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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 17, March, 1859
Is it unnatural? We have once seen, with our own eyes, a very large unroasted "small pig" devour one of her own piglets, whilst the others lustily drew nourishment from the grunting mother. It look our appetite away for forty-eight hours; yet it was nature; and in some portions of Europe, people express the highest degree of fondness by the expressive phrase,—"I could eat you." We may rely upon it, that, as Mr. Agassiz says,—"There is no difference in kind, but only in degree."
With reference to religion, we readily acknowledge that dining à la Fijienne does not appear exactly to be a divine institution, as slavery has recently been discovered to be. From olden times it used to be the belief of superstitious man that there was a divine afflatus in liberty; but our profound theological scholars and Biblical critics have found out that the divinity is on the other side. Neither Tertullian nor Austin, neither St. Bernard nor any Pope, good or bad, neither Luther, Bossuet, Calvin, nor Baxter, no commentator, exegetist, or preacher, ever found out, what these profoundest inquirers have at length discovered, that slavery is divine, like matrimony. Had they discovered this great truth before the Catholic Church settled the number of sacraments, there must have been eight instead of seven. Why was their advent so late?
Possibly these grave and candid, deep and fervent theologians, whose opinions on theology are quoted everywhere, whose works are spread over the globe, and whose lore is stupendous, may yet discover that there is a divine flavor even in a soup à la Mexicaine. One thing, however, is quite certain, namely,—that there is no prohibition of digestively assimilating our neighbor with ourselves, from one end of the Bible to the other. Was not Fielding's parson logical, who preferred punch to wine, because it is nowhere spoken ill of in Scripture? When Baron Viereck was rebuked by a friend for having given his daughter in marriage to the King of Denmark, the Queen, undivorced, continuing to occupy the throne, the shrewd father replied, that he had found no passage in the Bible that prohibits a King of Denmark from having two wives; and has not the democratic Fijian as good a right to that logic as the noble Baron had?
To say the truth, all these objections are founded mainly upon sentiment, and we trust that morbid sentimentality will have no weight in an age which ridicules the horror of the British Commons at the descriptions of the middle passage, and demands calm judgment when the question arises, how to increase the number of representatives and the profits on sugar and cotton,—in our poetic age, in which republican senators have openly declared their chivalrous allegiance to the sovereign substance of which night-caps are made, and petticoats,—to His Majesty, King Cotton,—not a very merry king, it must be owned, as young King Charles was, or old King Cole, but still a worthy sovereign; for, after all, he is but a new and most bulky avatar of Almighty Dollar.
No objection whatsoever can be made to the deglutinatio Fijiana on the score of utility. The islands of the Fijians are but small; no Fijian Attila can lead forth his hosts into neighboring countries; no Fijian Goths can pour down from Polynesian Alps into an Oceanic Italy; no Athenians can there send sons and gods to a Coreyra: and no Fijian Miles Standish can there walk up and down before his pipe-clayed bandoleers in foreign colonies. How, then, can an over-increase of population be more harmoniously prevented than by making the young and sleek furnish the starving with a plump existence? Is it not, economically viewed, the principle of Dr. Franklin's smoke-consuming pipe applied to the infinitely more important sphere of human existence? The festive table, to which, according to the great Malthus, Nature declines inviting a large portion of every well-peopled country, will never be known by the happy Fijian Say or Senior, so long as wise conservatism shall not change its old and sacred laws, and shall allow Nature to invite one happy portion as guests, and another happy portion as savory dishes. It is Nature in modest simplicity, as it is exhibited in half-a-dozen mice in a deep kettle, of whom one survivor and material representative remains. The Chinese expose female infants, and lawful infanticide has been abolished in some districts of the British East Indies within these thirty years only. Would it not be wiser to reassimilate the tender dear ones, and think of them ever after with smacking memory?
It is true, indeed, that, upon the whole, Fijian gastronomy leers more toward the tender sex than toward that which in our country wears the trousers uncrinolined. But, we submit, is this a fair objection? Why is the tender sex more tender? Lately, when an orator had strongly expressed himself against the maxim of patriotic office-hunters,—"To the victor belong the spoils," he was very logically asked,—"And pray, Sir, to whom should the spoils belong, if not to the victor?" So we would ask, should any one complain of girls being thus economized by men,—"Who, in the name of common sense, should, if not men? Would you have them perform that sacrificial duty for one another?"
But whatever may be thought, by some of our lovely readers, of this last argument, (which henceforth may be termed argumentum marcianum,) and which, in the case before us, will always be an ex parte argument, all will agree that no objection can be taken to making repasts on porcus longus once fairly killed,—for instance, on heroes stretched on the battle-field. This was the cogent argument of the New Zealander, after baptism,—used in discussing the topic with the Rev. Mr. Yale. Willing to give up slaughtering fellow-men for the sake of eating them, he could not see why it was not wicked to waste so much good food.
If it were objected, that, admitting the making of your enemy's flesh flesh of your own flesh would necessarily lead to skirmishes, "surprise-parties," and battles for the sole purpose of getting a dinner,—to a sort of pre-prandial exercise, as in fishing,—we would simply answer, "Too late!" Our friends who desire the reopening of the African slave-trade declare that they wish to buy slaves only. When statesmen, and missionaries, and simple people with simple sense and simple hearts, cry out to them, "Stop! for the sake of our common Father, stop! By reopening the slave-trade, you revive the vilest crimes, and, for every negro ultimately sold to you on the coast, you cause the murder of at least ten in the interior, not to speak of those that are coolly massacred in the barracoon, when no demand exists,"—the satisfactory reply is: "We have nothing to do with all that; we do not travel beyond the record. We buy the negro who is a slave; what made him a slave we do not care to know. The pearl in the market does not show the toil of the fisher." And so the Fijian would properly reply: "Do not mix up different subjects. I rescue my departed brother from ignominious decay, and remake a man of him. How he came to depart,—that belongs to quite a different chapter."
This utilitarian view acquires a still greater importance when applied to criminals under sentence of capital punishment. Soon after Beccaria, it was asked, if we mistake not, by Voltaire: "Of what use is the dead body of a criminal? You cannot restore the victim to life by the execution of the murderer." And many pardons in America have been granted on the assumption that no satisfactory answer could be given to the philosophical question: "What use can the swinging body of the poor creature be to any one?" The Fijian alone has a perfectly satisfactory reply.
The missionaries, already named in this paper, give a long account of the execution of a supposed Fijian conspirator, which ends with these words: "At last he was brought down to the ground by a club; after which he was eaten."
We can discern many advantages to be derived from the introduction of what we will call "pâtés penitentiaires."
There would be no waste of food.
The sentence of the judge would sound more civilized; for, instead of hearing the odious words, "You shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead," words would be pronounced somewhat like these: "You shall be taken to Delmonico, and there and by him be served up on such a day, as scélérat en papillotes."
There would be a greater readiness in jurors to convict interesting criminals, who now-a-days cannot be found guilty,—especially were a law passed that the jury should have the criminal. We read in the "Scottish Criminal Trials," that a woman, clearly convicted of an atrocious murder, was, nevertheless, found not guilty. The astonished lord justiciary asked the foreman, how it was possible to find the prisoner not guilty, with such overwhelming evidence, and was answered: "Becaase, my laird, she is purty." Would not the delicacy of the prisoner have been an additional reason for finding her guilty with Fijian jurors?
Fourthly, there would be an obvious national advantage in some countries, in which the government is at one and the same time busily engaged in finding cheap food for the people, and in transporting annually many hundreds of political suspects to killing colonies. It is, indeed, surprising, that so sagacious and parental a government as that of Napoleon the Third,—may His Majesty be long preserved for the civilization of France, the peace of Europe, and the glory of mankind in general!—it is surprising, that his all-providing and all-foreseeing government has not long ago discovered how the craving of the national stomach for food, and of the popular mind for political purification, might be stilled by no longer transporting political offenders and suspects to French Guiana or Lambessa, where they uselessly and ignobly perish, but by sentencing them, instead, to the enviable lot of making a feast for their brethren. Would not every Socialist, receiving permission thus to help feed society, exclaim: C'est magnifique! mais c'est sublime!
When Robespierre was in the zenith of his guillotinacious glory, the bonnes would sit around the scaffold, minding children and knitting stockings, to see the head of a marquis or of a shoemaker fall. We leave it to every reader, whether there would not be more historic unity and poetic completeness in the tableau, were we to read that these good creatures dined upon the ci-devant, after the execution.
Imperial Rome is the beau idéal of the present government of la belle France; and we must own, that, when perusing the exhilarating pages of Suetonius, it has often occurred to our mind that there is something wanting in the list of high deeds related of those superb specimens of humanity exhibited in the Caligulas and Heliogabali. They did so much for cookery! Yet they seem never to have risen above an indirect consumption of their subjects, by feeding their lobsters with ignoble slaves; never did they directly bestow upon Roman freemen the honor of being served up for the imperial table. Nero murdered his mother and bade his teacher open his own veins. Would it not read much more civilized, if the annals of the empire were telling us: Nero, jam divus, leniter dixit: O Seneca, Pundit delectabilis et philosophe laute, quis dubitet te libentissime mihi hodie proferre artocreatem stoicum?
Strange as it may appear to some readers, that thus the polished Romans might have learned a lesson of civilization from the Fijians, they will not reject our suggestion, when they reflect, that, only a short time ago, they were, probably, as much surprised at finding the government of so great a country as France adopting imperial Rome as a model body-politic. Familiarize your mind with the idea, and all difficulties vanish. It is only the last step which costs,—not the first.
There are many more reasons that might be urged in favor of the Fijians. We are not aware that the reverend missionaries have given any statistical tables, showing a regularity in the annual numbers of consumed persons, male and female, classed according to the reasons why consumed; but no one can doubt that such tables might be given, and if so, the whole question of anthropophagism could be very easily buckled up in a tidy little valise. The Fijians, in the plural, we take it, have little or nothing to do with it; it is the abstract, will-less, impersonal Fijian—who, according to the learned Ferrari,20 would be called, now, Podesta Fijian, now Consul Fijian, now Papa Fijianus—that snuffs the flavor of his own dear natural pot à feu; and Right or Wrong, Just or Unjust, Commendable or Revolting, are schoolboy distinctions, no longer recognized by the philosophical historian, who treats all moral questions and national movements like questions of natural philosophy,—like social chemistry, in which so puerile a word as poison has no place. Arsenic is arsenic with certain effects, and nothing more; and society poisons itself annually to such an amount, arithmetically expressed.
We ask leave to add two suggestions in favor of the Fijians, both, it would seem, of philosophic importance. If you do not like the Fijian national dish,—national in more than one sense,—have the dear sons of Nature, as Carlyle probably would call them, not the right to reply,—"We do not like your sauerkraut, if you are a German; your polenta, if you are an Italian; your olla podrida, if you are a Spaniard; nor your grit, if you are a Dane; your bacon and greasy greens, if you are a Southerner; nor your baked beans, if you are a Northerner; nor any other stuff called national dishes,—all of which are vile, except English roast beef and plum-pudding, and Neapolitan maccaroni."
The other suggestion is this: Is it likely that Nature has placed the Fijians exactly in the same meridian with Greenwich, which in some measure may be called the meridian of civilization, for nothing?—is it likely that all the solar and cosmic influences which must result from this fact have really left the Fijian in that state of hyper-brutality which you think is proved by his menage? Is it, we ask, fairly to be supposed? We think not.
We do not presume to know whether we have carried conviction to the minds of our readers; but even if we have not,—if we have only been sufficiently fortunate to give the first impulse to the great inquiry, we shall be satisfied. If we consider the history of some opinions now openly preached and vehemently maintained,—how timidly they were first hinted at, within our own recollection, and with what surprising rapidity they have risen to an unblushing amplitude, rustling and sweeping proudly and defiantly along the Broadway of human events and opinions,—how that which but a lustre ago was wicked is now virtuous,—we see no reason for despair; and our century may yet witness the time when it will be considered the highest mixture of philosophic courtesy and Christian urbanity to make the most graceful semi-lateral bow, as you pass your friend in the street, and, kissing the tip of your finger, to lisp, with bending head and smiling eye,—
"May I never disagree with you!"
THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
[The Professor talks with the Reader. He tells a Young Girl's Story.]
When the elements that went to the making of the first man, father of mankind, had been withdrawn from the world of unconscious matter, the balance of creation was disturbed. The materials that go to the making of one woman were set free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of one man's-worth of masculine constituents. These combined to make our first mother, by a logical necessity involved in the previous creation of our common father. All this, mythically, illustratively, and by no means doctrinally or polemically.
The man implies the woman, you will understand. The excellent gentleman whom I had the pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of miracles at the present day. So do I. I believe, if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, you would find him walking under the palm trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.
Where would she come from?
Oh, that's the miracle!
–—I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand.
–—I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the sun to ripen well.—How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, Baltimoreans, both! Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh of cocoa-nuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay times! Harry, champion, by acclamation, of the College heavyweights, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces? The huge butcher, fifteen stone,—two hundred and ten pounds,—good weight,—steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, the Baltimorean,—one of the quiet sort, who strike first, and do the talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melée, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order, and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dismiss the ring with a benediction.
I can't help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it is the most wanton and irrelevant digression. But all of us have a little speck of fight underneath our peace and goodwill to men,—just a speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, you know,—so that we should not submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy-heeled aggressor that came along. You can tell a portrait from an ideal head, I suppose, and a true story from one spun out of the writer's invention. See whether this sounds true or not.
Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine blood-horses, Barefoot and Scrab by name, to Massachusetts, something before the time I am talking of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, a stocky little fellow, in velvet breeches, who made that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in English stables, when he rubbed down the silken-skinned racers, in great perfection. After the soldiers had come from the muster-field, and some of the companies were on the village-common, there was still some skirmishing between a few individuals who had not had the fight taken out of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he must serve out somebody. So he threw himself into an approved scientific attitude, and, in brief, emphatic language, expressed his urgent anxiety to accommodate any classical young gentleman who chose to consider himself a candidate for his attentions. I don't suppose there were many of the college boys that would have been a match for him in the art which Englishmen know so much more of than Americans, for the most part. However, one of the Sophomores, a very quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he stood there, sparring away, struck him with the sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had been with his fist,—and knocked him heels over head and senseless, so that he had to be carried off from the field. This ugly way of hitting is the great trick of the French savate, which is not commonly thought able to stand its ground against English pugilistic science.—These are old recollections, with not much to recommend them, except, perhaps, a dash of life, which may be worth a little something.
The young Marylander brought them all up, you may remember. He recalled to my mind those two splendid pieces of vitality I told you of. Both have been long dead. How often we see these great red flaring flambeaux of life blown out, as it were, by a puff of wind,—and the little, single-wicked night-lamp of being, which some white-faced and attenuated invalid shades with trembling fingers, flickering on while they go out one after another, until its glimmer is all that is left to us of the generation it belonged to!
I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforehand, we should find some pleasing girlish or womanly shape to fill the blank at our table and match the dark-haired youth at the upper corner.
There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just as far off as accident could put her from this handsome fellow, by whose side she ought, of course, to be sitting. One of the "positive" blondes, as my friend, you may remember, used to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed, full-throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. Looks dreamy to me, not self-conscious, though a black ribbon round her neck sets it off as a Marie-Antoinette's diamond-necklace could not do. So in her dress, there is a harmony of tints that looks as if an artist had run his eye over her and given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a picture. I can't help being struck with her, for she is at once rounded and fine in feature, looks calm, as blondes are apt to, and as if she might run wild, if she were trifled with.—It is just as I knew it would be,—and anybody can see that our young Marylander will be dead in love with her in a week.
Then if that little man would only turn out immensely rich and have the good-nature to die and leave them all his money, it would be as nice as a three-volume novel.
Little Boston is in a flurry, I suspect, with the excitement of having such a charming neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his silence and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, as if he were thinking of something that had happened, or that might happen, or that ought to happen,—or how beautiful her young life looked, or how hardly Nature had dealt with him, or something which struck him silent, at any rate. I made several conversational openings for him, but he did not fire up as he often does. I even went so far as to indulge in a fling at the State House, which, as we all know, is in truth a very imposing structure, covering less ground than St. Peter's, but of similar general effect. The little man looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He said to the young lady, however, that the State House was the Parthenon of our Acropolis, which seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he reddened a little,—so I thought. I don't think it right to watch persons who are the subjects of special infirmity,—but we all do it.
I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of the table, to make room for another new-comer of the lady sort. A well-mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without a cap,—pretty wide in the parting, though,—contours vaguely hinted,—features very quiet,—says little as yet, but seems to keep her eye on the young lady, as if having some responsibility for her.—
* * * * *My record is a blank for some days after this. In the mean time I have contrived to make out the person and the story of our young lady, who, according to appearances, ought to furnish us a heroine for a boarding-house romance before a year is out. It is very curious that she should prove connected with a person many of us have heard of. Yet, curious as it is, I have been a hundred times struck with the circumstance that the most remote facts are constantly striking each other; just as vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadth of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers,—a cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coasting skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers upon her lonely pillow,—a widow.
