and the spontaneous generosity of one king became a rule for those
that followed. The next laureate, Davenant, a vintner’s son, was
far more dissolute in his drinking, for which he did not compensate
by being more excellent in his poetry. The third of the patented
laureates, Dryden, if he loved convivial nights, loved to spend them
as Jonson did, in “noble society.” Speaking of the Roman poets of the
Augustan age, he says:--“They imitated the best way of living, which
was, to pursue an innocent and inoffensive pleasure; that which one
of the ancients called ‘eruditam voluptatem.’ We have, like them,
our genial nights, where our discourse is neither too serious nor
too light, but always pleasant, and for the most part instructive;
the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor too censorious
on the absent; and the cups only such as will raise the conversation
of the night, without disturbing the business of the morrow.” The
genial nights, however, were not always so delightfully Elysian and
æsthetic. When Rochester suspected Dryden of being the author of the
“Essay on Satire,” which was really written by Lord Mulgrave, and
which was offensive to Rochester, the latter took a very unpoetical
revenge. As Dryden was returning from his _erudite voluptes_ at Wills’,
and was passing through Rose-street, Covent Garden, to his house in
Gerrard-street, he was waylaid and severely beaten, by ruffians who
were believed to be in the pay of Rochester. The conversation of _that_
night certainly _must_ have disturbed the business of the morrow!
And next we come to hasty Shadwell, who may be summarily dismissed
with the remark that he was addicted to sensual indulgence, and to any
company that promised good wine, and plenty of it. Poor Nahum Tate,
too, is described as “a free and fuddling companion;” but the miserable
man had gone through more fiery trials than genial nights. Of Rowe,
the contrary may be said. He was the great diner-out of his day; always
vivacious, dashing, gay, good-humoured, and habitually generous,
whether drunk or sober. He was but a poor poet, but he was succeeded
by one who wrote worse and drank more--Eusden, of whom Gray writes to
Mason that he “was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at
last he turned out a drunken parson.” Cibber loved the bottle quite
as intensely as Eusden did, and he was a gambler to boot; but there
were some good points about Colley, although Pope has so bemauled him.
Posterity has used Cibber as his eccentric daughter did when he went to
her fish-stall to remonstrate with her against bringing disgrace upon
his family by her adoption of such a course: the affectionate Charlotte
caught up a stinking sole, and smacked her sire’s face with it; but
Colley wiped his cheek, went home, and got drunk to prove that he was
a gentleman. With heavy Whitehead we first fall in with indisputable
respectability. He sipped his port, a pensioner at Lord Jersey’s table,
and wrote classical tragedies, for which I heartily forgive him,
because they are deservedly forgotten. His successor, slovenly Warton,
exulted over his college wine with the gobble of a turkey-cock; and
then came Pye, with his pleasant conviviality and his warlike strains,
which “roared like a sucking dove,” and put to sleep the militia, which
it was hoped they would have aroused. Pye was of the time of “Pindar,
Pye, and Parvus Pybus;” and it was during his tenure of office that
the tierce of Canary was discontinued, and the 27_l._ substituted.
With Southey, a dignity was given to the laureateship, which it had,
perhaps, never before enjoyed; and the poetic mantle fell on worthy
shoulders, when it covered those of the gentle Wordsworth. Not that
Wordsworth never was drunk. The bard of Rydal Mount _was_ once in his
life “full of the god;” but he was drunk with strong enthusiasm too,
and the occasion excused, if it did not sanctify the deed. The story is
well told by De Quincey, and it runs thus:--
“For the first time in his life, Wordsworth became inebriated at
Cambridge. It is but fair to add, that the first time was also the last
time. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is the occasion of
this drunkenness, which was the celebration of the first visit to the
very rooms at Christ College once occupied by Milton,--intoxication by
way of homage to the most temperate of men, and this homage offered
by one who has turned out himself to the full as temperate! Every
man, in the mean time, who is not a churl, must grant a privilege and
charter of large enthusiasm to such an occasion; and an older man than
Wordsworth, at that era not fully nineteen, and a man even without a
poet’s blood in his veins, might have leave to forget his sobriety
in such circumstances. Beside which, after all, I have heard from
Wordsworth’s own lips that he was not too far gone to attend chapel
decorously during the very acme of his elevation!”
De Quincey has told how pleasant, and cheerful, and conversational was
the tea-time at Wordsworth’s table; and there, no doubt, the poet was
far more, so to speak, in his element than when in the neighbourhood
of wine, whose aid was not needed by him to elevate his conversation.
But Wordsworth, gentle as he was, had nothing in him of the squire
of dames, whom he generally treated with as much indifference as the
present laureate, Tennison, was once said to feel for those very
poetical little mortals,--children. And here I end the record of a
few table traits of the patented laureates, adding no more of the
fourteenth and last, that is, the present vice-Apollo to the Queen,
than that he has said of his own tastes and locality to enjoy them in,
in Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue, made at the Cock,--
“O plump head waiter at ‘The Cock,’
To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port.
“But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.”
And now all things must have an end; and the end of pleasure is like
the end of life,--weariness, satiety, and regret; and the end of a
well-spent day is _not_ of that complexion, for its name should be
“supper,” without which, however, a man had better go to bed, than with
it and arise in debt. But, as the moral does not apply to us, you and
I, Reader, if you will venture further with so indifferent a companion,
will go hand in hand, before we finally separate.
SUPPER.
The supper was the only recognised repast in Rome; if, indeed, we may
call that supper which sometimes took place at three in the afternoon.
It was then rather a dinner, after which properly educated persons
would not, and those who had supped over freely could not, eat again
on the same day. The early supper hour was favoured by those who
intended to remain long at table. “Imperat extructos frangere nona
toros,” says Martial. The more frugal, but they must also have been the
more hungry, supped, like the Queen of Carthage, at sunset; “labente
die convivia quærit.” All other repasts than this had no allotted
hour; each person followed inclination or necessity, and there was no
difference in the _jentaculum_, the _prandium_, or the _merenda_,--the
breakfast, dinner, or collation,--save difference of time. Bread, dried
fruits, and perhaps honey, were alone eaten at these simple meals;
whereat too, some, like Marius, drank before supper-time, “the genial
hour for drinking.” The hosts were, in earlier ages, cooks as well as
entertainers. Patroclus was famous for his Olla Podrida, and a Roman
general received the Samnite ambassadors in a room where he was boiling
turnips for his supper!
Sunset, however, was the _ordinary_ supper-time amongst the Romans.
“De vespere suo vivere,” in Plautus, alludes to this. In the time of
Horace, ten o’clock was not an unusual hour, and men of business supped
even later. At the period of the decadence of the empire, it was the
fashion to go to the baths at eight, and sup at nine. The repasts which
commenced earlier than this were called _tempestiva_, as lasting a
longer time. Those which began by daylight--_de die_--had a dissolute
reputation; “ad amicam de die potare,” is a phrase employed in the
_Asinaria_ to illustrate the great depravity of him to whom it is
applied.
There is no doubt, I think, in spite of what critics say, that, however
it may have been with the Romans, the Greeks certainly had four repasts
every day. There was the breakfast (άκφκάτισμα), the dinner (ἄριστον),
the collation (ἑσπέρισμα), and the chief of all, despite the term for
dinner, the supper (δεῖπνον).
Among the Romans the _Cœna adventitia_ was the name given to suppers
whereat the return of travellers to their homes was celebrated; the
_Cœna popularis_ was simply a public repast, given to the people by the
government; the _terrestris cœna_ was, as Hegio describes it in the
_Captivei_, a supper of herbs, _multis oleribus_. The Greeks called
such “a bloodless supper.” The parasite, in Athenæus, says that when he
is going to a house to supper, he does not trouble himself to gaze at
the architectural beauties of the mansion, nor the magnificence of the
furniture, but at the smoke of the chimney. If it ascends in a thick
column, he knows there is certainty of good cheer; but if it is a poor
thread of smoke, says he, why then I know that there is no blood in the
supper that is preparing: τὸ δεῖπνον ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ αἷμα ἔχει.
These repasts were gay enough when there was good Chian wine,
unmixed with sea-water, to set the wit going. The banquets of Laïs
were probably the most brilliant ever seen in Greece, for there was
abundance of sprightly intellect at them. It might be said of them, as
Sidney Smith says of what used to be in Paris under the ancient régime,
when “a few women of brilliant talents violated all the common duties
of life, and gave very pleasant little suppers.”
It is a well-ascertained fact that when the Greeks gave great
entertainments, and got tipsy thereat, it was for pious reasons.
They drank deeply in honour of some god. They not only drank deeply,
but progressively so; their last cup at parting was the largest, and
it went by the terrible name of the Cup of Necessity. There was a
headache of twenty-anguish power at the bottom of it. Their pic-nic
and conversation suppers were not bad things. Every guest brought his
own rations in a basket; but as the rich and the selfish used to shame
and tantalise the poorer guests by their savoury displays, Socrates,
that dreadfully didactic personage, imperious as Beau Nash in matters
of social discipline, insisted, that what each guest brought should be
common to all. The result was less show and more comfort. But I would
not have liked to have supped where Socrates was in the chair, for, in
spite of his talents, he was a horrid bore, watching what and how each
guest ate, and speaking to or at him whenever his acute eye discovered
a rent in the coat of his good manners. If he sometimes said good
things, he as frequently said sharp ones; and where he was president,
the guests were simply at school.
It is indeed seldom that the sages are desirable associates. “Come and
sup with me next Thursday,” said a French Amphitryon to a friend. “You
shall meet philosophers or literary men; take your choice.” “My choice
is soon made,” was the reply; “I will sup twice with you.” It was so
arranged, and the supper with the _literati_ was incomparably the
better banquet of the two.
The supper was the great meal of the Greeks; but neither at this, nor
at any other repast, does Homer ever make mention of boiled meat.
The Greeks, then, were not like our poor Greenwich pensioners, who,
up to the present time, have never been provided with meat cooked
in any other way. The result is that the men themselves look as if
they were half-boiled. But a new order of things, including ovens and
baked joints, has been introduced into the kitchen and refectory of
the hospital, and the ancient mariners will soon show the effects of
variety in diet and cooking, by a healthier and a happier hue on their
solemn and storm-beaten cheeks.
And this matter of boiled meat reminds me of the old Duke of Grafton,
who never ate any thing else at dinner or supper, (for it was in the
days of double meals,) but boiled mutton. Yet every day the cook was
solemnly summoned to his grace’s side, to listen to orders which he
knew by heart, and instructions which wearied while they vexed his
spirits. The duke must have been of the saddened constitution which
would have entitled him to sup with that nervous Duke of Marlborough,
who always joined with his invitation a request that his guest would
say or do nothing to make him laugh, as his grace could not bear
excitement.
At the supper-table the Romans did not decline the flesh of the ass,
nor that of the dog; and they were as fond of finely fatted snails as
the southern Germans are, who have inherited their taste. Macrobius,
describing the supper given by the epicurean pontiff Lentulus, in
honour of his reception, says that the first course was composed
of sea hedgehogs, oysters, and asparagus. After these provocatives
came a second course, consisting of more oysters, and various other
shell-fish, fat pullets, beccaficoes, venison, wild boar, and sea
nettles,--to digest the marine hedgehogs, I suppose. The third course
assumed a more civilized aspect, and the guests were only tempted
by fish, fowl, game, and cakes from the Ancona marshes. There is a
supper of Lentulus, as described by Becker. The supper was given to
Gallus, and the account of it is so little exaggerated as to afford
a tolerably correct idea of what those banquets were. Nine guests,
two of them “gentlemen from Perusia,” occupied the _triclinium_. The
pictures around represented satyrs celebrating the joyous vintage;
the death of the boar; fruit and provision pieces over the door, and
similar designs, calculated to awaken a relish for the banquet, were
suspended between the elegant branches occupied by living thrushes.
The lowest place in the middle sofa was the seat for the most honoured
guest. As soon as all were in a reclining posture, the attendant slaves
took off their sandals, and water in silver basins was carried round by
good-looking youths, and therewith the visitors performed their brief
ablutions. At a nod from the host, two servants deposited the tray
bearing the dishes of the first course in the centre of the table. The
chief ornament of this tray, which was adorned with tortoise-shell,
was a bronze ass, whose panniers were filled with olives, and on whose
back rode a Silenus, whose pores exuded a sauce which fell upon the
roast breast of a sow that had never fulfilled a mother’s duty, below.
Sausages on silver gridirons, with Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds
beneath them to simulate fire; and dishes, also of silver, containing
various vegetables, shell-fish, snails, and a reptile or two, formed
the other delicacies of this course. While the guests addressed
themselves thereto, they were supplied with a beverage composed of
wines and honey scientifically commingled. The glory of the first
course was, however, the carved figure of the brooding hen, which was
brought in on a separate small tray. The eggs taken from beneath her
were offered to the guests, who found the apparent eggs made of dough,
on breaking which with the spoon, a fat figpecker was seen lying in the
pepper-seasoned yolk, and strongly tempting the beholder to eat. This
delicacy, was, of course, readily eaten, and _mulsum_, the mixture
of Hymettian honey and Falernian wines, was copiously drunk to aid
digestion. A good deal of wine was imbibed, and numerous witch stories
told (a favourite supper pastime), between and during the courses, at
which the dishes were more and more elaborate and fantastic. A vast
swine succeeded to a wild boar at the supper of Lentulus, who affecting
to be enraged at his cook for forgetting to disembowel the animal
before preparing it for the table, that official feigns to tremble with
the energy of his repentance, and forthwith proceeds to perform the
office of gutting the animal in presence of the guests. He plunges his
knife into its flanks, when there immediately issues from the gaping
wound string after string of little sausages. The conclusion of the
supper is thus told:--“The eyes of the guest were suddenly attracted to
the ceiling by a noise overhead; the ceiling opened, and a large silver
hoop, on which were ointment bottles of silver and alabaster, silver
garlands with beautifully chiselled leaves, and circlets and other
trifles, descended upon the table; and after the dessert, prepared
by the new baker, whom Lentulus purchased for a hundred thousand
sesterces, had been served up, the party rose, to meet again in the
brilliant saloon, the intervening moments being spent, by some in
sauntering along the colonnades, and by others in taking a bath.”
In the description of the supper given by Siba to celebrate the
return of Nero to Rome, we find that the slaves, when they took off
the sandals of the guests, supplied them with others of a lighter
description, which were fastened by crossed ribands. Those who did not
come in “dress,” were furnished with variegated woollen vestments to
cover their togas. Siba’s banquet began to the sound of a hydraulic
organ, which, however, was only in place of our dinner-bell. When the
lime-wood tables were duly covered and flowered, the guests took their
places to the sound of flutes and harps, and said a sort of _grace_,
by invoking Jupiter; while a modest libation of wine was cast on the
floor in honour of the household gods. The first course consisted of
some remarkably strange dishes, but the guests reserved their appetite,
or provoked it with pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar
cattle. A master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was to
regulate how often the guests should drink; and the latter invariably
selected the most confirmed toper. _We_ leave this office to the master
of the house, and in well-regulated families that high official leaves
his guests to do according to their good pleasure. The garlands having
been duly encircled round the brows of Siba’s friends, the trumpets
announced the entrance of the second course. The second course was
duly discussed, its extraordinary dishes thoroughly consumed, and the
four cups were drained to Nero; being the number of letters in his
name; and a good deal of jollity began to abound, which was checked
a little by the arrival of a present from the emperor, sent to Siba,
and which consisted of a silver skeleton. As the guests feared to
interpret the meaning of the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and
then to singing, and philosophising; and then resumed their eating;
and when the force of nature could no further go, they called in the
jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, and having drawn as
much amusement from these as they possibly could, they whipped up their
flagging sensations by looking at the feats of Spanish dancing girls,
and these were succeeded by ten couple of gladiators, who slew one
another in the apartment for the pastime of the supremely indifferent
personages who lay half asleep and half drunk, and lazily applauded the
murderous play. The company were in the very midst of this innocent
amusement when the fire was lit up in Rome by Nero, and which did not
spare the mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape was not more furious
and selfish than that which took place at Prince Schwartzenberg’s ball
in Paris, at which the devouring flames had as little respect for some
of the guests as they had at the terrible supper of Caius Siba.
It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of
deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records of
the olden time. But this is not the case. They are fewer; but they
_do_ exist. We read in the modern history of Germany, that a man with
an uncontrollable appetite for bacon once presented himself at the
tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, before Prague, which he was
besieging. The man was a boor, and had sought access to the king, to
ask permission to perform before him a feat which he boasted of being
able to accomplish,--namely, devour a whole hog. General Koenigsmark,
who was present, and was very superstitious, warned the king not to
listen to a being who, if not the devil, was probably leagued with him.
“I’ll tell you what it is, and please your Majesty,” said the boor, “if
you will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and spurs, I’ll
eat him before I begin with the hog!” The general was no coward; but he
took to his heels, as though the man were serious, and left the king to
enjoy what pleasure he might from seeing a peasant eat a whole pig.
In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs for supper. When
Cailli was in that quarter of the world, a Bambere woman gave him some
yams, and what he thought was gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On
dipping his yams therein, however, he saw some little paws, and at
once knew that it was the famous mouse-sauce; but he was hungry, and
continued his repast. He often subsequently saw the women chopping up
mice for their suppers. When the animals were caught, they were singed
over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. A hungry man _might_
eat thereof without loathing. We have all partaken of far less clean
animals.
It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal is the very hour
for wit. I do not know how this may be, but Souwarow’s wit appears
to have been uncommonly alert at supper-time. When he returned from
his Italian campaign to St. Petersburg, in 1799, the Emperor Paul
sent Count Kontaissow to compliment him on his arrival. The count
had been originally a Circassian slave, and _valet_ to Paul, who had
successively raised him to the ranks of equerry, baron, and count. The
Circassian _parvenu_ found the old warrior at supper. “Excuse me,” said
Souwarow, pausing in his meal, “I cannot recall the origin of your
illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle procured for you
your dignity as count.” “Well, no,” said the ex-valet, “I have never
been in battle.” “Ah! perhaps you have been attached to an embassy?”
“No.” “To a ministerial office then?” “That neither.” “What important
post, _then_, have you occupied?”--“I have been valet-de-chambre to
the emperor,” “Oh, indeed,” said the veteran leader, laying down his
spoon, and calling aloud for his own valet, Troschka. “Here, you
villain,” said he, as the latter appeared, “I tell you daily to leave
off drinking and thieving, and you never listen to me. Now, look at
this gentleman here. He was a valet like you; but being neither sot
nor thief, he is now grand equerry to his majesty, knight of all
the Russian orders, and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow his
example, and you will have more titles than your master; who requires
nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his supper!”
It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was generally accounted
as the peculiar season of wit; but wit, often too daring at such an
hour, sometimes got chastised for its over-boldness.
At one of the _petits soupers_ of Paris, in this olden time, when wit
and philosophy had temporarily dethroned religion, a little abbé,
who had the air of a full-grown Cupid in a semi-clerical disguise,
or who was like Rose Pomaponne in a carnival suit at the Courtille,
took upon himself to amuse the assembled company with stories intended
to ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the philosophers styled
Christianity,) and its professors. He was particularly comic on
the subject of hell and eternal punishments, upon which questions
he dilated with a fulness that would have scarcely edified either
Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole of the amiable society
exploded in inextinguishable laughter at hearing this villanous abbé
speak of hell itself as his “feu de joie!” There was, however, one
face there that bore upon it no traces of a smile. It was that of an
old marechal-de-camp, who might have said, like the old beadle of St.
Mary’s, Oxford, “I have held this office, sir, for more than thirty
years, and, thank heaven, I am a Christian yet!” Well, the old maréchal
frowned as, looking at the infidel abbé, he remarked, “I see very
plainly, sir, by your uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it
seems to me that you must be a deserter.” “My dear maréchal,” answered
the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, “it may indeed be a little
as you say, but then, you see, I do not hold in my troop the rank which
you enjoy in yours. I am not a marechal-de-camp!” “Parbleu,” rejoined
the old soldier, “you never could have reached such a rank, for, to
judge by your conduct and sentiment, you would have been hanged long
before your chance came for promotion.”