BREAKFAST.
Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses partaking of it, when he said, in illustration of modern Epicureanism, that “the world must be encompassed before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast.”
Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” It is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity presiding, better than another essayist, though one of a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin,—I mean Leigh Hunt. In the “Indicator” he invites us to a “Breakfast in Cold Weather.” “Here it is,” he says, “ready laid.Imprimis, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared for us,—a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed heads of aset of good-humoured urchins; and the sole empty chair, at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone,” he adds, “we could not help reading at meals; and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. The first look at the page, accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the head of ‘intensities.’” Under the head of “&c.” in the above list, I should be disposed to include “sunshine;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gardens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,” and amid flowers. Breakfastsal-frescoare all the more intensely enjoyed, because so few may be discussed in the open air in a country whose summer consists of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people should not leave off their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same the next morning when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and Boerhaave are right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraordinary severity.
The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. If Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appetites, and these could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who consumed three. The Romans were, in thisrespect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or nothing before the hour when they compensated for a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of “bread and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but good authority assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry for his morning repast long before day-break. This was in winter time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably induced to do so by indisposition; for he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater,—eating much, leaving more, and ordering the remains to be divided among the attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled for the same.
Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the dishes half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast; but potentates of our own days have made their first meal upon very questionable matter.
When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a large grilled water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The company were much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to those savoury viands. The Prince, who gave this public breakfast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century, our commoners used to give similar entertainments in honour of Princes.
“Ælia Lælia” Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers will be found noticedin another page. In 1763, she gave a concert and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s birthday. Thesceneis admirably painted by Walpole. “The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it was the loosest family I ever saw.”
There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called “the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility with which he departed.” There was neitherconvulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger Berthollet,—although in the latter there was something heroical, too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;—“a pause, and then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”
I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water; add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake; spoonout portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the various
And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast of,—a birth-right,—the least disputable article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.
It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in intensity to that of having him——but let us keep to “Table Traits.”
Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call theaqua pumpaginis, has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if, indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.
In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.
“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,—a substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.
There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiasticalcanons. But there is great licence in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket!
Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton,—which, by the way, is not madeatStilton,—and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese,—principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing peoplemust, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.
I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by mere repose.
Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimesmore than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs.
Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six feet high, and men at all points.
If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air through which they passed!
Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome andGreece eggs were among the introductory portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs!
Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of that very interesting personage, her future husband!
There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, appear.
Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its natureis entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread;—of which I will now say a few words, and first of
Our first parents received the mission to cultivate the garden which was given them for a home. Their Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage of all descriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority which they professed to obey. The sons of the tribes stood proudly by the plough, the daughters of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent their strength in the threshing barn, Kings guided oxen, and Prophets were summoned from the furrows to put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of things that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the law enforced. The people were taught to love and hold by the land which was in their own possession. To alienate it was to commit a crime. And it is from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended to us the feeling which universally prevails,—that he alone is aristocratic, has the best of power, who is lord of the land upon which he has built his earthly tabernacle.
The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what was known elsewhere; her cattle produced more abundantly, and the very appellations of many of her localities have reference to the beauty and the blessings showered down upon them by the Lord.
Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, was Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes where temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long the granary of the Roman empire, and twenty million bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute which she annually poured into the store-houses of Imperial Rome. That territory could hardly be more productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the soil at night would be found budding before morning. And this ancient story, I may notice, has been the venerable father of a large family of similar jokes among our Transatlantic cousins.
The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowledged the divine influence; and his first public act, as King, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly increase of harvests.
It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that of the Italian peasants, who, when one who was a native of their district had been raised to the tiara, sent a delegation to request an especial favour at his hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaintances benevolently, and bade them express their wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,” they replied: “nothing more than a declaration from the Pontiff that their district should be henceforth distinguished by its havingtwoharvests every year!” And the obliging “successor of the Fisherman” smiled, and not only granted their request, but promised more than he was petitioned for. “To do honour to my old friends,” said he, “not alone shall they have two harvests every year, but henceforth the year in their district shall be twice as long as it is in any other!” And therewith the simple people departed joyously.
The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did the Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their coin was stamped with symbols in connexion therewith, and their public treasury “pascua” showed, by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he who was rich in minted coin enjoyed thepecunia, or “money,” for which “flocks” (pecus) were bought and sold. The owner of an “estate” (locus) waslocuples, a term for a man well endowed with worldly goods; and he was in possession of a “salary,” who had hissalarium, his allowance of salt-money, or of salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived.
The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their ploughing oxen with wine. The labour was considerable; for, although the plough was light, it lacked the conveniencies of the more modern implement. Like the Anglo-Norman plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled plough is the work of the inventive Gauls.
The French Republicans made a show of paying honour to agriculture by public demonstrations, the chief actors in which were the foremost men in the Land of Equality. They, absurdly enough, took their idea from the example presented them by a Monarch, all of whom they pronounced execrable; and by one, too, who was the most despotic upon earth,—the Emperor of China.
And, in the case of the Emperor, there probably was more ostentation than any better motive for the act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,” says, truly enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the plough; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much of the etiquette of European Courts, such a custom may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising no influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, “to find a more impressive ceremony than that by which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the husband of the Adriatic Sea. Howexalting!—how stimulating!—how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, when their nation was, in reality, sovereign of the seas! But now it is little more than a ridiculous sport, and without any other effect than that of attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the Ascension.”
Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit necessary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the property of such husbandmen was alike exempted from seizure; and it strikes us, that this was a much more reasonably-founded exemption than that with which we endowrouéMembers of Parliament, who have no excuse for exceeding their income. They are free from arrest for six weeks from the prorogation of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce which is so often played in the autumn and winter, when Parliament is “further prorogued.” The Great Council would be all the better for the absence of men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her Majesty’s lieges by exceeding their own income. The Senate could better spare the spendthrifts, than the land could spare the presence of him whose mission it is to render it productive.
Wheat is a native of Asia,—some say, of Siberia; others, of Tartary; but it is a matter of doubt, whether it can now be found there growing in a wild state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then asked its protection. The powerful deity was called Robigus, and he was solemnly invoked, on every 25th of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was excepted from this homage; and to threaten to put an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy still exists, if we may believe the Italian Professor, who, being offereda basin of gruel, (made from barley,) declared its proper appellation to be “acqua crudele.” He accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, that it was detestable, and could only be swallowed by an extremely hungry man. Oats were only esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet speaks of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson did, when he described them as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain, however, found a good advocate in him who asked, “——where did you ever see such horses and such men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a heating quality, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad eating,—where better is not to be procured,—though they are less attractive to the palate than those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which the Romans not only swallowed with delight, but used the name proverbially. The lover who was treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of provision was very largely dealt in by Latin lovers. It was to be had cheaply; and nymphs consumed as fast as swains presented.
If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win a maiden’s affection, the Government distributed solid loaves, or corn to make them with, to the people, in order to gain the popular esteem, and suppress sedition. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid by the Emperors, and costing them nothing. In too many cases, it was ill applied; and if Adrian daily fed all the children of the poor, other imperial rulers showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels—twenty times that number of pounds’ weight—were supplied by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the imperial granaries an abundant tribute of the golden seed. It is afact, however, that neither Romans nor Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the method of making fermented bread.
Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the food of the gods; the first men existed on more bitter fare,—bread made from acorns. Ceres has the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men worshipped her accordingly; and, abandoning acorns, took also to eating the pig, now allowed to fatten on them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus dispute the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The hand-mill was one of the trophies which the Roman eagles bore back with them from Asia. Mola, the goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had something to do with this. It was he, at least, who sent to the Athenian market-women, selling bread, their customers; and, as he was the God of Eloquence, it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that all market-women are endowed with shrewdness and loquacity.
The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have possessed both. Our ladies of the Gate, in Billing’s Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I am inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol market-woman would surpass both. Let me cite an instance.
Some years ago, an old member of this ancient sisterhood was standing at her stall, in front of one of the Bristol banks. She had a £10 Bank-of-England note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she had been nurse-maid in the family of one of the partners, she thought she might venture to enter, and ask for gold for her note. She did so; but it was at a time when guineas were worth five-and-twenty shillings a-piece, and gold was scarce, and——in short, she met with a refusal. The quick-witted market-woman, without exhibiting any disappointment, thereupon asked the cashier to let her haveten of the bank’s £1 notes in exchange for her “Bank-of-Englander.” The cashier was delighted to accommodate her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, the old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, read aloud the promise engraved upon it, to pay the bearer in cash. “Very good!” said she, with a gleesome chuckle, “now gi’ me goold foryournotes, or I’ll run to the door, and call out, ‘Bank’s broke!’” There was no resisting this, and the market-woman departed triumphantly with her gold. Light-heeled Mercury could not have helped her better than she helped herself, by means of her own sharp wit.
Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman soldiery, for many years, had no better food than gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an addition suggested by Numa, who also not only improved the very rude ideas which previously prevailed with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens which he had erected, and to the bakers whom he had raised into a “guild,” placed under the protection of the goddess Fornax;—and a very indifferent, nay, disreputable, deity she was! The public ovens were to the people of Rome what a barber’s shop is to a village in war time,—the temple of gossip. It had been well had they never been any thing worse! The vocation of baker was hereditary in a family; the son was compelled to follow his father’s calling. Occasionally, a member of the fraternity was offered a senatorship; but then he was required to make over his property, realized by baking, to his successors; and, consequently, the honour was as deeply declined as the London mayoralty would be by the Governor of the Bank of England.
If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the bakers were consigned by the State, she suffered by thereligious liberty exercised by the bakers themselves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta was the very antipodes in character and attributes to Fornax; and the selection of the former would seem to show, that the generally reviled bakers could not only praise virtue, but practise it.
Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the markets at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the athletæ; batter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the weak, of stomach: and there were the prepared bread poultices, which people who, like Pompey’s young soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion, were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slumbering, with Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can hardly be said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and morepanis madidusthan blushes on the cheeks of either.
Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard to oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly allied, that when a man sows the one, he is not sure that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single grain produced “innumerable ears of corn; and that a bushel (twenty pounds’ weight) of millet would make more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been acquainted with Indian corn.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to love nature,—and he was himself one of the most artificial of characters,—knew very little about her, or her productions. Some of our great men are described as being in much the same condition of ignorance. Three poets of the last century were one day walking through a field, promising a glorious harvest of grain. One of them extolledthe beauty of the wheat. “Nay,” said the second, “it is rye.” “Not so,” remarked the third, “it is a field of barley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at the triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentlemen,” said he; “those be oats.” The poets were town-bred; or were of that class of people who go through a country with their eyes open, and are unable to distinguish between its productions. I have seen Londoners contemplating, with a very puzzled look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of Herne Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was “teazle!”
These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “capricious.” They will grow abundantly upon certain land having certain aspects; but where the aspect is changed, although the land be chemically the same, the canary will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in large quantities from Herne Bay for London, where it is used for many purposes. None of its uses are so singular as one to which corn was applied, some thirty years ago, in the western settlements of America, namely, for stretching boots and shoes. The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made secure by such tight tying that none could escape. It was then immersed for several hours in water; during which the leather was distended by the gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken from the water, a coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit for wear.
A more interesting anecdote in connexion with corn, and illustrative of character, is afforded us by Dr. Chalmers in his Diary. The Doctor, as is well known,—and he was ever ready to confess his weakness,—occasionally let his warm temper get the better of his excellent judgment. Here is an instance, which shows, moreover, how Christian judgment recovered itself from the influence of human nature: “Nov. 20th, 1812.—Was provoked withThomas taking it upon him to ask more corn for my horse. It has got feeble under his administration of corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appropriates it; and his eagerness to have it strengthens the suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to my servant and wife; and, though I afterwards got my feelings into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon Christian principles, was moved and agitated when I came to talk of it to himself. Let me take the corn into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire charity. O, my God, support me!” Was it not to Socrates that some one said?—“To judge from your looks, you are the best-tempered man in the world.” “Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher; “I have the worst possible temper, by nature; with the strongest possible control over it, by philosophy.” Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but the control over his stubborn infirmity had something better “than your philosophy” for its support.
Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, that, according to the Earl of Northumberland’s “Household-Book,” the corn was not thrown loose into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been conjectured, that the English poor formerly ate the same bread. There can be no question about it; and even at the present time it is no uncommon sight, in some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding his horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice therefrom for himself.
There is no greater consumer of corn in England than the pigeon. Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the hungry poor, calls pigeons “voracious and insatiate vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England and Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “consuming 159,500,000 pints of corn annually, to the value of £1,476,562. 10s.” It is impossible for calculation to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons, that they have an organ in the stomach forsecreting milk. And it is not alone in the way of devouring corn that they are destructive. In the “Philosophical Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for many ages built under the roof of the great church of Pisa. Their dung spontaneously took fire, at last, and the church was consumed.
I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to victory under the influence of no more exciting stimulant than gruel and vinegar. A little oatmeal has often sustained the strength of our own legions in the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they are, sometimes require a more substantial support. Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great Frederick, hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of Mark set out as volunteers for the royal army,—the Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders in blue jackets,—each man with a stout staff in his hand, and a rye loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with astonishment when they presented themselves at his head-quarters. “Where do you fellows come from?” said he. “From Mark, to help our King.” “Who doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the better; we are here of our own accord.” “Where are your officers?” “We have none.” “And how many of you deserted by the way?” “Deserted!” cried the Markers indignantly: “if any of us had been capable ofthat, we should not be what we are,—volunteers.” “True!” said the King, “and I can depend upon you. You shall have fire enough soon to toast your bread and cook your hams by.”
When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the Leaguers, the want most severely felt by the famished inhabitants was that of bread. The Guise party, who held the city,—and the most active agent of that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the sister of Duke Henri of Guise,—endeavoured to keep life in the people by meansthat nature revolts at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, the Government within the walls distributed very diminutive rolls made of a paste, the chief ingredient in which was human bones ground to powder. The people devoured them under the name of “Madame de Montpensier’s cakes;”—no wonder that they soon after exultingly welcomed the entry of a King, who declared that his first desire was to secure to every man in France his “poule au pot!” But enough of bread. Let us examine briefly the subject of
The illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him the authority for the nonce, has sneered at the English as being a nation having twenty religions, and only one sauce,—melted butter. A French commentator has added, that we have nothing polished about us but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged dislike of the French of his day for the English, to the circumstance that the latter poured melted butter over their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly said to have been further directed against us, on account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster-sauce with rump-steak, and “poultice,” as they cruelly characterize “bread sauce,” with pheasant. But, to return to butter:—the spilling of it has more than once been elucidative of character. When, in the days of the oldrégime, an English servant accidentally let a drop or two of melted butter fall upon the silken suit of a Frenchpetit-maître, the latter indignantly declared that “blood and butter were an Englishman’s food.” The conclusion was illogical, but the arguer was excited. Lord John Townshend manifested better temper and wit, when a similaraccident befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. “John,” said my Lord, “you should never grease anything but your coach-wheels.”
It was an old popular error that a pound of butter might consist of any number of ounces. It is an equally popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of less rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of digesting any thing stronger. Solid breakfasts are only fit for those who have much solid exercise to take after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls; look on muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as of equally wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent powers of digestion; or they may substitute for it the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of liquids I may next speak; and in this our ancient friend, Tea, takes the precedence.
The origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted for by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo Prince, went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he would never take rest by the way; but he once fell asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, that he cut off his eye-lids, and flung them on the ground. They sprang up in the form of tea shrubs; and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes the juice of the eye-lids of Darma. Tea, however, is said to have been first used in China as a corrective for bad water; andthatnot at a remote date.
In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogizers affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. In the ninth century, tea was taken in China simply as a medicine; and it then had the repute of being a panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so earnestly recommended its use as a common beverage, met with strenuous opposition. France, Germany, and Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, and the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. Nor was Holland itself unanimous in panegyrizing the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogized the infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; but others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, indignantly derided it as filthy “hay-water.” Olearius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian Ambassador, at about the same period, refused a pound or two of it, offered him by the Mogul as a present to the Czar, on the ground that the gift was neither useful nor agreeable.
The Dutch appear to have been the first who discovered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. They not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of sago for three or four pounds of tea; and it is very possible that each party, preferring its own acquisition, looked on the opposite party as duped.
Tea is supposed to have been first imported into England, from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it was slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original cost was, as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. But great uncertaintyrests as well upon the period of introduction, as upon the original importers, and the value of the merchandise. One fact connected with it is well ascertained; namely, that European Companies had long traded with China before they discovered the value and uses of tea.
It is said to have been in favour at the Court of Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his Queen, who had been used to drink it in Portugal. Medical men thought, at that time, that health could not be more effectually promoted than by increasing the fluidity of the blood; and that the infusion of Indian tea was the best means of attaining that object. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, published a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to his authority its general use in so many parts of Europe is to be attributed.
The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold the two weeds of novelty together, or separately. His name was Garway, (“Garraway’s,”) and hislocale, Exchange-alley. It was looked upon chiefly as a medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth century, not only “made up prescriptions,” in which tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to his house to drink it over his counter. Its price then varied from 11s.to 50s.per pound. The taking tea with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance; and, towards the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and Père Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea after supper, an occurrence which is journalized by his Lordship without any remark to lead us to suppose that it was an extraordinary event.
Dr. Lettsom has written largely, and plagiarized unreservedly, on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. Disraeli remarks, his own dry medical reflections to the sparkling facts of others; but he was the first, perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of green tea. He “distilledsome green tea, injected three drachms of the very odorous and pellucid water which he obtained, into the cavity of the abdomen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be unwholesome”—to the frogs, and so applied, as it undoubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are unsatisfactory.Nux vomica, for instance, deadly poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, by many animals.
The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of the new mystery. “Mrs. Hutchinson’s great grandmother was one of a party who sat down to the first pound of tea that ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, and without directions how to use it. They boiled the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how any person could like such a diet.”
Steele, in “The Funeral,” laughs at the “cups which cheer, but not inebriate.” “Don’t you see,” says he, “how they swallow gallons of the juice of tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under foot?”
What Bishop Berkeley did with “Tar Water,” when he made his Essay thereupon a ground for a Dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph Williams—“the Christian merchant” of the early and middle part of last century, whose biography is well known to serious readers—did, when he wrote to his friend Green upon the necessity of “setting the Lord always before us.” When treating of this subject, the pious layman adverts to a present of that new thing called “tea,” which Green had sent him, and which had lost some of its flavour in the transit. There is something amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual way in which worthy Joseph Williams mixes his Jeremiad upon teawith one upon human morals. “The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath lost the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at Sherborne, owing, I suppose, to its conveyance in paper, which, being very porous, easily admits effluvia from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil communications among men, which nothing will prevent, (like canisters for tea,) but taking to us the whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up with cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been tinctured with these sweet spices; so ‘he that walks with wise men shall be wise.’ He that converses with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in heaven, whose treasure and whose hearts are there, will catch some sparks from their holy fire; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners.’ I have put the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its original flavour, as the pious soul which hath received some ill impressions from vicious or vain conversation will, by retiring from the world, by communing with his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.” The simile, however, limps a little; for if every man canistered himself, and a good example, from the world, the wide-spreading aroma of that example would never seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It is by contact we brighten, and sometimes suffer. We must not canister our virtue as Mr. Williams did his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the commerce of the world, in the very centre of the chest of avarice; but what good does it do there? Let it circulate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant Industry, and there will be more profit than evil effected by the process. But good Joseph Williams would not have agreed with us, and hewouldtake his saintly similes from traits of the table. “O that I may walk humbly,”he says, “and look on myself, when fullest of divine communications, but as a drinking-glass without a foot, and which, consequently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may be put into it.” A very tipsy-like simile!
I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion happily proved stronger than tea, but not without still stronger opposition; and we are told by the disgustedConnoisseur, that “persons of fashion cannot but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in Ranelagh were laid aside, from a superstitious regard to religion.” A remark which shows how very poor aconnoisseurthis writer was in matters of propriety. Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be seated at the same table. On Easter-day, for instance, the first dish that used to be placed before the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback, set in a corn salad. Some hundred and fifty years ago, too, there was a semi-religious, semi-roystering club held at the “Northern Ale-house in St. Paul’s Alley,” every member of which was of the name of Adam. It was formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. The honour was more than Adam deserved; for the first created man not only betrayed his trust, but he shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has managed to survive even the memory of the club founded by his namesakes, and long since defunct. The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron posset, which Arabella, in “The Committee,” recommends as “a very good drink against the heaviness of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout,—an assertion which would seem to indicate that the author of it was of Hibernian origin!
There are various passages of our poets which tend to show that “tea” and “coffee” became, very early, fixed social observances. Pope, writing, in 1715, of a lady wholeft town after the coronation of George I., says that she went to the country—