Part 3

“My friend has so long lived his life with nature that it has become the theme of his chief study. He outlined this to me one evening when the rain caused us to transfer our coffee from the terrace to the conservatory, where his ideas became permanently associated with the impressions of azalea bloom and jasmine fragrance which I acquired at the same time.

“‘I am slowly accumulating,’ he said, ‘facts and ideas for a history of the relations between nature and man in the United States. The conditions have been peculiar, and the results more than ordinarily interesting. Nowhere else, for example, have people possessing all the arts of civilization made their homes in the midst of absolutely primitive nature. With such a beginning, three thousand years of history have here been epitomized in three hundred. Nature as an enemy was soon conquered, and nowhere else has she afterward shown herself more friendly in surface fertility and underground resources. Our vast and relatively undiversified territory has brought men of the coast, the mountains, and the plains; of the rugged North and the languorous South, into closer and more constant contact than ever before. And to this unparalleled interplay we have welcomed myriads from every other climate and condition on the earth, and have set up for the whole theories of government which allow almost perfect freedom to all racial, local, and individual traits.

“‘I intend to deal but briefly with the physical results of such inhabitation. The wisdom of experience is beginning to check the perhaps natural tendency to spoil ruthlessly the conquered forest; and even the most materially minded are beginning to act toward the universal mother no more harshly than they would toward a captive or slave whose usefulness is increased by considerate treatment.

“‘The peculiar relations between nature and the human spirit in the United States, however, seem to me worthy of extended study. Thus, it is undoubtedly because of our unique environment, that so just an observer as Emerson found American perceptions keener than any he met with elsewhere. Our poets have certainly recorded other and more varied aspects of nature than their English brethren, who in comparison seem to deal chiefly with the “common or garden variety.” Nothing is more mistaken than to consider Bryant a kind of inferior Wordsworth. There is more truth in the remark that Wordsworth himself was not primarily a nature poet, since nature was to him chiefly the source of certain stimuli to the mental life, which was his fundamental interest. Bryant not only feels this stimulus, along with nature’s suggestive and representative qualities, and its physical benefits; but he also apprehends nature as an independent world of physical life and order, of which man is a citizen so far as he is a creature, and of which he may be a ruler so far as his mind works in harmony with natural law, and partakes of the power behind it.

“‘This aspect of nature was not, I believe, apprehended by Wordsworth at all. He at least gave no utterance to it. Similarly, in the treatment of the water-world, in which English poets have usually excelled, the English critic Henley has shown how Longfellow, through a simple self-forgetfulness in his impressions, found eternal beauties hitherto unnoticed. Emerson’s nature-teaching is fairly well known, but the depth and breadth of Whitman’s sympathy for land and sea has yet to be generally appreciated; and these poets are only a few of many examples.

“‘American painting, too, has found itself in landscape; our sculpture and music have drawn inspiration from aboriginal life; and our natural science is second to none in its careful, accurate, and tireless study.

“‘The special field in which we may learn from the older world is in the employment of nature as the material of art; and for this with our advance in wealth and leisure, we are now ready. Roman, Italian, and English examples have already been followed in making real for us some of Poe’s visions of cultivated landscape; and I am daily expecting those delightful intellectual and aesthetic results which have always come when men, wearied with the cultivation of cities, retire to the contrasting peace, simplicity, and beauty of nature.’

“There were, of course,” continued Professor Maturin, “many other general ideas in my friend’s system, and he has accumulated a vast hoard of particular facts to illustrate them. The last aspect of the subject, however, continued to interest me most; for I was experiencing hourly the truth of what he said concerning the thaumaturgic, healing power of nature. I never felt such gentle and cumulative refreshment in my life. The varied sensations of travel, which is perhaps the favorite form of recreation, merely whip the jaded spirit into new activity. But these peaceful, natural scenes and sounds allow the senses to relax, and the mind to renew its texture and recover its tone. As Browning puts it,

_my soul Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll._

I have experienced a real re-creation.

“Therefore,” concluded Professor Maturin, as we finished our cigars, “you must not be surprised if, within the next few weeks, I compose a pastoral symphony, or become a new Theocritus, or--what is less unlikely--retire to a villa, as Horace did.”

V

_Food for Thought_

I was just ordering dinner at the Athenaeum when Professor Maturin entered the room and peered about over his spectacles in search of a congenial corner. Happily for me, his glance encountered mine, and his smile accepted my invitation. I settled myself for an hour of rare conversation.

“And what are you planning to have?” he queried. I passed him the order I was signing, but noticed, as he read it, first surprise, then incredulity, and finally sorrow in his expression.

“My friend, my friend,” he said, mournfully shaking his head, “and you a literary man!”

“Won’t you, then, order for me instead?” I responded, cancelling the slip, outwardly meek, but inwardly rejoicing that my friend’s energy had created a situation which his kindliness would require him to explain at length.

“In the cause of the advancement of learning, sir, I will!” he replied. And taking a new blank, he began to write from the bottom upward, remarking: “In the first place, I always feel, in order that a dinner may have unity and consistency, it should be planned like a poem, from the end toward the beginning; all the more, since there is no chance for revision. There,” he resumed, finishing, “I think that will do, as simple, nourishing, and suggestive.”

And he read: “Oysters, with a few Platonic olives, for the sake of Dr. Holmes and criticism; a bit of tenderloin, in memory of Mary Lamb’s beefsteak pudding; asparagus, which, according to Charles Lamb, inspires gentle thoughts; cauliflower, which Dr. Johnson preferred to all other flowers; Vergil’s salad; apple pie, according to Henry Ward Beecher’s recipe, with a bit of Dean Swift’s cheese; and, finally, a little coffee. I have considerably increased my usual ration in order that you may not miss what the French call ‘the sensation of satiety.’

“I find it difficult,” sighed Professor Maturin, as he passed the order to an attendant and leaned back in his chair, “to absolve men of letters from what has been called the crime of unintelligent eating. Of all men their need of and their opportunity for wisdom in such matters is the greatest. And yet you have Gray wondering at his ailments and his melancholia, when he was eating chiefly marmalade and pastry, taking no exercise, and dosing himself with tar water and sage tea.

“Shelley did scarcely better in a more enlightened age. Byron’s habitual flesh-reducing mixture, potatoes and vinegar, is chemically indigestible. And Thoreau literally consumed himself in following and advocating a diet which so prepared him for tuberculosis that living half his time in the open air could not prevent it.

“The opposite extreme, which is yet more common, is even less attractive in men of genius. Who likes to remember that Spenser and Milton had gout, or that Goethe drank in his time fifty thousand bottles of wine? As for Pepys, what do you think of having one’s ‘only mayde’ dress such a home dinner as this, copied from his ‘Diary:’ ‘A fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton, three carps, a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a dish of anchovies, and good wine of several sorts’? No wonder that his better qualities are obscured in our memories of him.

“Philosophers, men of action, and, interestingly enough, men of the world, have usually set a better example. ‘They that sup with Plato,’ said Aelianus, ‘are not sick or out of temper the next day.’ Socrates, Epicurus, and Kant, all preached and practiced judgment and restraint. Horace and Catullus insisted that their pampered guests should bring their luxuries with them. Montaigne highly disapproved of elaborate cooking, and Pope refused to dine with Lady Suffolk so late in the day as four.

“Then there is that admirable story of Cincinnatus, whom the venal senators knew they could not bribe after they found him preparing his own dinner of turnips. It is quite in keeping that King Alfred should have burned the cakes, and that Napoleon should have spilled the omelet; and it is to Lady Cromwell’s credit that she would not allow the Protector oranges that cost a groat apiece.

“Even aside from health and morals, a man’s relation to food is always significant. Who can think of Tasso without remembering that he loved sweetmeats? Is there not literary suggestion in the fact that Vergil loved garlic and Horace hated it; that Horace preferred his Falernian and his Sabine farm to the dinners and Persian apparatus of Maecenas, but that Cicero loved to dine with Lucullus and bought himself a seven-thousand-dollar dinner table?

“Is it not illuminating to know that the favorite food of Burns was oat-cake, that of Byron truffles? De Quincey’s reports that Wordsworth used the same knife for cutting butter and the pages of books; and that Scott, when Wordsworth’s guest, repaired secretly to an inn for chops and ale--these are not gossip, but literary criticism. It is as surely interpretative of Dickens to know that he disliked Italian cookery as that he was fond of playing an accordeon.

“Carlyle’s pessimism is usually attributed to indigestion. It ought, I think, to be as usual to explain Emerson’s optimism by a digestion that could cope successfully with his favorite pie. We habitually associate tea and coffee with Johnson and Balzac, and their work. Should we not as often remember that Milton produced ‘Paradise Lost’ on coffee, and ‘Paradise Regained’ on tea? Of course, such physical criticism of literature must be limited by other judgments. I can well agree with Dr. Gould that many writers show the effects of eye-strain, and it is difficult to upset the diagnosis of anaemia in Hawthorne; but I hesitate to think, with Dr. Conan Doyle, that Shakespeare had locomotor ataxia.”

“Why did you associate oysters with criticism?” I inquired, as Professor Maturin paused.

“Do you not recall,” he replied, “the Autocrat’s remark that literary reputations are largely a matter of administering oysters in the form of suppers, to gentlemen connected with criticism? Veuillot similarly claimed that men were elected to the French Academy chiefly because they gave good dinners. Sydney Smith applied the principle to religion when he said, ‘The way to deal with fanatics is not to reason with them, but to ask them to dinner.’ On the other hand, Swift used deliberately to test men’s tempers by offering them bad wine.”

“And did Plato like olives?” I continued.

“He often made a meal of nothing else,” was the reply.

“And what was Vergil’s salad?” It arrived at that moment.

“It is made of cheese and parsley, with a bit of garlic, rue, and coriander, salt, oil, and vinegar. A little of it is, I think, very pleasing. I much prefer it to Sydney Smith’s. I never understood how he could write ‘Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day’ about a salad made of potatoes. For the truly esoteric doctrine you must read John Evelyn’s ‘Discourse of Sallets.’

“Indeed, I am inclined, on the whole, to think that Sydney Smith was what Carlyle called ‘a blethering blellum,’ when he wrote about food, as he so often did. It was perfectly proper for him to express a desire to experience American canvasbacks, and to be glad that he was not born before tea; but to say that roast pheasant and bread sauce was the source of the most elevated pleasure in life, and that his idea of heaven was eating _pâté de fois gras_ to the sound of trumpets--that was both posing and trifling with serious subjects. Charles Lamb’s comments on roast pig and frogs’ legs, and his kindred table talk, are much more genuine, and, of course, charming; but even they scarcely touch the deeper aspects of the subject.

“Thackeray had all of Lamb’s appreciation of food and, I think, something more. He enjoyed his own and accepted others’ idiosyncrasies of taste,--witness his treating boys to apricot omelet, which he hated,--but his plea for simpler and more varied dinners, for more hospitality and less ostentation, indicates, I think, that he realized at least something of the profound moral and social significance of food.

“This, as you know, is one of my hobbies, and I unconsciously add it to my other criteria of judgment in my reading. That Scott invented a venison pasty, Dickens a sandwich, Webster a clam chowder, and Henry Clay a stew is interesting; just as it is that Buckle was discriminate and Heine indiscriminate in choosing tea. But it is far more significant that Dr. Johnson considered writing a cook-book, and that Dumas’ last work actually was such a volume of more than a thousand pages.

“That is the kind of thing we need: sound doctrine from influential writers, but it is not easy to get. The intemperate use of food, which is always with us, causes many to turn with prejudice from the whole subject. Here, as elsewhere, conservatism often opposes the good. You know, for example, how long the clergy decried the use of forks; and I never cease to regret that the man who was opened-minded enough to introduce umbrellas into England should have been furiously opposed to tea.

“Many writers, too, treat the subject fancifully, without regard to its inherent truths--witness the conventional praise of the indigestible turtle. Often those who intend well lack knowledge: Pythagoras made it a principle of morality to abstain from beans, an almost perfect food; the ideal diet of Plato’s republic, barley pudding and bread, does not contain the elements necessary to sustain life properly. Democritus inaugurated the still repeated heresy that any food that is pleasant is wholesome; and even Dr. Johnson defended his doubtful practice of eating whenever he was hungry, without regard to regularity. For all these reasons and many others I hold it, in this enlightened age, doubly the responsibility of intelligent men, and particularly of those who influence popular opinion, to acquire a sound knowledge of such matters and to do all that they can to disseminate it.”

“You have previously convinced me of this,” I replied, “but I have not found it easy to attain to such knowledge.”

“The important thing,” continued my mentor, “is a conscious attitude of serious attention to contemporary investigations in the field. One should welcome every item of reliable information, observe much, and, whenever possible, experiment. Of course, our special problem, as persons of sedentary habit, is to obtain a large quantity of blood and brain nutriment without taxing an organism which gets comparatively little physical exercise. The problem is not simple, indeed it is very complex, but it can be so completely handled by knowledge and care that the process of solving it adds another satisfaction to life.

“Cheerfulness, by the way, is an invaluable agent in the whole business. I know of a physician who cured a persistent dyspeptic by requiring him to tell at least one amusing story at each meal. We are apt to forget that the taking of food is not only a necessity, but also one of our most constant sources of pleasure.

_Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie, Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?_

Sometimes, even, as Voltaire says, ‘the superfluous is a very necessary thing.’

“That high thinking does not require that all our living be plain, is admirably illustrated by this quotation from Mr. Howells’s reminiscence of the ‘very plain’ suppers which followed the meetings of Longfellow’s memorable Dante Club. They consisted of ‘a cold turkey, or a haunch of venison, or some braces of grouse, or a plate of quails, with a deep bowl of salad, and the sympathetic companionship of those elect vintages which Longfellow loved and chose with the inspiration of affection.’

“From such pabulum came our most poetic version of the world’s most spiritual poet.”

VI

_Beside the Sea_

Hearing that Professor Maturin was back again in town, I made an early call, and found him hale and hearty, bleached and bronzed, and even more than usually clear-eyed.

“Behold me returned from a summer beside the sea,” he said in greeting. “I see that you note the visible indications of my sea-change. Whenever you are in the mood for a tide of talk, I believe I can convince you that my experience was as rich as its outward signs are strange.” I reminded him that there was never any time like the present, and added such further solicitation that he began at once.

“You know the locality of my preference: a place frequented just enough not to be lonely, a region of bays and sounds as well as of open sea; where the waves batter at the cliffs only to return their spoil to the sands--where, in short, the unity of the element appears in endless variety. My favorite station was a dune-guarded beach of sand, which swept on either hand into pebbles and stones, until lost in the rocks heaped below the boulder cliffs that formed the horns of a crescent cove.

“At first I spent unmeasured hours looking over the expanse toward the terminal haze, and watching, as far out as I could, the great ridges rolling with the motion of wind and tide and open sea. At the farthest, they looked like mountain ranges, one behind the other; nearer, they were dark green hills with grayish summits. Nearer yet, one could see them reflect the sky, and sometimes the shore. Nearest of all, there was a visible upgathering before the rush, plunge, and sweep on the beach--all endlessly repeated and infinitely varied.

“The same perpetual repetition and variety appeared in the surge, as it flooded up the sands in a wide curve of plash, ripple, and foam; paused, retreated slowly, and then swept out, only to join with the drag of the bottom in opposing an incoming wave, until it rose high, plunged forward, and broke into the churning shallows, which were quickly covered by the main body of the wave as it flooded in.

“The outermost margin of almost every surge lingered long enough to make its record in a tiny ridge of sand and to reflect the light and color of the sky; then it sank into the sand, leaving a burden of pebbles and shells, stubble and seaweed, and the like. This flotsam and jetsam is so constantly swept up, drawn back, and tossed to and fro that I was not surprised to find the sands, under a microscope, composed entirely of such materials worn to powder. Behind me, the sea and the wind had heaped the sand into hills, that shore grasses burrowed into and held together. To left and right, the cliffs, although high and precipitous, were so scarred and worn by storm and wave that they looked almost primeval. Their tops were bared by the winds and corroded by the alternate action of heat and moisture; their granite sides were seamed and stained by the surge; and their feet were encumbered with fragments of their own wreckage that must have thundered down like avalanches. These rocks, whether flung forward in reefs like sculptured waves, or heaped like ruins, were naturally of a rich old rose, but they were often also gray with barnacles, or green with sea growths, and they showed even deeper in tone when submerged beneath the many pools that similarly mellowed and enriched the coloring of pebbles, shells, and weeds.

“My observation of the almost infinitely varied flora and fauna of the sea was, naturally, but superficial. Yet I saw many delightful plant and flower-like forms of dark or light green, yellow, brown, and red, all ceaselessly retinted by the ever-changing sky lights, and the reflection and refraction of the water. Sometimes they rioted in thick tangles among the rocks; again they softly swayed, outspread toward the rising and falling surface.

“The fauna I preferred to look at under water, for, on the whole, I found them grotesque, although I was bound to admire their adjustment to their environment, and to respect them as possible images of our remote ancestors. I was especially impressed with the constant warfare beneath the surface, as exemplified in the regular manœuvring of whole armies of tiny fish, only to have company after company routed by the dash and gulp of some larger enemy.

“The bottom of the sea I have never seen, save through the glass-bottomed boats of the Bermudas, but some day I hope for a diver’s view of the depths. It is easy to understand why the imagination of the poets should be stimulated by the idea of that cool, dim quietness, disturbed only by the swaying of verdure and the movement of great fish; of the richness of color, and the long, slow passage of time, measured only by the up-building of the coral.

“The open sea is, of course, familiar to us all, and yet its apparent boundlessness and immeasurable depth are ever new as the most immense thing in our knowledge--the sky belonging rather to the realm of the intangible. Mid-ocean always makes me feel the infinite continuity of time, the omnipresence of natural law, and a stimulus to greater harmony with its workings. Nowhere else are my ‘cosmic emotions’ so stirred. One gets something of the same impression on land wherever one can mark the ceaseless rising, pausing, and falling of the tide, under the mysterious governance of the moon. I am more than fond of the regular, gentle quality of the tide’s behavior, even if it does sometimes seem stealthy in its creeping toward and around the half-oblivious observer.

“I cannot similarly commend the behavior of the wind, when it opposes the tide in bluster on the sea or pushes it in tumult on the shore. The tide is a serene and responsible world power; the wind almost always performs its indispensable functions with all the eccentricity of genius. A breeze is positively attractive when ruffling the surface or sweeping spray from the wave-crests, and the wind itself is unobjectionable when it consistently urges the waves in one direction. But when it plays havoc with the clouds, or ‘ruffians on the enchafèd flood’ until it fastens upon the eluctant sea a behavior as bad and a reputation worse than its own--then I am by no means for it.