Part 38

Sometimes Drusillus, still fascinated with that dulcet poetry of the Greeks with which, when young, he had stored his mind, would take up the harmonious cadences of Horace, and thus personate, as it were, those divine chanters of Attica who have immortalised themselves by celebrating love, wine, and pleasure.

One of his extempore strains, while sipping the sparkling liquor from his cup, was:--

This dream of bliss maintain, prolong these happy hours, O, all-enchanting wines! perfumed with flowers Which Cos and Cyprus rear; Let nothing ever change this soul-felt, rich delight; For I would say, when parting for the realms of night, I never knew a tear.

This sensual philosophy found numberless echoes in that vainglorious Rome, who exhausted her disdain, outrage, and punishments on the (so called) new fantastic folly that the Nazarenes were endeavouring to introduce. A few years more, and their doctrine will subjugate the universe!

Time passed rapidly, and the meats, divided into equal portions, were served to the guests, who frequently did not touch them, but gave their share to their servants, or sent it home.[XXXV-81]

So soon as the major-domo perceived that appetite began to flag, he ordered the whole to be cleared, and the dessert, spread on ivory tables,[XXXV-82] to be substituted for the more substantial comestibles, with which the guests were satiated.

Exquisite drinks, artificial wines, delicate and light aliments,[XXXV-83] still came to titillate the palate and the burthened stomach--pears, apples, walnuts, dried-figs, grapes;[XXXV-84] a thousand different kinds of raw, cooked, and preserved fruits; tarts, cakes, and those incredible delicacies which the Latins designated by the collective generic term _bellaria_, wooed the epicurean--if we may be allowed the expression--with their mild, material, dangerous, and irresistible eloquence.

Some one proposed to replace the half-faded flowers by Egyptian wreaths, and every brow was soon bound with garlands of roses and myrtle, interspersed with little birds, which, by their fluttering and chirping, soon restored the drowsy company to that animation which seemed to wane.[XXXV-85]

Then began the amusements of the evening.

A troop of strolling players were admired for their agility and suppleness. Some rolled round a cord like a wheel which turns on its axle; they hung by the neck, by one foot, and varied these perilous exercises in a thousand different ways. Others slid down a cord, lying on the stomach, with their arms and legs extended. Some revolved as they ran along a descending cord. Some, in a word, performed feats of strength and address on the horizontal rope which were truly incomprehensible, and at an elevation from the flooring which would have rendered a fall fatal.[XXXV-86]

To these acrobats succeeded prestigiators, who appeared to receive a peculiar degree of attention. One placed under cups a certain number of shells, dry peas, or little balls, and he caused them to disappear and re-appear at will.[XXXV-87] The spectators strained their eyes without being able to comprehend anything. Another of these mountebanks wrote or read very distinctly while whirling rapidly round.[XXXV-88] Some vomited flames from the mouth, or walked, head downwards, on their hands, and beat with their feet the movements of the most agile dancers.[XXXV-89] Then a woman appeared, holding in her hand twelve bronze hoops, with several little rings of the same metal, which rolled round them. She danced gracefully, throwing and successively catching the twelve hoops, without ever allowing any of the rings to fall.[XXXV-90] After that, another juggler rushed, with his breast uncovered, into the midst of a forest of naked swords. Every one thought him to be covered with wounds, but he re-appeared, with a smile on his countenance, whole and sound.[XXXV-91]

These feats were followed by an interlude, in which the parts were amusingly sustained by marionettes. The Greeks knew this childish pastime,[XXXV-92] and Rome did not disdain it.[XXXV-93] These little bronze and ivory figures[XXXV-94] played some comic scenes tolerably well, and obtained the applauses of grave senators, who more than once forgot their senility as they contemplated the grotesque pantomime.

The only thing now wanting to render Seba’s supper a worthy specimen of nocturnal Roman feasts was, to produce before the guests one of those spectacles which outrage morals and humanity. Nero’s freed-man had been too well tutored to refuse them this diversion. Young Syrians,[XXXV-95] or bewitching Spanish girls,[XXXV-96] went through lascivious dances,[XXXV-97] which raised no blush on the brow of rigid magistrates, who forgot, in the abode of the vile slave, the respect due to their age and dignity.

After the voluptuous scenes of the lewd Celtiberians, blood was required: for they seem to have been formed by nature to take a strange delight in sudden contrasts. Ten couples of gladiators, armed with swords and bucklers, occupied a space assigned to them, and ten horrible duels recreated the attentive assembly. For a long time nothing was heard but the clash of arms; but the thirst for conquest animated those ferocious combatants, and they rushed with loud cries on one another. Blood flowed on all sides; the couches were dyed with it, and the white robes of the guests were soon spotted. Some of the combatants fell, and the rattles announced approaching death; others preserved, in their last struggle, a funereal silence, or endeavoured to fix their teeth in the flesh of their enemies standing erect beside them.[XXXV-98] The spectators, stupified with wine and good cheer, contemplated this carnage with cold impassibility; they only roused from their torpor when one of those men, happening to trip against a table, struck his head on the ivory, and his antagonist, prompt as lightning, plunged his sword into the throat of his foe, whence torrents of black, reeking blood inundated the polished ivory, and flowed in long streams among the fruits, cups, and flowers.

The deed was applauded; servants washed the tables and the floor with perfumed water, and these stirring scenes were soon forgotten. A last cup was drunk to the good genius,[XXXV-99] whose protection they invoked before returning home.

Meantime a stifling atmosphere pervades every part of the hall, and a hollow noise, rumbling in the distance, excites at intervals in the minds of the guests a sort of undefinable apprehension--the ordinary presage of an unknown but imminent catastrophe. The consuls raise themselves on their couches and listen; their host endeavours to calm their fears; but at this moment a slave, panting for breath, rushes towards Seba, and pronounces a few inarticulate words. “Fire!” cries the anguished freed-man. “Where is the fire?” inquire all the terrified guests, who have heard but this one sinistrous word. “Everywhere!” replies the slave; “it has burst forth simultaneously in every part of the city!” No one waits to hear more. Consuls, senators, knights, musicians, and servants, jostle one another; and, abandoning those who fall, arrive pell-mell at the atrium. The porter still chained, trembles at his post; the flames already envelop the sumptuous edifice--the entire street is one vast brazier! Rome burns, and will soon be a heap of ruins and ashes! Flight is impossible--the flames intercept every issue! * * * Nero has taken his measures well.

We will not attempt to depict the mute but terrible despair of those proud patricians, at bay in the midst of an ocean of fire, in which they are fated ere long to perish. The wreaths of flowers which bind their brows are already parched by the scorching breath of those roaring flames, which engulf and consume everything as they sweep along. A thick smoke begrimes the lustrous robes, whose graceful folds erewhile displayed the exquisite urbanity of Seba’s guests, and which now exhibit only a sad emblem of festive joys. The dread of death, and I know not what strange anguish at this all-important moment, blanch those human faces, to which the choicest wines of Greece and Italy had just given a hue of purple. These men feel--instinct tells them--that life is theirs no longer, and they have not the courage to die!

The opulent freed-man calls to his slaves, and promises them their liberty if they consent to risk their lives in an attempt to save his. But the vile herd is already dispersed; the porter alone remains--for no one has thought to liberate him--and he, in his impotent fury, replies by insulting clamours to the cowardly supplications of his quondam master.

This horrible scene soon changed by the very action of that torrent of fire which was pursuing its devastating course; and the next day, when Aurora appeared, a heap of ruins was all that remained of the odious Seba’s magnificent palace.

The two consuls and some of the senators were fortunate enough to escape the common danger. Less besotted, perhaps, by the wine and good cheer, and finding in despair that incredible energy which sometimes operates the same prodigies as courage, they rushed through the flames, and gained the country, or those obscure portions of the city which the son of Agrippina had apparently forgotten.

Thus it was that Lucius Domitius Nero celebrated the tenth anniversary of his glorious reign. While the fire was rolling on with its resistless flood of flame from temples to palaces, and from the Circus to the Pantheon, the young, poetic Cæsar, his brow bound with laurel, and holding in his hands a golden lyre, viewed from the top of a tower--where he was surrounded by a troop of histrions and buffoons--the conflagration he had just kindled.

And while the imperial Apollo sang some melancholy verses on the fatal destiny of the antique city of Troy, his ignoble courtiers cried with enthusiasm: “May the Gods preserve Nero, their august son, and the delight of the human race!”

Such was the last gorgeous feast at which the magiric genius presided in that Rome which Romulus had founded, and which engulfed the treasures and wonders of the world. Destroyed by the imperial incendiary, it arose from its ashes with increased beauty and voluptuousness; and the wild joy of its new banquets caused the thoughtless queen of nations quickly to forget the disasters of the past, and the sinistrous presages of the future.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

NERO.

Lucius Domitius Nero’s father was Caius Domitius Ænobarbus; Agrippina was his mother. He took the reins of the empire at the age of eighteen (A.D. 54), and governed at first with clemency and equity. The Roman people, transported with love for their young prince, indulged the fond hope of long and unalloyed felicity; but they were soon aroused from this delusion to a sense of the dire reality. Nero had forgotten himself in the path of virtue; he rallied by trying his hand at crime, and found at last his true vocation. Others have recounted his detestable infamies: we will merely remind our readers that he poisoned Britannicus,--that he caused his mother to be slain,--that he killed his wife Octavia by kicking her,--and that Seneca, his preceptor, only escaped his cruelty by having his veins opened. In the year 64 he took it into his head to set fire to the city of Rome, and then accused the Christians of that prodigious atrocity. Language cannot describe the unbridled luxury of this ignominious emperor. His gilded house, his ivory ceilings, his murrhine vases, the nets of gold and scarlet with which he fished, the incalculable profusion of his repasts--everything connected with Nero betrayed a species of pompous monomania, leading to excesses so immeasurable and abominable that in these days they excite doubt or incredulity.

The entire world detested the monster. Galba and the Roman army revolted against him, and the pusillanimous Cæsar fled bare-footed, and wrapped in a sordid robe. But, alarmed at the idea of the tortures he would have to undergo if he fell alive into the hands of the cohorts and the people, and finding no executioner more infamous than himself, he plunged a sword timidly into his breast, while a freed-man, Epaphroditus, guided his trembling hand. This happy event happened in the year 68. Nero had reigned thirteen years!

This prince sat down to table at mid-day, and did not quit it till midnight (Sueton. in Neron. 27),--he had reservoirs stocked with the most rare and exquisite fish,--and he gave to his boon companions suppers which vied in delicacy with their astonishing magnificence. Let this, then, plead our excuse for having classed the cruel but epicurean Cæsar among the high culinary notabilities whose names, glory, or excesses we record in this work.

HELIOGABALUS.

Heliogabalus (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Verus), son of Antoninus Caracalla and Semiamira, immortalised himself by his follies, and merited the name of the _Sardanapalus of Rome_. His grandmother, Mœsa, had a fancy to have him invested with the functions of Priest of the Sun, and the following year (218) the army elected him to succeed Macrinus. He was then only fourteen years old. It would be impossible to give a complete catalogue of the crimes which stained this precocious monster. His luxury knew no bounds, and his insatiable gluttony led him to send into distant provinces for rare birds, unknown in Italy. The golden lamps of his palace were supplied with a precious balm, and scented waters of exquisite delicacy were daily renewed in the vast piscina of this beardless Cæsar. His beds were adorned with coverlets of a cloth of gold, and in his kitchens none but skilfully chased silver utensils were employed. It is said that Heliogabalus invented after-dinner lotteries: his guests took the tickets at random, and fate gave to one some vase of inestimable value, to another a simple toothpick; a fortunate adventurer would receive for his allotment ten elephants, richly caparisoned, and his less lucky neighbour had to content himself with ten flies, and loud bursts of laughter from the imperial stripling.

Thank Heaven! this frightful phenomenon of turpitude and folly never attained manhood. The soldiers of his guard massacred him after a reign of something less than four years, and threw to the populace the dead body of a young man of eighteen, who, in the course of his brief existence, had exhausted the treasures of the empire, and enlarged the sphere of every crime.

The gastronomic art is, however, indebted to the odious Heliogabalus for some useful discoveries, and for that reason alone is he here mentioned.

EPICURUS.

Epicurus--born 337 years B.C., in the market-town of Gargettus, near Athens--taught in his gardens a system of philosophy, which, though indulgent towards the requirements of the senses, possessed the merit of a sovereign disdain for every kind of superstition. Epicurus had a great number of disciples among the ancient pagans, and the sensual philosophy of modern times hails him as a patron. At this very day the dainty livers rally under the joyous banner of the moralist of Gargettus, and his cherished shade inspires the guests and presides over the soothing intoxication of banquets.

MODERN BANQUETS.[E]

We have endeavoured to describe in the preceding pages some of those antique entertainments, which seem to be the summum bonum of the gigantic power of those shameless dominators of the Roman empire, whose reigns might be counted as so many banquets, and for whom the entire world was transformed into one vast market.

We are reduced to despair when we attempt to depict such sensualism, and we also despair of inspiring belief. When one goes back into those old pagan times,--when one shuts out the world as it is, to evoke the manners and customs of days gone by, and breathe in their atmosphere,--the mind experiences a sort of stupefaction, so much is it immersed in the senses, so thick is the moral darkness, so low has man fallen!

And, as if it had been decreed that everything should concur to consummate the annihilation of the human species, on the one hand, almost the whole family of man was, for the first time since their dispersion, collected into one body under the Roman domination, which spread its corruption throughout the several members; while, on the other hand, the hordes of barbarians who pressed round--like ferocious beasts waiting till the arena opened--were about to over-run the earth, in the absence of any civilising element that could interpose to stay the destruction, by snatching the conquered from the hands of victory, and the conquerors themselves from their own ferocity.

It belongs not to us to portray this fearful cataclysm, this sudden transition from the development of all the arts which perpetuate the enjoyments of life to the profound ignorance, the savage rudeness, which the northern conquerors imposed on enslaved Europe.

The fifth was the last century of Rome. It was then that barbarism became everywhere victorious. The Vandals were masters of Africa, the Lombards of Italy, the Visigoths of Spain, the Franks of Gaul. Literature followed the destiny of the empire, and seemed to perish at the same time. It is, however, impossible for nations not to receive, as an inheritance from people civilised before themselves, a great part of their intellectual cultivation. Happily modern Europe was swayed by this law: the barbarians reduced Rome by the force of arms,--Rome triumphed in the long run over the barbarians by the genius of civilisation and her arts.

It is known that even after the introduction of vulgar idioms, the learned of the middle ages continued the use of Latin, and that in the 15th century that beautiful language, purified from barbarian corruptions, became once more classic, particularly in Italy.

At that epoch, an obscure inhabitant of Mentz, John Guttenberg, immortalised himself by the discovery of printing, just as the love of antiquity was causing the old literary masterpieces to be sought out, and creating a demand for copies of the manuscripts.

Then, as if they had risen from their tombs after a thousand years of forgetfulness, all the writers of antiquity re-appeared, to charm, instruct, and renovate the world.

It was the era of regeneration, when you, O, beloved masters! Pliny, Apicius, Petronius, Athenæus,--and you, ingenuous and faithful chroniclers of the gastronomic follies of the people-king,--were resuscitated in all your glory! Others instructed the universe in philosophy, eloquence, and history,--you taught man how the ancients dined; and, thanks to your lessons, our fathers began to comprehend that, since the table is the great scene of life where bonds of friendship are formed and cemented, banqueting is indispensable to the prosperity of nations.

No one will accuse us, we hope, of endeavouring to establish a paradox for which we could hardly find an excuse, in our love of the culinary art, as long experience, and public facts within the memory of all, victoriously confirm our assertion.

Let us interrogate the 19th century. Hardly had the lamentable wars which divided the nations of Europe ceased,--hardly had the vibration of the last cannon-shot died away,--when the people of every clime--too long disunited--sealed by fraternal banquets their tardy but frank reconciliation. The destructive genius of war is succeeded by those grand struggles of commerce and industry, which, aided by the arts and sciences of civilisation, dispense to all the blessing of reproductive wealth.

And then dinner is the _sine quâ non_,--to that goal all our efforts tend. The Englishman dines in Paris, the Frenchman dines in London; the time-honoured national dishes become cosmopolite, like those who dwell on the banks of the Thames or the Seine; on both sides the people are proud to communicate the arcana of those delicate preparations, which have only to cross the frontier to obtain, under a favourable sky, a more ample illustration and a new right of citizenship. Appetite, the roasting-jack,--in a word, gastronomy, serves perhaps to unite men much more firmly than motives of interest; and more than one thought useful to the human species has often originated in the midst of the creative excitement of a banquet, where, to say the least, we meet with that hearty goodwill and friendly aid which might be wanting elsewhere.

Shall we mention that prodigious enterprise with which a noble prince--the enlightened protector of industry and the arts, and so worthy of our love and respect--has deigned to couple a name dear to public gratitude?

The royal plan was nothing less than this: to erect an immense, costly, and sumptuous palace, in which each nation should deposit the material proofs of its intelligence. Neither Rome nor Greece ever conceived such a thought! Louis XIV., with all his magnificence, and the magic pomp of his reign, imagined nothing equal to it!

This great and complex idea struck many persons no doubt with surprise; but England--we must do her the justice which facts prove to be her due--is always ready to undertake impossibilities, and generally performs them.

However, it was necessary to bring together a certain number of influential, scientific, patriotic, and wealthy men, and obtain their co-operation to realise that modern arch of crystal, into which the industry of the world would be summoned to send its most marvellous productions. Banquets were proposed, and banquets took place, in honour of a prince who was about to connect all parts of the globe in the bands of commercial fraternity. The Lord Mayor of the city of London--that celebrated factory of the world’s trade!--invited all the mayors of the three kingdoms to come and place themselves by the side of the august spouse of their sovereign, at a feast worthy of such guests by its delicate profusion and splendid magnificence. There his Royal Highness Prince Albert received the enthusiastic assurance of the realisation of a colossal project, a philanthropic thought,--the union of nations, by rousing the noble pride of their nationality!

In their turn, the mayors of Great Britain and Ireland were desirous of offering to the Lord Mayor of the city of London a banquet, at which his Royal Highness would be present; and this feast, a grandiose and sympathetic demonstration on the part of the votaries of the memorable London Exhibition, took place the 25th October, 1850, in the gothic Guildhall of York, where remembrance of the past was blended with hopes for the future.

It was resolved to intrust us with the direction of the gastronomic department, and, let us add, the artistic arrangement of that banquet, which, by reason of its unprecedented richness and truly magic aspect, no pen can describe, owing partly to the magnificence of the maces, swords, banners, &c., of each county being for the first time displayed under the same roof. The engraving which we present to our readers[F] will perhaps convey an idea of a portion of the splendour of the entertainment.

The guests at the royal table consisted of the following distinguished personages:

The Lord Mayor of York being in the chair, there were seated on his right his Royal Highness Prince Albert, his Grace the Archbishop of York, Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord John Russell, Earl Minto, Lord Overstone, Lord Beaumont, and the Right Honourable Sir Charles Wood. On his Lordship’s left were the Lord Mayor of London, the Marquis of Clanricarde, the Earl of Carlisle, the Earl of Abercorn, Lord Feversham, the Earl Granville, the High Sheriff of Yorkshire, the Right Honourable Sir G. Grey, Bart., and Sir J. V. Johnstone, Bart.

As this table formed a prominent feature in the entertainment, the following distinct bill of fare was provided:--

BILL OF FARE FOR THE ROYAL TABLE.

FIRST COURSE.

[Sidenote: Rissolettes à la Pompadour.]

[Sidenote: Rissolettes à la Pompadour.]