Part 39

But the Australians do not always exhibit this extreme nicety. If they cannot, or once could not, eat biscuits, they have no such delicate scruples about eating babies, even when those babies are their own. The cannibalism of the Australians appears to be not so obsolete as those who wish well to humanity would fain desire. This is settled by the testimony of Mr. Westgarth, a member of the local parliament, and the latest writer who has touched upon the subject. In his “Victoria, late Australia Felix,” he says:--“In their natural state, the aborigines stand out with a species of rude dignity. The precision and acuteness of their observant faculties are not to be surpassed; and they exhibit a surprising tact in their various modes of discovering and securing food. The narrow compass of their minds is concentrated in a few lines of vocation, in which, as in the exhibitions of a Blind Asylum, there are displayed an extraordinary accuracy and skill. But to these barbaric excellences, must be added the most degrading, superstitious, and revolting customs. Civilized nations are still unwilling to believe that infanticide and cannibalism are associated with the customs of any race of human beings, or voluntarily practised, except in those rare cases of necessity which have broken down the barriers of nature alike to the white and the black; but nothing is better affirmed than that cannibalism is a constant habit with this degraded race, who alternately revel in the kidney fat of their slain or captured enemies, and in the entire bodies of their own friends and relatives. Nor can the infant claim any security from the mother who bore it, against some ruthless law, or practice, or superstition, that on frequent occasions consigns the female proportion, and sometimes both sexes, to destruction. On authentic testimony, bodies have been greedily devoured even in a state of obvious and loathsome disease; and a mother has been observed deliberately destroying her youngest child, serving it up as food, and gathering around her the remainder of the family to enjoy the unnatural banquet.” It is certainly pleasant to turn from such a spectacle as this to contemplate the wives of the King of Delhi, who pass their time in spoiling, but not killing, their children, and whose chief amusement, after matters of dress, consists in sitting and cracking nutmegs in presence of the Great Mogul!

But there are worse things than these which necessity can render 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!