V
Cannibals and Poisoners
There are two aspects of gastronomy with somewhat the same peculiar fascination for human beings: poisoning and cannibalism.
Few men have actually eaten their fellows’ flesh, but the possibility that sometime it might be necessary haunts every thoughtful creature, with varying degrees of perverse excitement. Stories of such grim nourishment, masterly or merely lurid, are inevitable in any collection of popular writings, and there is hardly one of us, I think, who will not admit to remembering this or that detail of them with a particular if unwilling vividness.
I was about eight years old when I read in an English newspaper an interview with a South Sea Islander studying at Oxford, and every startlingly casual word of it sticks in my mind and always will, although now for more clinical reasons than the innocent creepiness of my first thrill in it. “Myself, I do not care much for human meat,” the princeling said in his precise impeccable accent. “However, my father the King has often prevailed upon me to enjoy with him his favorite tidbit, the tiny fillet from the ball of the thumb!”
My own feeling that I might one day be faced with some such parental or regal request is mixed less with spiritual aversion than with physical: I cannot believe that the average modern diet (a coke and a peanut-butter-on-white for lunch) is capable of producing particularly agreeable meat. A fat body would be too much so, a thin one stringy. Probably a well-rounded adolescent, of either sex but raised in the country on fresh apples and plenty of creamy milk, would make the best food, since the tasteless flesh of infancy would have ripened a little, but not enough to be toughened by the cholers and ardors of maturity. . . .
But there is no ignoring the fact that there is a tabu against cannibalism, and always has been almost everywhere in the world. Among heathens it is generally practiced in connection with one or another form of mystic religious rite, and is a complex and symbolical thing which has little if anything to do with pleasure. Among so-called civilized beings it is either a form of insanity or sexual perversion, or a question of starvation, which is in itself a madness.
Men who have been morally broken to the point of being able to eat their companions, and perhaps of murdering them first, are almost unclaimable again as decent creatures. They live always under an invisible web of horror, unless like one of the characters in a story by Joseph Conrad they find a good solid love to brush it away.
And people like the wealthy Parisian gourmet who always managed to eat some part of every criminal hanged or guillotined, which was brought to him by the well-paid executioner and prepared by his equally bribed chef; people like the man who hated the world so much that he finally contrived to invite his favorite enemies to an exquisite banquet and then damn them all forever by informing them at the last bite of it that they had dined on human flesh: such case histories are of small value to anything but the most juvenile editions of sensational “true story magazines,’ ” fit only to be read by children already inured to Jack the Giant-Killer with its “Fee-fi-fo-fum,” or by pathetic perverts.
Human sacrifice has never figured in the Christian religion, except mystically in the communion with Christ through His body and blood, and gentlemen of the Church, especially its English branches, have long done their utmost to make cannibalism a heathen and disreputable thing. Most of them, however, have mercifully and conveniently forgotten the accounts of some of the earliest British feasts of the Druids!
The story D. H. Lawrence wrote called The Woman Who Rode Away is probably the best description I have ever read, the most inevitable and logical and real, of how a human victim is prepared for its ceremonial death. Of course the white-skinned fair woman in that haunting English prose-poem, which I wish I had room to quote here, may or may not have been eaten afterward; but it does not matter; she was sacrificed, after long rites much like those described by William H. Prescott:
From History of the Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott, 1796–1859
Human sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs early in the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the Conquest. Rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination. These religious ceremonials were generally arranged in such a manner as to afford a type of the most prominent circumstances in the character or history of the deity who was the object of them. A single example will suffice.
One of their most important festivals was that in honor of the god Tezcatlipoca, whose rank was inferior only to that of the Supreme Being. He was called “the soul of the world,” and supposed to have been its creator. He was depicted as a handsome man, endowed with perpetual youth. A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty, and without a blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-scented flowers, of which the ancient Mexicans were as fond as their descendants at the present day. When he went abroad, he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and, as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life, till within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were then selected to share the honors of his bed; and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honors of a divinity.
At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived. The term of his short-lived glories was at an end. He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelries. One of the royal barges transported him across the lake to a temple which rose on its margin, about a league from the city. Hither the inhabitants of the capital flocked, to witness the consummation of the ceremony. As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplets of flowers, and broke in pieces the musical instruments with which he had solaced the hours of captivity. On the summit he was received by six priests, whose long and matted locks flowed disorderly over their sable robes, covered with hieroglyphic scrolls of mystic import. They led him to the sacrificial stone, a huge block of jasper, with its upper surface somewhat convex. On this the prisoner was stretched. Five priests secured his head and his limbs; while the sixth, clad in a scarlet mantle, emblematic of his bloody office, dexterously opened the breast of the wretched victim with a sharp razor of itzli—a volcanic substance, hard as flint—and, inserting his hand in the wound, tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first holding this up towards the sun, an object of worship throughout Anahuac, cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration. The tragic story of this prisoner was expounded by the priests as the type of human destiny, which, brilliant in its commencement, too often closes in sorrow and disaster.
Such was the form of human sacrifice usually practised by the Aztecs. It was the same that often met the indignant eyes of the Europeans, in their progress through the country, and from the dreadful doom of which they themselves were not exempted. There were, indeed, some occasions when preliminary tortures, of the most exquisite kind—with which it is unnecessary to shock the reader—were inflicted, but they always terminated with the bloody ceremony above described. It should be remarked, however, that such tortures were not the spontaneous suggestions of cruelty, as with the North American Indians; but were all rigorously prescribed in the Aztec ritual, and doubtless were often inflicted with the same compunctious visitings which a devout familiar of the Holy Office might at times experience in executing its stern decrees. Women, as well as the other sex, were sometimes reserved for sacrifice. On some occasions, particularly in seasons of drought, at the festival of the insatiable Tlaloc, the god of rain, children, for the most part infants, were offered up. As they were borne along in open litters, dressed in their festal robes, and decked with the fresh blossoms of spring, they moved the hardest heart to pity, though their cries were drowned in the wild chant of the priests, who read in their tears a favorable augury for their petition. These innocent victims were generally bought by the priests of parents who were poor, who stifled the voice of nature, probably less at the suggestions of poverty than of a wretched superstition.
The most loathsome part of the story—the manner in which the body of the sacrificed captive was disposed of—remains yet to be told. It was delivered to the warrior who had taken him in battle, and by him, after being dressed, was served up in an entertainment of his friends. This was not the coarse repast of famished cannibals, but a banquet teeming with delicious beverages and delicate viands, prepared with art, and attended by both sexes, who, as we shall see hereafter, conducted themselves with all the decorum of civilized life. Surely, never were refinement and the extreme of barbarism brought so closely in contact with each other!
Human sacrifices have been practised by many nations, not excepting the most polished nations of antiquity; but never by any on a scale to be compared with those in Anahuac. The amount of victims immolated on its accursed altars would stagger the faith of the least scrupulous believer. Scarcely any author pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty!
It is possible to argue that forms of religious cannibalism are in their complex ways revenge-killings, done indirectly by the gods themselves in anger or ambition or desire. When men stoop to vengeance, however, by using the flesh of their victims as a weapon, they are far from godlike.
The story of a cuckold who feeds the lover’s heart to his unfaithful wife is one of the oldest, and most continuously and horridly titillating, in the world. It has been told too many times, with too many variations, but since it is a part of the history of gastronomy, once more will not hurt. The version I have chosen, perhaps because its quaint language strips it of some of its revolting nature, is from Boccaccio’s Decameron, and was written about 1350 A.D., based on an earlier account by one Nostrodamus in his Lives of the Troubadours:
From The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313–1375
You must know . . . that in Provence were two noble knights, who had each of them castles of their own, and vassals under their subjection; one of these knights was called Gulielmo Rossiglione, and the other, Gulielmo Guardastagno; and, being both persons of great prowess, they took a great delight in military exploits, and used to go together to all tilts and tournaments, and appeared always in the same colours. Though they lived ten miles asunder, yet it happened that, Rossiglione having a very beautiful wife, the other, notwithstanding the friendship that existed between them, became violently in love, and by one means or other he soon let her know it. He being a valiant knight, this was not at all displeasing to her, and she began to entertain the same respect for him, so that she wished for nothing so much as that he should speak to her upon that subject, which in some little time came to pass, and they were together more than once. They being not so discreet as they ought to have been, the husband soon perceived it, and he resented it to that degree, that the extreme friendship he had entertained for Guardastagno was turned into the most inveterate hatred; but he was more private with it than they had the prudence to be with their amour, and was fully bent upon putting him to death. Continuing in this resolution, it fell out that a public tilting match was proclaimed in France, which Rossiglione immediately signified to Guardastagno, and sent to desire his company at his castle, when they would confer together about going, and in what manner: Guardastagno was extremely pleased with the message, and sent word back that he would sup with him the next night without fail.
Rossiglione, hearing this, thought it a fit opportunity to effect his design, and arming himself the next day, with some of his servants he went on horseback into a wood about a mile from his castle, through which Guardastagno was to pass, where he lay in wait for him. After a long stay, he beheld him coming unarmed, with two servants unarmed likewise, as not apprehending any danger; and when he saw him in a fit place for his purpose, he ran with his lance at him, with the utmost malice and fury, saying, “Villain, thou art a dead man!” and the very instant he spoke the word, the lance passed out behind through his breast, and he fell down dead, without uttering a word. The servants not knowing who had done this, turned their horses, and fled with all possible haste to their lord’s castle. Rossiglione now dismounted from his horse, and with a knife cut Guardastagno’s breast open, and took out his heart, and, wrapping it in the streamer belonging to his lance, gave it to one of his servants to carry. Then commanding them not to dare to speak of it, he mounted his horse, and, it being now night, returned to his castle.
The lady, who had heard of Guardastagno’s supping there that night, and longed much to see him, finding that he did not come, was a good deal surprised, and said to her husband, “Pray, what is the reason that Guardastagno is not here?” He replied, “I have just received a message from him that he cannot be with us till to-morrow”; at which she seemed very uneasy. As soon as he alighted from his horse, he sent for the cook, and said to him, “Here take this boar’s heart, and be sure you make it as delicious as possible, and send it up to the table in a silver dish.” Accordingly, he took and minced it very small, dressing it up with rich spices, and making it a sort of high-seasoned forced meat.
When supper-time came, they sat down, and the dishes were served up; but Rossiglione could not eat much for thinking of what he had done. At last the cook having sent up the forced meat, he set it before his lady, pretending himself to be out of order, but commending it to her as a nice dish. She, who was not at all squeamish, began to taste, and liked it so well that she ate it all up. When he saw that she had made an end, he said, “Madam, how do you like it?” She replied, “In good truth, Sir, I like it much.”—“As God shall help me,” quoth the knight, “I believe you; nor do I wonder that it pleases you so much now it is dead, which, when living, pleased you above all things.” She made a pause at this, and then said— “Why, what is it that you have given me?” He replied, “It is really the heart of Guardastagno, whom you, base woman, loved so well: be assured it is the same, for these very hands took it out of his breast, a little time before I returned home.”
When the lady heard this of him whom she loved above all the world, you may easily imagine what her anguish must have been. At last she replied, “You have acted like a base villain as you are; for if I granted him a favour of my own accord, and you were injured thereby, it was I, and not he, that ought to have been punished. But let it never be said that any other food ever came after such a noble repast as was the heart of so valiant and worthy a knight.” Then, rising up, she instantly threw herself out of the window. It was a great height from the ground, and she was in a manner dashed to pieces. He, seeing this, was a good deal confounded, and being conscious of having done a base action, fearing also the country’s resentment, he had his horses saddled, and fled directly away. The next morning the whole story was known all around the country, when the two bodies were taken and buried together with the utmost lamentation in one grave in the church which had belonged to the lady; and verses were written over them, signifying who they were, as well as the manner and cause of their deaths.
Poisoning, for some reason, has much of the same decadent phosphorescence as cannibalism about it, in the gastronomy of the mind. It fascinates; it tantalizes. It lacks the ultimate titillation of the tabu, but, to compensate, it is much more easily imaginable and, unfortunately, more practicable a form of crime.
Since all of us are potential murderers or murderees, each one of us is intrinsically capable of either poisoning another human being or being thus done away with by him. And it is almost too banal a fact to mention that undoubtedly a great many more of us are poisoners, and therefore murderers, than has yet been proved. . . .
The art of removing an undesirable person by putting death in his food or drink has been practiced for almost as many years as men have lived in the world, and of course has reached newer and newer heights of refinement. No matter how crude the method or the drug (Miss Lizzie Borden whacked her parents to death with an axe, but it has often been felt that such an end was really a coup de grâce after serving them bananas, cookies, and cold mutton soup for breakfast!), the crime itself is a much more intelligent one than most other kinds of murder. It takes premeditation, if of only a few seconds, and it usually calls for delicacy, skill, an iron courage, and the appalling ability to watch and wait, sometimes for months or years, for the end to announce itself. (Miss Borden could not wait, or perhaps could no longer endure to share the breakfast poison with her family!)
People like the Renaissance Borgias used it with such consummate autocracy that it became almost a social honor to taste their delicious brews—Max Beerbohm in his Hosts and Guests writes that “though you would often in the fifteenth century have heard the snobbish Roman say, in a would-be offhand tone, ‘I am dining with the Borgias tonight,’ no Roman was ever able to say, ‘I dined last night with the Borgias’ ”—and the lethal subtleties they fed were, to my mind, much less ugly than are the spiritual poisons injected by modern political overlords into their victims’ minds and hearts. A Huey Long, generous to voters with fish fries and burgoos, can spread death more than any wily Roman ruler ever did with his fine roasted ortolans and peacocks’ tongues. . . .
That is the kind of murder William Blake wrote about in A Poison Tree, much more insidious than the honest arsenic and strychnine that were as dust to mighty Mithridates, or the loathsome brew the witches made, that “deed without a name”:
A Poison Tree by William Blake, 1757–1827
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunnèd it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
From A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman, 1859–1936
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt;
They it was their poison hurt.
—I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
From Macbeth by William Shakespeare, 1564–1616
A cavern. In the middle, a cauldron boiling.
Thunder. Enter the three WITCHES.
1. WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2. WITCH. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whin’d.
3. WITCH. Harpier cries; ’tis time, ’tis time.
1. WITCH. Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelt’red venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot.
ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
2. WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blindworm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing;
For a charm of pow’rful trouble
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
3. WITCH. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock, digg’d i’ th’ dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab:
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron
For th’ ingredience of our cauldron.
ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
2. WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.