Table traits, with something on them

by Dr. Doran

THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN AGE.

The good Archbishop Fénelon, in his “Voyage dans l’Ile des Plaisirs,” cites some charming examples of the pleasant way in which people lived in the Utopian Land of Cocagne, which he describes from imagination, and where the laws were characterized by more good sense than distinguishes the legislation of the Utopian authorities of More.

The “Voyage” of Fénelon was probably founded on a fragment of Teleclides, who has narrated, in rattling Greek metres, how the citizens of the world lived and banqueted in the golden age of its lusty youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth of Saturn, who says, “I will tell you what sort of life I vouchsafed to men in the early ages of creation. In the first place, peace reigned universally, and was as common as the water you wash your hands with. Fear and disease were entirely unknown; and the earth provided spontaneously for every human want. The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into the valleys; and cakes disputed with loaves to get into the mouth of man, as he walked abroad, supplicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of excellent flavour and quality. The tables were covered with fish which floated into the kitchens, and courteously put themselves to roast. By the sides of the couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with them joints of ready-roasted meat; while rivulets full of ragoûts were near the guests, who dipped in, and took therefrom, according to their fancy. Every one could eat of what he pleased; and all that he ate was sweet and succulent. There were countless pomegranate seeds for seasoning; little pâtés and grives, done to a turn, insinuated themselves into the mouths of the banqueters; and tarts got smashed in trying to force their way into the throat. The children played with sow-paps and other delicacies as they would with toys; and the men were gigantic in height, and obese in figure.”

The above is a specimen of the classical idea of that delicious—

——“Land of Cocagne,

That Elysium of all that is friand and nice,

Where for hail they have bon-bons, and claret for rain,

And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice.”

It is a theme with which modern poets have been as fond of dealing as Teleclides and others of the tuneful children of song, in the early period when young Time counted his birthdays by the sun. It has been well treated by Béranger, who thus describes, through my imperfect translation, his own impressions of

A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF COCAGNE.

Ho, friends, every one!

Let us up, and be gone;—

To where care is not known,

Let us hasten away!

Yes; fired with champagne,

I reel o’er the plain,

And see dear Cocagne

In its sunny array.

O! land full of glee,—

Here long may I be,

And laugh merrilie

At Fate’s changeable way.

For here—what a treat!—

I may love, drink, and eat,

And—this makes it more sweet—

There is nothing to pay!

My appetite’s great,

And I see the huge gate

Of a tower of state

At my elbow, handy:

The tower is a pie;—

And tall guards, standing by,

Carry spears ten feet high,

All in sugar-candy.

Ah! banquet of fun,

It will please ev’ry one:

Look, there is not a gun

But of sugar is made!

See the paintings, how grand!

And the statues, they stand,

All wrought by the hand

Out of sweet marmalade.

Here the people repair

In gay crowds to the square,

Where the jests of a fair

With loud merriment shine;

Where the fountains so gay

Not with water do play,

But are sparkling away

With rich, rosy, old wine!

Here, the baking’s begun;

There, the baking is done;—

See the folks how they run,

With beef, mutton, and veal.

And the eaters think fit,

That the man who lacks wit,

Shall be made a “turnspit,”

And be bound to the wheel.

To the palace I haste,

With two Falstaffs I feast,

(Twenty stone weighs the least,)

And with them hob and nob.

And here, too, I’ve found,

Where such good things abound,

Shy Venus quite round,

And young Cupid a squab.

No sadness of brow,

No pedantic vain show,

No pompous state-bow,

Can be ever allow’d:—

But with feasting and song

We carry night on,

Drink deep and drink long,

And toast beauty aloud.

Now, good-natured lasses,

To the music of glasses,

As the sweet dessert passes,

Let’s laugh the time by.

Let fools sigh and snuffle,

And merriment muffle,

But you, dears, shall ruffle

Our pro—priety.

---

So, in this joyous way,

With fresh loves ev’ry day,

And with no debts to pay,

We scamper time o’er;

While between drinking deep,

And light visions in sleep,

Our young years will creep

To a hundred or more.

Yes, dear old Cocagne,

It’s with thee,—free from pain,—

But who checks my strain,

In an accent so shrill?

For, while singing, I thought,—

But, my friends, we are caught,—

’Tis the waiter who’s brought

His confounded long bill.

The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its name from the Latin, coquere, “to cook.” Duchat says, that its flocks and herds present themselves perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from the skies ready roasted. For it is there alone—

“Where so ready all nature its cookery yields,

Maccaroni au parmesan grows in the fields;

Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint,

And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.”

The Utopian banquets, which are described by More, present an imaginary view of society in another extreme. The learned Chancellor, amid much invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citizens of Amaurat after the fashion of those of Crete and Lacedæmonia, especially with regard to their common halls for their repasts,—a fashion, by the way, which was partially followed in the club-rooms of Attica. Others of the author’s ideas have been realized since he wrote; and, in this respect, his Utopia may be said to have done good service; but there is a woful residue of nonsense, nevertheless, which is neither amusing nor useful.

Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as possessing provision markets abundantly supplied with herbs, fruits, bread, fowl, and cattle. The latter were previously slain in extra-mural slaughter-houses, well-furnished with running water, for washing away the filth after killing. The butchers were slaves, (for serfdom “was a peculiar institution” of this happy republic,) the free citizens not being permitted to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their singularly tender characters. “In every street,” we are told by the author, “there are great halls that lie at an equal distance from one another, and are marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell in those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying on one side of it, and as many on the other. In these they do all meet and eat. The stewards of every one of them come to the market-place at an appointed hour, and, according to the number of those that belong to their hall, they carry home provisions. But they take more care of their sick than of any others.... After the steward of the hospitals has taken for them whatever the physician does prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the best things that remain are distributed equally among the halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in the first place, they serve the Prince, the Chief Priest, the Tranibors, and Ambassadors, and strangers, if there are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for whom there are houses well-furnished, particularly appointed, when they come among them. At the hours of dinner and supper, the Syphogranty, being called together by sound of trumpet, meets and eats together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place, for they know none does that but for some good reason; for, though any that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both an indecent and foolish thing for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are done by their slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their meat, and ordering of their tables, belong only to the women, which goes round all the women of every family by turns. They sit at three or more tables, according to their numbers; the men sit towards the wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them fall suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those expecting to be mothers, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who are there with the suckling children, where there is always fire and clean water at hand, and some cradles in which they may lay the young children,” &c. But, to return from this public nursery to the public dining hall, “all the children under five years of age dined with the nurses: the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do either serve those that sit at table; or, if they are not strong enough for that, they stand by them in great silence, and eat that which is given them by those that sit at table, nor have they any other formality of dining.” The whole formality was bad enough, and that last-mentioned was a Doric custom prevailing in Crete. As to the personal arrangements at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests stood much upon their order of precedence: the syphogrant and his wife, the gnädige Frau Syphograntinn, presided at the centre of the cross-table, at the upper end of the hall. After the Magistrates and their mates, came the Priests and their ladies,—for More placed the Church below the State, and hinted that celibacy in the Clergy was not to be commended. Below these, groups of the young and gay were placed, between flanking companies of the aged and grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve their manners; and this Spartan custom was occasionally imitated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked with something like contempt upon the institutions of old Laconia. The best dishes were placed before the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty bits to the young, if these merited such favour by their behaviour; if not, they took their chance of what the older gourmands might leave, or were obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted to them.

During this delectable process, the young could not have offended by their gaiety, nor the old have improved them by conversation, seeing that a reader was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an Essay on Morality. The Romans had the same office performed at some of their meals by learned slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian lecture was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy to those that heard it; and that after it, the elders not only wagged their beards by “pleasant enlargements,” but encouraged the young to follow them in the same track. This must have been after the supper, when it was the law of Utopia, not to “run a mile,” but to “rest awhile.” The dinners were dispatched quickly, because work awaited the diners, while the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterwards but sleep. This must have been all terribly dreary, if it had ever been realized. The only pleasant feature in More’s Utopian banquets is, that wherein he says that there was always music at supper, and fruit served up after meat, (which, by the way, was a cruel trial for the digestive powers,) and that as the repast proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are wanting in nothing that may cheer up their spirits; for they give themselves a large allowance in that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus,” he adds, “do they that are in towns eat together; but in the country, where they live at a greater distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions are sent in to them that live in the towns.”

I have noticed above the slave-readers at Roman dinners. These were seldom born slaves; indeed, of born slaves, among the Greeks or Romans, the numbers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. Those who became authors or teachers, were the distinguished and illustrious of their class; and it was they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast by reading livelier sallies than Essays on Morality, like the Utopians. If their rank in humanity was low, their ability secured for them many privileges which even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of reading slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic poetry. Plautus, the witty, but coarse, play-writer, miller, and Jack of all trades, was a slave. Terence was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a Negro slave. Æsop the fabulist, Phædrus, his imitator, and the moral philosopher Epictetus, were slaves. The latter, who was as low in condition among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character of teacher of mankind, was the slave of one who had been a slave,—a depth of degradation than which there can be none deeper. But his mission was a great one; for he appears to me to have been an instrument employed to prepare men’s minds for a change from the vices of Paganism to the virtues of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones across the dark and rapid stream dividing error from truth. They are admirably calculated to enable men to go forward; not only to induce them to make the first step out of infidelity; but, having made it, rather to make a second in advance towards Christ, than go backward again in the direction of the dazzling unintelligibilities of the Capitoline Jove.

From slavery, if we turn our eyes towards mere poverty, the next condition to it, we shall see that the poor men characteristically paid their addresses to poetry;—and they were the “lions” at the dinners and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if he were not in want, was of inferior descent, his father having been a slave, and subsequently, on being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he derived some portion of nobility from his mother. Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet,—a condition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt,—but he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. In equal proportion as he was poor, angry, and satirical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and satirical in prose.

If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the same with the philosophers. The proudest walks of philosophy were trodden by Demosthenes, the blacksmith. Socrates was the ill-featured, but original-minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was only rich in a valueless boast of being descended from Ajax; and Isocrates, whose father manufactured the musical ancestry from which are descended the modern families of piano-forte and fiddle, was also one of the immortal race of intellectual giants.... Of other writers we may remark, that Quintus Curtius, whose “Alexander the Great” is the first historical romance that ever was written, and contains the best description of a Babylonian banquet that ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble family. Celsus was, at least, not a Roman citizen, though resident at Rome; and Plutarch was just “respectable,” and nothing more;—though to be worthy of respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man need sigh for.

But though art and science, though the Nine Sisters who made Parnassus vocal, were thus worshipped by the slave and his cousin the beggar, wealth was by no means a synonymous term for either sloth or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, who believed nothing; the two Plinies, the soul of one of whom, “with a difference,” entered into Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave Zozimus, as Walpole does of his favourite servants; the tender and chivalrous Tibullus,—a Latin Sir Philip Sidney; the profligate Sophocles; Æschylus, the bottle-drainer; and the lofty Euripides: all these mounted Pegasus with golden spurs, and gave glorious dinners to guests with whom they could contend in the battle of brains. Some, like Martial, got their mouths filled with the sugar-candy of imperial recompence. Cæsar, the Commentator, was the descendant of the Sabine Kings, and the founder of an empire. In Plato we see the double condition of aristocrat and slave. From the latter condition he was rescued by his noble friends at the cost of three thousand drachmas; more fortunate in this than Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug his irons, and teach his master’s sons to love virtue and liberty.

And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me of a more modern philosopher, who did not lack reverence for him,—I mean Bacon,—and Bacon naturally brings me from my digression to the subject of “Table Traits” in imaginary Utopias. This philosopher, in his “New Atlantis,” is even more infelicitous than More, both in the framing of his fiction, and the extracting from it of a moral. The table laws spoken of in Solomon’s house, have more of a jolly aspect than those drawn by Sir Thomas More. For instance, “I will not hold you long with recounting of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and kitchens, where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats, rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes, and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of roots; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, and fruits dried and decocted; also of the tears and woundings of trees, and of the pulp of canes: and these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at least of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of several herbs or roots, and spices, yea, with several fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of the drinks are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. So that divers, especially in age, do desire to live with them, with little or no meat or bread; and, above all, we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, to insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them put upon the back of your hand will, with a little stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in that fashion as they become nourishing, so that they are, indeed, excellent drink, and many will use no other. Breads we have of several grains, roots, and kernels, yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with divers kinds of leavenings and seasonings, so that some do extremely move appetites; some do nourish so as divers do live of them without any other meat, who live very long. So, for meats, we have some of them so beaten and made tender and mortified, yet without all corrupting, as a weak heat of the stomach will turn them into good chylus, as well as a strong heat would meat otherwise prepared. We have some meats, also, and breads and drinks which, taken by some, enable them to fast long after; and some other that will make the very flesh of men’s bodies sensibly more hard and tough, and their strength far greater than otherwise it would be.”

In this way could philosophy disport itself, and not with much attendant profit, beyond amusement. Before I conclude this section, I may notice a more graceful fiction touching banquets, than any thing to be met with among the philosophers. The inhabitants of the coast of Malabar believe that the double cocoas of the Moluccas, annually thrown on their shore by the waves, and joyfully welcomed by the expecting inhabitants, are the produce of a palm-tree growing in the fathomless recesses of the ocean; and that they arise from among coral-groves endowed with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a detailed account of this supposed phænomenon, and a very pretty illustration of the theory of seeds transported by winds and currents, I refer all curious inquirers to the “Annals of My Village,” by a Lady. In the mean time, I venture to put into verse, the supposed scene which occurs at the annual cocoa-banquet in Malabar:—

’Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree,

In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove,

Where slumber young sprites,—the gay elves of a sea

Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above.

There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave

Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray,

And laugh away time with their lovers at eve,

And sing to those elves of the deep by the way.

Ο! to see them at sunset, when down by the shore

Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand,

Like spirits of light shedding softness all o’er

The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land!

There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth,

Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth,

Drink the white wine of Kishna;—while some are at play,

Flinging glances and handsfull of roses, in showers,

That their lovers can’t tell, as they bend ’neath the fray,

Which are falling the fastest,—the glances, or flowers.

And then on the sands where these young people meet,

What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee,

As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet,

The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea!

There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar’s daughters,

Half play, dip their white, sandal’d feet in the waters,

To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again,

As the wave washes over their small anklet bells,

There are some, youths and maidens, who, link’d in a chain,

Like pearls strung, and mix’d, here and there, with sea-shells,

Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm,

Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out;

Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm

With laughter and splashing the waters about.

O, who would not like to pass summer away

Amid scenes such as this? O, who would not love

With Malabar’s daughters, at twilight, to play,

And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove?

The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its kind that used to afford holidays and banquetings to the people of the East, that is, according to the poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the natives somewhat unmusically call it, “lanka dwipa,” was, in the olden time of pleasant fiction, one of this gifted species. But the banquet it afforded was not of annual occurrence; for the tree never flowers till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy used to bestow the rich gift of some of its blossoms on the favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of the Sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to his painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, not such a present as Demetrius Poliorcetes made to Lamia, after that accomplished courtezan had erected at Sicyon a portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a book to describe it; and poem and portico became the table-talk of all Greece. The gift of Demetrius was a magnificent purse, containing two hundred and fifty talents, which, by the way, he had compelled the reluctant Athenians to contribute; and this he sent to Lamia, saying, that it was merely “for soap.” The extravagant lady spent it all in one single, but consuming, feast! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that other courtezan, Leæna, whose wit made guests forget that the feast was frugal; and to whom the Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a tongue, in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out her own, that torture might not make her betray the accomplices of her protector Harmodius, in the murder of her tyrant Hipparchus!——

We have not found much of the refinement we looked for in these remote periods and banquets. Let us see what may be discovered in the Table Traits of England in Early Times.