Personal Pleasures (12 page)

There are some sad facts concerning eating and drinking. One is that the best foods are unwholesome: an arrangement doubtless made by the authors of our being in order to circumvent gluttony. It is a melancholy discovery made early by infants, and repeatedly by adults. We all have to make it in turn, only excepting the ostrich. No doubt the Lady in Comus made it later, after she had more fully grown up, though as an adolescent we find her remarking, sententiously and erroneously, to the enticing sorcerer,

And that which is not good is not delicious

To a well-govern'd and wise appetite
.

Even the untutored savage knows better than this. They of Dominica, said Antonio de Herrera, that elegant Castilian chronicler of Spanish travels in the West Indies, they of Dominica did eat, one day, a Friar, but he proved unwholesome, and all who partook were ill, and some died, and therefore they of Dominica have left eating human flesh. This was a triumph for Friars, which must be envied by many of the animal world.

Another sad comestive truth is that the best foods are the products of infinite and wearying trouble. The trouble need not be taken by the consumer, but someone, ever since the Fall, has had to take it. Even raw fruit was, to the exiles from Eden, hard to come by.

Their meanest simple cheer
(says Sylvester)

Our wretched parents bought full hard and deer
.

To get a Plum, sometimes poor Adam rushes

With thousand wounds among a thousand bushes
.

If they desire a Medler for their food
,

They must go seek it through a fearfull wood;

Or a brown Mulbery, then the ragged Bramble

With thousand scratches doth their skin bescramble
.

And, did they desire anything better, they could not have it at all. Slowly they learned, we suppose, about planting seeds and reaping ears and grinding flour and welding it into that heavy substance we call bread. Rather more quickly, perhaps, about the merits of dead animals as food, but how long it took them to appreciate the niceties of cooking these, we know not. That is to say, no doubt the students of the history of man know, but I do not.

Once learnt, this business of cooking was to prove an ever growing burden. It scarcely bears thinking about, the time and labour that man and womankind has devoted to the preparation of dishes that are to melt and vanish in a moment like smoke or a dream, like a shadow, and as a post that hastes by, and the air closes behind them, and afterwards no sign where they went is to be found.

Still, one must keep one's head, and remember that some people voluntarily undertake these immense and ephemeral labours, for pay or for a noble love of art even at its most perishable, or from not being able to
think of a way of avoiding it. All honour to these slaves of baked-meats: let them by all means apply themselves to their labours; so long as those who do not desire to prepare food are not compelled to do so. If you are of these, and can get no one to cook for you in your home, you should eat mainly such objects as are sold in a form ready for the mouth, such as cheese, bread, butter, fruit, sweets, dough-nuts, macaroons, meringues, and everything that comes (if you have a tin-opener) out of tins. If you can endure to apply a very little and rudimentary trouble to the matter yourself, eggs are soon made ready, even by the foolish; bacon also. I would not advise you to attempt real meat; this should only be cooked by others; so should potatoes.

But, whatever has been prepared for you, and whoever has had the ill chance to prepare it, there comes the exquisite moment when you push or pour it into the mouth. What bliss, to feel it rotating about the palate, being chewed (if this is required) by the teeth, slipping, in chewed state, down the throat, down the gullet, down the body to the manger, there to find its temporary home. Or, if it is liquid, to feel it gurgling and gushing, like the flood of life, quite down the throat with silver sound, running sweet ichor through the veins. Red wine, golden wine, pink wine, ginger beer (with gin or without), the juice of grape-fruit or orange, tea, coffee, chocolate, iced soda from the fountain, even egg nogg—how merrily and like to brooks they run!

My subject runs away with me: I could, had I but
time and space, discourse on it for ever. I could mention the great, the magnificent gourmets of history; I could dwell on the pleasures experienced by Lucullus, Heliogobalus, those Roman Emperors, those English monarchs, those Aldermen, who, having dined brilliantly and come to sad satiety, had their slaves tickle them with feathers behind the ears until this caused them to retire in haste from the table, to which they presently returned emptied and ready to work through the menu again. These are the world's great gluttons; to them eating and drinking was a high art.

But they are beaten by one Nicholas Wood, a yeoman of Kent, who, in the reign of James I, “did eat with ease a whole sheep of 16 shillings price, and that raw, at one meal; another time he eat 13 dozen of pigeons. At Sir William Sedley's he eat as much as would have sufficed 30 men; at the Lord Wotton's in Kent, he eat at one meal 84 rabbits, which number would have sufficed 168 men, allowing to each half a rabbit. He suddenly devoured 18 yards of black pudding, London measure, and having once eat 60 lbs. weight of cherries, he said, they were but wastemeat. He made an end of a whole hog at once, and after it swallowed three pecks of damsons; this was after breakfast, for he said he had eat one pottle of milk, one pottle of pottage, with bread, butter, and cheese, before. He eat in my presence, saith Taylor, the water poet, six penny wheaten loaves, three sixpenny veal pies, one pound of sweet butter, one good dish of thornback, and a sliver of a peck household loaf, an inch thick,
and all this within the space of an hour: the house yielded no more, so he went away unsatisfied. … He spent all his estate to provide for his belly; and though a landed man, and a true labourer, he died very poor in 1630.”

And this is the third snag about good eating and drinking.

Nevertheless, expensive, troublesome, and unwholesome though it be, it is a pleasure by no means to be forgone.

Can it be true, or do I dream? Driving at dead of the night (if the night is ever dead) through Tavistock Square, can it be that I discern in the street before me a herd of elephants? Large, grey, tranquil, accompanied by a man with a little stick, I think that I see them pad along the Bloomsbury streets, swinging their heads, their trunks, this way and that, enjoying the air of the cool summer night. Slowly I drive past them; they do not seem concerned. I leave them behind; I see them mirrored in my glass, padding, wagging, pompous, serene, wreathing their lithe proboscis to make me mirth, as if they trod their native jungle tracks.

Native? Were elephants, after all, not native to these islands once? Did they not roam our tangled weald and jungled swamps, trumpeting blithely one to another as cows in pastures trumpet now? Have they, perhaps, never quite vanished, and do they still pad out on a summer night to take the air, tramping round our pleasant squares, breaking off boughs from the trees in the gardens and munching them, one little eye ever open for their bitter foe the dragon? Does the she-elephant go seeking in vain for the mandragora tree, that her husband may eat thereof and turn to her and
give her the little elephants which she, never (it is said) he, intermittently craves? And when these little creatures are due, does she pad Thamesward, along the Embankment, seeking steps down into the river, that she may bear them in water, safely out of reach of the dragon? And do the herd go thither always to drink? for they drink not wine, we are told, except in wartime, when they like to get drunk, but will suck up whole rivers of water, and it must be muddy, for they will not drink if they see their own shadow therein.

I recall other things I have heard about elephants: how they hate mice, love sweet flowers, which they will go gathering in baskets, and will not eat the food in their stables until they have decked the mangers with these fragrant nosegays and herbs. I recall how chaste they are, how never there is adultery among them; how they love and defend their young; how, though like to living mountains in quantity, no little dog becomes more serviceable and tractable; how the African elephant has such an inferiority complex that if he do but see an Indian one he trembles and hurries past, by all means to get out of his sight.

I think of their patriotism, how they love their own countries so well that they will not go abroad unless their rulers swear a solemn oath that they shall return; and, even after this, and however well entertained they be with meats and pleasures abroad, they will always weep. The elephants I have just passed were not, I think, weeping; they must, therefore, be native to this land.

I remember how, when they have eaten a chameleon by mistake with their leaves, they will die unless immediately they take a wild olive; how they are so loving to their fellows that they will not eat alone, but invite each other to their feasts, like reasonable civil men; how the troglodytes take them by leaping on to their backs from trees and shooting them with arrows dipped in serpent's gall; how at the new moon they come together in great companies and bathe in rivers and lout one to another, and teach their children to do likewise; how if they meet a man lost in the wilderness, they will draw themselves out of the way, not to affright him, and then will pass before him and show him his road; how they will face and overthrow troops in battle, but will flee from the least sound of a swine; how, like the unicorn, they love young maidens, and when these sing will come and listen until they fall asleep.

Other of their amiable habits come to my mind: how they are excellent linguists, and understand human tongues; how they remember their duties, delight in love, glory, goodness, honesty, prudence, and equity; how religiously they reverence the sun, moon, planets and stars; how they can learn the most ingenious tricks, such as climbing up ropes and sliding down head first, and flinging darts into the air.

Yea (if the Grecians do not mis-recite)

With's crooked trumpet he doth sometimes write
.

Great dancers they are too, though sometimes in a somewhat rude and disorderly manner; and marvellous bashful, and die easily of shame; it does not do to make game of elephants; they never, as is well known, forget. I recall also how great conquerors have always used them–Hannibal in the Alps; Alexander; Bacchus, who charioted over India behind a pair of them; Pompey, who returned, similarly encharioted, to Rome after the conquest of Africa, but his elephants failed to pass two abreast through the gates.

All these feats and characters of elephants I recall, and more beside, as I drive home through the bland, lit streets of London. Elephants become, as I brood on them, so wonderful, so all that I admire, looming heaven-high, far more than brute and little less than god, that by the time I reach the British Museum I am sure that I never saw elephants straying free in Tavistock Square. They were ghosts, dreams, no more flesh and blood than the two lions who guard the Museum's back door. I think of them as the historian of Ophirian travels thought of elephants in Peru. No Elephant said he, could come into Peru but by miracle, the cold and high hills every way encompassing being impassable to that creature. Yea, said he, I aver further that an Elephant could not live in Peru, but by miracle. For the hills are cold in extremity and the valleys without water, whereas the Elephant delights in places very hot and very moist. But I deserve blame, he concludes, to fight with Elephants in America,
which is less than a shadow, and to lay siege to Castles in the Air.

Less than a shadow. Perhaps my nocturnal elephants in Bloomsbury were, after all, no more than that. Nevertheless, I swear they moved, mighty and gentle and elephant-grey, swinging heavy heads and wreathing lithe trunks, across Tavistock Square an hour before the midsummer dawn.

And really, if the London traffic problem is going now to be complicated by elephants, heaven alone knows where it will all end. We shall be having dinosaurs next.

When I return to my parked car, I often find on it, attached to the wind-screen or window or lying on the seat, a square of paper bearing the printed boast, “Fastest on Earth.” I should like to keep it there, a visible testimony to my car's prowess, as I roll through the streets, that other cars, yes, and even omnibuses, may yield to me and my Morris pride of place in the Hyde Park Corner scuffle, at the Marble Arch roundabout, and dashing up Baker Street. “There goes,” they would say, “the Atalanta among cars; see how it swifts along, passing all others; it travels post, it shoots through space like a star, or would, were it not held up by other traffic and by policemen; it is the car of Mercury himself, make way, make way!” The dogs would bark, the children scream, up fly the windows all, and every soul cry out, “Well done!” as loud as he could bawl. “She carries weight, she rides a race! 'Tis for a thousand pound!” And still, as fast as I drew near, 'twas wonderful to view how in a trice the turnpike-men their gates wide open threw. Gongs would sound, police shout, all would be uproar and pursuit.

The very thought of going thus tagged and bragged, intoxicates, weights my foot on the accelerator, speeds my swift course around St. James's Square.

But see, he who tagged me hastens up; he appears to desire remuneration. He is also informing me that I have left my car in his park for over two hours. “Fastest on Earth” indeed, when I cannot even hurry out of the square quickly enough not to be overtaken by one of its covetous and curmudgeonly guardians. So much for his label; I scatter it to the winds.

It is done, it is over. This litter of papers that has got in my way, taking my time and my space and my energy, intruding on my leisure, for so many months, this horrid mess of nonsense which I call a book–do it up in brown paper, send it away to its publisher, let me see it no more. Let me not look ahead. For the moment, I have rid me of its foolish presence, and that is enough.