Part 4

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us, that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with which we endow _roué_ Members of Parliament, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is “further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose mission it is to render it productive.

Wheat is a native of Asia,--some say, of Siberia; others, of Tartary; but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found there growing in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then asked its protection. The powerful deity was called Robigus, and he was solemnly invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was excepted from this homage; and to threaten to put an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still exists, if we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offered a basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper appellation to be “_acqua crudele_.” He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that it was detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet speaks of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he described them as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain, however, found a good advocate in him who asked, “----where did you ever see such horses and such men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad eating,--where better is not to be procured,--though they are less attractive to the palate than those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the Romans not only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially. The lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of provision was very largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply; and nymphs consumed as fast as swains presented.

If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden’s affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to make them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, and suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid by the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill applied; and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels--twenty times that number of pounds’ weight--were supplied by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial granaries an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is a fact, however, that neither Romans nor Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the method of making fermented bread.

Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the gods; the first men existed on more bitter fare,--bread made from acorns. Ceres has the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her accordingly; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating the pig, now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus dispute the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The hand-mill was one of the trophies which the Roman eagles bore back with them from Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do with this. It was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women, selling bread, their customers; and, as he was the God of Eloquence, it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are endowed with shrewdness and loquacity.

The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our ladies of the Gate, in Billing’s Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman would surpass both. Let me cite an instance.

Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sisterhood was standing at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She had a £10 Bank-of-England note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had been nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she thought she might venture to enter, and ask for gold for her note. She did so; but it was at a time when guineas were worth five-and-twenty shillings a-piece, and gold was scarce, and----in short, she met with a refusal. The quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any disappointment, thereupon asked the cashier to let her have ten of the bank’s £1 notes in exchange for her “Bank-of-Englander.” The cashier was delighted to accommodate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the promise engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. “Very good!” said she, with a gleesome chuckle, “now gi’ me goold for _your_ notes, or I’ll run to the door, and call out, ‘Bank’s broke!’” There was no resisting this, and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her gold. Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her better than she helped herself, by means of her own sharp wit.

Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many years, had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by Numa, who also not only improved the very rude ideas which previously prevailed with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens which he had erected, and to the bakers whom he had raised into a “guild,” placed under the protection of the goddess Fornax;--and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable, deity she was! The public ovens were to the people of Rome what a barber’s shop is to a village in war time,--the temple of gossip. It had been well had they never been any thing worse! The vocation of baker was hereditary in a family; the son was compelled to follow his father’s calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered a senatorship; but then he was required to make over his property, realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the Governor of the Bank of England.

If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were consigned by the State, she suffered by the religious liberty exercised by the bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the very antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax; and the selection of the former would seem to show, that the generally reviled bakers could not only praise virtue, but practise it.

Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the athletæ; batter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of stomach: and there were the prepared bread poultices, which people who, like Pompey’s young soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion, were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slumbering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and more _panis madidus_ than blushes on the cheeks of either.

Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man sows the one, he is not sure that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced “innumerable ears of corn; and that a bushel (twenty pounds’ weight) of millet would make more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian corn.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature,--and he was himself one of the most artificial of characters,--knew very little about her, or her productions. Some of our great men are described as being in much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the last century were one day walking through a field, promising a glorious harvest of grain. One of them extolled the beauty of the wheat. “Nay,” said the second, “it is rye.” “Not so,” remarked the third, “it is a field of barley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentlemen,” said he; “those be oats.” The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of people who go through a country with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish between its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, with a very puzzled look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of Herne Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was “teazle!”

These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “capricious.” They will grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects; but where the aspect is changed, although the land be chemically the same, the canary will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities from Herne Bay for London, where it is used for many purposes. None of its uses are so singular as one to which corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settlements of America, namely, for stretching boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed for several hours in water; during which the leather was distended by the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit for wear.

A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illustrative of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. The Doctor, as is well known,--and he was ever ready to confess his weakness,--occasionally let his warm temper get the better of his excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence of human nature: “Nov. 20th, 1812.--Was provoked with Thomas taking it upon him to ask more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his administration of corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appropriates it; and his eagerness to have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to my servant and wife; and, though I afterwards got my feelings into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles, was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire charity. O, my God, support me!” Was it not to Socrates that some one said?--“To judge from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the world.” “Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher; “I have the worst possible temper, by nature; with the strongest possible control over it, by philosophy.” Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but the control over his stubborn infirmity had something better “than your philosophy” for its support.

Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, according to the Earl of Northumberland’s “Household-Book,” the corn was not thrown loose into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been conjectured, that the English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be no question about it; and even at the present time it is no uncommon sight, in some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding his horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice therefrom for himself.

There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the pigeon. Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls pigeons “voracious and insatiate vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “consuming 159,500,000 pints of corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. 10_s._” It is impossible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons, that they have an organ in the stomach for secreting milk. And it is not alone in the way of devouring corn that they are destructive. In the “Philosophical Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for many ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung spontaneously took fire, at last, and the church was consumed.

I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under the influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vinegar. A little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own legions in the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require a more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of Mark set out as volunteers for the royal army,--the Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders in blue jackets,--each man with a stout staff in his hand, and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with astonishment when they presented themselves at his head-quarters. “Where do you fellows come from?” said he. “From Mark, to help our King.” “Who doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the better; we are here of our own accord.” “Where are your officers?” “We have none.” “And how many of you deserted by the way?” “Deserted!” cried the Markers indignantly: “if any of us had been capable of _that_, we should not be what we are,--volunteers.” “True!” said the King, “and I can depend upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook your hams by.”

When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the Leaguers, the want most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that of bread. The Guise party, who held the city,--and the most active agent of that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri of Guise,--endeavoured to keep life in the people by means that nature revolts at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, the Government within the walls distributed very diminutive rolls made of a paste, the chief ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder. The people devoured them under the name of “Madame de Montpensier’s cakes;”--no wonder that they soon after exultingly welcomed the entry of a King, who declared that his first desire was to secure to every man in France his “_poule au pot!_” But enough of bread. Let us examine briefly the subject of

BUTTER.

The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty religions, and only one sauce,--melted butter. A French commentator has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,” with pheasant. But, to return to butter:--the spilling of it has more than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the old _régime_, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted butter fall upon the silken suit of a French _petit-maître_, the latter indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.” The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similar accident befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”

It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.

TEA.

The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been first used in China as a corrective for bad water; and _that_ not at a remote date.

In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy “hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither useful nor agreeable.

The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.

Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was, as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertainty rests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.

It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood; and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.

The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”) and his _locale_, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11_s._ to 50_s._ per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.

Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He “distilled some green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be unwholesome”--to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are unsatisfactory. _Nux vomica_, for instance, deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many animals.

The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person could like such a diet.”

Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”