Part 38

We are told by old Pierre de Chastel, Bishop of Macon, that the ordinary etiquette of service was rigorously maintained every day, during eleven days, as if the king had been living and laughing in the midst of them. The royal dinner-table was laid out at the side of the bed; a cardinal blessed the viands; and a gentleman of various quarterings presented to the unconscious image a full ewer, wherewith to wash the hands which, folded as they were, seemed like those of the father of Miss Kilmansegg, to be already washing themselves with invisible soap in imperceptible water!

A second gentleman offered to the representative of the defunct king a vase mantling with wine; and a third wiped his lips and fingers, as if either could have been soiled by _not_ coming in contact with the cates and the goblet! These functions, and others that may very well be passed over, were performed amid a most death-like silence, and by the fitful light of funereal torches,--the only dinner lamps in use while the dead king was engaged in _not_ dining. And such were the clever funeral banquets presided over by the waxen similitude of a defunct king. And here it should be _my_ office to pass to other subjects more immediately connected with Table Traits, but I may perhaps, be pardoned if I add, that the royal corpse, after the copious feeding which its effigy was mocked with, was raised with incredible pomp, and borne into Paris with an attendant mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. It was preceded by beggars, nobles, cavaliers, and cooks, (“officiers de bouche,”) pages, surgeons, and valets de chambre, grooms, heralds, and archbishops. The followers behind the car were of more uniform and exalted rank; and when the procession reached Vaugérard, it was met by the twenty-four town-criers of Paris, who took immediate precedence of the five hundred beggars. The funeral service in the cathedral was conducted with similar magnificence; but what is most singular is the fact, that the solemn ceremony was no sooner concluded, than it was recommenced with all gravity, for the benefit of the waxen effigy that had been served for eleven days with an “omelette fantastique!” and more than this, two of the sons of the deceased king, having been previously interred, but with maimed rites, a newly organized procession and service took place on this occasion, not only for themselves, but for their effigies also! There was an ocean of holy water scattered on these exaggerated dolls; the aspersion, however, was borne with a calmness worthy of their dignity! And at these ceremonies the English ambassador, with other Christian representatives, appeared on horseback, each with a prelate mounted also at his side. The union represented that which ought to exist between church and state everywhere, but which does not even in the Duchy of Baden. When the lengthened solemnities had come to a conclusion, the merry pages, as hungry as they were joyous, scrambled for sweetmeats, and that was the last of the feasting or fasting of Francis I.

All this seems barbarous and antique: it _is_ the former rather than the latter. The custom, with some attendant exaggerations, is still prevalent in China, where only two years ago the defunct aunt of the sun and moon, mother to the reigning monarch, was feasted with a solemn parade of magnificent nonsense, the details of which make those of the banquet of the deceased Francis look extremely poor indeed. I believe that the Chinese idea with regard to their poor dead princess was, that she, or the immortal part in her, could not possibly take flight upon the celestial dragon waiting to convey her to the pagoda--paradise of Cathay--until this farewell banquet had been given to her by those who had loved her upon earth.

It is the easiest thing in the world, and perhaps it is the most natural, to smile superciliously at these customs, and dismiss them with the definite remark, that they were heathenish and superstitious. _But_ our grandmothers, or _their_ mothers rather, saw something very like it in England. In the latter case, it was not the consequence of a law that ruled in such matters, but a spontaneous act of a sublimely ridiculous, or a ridiculously sublime, affection. Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, we are told, demonstrated her affection for Congreve in a manner indicative of absolute insanity. “Common fame reports,” says Kippis, in the “Biographia Britannica,” “that she had his figure made in wax, talked to it as if it had been alive, placed it at table with her, took great care to help it with different sorts of food, had an imaginary sore in its leg regularly dressed, and, to complete all, consulted physicians with regard to its health.”

An invitation from the duchess to dinner, to meet her simulative friend, who could hardly be said to have waxed wittier after his metempsychosis, would not have been a lively thing. I am not sure that I would not rather have been in the place of the Hetman of the Zaparogue Cossacks, who was strangely treated and dieted when he was elected to the chief command over his own wild hordes. His followers besmeared (and the fashion is not yet obsolete) his face with mud, placed a symbolic _baton_ in his hand, and a saucy-looking crane’s feather in his bonnet. They then gave him a cupful of tar (a process that would have delighted Bishop Berkeley), and after pitching greatness into him in this manner, he was allowed a draught of mead by way of purifying his palate. When Shakspere said, “Take physic, pomp,” he was little aware of the custom to that effect among the Zaparogues. It was sweetened, indeed, by the conclusive draught of mead, as Berkeley’s dissertation on tar water was wound up by a sermon on the Trinity; but I think I would have preferred swallowing the tar, with nothing to qualify it but the title, rather than have sat down to the most sumptuous of banquets, between the mad duchess and her wax lover with an issue in his leg!

William Howitt tells of an old countrywoman whom he sought to initiate into the simple elements of religion, and to whom he presented a Testament. When the latter had been read through, the worthy teacher asked her what she thought of the solemn record: “Ah, well!” was the graceless comment, “it all happened so long ago, and so far off, that I don’t believe a word of it!” Some such witticism may, perhaps, apply to my stories just told, some of which have distant scenes for their locality, and others distant periods for their times of actions. But, in the way of barbarous banquets, examples may be cited less open to this objection; and if the far-off Zaparogue chiefs have a cruelly nasty inauguration into greatness, I do not know if the children in the Scottish Highlands, to whom the wise women there administer a mixture of whisky and earth as their first food, have not a nastier inauguration into life. Having mentioned Scotland, I may, while on the subject of strange banquets, show how they cooked and fed in the days of Edward III. “Nor yet had they,” says old Joshua Barnes, “any cauldrons or pans to dress their meat in; for what beasts they found (as they always had good store in those northern parts), they would seethe them in their own (the beasts’!) skins, stretched out bellying on stakes, in the manner of cauldrons; and having thus sodden their meat, they would take out a little plate of metal, which they used to truss somewhere in or under their saddles, and laying it on the fire, take forth some oatmeal (which they carried in little bags behind them for that purpose), and having kneaded and tempered it with water, spread that thereon. This being thus baked they used for bread, to comfort and strengthen their stomachs a little when they eat flesh.”

Stomachs that needed no other comforting than this must have belonged to men of irresistible arms. They devoured the bullocks, and afterwards dressed themselves in the cauldrons. They remind us of those nomade people of whom the poet asks,--

“Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel Upon the strength of water-gruel? But who shall stand his rage and force, If first he rides, then eats his horse?”

And this metrical allusion to ancient banquets, and characteristic prowess connected with them, recalls to my memory the singular story touching the strangest of facts, which has been told in choice verse by Ludwig Uhland. The German poet, in narrating it, has condemned himself to execute a sort of double hornpipe in fetters, having set himself the task to introduce one word, the subject of his poem, into every stanza of his rhymed romance. “Done into English,” the legend runs thus:--

THE CASTELLAN OF COUCY, OR THE HEART.

“How deeply young De Coucy sigh’d, How sad the feeling that came o’er him, And smote his heart, when first he saw The Lady of Fayal before him!

“How suddenly his song assumed The strain of love’s impassion’d fire! How every measure clearly told His heart vibrated with his lyre!

“But vain the sweetness of his song, In am’rous cadence softly dying! No hope had he to move the heart Of her who heeded not his sighing!

“For even, when beyond his wont He fell on some inspirèd strain, The wedded lady’s heart scarce moved,-- It warm’d but to be cold again.

“Then was the Castellan resolved, The cross upon his cuirass’d breast, ’Mid toils in Palestine to seek The tumults of his heart to rest.

“And there, in many a hot affray, Where perils threat, and dangers thicken, He stands till,--’spite his coat of mail, His noble heart with death is stricken.

“‘Oh! hear’st thou me, my page?’ he cried, ‘When this fond heart has ceased its beating, To the fair Lady of Fayal Bear it, with De Coucy’s greeting.’

“In cold and consecrated earth The hero’s corpse at length reposes; But o’er his heart, his broken heart, Hot so the tomb its portal closes.

“The heart within a golden urn. Was laid; the page received the treasure, And quickly sped him o’er the main, To do his noble master’s pleasure.

“Now whirlwinds tear, and waters dash, Now lightnings rend, and masts are falling; All hearts on board are struck with awe, One heart alone’s beyond appalling!

“Now beams the golden sun again; Now France upon the bow’s appearing; All hearts on board with joy are cheer’d; One heart alone’s beyond all cheering!

“And soon, through Fayal’s frowning wood, The page and heart their way are making, When winding sounds the lusty horn, With hunters’ cries the stillness breaking.

“Then from the thicket bounds a stag, Through his heart an arrow flying, Checks his course, and strikes him dead,-- At the page’s feet he’s lying.

“And now the Ritter of Fayal, Who first the gallant stag had wounded, Gallops up with hunting train, Who soon the gentle page surrounded.

“The golden urn had quickly fall’n To the Ritter’s knaves a welcome booty, Had not the boy stepp’d back a pace, And told them of his mournful duty.

“‘Heart of a knightly Troubadour, Here is a warrior’s heart, I say,-- The Castellan of Coucy’s heart; Let pass this heart its peaceful way!

“‘Dying, my gallant master cried, When this heart has ceased its beating, To the fair Lady of Fayal Bear it, with De Coucy’s greeting.’

“‘That dame I know full passing well!’ Shouted the knight in deadly passion, As from the trembling page he tore The urn, in fierce uncourteous passion.

“And with it, grasp’d beneath his cloak, Homeward sped the savage Ritter; The heart close press’d upon his breast, Fill’d it with thoughts of vengeance bitter.

“Scarce at his castle-gate arrived, His madden’d thoughts intent on treason, Than straight his frighted cooks are charged The heart with condiments to season.

“’Tis done! and richly strewn with flow’rs, And lain on golden dish withal, ’Tis placed before the Knight and Dame, When seated in their banquet-hall.

“The Knight upon the Lady tended. Speaking in terms of feign’d delight-- ‘Of all the produce of my chase, This heart is yours, fair dame, by right!’

“But scarcely had the Lady tasted Of the dainty placed before her, When impulse, strong and strange, to weep, Irresistibly came o’er her.

“On marking which the Ritter cried, With wild and savage laugh unholy, ‘Do pigeons’ hearts, my faithful Dame, Give tendency to melancholy?

“‘Then how much more, O Lady mine, Must fare like this such passion raise-- The Castellan of Coucy’s heart, Whose lyre was wont to sound thy praise?’

“And when the Knight, with stern reproof, Had ceased thus sneering to upbraid, he Stood; while hand on heart too, thus With solemn action spoke the Lady:--

“‘Thou’st done me foulest wrong to-day! Ne’er false was I, not e’en in thought, Till this poor heart I touch’d but now, Within my own mutation wrought.

“‘The youthful Poet’s passion, told With sadden’d heart and anxious brow, I scorn’d while yet the Poet lived, But dead! I yield me to it now.

“‘To death devoted, this weak frame, To which De Coucy’s heart hath lent A brief support, shall never more Partake of earthly nourishment.

“‘May Heav’n its mercy show to all; Yes, e’en to thee may Heav’n show it!’

* * * * *

“Such is the story of a heart That once inspired a youthful Poet.”

The above story of the Castellan de Coucy is considered to be one of Uhland’s most remarkable poems, as much from its general sweetness, unhappily lost in translation, as from the wit with which he continually keeps before the reader the one word which forms the principal feature in the little romance. The tale is, however, by no means new. There are few nations whose story-tellers do not celebrate a lady who was forced by a jealous husband to eat the heart of her lover. It is common to England, Ireland, and Scotland. In France, the story exists nearly as Uhland has told it. In Germany, it is to be met with in various forms. In one of these, the lady is shown to have been more kind and less faithful than the Ritter’s wife of Fayal. But above all it is, as the mad prince says, “extant, and written in very choice Italian,” by the at once seductive and repulsive Boccaccio. It is one of the least filthy of a set of stories, told with a beauty of style, a choice of language, a lightness and a grace, which make you forget the matter and risk your morals, for the sake of improving your Italian. In Boccaccio’s narrative, the lady is of course very guilty; and the husband also, of course, murders the lover in as brutal and unknightly a fashion as can well be imagined. Nothing else could be expected from that unequalled story-teller, (unequalled as much for the charm of his manner, as for the general uncleanness of his details,) who but seldom has a good word to say for woman, or an honest testimony to give of man. Human nature presented nothing beautiful or estimable to him; and yet it is undeniable that he had an acute perception of beauty and honour. The characters he describes are scurvy, vicious, heartless, debauched wretches; but he dresses them up in such dashing bravery of attire, and endows them with such divinity of beauty, and he writes of their whereabout with such witchery of pen, that his poor, weak, ensnared readers have nothing for it but to go on in alternate extremes of admiring and condemning. To revert to the German prose story of the Heart, I may say that it is merely a bad translation from the “Decameron,” telling in a very matter-of-fact way the history of a Lady von Roussillon, “welches ihres geliebte Herz zu essen erhält, und sich den Tod gibt.”

This strange banquet is not to be set down as positively apocryphal, merely because it has fallen into the possession of the rhymers and romancers. The old German barons were rather inclined to a barbarous species of kitchen--something crude and cannibal of character--if we may so far credit the extravagances of legend as to believe that they are founded on fact. But we need not go to Germany and fairy periods for illustrations of extraordinary banquets, or individual dieting.

Among eccentric gastronomists, I do not recollect one more remarkable than Mrs. Jeffreys, the sister of Wilkes. At Bath, she slept throughout the year beneath an open window, and the snow sometimes lent her bed an additional counterpane. She never allowed a fire to be kindled in this room, the chief adornment of which was a dozen clocks, no two of which struck the hour at the same moment. She breakfasted frugally enough on chocolate and dry toast, but proceeded daily in a sedan-chair, with a bottle of Madeira at her side, to a boarding-house to dine. She invariably sat between two gentlemen, “men having more sinew in mind and body than women,” and with these she shared her “London Particular.” Warner, in his “Literary Recollections,” says that some mighty joint that was especially well-covered with fat, was always prepared for her. She was served with slices of this fat, which she swallowed alternately with pieces of chalk, procured for her especial enjoyment. Neutralizing the _subacid_ of the fat with the alkaline principle of the chalk, she “amalgamated, diluted, and assimilated the delicious compound with half-a-dozen glasses of her delicious wine.” The diet agreed well with the old lady, and she maintained that such a test authorized use.

We may contrast with the lady who loved lumps of chalk, the people of a less civilized time and place, who had a weakness for a species of animal food, which is not to be found written down in the _menus_ of modern dinners. Keating, in his “Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River,” gives some curious details, which may be not inappropriately touched upon here, referring as they do to a nation of dog-eaters. The custom at first sight strikes us as rather revolting; but the animal in question, to say nothing of our stealthy friend the cat, is eaten every day in “ragoûts,” that smoke on the boards of the cheap _gargottes_ of Paris and the _banlieux_. After all, custom and prejudice have much to do with the subject. “What do you do with your dead?” once asked a member of a distant Asiatic tribe of a Roman. “We bury them,” answered the latter. “Gracious heaven!” exclaimed the “untutored Indian,” with disgust, “what filthy and fiendish impiety!” “Why so?” inquired the other. “What do you and your people with _your_ dead?” “We treat them,” replied the Indian proudly, “with the decent forms that best become the dead; we _eat_ them!” To this day the nobles of Thibet are honoured after death with a very valuable and enviable privilege. They are reverentially offered to a body of hounds, maintained for the especial purpose of devouring the defunct aristocracy. What remains at the end of the process is cared for, like the ashes which were taken of old from beneath the pile on which a loved corpse had lain. This exclusive honour is never vouchsafed to the commonalty; it is the particular vested right of greatness; and had Hamlet known of it when he traced great Cæsar’s clay stopping a bung-hole, it would have afforded him another illustration of the base uses to which mortality may return. Let _us_ return to the dog-eaters. Mr. Keating shall tell what he saw among them, in his own words: _Sua narret Ulysses_.

“As soon as we had taken our seats, the chief (Wanotau) passed his pipe round; and while we were engaged in smoking, two of the Indians arose, and uncovered the large kettles which were standing over the fire. They emptied their contents into a dozen of wooden dishes which were placed all round the lodge. These consisted of buffalo meat boiled with _tepsin_; also the same vegetable boiled without the meat, in buffalo grease; and, finally, the much-esteemed dog-meat--all which were dressed without salt. In compliance with the established usage of travellers to taste of everything, we all partook of the latter, with a mixed feeling of curiosity and reluctance. Could we have divested ourselves entirely of the prejudices of education, we should, doubtless, unhesitatingly have acknowledged this to be one of the best dishes that we had ever tasted. It was remarkably fat,--was sweet and palatable. It had none of that dry, stringy character which we had expected to find in it; and it was entirely destitute of the strong taste which we had apprehended it must possess. It was not an unusual appetite, or the want of meat to compare with it, which led us to form this favourable opinion of the dog; for we had on our dish the best meat which our prairies afford. But so strongly rooted are the prejudices of education, that though we all unaffectedly admitted the excellence of this food, yet few of us could be induced to eat much of it. We were warned by our trading friends, that the bones of this animal are treated with great respect by the doctors. We therefore took great care to replace them in the dishes; and we are informed that after such a feast is concluded, the bones are carefully collected, the flesh scraped off them, and that after being washed, they are burned on the ground; partly, as it is said, to testify to the dog-species that in feasting on one of their number, no disrespect was meant to the species itself; and partly also from a belief that the bones of the animal will arise and reproduce another. The meat of this animal, as we saw it, was thought to resemble that of the finest Welsh mutton, except that it was of a much darker colour. Having so far overcome our repugnance as to taste it, we no longer wonder that the dog should be considered a dainty dish by those in whom education has not created a prejudice against this flesh. In China it is said that fatted pups are frequently sold in the market-place; and it appears that an invitation to a feast of dog meat is the greatest distinction that can be offered to a stranger by any of the Indian nations east of the Rocky Mountains. That this is not the case among some of the nations on the east of those mountains, appears from the fact that Lewis and Clarke were called in derision by the Indians of Columbia, ‘dog-eaters.’”

It may be readily believed that the food above spoken of must be more acceptable to the human appetite than the snails which are fattened for the public markets in the meadows about Ulm. Two Edinburgh doctors did indeed pronounce the prejudice against snails to be absurd, and they showed the strength of their own convictions by sitting down to a charmingly prepared little dish. The courage of each failed him at the first taste, but neither liked to confess as much to the other. They went on playing with their repast, until one ventured to say in a remarkably faint voice, “Don’t you think, doctor, they are a _leetle_ green?” “D--d green, Sir! d--d green!” was the hearty confirmatory rejoinder; “they are d--d green! take them away!”