“Greedily he ingorged without restraint,
And knew not eating death.”
Dr. Johnson’s friend, Thrale, is a noteworthy example, or warning, of the man of appetite, who will not restrain it; will not put a knife to his throat, but prefers sending a full laden fork in that direction. His wife describes his natural disposition to conviviality as degenerating into a preternatural desire for food. “No one could control his appetite.” “Burney and I and Queeney tease him every meal he eats, and Mrs. Montagu is quite serious with him; but what can one do? He will eat, I think; and if he does eat, I know he will not live.” The lampreys that were one too many for Henry the king, were one too many for Thrale the brewer. He begged some of an old friend, and the old friend complied, despite the frowns and negative signals of the ladies of the house—whom following out of the room, the too compliant visitor thus made his apology to Mrs. Thrale, “I understand you, Madam, but must disobey. A friend I have known thirty-six years shall not ask a favour of me in his last stage of life and be refused. What difference can it make?” Tears stood in his eyes, and Mrs. Thrale’s own—les larmes dans la voix—prevented all reply. What difference did it make? That day was Mr. Thrale’s last. The tone of the apology reminds us of General Paoli’s answer to Boswell, when whispering his fear lest Johnson, very aged and very ailing, might be hurt by the amount and variety of what he was despatching at the general’s table, “where he loved to dine.” Boswell begged Paoli not to press him. Why urge a too willing horse? “Alas!” said the host, “see how very ill he looks: he can live but a very short time. Would you refuse a slight gratification to a man under sentence of death?” And the general cited approvingly the “humane custom” in Italy, by which those in Johnson’s position were indulged with having whatever they liked best to eat and drink, even with expensive delicacies. A parallel case we have in Sir Walter Scott, during his melancholy sojourn in Italy, as Sir W. Gell describes his dining at a Roman palace, and his own fears lest, from the hospitality of the Torlonia family, and “with servants on all sides pressing him to eat and drink, as is their custom at Rome,” Sir Walter might be induced to eat more than was safe for his malady. “Colonel Blair, who sat next him, was requested to take care that this should not happen. Whenever I observed him, however, Sir Walter appeared always to be eating; while the duchess, who had discovered the nature of the office imposed on the colonel, was by no means satisfied, and after dinner observed that it was an odd sort of friendship which consisted in starving one’s neighbour to death, when he had a good appetite, and there was dinner enough.”
The selfish club-man par excellence has been depicted as earthing himself from pursuit in the sanctuary of his club, there to eat his fill unmolested, with no remonstrant at hand to remind him of the gout when enjoying his turtle, or to talk of cupping when the glass of champagne is at his lips. “There he may eat his asparagus tout à l’huile—there he may pepper his cream-tart,” and none to say him nay. Drawn with pitiless realism from the life is Acton Bell (Anne Brontè)’s picture of the dying master of Wildfell Hall, whose extreme dread of death, when and while it seems imminent, renders easy his wife’s task of curbing his unruly greed, but who becomes intractable as the danger to dear life seems receding. “I watch and restrain him,” she writes, “as well as I can, and often get bitterly abused for my rigid severity; and sometimes he contrives to elude my vigilance, and sometimes acts in opposition to my will.” William Collins, the painter, notes in his diary a certain “dinner at C⸺’s,” where he “sat next to H⸺, who took some highly seasoned omelet. I asked him how he could venture on such stuff; he said he could not resist it, though he knew how much he should suffer from it. He took a great deal of wine, to overcome the effects of the omelet, and assured me he should be ill for four days after such a dinner, and that he always suffered in the same way after dining with C⸺! How absurd such weakness appears, and yet how common it is!” George Herbert’s counsel is never out of date, any more than King Solomon’s, in the matter of putting a knife to one’s throat, if edacious and a diner-out:—
“Look to thy mouth: diseases enter there....
... Carve, or discourse; do not a famine fear.
Who carves is kind to two, who talks to all.
Look on meat, think it dirt, then eat a bit;
Then say withal, Earth to earth I commit.”
