In short, it has been demonstrated as a gastronomic truth that there is no feast worthy of a connoisseur where oysters do not come to the front. It is their office to open the way by that gentle excitement which prepares the stomach for its sublime function, digestion; in a word, the oyster is the key of that paradise called appetite. "There is no alimentary substance, not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances," says Reveille-Parise, "but oysters never." This is an homage which is due to them: "We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always, and in profusion, without fear of indigestion." Dr. Gastaldi could swallow, we are assured, his forty dozen with impunity—quite a bank must he have eaten. He was unfortunately struck with apoplexy at table before a paté de foie gras.
Montaigne quaintly says, to be subject to colic, or deny oneself oysters, presents two evils to choose from, since one must choose between the two, and hazard something for his pleasure.
England has always been famous for its oysters, and its pearls are said to have been the chief incentive to Cæsar's invasion. It is not, therefore, to be supposed that British magnates could be indifferent to the "native." But the bivalve has perhaps been more celebrated, in prose and verse, north of the Tweed than south, where silent enjoyment is more relished than noisy demonstration. Dugald Stewart, Hume, Cullen, and other Scotch philosophers of the last centuries, had their "oyster ploys" as an accompaniment to their "high jinks," in the quaint and dingy taverns of the old town of Edinburgh; and what the bivalve has been to modern celebrities let the Noctes Ambrosianæ tell.
The oyster may thus be said to be the palm and glory of the table. It is considered the very perfection of digestive aliment. From Stockholm to Naples, from London to St. Petersburg, it is always in request. At St. Petersburg they cost a paper rouble (nearly one shilling), and at Stockholm fivepence each. For the last year or two the English amphitryon must pay from two shillings to half a crown a dozen for choice natives.
For his daily nourishment a man of middle size requires a quantity of food equal to twelve ounces of dry nitrogenized substance. According to this calculation, it would be necessary to swallow sixteen dozen of oysters to make up the necessary quantity. The small proportion of nutritive matter explains the extreme digestibility of the oyster. It also explains the immense consumption of them attributed to the Emperor Vitellius. The oyster is nothing more than water slightly gelatinized. Without this Vitellius, all emperor and master of the world as he was, never could have absorbed twelve hundred oysters by way of whetting his appetite.
The gourmets were long of opinion that the quadrangular pad or cushion in the bivalve was the most savoury and exciting part. Certain distinguished amateur performers adopted and proclaimed the principle of dividing transversely the body of the mollusc, and eating the cushion only. Natural history explains this gastronomical discovery. It recognizes the fact that the bile secreted by the liver is contained in this substance, that it accelerates while it exhausts the qualitative surface of the tongue and palate, aiding also the functions of the stomach.
We have described the organization of the oyster, and we have said something of the enjoyment it confers. Did it ever occur to the various Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to consider whether the oyster might not be a very proper object of their care? Let us see if we can bridge over the gulf.
We commence operations upon them by dragging them violently from their own element. We place them out afterwards in water-parks, more or less briny and unsuitable, filled with villainous green matter, which presently pervades their breathing apparatus, impregnating, obstructing, and colouring it; the oyster swells, fattens, and soon attains that state of obesity which verges on sickness.
When the poor creature has attained its livid green colour, it is fished up a second time. Alas! it is now doomed neither to return to the sea, to the park, nor to its native rock. It has water at its disposal only in the very small quantity which it can retain between its two valves, a quantity scarcely sufficient to keep away asphyxia. It is shut up in an obscure narrow basket—an ignoble prison-house, without door or window. It seems to be forgotten that they are animals: they are piled upon the pavement like inert merchandise. The basket is carried by railway; the animal, shaken out of existence almost, is at last landed at the door of some oyster-shop; and this is the critical moment for the poor bivalve! It is thrown into a tub with clean water enough to remind it of its former luxurious life, when it is again seized by the pitiless master of its fate. With a great knife he brutally opens the shell, cuts through the muscle by which it adheres to the valve, and violently detaches it, after breaking the hinges. It is now laid out on a plate, exposed to every current of air, and in this state of suffering it is carried to the table. There the pitiless gourmet powders it over with the most pungent pepper, squeezes over the wounded and still bleeding body the abomination of its race in the shape of citric acid or vinegar, and then, alas! with a silver knife which cannot cut, he wounds and bruises it a second time; or, worse still, he saws and tears and rends it from its remaining shell; he seizes it with a three-pronged fork, which is driven through liver and stomach, and throws it into his mouth, where the teeth cut, crush, and grind it, and, while still living and palpitating, reduced to an inanimate mass, these organs first triturate it, while our gourmet is drinking its blood, its fat, and its bile.
We have said that oysters have no head, no arms—that they are without eyes (although that is disputed), without ears, and without nose; that they do not stir—that they never cry!