DR KITCHINER.
FIRST COURSE.
It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a dread of Us—not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew and felt must have hung his reputation with posterity—his posthumous fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet, perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the matériel on which he would have had to work! How defective the instruments! Yes—yes!—happier far was it for the good old man that he should have fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of a broken heart!
"Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his "Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to those whose employments are sedentary—who are engaged in abstract studies—whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be exposed to long and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."
Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by "long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races. Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?
We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne—the Navy—and the Army. These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the Whigs—the Angler's delight—the cause of Liberty all over the World—Christopher North—Maga the Immortal.—"Nature will not suffer any sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His very own mother could not know him—he has lost all resemblance to his twin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow—so completely is his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him to establish an alibi. He sees a figure in the mirror above the chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced Bacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care to imitate the manual exercise of the phantom—lifting his glass to his lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.
The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude, which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."
We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating. What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued—quite done up as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in heaven—tira-lira—or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day—or tripping along, all by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs, the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand, to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak, beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry! Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower, till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday Night—for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream—and know not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather, that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number of our bosom friends—alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune, the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor, puny, idle, and unmeaning word!
Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by three platefuls of hotch-potch—and, to the eyes of an ordinary observer, our dinner would seem to be at an end. But no—strictly speaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standing on the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, with his back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up the Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend his honeymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rocky sofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What has become now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John—the castors!—mustard—vinegar—cayenne—catchup—pease and potatoes, with a very little butter—the biscuit called "rusk"—and the memory of the hotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton, exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be, can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch of venison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two by alternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave off after the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating," of which Dr Kitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above—but of all the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transit through this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature will not suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experienced by us is "the sense of satiety in eating." Therefore, we have now seen it for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch—dying on the appearance of the Tay salmon—once more noticeable as the last plate of the noble fish melted away—extinguished suddenly by the vision of the venison—again felt for an instant, and but for an instant—for a brace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuous bosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed! If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs—pungent with the most palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of all tastes—the wild bitter-sweet.
But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling—and fatigue. "When one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is sensible of a bitter taste, seek refreshment and repose, if you wish to PREVENT ILLNESS, already beginning to take place." Why, our dear Doctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end, and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition to which we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever saw us yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on the withdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivet was at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or Kendal's chronometer.
But the Doctor proceeds—"By raising the temperature of my room to about 65°, a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a pint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves the bowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner than usual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &c."
Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we should far rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, of Tims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy—and that the Cockneys well know—to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We do not believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have any serious effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no hesitation in backing him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;—and would, we verily believe, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid.
We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera," more efficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozen tumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Or an equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeper still the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? Adde tot small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, as they stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by the lambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated calumny against the character of toasted cheese—that, forsooth, it is indigestible—has been trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in a pound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh, may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy—or the green goose from his first stubble-field—or why not, by way of a little variety, a roasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maiden between woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frock and a gown? Go to bed—no need of warming-pans—about a quarter before one;—you will not hear that small hour strike—you will sleep sound till sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings of Scotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold about you next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensible people—and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till it moves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics, or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute even a bit of Balaam to the Magazine.
The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and very judiciously observes that it is during these months when there is no occasion for a fire—that is, just before and after the extreme heat. In winter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers of observation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and often dangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice. The days are short—a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is often forced to rise before the sun in the morning—besides, the country looks dismal—nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all these inconveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sight appear—yet we have verified it by experience—having for many years found, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long, warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of the inconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter—a season which is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold—an intolerable bore—always pretending to be taking his leave, yet domiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together—and, to be plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him till frost has hung an ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voice is dumb under the wreathed snows.
"Cleanliness when travelling," observes the Doctor, "is doubly necessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and then rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preserve health. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes just before going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; for promoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience."
Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is a nuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises—who—what—is a dirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally—necessarily—dirty. They are not dirty by chance—or accident—say twice or thrice per diem; but they are always dirty—at all times and in all places—and never and nowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church. It is in the skin, in the blood—in the flesh, and in the bone—that with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon—no less in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they are dirty—that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think themselves pinks of purity—incarnations of carnations—impersonations of moss-roses—the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every half-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight clean shirts in the twenty-four hours—and it might not be reasonable, perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat too Whiggish—yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirts would be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunrise to sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be just every whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt all his life—and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe.
Men again, on the other hand, there are—and, thank God, in great numbers—who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them bonâ fide dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of swans—that is, Poets—when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the ditch,—
"He bears no tokens of the sabler streams,
But soars far off among the swans of Thames."
Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of a morning rather in dishabille—hair uncombed haply—face and hands even unwashed—and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded skies—the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree—what need, in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though, from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? It is not dim—dull—oily—like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon comb itself with the fingers of the west wind—that tent-like tree its toilette—its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed.
Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty—you cannot possibly tell why—unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds, infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet, soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth. The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of his senses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of being caricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of such streams—save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weak well-meaning willow—a thing of shreds and patches—its leafless wands covered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle (see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, long hereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies.
Some streams, just like some men, are always clean—you cannot well tell why—producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In dry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers—so that the trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, it is true, dark and drumly—and at midnight, when heaven's candles are put out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurora beholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows—far and wide glittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappear green as emerald from the subsiding current—into which look with the eye of an angler, and you behold a Fish—a twenty-pounder—steadying himself—like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leister to strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees far down, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down, alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning sky!
Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated—generally sweet—at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argument in favour of Catholic Emancipation.—So are Scotsmen. Whereas, blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand, immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your nose—and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly denominated dirt—one week's earth—washed off the feet of a pretty young girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the little rivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would have served him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. How beautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washed feet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid waters—and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm.
It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm—"that a clean skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words "clean skin"—his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin—just as many good people think that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious—with slight expense either in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and finally go out like the stink of a candle.
Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it—do this upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you—at all events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."
Suppose all people behaved in this way—and what an absurd world we should have of it—every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see, hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one especially—in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the Memory—each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by itself, is in a very awkward predicament—gets comatose—snores loudly, and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination and our Judgment—nay, our very Reason itself—than our Memory—provided we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy. Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.
The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never, properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees, hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge, either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in their very being spontaneous and free—the mind being even unconscious of them as they are going on—while the edifice has all the time been silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent workers—Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and Foreman—had not only originally planned, but had even daily superintended the building of the Temple.
Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple question—Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney, without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could. Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth, what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad—a moon to a mutton chop—a comet to a curry—a planet to a pâté! What gross ingratitude to the Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever—yea, even to the great Day of Judgment.
If men will but look and listen, and feel and think—they will never forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our wives—unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes will be? Do we forget our triumphs—our defeats—our ecstasies, our agonies—the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"—the ghost-like voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes—or her seraph hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may enter in among the white-robed spirits, and
"Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"
What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that every man—who is a man—carries within the Ratcliffe—the Bodleian of his own breast?
What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp—vanished like a thought!