"He was a bold man who first ate an oyster," has been said before. The name of the courageous individual has not been recorded, but Mr. Bertram, in his "Harvest of the Sea," tells us a legend concerning him: "Once upon a time,"—it must have been a long time ago,—"a man of melancholy mood was walking by the shores of a picturesque estuary, listening to the monotonous murmur of the sad sea-waves, when he espied a very old and ugly oyster-shell all coated over with parasites and sea-weeds. It was so unprepossessing that he kicked it with his foot, and the animal, astonished at receiving such rude treatment on its own domain, gaped wide with indignation, preparatory to closing its bivalve still more tightly. Seeing the beautiful cream-coloured layers that shone within the shelly covering, and fancying that the interior of the shell itself must be beautiful, he lifted up the aged 'native' for further examination, inserting his finger and thumb within the valves. The irate mollusc, thinking, no doubt, that this was meant as a further insult, snapped its pearly door down upon his finger, causing him considerable pain. After releasing his wounded digit, our inquisitive gentleman very naturally put it in his mouth. 'Delightful!' exclaimed he, opening wide his eyes; 'what is this?' and again he sucked his finger. Then the great truth flashed upon him that he had found out a new delight—had, in fact, achieved the most important discovery ever made. He proceeded at once to realize the thought. With a stone he opened the oyster's stronghold, and gingerly tried a piece of the mollusc itself. 'Delicious!' he exclaimed; and there and then, with no other condiment than its own juice, with no accompaniment of foaming brown stout or pale Chablis to wash it down, no newly-cut, well-buttered brown bread, did that solitary anonymous man inaugurate the first oyster banquet."
Another story makes the act of eating the first oyster a punishment. The poetaster also had his views on the subject:
"The man had sure a palate covered o'er
With brass, or steel, that on the rocky shore
First broke the oozy oyster's pearly coat,
And risked the living morsel down his throat."
And ever since men have gone on eating oysters. Emperors and poets, princes and priests, pontiffs and statesmen, orators and painters, have feasted on the favoured bivalve.
Man has made use of the oyster from the most remote antiquity. Among the débris of festivals which precede by ages the epoch of written history, oyster-shells are found. On the "midden heaps" of northern Europe they are often discovered, mingling with other rubbish and with stone implements, evidently the refuse of very ancient feasts. We have all read of the classic feasts of the Romans, which began with oysters brought from fabulous distances. Vitellius ate oysters all day long, and the idea prevailed that he could eat a thousand. Calisthenes, the philosopher, was a passionate oyster eater; so was Caligula; Seneca the wise could eat his hundred, and the great Cicero did not despise the savoury bivalve. Lucullus had sea-water brought to his villa from the shores of the Campania, in which he bred them in great abundance for the use of his guests. To another Roman, Sergius Orata, we owe the original idea of the oyster-park. He invented the oyster-pond, in which he bred oysters, not for his own table, but for profit.
Among modern celebrities whose love of oysters is recorded, we may mention Louis XI., who feasted the learned doctors of the Sorbonne once a year on oysters. Another Louis invested his cook with an order of nobility, in reward for his skill in cooking them. Cervantes loved oysters, although he satirized oyster dealers. Marshal Turgot used to eat a hundred or two just to whet his appetite. Rousseau, Helvetius, Diderot, the Abbé Raynal, and Voltaire, are recorded lovers of oysters. Danton, Robespierre, and other of the revolutionists, frequented the oyster salons of Paris. Cambaceres was famous for his oyster feasts, and it is recorded of the great Napoleon that he always partook of the bivalve on the eve of his great battles, when they could be procured.