An Old Guide to Good Manners.
In the first number of The Catholic World we gave our readers some account of the great Christian school of Alexandria in the time of St. Clement, the philosopher. The article, borrowed from The Dublin Review, sketched the corrupt, luxurious, and effeminate society of the Egyptian metropolis—that gay, bustling, frivolous city which was to the old Eastern world what Paris now is to the continent of Europe—and showed how St. Clement thought it well worth his while to spare an occasional hour from the discussions of philosophy and dogma, and the definition of a code of Christian ethics, to rebuke the scandalous luxury of dandies and gourmands, and the follies of fashionable ladies. It would have been but a meagre code of ethics, indeed, which had overlooked the busy trifles that made up so much of the life of Alexandrian gentlefolks. The teacher who would form a better school of morality could not confine himself to the church and the market-place. He must enter the bath and the banquet-hall, the shops of the silk merchant, the jeweller, and the perfumer. He must touch with sharp hand little things which are only foolishness to us, but, to the pagan society of Egypt, made up a large part of the sum of human existence. All this St. Clement did, and the substance, if not the words, of his directions to the flock has come down to us in the pages of his Instructor.
It is a curious picture which he gives us of Alexandrian manners; but we question, after all, if much of what he says will not apply pretty well to our own day. He begins with the diet. This, he remarks, ought to be "simple, truly plain, suiting precisely simple and artless children." He had no faith in the fattening of men as one fattens hogs and turkeys. If he had lived in the days of prize-fights and rowing-matches, he would have inveighed against the processes of "training," and looked with no favor upon a bruiser or a boatman getting himself into condition with raw beef-steaks and profuse sweating. Growth, and health, and right strength, says the venerable father, come of lightness of body and a good digestion; he will have none of the "strength that is wrong or dangerous, and wretched, as is that of athletes, produced by compulsory feeding." Cookery is an "unhappy art," and that of making pastry is a "useless" one. He points the finger of scorn at the gluttons who "are not ashamed to sing the praises of their delicacies," and in, their greed and solicitude seem absolutely to sweep the world with a drag-net to gratify their luxurious tastes. They give themselves "great trouble to get lampreys in the straits of Sicily, the eels of the Meander, and the kids found in Melos, and the mullets in Sciathus, and the muscles of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos, not omitting the sprats found in Lipara, and the Mantinican turnip; and, furthermore, the beet-root that grows among the Ascraeans; they seek out the cockles of Methymna, the turbots of Attica, and the thrushes of Daphnis, and the reddish-brown dried figs, on account of which the ill-starred Persian marched into Greece with five hundred thousand men. Besides these they purchase birds from Phasis, the Egyptian snipes, and the Median pea-fowl. Altering these by means of condiments, the gluttons gape for the sauces; and they wear away their whole life at the pestle and mortar, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-pans." Do we not feel a little ashamed at reading this? Are we so much better than the gluttons of Egypt? They sent to Abydos for their oysters, and we export the shell-fish of Norfolk and Saddle Rock to all parts of the country. If they yearned for snipe, so do we. If they had a hankering after eel pot-pies, pray, is the taste unknown to ourselves? Was the Median pea-fowl, we wonder, a more costly luxury than woodcock, or the Sicilian lamprey worse than Spanish mackerel? Perhaps we do not quite "sweep the world with a drag-net;" but that is only because we should gain nothing by it. We may not ransack the four quarters of the globe for unknown viands; but we lay distant climes and far-off years, under contribution to furnish us with rare and luscious wines. The good saint, had he lived in the nineteenth century, would have delighted in Graham bread; for he blames his countrymen for "emasculating their bread by straining off the nourishing part of the grain." He inveighs against "sweetmeats, and honey-cakes, and sugar-plums," and a multitude of desserts, and suppers where there is naught but "pots and pouring of sauce, and drink, and delicacies, and smoke" The smoke to which he alludes is undoubtedly the fume of the "hissing frying-pans," but it almost seems as if he were describing a modern carouse with punch and tobacco. The properest articles of food are those which are fit for immediate use without fire. The apostle Matthew ate "seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh;" and St. John the Baptist, "who carried temperance to the extreme, ate locusts and wild honey." St. Clement does not give us his authority for the statement regarding St. Matthew's diet; nor, it may be objected, is there any evidence that the Baptist did not cook his locusts before he fed upon them. In some parts of the East, where locusts are still regarded as a delicacy, they are prepared for the table by pulling off the legs and wings, and frying the bodies in oil. But Clement's object was not so much to prescribe a bill of fare as to teach men of gluttonous proclivities how to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of that "most lickerish demon," whom he calls "the Belly-demon, and the worst and most abandoned of demons." First of all, we must guard against "those articles of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite." (How he would have shuddered at a modern grand dinner, with sherry-and-bitters first to whet the palate; then three or four raw oysters, just to give a relish to the soup, the fish, and the entrées; and in the middle of the repast a sherbet, or a Roman punch, to wipe out the taste of all that had gone before, and give strength for a few more courses of meat!) Then, being naturally hungry, he says; let us eat the simplest kind of food; bulbs, (we hope he does not mean onions,) olives, certain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds of cooked food without sauces, and, if we must have flesh, let it be roast rather than boiled.
Wine, of course, ought to be taken in moderation, if it is taken at all; and it is well to mix it always with water, and not to drink it during the heat of the day, when the blood is already warm enough, but to wait until the cool of the evening. Even water, however, must be drunk sparingly, "so that the food may not be drowned, but ground down in order to digestion." What a disgusting picture the holy philosopher draws of those "miserable wretches whose life is nothing but revel, debauchery, bath, excess, idleness, drink!" "You may see some of them, half-drunk, staggering, with crowns round their necks like wine-jars, vomiting drink on one another in the name of good-fellowship; and others, full of the effects of their debauch, dirty, pale in the face, and still, above yesterday's bout, pouring another bout to last till next morning." Moreover, he entirely disapproves of importing wines. If one must drink, the product of one's native vines ought to suffice. "There are the fragrant Thasian wine, and the pleasant-breathing Lesbian, and a sweet Cretan wine, and sweet Syracusan wine, and Medusian and Egyptian wine, and the insular Naxian, the highly perfumed and flavored, another wine of the land of Italy. These are many names, but for the temperate drinker one wine suffices."
St. Clement concerns himself not only with what people ought to eat and drink, but with how they ought to eat and drink it. The chief thing necessary at table is temperance; the next is good manners. We remember to have had the pleasure and profit of reading once a modern hand-book of etiquette which abounded in the most amazing instructions for gentlemen and ladies at their meals. When you go to a dinner party, it said, do not pick your teeth much at table. Do not breathe hard over your beef. Don't snort while you are eating. Don't make a disgusting noise with your lips while taking in soup. And don't do twenty other horrible things which no gentleman or lady would any more have thought of doing than of standing up on their chairs or jumping upon the table. But St. Clement's directions for polite behavior show that worse things than these were in vogue in those beastly old days. He pours out words of indignation and contempt upon those 'gluttonous feasters who raise themselves from the couches on which the ancients used to recline at their banquets, stretch out their necks, and all but pitch their faces into the dishes "that they may catch the wandering steam by breathing in it." They grab every minute at the sauce; they besmear their hands with condiments; they cram themselves ravenously—in such a hurry that both jaws are stuffed out at once, the veins about the face are raised, and the perspiration runs all over as they pant and are tightened with their insatiable greed.
Suppose St. Clement had dined on board an American steamboat!
Then about drinking. In this, too, the old Alexandrians must have had some queer ways. "We are to drink without contortions of the face," says the saint, "not greedily grasping the cup, nor, before drinking, making the eyes roll with unseemly motion; nor from intemperance are we to drain the cup at a draught; nor besprinkle the chin, nor splash the garments while gulping down all the liquor at once—our face all but filling the bowl, and drowned in it. For the gurgling occasioned by the drink rushing with violence, and by its being drawn in with a great deal of breath, as if it were being poured into an earthenware vessel, while the throat makes a noise through the rapidity of ingurgitation, is a shameful and unseemly spectacle of intemperance. … Do not haste to mischief, my friend. Your drink is not being taken from you. Be not eager to burst by draining it down with gaping throat." Sad to say, even the women were addicted to "revelling in luxurious riot," and "drawing hiccups like men." It used to be the fashion for ladies to drink out of alabaster vessels with narrow mouths—quite too narrow, Clement complains and, to get at the liquor, they had to throw their heads back so far as to bare their necks in a very unseemly manner to their male boon companions, and so pour the wine down their throats. This custom the saint strenuously condemns. It was adopted because the women were afraid of widening their mouths and so spoiling their beauty, if they rent their lips apart by stretching them on broad drinking-cups.
These drinking-cups themselves, and much other furniture of the table, were causes of offence in the good father's eyes, and he thunders against them with indignant eloquence, as marks of the shameless luxury and extravagance which pervaded the daily life of the richer classes. The use of cups made of silver and gold, and of others inlaid with precious stones, is out of place, he declares, being only a deception of the vision. For, if you pour any warm liquid into them, they become so hot that you cannot touch them, and, if you pour in anything cold, the material changes its quality, injuring the mixture. St. Clement was right. Of jewelled drinking-vessels we freely confess that we have no personal knowledge; but we have a very distinct and painful recollection of certain silver mugs and silver-gilt goblets which used always to be given to children by their god-parents, and from which the unfortunate youngsters were forced to drink until, say, they were old enough to leave boarding-school. How many a time have we not longed in our boyhood to exchange the uneasy gentility of a chased silver cup for the plain comfort of a good, honest tumbler of greenish pressed glass! How hot those dreadful cups used to be when filled with a vile, weak compound known in the nursery as tea! How they used to hide the refreshing sparkle of the clear, cold water in summer, and the beautiful color of the harmless decoctions, flavored with currant jelly or other delicacies, which were allowed us on rare occasions of festivity! St. Clement was right; they were out of place and a deception of the vision. But there was many a vessel on the Alexandrian tables, besides the drinking-cups of silver, and gold, and alabaster, which shocked this fearless censor of manners and morals. Away, he cries, with Theracleian cups and Antigonides, and Canthari, and goblets, and limpet-shaped cups, and the endless forms of drinking-vessels, and wine-coolers and wine-pourers also. Away with the elaborate vanity of chased glass vessels, more liable to break on account of the art, and teaching us to fear while we drink. Ah! had he seen a Christian dinner-party in the nineteenth century, with the delicately cut wine-glasses, slim of stem, fragile as an eggshell, scarcely safe to touch; the claret-jugs of Bohemian ware, elaborately ornamented and hardly less costly than gold; the curiously contrived pitchers for icing champagne; the decanters, the water-flagons, the decorated goblets, and all the other glass and china ware, what would good St. Clement have said? Many other things are there which he reprehends among the apparatus of the banquet, and of these some we have assuredly copied or retained, while of others we can only conjecture the nature and uses. There were silver couches, and pans and vinegar saucers, and trenchers and bowls, and vessels of silver, and gold, and easily cleft cedar, and thyme-wood, and ebony, and tripods fashioned of ivory, and couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, and folding-doors of beds studded with gold and variegated with tortoise-shell, and bedclothes of purple and other colors difficult to produce. And let no one wonder that he should enumerate bedclothes among the objectionable furniture of a dining-room. It must be remembered that in those gluttonous old times people took their meals not sitting on chairs, but reclining on couches, so that it would hardly be out of the way to say that they breakfasted, and dined, and supped in bed. They used to eat and drink so much that this attitude was perhaps, on the whole, the most convenient for them. Among the other blamable luxuries which he enumerates are ivory-handled knives. The basins in which it was customary to wash the feet and hands before meals ought to be of no better material than common potter's ware. You can get off the dirt just as well in a cheap earthen washbowl, says the saint, as in one of price; the Lord did not bring down a silver foot-bath from heaven.
Music at feasts is an abomination to be carefully shunned, and a comic song is unworthy of a Christian gentleman, for "burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness." If people occupy their time with "pipes and psalteries, and Egyptian clapping of hands," they become, by degrees, quite intractable, and even descend so low as to "beat on cymbals and drums, and make a noise on the instruments of delusion." We must be on our guard against whatever pleasure effeminates the soul by tickling the eye or the ear, and so must shun "the licentious and mischievous art of music," which disturbs the mind and corrupts the morals. Grave, temperate, and modest music may, indeed, be permitted, but "liquid" strains and "chromatic harmonies" are only for immodest revels. All which shows that in Clement's time there must have been a wickedness associated with music which that glorious art has now happily lost. The psalmist, it is true, exhorts us to praise the Lord in the sound of the trumpet, with the psaltery, the lyre, the timbrel and dance, the chords, and the organ, and the clashing cymbals; but the Alexandrian philosopher interprets all this passage symbolically. The trumpet to which King David refers is the blast which shall wake the dead on the last day. The lyre is the mouth struck by the spirit. The timbrel and dance are the church "meditating on the resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin." Our body is the organ; its nerves are the strings by which it has received harmonious tension; and the clashing cymbal is the tongue, resounding with the pulsations of the mouth. Reading St. Clement's instructions, with no light by which to interpret them, except the bare words of the text itself, it would seem to be but a solemn and joyless life which he inculcated a perpetual Puritan Sunday—than, which, probably, nothing more doleful was ever imagined of man. But we must remember that he lived in an age of ineffable vileness. Amusements, the most innocent in themselves, were the recognized cloaks or accompaniments of horrible deeds of licentiousness. The employment of certain kinds of music at banquets naturally suggested the criminal excesses with which such music was ordinarily associated. It was like meats offered to idols. Christians were bound to shun it, not because it was bad, but because it had been dedicated to bad uses. So was it also with burlesque singing. The songs were not only comical, but wicked. And it is in pretty much the same sense that we must understand the saint's curious chapter on laughing, in which he rebukes ludicrous remarks, buffoonery, and "waggery," and declares that "imitators of ludicrous sensations" (mimics) ought to be driven out of good society. It is disgraceful to travesty speech, which is the most precious of human endowments, though pleasantry is allowable, provided laughter be kept within bounds. But we ought not to laugh in the presence of elderly persons or others to whom we owe respect, unless they indulge in pleasantries for our amusement; and women and children ought to be especially careful not to laugh too much, lest they slip into scandal. It is best to confine ourselves to a gentle smile, which our author describes as the seemly relaxation of the countenance in a harmonious manner, like the relaxation of a musical instrument. "But the discordant relaxation of the countenance in the case of women is called a giggle, and is meretricious laughter; in the case of men a guffaw, and is savage and insulting laughter." Of all such as this, it is needless to say, St. Clement disapproves.