It is only with the present century that old customs disappeared; and, with regard to some of them, society is all the better for their disappearance. Even plum-porridge did not survive the first year of this half century; when the more solid and stable dynasty of plum-pudding was finally established. Brand relates, that on Christmas-Day, 1801, he dined at the Chaplain’s table, at St. James’s, “and partook of the first thing served and eaten on that festival, at that table, namely, a tureen full of rich, luscious plum-porridge. I do not know,” he says, “that the custom is anywhere else retained.” The great innovation, after this, was in the days of the Regent, when oysters were served as a prelude to dinner. This fashion was adopted by the Prince on the recommendation of a gentleman of his household, the elder Mr. Watier, who brought it with him from France, and added an “experto crede” to his recommendation. This fashion, however, like others, has passed away; and oysters and drams, as overtures to dinner, are things that have fallen into the domain of history.
There is a custom of these later days, much observed at Christmas time, which deserves a word of notice. I allude to the “Christmas-tree.” The custom is one, however novel in England, of very ancient observance elsewhere. Its birth-place is Egypt. The tree there used was the palm; and the ceremony was in full force long before the days of Antony and Cleopatra. The palm puts forth a fresh shoot every month. Its periodical leaves appear as regularly as those of Mr. Bentley’s “Miscellany.” In the time of the winter solstice, when parties were given in ancient Misraim, a spray of this tree, with twelve shoots, was suspended, to symbolize the completion of another year. The custom passed into Italy, where the fir-tree was employed for the purposes of celebration; and its pyramidal tips were decorated with burning candles, in honour of Saturn. This festival, the Saturnalia, was observed at the winter solstice, from the 17th to the 21st of December, and, during its continuance, Davus was as good a man as Chremes. The Sigillaria, days for interchanging presents of figures in wax, like those on the Christmas-tree, followed; and, finally, the Juvenalia, when men became “boys with boys,” matrons turned children once again, and young and old indulged in the solemn romps with which the festival closed, and which used to mark our own old-fashioned festivities at Christmas time. That the Egyptian tree passed into Germany, may be seen in the pyramids which sometimes there are substituted for the tree. But the antique northern mythology has supplied some of the observances. The Juel Fesi was the mid-winter “Wheel Feast;” and the wheel represented the circling years which end but to begin again. The yule-log, as we call it, was the wheel-shaped log; in front of which was roasted the great boar,—an animal hateful to the god of the sun, but the flesh of which was religiously eaten by his worshippers. At this festival presents were made, which were concealed in wrappers, and flung in at open windows, emblematical, we are told, of the good, but as yet hidden, things which the opening year had in store.
The Church generally made selection of the heathen festivals for its own holy-days. In the early days, this was done chiefly to enable Christians to be merry without danger to themselves. It would not have been safe for them to eat, drink, and rejoice on days when Pagan Governments put on mourning. They were glad, then, when these were glad, and feasted with them, but holding other celebrations in view. Hence the German tree; only, for the sun which crowned the Roman tree, in honour of Apollo, the Germans place a figure of the Son of God; and, for the Phœbus and his flocks at the foot, they substitute “the Good Shepherd.” The waxen figures are also the sigillaria, but with more holy impress. The Saturnalia have a place in the table joys that attend the exhibition of the tree, in presence of which joy is supposed to wither.
In conclusion, I cannot but notice one other table custom, which is of Teutonic origin. I allude to the Cabinet dinners given by Ministers previous to the opening of Parliament, and at which the Royal Speech is read, before it is declared in the presence of collective wisdom. This, at all events, reminds us of the ancient German custom, mentioned by Tacitus, who tells us, that the Teutonic legislators and warriors consulted twice touching every question of importance: once, by night, and over the bowl; and once, by day, when they were perfectly sober. Of course, I would not insinuate that Ministers could possibly indulge too fondly over their cups, like the Senators of the Hercynian forest; and yet Viscount Sidmouth’s vice, as Lord Holland tells us, “was wine;” and we have heard even of grave Lord-Stewards so drunk as to pull down the Monarchs they held by the hand, and should have supported. The last unfortunate official who so offended, should have craftily qualified his wine with water; and the mention of that subject reminds me of the origin of wine and water, of which I will say a few words, after adding one or two more traits of table manners.
I have spoken, in another page, of the unlucky exclamation touching haddock, which caused the perpetual exile of Poodle Byng from Belvoir. There was, however, no offence meant. How different was the case with that impudent coxcomb, Brummell, who managed to be the copper-Captain of fashion in London, when the true Captains were fighting their country’s battles! When Brummell was living almost on the charity of Mr. Marshall, he was one of a dinner party at that gentleman’s house, whither he took with him, according to his most impertinent custom, one of his favourite dogs. The “Beau” had, during dinner, helped himself to the wing of a roasted capon stuffed with truffles. He chose to fancy that the wing was tough, and, delicately seizing the end of it with a napkin-covered finger and thumb, he passed it under the table to his dog, with the remark, “Here, Atout! try if you can get your teeth through this; for I’ll be d—d if I can.” Not less ungratefully impudent was this gentleman-beggar on another occasion. A French family had given a dinner entirely on his account. It was perfect in its way. The ortolans came from Toulouse, the salmon was from the waters in the neighbourhood of Rouen, and the company most select. A friend, encountering him next day, asked how the dinner had gone off. Brummell lifted up his hands, shook his head in a deprecatory manner, and said, “Don’t ask me, my good fellow; but, poor man! he did his best.”
The two most recent examples of Table Traits of the present century, that I have met with, illustrate the two extremes of society; and as they refer to a period of not above a month ago, they will serve, not inaptly, to close this section of my series. The first example is that afforded by a dinner given at Boston, in Lincolnshire, to twenty aged labourers. At this dinner, one of the gentlemen donors of the feast, gave “the Ladies,” and called on the octogenarian Chairman to return thanks. The old President, however, shook his head, with a mixed melancholy and cunning air, as if he too well knew there was nothing to return thanks for. The venerable “Vice” was then appealed to; but his reply was, that the least said about the subject of the toast would be the soonest mended. At length, a sprightly old man of threescore and ten was requested to respond, he having a gay look about him which seemed warranting gallantry; but he surprised the toast-giver by answering, that “as for t’leddies, he’d nowt to say; for his part, he’d never liked ’em.” This unchivalrous sentiment awoke, at last, the spirit of a strip of a lad who was only sixty-five; and he responded to the toast, with a touch of satire, however, in his remarks, that left it uncertain whether he were so much a champion of the fair sex, as the company had expected to find in him. The second “Trait” of the customs of this country is presented by the dinner given in February of the present year, by Earl Granville, the guests at which were Lord Aberdeen, the Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Bright. There were not such startling contrasts at the reconciliation dinner which brought Wilkes and Johnson together, as at Earl Granville’s unique banquet. The host and the Premier represented—the first, smiling courtesy; the second, the most frigid severity of a freezing civility. But the strongest contrast was in the persons of the Bishop and the “Friend:”—Dr. Wilberforce, highest of Churchmen, briefest of Preachers, and twice as much curled as the son of Clinias himself; while Mr. Bright, with every hair as if a plummet depended at the end of it, hating the Church, but not indifferent to petits pâtés à la braise, must have looked like the vinegar of voluntaryism that would not mingle with the oil of orthodoxy. To have made this banquet complete, there should have been two more guests,—Dr. Cumming and Dr. Cahill, with appropriate dishes before each:—a plate of sweetbreads in front of the gentle apostle of the Kirk; and a bowl of blood-puddings opposite the surpliced Priest who has gained a gloomy notoriety by the “glorious idea,” to which I have referred, of a massacre of English heretic beef-eaters, by the light-dieted holders of Catholic and continental bayonets. But Dr. Cahill, it may be hoped, is something insane, or would he have deliberately recorded, as he did the other day in the “Tablet,” that it were much better for Romanists to read immoral works than the English Bible? His excellent reason is, that “the Church” easily forgives immorality, but has no mercy for heresy. Well, well; we should not like to catch a Confessor of this school sitting next our daughter at dinner, and intimating that Holywell-street literature was better reading than the English version of the Sermon on the Mount.—But let us sweeten our imagination with a little Wine and Water.
WINE AND WATER.
Early ages, and the oldest poets, confessed, that wine was the gift of the gods to men. The latter would appear to have abused the gift, if we may believe Philonides the physician, who wrote a treatise “On Perfumes and Garlands” (Περὶ Μύρων καὶ Στεφάνων). In this treatise he asserts, that, when Bacchus brought the vine from the Red Sea into Greece, men drank to such excess, that they became as beasts, and incapable of performing manly duties. A party of these revellers were once drinking by the sea-shore, when a sudden storm drove them into a cave for shelter. They do not seem, however, to have been inveterate tipplers; for, according to Philonides, they left their cups on the beach. When the shower had passed, they found the wine in them mingled with rain water; and, very much to their credit, they liked the mixture so well, that they solemnly thanked the “good genius” who had sent it. Hence, when wine was served at Grecian repasts, the guests invoked this good genius; and when the turn came for wine mixed with water, they acknowledged the benevolent inventor by the name of Jupiter Saviour. I may take this opportunity to state, that, at one period, it was the fashion to attend these drinking entertainments in a pair of “Alcibiades,” or boots which had been rendered popular by being first worn by the curled son of Clinias. Thus we see, that in our fashion of conferring on boots the authorities of great names, we are doing nothing original; and that men used to call for their “Alcibiades,” as they do now for their “Wellingtons,” “Bluchers,” or “Alberts.”
To revert, for a moment, to the question of wine and water, I would state, that it has been discussed in its separate divisions by German writers, the substance of whose opinions I will venture to give in verse, without desiring, however, to be considered as endorsing every sentiment in full. As French music-books say, it is an “Air à faire.”
Do you ask what now glows