Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher ground. He says, that in all the arts the resulting pleasure does not depend solely on those who exercise the art; there must be others who possess the science of enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis further adds, that the guest who keeps a dinner waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before its time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis professes.
The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, unquestionably, among the Sybarites,—the people to whom the crumpling of a rose under the side on which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were as self-luxurious as though the world was made for them alone, and they and the world were intended to last for ever. They would not admit into their city any persons whose professions entailed noise in the practice of them: the trunkmaker at the corner of St. Paul’s would have been flogged to death with thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris for an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found with energy enough to wield the instrument of execution! The crowing of one of the proscribed race of cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits; and, on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend how his nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools of some labouring men in another country strike against each other, at their work, the friend was so overcome, that he merely exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fainted away.
Athenæus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from one of the authors whose works were in that Alexandrian library, the destruction of which by the Caliph Omar, Dr. Cumming tells us in his “Finger of God,” is a circumstance at which he is rather glad than sorry,—Athenæus mentions the visit of a Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. Having tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and convulsively remarked, that “he no longer wondered why the Lacedæmonians sought death in battle, seeing that such a fate was preferable to life with such broth!”
Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were of another quality. The giver of such repasts was enrolled among the benefactors of their country, and the cook who had distinguished himself was invested with a golden crown, and an opera ticket; that is, free admission to those public games where hired dancers voluptuously perverted time and the human form divine.
I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed but an indifferent reputation, and thoroughly deserved what they enjoyed. The comic Dionysius introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, impressing upon a young apprentice the propriety of stealing in houses where they were hired to cook dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor Fagan of the Saffron-Hill University. “Whatever you can prig,” says the elder rogue, “belongs to yourself, as long as you are in the house. When you get past the porter into the street, it then becomes my property. So fake away! (Βάδιζε δεῦρ’ ἅμα,) and look out for unconnected trifles.”
And yet Athenæus asserts that nothing has so powerfully contributed to instil piety into the souls of men, as good cookery! His proof is, that when men devoured each other, they were beasts,—which is a self-evident proposition; but that when they took to cooked meats, and were particular with regard to these, why, then alone they began to live cleanly,—which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. In his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora,—a good appetite, and an irreproachable indigestion. These are, doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity can do without them,—which is questionable,—where they are not, comfort is absent, and a good conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation.
If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedæmon was their purgatory. They were blamed if men grew fat on their diet, and plump children were legally condemned to get spare again upon their gruel. The Romans, again, restored the cook to his proper place in society. He might be still a slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was the confidant of his master, and there were not a few who would have exchanged their liberty for such a post and chains. And who dare affirm that the coquus was not an officer of distinction? He who knows how to prepare food for digestion and delight, is a greater man, in one particular at least, than Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary science than turning the spit; than Ulysses, who could light fires and lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort waiter; or than Patroclus, who could draw wine and drink it, but who knew no more how to make a stew, than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier.
When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grandfather of Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat as civilized beings should, it is thereby further intimated that good eating should be followed by good drinking.
We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made dissertations on eternal flames by the heat of their own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes, made patties and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fashion to please their several admirers. Artemidorus was the Dr. Johnson of his own art, and wrote a Kitchen Lexicon for the benefit of students. Sicily especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and Mithœcus wrote a treatise on the art; while Archestratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes and effects, meditated on stomachs as well as sauces, and first showed how digestion might be taught to wait on appetite. Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid of the practical cook, and gastronomists hit upon all sorts of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoyments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for the tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest viands faster than other guests, who wisely preferred rather to slowly please the palate than suddenly satisfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty, that it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his tongue by rubbing it with a piece of rough fish-skin; and his taking up hot viands with his hand, like that of Götz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is cited as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons of the Romans had a pointed end, at the extremity of the handle, for the purpose of picking fish from the shell.
Then came the age when, if men had not appetites of nature’s making, they were made for them by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were crowned with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, and had no fears of indigestion. The inventor of a new dish had a patent for its exclusive preparation for a year. But ere that time it had probably been forgotten in something more novel discovered by a Sicilian rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the Parisians of the last century used to look on Languedoc,—as the only place on earth where cooks were born and bred, and were worth the paying. The artists of both countries, and of the opposite ages mentioned, were especially skilled in the preparation of materials which were made to appear the things they were not; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, flesh, and fowl, was really fashioned out of the supplies furnished by the kitchen-garden. The Greeks, however, never descended to the bad taste of which the diarists of the last century show the French to have been guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, carved and painted, placed upon their tables for show. Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an artificial sirloin, made of a block of deal, would be very intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry guests, who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who could make very little of the deal before them.