Miscellaneous Essays - Thomas de Quincey
If we should suppose the case of a nation taking three equidistant meals
all of the same material and the same quantity, all milk, for instance, it
would be impossible for Thomas Aquinas himself to say which was or was not
dinner. The case would be that of the Roman _ancile_ which dropped from
the skies; to prevent its ever being stolen, the priests made eleven
_facsimiles_ of it, that the thief, seeing the hopelessness of
distinguishing the true one, might let all alone. And the result was, that,
in the next generation, nobody could point to the true one. But our dinner,
the Roman _coena_, is distinguished from the rest by far more than the
hour; it is distinguished by great functions, and by still greater
capacities. It _is_ most beneficial; it may become more so.
In saying this, we point to the lighter graces of music, and conversation
_more varied_, by which the Roman _coena_ was chiefly distinguished from
our dinner. We are far from agreeing with Mr. Croly, that the Roman meal
was more "intellectual" than ours. On the contrary, ours is the more
intellectual by much; we have far greater knowledge, far greater means
for making it such. In fact, the fault of our meal is--that it is _too_
intellectual; of too severe a character; too political; too much tending,
in many hands, to disquisition. Reciprocation of question and answer,
variety of topics, shifting of topics, are points not sufficiently
cultivated. In all else we assent to the following passage from Mr. Croly's
eloquent Salathiel:--
"If an ancient Roman could start from his slumber into the midst of
European life, he must look with scorn on its absence of grace, elegance,
and fancy. But it is in its festivity, and most of all in its banquets,
that he would feel the incurable barbarism of the Gothic blood. Contrasted
with the fine displays that made the table of the Roman noble a picture,
and threw over the indulgence of appetite the colors of the imagination,
with what eyes must he contemplate the tasteless and commonplace dress,
the coarse attendants, the meagre ornament, the want of mirth, music, and
intellectual interest--the whole heavy machinery that converts the feast
into the mere drudgery of devouring!"
Thus far the reader knows already that we dissent violently; and by looking
back he will see a picture of our ancestors at dinner, in which they
rehearse the very part in relation to ourselves that Mr. Croly supposes
all moderns to rehearse in relation to the Romans; but in the rest of the
beautiful description, the positive, though not the comparative part, we
must all concur:--
"The guests before me were fifty or sixty splendidly dressed men,"
(they were in fact Titus and his staff, then occupied with the siege of
Jerusalem,) "attended by a crowd of domestics, attired with scarcely less
splendor; for no man thought of coming to the banquet in the robes of
ordinary life. The embroidered couches, themselves striking objects,
allowed the ease of position at once delightful in the relaxing climates of
the South, and capable of combining with every grace of the human figure.
At a slight distance, the table loaded with plate glittering under a
profusion of lamps, and surrounded by couches thus covered by rich
draperies, was like a central source of light radiating in broad shafts of
every brilliant hue. The wealth of the patricians, and their intercourse
with the Greeks, made them masters of the first performances of the arts.
Copies of the most famous statues, and groups of sculpture in the precious
metals; trophies of victories; models of temples; were mingled with vases
of flowers and lighted perfumes. Finally, covering and closing all, was
a vast scarlet canopy, which combined the groups beneath to the eye, and
threw the whole into the form that a painter would love."
Mr. Croly then goes on to insist on the intellectual embellishments of the
Roman dinner; their variety, their grace, their adaptation to a festive
purpose. The truth is, our English imagination, more profound than the
Roman, is also more gloomy, less gay, less _riante_. That accounts for our
want of the gorgeous _trictinium_, with its scarlet draperies, and for many
other differences both to the eye and to the understanding. But both we and
the Romans agree in the main point; we both discovered the true purpose
which dinner might serve,--1, to throw the grace of intellectual enjoyment
over an animal necessity; 2, to relieve and antagonize the toil of brain
incident to high forms of social life.
Our object has been to point the eye to this fact; to show uses imperfectly
suspected in a recurring accident of life; to show a steady tendency to
that consummation, by holding up, as in a mirror, (together with occasional
glimpses of hidden corners in history,) the corresponding revolution
silently going on in a great people of antiquity.
NOTES.
[NOTE 1.
"_In procinct_."--Milton's translation (somewhere in The Paradise Regained)
of the technical phrase "in procinctu."]
[NOTE 2.
"_Geologists know not_."--Observe, reader, we are not at all questioning
the Scriptural Chronology of the earth as a _habitation for man_, for on
the pre-human earth Scripture is silent: not upon the six thousand years
does our doubt revolve, but upon a very different thing, viz. to what age
in man these six thousand years correspond by analogy in a planet. In man
the sixtieth part is a very venerable age. But as to a planet, as to our
little earth, instead of arguing dotage, six thousand years may have
scarcely carried her beyond babyhood. Some people think she is cutting her
first teeth; some think her in her teens. But, seriously, it is a very
interesting problem. Do the sixty centuries of our earth imply youth,
maturity, or dotage?]
[NOTE 3.
"_Everywhere the ancients went to bed, like good boys, from seven to nine
o'clock_."--As we are perfectly serious, we must beg the reader, who
fancies any joke in all this, to consider what an immense difference
it must have made to the earth, considered as a steward of her own
resources-whether great nations, in a period when their resources were so
feebly developed, did, or did not, for many centuries, require candles;
and, we may add, fire. The five heads of human expenditure are,--1, Food;
2, Shelter; 3, Clothing; 4, Fuel; 5, Light. All were pitched on a lower
scale in the Pagan era; and the two last were almost banished from ancient
housekeeping. What a great relief this must have been to our good mother
the earth! who, at _first_, was obliged to request of her children that
they would settle round the Mediterranean. She could not even afford them
water, unless they would come and fetch it themselves out of a common tank
or cistern.]
[NOTE 4.
"_The manesalutantes_."--There can be no doubt that the _levees_ of modern
princes and ministers have been inherited from this ancient usage of Rome;
one which belonged to Rome republican, as well as Rome imperial. The
fiction in our modern practice is--that we wait upon the _leve_, or rising
of the prince. In France, at one era, this fiction was realized: the
courtiers did really attend the king's dressing. And, as to the queen, even
up to the revolution, Marie Antoinette almost from necessity gave audience
at her toilette.]
[NOTE 5.
"_Or again, 'siccum pro biscodo, ut hodie vocamus, sumemus_?'"--It is odd
enough that a scholar so complete as Salmasius, whom nothing ever escapes,
should have overlooked so obvious an alternative as that of _siccus_,
meaning without _opsonium--Scotice_, without "kitchen."]
[NOTE 6.
"_The whole amount of relief_;"--from which it appears how grossly Locke
(see his _Education_) was deceived in fancying that Augustus practised any
remarkable abstinence in taking only a bit of bread and a raisin or two, by
way of luncheon. Augustus did no more than most people did; secondly, he
abstained only with a view to dinner; and, thirdly, for this dinner he
never waited longer than up to four o'clock.]
[NOTE 7.
"_Mansiones_"--the halts of the Roman legions, the stationary places of
repose which divided the marches, were so called.]
[NOTE 8.
"_The everlasting Jew_;"--the German name for what we English call the
Wandering Jew. The German imagination has been most struck with the
duration of the man's life, and his unhappy sanctity from death; the
English by the unrestingness of the man's life, his incapacity of repose.]
[NOTE 9.
"_Immeasurable toga_."--It is very true that in the time of Augustus the
_toga_ had disappeared amongst the lowest plebs, and greatly Augustus was
shocked at that spectacle. It is a very curious fact in itself, especially
as expounding the main cause of the civil wars. Mere poverty, and the
absence of bribery from Rome, whilst all popular competition for offices
drooped, can alone explain this remarkable revolution of dress.]
[NOTE 10.
That boys in the Praetexta did not bathe in the public baths, is certain;
and most unquestionably that is the meaning of the expression in Juvenal
so much disputed--"Nisi qui nondum _aere_ lavantur." By _aes_ he means the
_ahenum_, a common name for the public bath, which was made of copper; in
our navy, "the _coppers_" is a name for the boilers. "Nobody believes in
such tales except children," is the meaning. This one exclusion cut off
three eighths of the Roman males.]
[NOTE 11.
"_His young--English bride_."--The case of an old man, or one reputed
old, marrying a very girlish wife, is always too much for the gravity of
history; and, rather than lose the joke, the historian prudently disguises
the age, which, after all, was little above fifty. And the very persons
who insist on the late dinner as the proximate cause of death, elsewhere
insinuate something else, not so decorously expressed. It is odd that this
amiable prince, so memorable as having been a martyr to late dining at
eleven, A.M., was the same person who is so equally memorable for the noble
answer about a King of France not remembering the wrongs of a Duke of
Orleans.]
[NOTE 12.
"_Took their coena at noon_."--And, by the way, in order to show how little
_coena_ had to do with any evening hour (though, in any age but that of our
fathers, four in the afternoon would never have been thought an evening
hour in the sense implied by _supper_,)--the Roman _gourmands_ and _bons
vivants_ continued through the very last ages of Rome to take their coena,
when more than usually sumptuous, at noon. This, indeed, all people did
occasionally, just as we sometimes give a dinner even now so early as four,
P.M., under the name of a _dejeuner a la fourchette_. Those who took their
_coena_ so early as this, were said _de die coenare_--to begin dining from
high day. Just as the line in Horace--"Ut jugulent homines surgunt _de
nocte_ latrones," does not mean that the robbers rise when others are going
to bed, viz., at nightfall, but at midnight. For, says one of the three
best scholars of this earth, _de die, de nocte_, mean from that hour
which was most fully, most intensely day or night, viz., the centre, the
meridian. This one fact is surely a clencher as to the question whether
_coena_ meant dinner or supper.]