Table traits, with something on them

by Dr. Doran

THE SUPPORT OF SAINTS OF LATER DAYS.

It may be seen from our last chapter, that the bill of fare of those who dined in the desert was neither very long nor very varied. It was otherwise with the better fed, but perhaps not better-taught gentlemen of the church of later days. Thus, for instance, the Curé of Brequier kept a very different table from that of the lean Amphitryons of the desert. Brillat Savarin once called on the holy man just as he had dismissed the soup and beef from the table. These were replaced by a leg of mutton à la royale, a fat capon, and a splendid salad. The hour was scarcely noon, and the curé had sat down to this saint’s fare alone. He was not selfish, however, and he invited his guest to “break bread” with him, but the guest, a prince of “gastronomers” in his way, declined, and the curé, like Coriolanus, did it all alone! He finished the “gigot” to the ivory, the capon to the bones, and the salad to the polished bottom of the bowl. A colossal cheese was then placed before him, in which he made a breach of ninety degrees, and having washed down all with a bottle of wine, he, like the Irishman, thanked God “for that snack,” and betook himself to digestion and repose. “Le pauvre homme!”

The nuns were in no ways behind the priests. Madame d’Arestrel, lady Abbess of the nuns of the Visitation at Belley, (faustum nomen!) once told a secret to a visitor who feared she was going to expound a chapter from the Prophets. “If you want a foretaste of Paradise in the guise of good chocolate,” said she, “be sure to make it over-night, in an earthenware coffee-pot. Its standing still for a night concentrates it, and gives it a velvety taste, which is divine! And Heaven cannot be angry with us for this little luxury, for is not Heaven too divine?” How wide the distance between St. Paula, widow, and Madame d’Arestrel, of the convent of the Visitation! I may add, that if the Visitandines made good chocolate, the monks of the Feuillants, in Paris, were renowned for their ratafie. But they too have superior authority for good living. A dainty dish in Italy is commonly called a “mouthful for a cardinal.”—un boccone di cardinali.

The canons took the tone from the cardinals. When the French canon Rollet became ill through excessive drinking, his doctor interdicted all strong beverages, and was not a little wroth, on his next visit, at finding the dignitary in bed indeed, but at his bed-side a little table, neatly laid out with bottles and glasses. The canon met the threatened storm by gently remarking:—“Doctor, when you forbade me drinking wine, you did not wish to deprive me of the pleasure of looking at the bottle!” It was such canons who were the best customers of the nuns who distilled liqueurs, and of the Ursulines who manufactured the daintiest drops flavoured by the daintiest essences! But in the Archbishop of Paris himself, M. de Belley, the clergy of France had example to which they might appeal as authority for indulging in good cheer. The archiepiscopal face was wreathed in smiles at the sight of a good dinner. The prelate lived to be a veteran among gastronomers, and was, in other respects, not an unworthy archbishop.

But M. de Belley was at least a gentleman in his gastronomic propensities. He was not, like a Russo-Greek “Papa,” a brandy-bibber. The Russo-Greek priests sanctify drinking, in the minds of the people, by their evil example. Monsieur Léverson Le Duc, a French diplomatist in Russia, tells us that he knows of one parish in Muscovy where the people lock up their pastor every Saturday night, in order that he may not be too muzzy for mass on the Sunday. They occasionally find him very drunk, nevertheless, when they have forgotten previously to examine beneath his robe, under which the sinning sot sometimes smuggles his quart of Cognac! Sir George Simpson crossed the Pacific in a Russian vessel. The chaplain had been sent in her to sea, because he was always too drunk to officiate on land. He was kept sober expressly for the hour of service on Sundays, but at other times, he appears to have realized the verse in the old song of Dibdin’s, wherein it is said that

“’Tother day as our chaplain was preaching,

Behind him I curiously slunk;

And while he our duty was teaching,

As how we should never get drunk,

I show’d him the stuff, and he twigg’d it,

And it soon set his Rev’rence agog.

And he swigg’d, and Nick swigg’d,

And Ben swigg’d, and Dick swigg’d,

And we all of us swigg’d it,—

And we swore there was nothing like grog.”

These examples, however, must be understood as occurring mostly, if not exclusively, among the lower classes of the clergy. There was a time when “the Vicar and Moses” illustrated the sad doings of a similar class among ourselves.

The Greek clergy in the South of Europe present us with something no less curious of aspect. The hall-kitchen of the Greek Patriarch, at Constantinople, is crowded with inferior clergy, who take their meals there, and his All-Holiness himself is served with pipes and sweetmeats by nothing less than gentlemen in Deacon’s orders. Fancy our Lord Primate ringing his bell for cheroots for two! and having them brought in on a silver tray by the Curate of St. Margaret’s!

The Greek usages however are classical. The stranger who dines with the Patriarch has, previous to falling to, water poured over his hands as he holds them over a basin with a perforated cover, and the napkins for drying them are as delicate as rose-leaves. The guest reclines on a low couch, in ancient fashion, and his repast is placed on a low stool at his side. The same custom exists in the convents, but meat is seldom to be found there by a guest who arrives unexpectedly. The monks themselves never eat it at all. During half the year they have but one meal a day, and that consists of vegetables and bread. On the other days of the year they are permitted the more liberal, but sufficiently eremitic fare of cheese, eggs, fish, wine, and milk; but even on these gala days they are never allowed more than two meals. Poor fellows! the majority of them pass their remarkably well-spent time, when not at table, in tilling the ground or teaching wonderful feats to very accomplished tom-cats!

A Greek monk’s idea of an Englishman is that he is a plum-pudding eater. And no wonder, since the English are almost the exclusive purchasers of the currant-grapes which are cultivated all along the northern shores of the Peloponnesus, from Patra to Corinth. As the Chinese think that we take their tea that we may live, so the Greek monks conclude that we must buy their currants, or die! At the convent of Vestizza, the good fathers trouble their heads about nothing but the produce and price of their great staple crop. If you ask how many brethren there are in the convent, they will answer, “Three hundred; and what was the price of currants in England when you left?” Inquire if their books be in good order, and they will reply in the negative, adding an assurance that they do their utmost to produce the best currants in the country. And they will give you permission to see their church, if you will only promise to recommend their dwarf grapes to the English merchants who are catering for plum-pudding eaters at home. The grounds of other convents in the peninsula are famous for their nuts, in the exportation of which the brethren drive no inconsiderable trade.

These worthy people are said to be a trifle more enlightened and a degree less slothful than they were some thirty years ago. There was ample room and verge enough for improvement; for at the period mentioned, the Greek priests resisted the introduction of the potato into the kitchen-garden, for the very satisfactory reason that the pomme de terre was the very identical apple with which Satan beguiled Eve out of Paradise! Yes, these modern and orthodox saints very generally held that the devil tempted Eve with an “ash-leaf kidney!”

If we cross over to Abyssinia, we shall find that the priests and orthodox people there keep as poor tables, at least on fast-days, as the Greeks. Above eight months in the year are assigned by the Abyssinian Christians to abstinence! On these occasions an Abyssinian neither eats nor drinks till long after noon. On festival days, however, they make up for their moderation by unrestrained excess. Mr. Mansfield Perkyns, a traveller who has given us the most recent account of life in Abyssinia, tells us that, in honour of the festival of the Elevation of the Cross, he gave an early breakfast to some dozen guests, who were engaged to half-a-dozen other parties in the course of the same joyous day, and that these guests whetted their appetite for later meals by consuming at breakfast a fine fat cow, two large sheep, and endless gallons of mead! On these occasions the mead is pretty prolific of murder. The guests get dreadfully drunk in honour of the day, exactly as many highly civilized Christian people in happy England do on the yearly recurrence of “merry Christmas.” Indeed, a feast of the Elevation of the Cross without plenty of quarrelling and bloodshed would be as dull as Donnybrook fair now is without a row. But the Abyssinian Christian is as clever in establishing a casus belli as a Donnybrook Romanist. If the latter sees the fair is likely to end without a fight, he simply takes off his hat, draws a white line round it with chalk, and declaring that he will break the head of the first man who denies that such white line is silver lace, he has speedily abundance of active work before him. So a pious Abyssinian at an “Elevation” banquet, if he finds things dull, merely remarks to his dearest friend and next neighbour, “You are a good sort of man, but you are not so handsome as I am!” and thereupon out fly the knives of the parties and their respective friends, which they proceed to clean by plunging them into each other’s ribs!

The people are brought up on a food likely to encourage such pugnacious propensities. Mr. Perkyns, speaking of the slaughtering of oxen for the kitchen, says:—“Almost before the death-struggle is over, persons are ready to flay the carcase, and pieces of the raw meat are cut off, and served up before this operation is completed. In fact, as each part presents itself, it is cut off and eaten while yet warm and quivering. In this state it is considered, and justly so, to be very superior in taste to what it is when cold. Raw meat, if kept a little time, gets tough; whereas, if eaten fresh and warm, it is far tenderer than the most tender joint that has been hung a week in England. The taste is perhaps, in imagination, rather disagreeable at first, but far otherwise when one gets accustomed to it; and I can readily believe that raw meat would be preferred to cooked meat, by a man who from childhood had been accustomed to it.” Such fare, I may observe, may not be out of place at the table of a patriarch who lives in such a climate as that of Abyssinia, but we suspect that it would as much astonish a dinner party at an episcopal palace in England, as Mr. Perkyns himself would do were he to sit down to that dinner in his ordinary Abyssinian fashion of—a bald head covered with butter!

I have spoken in another chapter of a Brahmin who stuffed himself with sweetmeats until he was nearly suffocated, and who exclaimed, on being recommended to swallow a little water, that if he had had room for water he would have swallowed more sweetmeats! It is but justice, however, to these saintly gentlemen to confess that they can fast when there is anything to be gained by it. Among the Mahrattas, when a fast man attempts to cheat his creditors, a Brahmin is hired to sit the dhurna, and this is the process—a process, by the way, which Monsieur Dimanche tried on Don Juan, but unsuccessfully. The Brahmin goes to the house or tent of the debtor, sometimes attended by numerous followers, and he announces the dhurna, by which the debtor must not eat until he has discharged his liabilities. The clerical bailiff sits at his side and is bound to fast also, until the matter is arranged. He who holds out longest wins the day, and if the debtor be famished he will pay rather than die outright, for eat he dare not until his creditor be satisfied; besides, if he were to starve the Brahmin to death, the crime would be so heinous, that the debtor himself had better have departed to the world of shadows. It ensues that sitting dhurna is more successful in certain districts than it would be in Belgravia, even though the Archbishop of Canterbury himself were to take his seat in the middle of the square, with a declaration that he would neither move nor eat until every inhabitant in the parish had paid his Christmas bills. Poor man! he would have to sit as long as infelix Theseus.

The saints of our puritan days were great favourers of public fasts; but these fasts were less numerous after they had consolidated their power, than before. “In the beginning of the wars,” says Foulis, in his “History of the wicked Plots of the pretended Saints,” “a public monthly fast was appointed for the last Wednesday of every month, but no sooner had they got the king upon the scaffold, and the nation fully secured to the Rump interest, but they thought it needless to abuse and gall the people with a multitude of prayers and sermons,” and so, by a particular act of their worships (April 23, 1649), nulled the proclamation for the observation of the former; all which verifieth the old verses:—

“‘The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be.

The devil was well, the devil a monk was he.’”

George Fox, the father of the Quakers, remarks in his Journal, of the Puritans and their fasts:—“Both in the time of the Long Parliament, and of the Protector, so called, and of the Committee of Safety, when they proclaimed fasts, they were commonly like Jezebels, and there was some mischief to be done.” Taylor, the Water-poet, compares their fasts to hidden feasts. “They were like the holy maid,” he says, “that enjoined herself to abstain four days from any meat whatsoever; and being locked close up in a room, she had nothing but her two books to feed upon; but the two books were two painted boxes, made in the form of great Bibles, with clasps and bosses, the inside not having one word of God in them; but the one was filled with sweetmeats, the other with wine; upon which this devout votary did fast with zealous meditation, eating up the contents of one book, and drinking as contentedly the other.” Dr. South, in his Sermons, is equally severe. He observes that “their fasts usually lasted from seven in the morning till seven at night; the pulpit was always the emptiest thing in the church; and there never was such a fast kept by them, but their hearers had cause to begin a thanksgiving as soon as they had done.” Butler, in his Hudibras, hints that the work of fasting was to be accounted to the faster, righteousness:—

“For ’tis not now who’s stout and bold,

But who bears hunger best, and cold.

And he’s approved the most deserving,

Who longest can hold out at starving.”

The fasting of the civilians, however, was made to turn to the benefit of the military gentlemen; and, in March, 1644, an ordinance was passed for the contribution of one meal a week towards the charge of the army. There was by far a more considerable liberality of spirit among some of the clergy of the time of Louis XIV. than in the Puritan authorities, inasmuch as they permitted others to follow clerical example rather than precept. The celebrated preacher, Father Feuillot, for instance, stood by while “Monsieur” was enjoying an uncanonical collation in the middle of Lent. His Highness held up a macaron, and remarked, “This is not breaking fast, is it?” “Nay,” said Feuillot, “you may eat a calf, if you will only act like a Christian.” I am afraid that we had not improved at home, in the last century. On one of the fasts of that period, Walpole comments after his usual gay fashion. “Between the French and the earthquakes,” he says, in 1756, “you have no notion how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth, turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that Dick Edgecumbe, finding a very lean hazard at White’s, said with a sigh, ‘Lord! how the times are degenerated! Formerly, a fast would have brought everybody hither; now it keeps everybody away!’ A few nights before, two men were walking up the Strand, one said to t’other, ‘Look how red the sky is! Well, thank God, there is to be no masquerade!’”

An ex-Capuchin has revealed some of the mysteries of the house of which he was lately a member, and by this it would appear that the Friars of the nineteenth century are as little for slender diet as the fine gentlemen of the eighteenth. “These Capuchins,” he says, “of squalid appearance, clothed in serge, with shaven heads and bare feet, presenting the very type of humility and self-renunciation, enjoy the luxuries of life with a prodigality unknown to you. The poor friars have, with one exception, no enjoyment of the things of this world, their only worldly comfort is good cheer. The friars have three carnivals in the year, of two or three weeks’ duration each. These are the only periods at which they can recruit their wasted strength, to enable them to resist the mortifications of the rest of the year. During these few weeks they have seven courses served at dinner, all substantial and choice dishes, the most dainty morsels that can be provided. At supper they have five courses. By that hour, in spite of their plentiful dinner, they have regained their appetites; and their digestion is again most active. These courses are as substantial as those of the dinner, and are despatched with equal facility by these men of iron frame and tranquil conscience.... Lent is arrived! Well, you must fast, you must mortify the flesh, but you must not die of inanition. A good table is necessary, or you will suffer too much from contrast with the past few weeks. You need double the supply that the secular orders do when they fast, for your digestion is twice as active as theirs. Supper is now a sadly scanty meal; it consists simply of fish, bread, wine, and fruit. A miserable dish! not miserable as to quantity or quality, but because it is the solitary dish during the forty days of Lent, always excepting bread and wine ad libitum. Fortunately, the friars are wise and provident; the slender supper is foreseen and provided against at dinner, which consists of four dishes. The bottle of good wine is valuable now, or they would be overcome with weakness.” Such is the testimony of a living witness, who pledges his reputation for the truth of his depositions.

I do not know that there is much that is exaggerated in this, for from M. Saurin we hear that, in France, well-to-do priests mortify the flesh on maigre days by very pretty eating. The bill of fare of these saintly men has been known to include soup au coulis d’écrevisse, salmon trout, an omelette au Thon, that would have called a dead gastronome to life; a salad, the very smell of which seemed to give eternal youth; Semonal cheese, fruit, confectionary, a light wine, and a cup of coffee. By such self-denial is heaven gained by modern saints, in orders; having fair fortunes, and looks with the same characteristic.

The Dominicans of Italy are in no degree behind their brethren in France. The “late prior and visitor of the order,” who recently published his dealings with the Inquisition, thus describes his ancient brethren. “They do nothing,” he says, “which they are bound to do by their rules, if these are opposed to their inclinations. They profess never to eat meat in the refectory, or room for their common meals; but there is another room near it, which they call by another name, where they eat meat constantly. On Good Friday, they are commanded by their rules to eat bread and drink water. At the dinner hour they all go together into the refectory, to eat bread and drink water, but having done so for the sake of appearance, they go one after another into another room, where a good dinner is prepared for them all. I do not blame them for enjoying it; but I blame them for feigning an abstinence which none of them intend to keep.” These Dominicans, honest fellows! are more hungry than the gods of the old régime of whom it is said,—

“The Gods require the thighs

Of beeves for sacrifice;

Which roasted, we the steam

Must sacrifice to them,

Who, though they do not eat,

Yet love the smell of meat.”

But our poor friend the monk has witnesses in his favour, as well as opposed to him. Some men call him a living mummy swathed in faith. Another says he is “a moral gladiator who wrestles with his passions, and either stifles them or is devoured by them.” A third, describes him picturesquely as a sea-worthy vessel moored in a stagnant dock; and a fourth dismisses him contemptuously as a coward who won’t fight. Even allowing him to be all these, it does not follow that he is to be deprived of his dinner. If he pays homage with his body to the saints, he has earned what has been called the mind’s daily homage to the body. Dinner should be the peculiar privilege of the monk, for it is as he is, in some sense, “the open friend of poverty, the secret foe of riches” and if dinner be “the breakfast of the poor and the supper of the rich,” it is doubly due to the monk, who can claim it by either title. And it must not be supposed that they do not know how to enjoy pleasure like sensible men. The Abbé of St. Sulpice, a Bernardine monastery in the south of France, once invited a party of merry and musical gentlemen from the neighbouring town to come up to the monastery, and give the monks a treat of good music on the fête day of their patron saint. A joyous company ascended at early dawn to the monastery; the most remarkable incident connected with which is, that it is seated at the edge of a pine forest, from which a hurricane swept down, in one night, thirty-seven thousand trees. The visitors were received by the cellarer, the abbé not being yet risen, who conducted them to the refectory, where they found awaiting them a pâté as big as a church; flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal; on the south by a monster ham; on the east by a monumental pile of butter; and on the west by a bushel of artichokes à la poivrade. All the necessary adjuncts were at hand; and among others, a party of lay brethren ready to wait upon the visitors, and very much astonished to find themselves out of bed at so early an hour. An array of a hundred bottles of wine bespoke the fathers’ idea of good cheer; and the cellarer, having bidden them fall-to and welcome, deplored his inability to join them, not having yet said mass,—and he then took his leave to go and sing “matins.”

The breakfast was done ample justice to; after which the visitors retired to take a short repose, subsequently repairing to the church, where they performed a musical service with the usual zeal and energy of amateurs, and received modestly the showers of thanks that descended upon them in return.

Monks and musicians then sat down to a dinner,—ample, admirably cooked, excellently served, and thoroughly enjoyed. The abundance that marked it may be judged of by the fact, that at the second course there were not less than fifteen dishes of roasted meats. The dessert would have made the eyes of a queen sparkle; the liqueurs were choice, and the coffee redolent of Araby the Blest. The enjoyment was long and perfect; and by the end of the repast, there was not man or monk present who was not in charity with all the world. The “pious, glorious, and immortal memory” of St. Bernard was not forgotten among the toasts.

And then came vespers and more amateur music,—probably more vigorously performed than in the morning. And after vespers there was a division of pleasures: some took to quiet games at cards, some chose a ramble in the wood, and a few looked in again upon their friend the cellarer. As night came on, all again drew together, but the discreet abbot retired, willing to allow the brethren full liberty on a festival which only came “once a year.” And to do the brothers justice, they began to make a night of it as soon as the superior had disappeared. Jokes and laughter and winged words flew about like wildfire, and the exercise got thereby sharpened the general appetite for supper,—a repast which was discussed with a vivacity as if the guests had been fasting up to that very hour. Wit and wine, and wisdom and folly, were all mingled together; and the oldest of the fathers present, with a flush on the cheek and a light in the eye, joined chorus in table songs that were not sung to the tune of Nunc dimittis. It was when the fun was flying most fast and furious, that a voice exclaimed, “Brother cellarer, where is your official dish?” “True!” answered that reverend individual; “I am not cellarer for nothing;”—and therewith he disappeared, but speedily returned accompanied by three servitors, bearing piles of buttered toast and bowls of what worldly men would have called “punch.” If the fun had waxed fast before, it grew fiery now, and fervour for the patron saint glowed at the very fiercest heat that punch could give it. In the midst of it all, the hour of midnight was solemnly tolled out by the convent bell, and the revellers, reverend and laic, swang merrily to bed, satisfied with the day well spent in honour of St. Bernard.

I have now spoken of the Dominicans, Capuchins, and Bernardins. The Franciscans are a not less lively fraternity. When the author of Eöthen was at the Franciscan Monastery in Damascus, he asked one of the monks to tell what places were best worth seeing, in reference to their association with St. Paul. “There is nothing in all Damascus,” said the good man, “half so well worth seeing as our cellars;” and forthwith he invited the stranger to “go and admire the long range of liquid treasures that he and his brethren had laid up for themselves upon earth.” And, adds the author, “these I soon found were not as the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse; for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from the dark recesses of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the friars, dear old fellows! In the midst of that solemn land, their Christian laughter rang loudly and merrily. Their eyes kept flashing with joyous bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats could no more weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the filmy gauze of a danseuse can cloy her bounding step.”

Richard the First, as worthless a human being as ever lived, bankrupt in every virtue save that of brute courage, in making legacy of his vices, said he would bequeath gluttony to the priests. It was rather a compliment than otherwise, for the inference was, that they lacked what he was willing to surrender, when he could no longer enjoy it. St. Augustin settled this vexed question as to what was “good living,” when he said, that “the great fast was abstinence from vice.” And in the true spirit of St. Augustin’s prose, rings the rich rhyme in Herrick’s Noble Numbers. “Is this,” he says,

“Is this a fast, to keep

The larder leane

And cleane

From fat of veales and sheep?

“Is it to quit the dish

Of flesh, yet still

To fill

The platter high with fish?

“Is it to faste an houre?

Or ragged to go,

Or show

A downcast look, and soure?

“No; ’tis a fast, to dole

Thy sheaf of wheat,

And meat,

Unto the hungry soule.

“It is to fast from strife,

From old debate,

And hate;

To circumcise thy life.

“To show a heart grief-rent,

To starve thy sin,

Not bin:

And that’s to keep thy Lent.”

This is better philosophy than that given on a similar subject by Montesquieu, who only recommends moderation on the ground that it lengthens the term of enjoyment. “I call moderation,” says Pythagoras, “all that does not engender pain;” and by this maxim of the Hellenized Hindoo, Buddha Ghooros, the saints both of the desert and the dining-room may, perhaps, in their several ways be condemned.

In treating of the diet of more modern saints than those of the days of martyrdom, I might have noticed the fact, that in not very remote times, the parsonage-house at Langdale, in Westmoreland, was licensed as an ale-house, the living being too poor to allow the incumbent to make anything like one upon it for himself. The ale-cask became to the priest, what the fruit of the amrite tree was to the Tibetians—the spring of life. This Westmoreland ale was accounted a great strengthener, but so have many less likely things. But enough of the “saints,” good men and true the majority of them, earning their right to enjoy the rich blessings of God, by fairer means, perhaps, than many of their censurers. I know no set of men so well to contrast with the saints, as the “Cæsars,” and we have yet time before supper to attend that august company to table.