Part 3

Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” It is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity presiding, better than another essayist, though one of a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin,--I mean Leigh Hunt. In the “Indicator” he invites us to a “Breakfast in Cold Weather.” “Here it is,” he says, “ready laid. _Imprimis_, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared for us,--a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed heads of a set of good-humoured urchins; and the sole empty chair, at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone,” he adds, “we could not help reading at meals; and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. The first look at the page, accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the head of ‘intensities.’” Under the head of “&c.” in the above list, I should be disposed to include “sunshine;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gardens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,” and amid flowers. Breakfasts _al-fresco_ are all the more intensely enjoyed, because so few may be discussed in the open air in a country whose summer consists of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people should not leave off their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same the next morning when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and Boerhaave are right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraordinary severity.

The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. If Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appetites, and these could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who consumed three. The Romans were, in this respect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or nothing before the hour when they compensated for a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of “bread and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but good authority assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry for his morning repast long before day-break. This was in winter time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably induced to do so by indisposition; for he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater,--eating much, leaving more, and ordering the remains to be divided among the attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled for the same.

Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the dishes half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast; but potentates of our own days have made their first meal upon very questionable matter.

When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a large grilled water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The company were much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to those savoury viands. The Prince, who gave this public breakfast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century, our commoners used to give similar entertainments in honour of Princes.

“Ælia Lælia” Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s birthday. The _scene_ is admirably painted by Walpole. “The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it was the loosest family I ever saw.”

There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called “the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility with which he departed.” There was neither convulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger Berthollet,--although in the latter there was something heroical, too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;--“a pause, and then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”

I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water; add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the various

MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.

And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast of,--a birth-right,--the least disputable article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.

It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in intensity to that of having him----but let us keep to “Table Traits.”

Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call the _aqua pumpaginis_, has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if, indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.

In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.

“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,--a substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.

There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket!

Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton,--which, by the way, is not made _at_ Stilton,--and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese,--principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people _must_, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.

I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by mere repose.

Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs.

Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six feet high, and men at all points.

If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air through which they passed!

Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs!

Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of that very interesting personage, her future husband!

There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, appear.

Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread;--of which I will now say a few words, and first of

CORN.

Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the feeling which universally prevails,--that he alone is aristocratic, has the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his earthly tabernacle.

The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere; her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings showered down upon them by the Lord.

Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice, has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among our Transatlantic cousins.

The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests.

It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently, and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,” they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that their district should be henceforth distinguished by its having _two_ harvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman” smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And therewith the simple people departed joyously.

The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in connexion therewith, and their public treasury “_pascua_” showed, by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in minted coin enjoyed the _pecunia_, or “money,” for which “flocks” (_pecus_) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (_locus_) was _locuples_, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he was in possession of a “salary,” who had his _salarium_, his allowance of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived.

The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the inventive Gauls.

The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,--the Emperor of China.

And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,” says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting!--how stimulating!--how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”