Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 370, August 1846

"'Beautiful! – admirable! – miraculous!' shouted half a dozen voices.

"'Now, sir, will you try if you can take it down?'

"'The magnetiser made efforts which, if successful, would have enabled O'Shaughnessy to count the number of his own dorsal vertebræ. He didn't seem, however, to have any such passion for osteology. The arm gradually declined, and at last reposed passively by his side. A general cheer proclaimed the success of the experiment.

"'Mr Chairman,' said one gentleman, 'I move that it be recorded as the opinion of this meeting, that the late exhibitions of mesmerism, as exhibited in this city, were neither more nor less than a tissue of unmitigated humbug!'

"'After what we have seen this evening,' said another, 'I do not feel the slightest hesitation in seconding that motion.'

"'And I move,' said a third, 'that in case that motion should be carried, we do incontinently proceed to supper.'

"So far as I recollect, there was not a dissentient voice in the room to either proposition.

"'Axing yer pardon,' said O'Shaughnessy, advancing to the chairman, 'it's five shillings I was promised for time and trouble, and expinces in attending this mating. Perhaps yer honour will allow a thrifle over and above to my friend Teddy yonder, who came to see that I wasn't bothered all at onst?'

"'You are an impudent scoundrel, sir,' said the chairman, 'and deserve to be kicked down stairs. However, a promise is a promise. There is your money, and let us never see your face again.'

"'Och, long life to yese all!' said the undaunted O'Shaughnessy, 'but its mismirism is a beautiful science! Divil a barrow have I wheeled this last month on the North British Railway, and it isn't soon that I'll be after doing it again. Teddy, ye sowl! let's be off to the ould place, and dhrink good luck to the gintlemin in a noggin.'

"Such," concluded the Jemadar, "was the result of our meeting; and I can tell you that you lost a rich treat by not hearing of it in time."

"I don't want to be disenchanted," said we. "Nothing that you have said can shake my firm belief in mesmerism in all its stages. I allow that the science, like every thing else, is liable to abuse, but that does not affect my faith in the slightest degree. Have you ever read Chauncey Hare Townshend's book? Why, my dear fellow, he has magnetized a female patient, through mere volition alone, at the other end of the town; and I have not the remotest doubt that it is quite possible to exercise the same powers between Edinburgh and Madras. What a beautiful thought it is that two lovers, separated by land and ocean, may yet exercise a sweet influence over each other – that at a certain hour, a balmy slumber, stealing over their frames, apprises them that their souls are about to meet in undisturbed and tranquil union! That in a few moments, perhaps, far, far above the galaxy" —

"Oh, confound the galaxy!" interrupted the prosaic Jemadar. "If you're going on in that style, I shall be off at once. I have no idea of any communication quicker than the electric telegraph; and as for your sympathies, and that sort of rubbish, any body may believe them that likes. I suppose, too, you believe in clair-voyance?"

"Most assuredly," we replied. "The case of Miss M'Avoy of Liverpool – of Prince Hohenlohe, and many others" —

"Are all very wonderful, I daresay; but I should like to see the thing with my own eyes. A friend of mine told me, no later than yesterday, that he had been present at a meeting, held in a professional gentleman's house, for the purpose of testing the powers of a lad said to be clair-voyant, who was exhibited by one of those itinerant lecturers. In addition to the usual bandages, of which there was much suspicion, a mask, previously prepared, was put upon the face, so that all deception was impossible. In this state, the boy, though professedly in the mesmeric sleep, could see nothing. He fingered the cards – fumbled with the books – but could read no more than my poodle-dog. In fact, the whole thing was considered by every one present not only a failure, but a rank and palpable sham; and until I have some better evidence in support of these modern miracles, I shall take the liberty of denouncing the system as one of most impudent imposture."

"But, my dear fellow, recollect the number of persons of rank and station – the highly intellectual and cultivated minds which have formed a directly opposite opinion. What say you to Van Helmont? What say you to Michael Scott,

'A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca's cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave,
The bells would ring in Notre Dame?'

What say you to the sympathetic secrets still known to be preserved in the monastery of Mount Carmel? What say you" —

"I say," replied the Jemadar, "that you are beginning to talk most infernal nonsense, and that I must be off, as I have an engagement at three to play a match at billiards. In the meantime, you'll oblige me by settling with Mrs Stewart for the ices."

COOKERY AND CIVILISATION.[12 - The Gastronomic Regenerator; a Simplified and entirely New System of Cookery, &c. By Monsieur A. Soyer, of the Reform Club. London; 1846.]

It is only after passing through an ordeal cruelly insidious, tolerably severe, and rather protracted, that we feel conscientiously entitled to assert our ability to dine every day of every week at the Reform Club, without jeopardy to those immutable principles which are incorruptible by Whigs and indestructible by Rats. A sneer, perhaps, is curling with "beautiful disdain" the lips of some Conservative Achilles. Let us nip his complacent sense of invulnerability in the bud. To eat and to err are equally attributes of humanity. Looking at ourselves in the mirror of honest criticism, we behold features as unchangeable as sublunary vicissitudes will allow.

"Time writes no wrinkles on our azure brow."

Witness it! ye many years of wondrous alternation – of lurid tempest and sunny calm – of disastrous rout and triumphant procession – of shouting pæan and wailing dirge – witness the imperturbable tenor of our way! Attest it, thou goodly array of the tomes of Maga, laden and sparkling, now as ever, with wisdom and wit, science and fancy! – attest the unwavering fidelity of our career! All this is very true; but the secret annals of the good can never be free from temptations, and never are in reality unblotted by peccadilloes. The fury of the demagogue has been our laughing-stock – the versatility of trimming politicians, our scorn. We have crouched before none of the powers which have been, or be; neither have we been carried off our feet by the whirlwinds of popular passion. Yet it is difficult to resist a good dinner. The victories of Miltiades robbed Themistocles of sleep. The triumphs of Soyer are apt to affect us, "with a difference," after the same fashion.

There was, we remember, a spirit of surly independence within us on visiting, for the first time, the "high capital" of Whiggery, where the Tail at present

"New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer
Their State affairs."

To admire any thing was not our mood:

"The ascending pile
Stood fix'd her stately heighth; and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth
And level pavement."

And as these lines suggested themselves, we recollected who the first Whig is said to have been, and whose architectural glories Milton was recording. We never yet heard a Radical disparage a peer of the realm without being convinced, that deep in the pocket, next his heart, lay an incautious hospitable invitation from the noble lord, to which a precipitate answer in the affirmative had already been dispatched. Analogously, in the magnificent edifice, whose tesselated floor we were treading gingerly, it seemed to us that we surveyed an unmistakable monument of an innate predilection for the splendours and comforts, the pomp and the abandon, of a "proud aristocracy." This was before dinner, and we were hungry. To tell all that happened to us for some hours afterwards, would, in fact, force us to transfer to our pages more than half of the volume which is prompting these observations. Suffice it to say, that when we again stood on Pall-Mall, a bland philanthropy of sentiment, embracing all races, and classes, and sects of men, permeated our bosom. Whence came the mellowing influence, seeing that we had been, as our custom is, very innocent of wine? Nor could it be the seductive eloquence of the company. We had indeed been roundly vituperated in argument by the Liberator. Oh yes! but we had been fed by the Regenerator.

To us, then, on these things much meditating – so Cicero and Brougham love to write – many of the speculations in which we had indulged, and of the principles which we had advocated, were obviously not quite in harmony with the views long inculcated by us on a docile public. Suddenly the truth flashed across and illuminated the perplexity of our ponderings. We were aware that, early in the evening, a much milder censure than usual upon some factious Liberal manœuvre had passed our lips. This took place just about the fourth spoonful of soup. The spells were already in operation under the shape of "potage à la Marcus Hill." There is a fascination even in the name of this "delicious soup" – such is the epithet of Soyer – which our readers will better understand in the sequel. Again, it was impossible to deny that we had hazarded several equivocal observations in reference to the Palmerstonian policy in Syria. But it was equally true that such inadvertencies slipped from us while laboriously engaged in determining a delicate competition between "John Dorée à l'Orléannaise" and "saumon à la Beyrout." A transient compliment to the influence at elections of the famous Duchess of Devonshire was little liable to objection, we imagined, during a playful examination of a few "aiguillettes de volaille à la jolie fille." More questionable, it must be admitted, were certain assertions regarding the Five Points, enunciated hastily over a "neck of mutton à la Charte." No fault, however, had we to find with the cutting facetiousness with which we had garnished "cotelettes d'Agneau à la réforme en surprise aux Champignons." The title of this dish was so ludicrously applicable to the consternation of the remnants of the Melbourne ministry – the cutlets of lamb – in finding themselves outrun in the race by mushroom free-traders, that our pleasantry thereanent was irresistible. It was difficult, at the same time, to justify the expression of an opinion, infinitely too favourable to Peel's commercial policy, yielding to the allurements of a "turban des cailles à la financière." And, on the whole, we smarted beneath a consciousness that all our conversation had been perceptibly flavoured by "filets de bécasses à la Talleyrand."

The result of these reflections was, simply, an alarming conviction of the tremendous influence exercised by Soyer throughout all the workings of the British constitution. The causes of the success of the League begin to dawn upon us, while our gravest suspicions are confirmed by the appearance, at this peculiar crisis, of the "Gastronomic Regenerator." What patriotism can withstand a superabundance of untaxed food, cooked according to the tuition of Soyer? How can public virtue keep its ground against such a rush of the raw material, covered by such a "batterie de cuisine?" Cobden and Soyer, in alliance, have given a new turn, and terribly literal power, to the fable of Menenius Agrippa.

"There was a time when all the body's members
Rebell'd against the belly."

Such times are gone. The belly now has it all its own way, while

"The kingly-crownèd head, the vigilant eye,
The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,"

are conjunctly and severally cuffed, or bunged up, or broken, or stifled, unless they are perpetually ministering to the service of the great cormorant corporation. It is mighty well to talk of the dissolution of the League. The testament of Cæsar, commented on by Mark Antony, was eventually more fatal to the liberties of Rome, than the irrepressible ambition which originally urged the arch-traitor across the Rubicon. The "Gastronomic Regenerator," in the hands of every housewife in the country, is merely to convert the most invincible portion of the community into a perpetual militia of free-traders. All cooks proverbially encourage an enormous consumption of victuals. The study of Soyer will infallibly transform three-fourths of the empire into cooks. Consequently, the demand for every variety of sustenance, by an immense majority of the nation, will be exorbitant and perennial. No syllogism can be more unassailable. We venture also to affirm that the judgment of posterity will be rigidly true in apportioning the endurance of fame which the conflicting merits of our great benefactors may deserve. It is far from unlikely that the glories of a Peel may be disregarded, forgotten, and unsung, when the trophies of a Soyer, still odorous, and unctuous, and fresh, shall be in every body's mouth.

The "Gastronomic Regenerator" has not assumed his imposing title without a full appreciation of the dignity of his office and the elevation of his mission. The brief and graceful "dialogue culinaire" between Lord M. H. and himself, illustrates the grand doctrines that man is a cooking animal, and that the progress of cooking is the progress of civilisation. There is something prodigiously sublime in the words of the noble interlocutor, when he declares, "Read history, and you see that in every age, and among all nations, the good which has been done, and sometimes the evil, has been always preceded or followed by a copious dinner." This language, we presume, must be considered on the great scale, as applicable to the most solemn and momentous occurrences in the history of governments and countries. Not that we can exclude it from individual biography. Benevolence we have always regarded as a good sauce, and have often observed it to be an excellent dessert. The man who tucks his napkin under his chin immediately after conferring a benefit on a fellow-creature, invariably manifests marvellous capabilities for digestion; and, on the other hand, the man who has dined to his own entire satisfaction, if solicited in the nick of time, will frequently evince an open-handed generosity, to which his more matutine emotions would have been strangers. But – to reverse the picture – any interruption to the near prospect of a "copious dinner" is at all times inimical to charity; while repletion, we know, occasionally reveals such unamiable dispositions as could not have been detected by the most jealous scrutiny at an earlier period of the day. Nations are but hives of individuals. We understand, therefore, the noble lord to mean, that all the history of all the thousand races of the globe concurrently teaches us that every great event, social or political, domestic or foreign, involving their national weal or woe, has been harbingered or commemorated by a "copious dinner." Many familiar instances of this profound truth – some of very recent date – crowd into our recollection. But we cannot help suspecting a deeper meaning to be inherent in the enunciation of this "great fact." Copious dinners are, as it strikes us, here covertly represented as the means of effecting the most extensive ameliorations. To dine is insinuated to be the first step on the highway to improvement. In the consequences which flow from dining copiously, what is beneficial is evidently stated to preponderate over what is hurtful, the qualifying "sometimes" being only attached to the latter. In this respect, dinners seem to differ from men, that the evil is more frequently "interred with their bones," while the "good they do lives after them." This is, assuredly, ringing a dinner-bell incessantly to the whole universe. We have ourselves, not half an hour ago, paid our quota for participating within the last week in congratulatory festivities to two eminent public characters. The overwhelming recurrence, in truth, of these entertainments, drains us annually of a handsome income; and reading, as we do daily in the newspapers, how every grocer, on changing his shop round the corner, and every professor of dancing, on being driven by the surges of the Utilitarian system up another flight of stairs, must, to felicitate or soothe him, receive the tribute or consolation of a banquet and demonstration, we hold up our hands in amazement at the opulence and deglutition of Scotland.

What shall become of us, driven further onwards still, by the impetus of the Gastronomic Regenerator, we dare not foretell. The whole year may be a circle of public feasts; and our institutions gradually, although with no small velocity, relapse into the common table of Sparta. But never, whispers Soyer, into the black broth of Lycurgus. And so he ensnares us into the recognition of another fundamental principle, that the simplicity of Laconian fare night be admirably appropriate for infant republics and penniless helots, but can afford no subsistence to an overgrown empire, and the possessors of the wealth of the world! Thus cookery marks, dates, and authenticates the refinement of mankind. The savage cuts his warm slice from the haunches of the living animal, and swallows it reeking from the kitchen of nature. The civilized European, revolting from the dreadful repast, burns, and boils, and stews, and roasts his food into an external configuration, colour, and substance, as different from its original condition as the mummy of Cheops differs from the Cheops who watched, with an imperial dilatation of his brow, the aspiring immortality of the pyramids. Both, in acting so differently, are the slaves and the types of the circumstances of their position. The functions in the frames of both are the same; but these functions curiously follow the discipline of the social situation which directs and regulates their development. The economy of the kitchen is only a counterpart, in its simplicity or complication, its rudeness or luxury, of the economy of the state. The subjects of patriarchs and despots may eat uncooked horses with relish and nourishment. The denizens of a political system whose every motion is regulated by an intricate machinery, in which the teeth of all the myriad wheels in motion are indented with inextricable multiplicity of confusion into each other, perish under any nurture which is not as intricate, complex, artificial, and confused. What a noble and comprehensive science is this Gastronomy!

"Are you not also," says the philosophic Soyer, in the same interesting dialogue, "of opinion with me, my lord, that nothing better disposes the mind of man to amity in thought and deed, than a dinner which has been knowingly selected, and artistically served?" The answer is most pregnant. "It is my thinking so," replies Lord M. H., "which has always made me say that a good cook is as useful as a wise minister." Behold to what an altitude we are carried! The loaves and fishes in the hands of the Whigs, and Soyer at the Reform Club to dress them! Let us banish melancholy, and drive away dull care. The bellicose propensities of a foreign secretary are happily innocuous. The rumours of war pass by us like the idle wind which we regard not. Protocols and treaties, notes and representations, are henceforth disowned by diplomacy. The figure of Britannia with a stew-pan for her helmet, and a spit for a spear, leaning in statuesque repose on a folio copy of the Gastronomic Regenerator, and with an unruffled ocean at her feet, and a cloudless sky overhead, smiles on the countless millions of the children of earth, chatting fraternally together at the round table of universal peace. Bright will be the morning of the day which sees the impress of such an image on our currency. Of course, it will be understood that we are entirely of the same mind, abstractly, as M. Soyer and Lord M. H. The maître de cuisine appears to us unquestionably to be one of the most important functionaries belonging to an embassy. Peace or war, which it is scarcely necessary to interpret as the happiness or the misery of two great countries, may depend upon a headache. Now, if it were possible, in any case, to trace the bilious uneasiness which may have perverted pacific intentions into hostile designs, to the unskilful or careless performance of his momentous duties by the cook-legate, no punishment could too cruelly expiate such a blunder. We should be inclined to propose that the brother artist who most adroitly put the delinquent to torture, should be his successor, holding office under a similar tenure. It may be matter of controversy, however, at once whether such a system would work well, and whether it is agreeable to the prevalence of those kindly feelings which it is the object of M. Soyer, and every other good cook or wise statesman, to promulgate throughout the human family. The publication of the Gastronomic Regenerator inspires us with better hopes. The tyro of the dripping-pan will be no more entitled to screen himself behind his imperfect science or neglected education, than the unlettered criminal to plead his ignorance of the alphabet as a justification of his ignorance of the statute law, whose enactments send him to Botany Bay. The rudiments and the mysteries – the elementary axioms and most recondite problems – of his lofty vocation are unrolled before him in legible and intelligible characters. The skill which is the offspring of practice, must be attained by his opportunities and his industry. And if

"Surveys mankind from China to Peru;"

it might, we trust, satiate the most ravenous appetite which ever gnawed the bowels even of a cook, not merely to secure the tranquillity of the universe, but to save his native land the expense of armies and fleets, and turn the currents of gold absorbed by taxation, into the more congenial channel of gastronomical enterprise. The majestic and far-spreading oak springs out of the humble acorn. In future ages, the acute historian will demonstrate how the "copious dinner" which cemented the bonds of eternal alliance between vast and consolidated empires, whose people were clothed in purple and fine linen, lived in habitations decorated with every tasteful and gorgeous variety which caprice could suggest and affluence procure, and mingled the physical indolence of Sybaris with the intellectual activity of Athens, was but the ripe fruit legitimately matured from the simple bud of the calumet of peace, which sealed a hollow truce among the roving and puny lands of the naked, cityless, and untutored Indian. So, once more, the perfectibility of cookery indicates the perfectibility of society.

"Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,"

The gallantry of Soyer is as conspicuous as his historical and political philosophy. He would not profusely "scatter plenty o'er a smiling land" solely for the gratification of his own sex. The sun shines on woman as on man; and when the sun will not shine, a woman's eye supplies all the light we need. The sagacious "Regenerator" refuses to restrict to the lordly moiety of mankind a monopoly of his beams, feeling that, when the pressure of mortal necessity sinks his head, fairer hands than those of the statesman or the warrior, the ecclesiastic or the lawyer, are likely to be the conservators of his reputation. "Allow me," he remarks, "to suggest to your lordship, that a meeting for practical gastronomical purposes, where there are no ladies, is in my eyes a garden without flowers, a sea without waves, an experimental squadron without sails."

"Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Say what were man? – a world without a sun!"

The harrowing picture of desolation, from the pen of M. Soyer, may be equalled, but cannot be surpassed, by a line here and there in Byron's "Darkness." The sentiment, at the same time, sounds oddly, as it issues from the penetralia of a multitudinous club. Our notion has hitherto been, that a club was an invention of which a principal object was to prove that female society was far from being indispensable to man, and that all the joys of domesticity might be tasted in a state of single-blessedness beyond the precincts of home for a small annual payment. A thorough-going club-man would very soon drive a coach and four through the Regenerator's polite eloquence. For instance, a garden without flowers has so much the more room for the growth of celery, asparagus, artichokes, and the like. There could not possibly be a greater convenience than the evaporation or disappearance of the waters of the ocean; because we should then have railways every where, and no nausea. Sails, likewise, are not requisite now-a-days for ships; on the contrary, steam-vessels are so evidently superior, that the sail-maker may as well shut up his shop. The flowers of a garden are an incumbrance – the waves of the sea are an impediment – the sails of a ship are a superfluity. Garden, sea, and ship would be better wanting flowers, waves, and sails. On the same principles a club is preferable to a family fire-side, and the lot of a bachelor to the fate of a Benedict. M. Soyer, speaking ex cathedrâ from the kitchen of the Reform Club, would find it no easy matter to parry the cogency of this reasoning. He forgets, apparently, that he bares his breast to a most formidable attack. What right have MEN to be Cooks? What hypocrisy it is to regret that women cannot eat those dinners which women alone are entitled, according to the laws of nature and the usages of Britain, to dress! Be just before you affect to be generous! Surrender the place, and the privileges, and the immunities, which are the heritage and birthright of the petticoat! Hercules with a distaff was bad enough; but here, in the vagaries and metamorphoses of heathen mythology, do you read of Hercules with a dishclout? What would the moon say, should the sun insist on blazing away all night as well as all day? Your comparisons are full of poetry and humbug. A kitchen without a female cook – it is like a flowerless garden, a waveless sea, a sail-less ship. A kitchen with a male cook – is a monster which natural history rejects, and good feeling abhors. The rights of women are scarcely best vindicated by him who usurps the most precious of them. There will be time to complain of their absence from the scene, when, by a proper self-ostracism, you leave free for them the stage which it becomes them to occupy. These are knotty matters, M. Soyer, for digestion. With so pretty a quarrel we shall not interfere, having a wholesome respect for an Amazonian enemy who can stand fire like salamanders. To be candid, we are puzzled by the sprightliness of our own fancy, and do not very distinctly comprehend how we have managed to involve the Regenerator, whose thoughts were bent on the pale and slim sylphs of the boudoir, in a squabble with the rubicund and rotund vestals who watch the inextinguishable flames of The Great Hearth.

This marvellous dialogue, from which we have taken with our finger and thumb a tit-bit here and there, might be the text for inexhaustible annotation. It occupies no more than two pages; but, as Gibbon has said of Tacitus, "they are the pages of Soyer." Every topic within the range of human knowledge is touched, by direct exposition or collateral allusion. The metaphysician and the theologian, the physiologist and the moralist, are all challenged to investigate its dogmas, which, let us forewarn them, are so curtly, positively, and oracularly propounded, as, if orthodox, to need no commentary; and if heterodox, to demand accumulated mountains of controversy to overwhelm them. For he, we believe, can hardly be deemed a mean opponent, unworthy of a foeman's steel-pen, who has at his fingers' ends "Mullets à la Montesquieu," "Fillets of Haddock à la St Paul," "Saddle of Mutton à la Mirabeau," "Ribs of Beef à la Bolingbroke," "Pounding Soufflé à la Mephistopheles," "Woodcock à la Staël," and "Filets de Bœuf farcis à la Dr Johnson."