The Physiology of Taste (10 page)

AUTHOR
—Me? I should say not! I simply showed myself as an author for a minute. And that reminds me of a high-comedy scene from an English play, which really amused me. I think it’s in a thing called
THE
NATURAL
DAUGHTER
. See what you think of it.
^*

The play is about Quakers. You know that members of this sect thee-and-thou everyone, dress very simply, frown on war, never preach sermons, act with deliberation, and above all never let themselves be angry.

Well, the hero is a handsome young Quaker, who comes on the scene in a severe brown suit, a big flat-brimmed hat, uncurled hair … none of which facts prevents him from being normally amorous!

A stupid lout, finding himself the Quaker’s rival in love, and emboldened by this ascetic exterior and the nature it apparently hides, teases and taunts and ridicules him, so that the young hero grows increasingly furious and finally gives the fool a good beating.

Once having done it, though, he suddenly reassumes his Quakerish manners. He falls back, and cries out in his shame, “Alas! I believe that the flesh has triumphed over the spirit!”

I feel the same way. After a reaction which is certainly pardonable, I go back to my first opinion.

FRIEND
—It simply can’t be done. You admit that you have shown yourself as an author for a second or two. I’ve got you now, and I’m taking you to the publisher’s. I’ll even tell you that more than one friend has already guessed your secret.

AUTHOR
—Don’t leave yourself open! I’ll talk about you in return … and who knows what I may say?

FRIEND
—What could you possibly say about me? Don’t get the idea you can scare me off!

AUTHOR
—What I shan’t say is that our native land
^*
prides itself on having produced you; that at twenty-four you had already published a textbook which has since become a classic; that your deserved reputation inspires great confidence in you; that your general appearance reassures the sick; that your dexterity astounds them; that your sympathy comforts them. All this is common knowledge. But I shall reveal to the whole of Paris
(here I draw myself up)
, to all of France
(I swell with oratorical rage)
, to the Universe itself, your only fault!

FRIEND
(
gravely)
—And what is that, may I ask?

AUTHOR
—An habitual vice, which all my exhortations have not corrected.

FRIEND
(horrified
)—Tell me! Don’t torture me like this!

AUTHOR
—You eat too fast!
†

1.
Dr. Richerand, although younger than the Professor by many years, was probably his closest friend, and is most often mentioned in this book. It was he who wrote the introduction to the second edition, which appeared soon after Brillat-Savarin’s
death, and which is plainly a tender eulogium rather than a dispassionate preface. He began by saying, “The fine man who wrote this book has portrayed himself in it with such charm, and has told of the main happenings of his life so pleasantly and with such truth, that few words will suffice to finish his story …” After an obviously emotional résumé of the Professor’s career (“… recalled to the Court of Appeals by the choice of the Senate, for twenty-five years he held the respect of his inferiors, the friendship of his equals, and the affection of everyone who knew him …”), Dr. Richerand wrote, “A man of great wit, a most agreeable dinner companion, and one endowed with measureless gaiety, he was the center of attraction in any gatherings fortunate enough to have his company, for he gave himself up willingly to the seductions of worldly society, and only spurned them when he could delight in the more intimate pleasures of true friendship.” It was of himself that the grieving Richerand spoke, here, and of the many gay fine hours he had known with Brillat-Savarin at Villecrêne, where they tasted quietly those “intimate pleasures of true friendship.”

2.
The only contradiction I know of to this plain statement, made early in the book by the man best qualified to say, is in a preface to
THE
PHYSIOLOGY
OF
TASTE
written in Paris in 1879 by Charles Monselet, after talking with many people who still remembered Brillat-Savarin: “His widow lived long after him,” Monselet said flatly. “M. Lefeuve affirms that she was still living in 1859, in the Rue Vivienne.” This is the one mention I have ever found of a marriage in the Professor’s life, and although it is pointless of me to quarrel with a man so much nearer the scene and the period than I, I think it possible that the French critic referred to the widow of one of Brillat-Savarin’s brothers, who is said to have died in Paris in 1836, leaving a family behind him.

3.
When Brillat-Savarin finally published his book, a few months before his death in February, 1826, he did it at his own expense and anonymously. It was the astonishment of his friends, who had never suspected his worldly classicism, that gave
THE
PHYSIOLOGY
OF
TASTE
its first literary push. Everyone from Dr. Richerand to his somewhat unsuspected admirer Honoré de Balzac (who later tried the first imitation of it in his
PHYSIOLOGY
OF
MARRIAGE
) was eager to write some kind of preface to the flood of pirated editions that followed, and the eager tricks that publishers have resorted to since 1826 to get it into print would amuse none more than the Professor himself, who could not but pay from his own pocket for its first appearance. The title page from the editions through 1838 reads as follows:
THE
PHYSIOLOGY
OF
TASTE
, or
Meditations On Transcendental Gastronomy, An historical, theoretical, and timely Work, Dedicated to Parisian Gastronomers, BY A PROFESSOR, Member of Numerous Scholarly Societies
.

4.
When Brillat-Savarin used Latin words or phrases he sometimes italicized them and as often not. The comparatively few people who could read, in his day, knew this so-called “dead” language almost as well as their own living ones. It was when he blithely sprinkled his pages with words from any of the four or five “living” languages he professed to be familiar with that his italics became a necessity. Then a double-type became even more necessary for me, to show, for instance, that when a pretty American girl sang
YANKEE
DUDDE
it was not a printer’s error but the Professor’s! That holds true throughout this translation: whatever is in simple italics is as Brillat-Savarin so accentuated it; whatever is placed in
SPACED
SMALL
CAPS
represents a typographical way of showing that here Gallic enthusiasm triumphed over erudition, and led the old lawyer down a misspelled but always delightful path bordered by linguistic lilies.

THE
DOCTOR
INTRODUCED
in the preceding Dialogue is far from being some such creature of fantasy as a mythical Chloris, but is rather a living, breathing, handsome man; and whoever knows me will already have recognized in him my friend Dr. Richerand.

As I was writing about him, my mind went back to men who came before his time, and I realized with pride that the district around Belley, my birthplace in the Department of the Ain, has for a long time given to Paris, the capital of the world, some doctors of great distinction. I could not resist the temptation of raising a modest monument to them, here in this short sketch.

During the Regency, Genin and Civoct were physicians of the highest standing, and poured an honestly acquired fortune back into their native soil. The first was completely hippocratic, ethical in the extreme; the second, whose patients included a large number of beautiful ladies, was much milder and more accommodating …
res novas molientem
, as Tacitus put it.

Toward 1750, Dr. La Chapelle distinguished himself in the dangerous career of military medicine. He left several useful books on the subject, and we owe to him the introduction of the treatment of inflammations of the chest with fresh butter, a method which works miracles when it is employed within the first thirty-six hours of the attack.
¹

About 1760, Dr. Dubois
²
had great success in the treatment of the vapors, a disorder very fashionable at that time, quite as popular as the nervous breakdowns which have replaced it! His stylish reputation is all the more astonishing when I recall that he was far from handsome …

Unhappily, he accumulated a fat fortune too early in life.
He fell into the clutches of his own laziness, and seemed quite content to devote himself to being a charming dinner guest and a wholly amusing conversationalist. He was a sturdy fellow, and lived more than eighty-eight years, in spite of, or rather because of, the dinner parties of both the old and the new
régimes
.
^*

Toward the end of the reign of Louis XV, Dr. Coste, a native of Châtillon, came to Paris. He brought with him a letter of introduction from Voltaire to the Duke of Choiseul, whose patronage he was lucky enough to win from his very first visit.

Coste rose fast, thanks to the Duke’s protection and that of his sister the Duchess of Grammont, and within a few years Paris counted the doctor among its most promising physicians.

The same protection which had so helped his climb dragged him away from his easy, profitable career, to put him at the head of the health service in the army which France sent to the United States, which were then fighting for their freedom.

Dr. Coste returned to France, having fulfilled his duties. He passed almost unharmed through the bad days of 1793, and was elected Mayor of Versailles, where he is still remembered for his active and yet paternal and kindly administration.

Before long the Directory recalled him to military medicine: Bonaparte appointed him one of three general inspectors of the armies’ medical services. There Coste was unfailingly the friend, protector, and father of younger men who prepared for the same career as his. Finally he was named royal physician at the Invalides, and he practiced there until his death.

Such faithful services could not go unrewarded under the government of the Bourbons, and Louis XVIII did no more than his just duty in conferring on M. Coste the order of Saint-Michel.

The doctor died a few years ago, leaving an honored memory, a fortune largely philosophical in content, and a single child, wife
of that M. de Lalot whose colorful and profound eloquence in the Chamber of Deputies still did not prevent his political shipwreck.

One day when we were dining with M. Favre, the priest of Saint-Laurent, our compatriot Dr. Coste told me of his lively quarrel, that same morning, with Count de Cessac, at that time minister and director of the War Department, over some economizing the count wanted to do to curry favor with Napoleon.

This penny pinching was to consist of withholding from sick soldiers half their daily allotments of bread-and-water gruel, and of washing the lint packing from their bandages so that it could be used a second or third time.

The doctor had protested with violence against these plans, which he qualified as
abominable
, and he was still so full of the quarrel at dinner that he fell into another rage, exactly as if the object of his wrath were there before him.

I never knew whether the count was really dissuaded from carrying out his little plan, or simply left it hidden in his brief case, but what is certain is that the sick soldiers continued to drink all the gruel they wanted, and that their bandages once used were thrown away.

About 1780 Dr. Bordier, born near Ambérieux, came to practice medicine in Paris. His technique was pleasant, and he had a sure sense of diagnosis and an optimistic approach.

He was named professor in the College of Medicine. His manner was simple, but his lectures were fatherly and rewarding. Honors sought him out when he thought least of them, and he was made doctor to the Empress Marie-Louise. But he enjoyed himself only a short time in this position: the Empire dissolved, and the doctor himself was carried off by a disease of the leg which he had fought all his life.

Dr. Bordier was a contented man, with a trustworthy and benevolent nature.

Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared Dr. Bichat … Bichat whose every written word carries the sign of genius, who used up his life to advance science, who united in himself a vital enthusiasm with a deep patience for more limited souls, and who, dead at thirty, deserved great public memorials to his name.