TABLE TRAITS,
WITH SOMETHING ON THEM.
THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON.A PROLOGUE.
“Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne.”—Molière.
“Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne.”—Molière.
Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head of a table is among those “respectable” powers who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I say, “at the hands;” for what is “adoration” but the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its componentsadandos,oris)? and what worship is so common as that which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and his altar well supplied?
But such a solution of the question affords us, after all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality of Amphitryon himself, whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside at modern banquets.Was he real? is he a myth? was he ever in the body? or is his name that of a shadow only, employed for purposes of significance? If real, whence came he? What does classic story say of the abused husband of Alcmena?
Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two nephews, fast young men, who were slain by the Teleboans. This is a myth. They were extravagant individuals, of the class of those who count the chimes at midnight. Their father could not help them; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, spend his substance for the benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, however, had an article of small value,—a daughter, named Alcmena; and this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus.
An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef in particular, made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen he found amongst them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the animals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon,falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion; for the Teleboan beef was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboës themselves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their Ætolian homes, and settled in the island of Capreæ.
The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his son, was among the last-born of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that the tale is to be found in Dow’s “Hindostan;” but that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as easily “Indicized” as that of Pythagoras.
In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the title of “plagiary;” and an instance of the latter is here before us. When Plautus sat in his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted all that he had been told of his hero’s birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home is in the far East; and his history was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners by the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome had been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is his story.
A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us,—but he was the individual whom the Greeks stole,and called Amphitryon,—lived many years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature; and he not only found the former a good thing to possess, but he used itlikea giant. He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile, girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at sunset, “like Hebe in Hercules’ arms.” It was not often, however, that such passages of peace embellished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for flatterers; and her monster of a husband had a stick, which showered blows upon her when he detected her neglecting her household work. Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the more modern, and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and finally there was much more of the first than there was of the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insensible on the threshold of their house, and threatened never again to keep up aménagewith so incorrigible a partner.
A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order,—not the King of gods and men, as in the Grecian legend,—had witnessed the whole proceeding from his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the husband disappeared; and, gradually descending in his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly-bruised beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led the orchestra, and gave him strength.
The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused itself into a human body, which was found without difficulty,and it clothed the whole under the counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These feats of transmutation were common among the eastern deities; and I take for granted that my readers are aware that Pythagoras himself—who is connected with Table Traits, on the subject of beans—was no other than Buddha Goroos, who slipped into a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis to wondering Europe.
The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished, on recovering herself, to find that she was seated, without any sense of pain, on a bench in the little garden, with her apparent husband at her feet, pouring out protestations of love and assurances of fidelity. She accepted all, without questioning; for it was all too pleasant to be refused. A new life commenced. The married pair became the admiring theme of the village; and when a son was born to them, there ensued such showers of felicitations and flowers as had never fallen upon married lovers since the Hindoo world first started on its career, on the back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon never ceased to shed honey; and this was flowing, sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, the vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting the counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity of women who indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche glasses. In an instant, however, he was conscious that his other self was not a reflection, but only the cause of many that began crowding into the brain of the true man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit irritated the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affray ensued, in which the mortal got all the blows, and his rival all the advantage. The wife was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning towards the irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigantic original roar forth the tale of his wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights; and it was onlyduring a lull in the storm that he heeded a suggestion made, to the effect, that all the parties should submit their case to the judgment of an inspired Brahmin.
This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the double-man that stood before him, one was a dupe, and the other a deity,—something, at all events, above humanity. The question was, how to discover the divinity. After much cogitation, this was the judgment pronounced by the dusky Solomon: “Madam,” said he to the perplexed lady, “your husband was known as being the most robust man ever made out of the red earth, of which was composed the father of us all. Now, let these two litigants salute you on the lips; and we pronounce him to be the true man who comes off with the loudest report.” The trial took place forthwith in presence of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal first approached the up-raised lips of his wife; and he performed the required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred culverins to the “pistol-shot” kiss recorded of Petruchio. The Judge and the people looked curiously to the defendant, as wondering how, on the pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note higher than his rival. The Indian god addressed him to what seemed a rose-bud wet with dew; and therewith ensued a sound as though all the artillery of the skies were saluting, too, in honour of the achievement. The multitude and the Brahmin looked, for all the world, as if they had lost their hearing; and it was calculated that the astounding din might have been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked towards the Brahmin for confirmation of their award; but the Brahmin merely remarked to them, with urbanity, that they were the sons and fathers of asses, and were unable to distinguishbetween the almost invisible seed which diets the bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palm of the garden of the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent that an earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it in fifty millions of mortal-measured years. “Here is the true husband,” added the Judge, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Indian, “who has done all that human being, in the particular vocation required, could do; and here,” added he, turning reverentially to the other, “is some supreme being, who has been pleased to amuse himself at the expense of his servants.”
The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the Judge’s perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and somewhat operatic, form. He ascended the cloud, which appeared in waiting for him like an aërial cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade the edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the deity appointed to preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair;—and, “if these have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege to avenge them according to my good pleasure.” The ladies thereupon flung flowers to him as he rose, and the husbands saluted his departure with rather faint cheers; but throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never was a table spread, but the master thereat, prince or peasant, invoked the Hindoo deity to cast the beams of the sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, however, in this matter, has crept in; and, if Hindoo feasts lack real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer present sharers in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the god came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when he perplexed the household of Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, ensconced within a rose; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and the finger on his lip to discretion; and every docileguest whisperssub rosâ, and acknowledges the present god.
It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who gave men diet, but forgot digestion. It was like giving them philosophical lectures, without power to understand them; and the case is still common enough upon earth. These subjects demand brief notice, were it only by way of appendix to this prolegomenical chapter.