasion that an author who excited such general admiration would
create endless delight for the select company, to entertain whom he
had been invited. La Fontaine knew it well, during the whole repast
ate in silence, and immediately rose, to the consternation of the
convives, to take his departure. He was going, he said, to the Academy.
The master of the house represented to him that it was by far too
early, and that he would find none of the members assembled. “I know
that,” said the fabulist, with his quiet smile and courteous bow; “I
know that, but I will go a long way round.” If this seemed a trifle
uncourteous--and it was so more in seeming than reality--it was not
so much so as in the case of Byron, who used to invite a company to
dinner, and then leave them to themselves to enjoy their repast. Noble
hosts of the past century used to do something like this when they gave
masquerades. Fashion compelled them to adopt a species of amusement
which they detested; but they vindicated personal liberty nevertheless,
for when their rooms were at their fullest, the noble host, quietly
leaving his guest to the care of his wife, would slip away to some
neighbouring coffee-house, and over a cool pint of claret enjoy the
calm which was not to be had at home. The late Duke of Norfolk used
habitually to dine at one of the houses in Covent Garden, out of pure
liking to it. He was accustomed to order dinner for five, and to duly
eat what he had deliberately ordered; but, as he one day detected a
waiter watching him in his gastronomic process, he angrily ordered his
bill, and never entered the house again.
It was a common practice with Haydn, like his Grace of Norfolk, to
order a dinner for five or six, and then eat the whole himself. He
once ordered such a dinner to be ready by a stated hour, at which time
he alone appeared, and ordered the repast to be served. “But where is
the company?” respectfully inquired the head waiter. “Oh!” exclaimed
Haydn, “_I_ am de gompany!” But if he ate all, he also paid for all.
Moore and Bowles, in their visits together to Bath, used sometimes to
dine at the White Hart, where, as Moore records, he paid his share of
the dinner and pint of Madeira, and then Bowles magnificently “stood” a
bottle of claret, at dessert. And a pleasant dinner the two opposite,
yet able, poets, made of it;--far more pleasant than Coleridge’s dinner
with a party at Reynolds’s, when he bowled down the glasses like
nine-pins, because they were too small to drink from copiously!
The name of Coleridge reminds me of Dufresny, an author of the time
of Louis XIV., who was full of sentiment and majestic sounds, but
who was content to live at the cost of other people, and who never
achieved anything like an independence for himself. After the death
of his royal patron, he was one day dining with the Regent Duke of
Orleans, who expressed a wish to provide for him. Caprice inspired
the author to say, “Your royal highness had better leave me poor, as
I am, as a monument of the condition of France before the regency.”
He was not displeased at having his petition refused. A guest at his
side did indeed remark, by way of encouragement, that “poverty was no
vice.” “No,” answered Dufresny, sharply, “but it is something very
much worse.” In act and spirit he was not unlike a prince of wits and
punsters among ourselves, who used to set up bottles of champagne on
his little lawn and bowl them down for nine-pins; and who, of course,
left his wife and children pensioners on the charity of the state and
the people.
I have spoken of La Fontaine; he was as absent at table as poor Lord
Dudley and Ward, whose first aberrations so alarmed Queen Adelaide.
La Fontaine was also like Dean Ogle, who, at a friend’s table, always
thought himself at his own, and if the dinner were indifferent, he
would make an apology to the guests, and promise them better treatment
next time. So La Fontaine was one day at the table of Despreaux; the
conversation turned upon St. Augustin, and after much serious discourse
upon that Christian teacher, La Fontaine, who had till then been
perfectly silent, turned to his neighbour, the Abbé Boileau, one of
the most pious men of his day, and asked him “if he thought that St.
Augustin had as much wit as Rabelais?” The priest blushed scarlet, and
then contented himself with remarking, “M. de la Fontaine, you have got
on one of your stockings the wrong side out;”--which was the fact.
The poet’s query to the priest was no doubt as startling as that put
by the son of a renowned reverend joker to the then Lord Primate. The
anxious parent had informed his somewhat “fast” offspring, that as the
archbishop was to dine with him that day, it would be desirable that
the young gentleman should eschew sporting subjects, and if he spoke at
all, speak only on serious subjects. Accordingly, at dessert, during a
moment of silence, the obedient child, looking gravely at his grace,
asked him “if he could tell him what sort of condition Nebuchadnezzar
was in, when he was taken up from grass?” The Lord Primate readily
replied that he should be able to answer the question by the time he
who had made it had found out the name of the man whom Samson ordered
to tie the torches to the foxes’ tails, before they were sent in to
destroy the corn of the Philistines!
Moore loved to dine with the great; but there have been many authors
who could not appreciate the supposed advantages of such distinction.
Lainez was one of these, and there were but few of his countrymen who
resembled him. One day the Duke of Orleans met him in the park at
Fontainebleau, and did him the honour of inviting him to dinner. “It
is really quite impossible,” said Lainez; “I am engaged to dine at a
tavern with half-a-dozen jolly companions; and what opinion would your
royal highness have of me if I were to break my word?” Lainez was not
like Madame de Sevigné, who, after having been asked to dance by Louis
XIV., declared in her delight that he was the greatest monarch in the
world. Bussi, who laughed at her absurd enthusiasm, affirms that the
fair authoress of the famous “Letters” was so excited at the supper
after the dance, that it was with difficulty she could refrain from
shrieking out “Vive le Roi!”
Had the famous “petit père André” kept down his impulses as
successfully as Madame de Sevigné did at the supper, where, after
all, she did _not_ exclaim, “Vive le Roi,” it would have been more to
his credit, and less to our amusement. The good father, like a better
man, H. Vincent de Paul, was excessively fond of cards, but he did not
cheat, like the saint, for the sake of winning for the poor. He had
been playing at _piquet_, and in one game had won a considerable sum by
the lucky intervention of a fourth king. He was in such ecstasy at his
luck, that he declared at supper he would introduce his lucky fourth
king into his next day’s sermon. Bets were laid in consequence of this
declaration, and the whole company were present when the discourse was
preached. The promise made at the supper was kept in the sermon, though
something profanely: “My brethren,” said the abbé, “there arrived one
king, two kings, three kings; but what were they?--and where should I
have been without the fourth king, who saved _me_, and has benefited
you? That fourth king was He who lay in the manger, and whom the three
royal magi came but to worship!” At the dinner which followed the
author of the sermon was more eulogised than if he had been as grand as
Bourdaloue, as touching as Massillon, or as winning as Fénelon.