Part 6
Ever since the first printers with misguided zeal dipped an innocent world in ink, those books have been truly popular which reflected faithfully and enthusiastically the foibles and delusions of the hour. This is what is called “keeping abreast with the spirit of the times,” and we have only to look around us at present to see the principle at work. With an arid and dreary realism chilling us to the heart, and sad-voiced novelists entreating us at every turn to try to cultivate indecorous conduct and religious doubts, fiction has ceased to be a medium of delight. Even nihilism, which is the only form of relief that true earnestness permits, is capable of being overstrained, and some narrowly conservative people are beginning to ask themselves already whether this new development of “murder as a fine art” has not been sufficiently encouraged. Out of the midst of the gloom, out of the confusion and depression of conflicting forms of seriousness, rises from London a voice, clear, languid, musical, shaken with laughter, and speaking in strange, sweet tones of art and beauty, and of that finer criticism which is one with art and beauty, and claims them forever as its own. The voice comes from Mr. Oscar Wilde, and few there are who listen to him, partly because his philosophy is alien to our prevalent modes of thought, and partly because of the perverse and paradoxical fashion in which he delights to give it utterance. People are more impressed by the way a thing is said than by the thing itself. A grave arrogance of demeanor, a solemn and self-assertive method of reiterating an opinion until it grows weighty with words, are weapons more convincing than any subtlety of argument. “As I have before expressed to the still reverberating discontent of two continents”—this is the mode in which the public loves to have a statement offered to its ears, that it may gape, and wonder, and acquiesce.
Nothing can be further from such admirable solidity than Mr. Wilde’s flashing sword-play, than the glee with which he makes out a case against himself, and then proceeds valiantly into battle. There are but four essays in the volume, rather vaguely called _Intentions_, and of these four only two have real and permanent value. “The Truth of Masks” is a somewhat trivial paper, inserted apparently to help fill up the book, and “Pen, Pencil, and Poison” is visibly lacking in sincerity. The author plays with his subject very much as his subject, “kind, light-hearted Wainwright,” played with crime, and in both cases there is a subtle and discordant element of vulgarity. It is not given to our eminently respectable age to reproduce the sumptuous and horror-laden atmosphere which lends an artistic glamor to the poisonous court of the Medicis. This “study in green” contains, however, some brilliant passages, and at least one sentence—“The domestic virtues are not the true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate artists”—that must make Mr. George Moore pale with envy, when he reflects that he missed saying it, where it belongs, in his clever, truthful, ill-natured paper on “Mummer-Worship.”
The significance and the charm of Mr. Wilde’s book are centred in its opening chapter, “The Decay of Lying,” reprinted from _The Nineteenth Century_, and in the long two-part essay, entitled “The Critic as Artist,” which embodies some of his most thoughtful, serious, and scholarly work. My own ineffable content rests with “The Decay of Lying,” because, under its transparent mask of cynicism, its wit, its satire, its languid mocking humor, lies clearly outlined a great truth that is slipping fast away from us—the absolute independence of art—art nourished by imagination and revealing beauty. This is the hand that gilds the grayness of the world; this is the voice that sings in flute tones through the silence of the ages. To degrade this shining vision into a handmaid of nature, to maintain that she should give us photographic pictures of an unlovely life, is a heresy that arouses in Mr. Wilde an amused scorn which takes the place of anger. “Art,” he says, “never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as Thought has, and develops purely on its own lines. It is not necessarily realistic in an age of realism, nor spiritual in an age of faith. So far from being the creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress.” That we should understand this, it is necessary to understand also the “beautiful untrue things” which exist only in the world of fancy; the things that are lies, and yet help us to endure the truth. Mr. Wilde repudiates distinctly and almost energetically all lying with an object, all sordid trifling with a graceful gift. The lies of newspapers yield him no pleasure; the lies of politicians are ostentatiously unconvincing; the lies of lawyers are “briefed by the prosaic.” He reviews the world of fiction with a swift and caustic touch; he lingers among the poets; he muses rapturously over those choice historic masterpieces, from Herodotus to Carlyle, where “facts are either kept in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness.” He laments with charming frankness the serious virtues of his age. “Many a young man,” he says, “starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration, which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful. But, as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well-informed. Both things are equally fatal to his imagination, and in a short time he develops a morbid and unhealthy faculty of truth-telling, begins to verify all statements made in his presence, has no hesitation in contradicting people who are much younger than himself, and often ends by writing novels that are so like life that no one can possibly believe in their probability.” Surely this paragraph has but one peer in the world of letters, and that is the immortal sentence wherein De Quincey traces the murderer’s gradual downfall to incivility and procrastination.
“The Critic as Artist” affords Mr. Wilde less scope for his humor and more for his erudition, which, perhaps, is somewhat lavishly displayed. Here he pleads for the creative powers of criticism, for its fine restraints, its imposed self-culture, and he couches his plea in words as rich as music. Now and then, it is true, he seems driven by the whips of our modern Furies to the verge of things which are not his to handle—problems, social and spiritual, to which he holds no key. When this occurs, we can only wait with drooping heads, and what patience we can muster, until he is pleased to return to his theme; or until he remembers, laughing, how fatal is the habit of imparting opinions, and what a terrible ordeal it is to sit at table with the man who has spent his life in educating others rather than himself. “For the development of the race depends on the development of the individual, and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the intellectual standard is instantly lowered, and often ultimately lost.” I like to fancy the ghost of the late Rector of Lincoln, of him who said that an appreciation of Milton was the reward of consummate scholarship, listening in the Elysian Fields, and nodding his assent to this much-neglected view of a much-disputed question. Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn. We are growing rich in lectures, but poor in scholars, and the triumph of mediocrity is at hand. Mr. Wilde can hardly hope to become popular by proposing real study to people burning to impart their ignorance; but the criticism that develops in the mind a more subtle quality of apprehension and discernment is the criticism that creates the intellectual atmosphere of the age.
HUMORS OF GASTRONOMY
“There does not, at this blessed moment, breathe on the earth’s surface a human being that willna prefer eating and drinking to all ither pleasures o’ body or soul.” So speaks the Ettrick Shepherd, in the fulness of his content, contemplating with moist eyes the groaning supper-table, laden with a comfortable array of solid viands; after which fair and frank expression of his views we are somewhat pained to hear him denouncing in no measured terms “the awful and fearsome vice o’ gluttony,” as evidenced occasionally in women. His companions, too, those magnificent fellow-feeders, have a great many severe things to say about gudewives who betray a weakness for roasted pork, or an unfeminine solicitude for gravy; and Mr. Timothy Tickler unhesitatingly affirms that such a one, “eating for the sake of eating, and not for mere nourishment, is, in fact, the grossest of sensualists, and at each mouthful virtually breaks all ten of the commandments.” This is the language of an ascetic rather than of a _bon vivant_, but we are in some measure reassured when the same Mr. Tickler confesses, a little later, that, although roast goose always disagrees with him, yet he never refuses it, believing that to purchase pleasure by a certain degree of pain is true philosophy; whereupon the Shepherd, not to be outdone, gives it as his unreserved opinion that, in winter-time at least, “eating for eating’s sake, and in oblivion o’ its feenal cause, is the most sacred o’ household duties.”
From these somewhat inharmonious sentiments we reluctantly infer that gluttony is a vice—or a virtue—for man only, and that woman’s part in the programme is purely that of a ministering angel. Adam was made to eat, and Eve to cook for him, although, even in this humble sphere, she and her daughters have been doomed to rank second in command. Excellent in all things, but supreme in none, they have never yet scaled the dazzling heights of culinary fame. The records of antiquity make no mention of their skill; the middle ages grant them neither praise nor honor; and even as late as Dr. Johnson’s day they labored hard for scanty recognition. It is very painful to hear the great sage speaking lightly of our grandmother’s oracle, Mrs. Glasse, and declaring with robust contempt that women were fit to spin, but not to write a book of cookery. Yet for how many years had they modestly held their peace; profiting, doubtless, in many a roomy kitchen and in many a well-stocked buttery by the words of wisdom which vainglorious men let fall; and only now and then giving help and counsel to one another by means of little private recipe-books, which were circulated among a few noble families, and were considered as their own exclusive property and pride.
Opulence and a taste for display, upon the one side, and the natural conservatism of the great Saxon stock, upon the other, fought the battle of the table from the days of the Black Prince down to those of Anthony Trollope, and will, in all probability, fight it to the end. “A cod’s head for fourpence, and nine shillings’ worth of condiments to serve with it,” was the favorite sarcasm which greeted the growing extravagance of the rich middle classes. Those costly “subtleties” imported from French kitchens in the fifteenth century met with a sturdy opposition from British free-men, who, even while they gaped and marveled, resented such bewildering innovations. The pelican sheltering her young, and Saint Catherine, book in hand, disputing with the doctors, which figured among the dishes at the coronation of Henry V.; the hundred and four “dressed” peacocks, trailing their plumes gorgeously over the table at the consecration of Archbishop Neville, affronted more than one beef-eating gentleman, and exasperated more than one porridge-eating churl. From France, too, came certain heresies regarding the fitness of food which Englishmen had for centuries devoured and digested. Queen Elizabeth dined upon whale; Cardinal Wolsey, who was something of an epicure, and who first taught us that strawberries and cream were intended by a beneficent nature to set off each other’s merits, did not disdain to have a young porpoise served up at one of his banquets. Fish soup was a delicacy, and we are even assured by antiquarians that the grampus, or sea-wolf, was freely eaten by our strong-stomached ancestors.
But foreign cooks looked doubtfully upon these national dainties, and, in place of the old-time gravies, which were simply the broths in which meat had been boiled, flavored with a little ginger and sugar, delicate and highly seasoned sauces were devised for the tempting of weary appetites. Italy sent forks—those curious and uncanny implements—which were received with scornful indignation, as calculated to destroy the simplicity and manliness of Great Britain. Spoons and knives were held in slight esteem, for good soup could be swallowed from the bowl, and his sacred Majesty, Charles XII. of Sweden, was not the only monarch who buttered his bread with his royal thumb. But forks were contemptible affectations. As honest Master Breton observed, he had done no foul work, and handled no unwholesome thing, and consequently had no need of an instrument with which to make hay of his food and pitch it into his mouth. So, too, the time-honored custom of man and wife eating out of one trencher was falling into rapid disuse, and Walpole tells us that the old Duke and Duchess of Hamilton were the last couple in England who retained the fashion of their youth. Meats were growing daintier and dearer all the while. The ordinary or inn dinner, which in Elizabeth’s day cost sixpence, had risen to tenpence in the reign of George I., and soon crept up to a shilling. In every generation there were plenty of grumblers to lament over the good old times that had fled, and we catch the echo of this undying cry in the modern protests against unwelcome fashions. Thackeray and Trollope railed perpetually at that feeble striving after an impossible elegance which had well-nigh destroyed the cheery conviviality of their youth; and Peacock, the prince of good livers, with whom the pleasures of the intellect and the appetite walked amicably hand in hand, has recorded his still more vehement denunciation: “I detest and abominate,” says Mr. Macborrowdale, “the idea of a Siberian dinner, where you just look on fiddle-faddles, while your meal is behind a screen, and you are served with rations like a pauper.”
The scorn of the true Briton for alien delicacies was repaid with interest by the Frenchman, who regarded his neighbor’s groaning table very much as we might regard the doubtful provender of a cannibal chief. The contempt for frog-eating foreigners, on the one hand, was not greater than the contempt for beef-eating islanders, on the other; in fact, all nations, from Egypt down, seem to have cherished a wholesome dislike and distrust for each other’s food. The British officer who, at the attack on Cadiz, shouted to his men, “You Englishmen, who are fed upon beef, don’t surely mean to be beaten by a d—d lot of Spaniards, who live on oranges!” made a stronger appeal to human nature than did Napoleon with his famous “forty centuries;” and the reverse of the medal may be seen in Talleyrand’s description of England, as a land where there were twenty-four religions and only one sauce. Twenty-four religions would make but a poor showing in these days, when even a serious novel can beget a new one; but sauces are not so lightly called into being. Those “slibber sops” which brought “queesiness to the stomach and disquiet to the mind” of John Lyly were hard to rout from the field; and they were still holding their own when Brillat-Savarin, the most serene and kindly of epicures, first visited Great Britain. With Savarin, eating was more than a mere vulgar pleasure; it was a solemn and yet exquisite duty which man owed to himself, and to a generous nature that had yielded him up her bounties for this purpose. Mr. Birrell says that Burke’s letters on carrots “tremble with emotion,” and there is a like earnestness about all of Savarin’s recipes; a pathetic anxiety lest some ingredient should be omitted or ill-used. For fish he entertains a profound respect; for game, a manly affection; for pastries, a delicate regard; but truffles are the beloved darlings of his heart. It contents him greatly to sit at table with congenial spirits; to watch “the eagerness of desire, the ecstasy of enjoyment, and, finally, the perfect repose of bliss on every countenance,” when the noble meal is ended. Surely even the Reign of Terror might have dealt tenderly with such a man as this, since patriots are unswerving eaters, and it behooved them to remember that “the discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new planet.”
All of Savarin’s apothegms evince the same frank and warm-hearted regard for the welfare of others; the same unremitting anxiety to teach them what to eat and how to eat it. He entreats us never to forget that, when we have invited a man to dine, we have, for a short time at least, his happiness in our hands. The dinner table, he reminds us, is the only place where men are not hopelessly bored for the first hour, and during that hour it is our privilege to make them enamored of life. A cook is, in his eyes, a true scientist, with mighty capacities for good and evil. He believes, with Baudelaire, that such a one should have the soul of a poet, and—like the too fastidious Parisian, who declared that between Mme. du Deffand’s _chef_ and the Marquise de Brinvilliers “there was only the difference of intention”—Savarin has no words of reproach strong enough for those who debase and shame their noble calling. He is prompt to recognize the exigencies of a slender purse, and unwearying in his efforts to provide _menus_ fitted to its limitations; but his notions of economy are somewhat like those of the little French princess, who said that rather than starve she would live on bread and cheese. The famous _omelette au thon_, for instance, with all its air of pastoral simplicity, contains the roes of two carp, a piece of tunny, an eschalot, twelve eggs, and a number of other ingredients which would hardly recommend it to a poor country parsonage. As for the Abbé Chevrier’s spinach, which was warmed up with butter for seven days before it reached the acme of delicacy, we can only wonder at the admirable patience of the Abbé’s cook, who would return seven times with unremitting industry to the consideration of a single dish.
It will be observed, however, how many gastronomical triumphs we owe to clerical genius, or to the researches of the true philosopher. Lord Bacon thought it no shame to bend his mighty mind to kitchen problems, and Dr. Nowel, the learned and pious dean of St. Paul’s, was rightfully proud of the bottled beer which he first gave to his astonished and grateful country. The earliest list of recipes in England was the work of an archbishop. The Jesuits in the seventeenth century carried the turkey from its native haunts, and introduced it to the best French society, who received it with the rapture it deserved. The famous _mayonnaise_ is not the only delicacy which Richelieu bequeathed to the world; Talleyrand devoted one hour out of every busy day to the exclusive companionship of his cook; and the Regent Orleans was pleased to give his own name to the bread of his own baking.
What a kindly spirit of good-fellowship we discern in the frank epicureanism of Sydney Smith! what generous sympathy for a _bon vivant_ whose lines have led him into desert places! “Luttrell came over for a day,” he writes, “from whence I know not, but I thought not from good quarters; at least he had not his usual soup and patti look. There was a forced smile upon his countenance which seemed to indicate plain roast and boiled, a sort of apple-pudding depression, as if he had been staying with a clergyman.” How creditable, too, is his anxiety to please Luttrell, when that amiable sybarite becomes _his_ guest! “Mrs. Sydney,” he declares, “grows pale with alarm as the rich dishes are uncovered;” and yet so admirable a housewife might have shared in the superb confidence of Lord Worcester when cautioned by Sir Henry Halford to leave all such indiscreet messes alone. “Side dishes,” said the great physician, “are poison.” “Yours may be,” retorted Lord Worcester; “and I should never dream of eating them, but mine are a very different story.” So, too, were Sydney Smith’s, and the celebrated salad which gained for him nearly as wide a reputation as his wit was only one of many famous recipes, and probably no greater in its way than the mysterious pudding whose secret he imparted as an especial favor to the importunate Lady Holland. Those who had the happiness of sitting at his table rose from it with tranquil gratitude, “serenely full,” and conscious, let us hope, of his own graceful sentiment,
“Fate cannot harm me—I have dined to-day.”
There is one more subject to consider; one more aspect of the case, fraught with tender and melancholy associations. Like the lost joys of our youth; like the taste for apple-dumplings, which Lamb recognized as belonging only to those whose innocence was unimpaired; like the vanishing of gentle thoughts with a growing distaste for asparagus; so is the sorrowful blank left in our lives by the recollection of noble dishes that have been, and that are no longer. What of that lost recipe of Menander’s for fish sauce—an ambrosial sauce whose fame has flitted down to us from dim ages, and the eating of which would have filled to the brim Dr. Johnson’s cup of happiness? And what of its modern counterpart, now also gone forever, the famous green sauce which La Coste offered to Sir Thomas Dundas at the Duke of York’s table, whispering to him with unctuous fervor, “_Avec cette sauce là, on pourrait manger son grand-père_”? What of the bream-pie that disappeared with the good monks, driven from British soil, and the mere recollection of which caused Peacock to bewail in spirit the too rapid dissolution of the monasteries? And what of sack—_Falstaff’s_ sack—that made England the merry England of yore, and that took flight, like some old-fashioned genius, before the sombre days that were to follow? Surely if we knew its secret, we should learn how to laugh once more.
But alas! this may not be. We have but the memories of past good cheer; we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.
“Still shall this burden their answer bear, What has become of last year’s snow?”
CHILDREN IN FICTION
Mr. Rudyard Kipling has prefaced his little volume of _Child Stories_ with a modest intimation that he finds the subject almost beyond his grasp. He says:
“Only women understand children thoroughly; but if a mere man keeps very quiet, and humbles himself properly, and refrains from talking down to his superiors, the children will sometimes be good to him, and let him see what they think about in the world. Yet, even after patient investigation and the condescension of the nursery, it is hard to draw babies.”