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Fantasy
Fantasy, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is a noun meaning “Faculty of imagination, esp. when extravagant; mental image; fanciful design, speculation, etc.,” all of which leads me to think that lexicographers are as much baffled by a definition for the thing as are its amateurs. I, for instance, can give examples of what it is, but I cannot tell why they are fantastic to me and something else is not, even when it is equally imaginative and “impossible.”
The excerpts I have chosen are, to me, fantasy, but I know that to many other readers they may seem merely nonsense or whimsy. They are irreconcilable with logical and normal human behavior; they are monstrously exaggerated or deeply understated, but all with such a complete assumption of truth that their readers are almost too easily persuaded to wonder at their seeming actualities.
“That which is unreal, never was; that which is real, never was not.” It took thought to make such a statement, and such a statement takes much thought to think about at all. How better can one say what is so obvious about Alice’s tea-party, for instance?
If it was unreal, then it never did happen. But if it was real, then it happened as surely as ever any woman struggled to be polite and bright-faced at a confusing social flibflab. . . .
From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1832–1898
There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.”
The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming. “There’s plenty of room!” said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. “I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said the March Hare.
“I didn’t know it was your table,” said Alice; “it’s laid for a great many more than three.”
“Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.
“You shouldn’t make personal remarks,” Alice said with some severity; “it’s very rude.”
The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.
“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.
“Exactly so,” said Alice.
“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”
“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much.
The Hatter was the first to break the silence. “What day of the month is it?” he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.
Alice considered a little, and then said, “The fourth.”
“Two days wrong!” sighed the Hatter. “I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!” he added, looking angrily at the March Hare.
“It was the best butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.
“Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,” the Hatter grumbled: “you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.”
The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, “It was the best butter, you know.”
Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. “What a funny watch!” she remarked. “It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!”
“Why should it?” muttered the Hatter. “Does your watch tell you what year it is?”
“Of course not,” Alice replied very readily: “but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.”
“Which is just the case with mine,” said the Hatter.
Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. “I don’t quite understand,” she said, as politely as she could.
“The Dormouse is asleep again,” said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose.
The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, “Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.”
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “what’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said, “than waste it asking riddles with no answers.”
“If you knew Time as well as I do,” said the Hatter, “you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.
“Of course you don’t!” the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. “I dare say you never even spoke to Time!”
“Perhaps not,” Alice cautiously replied: “but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.”
“Ah! that accounts for it,” said the Hatter. “He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!”
(“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)
“That would be grand, certainly,” said Alice thoughtfully: “but then— I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.”
“Not at first, perhaps,” said the Hatter: “but you could keep it to half- past one as long as you liked.”
“Is that the way you manage?” Alice asked.
The Hatter shook his head mournfully. “Not I!” he replied. “We quarrelled last March—just before he went mad, you know—” (pointing with his teaspoon at the March Hare) “—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
“You know the song, perhaps?”
“I’ve heard something like it,” said Alice.
“It goes on, you know,” the Hatter continued, “in this way:
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea-tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle—”
Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep, “Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—” and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop.
“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!’ ”
“How dreadfully savage!” exclaimed Alice.
“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.”
A bright idea came into Alice’s head. “Is that the reason so many tea- things are put out here?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s it,” said the Hatter with a sigh: “it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.”
“Then you keep moving round, I suppose?” said Alice.
“Exactly so,” said the Hatter: “as the things get used up.”
“But what happens when you come to the beginning again?” Alice ventured to ask.
“Suppose we change the subject,” the March Hare interrupted, yawning. “I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know one,” said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
“Then the Dormouse shall!” they both cried. “Wake up, Dormouse!” And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: “I heard every word you fellows were saying.”
“Tell us a story!” said the March Hare.
“Yes, please do!” pleaded Alice.
“And be quick about it,” added the Hatter, “or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.”
“Once upon a time there were three little sisters,” the Dormouse began in a great hurry; “and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—”
“What did they live on?” said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
“They lived on treacle,” said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
“They couldn’t have done that, you know,” Alice gently remarked; “they’d have been ill.”
“So they were,” said the Dormouse; “very ill.”
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: “But why did they live at the bottom of a well?”
“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.
“Who’s making personal remarks now?” the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question: “Why did they live at the bottom of a well?”
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, “It was a treacle-well.”
“There’s no such thing!” Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went “Sh! sh!” and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, “If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.”
“No, please go on!” Alice said. “I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.”
“One, indeed!” said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on: “And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—”
“What did they draw?” said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
“Treacle,” said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
“I want a clean cup,” interrupted the Hatter: “let’s all move one place on.”
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: “But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?”
“You can draw water out of a water-well,” said the Hatter; “so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?”
“But they were in the well,” Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
“Of course they were,” said the Dormouse; “—well in.”
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; “and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—”
“Why with an M?” said Alice.
“Why not?” said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: “—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are ‘much of a muchness’—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?”
“Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t think—”
“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
“At any rate I’ll never go there again!” said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. “It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!”
As Sir Thomas More said in the last sentence of his Utopia, “There are many things in the Commonwealth that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed.”
And the description of the dining habits of his Syphogrants will prove, if that be needed, that any Utopia must be based on an idealization of the human animal rather than on his reality!
From Utopia by Sir Thomas More, 1478–1535
. . . At the hours of dinner and supper, the whole Syphogranty being called together by sound of trumpet, they meet and eat together except only such as are in the hospitals, or lie sick at home. Yet after the halls are served, no man is hindered to carry provisions home from the market-place; for they know that none does that but for some good reason; for though any that will may eat at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both ridiculous and foolish for any to give themselves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at home, when there is a much more plentiful one made ready for him so near at hand. All the uneasy and sordid services about these halls are performed by the slaves; but the dressing and cooking their meat and the ordering their tables belong only to the women, all those of every family taking it by turns. They sit at three or more tables, according to their number; the men sit toward the wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any of them should be taken suddenly ill, which is no uncommon case among women with child, she may, without disturbing the rest, rise and go to the nurse’s room, who are there with the sucking children; where there is always clean water at hand, and cradles in which they may lay the young children, if there is occasion for it, and a fire that they may shift and dress them before it. Every child is nursed by its own mother, if death or sickness does not intervene, and in that case the Syphogrants’ wives find out a nurse quickly, which is no hard matter; for any one that can do it, offers herself cheerfully; for as they are much inclined to that piece of mercy, so the child whom they nurse considers the nurse as its mother. All the children under five years old sit among the nurses, the rest of the younger sort of both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, either serve those that sit at table, or if they are not strong enough for that, stand by them in great silence, and eat what is given them; nor have they any other formality of dining. In the middle of the first table, which stands across the upper end of the hall, sit the Syphogrant and his wife; for that is the chief and most conspicuous place; next to him sit two of the most ancient, for there go always four to a mess. If there is a temple within that Syphogranty, the priest and his wife sit with the Syphogrant above all the rest: next them there is a mixture of old and young, who are so placed, that as the young are set near others, so they are mixed with the more ancient; which they say was appointed on this account, that the gravity of the old people, and the reverence that is due to them, might restrain the younger from all indecent words and gestures. Dishes are not served up to the whole table at first, but the best are first set before the old, whose seats are distinguished from the young, and after them all the rest are served alike. The old men distribute to the younger any curious meats that happen to be set before them, if there is not such an abundance of them that the whole company may be served alike.
Thus old men are honored with a particular respect; yet all the rest fare as well as they. Both dinner and supper are begun with some lecture of morality that is read to them; but it is so short, that it is not tedious nor uneasy to them to hear it: from hence the old men take occasion to entertain those about them with some useful and pleasant enlargements; but they do not engross the whole discourse so to themselves during their meals that the younger may not put in for a share: on the contrary, they engage them to talk, that so they may in that free way of conversation find out the force of every one’s spirit, and observe his temper. They dispatch their dinners quickly, but sit long at supper; because they go to work after the one, and are to sleep after the other, during which they think the stomach carries on the concoction more vigorously. They never sup without music; and there is always fruit served up after meat; while they are at table, some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about fragrant ointments and sweet waters: in short, they want nothing that may cheer up their spirits: they give themselves a large allowance that way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as are attended with no inconvenience. Thus do those that are in the towns live together; but in the country, where they live at great distance, every one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary sort of provision, for it is from them that provisions are sent unto those that live in the towns.
The step from a philosophical to a satirical attitude is a short one, with men who observe as well as think. That is why Jonathan Swift’s bitter lashing of his fellows in Gulliver’s Travels is, in spite of the difference in feeling between it and Utopia, simply the second side of a mirror which is as clear gastronomically as otherwise. . . .
Here, then, are a few pages from Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon and Then a Captain of Several Ships. First, in these excerpts, Gulliver is in Lilliput, where the people are tiny; then he is in Brobdingnag, where he seems Lilliputian himself in contrast to the great inhabitants; finally he is among the Houyhnhnms, noble horses (and faring none too well, either, on their oats):
From A Voyage to Lilliput by Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745
Being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear shewing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The Hurgo (for so they call a great lord, as I afterwards learnt) understood me very well. He descended from the stage, and commanded that several ladders should be applied to my sides, on which above an hundred of the inhabitants mounted, and walked towards my mouth, laden with baskets full of meat, which had been provided and sent thither by the king’s orders, upon the first intelligence he received of me. I observed there was the flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very well dressed, but smaller than the wings of a lark. I eat them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the bigness of musket bullets. They supplied me as they could, shewing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk and appetite. I then made another sign that I wanted drink. They found by my eating, that a small quantity would not suffice me, and being a most ingenious people, they flung up with great dexterity one of their largest hogsheads, then rolled it towards my hand, and beat out the top; I drank it off at a draught, which I might well do, for it did not hold half a pint, and tasted like a small wine of Burgundy, but much more delicious. They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in the same manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, Hekinah degul. . . .
I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes apiece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table, an hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors, slung on their shoulders, all of which the waiters above drew up as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner, by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a surloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually eat at a mouthful; and, I must confess, they far exceed ours. Of their smaller fowl, I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife.
One day His Imperial Majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness (as he was pleased to call it) of dining with me. They came accordingly, and I placed them upon chairs of state on my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise, with his white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but eat more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration.
From A Voyage to Brobdingnag by Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745
It was about twelve at noon, and a servant brought in dinner. It was only one substantial dish of meat (fit for the plain condition of an husbandman), in a dish of about four and twenty feet diameter. The company were the farmer and his wife, three children, and an old grandmother. When they were set down, the farmer placed me at some distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the edge, for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. I made her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them exceeding delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup, which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink; I took up the vessel with much difficulty in both hands, and, in a most respectful manner, drank to her ladyship’s health, expressing the words as loud as I could in English, which made the company laugh so heartily that I was almost deafened with the noise. This liquor tasted like a small cyder, and was not unpleasant. Then the master made me a sign to come to his trencher-side; but as I walked on the table, being in great surprise all the time, as the indulgent reader will easily conceive and excuse, I happened to stumble against a crust, and fell flat on my face, but received no hurt. I got up immediately, and observing the good people to be in much concern, I took my hat (which I held under my arm out of good manners) and, waving it over my head, made three huzzas, to show I had got no mischief by my fall. . . .
The queen became so fond of my company that she could not dine without me. I had a table placed upon the same at which Her Majesty ate, just at her left elbow, and a chair to sit on. Glumdalclitch stood on a stool on the floor, near my table, to assist and take care of me. I had an entire set of silver dishes and plates, and other necessaries which, in proportion to those of the queen’s, were not much bigger than what I have seen of the same kind in a London toy-shop for the furniture of a baby-house. These my little nurse kept in her pocket in a silver box, and gave me at meals as I wanted them, always cleaning them herself. No person dined with the queen but the two princesses royal, the elder sixteen years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month. Her Majesty used to put a bit of meat upon one of my dishes out of which I carved for myself; and her diversion was to see me eat in miniature. For the queen (who had, indeed, but a weak stomach) took up at one mouthful as much as a dozen English farmers could eat at a meal, which, to me, was for some time a very nauseous sight. She would crunch the wing of a lark, bones and all, between her teeth, although it were nine times as large as that of a full-grown turkey; and put a bit of bread into her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves. She drank out of a golden cup, above a hogshead at a draught. Her knives were twice as long as a scythe, set straight upon the handle. The spoons, forks, and other instruments were all in the same proportion. I remember, when Glumdalclitch carried me out of curiosity to see some of the tables at court, where ten or a dozen of these enormous knives and forks were lifted up together, I thought I had never, till then, beheld so terrible a sight.
It is the custom that every Wednesday (which, as I have before observed, was their Sabbath) the king and queen, with the royal issue of both sexes, dine together in the apartment of His Majesty, to whom I was now become a great favourite; and at these times my little chair and table were placed at his left hand, before one of the salt-cellars. This prince took a pleasure in conversing with me, enquiring into the manners, religion, laws, government, and learning of Europe; wherein I gave him the best account I was able. His apprehension was so clear, and his judgment so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said. But I confess, that after I had been a little too copious in talking of my own beloved country, of our trade, and wars by sea and land, of our schisms in religion, and parties in the State; the prejudices of his education prevailed so far, that he could not forbear taking me up in his right hand, and, stroking me gently with the other, after an hearty fit of laughing, asked me whether I was a Whig or Tory. Then turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, he observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I: “And yet,” says he, “I dare engage, these creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour, they contrive little nests and burrows that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.” And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour, and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated.
From A Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms by Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745
The sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it in my hand, and, having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I could. He brought out of the Yahoo’s kennel a piece of ass’s flesh, but it smelt so offensively that I turned from it with loathing; he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily devoured. He afterwards shewed me a wisp of hay, a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify that neither of these were food for me. And, indeed, I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to some of my own species: for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind, at that time, than myself, yet, I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts, and the more I came near them, the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country. This the master horse observed by my behaviour, and therefore sent the Yahoo back to his kennel. He then put his fore-hoof to his mouth, at which I was much surprised, although he did it with ease, and with a motion that appeared perfectly natural; and made other signs to know what I would eat; but I could not return him such an answer as he was able to apprehend; and, if he had understood me, I did not see how it was possible to contrive any way for finding myself nourishment. While we were thus engaged, I observed a cow passing by, whereupon I pointed to her, and expressed a desire to let me go and milk her. This had its effect; for he led me back into the house, and ordered a mare servant to open a room, where a good store of milk lay in earthen and wooden vessels, after a very orderly and cleanly manner. She gave me a large bowl full, of which I drank very heartily, and found myself well refreshed.
About noon, I saw coming towards the house a kind of vehicle, drawn, like a sledge, by four Yahoos. There was in it an old steed, who seemed to be of quality; he alighted with his hind feet forward, having, by accident, got a hurt in his fore-foot. He came to dine with our horse, who received him with great civility. They dined in the best room and had oats boiled in milk for the second course, which the old horse eat warm, but the rest cold. Their mangers were placed circular in the middle of the room, and divided into several partitions, round which they sat on their haunches upon bosses of straw. In the middle was a large rack, with angles answering to every partition of the manger; so that each horse and mare ate their own hay, and their own mash of oats and milk, with much decency and regularity. The behaviour of the young colt and foal appeared very modest; and that of the master and mistress extremely cheerful and complaisant to their guest. The grey ordered me to stand by him; and much discourse passed between him and his friend concerning me, as I found by the stranger’s often looking on me, and the frequent repetition of the word Yahoo.
I happened to wear my gloves, which the master grey observing, seemed perplexed, discovering signs of wonder what I had done to my fore-feet; he put his hoof three or four times to them, as if he would signify, that I should reduce them to their former shape, which I presently did, pulling off both my gloves, and putting them into my pocket. This occasioned farther talk, and I saw the company was pleased with my behaviour, whereof I soon found the good effects. I was ordered to speak the few words I understood; and while they were at dinner, the master taught me the names for oats, milk, fire, water, and some others; which I could readily pronounce after him, having from my youth a great facility in learning languages.
When dinner was done, the master horse took me aside, and by signs and words, made me understand the concern that he was in, that I had nothing to eat. Oats, in their tongue, are called hluunh. This word I pronounced two or three times; for although I had refused them at first, yet, upon second thoughts, I considered that I could contrive to make of them a kind of bread, which might be sufficient, with milk, to keep me alive, till I could make my escape to some other country, and to creatures of my own species. The horse immediately ordered a white mare servant, of his family, to bring me a good quantity of oats on a sort of wooden tray. These I heated before the fire, as well as I could, and rubbed them till the husks came off, which I made a shift to winnow from the grain; I ground and beat them between two stones, then took water, and made them into a paste or cake, which I toasted at the fire, and ate warm with milk. It was at first a very insipid diet, though common enough in many parts of Europe, but grew tolerable by time; and, having been often reduced to hard fare in my life, this was not the first experiment I had made, how easily nature is satisfied. And I cannot but observe, that I never had one hour’s sickness while I stayed in this island. It is true, I sometimes made a shift to catch a rabbit, or bird, by springs made of Yahoo’s hairs; and I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, or eat as salads with my bread; and now and then for a rarity I made a little butter and drank the whey. I was first at a great loss for salt; but custom soon reconciled the want of it; and I am confident that the frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced only as a provocative to drink; except where it is necessary for preserving of flesh in long voyages, or in places remote from great markets. For we observe no animal to be fond of it but man: and as to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could endure the taste of it in anything that I ate.
It takes a long time to grow up to Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Almost every person who is beginning to feel educated goes through a period or, unfortunately, remains in it, when he reads skippingly some parts of these five great books, and refers to any remark that is even faintly gastronomical, pornographic, or scatological as “Rabelaisian,” with the appropriate winks, nudges, and leers. This period is either boring or actively nauseating in retrospect, of course, and happy is the man who can count it well behind him.
Even happier is he who finally reaches the stage where Rabelais is a depthless source of social philosophy, human observation, merriment.
The great doctor said to his readers, “. . . take in perfect part all I write or do; revere the cheese-shaped brain which feeds you this noble flummery; strive diligently to keep me ever jocund . . . be gay, and gayly read the rest, with ease of body and in the best of kidney! . . . remember to drink to me gallantly, and I will counter with a toast at once.”
Ronsard wrote of him something that referred to more than his great physical thirst, probably:
If, from a rotted corpse at rest,
Nature can breed and manifest
New life; if generations can
Rise from corrupted things or man,
Surely, some vine will grow from out
The paunch and belly of our stout
Friend Rabelais, who never tried
To curb his drinking ere he died.
In the pages I have chosen to put here, the first tell of how Ponocrates instructed the unruly young Gargantua to spend his time and his energies so that nothing was wasted.
Then come a description of a feast of welcome Pantagruel gave for his son, and the ridiculous story, which Swift might have written later, of the sadly sanctimonious adventure of six pilgrims who got swallowed by Gargantua in a salad.
Finally there is the account, scornful and mocking, of the behavior of the Gastrolaters, the swinish gluttons, the belly-worshipers who live always, everywhere. “Some,” Rabelais says, “were gay, wanton, downy milksops. Others were solemn, stern, grim, dour; utterly idle, working at nothing, they formed a useless weight and burden on earth. In so far as we could judge, what they most feared was to offend or reduce their bellies.”
In their futile viciousness they were then, as they are now, extravagantly, enormously superhuman, just as the thirsts and appetites of all Rabelais’s creatures were impossibly larger than life. That was his weapon, and that is why it takes a few years of ripening perspective for us to know what he was really saying. . . .
From Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, 1483–1553
Meanwhile My Lord Appetite put in an appearance and they sat down most opportunely to table.
At the beginning of the meal, they listened to the reading of some agreeable chronicle of chivalry in ancient times, until Gargantua gave the signal for wine to be served. Then, if they wished, the reading went on or they could talk merrily together. Often they discussed the virtues, property, efficacy, and nature of what was served at table: bread, wine, water, salt, meat, fish, fruit, herbs, roots, and their preparation. Thus Gargantua soon knew all the relevant passages in Pliny’s Natural History . . . in the grammarian Anthenæus’ Deipnosophistes or The Banquet of the Sages, which treats of flowers, fruits, and their various uses . . . in Dioscorides’ famous medical treatise, the bible of apothecaries . . . in the Vocabularium by Julius Pollux, a grammarian and sophist of Marcus Aurelius’ day, who wrote of hunting and fishing . . . in Galen’s numerous dissertations upon alimentation . . . in the works of Porphyrius, the third-century Greek author of a Treatise upon Abstinence from Meat. . . in Oppian’s two poems, Cynegetica which deals with venery and Halieutica with angling . . . in Of Healthy Diet by Polybius of Cos, disciple and son-in-law of Hippocrates . . . in Heliodorus of Emesa, Syrian Bishop of Tricca and a celebrated novelist of the fourth century . . . in Aristotle’s essays on natural history . . . in the Greek works upon animals by Claudius Ælianus, a Roman contemporary of Heliogabalus . . . and in various other tomes. . . . Often for surer authority as they argued, they would have the book in question brought to the table. Gargantua so thoroughly and cogently learned and assimilated all he heard that no physician of his times knew one-half so much as he.
They discussed the lessons they had learned that morning and topped their meal off with quiddany, a sort of quince marmalade and an excellent digestive. After which Gargantua picked his teeth with a fragment of mastic, washed his hands and daubed his eyes with cool clear water, and, instead of saying grace, sang the glory of God in noble hymns, composed in praise of divine bounty and munificence.
Presently cards were brought them and they played, not for the sake of the pastime itself but to learn a thousand new tricks and inventions all based on arithmetic.
Thus Gargantua developed a keen enthusiasm for mathematics, spending his leisure after dinner and supper every evening as pleasantly as once he had, dicing and gaming. As a result, he knew so much about its theory and practice that Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of Durham and secretary to King Henry VIII, a voluminous writer on the subject, confessed that, beside Gargantua, he knew no more about arithmetic than he did about Old High Gothic. Nor was it arithmetic alone our hero learned, but also such sister sciences as geometry, astronomy, and music.
Now the digestion of foods is a most important matter. There is the first stage, which occurs in the stomach, where the viands are changed into chyle; the second, in the liver, where the chyle is transformed into blood; the third, in the habit of the body, where the blood is finally converted into the substance of each part. So, whilst Gargantua awaited the first stage of digestion, they made a thousand delightful instruments, drew geometrical figures, and even applied the principles of astronomy.
After, they amused themselves singing a five-part score or improvising on a theme chosen at random. As for musical instruments, Gargantua learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the nine-holed transverse or German flute, the viol, and the sackbut or trombone.
Having spent an hour thus and completed his digestion, he discharged his natural excrements and then settled down again to work three hours or more at his principal study. Either he revised the morning reading, or proceeded in the text at hand or practised penmanship in the most carefully formed characters of modern Roman and ancient Gothic script.
Thereupon supper was prepared, and in honor of the special occasion they added to the regular menu sixteen oxen, three heifers, thirty-two calves, sixty-three young kids, ninety-five wethers, three hundred milch-sows soaked in sweet wine, eleven-score partridges, seven hundred woodcocks, four hundred capons from Loudun and Cornouailles in Brittany, six thousand pullets and as many pigeons again, six hundred crammed hens, fourteen hundred young hares, three hundred and three bustards, and one thousand and seven fat capons. As for venison, all they could obtain was eleven wild boars sent by the Abbot of Turpenay, eighteen fallow deer presented by My Lord of Grandmont, and sevenscore pheasants from My Lord of Les Essards. In addition, there were dozens of ringdoves and riverfowl, ducks, drakes, bitterns, curlews, plovers, francolins, sheldrakes, Poitou woodcocks, lapwings, shovellers, herons, moorhens, storks, orange flamingos, cranes, geese, ptarmigans, turkey hens, prepared with quantities of soups, broths, sauces and stew.
Beyond all doubt, here were victuals aplenty, cooked to a turn by Grangousier’s cooks Wolfsauce, Hotchpot, and Lickjuice. The stewards, Jock-bottle, Guzzletun, and Clearglass, kept their beakers brimful with wine.
We must now relate what happened to six pilgrims who were returning from St. Sebastien-d’Aigne, near Nantes. Afraid of the enemy, they sought shelter that night in the garden, crouched among the cabbage, lettuce, and peas.
Gargantua, being somewhat thirsty, asked for some lettuce salad. When they told him the lettuce in that garden was the greatest and finest in the land (some heads were tall as plum trees or walnut trees) he determined to pick it himself. Plucking what he thought good, he also carried off in the hollow of his hand the six pilgrims, who were too terrified to cough, let alone to speak.
While Gargantua was washing the heads of lettuce in the fountain, the pilgrims plucked up their courage and held a whispered consultation.
“What can we do?”
“We’re drowning in all this lettuce!”
“Dare we speak?”
“If we speak, he’ll kill us for spies.”
Amid their deliberations, Gargantua put them with the lettuce in a bowl of Grangousier’s large as the tun at the Abbey of Cîteaux, in Burgundy, a fine huge cask reputed to hold three hundred hogsheads. Then he doused the leaves (and pilgrims) with salt, vinegar, and oil, and, for refreshment before supper, began to eat. He had already swallowed five pilgrims and the sixth lay under a leaf, completely invisible save for his staff, when Grangousier pointed to the latter.
“Look, Gargantua, that’s a snail’s horn. Don’t eat it!”
“Why not? Snails are good this month.”
Picking up staff and pilgrim, he swallowed them neat, then drank a terrific draught of red Burgundy while awaiting his supper.
The pilgrims thus devoured crept out of his gullet as best they could, avoiding the millstones of his teeth. They believed they had been cast into the pit of the lowest dungeon in a prison. When Gargantua downed his wine, they all but drowned; the crimson torrent almost swept them down again into the abyss of his belly. However, leaping on their staffs as the Mont St. Michel pilgrims do, they found shelter in the chinks between his teeth. Unhappily one of them, sounding the lay of the land with his staff to ascertain its safety, struck hard into the cavity of a sore tooth and hit the mandibulary nerve. Gargantua screamed with pain, then, for relief, reached for his toothpick. Strolling out towards the great walnut tree in the garden, he proceeded to dislodge our six gentlemen pilgrims. He jerked one out by the legs, another by the shoulders, a third by his scrip, a fourth by his pouch, a fifth by his neckerchief and the last, the poor devil who had hurt him, he pulled out by the codpiece. . . .
The pilgrims, thus dislodged, scurried away at top speed. Gargantua’s toothache subsided, just as Eudemon announced dinner.
“Very well,” said Gargantua. “I shall piss away my misfortune.”
Which he proceeded to do so copiously that the pilgrims’ road was washed away and they were forced to wade through this vast, foamy salt lake. Skirting a small wood, all but Fournillier were swept off their feet into a trap set for wolves. But they finally escaped, thanks to the industry of Fournillier, who broke all the snares and ropes. Free once again, they spent the rest of the night in a hut near Le Coudray, where they drew comfort in their misfortune from the words of one of their number, Lasdaller or Dogweary, who reminded them that this adventure had been foretold by the prophet David in his Psalms.
We were observing the faces and gestures of those craven, great-gullied Gastrolaters when, to our amazement, we heard a carillon. At once, they drew up in rank and file, each according to his office, degree and seniority. In this formation, they advanced towards Master Gaster. Their leader was a fat, potbellied youth; he bore a long, richly gilt staff, with, at its end, an ill-carved, roughly bedaubed statue. Plautus, Juvenal, and Pompeius Festus have described it; at Lyons, in Carnival time, it is called Gnawcrust. The Gastrolaters called it Manducus.
A monstrous, hideous, ridiculous figure it was, too, calculated to terrify children, equipped with eyes larger than its belly, topped by a head larger than the rest of its body. Its jaws, wide, broad, and alarming, were lined with teeth which, by means of a small wire within the hollow gold staff, were made to rattle together as dreadfully as those of St. Clement’s dragon in the processions at Metz on Rogation Days.
Drawing close to the Gastrolaters, I noticed that they were followed by cohorts of fat varlets, bearing baskets, hampers, dishes, bags, pots, and kettles. Manducus in the lead, they advanced, singing God knows what dithyrambics (wild songs) cræpalcomes (chants of drunken revelry) and epænons (canticles of praise). Opening their baskets and pots, they offered up to their god all manner of gifts, as listed below.
White hippocras or spiced wine, with toasts and sippets. . . plain white bread and bread of the snowiest dough . . . carbonados or grilled meats of six different varieties . . . Couscous, an Arabian stew . . . haslets, pluck and fry . . . fricassées of nine sorts . . . bread and dripping, bread and cheese . . . gravy soup, hotchpotch, and potroast . . . shortbread and household loaf . . . cabirotado or grilled viands . . . cold loins of veal, spiced with ginger, meat pies and broths flavored with bay leaves . . . marrow-bones of beef with cabbage . . . salmagundi, which is a mixed dish of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper, and onions.
(Drink after drink, eternally, it seemed, provided the transition from course to course. First came a brisk, tartish white wine; next claret; then a dry red wine, iced to polar temperature and served in great silver cups.)
Next came sausages, caparisoned with choice mustard, chitterlings, smoked oxtongue, salted meats of various sorts, pork’s back with peas, pig’s haslets, blood sausages, brain sausages, Bolognas, hams, boars’ heads, dried venison with turnips, chicken livers on the spit, olives-in-oil.
(These dishes were accompanied by sempiternal bibbage.)
Next, they poured into his maw the following fare: shoulder of mutton with garlic, meat pies with hot sauce, pork chops with onion sauce, roast capons basted in their own dripping, spring capons . . . goose, kid, fawn and deer, hare and leveret, partridge and choice young partridges, pheasant and delicate young pheasants, peacock and toothsome young peacocks . . . stork and storklet, woodcock, snipe, ortolan, turkey; gobbler, hen and pullet. . . ringdove, wood pigeon, pork with wine sauce, duck with onion sauce, blackbird, rail, heron and excellent young herons, bustard and wild turkey, figpecker or beccafico, and Italian warbler fed on sweet fruits . . . young guinea hen, plover, goose and gosling, rockdove, wild duck, mavis, and flamingo. . . .
(To these dishes were added vast quantities of vinegar.)
Then, they fed Gaster pies and pasties of venison, lark, dormouse, roebuck, pigeon, chamois, capon, and bacon . . . hogs feet in lard, fried piecrust, stuffed capons, cheese, and juicy peaches. . . artichoke, sea grouse, crier, crane, egret, teal, diver and loon, bittern and stake driver, curlew, wood duck, water hen with leeks, hedgehog, kid, shoulder of mutton with caper sauce. . . beef royal, breast of veal, boiled chicken and stuffed capon with blancmange, pullet and pullen, rabbit and cony, waterfowl, cormorant, francolin, ringdove, cottontail, porcupine, rail. . . .
Next, they filled him with pastries, including cream tarts, fruit squares, sweet biscuits, sugar plums, fritters, tarts of sixteen varieties, waffles, pancakes, quince rolls, curds and cream, whipped cream, preserved myrobalans or prunes, and jellies.
(With, of course, red and pale hippocras to wash them down.)
And, finally, seventy-eight species of dry and liquid preserves and jams, sweetmeats of one hundred different colors, cream cakes, and light confections.
(Vinegar followed, for fear of quinsy, and toasts, to scour the teeth.)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.6
It is not a prank I play, to place after the final garglings of the Gastrolaters this fairy-song of nourishment. Nor is it a piece of personal whimsy to copy a few paragraphs from that subtle, haunting story, The Memoirs of a Midget, by Walter de la Mare.
Such changes, even if shocking and violent, are as restful to the soul’s palate as a leaf of crisp cool lettuce after a rich sauce, as a draught of beer after a plate of chilis rellenos.
The Memoirs, “sealed up with Miss M.’s usual scrupulous neatness in numerous small, square brown-paper packages, and laid carefully away in her old nursery,” were left to her friend Sir Walter, and he in turn had the minute handwriting deciphered and typed and then saw to it that they should not appear until after his own death.
“It is possible,” Miss M. said in her letter to him left with the manuscript, “that after reading my small, endless story you may be very thankful that you are not a Midget too.” But that is never the case with those who like this provocative, tantalizing piece of fantasy.
Here is the story of Miss M.’s first dinner with her new friend Mrs. Bowater:
From The Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare, 1873–1956
To my ear, Mrs. Bowater’s was what I should describe as a low, roaring voice, like falling water out of a black cloven rock in a hill-side; but what a balm was its sound in my ear, and how solacing this dignified address to jaded nerves still smarting a little after my victory on the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. Making my way around a grandfather’s clock that ticked hollowly beside the door, I followed her into a room on the left of the passage, from either wall of which a pair of enormous antlers threatened each other under the discoloured ceiling. For a moment the glare within and the vista of furniture legs confused my eyes. But Mrs. Bowater came to my rescue.
“Food was never mentioned,” she remarked reflectively, “being as I see nothing to be considered except as food so-called. But you will find everything clean and comfortable; and I am sure, miss, what with your sad bereavements and all, as I have heard from Mr. Pellew, I hope it will be a home to you. There being nothing else as I suppose that we may expect.”
My mind ran about in a hasty attempt to explore these sentiments. They soothed away many misgivings, though it was clear that Mrs. Bowater’s lodger was even less in dimensions than Mrs. Bowater had supposed. Clean: after so many months of Mrs. Sheppey’s habits, it was this word that sang in my head. Wood, glass, metal flattered the light of gas and coal, and for the first time I heard my own voice float up into my new “apartment”: “It looks very comfortable, thank you, Mrs. Bowater; and I am quite sure I shall be happy in my new abode.” There was nothing intentionally affected in this formal little speech.
“Which being so,” replied Mrs. Bowater, “there seems to be trouble with the cabman, and the day’s drawing in, perhaps you will take a seat by the fire.”
A stool nicely to my height stood by the steel fender, the flames played in the chimney; and for a moment I was left alone. “Thank God,” said I, and took off my hat, and pushed back my hair. . . . Alone. Only for a moment, though. Its mistress gone, as fine a black cat as ever I have seen appeared in the doorway and stood, green-eyed, regarding me. To judge from its countenance, this must have been a remarkable experience.
I cried seductively, “Puss.”
But with a blink of one eye and a shake of its forepaw, as if inadvertently it had trodden in water, it turned itself about again and disappeared. In spite of all my cajoleries, Henry and I were never to be friends.
Whatever Pollie’s trouble with the cabman may have been, Mrs. Bowater made short work of it. Pollie was shown to the room in which she was to sleep that night. I took off my bodice and bathed face, hands, and arms to the elbow in the shallow bowl Mrs. Bowater had provided for me. And soon, wonderfully refreshed and talkative, Pollie and I were seated over the last meal we were to share together for many a long day.
There were snippets of bread and butter for me, a little omelette, two sizes too large, a sugared cherry or two sprinkled with “hundreds and thousands,” and a gay little bumper of milk gilded with the enwreathed letters, “A Present from Dover.” Alack-a-day for that omelette! I must have kept a whole family of bantams steadily engaged for weeks together. But I was often at my wits’ end to dispose of their produce. Fortunately Mrs. Bowater kept merry fires burning in the evening—“Ladies of some sizes can’t warm the air as much as most,” as she put it. So at some little risk to myself among the steel fire-irons, the boiled became the roast. At last I made a clean breast of my horror of eggs, and since by that time my landlady and I were the best of friends, no harm came of it. She merely bestowed on me a grim smile of unadulterated amusement, and the bantams patronised some less fastidious stomach.
The things Paul Bunyan the Mightiest Logger did and said, even when they are told in the most pedestrian or pedagogic prose, or in the most obnoxious “Wal naow” ballad-style, are too important a part of the literature of fantasy to ignore.
They are completely American: tall tales, perhaps the tallest in the world, of a giant of power and benevolence and humor. It is surprising that they have not been better sung, but nevertheless they are absorbing, and a lot of fun to read and to think about in the dark.
They always manage to recall a few other private but equally Bunyanesque (or Gargantuan) happenings . . . such as, for me, visits to the Raleigh Inn. It is gone now, burned to the ground with a fire started in its clean but well-buttered kitchen.
It was a long-galleried wooden building, two stories tall, about as old as California itself since it became one of “us,” and there were forty-eight bedrooms, each named for a state in the union, and one cold-water bathroom. Downstairs were a big brown entrance hall with a fireplace and a ceaseless game of chess, and some postcards; rooms (I suppose) for the owners and the servants, and the offices for feeding all the miners and hunters and sybarites who came there.
The dining room was high and bleak, with strips of flypaper in the air and a few ancient spotted pictures of Cunard liners on the walls. Most of the tables seated eight or more people, and they were always covered with good clean linen, under the thick plates and tumblers. It was, that is to say, much like a pension in a small French town, even to the local “girls” who waited on table, and called the proprietors “Mama” and “Papa.”
I doubt if much was ever bought from stores . . . the waitresses and their families managed to supply everything, even to the rather watery and salty butter and the tough bread, which in contrast to the standardized California commercial “bread” and butter tasted like gods’ food. As for the vegetables and fruits, they were the same: tough but fresh carrots and peas and beets; twisted little apples like the ones from Normandy, with an unforgettable nip to them; lettuces nibbled by caterpillars and snails but infinitely tasteful after the hard pure heads sold in super-markets.
The specialty of the Raleigh Inn was “The Chicken Dinner,” which seemed to be ready any day at noontime (only city slickers ate dinner there at night) for twenty-five cents extra . . . and when you said weakly, under the eager insistent gaze of your “girl,” that you would take it, you did not mean you would take fried chicken, or broiled or roasted or fricasseed chicken, nor yet chicken pie, nor yet boiled chicken with dumplings. You meant all those kinds of chicken served at once in their respective gold or crisp or pale or soft disguises, each in its basin or platter, spread before you on the generous white table with accompanying bowls of sauces and gravies and spiced relishes and pickles, and surrounded by perhaps three different kinds of potatoes, say French-fried and plain boiled and baked, and then several bowls of vegetables like corn on the cob and carrots in butter with parsley and hot little beets cooked with their tops, and then another bowl, of lettuce with tomatoes sliced thick on a plate with scallions and slivers of green pepper.
There would be three kinds of hot bread, besides the dumplings and the baking-powder biscuits served as companions to the stewed chicken and the fried chicken: corn bread, pocketbook rolls, and salt-rising bread, with a bowl of dark pungent mountain honey to spread over the butter on them.
But the desserts at the Raleigh, for some reason, were nothing much . . . just a big bowl of sun-warm berries with thick cream and a slab of pound cake, or in the winter hot apple pie.
There was lots of coffee, good coffee . . . “Mama” thought drinkin-likka was nonsense, and if you wanted a snort before dinner, to give you an appetite, you had to take it in your dim, sparse bedroom, with its lumpy iron bed and its naked light bulb swinging, fly-hung, from the high ceiling.
The Raleigh Inn was a rare spot, not so much because of its insanely laden tables as its feeling of the old America, the free extravagant lusty America of Paul Bunyan’s days. It was a fairy tale, as he is, and yet completely real: that is to say, it was of the stuff of fantasy.
Here, then, is the story of the mighty Black Duck Dinner, as told by James Stevens:
From Paul Bunyan by James Stevens, 1892–1950
. . . Paul Bunyan . . . worked his men twelve hours a day, and, had they thought about it, they would have been astounded by any idea of working less. And they would have been perplexed by any other scheme to ease their lot. If there were not to be great exertions, they would have asked, why their sturdy frames, their eager muscular force? If they were not meant to face hazards, why was daring in their hearts? A noble breed, those loggers of Paul Bunyan’s, greatly worthy of their captain! He himself told them in a speech he made at the finishing of the Onion River Drive that they were “a good band of bullies, a fine bunch of savages.” I should like to quote this speech in its entirety, for it celebrated the accomplishment of a historical logging enterprise, and it was a master oration which showed the full range and force of Paul Bunyan’s oratorical powers. But as nine days and eight nights were required for its delivery, it is obvious that no publication save the Congressional Record could give all of it. It was at this time that Paul Bunyan served his great black duck dinner. . . .
All night fires roared in the ranges as preparations went on for the great dinner. The elevators brought a load of vegetables every minute from the deep bins, potatoes were pared and washed, kettles and roasting pans were made ready, and sauces and dressings were devised. The black ducks were scalded, plucked, and cleaned by the Preparations Department, and by morning the cranemen were bringing them by the hundreds to the Finishing Department, where the kettles and pans were waiting for them.
Most of the loggers stayed in their bunks this morning, and those who did come to breakfast ate sparingly, saving their appetites. Time passed quietly in the camp. The loggers washed and mended their clothes and greased their boots, but they did not worry themselves with bed-making. The other Sunday morning chores finished, they stretched out on their unmade bunks and smoked. They were silent and preoccupied, but now and again a breeze blowing from the direction of the cookhouse would cause them to sigh. What enchantment was in the air, so redolent with the aroma of roasting duck and stewing cabbages, so sharply sweet with the fragrance of hot ginger and cinnamon from the bakery where Cream Puff Fatty fashioned his creations! A logger who was shaving would take a deep breath of this incense, and the blood would trickle unnoticed from a slash in his cheek; another, in his bunk, would let his pipe slip from his hand and enjoy ardent inhalations, blissfully unaware of his burning shirt; yet another, engaged in greasing his boots, would halt his task and sit in motionless beatitude, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, quite unconscious of the grease that poured from a tilted can into a prized boot.
At half past eleven the hungriest of the loggers began to mass before the cookhouse door, and as the minutes passed the throng swiftly increased. At five minutes to noon all the bunkhouses were empty and the furthest fringe of the crowd was far up Onion River valley. The ground shook under a restless trampling, and the faces of the loggers were glowing and eager as they hearkened to the clatter and rumble inside the cookhouse, as four-horse teams hauled in loads of salt, pepper and sugar for the shakers and bowls. Then the loggers began to stamp and shout as they heard the flunkies, led by the Galloping Kid on his white horse, rushing the platters and bowls of food to the tables. Tantalizing smells wafted forth from the steaming dishes. The loggers grew more restless and eager; they surged to and fro in a tidal movement; jests and glad oaths made a joyous clamor over the throng. This was softened into a universal sigh as the doors swung open and Hot Biscuit Slim, in spotless cap and apron, appeared wearing the impressive mien of a conquering general. He lifted an iron bar with a majestic gesture, paused for dramatic effect amid a breathless hush, and then struck a resounding note from the steel triangle that hung from the wall. At the sound a heaving torrent of men began to pour through the doors in a rush that was like the roaring plunge of water when the gate of a dam is lifted. The chief cook continued to pound out clanging rhythms until the last impatient logger was inside.
Then Hot Biscuit Slim re-entered the cookhouse. He was reminded of a forested plain veiled in thin fog as he surveyed the assemblage of darkly clad figures, wreathed with white and fragrant blooms of steam. His impression was made the more vivid when the loggers plunged their spoons into the deep bowls of oyster soup, for the ensuing sounds seemed like the soughing of wind in the woods. The chief cook marched to the kitchen with dignity and pride, glancing to right and left at the tables that held his masterwork. He asked for no praise or acclaim; the ecstasy that now transfigured the plainest face was a sufficient light of glory for him.
The soup bowls pushed aside, the loggers began to fill their plates, which were of such circumference that even a long-armed man could hardly reach across one. The black ducks, of course, received first attention. And great as the plates were, by the time one was heaped with a brown fried drumstick, a ladle of duck dumplings, several large fragments of duck fricassee, a slab of duck baked gumbo style, a rich portion of stewed duck, and a mound of crisp brown dressing, all immersed in golden duck gravy, a formidable space was covered. Yet there was room for tender leaves of odorous cabbage beaded and streaked with creamy sauce; for mashed potatoes which seemed like fluffs of snow beside the darkness of duck and gravy; for brittle and savory potato cakes, marvelously right as to texture and thickness; for stewed tomatoes of a sultry ruddiness, pungent and ticklish with mysterious spices; for a hot cob of corn as long as a man’s forearm, golden with sirupy kernels as big as buns; for fat and juicy baked beans, plump peas, sunny applesauce, and buttered lettuce, not to mention various condiments. Squares of cornbread and hot biscuits were buttered and leaned against the plate; a pot-bellied coffee-pot was tilted over a gaping cup, into which it gushed an aromatic beverage of drowsy charm; a kingly pleasure was prepared. More than one logger swooned with delight this day when his plate was filled and, red-faced, hot-eyed, wet-lipped, he bent over it for the first mouthful with the joy of a lover claiming a first embrace.
In the kitchen the chief cook, the baker, and their helpers watched and listened. At first the volume of sounds that filled the vast room was like the roar and crash of an avalanche, as dishes were rattled and banged about. Then the duck bones crackled like the limbs of falling trees. At last came a steady sound of eating, a sound of seventy threshing machines devouring bundles of wheat. It persisted far beyond the usual length of time, and Hot Biscuit Slim brought out his field glasses and surveyed the tables. The loggers were still bent tensely over their plates, and their elbows rose and fell with an energetic movement as they scooped up the food with undiminished vigor.
“Still eatin’ duck,” marveled Hot Biscuit Slim.
“They won’t be more’n able to smell my cream puffs,” said the baker enviously.
The loggers ate on. They had now spent twice their usual length of time at the table. Each plate was in a dark shadow from tall rows of slick black duck bones and heaps of corn cobs. But—
“Still eatin’ duck,” reported Hot Biscuit Slim.
That no one might see his grief, Cream Puff Fatty moved to a dark corner. He was now certain that none of the loggers could have room for his pastries. They ate on. They had now spent three times their usual length of time at the table. The baker was sweating and weeping; he was soaked with despair. Then, suddenly:
“They’re eatin’ cream puffs!” cried Hot Biscuit Slim.
Cream Puff Fatty could not believe it, but a thrill of hope urged him to see for himself. True enough, the loggers were tackling the pastries at last. On each plate cream puffs the size of squashes lay in golden mounds. As the spoons struck them their creamy contents oozed forth from breaks and crevices. Stimulated by their rich flavor, the loggers ate on with renewed gusto. They had now stayed four times as long as usual at the table. Other enchantments still kept them in their seats: lemon pies with airy frostings, yellow pumpkin pies strewn with brown spice specks, cherry pies with cracks in their flaky crusts through which the red fruit winked, custard pies with russet freckles on their golden faces, fat apple pies odorous with cinnamon, cool, snowy cream pies, peach cobblers, chocolate puddings, glittering cakes of many colors, slabs of gingerbread, sugar-powdered jelly rolls, doughnuts as large around as saucers and as thick through as cups, and so soft and toothsome that a morsel from one melted on the tongue like cream. So endearing were the flavors of these pastries that the loggers consumed them all.
Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim solemnly shook hands. There was glory enough for both of them.
At last there were no sounds at the tables save those of heavy breathing. The loggers arose in a body and moved sluggishly and wordlessly from the cookhouse. They labored over the ground towards the bunkhouses as wearily as though they had just finished a day of deadening toil. Soon Onion River valley resounded with their snores and groans. . . .
At supper time, when Hot Biscuit Slim rang the gong, Cream Puff Fatty stood by his side. This was to be the supreme test of their achievement. For five minutes the chief cook beat the triangle, and then a solitary logger appeared in the door of a bunkhouse. He stared at them dully for a moment and then staggered back into the darkness. This was indeed a triumph! Great as other feasts in the cookhouse had been, never before had all the loggers been unable to appear for supper. This was a historic day. Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim embraced and mingled rapturous tears. It was their high moment. They would not have traded it for all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. . . .They had intimations of immortality. . . .