Part 6
We have all heard of the cook who boasted that he could serve up a leathern shoe in twenty-seven different phases of sauce and cookery. I never believed in him, and always set him down as a vapouring fanfaroon--a sort of copper-stewpan captain of cookery. But I have a firm belief that little Zita would have made everything out of anything or nothing culinary; that her stewed pump-handles would have been delicious, her salmi of bath-brick exquisite, her croquettes of Witney blanket unapproachable, her back hair en papillote a dish fit for a king. She cooked such irresistible dishes for the noble Pomponius that he frequently wept, and would have given her her freedom had he not been afraid that she would be off and be married: that the noble Domina Pomponia was jealous of her, and would have led her a sorry life, had she dared to cross her husband; that the guests of the Pomponian house wrote bad sapphics and dactylics in her praise, and would have given her necklaces of pearl and armlets of gold for gifts, but that the Roman finances were in rather an embarrassed condition just then, and that poor trust was dead with the Genoese jewellers.
Little Zita was very pretty; she must have been pretty--and she was. She was as symmetrical as one of Pradier’s Bacchantes--as ripe and blooming as the grapes they press; but as pure as the alabaster of which they are made. Her complexion was as delicately, softly tinted as one of Mr. Gibson’s Anglo-Roman statues; her long hair, when she released it from its confining fillet, hung down about her like a king’s mantle; she had wrists and ankles that only gold or gems were worthy to embrace: she had a mouth like a Cupid’s bow, and eyes like almonds dyed in ebony; and teeth that were the gates of ivory of the dreams of love, and nails like mother of pearl. She danced like Arbuscula, and sang like Galeria Coppiola; and she cooked, like an angel--as she is.
None could serve up in such style the great standard dishes of Roman cookery. The wild boar of Troy, with honey, oil, flour and garum; the Campanian sow, fed from golden troughs, stuffed with chestnuts and spices, and brought to table whole with her nine little sucking pigs disposed around her in sweet sauce; the vol au vents of peacocks’ tongues, and ortolans’ eyes, and beccaficos’ brains. Yet, though great in these, she excelled in fanciful, ravishing, gem-like dishes--in what the French call “surprises”--in culinary epigrams, edible enigmas, savoury fables, poems that you could eat and drink. She had sauces, the secrets of which have gone to Paradise with her; she had feats of legerdemain in compounding dishes that no life-long apprenticeship could teach. And, withal, she was so saving, so economical, so cleanly in her arrangements, that her kitchen was like a street in the clean village of Brock (I should not like to pass half an hour even in Velour’s kitchen); and her noble master had the satisfaction of knowing that he gave the mightiest “spreads” in Genoa at anything but an unreasonable or ruinous expense.
She was as honest as a child’s smile, and was as regardless of kitchen stuff, perquisites, Christmas boxes from tradesmen, and the dangerous old crones who hung about the area and cried hare-skins, as your own cook, madam, I hope may be. And, above all, little Zita had no followers, had boxed the major-domo’s ears for offering her a pair of fillagree ear-rings, and was exceeding pious.
Now, a pious cook is not considered, in these sceptical days, as a very great desideratum. A pious cook not unfrequently refuses to cook a Sunday’s dinner, and entertains a serious grenadier on Sunday evening. I have seen many a kitchen drawer in which the presence of a hymn-book, and the “Cook’s Spiritual Comforter” (price ninepence per hundred for distribution) did not exclude the company of much surreptitious cold fat and sundry legs of fowls that were not picked clean. Serious cooks occasionally wear their mistresses’ black silk stockings to go to chapel in; my aunt had a serious cook who drank; and there is a legend in our family of a peculiarly evangelical cook who could not keep her hands off other people’s pomatum. But little Zita was sincerely, unfeignedly, cheerfully, devotedly pious. She did not neglect her duties to pray: she rose up early in the morning before the cock crew, while her masters were sunk in drunken sleep, and prayed for herself and for them, then went to her daily labour with vigorous heart of grace. There are some of us who pray, as grudgingly performing a certain duty, and doing it, but no more--some of us as an example (and what an example!) to others--some through mere habit (and those are in a bad case)--some (who shall gainsay it?) in hypocrisy; but do we not all, Scribes and Pharisees, Publicans and Sinners, number among our friends, among those we know, some few good really pious souls who strike us with a sort of awe and reverent respect; who do their good deeds before we rise, or after we retire to rest; creep into heaven the back way, but are not the less received there with trumpets and crowns of glory?
Such was little Saint Zita. She was, I have said, truly pious. In an age when there was as yet but one Ritual, before dissent and drums ecclesiastic existed, Zita thought it her bounden duty to abide by and keep all the fasts and festivals of the church as ordained by the bishops, priests, and deacons. For she was not book-learned, this poor little cook-maid, and had but these three watchwords for a rule of conduct--Faith, Duty, and Obedience.
It is in the legend that she would decoy the little white-haired, blue-eyed children of the barbarian soldiers into her kitchen, and there, while giving them sweetmeats and other goodies, teach them to lisp little Latin prayers, and tell over the rosary, and kiss the crucifix appended to it. And she would have assuredly have fallen under the grave displeasure of the heaven-born Sir Robert W. Carden, and have been specially pointed at in his proposed Act of Parliament for making almsgiving penal, since she bestowed the major part of her wages in gifts to beggars, unmindful whether they were christian or pagan; and, for a certainty, the strong-minded would have sneered at her, and the wearers of phylacteries would have frowned on her, for she thought it a grave sin to disobey the edict of the church that forbade the eating of flesh on Friday and other appointed fasts. Pomponius Cotta, it must be acknowledged, was troubled with no such scruples. He would have rated his cook soundly, and perchance scourged her, if she had served him up meagre fare on the sixth day of the week; yet I find it in the legend that little Zita was enabled by her own skill, and, doubtless, by celestial assistance, to perpetrate a pious fraud upon this epicurean Roman. The Fridays’ dinners were as rich and succulent, and called forth as loud encomia as those of the other days, yet not one scrap of meat, one drop of carnal gravy, did Zita employ in the concoction thereof. Fish, and eggs, and divers mushrooms, truffles and ketchups, became, in the hands of the saintly cook, susceptible of giving the most meaty flavours. ’Tis said that Zita invented burnt onions--those grand culinary deceptions! And though they were in reality making meagre, as good Christians should do, Pomponius and his boon companions thought they were feasting upon venison and poultry and choice roasts. This is one of the secrets that died with Saint Zita. I never tasted sorrel soup that had even the suspicion of a flavour of meat about it; and though I have heard much of the rice fritters and savoury soups of the Lancashire vegetarians, I doubt much of their ability to conceal the taste of the domestic cabbage and the homely onion.
Now it fell out in the year of redemption--I have not the slightest idea--that P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius, a great gastronome and connoisseur in oysters, came from Asia to visit his kinsman Pomponius. There was some talk of his marrying the beautiful Flavia Pomponilia, the eldest daughter of the Pomponian house (she was as jealous of Zita as Fleur de Lys was of Esmeralda, and would have thrust golden pins into her, à-la-mode Romaine, but for fear of her father); but at all events Ostendius was come down from Asia to Genoa, and there was to be a great feast in honour of his arrival. Ostendius had an aldermanic abdomen under his toga, had a voice that reminded you of fruity port, bees-wings in his eyes, a face very like collared brawn, and wore a wig. Those adjuncts to beauty were worn, ladies and gentlemen, fifteen hundred years ago. Ay! look in at the Egyptian Room of the British Museum, London, and you shall find wigs older than that. He had come from Asia, where he was reported to have partaken of strange dishes--birds of paradise, gryphons, phœnixes, serpents, elephants--what do I know but he despised not the Persicos apparatus, and was not a man to be trifled with in his victuals! Pomponius Cotta called his cook into his sanctum, and gave her instructions as to the banquet, significantly telling her what she might expect if she failed in satisfying him and his gastronomical guests. Poor Zita felt a cold shudder as she listened to the threats which, in lazy Latin, her noble master lavished upon her. But she determined, less through fear of punishment than a sincere desire of doing her duty, to exert herself to the very utmost in the preparation of the feast. Perhaps there may have been a little spice of vanity in this determination; perhaps she was actuated by a little harmless desire to please the difficult Ostendius, and so prove to him that Pomponius Cotta had a slave who was the best cook in Genoa and in Italy. Why not? I am one who, believing that all is vanity, think that the world as it is could not well get on without some vanity. By which I mean an honest moderate love of and pleasure in approbation. I think we could much easier dispense with money than with this. When I see a conceited man, I think him to be a fool; but when I meet a man who tells me he does not rejoice when he is praised for the good book he has written, or the good picture he has painted, or the good deed he has done, I know him to be a humbug, and a mighty dangerous one to his fellow-creatures.
Flowers, wax torches, perfumes, rich tapestries, cunning musicians--all were ordered for the feast to the guest who was come from Asia. The piscator brought fish in abundance; the lignarius brought wood and charcoal to light the cooking furnaces withal; the venator brought game and venison; the sartor stitched unceasingly at vestments of purple and fine linen; the slaves who fed ordinarily upon salsamentum or salt meat revelled in blithe thoughts of the rich fragments that would fall to their share on the morrow of the banquet. It need scarcely be said that Zita the cook had a whole army of cook’s mates, scullions, marmitons, plate-scrapers, and bottle-washers under her command. These peeled the vegetables, these jointed the meat, these strained the soups and jellies; but to none did she ever confide the real cooking of the dinner. Her spoon was in every casserole, her spatula in every sauce-boat; she knew the exact number of mushrooms to every gratin, and of truffles to every turkey. Believe me--in the works of great artists there is little vicarious handiwork. Asses say that Mr. Stanfield painted the scenery of Acis and Galatea by means of a speaking-trumpet from the shilling gallery, his assistants working on the stage. Asses say that Carême used to compose his dinners reclining on a crimson velvet couch, while his nephew mixed the magic ingredients in silver stewpans. Asses say that all the hammering and chiselling of Praxiteles’ statues were done by workmen, and that the sculptor only polished up the noses and finger tips with a little marble dust. Don’t believe such tales. In all great works the master hand is every where.
On the morning of the banquet, early, Zita went to market, and sent home stores of provisions, which her assistants knew well how to advance through their preparatory stages. Then, knowing that she had plenty of time before her, the pious little cook--though she had already attended matins--went to church to have a good pray. In the simplicity of her heart, she thought she would render up special thanks for all the good dinners she had cooked, and pray as specially that this evening’s repast should be the very best and most succulent she might ever prepare. You see she was but a poor, ignorant, little slave-girl, and she lived in the dark ages.
Zita went to church, heard high mass, confessed, and then, going into a little dark chapel by herself, fell down on her knees before the mother of all virgins, the Queen of Heaven. She prayed, and prayed, and prayed so long, so earnestly, so devoutly, that she quite forgot how swiftly the hours fleet by, how impossible it is to overtake them. She prayed and prayed till she lost all consciousness and memory of earthly things, of earthly ties and duties, till the vaulted roof seemed to open, till she seemed to see, through a golden network, a sky of lapis-lazuli all peopled with angelic beings in robes of dazzling white; till she heard soft sounds of music such as could only proceed from harps played by celestial hands; till the statue of the Queen of Heaven seemed to smile upon her and bless her; till she was no longer a cook and a slave, but an ecstatic in communion with the saints.
She prayed till the mortal sky without, from the glare of noonday took soberer hues; till the western horizon began to blush for Zita’s tardiness; till the great blue Mediterranean sea grew purple, save where the sunset smote it; till the white palaces of Genoa were tinged with pink, as if the sky had rained roses. She prayed till the lazy dogs which had been basking in the sun rose and shook themselves and raised their shiftless eyes as if to wonder where the sun was; till the barbarian soldiers, who had been lounging on guard-house benches, staggered inside, and fell to dicing and drinking; till hired assassins woke up on their straw pallets, and, rubbing their villanous eyes, began to think that it was pretty nearly time to go a murdering; till cut-purses’ fingers began to itch premonitorily; till maidens watched the early moon, and longed for it to be sole sovereign of the heavens, that the trysting-time might come; till the young spendthrift rejoiced that another day was to come, and the old sage sighed that another day was gone; till sick men quarrelled with their nurses for closing their casements, and the birds grew drowsy, and the flowers shut themselves up in secresy, and the frog began to speak to his neighbour, and the glow-worm lighted his lamp.
She prayed till it was dusk, and almost dark, till the vesper bell began to ring, when she awoke from out her trance, and not a dish of the dinner was cooked.
And she hurried home, weeping, ah! so bitterly. For Zita knew her duty towards her neighbour as the road towards Heaven. She knew that there were times for all things, and that she had prayed too much and too long. Punishment she did not so much dread as the reproaches of her own conscience for the neglect of her duty. At length, faltering and stumbling in the momentarily increasing darkness, she reached the Pomponian house, which was all lighted up from top to bottom. “Ah!” thought she, “the major domo has, at least, attended to his business.” She hurried into a small side court-yard where the kitchen was, and there she found all her army of assistants: the cook’s mates, the scullions, the marmitons, the plate-scrapers, and the bottle-washers, all fast asleep, with their ladles, their knives, and their spits on benches and door-steps and in corners. “Ah!” cried little Zita, wringing her hands; “waiting for me, and quite worn out with fatigue!” Then, stepping among them without awakening them, she approached the great folding-doors of the kitchen, and tried the handle; but the doors were locked, and through the keyholes and hinges, the chinks and crannies of the portal, there came a rich, powerful, subtle odour, as of the best dinner that ever was cooked. She thought she understood it all. Enraged at her absence, her master had sent for Maravilla, the corpulent female cook of Septimus Pylorus, his neighbour, to prepare the dinner, or, perhaps, the great P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius had himself condescended to assume the cook’s cap and apron, and was at that moment engaged within, with locked doors, in blasting her professional reputation for ever. She was ruined as a cook, a servant--a poor little fatherless girl, with nought but her virtue and her cookery for a dower. Unhappy little Zita!
She ran back, through the court-yard to the great banquetting saloon, and there, lo, she found the table decked, and the soft couches ranged, the flowers festooned, the rich tapestries hanging, and the perfumes burning in golden censers. And there, too, she found the proud Domina Pomponia, in gala raiment, who greeted her with a smile of unwonted benevolence, saying:
“Now, Zita, the guests are quite ready for the banquet; and I am sure, from the odour which we can smell even here, that it will be the very best dinner that ever was cooked.”
Then came from an inner chamber the fruity port-wine voice of Ostendius, crying,
“Ay, ay, I am sure it will be the very best dinner that ever was cooked;” and the voice of Pomponius Cotta answered him gaily, that “Little Zita was not the best cook in Genoa for nothing,” and that he would not part with her for I don’t know how many thousand sesterces. Poor Zita saw in this only a cruel jest. For certain another cook had been engaged in her place, and she herself would be had up after the banquet, taunted with its success, confronted with her rival, and perhaps scourged to death amid the clatter of drinking-cups. Her eyes blinded with tears, she descended again to the court-yard, and fervently, though despairingly, breathed one brief prayer to our Lady of the Chapel. She had scarcely done so, when the great folding-doors of the kitchen flew open, and there issued forth a tremendous cloud of ambrosial vapour, radiant, golden, roseate, azure, in which celestial odours were mingled with the unmistakeable smell of the very best dinner that ever was cooked. And lo! hovering in the cloud, the rapt eye of little Saint Zita seemed to descry myriads of little airy figures in white caps and jackets, even like unto cooks, but who all had wings and little golden knives at their girdles. And she heard the same soft music that had stolen upon her ears in the chapel; and as the angelic cooks fluttered out of the kitchen, it seemed as though each little marmiton saluted the blushing cheek of the trembling saint with a soft and soothing kiss.
At the same time the army of earthly cook’s assistants awoke as one scullion, and without so much as yawning, took their places at the dresser-board, and composedly began to dish the dinner. And little Zita, hurrying from furnace to furnace, and lifting up the lids of casserole and bain-marie pan, found, done to a turn, a dinner even such as she with all her culinary genius would never have dreamt of.
Of course it was a miracle. Of course it was the very best dinner ever dressed: what else could it have been with such cooks? They talk of it to this day in Genoa; though I am sorry to say the Genoese cooks have not profited by the example, and do not seek to emulate it. They have the best maccaroni, and dress it worse than any people in Europe.
The legend ought properly to end with a relation of how Pomponius Cotta gave his little cook her freedom, how the guests loaded her with presents, and how she married the major domo, and was the happy mother of many good cooks and notable housewives. But the grim old monkish tradition has it, that little Zita died a virgin, and, alas, a martyr! But she was canonised at her death; and even as St. Crispin looks after the interests of cobblers, and St. Barbe has taken artillerymen under his special patronage, so the patroness of cooks has ever been little Saint Zita.
Now ready, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth boards,
THE TWELFTH VOLUME
OF
HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing from No. 280 to No. 303 (both inclusive) and the extra Christmas Number.
_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS _is reserved by the Authors_.
Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This is from Volume XIII of the series.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
Transcriber has generated a Table of Contents.
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the ends of their paragraphs.
Itemized changes from the original text:
On page 2, changed “ouside” to “outside”, in “the bare earth outside their hovels.” On page 4, changed “broad, streak” to “broad streak”, in “a broad streak of sky” On page 6, changed “litle” to “little”, in “two wretched little bed-chambers” On page 7, changed “way” to “away”, in “finally threw them away; not so” On page 7, changed “acquintance” to “acquaintance”, in “should have made acquaintance with the magician” On page 9, changed “couin” to “cousin”, in “on the subject of his cousin Lucy.”