OYSTERS

If you have eaten an oyster at Colchester or Faversham, in August, fresh from the sea; or a melting native at Milton, the best oyster in the world, in October; a Helford native in Cornwall; Whispered Pandores and Aberdours at Edinburgh, on the “Feast of Shells,” one hundred for a shilling, dripping in Prestonpans sea-water; Carlingfords and Powldoodies, of Burran, at Dublin; or even a Jersey oyster at St. Heliers, you know what an oyster should be.

These are the words of wisdom, written some thirty years ago by Herbert Byng Hall, a gastronomic writer of some eminence, who had made a special study of the Oyster, and wrote thereon learnedly and con amore.

Somehow or other there is something persuasively and personally intimate in one’s relations with an oyster, or with a couple of dozen oysters, for that matter. One does not feel the same sentimental regard for the pig that provides one with one’s morning rasher of bacon that one does for the merest preprandial oyster. And this feeling of friendship, almost intimacy, is always to be found in the writings of those who dilate upon “the breedy creatures,” as Christopher North called our illustrious bivalves in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ.”

Dr. Kitchiner, for instance, says: “Those who wish to enjoy this delicious restorative in its utmost perfection must eat it at the moment it is opened, with its own gravy in the undershell; if not eaten absolutely alive, its flavour and spirit are lost. The true lover of an oyster will have some regard for the feelings of his little favourite, and contrive to detach the fish from the shell so dexterously that the oyster is hardly conscious he has been ejected from his lodging till he feels the teeth of the piscivorous gourmet tickling him to death.”

There are other instances innumerable of a certain dainty touch in dealing with oysters. Contact with them seems to engender humour, good nature, and a tricksey spirit. Huxley called oysters “a delicious flash of gustatory lightning”; and there is a story told of the great master, G. F. Watts, who was challenged by Millais and Leighton to produce a humorous picture, whereupon he painted a primitive man and woman on the seashore. The woman is looking with awestruck admiration at the man who has just swallowed an oyster. The man himself appears very doubtful as to the result. The picture was called “B.C. The First Oyster.”

It was originally said in a very old number of the “North British Review,” that “he must have been a very bold man who first swallowed an oyster.” An old legend assigns the first act of oyster-eating to a very natural cause. It is related that a man walking by the sea one day picked up an oyster, just as it was in the act of gaping. Observing the extreme smoothness of the interior of the shell, he insinuated his finger between them that he might feel their shining surface, when suddenly they closed upon the exploring digit, with a sensation less pleasurable than he anticipated. The prompt withdrawal of his finger was scarcely a more natural movement than its transfer to his mouth. It is not very clear why people (including babies) when they hurt their fingers put them into their mouths; but it is very certain that they do, and in this case the result was most fortunate. The owner of the finger tasted oyster juice for the first time, as Elia’s Chinaman, having burned his finger, first tasted crackling. The savour was delicious; he had made a great discovery; so he picked up the oysters, forced open the shells, banqueted upon the contents, and soon brought oyster-eating into fashion.

That tender personal regard for the innocent oyster, which I have just referred to, is very manifest in one of the most widely known poems in the English language. I mean Lewis Carroll’s “Walrus and the Carpenter.”

The kindly regard for the susceptibilities of the oysters is kept up even until the dire dénoûment of the drama. Again we are touched by a fragment by the same author, of which, alas, we shall never know the full purport. It runs thus:—

Mr. Thomas Hardy did not, I am sure, in the title of his novel, “The Return of the Native,” intend to celebrate the coming of oysters into the dinner menu, but it seems to sum up in a brief and pithy phrase one of the great events of the autumn. The old convention that oysters are only eatable in those months which are spelled with an “r” has, of course, much to be said for it; at any rate, so far as British oysters are concerned.

Abroad it is different, and the parcs aux huîtres at French watering-places give quite excellent oysters in August, and even in July. The huîtres de Marennes, huîtres d’Ostende, and the tiny little green ones are by no means to be despised, although they do not, perhaps, quite come up in lusciousness of flavour to the real Whitstable native.

We are somewhat oyster-spoiled in this country, and particularly in London. We go to Scott’s, Sweeting’s, Driver’s, Hampton’s, Rule’s, or any first-class oyster shops, and we get, as we know we shall get, the very best brand of the very best oyster in the world; fresh, clean, untainted, and uncontaminated, which, after all is said and done, cannot be vouched for in the case of second-rate hotels and caterers.

Whether to drink champagne, Chablis, stout, or nothing with oysters is a nice point which has not as yet been authoritatively decided. Of course, champagne and Chablis go far to assimilate the oyster, but at the same time there are those (and—dare I confess it?—I am amongst the number) who are venturesome enough to assert that the oyster, pure and simple, requires no alcoholic addition. Drink Chablis, or a light hock, after the oyster feast, by all means; but when eating your two or three dozen on the deep shell (always order them on the deep shell) imbibe their own liquor only, and be thankful.

“Un voyageur anglais, transi de froid, arrive dans une hôtellerie de village où il n’y avait d’autre feu que celui de la cuisine, dont la cheminée était gardée par un grand nombre de voyageurs arrivées avant lui. Pour se faire faire place, il usa d’un stratagème assez original. Il avait aperçu en entrant quelques cloyères d’huîtres. Il dit au maître de la maison, ‘Monsieur, avez-vous des huîtres?’ ‘Oui, Monsieur, et de très-fraîches.’ ‘Faites-en porter une cloyère à mon cheval.’ ‘Comment, Monsieur, est-ce que votre cheval mange des huîtres?’ ‘Oui, Monsieur; au surplus, faites ce que je dis; s’il ne les mange pas, d’autres les mangeront.’

“Le maître obéit, et les voyageurs allaient voir un cheval manger des huîtres—qu’il ne mangea pas. Pendant ce temps, le nouvel arrivé prend place au feu. Le maître de retour lui dit, ‘Monsieur, je savais bien que votre cheval ne mangeait pas d’huîtres.’ ‘Eh bien, non,’ dit l’Anglais, ‘je les mangerai; ces messieurs ont quitté leur place, je la garderai; ainsi à tout cela, il n’y aura rien de perdu.’ Et, en effet, il vida la cloyère sans quitter le coin du feu.”

This is a quotation, apt enough, I think, from “La Gastronomie pour Rire, ou Anecdotes, Réflexions, Maximes, et Folies Gourmandes,” par César Gardeton, auteur du “Directeur des Estomacs,” Paris, 1827.

As a useful recipe for oysters, I should like to refer to an extract from a letter from Swift to Stella; it runs thuswise:—

If oysters have to be cooked at all, which is a doctrine I do not support, then the above seems as good a way as any other. Really good oysters are, anyhow, too precious to be cooked, but should be degustated in puris naturalibus.

A story which I venture to think apocryphal is quoted by W. R. Hare in a curious little book, “On the Search for a Dinner,” published in London in 1857. Speaking of dining in Paris, he refers to the celebrated restaurant the Rocher du Cancale, and relates how an English “Milord” drove up to the establishment and ordered (and ate) a hearty meal of twenty-nine dozen oysters; after which Milord died suddenly—and no wonder! They carried him down with great difficulty to the carriage. The groom, on seeing his master’s body arrive, exclaimed, with great coolness, “It is the third time that Milord gives himself the pleasure of dying of indigestion.” “He will not die a fourth time,” answered the patron, with sorrow. Milord was buried at Père-la-Chaise. His facetious friends deposit every year by the remains of the defunct an enormous quantity of oyster-shells. The tomb is about five-and-twenty yards from that of Héloise and Abélard. On a slab of black marble the following epitaph is inscribed: “Here lies ——, dead for the third time in a duel with the oysters of the Rocher du Cancale.”

I confess that I have not had the curiosity to verify the tombstone.

Brillat-Savarin has an oyster anecdote to the effect that he was at Versailles in the year 1798 as Commissary of the Directory, and had frequently to meet the Registrar of the Tribunal, M. Laperte. The latter was so fond of oysters that he used to grumble about never having had enough to satisfy him. Being determined to procure him that satisfaction, Brillat-Savarin asked Laperte to dinner, and the latter accepted. “I kept up with him,” says the host, “to the third dozen, letting him then go on by himself. He went on steadily to the thirty-second dozen—that is to say, for more than an hour, as they were opened but slowly—and as in the meantime I had nothing else to do—a state quite unbearable at table—I stopped him just as he was beginning to show more appetite than ever. My dear friend,” I said, “it must be some other day that you have enough to satisfy you; let us now have some dinner.” We took dinner, and he showed all the vigour and hunger of a man who had been fasting.

These oyster-gorges are, however, mere epitomes of vulgar gluttony. There is no more gastronomic satisfaction to be got out of thirty-three dozen than out of the conventional two dozen. In fact, doctors rarely prescribe more than one dozen at a time.

Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca, Pliny, Ætius, and the old Greek doctor Oribasius, whom Julian the Apostate delighted to honour, have all enlarged upon the virtues of the oyster. It would be easy to add to the list and to quote corroborative passages, but the thing has been done so often and so copiously, that it would certainly be supererogatory and tedious. The Tabella Cibaria has been referred to by every culinary scribe, and we really know more about the oyster habits of the Romans than we do about those of the inhabitants of the Hebrides; which is absurd.

G. A. Sala says that the Pontiffs of Pagan Rome caused oysters to be served at every repast; but the delicacy must have been very expensive, since a basket of oysters cost the equivalent of nine pounds sterling. They were served raw and were dexterously opened by a slave at a side-table at the beginning of the dinner.

There is a story told of an astute Roman epicure named Fulvius Hirpinus who constructed on his estate, close to the seashore, a fish-pond where he stored or “parked” oysters, which he fattened with paste and cooked wine, worked to the consistency of honey. He was certainly astute because besides regaling himself and his friends on these artificially fattened oysters, he drove a roaring trade in selling them wholesale and retail to the nobility and gentry of Rome.

The same authority goes on to say that, oddly enough, in a comparatively modern cookery book, that of Will Rabisha, there is a direction, a rather ferocious one, that while oysters are undergoing the process of broiling they should be fed with white wine and grated bread. Of course many ways were adopted in those days for the feeding of oysters; but a paste of oatmeal and water seems to have been the staple of the sustenance given to the creatures before they were considered to be fit for the table.

The Greeks, according to Athenæus, boiled and fried their oysters, finding them, however, best of all when roasted in the coals till the shells opened.

As early as the seventeenth century the French prepared them en etuvée and en fricasée. Both recipes appear in the “Délices de la Campagne” (1654), a book of extreme interest and full of quaint information; but not, it would seem, strictly reliable as a record of the cookery of the time.

We are so accustomed nowadays to pay half a crown, three and sixpence, and even more for our dozen oysters, that it seems almost incredible that our fathers regaled themselves thereon at the common or general price of sixpence a dozen. An old poem on the subject says:—

This is from “The Splendid Shilling,” by John Philip, which, according to Steele in the “Tatler,” was “the finest burlesque poem in the English language.”

Just exactly why the price of oysters should have increased so enormously in recent years has never been satisfactorily explained. Many ridiculous reasons have been given, but they seem either impertinent, or inadequate, or both. We need only refer to the pages of the “Pickwick Papers” for confirmation.

“Before proceeding to the Legacy Duty Office about proving the will of his late wife, Mr. Weller, senior, and his fellow-coachmen, as witnesses, bethought themselves of having a drop of beer, and a little cold beef, or an oyster. These viands were promptly produced, and the luncheon was done ample justice to. If one individual evinced greater powers than another it was the coachman with the hoarse voice, who took an imperial pint of vinegar with his oysters, and did not betray the least emotion.”

Another and more striking illustration.

“It’s a very remarkable circumstance, sir,” said Sam Weller, “that poverty and oysters always seem to go together; the poorer a place is the greater call there seems to be for oysters. Look here, sir! blest if I don’t think that ven a man’s wery poor he rushes out of his lodgings, and eats oysters for regular desperation.”

The Colchester Oyster Feast is an annual function which is usually graced by the presence and assistance of political and other notabilities. The Mayor and Corporation open the proceedings by “sizing” the oysters, eating a large number at luncheon, and following the luncheon with prescribed draughts of gin and slices of gingerbread. This historic repast seems, on the face of it, to be of a somewhat incongruous nature; but it is said by those who have survived it, and their number is very large, that the cates and beverage go well together, and never quarrel among themselves.

Until comparatively recent times, another annual Oyster Feast took place at Edinburgh, with a kind of civic ceremonial, known as the Feast of Shells. A voyage was made by Provosts and Bailiffs to the oyster beds in the Firth of Forth, and “though the solemnity of wedding the Frith formed no part of the Chief Magistrate’s office, as wedding the Adriatic with a gold ring did that of the Doge of Venice,” three cheers were given by all present as the first “dredge” was hoisted on to the deck of the civic barge.

There is an old fisherman’s song, now almost forgotten, one verse of which runs:—

Many years ago a sort of popular belief was current to the absurd effect that Oysters could be trained to sing. It is impossible to says whence the superstition arose, but it was helped by a noted exhibition, in London, of a “Whistling Oyster” which was supposed to emit certain sibilant sounds. Thousands flocked to hear it, but it was more or less conclusively proved, however, that it was a trick of ventriloquism on the part of the showman.

In Tom Hood’s “Miss Kilmansegg and her Golden Leg,” there is an apt reference to a Colchester Oyster, when they were very much cheaper than they are to-day, and, as before mentioned, were practically poor men’s food.

The Americans always seem to do things on a larger scale than we, in our effete little island, are able to do. They excel even in the fecundity of their oysters. The British mollusc Ostrea edulis produces about a million young in a season. One of the American variety, Ostrea Virginiana, about ten times as many.

There is a great Oyster cult in the United States, and the different manners of cooking, preparing, and serving the oyster are manifold. A book might be written on the pros and cons of cooking an oyster at all, and opinions as to its legitimacy differ, even among the erudite on the subject. Be that as it may, the Americans certainly owe much of their nerve-strength, hustlesomeness, and vigour to their enormous oyster consumption. It is the ideal food to replace and restore nerve power. It is hardly too much to say that the oyster is the foundation of America’s commercial success.

Oliver Wendell Holmes says somewhere that two immense oysters should be carved in marble and placed on top of the Washington monument in Baltimore, instead of the statue of the immortal George. “I am not in favour of removing the Father of his Country from off his imposing pedestal, but should like to compromise matters by making him sit on a pile of oyster-shells in lieu of a curule chair.”

When Thackeray went to Boston in 1852 he had some trouble with the very large American oyster. “He first selected the smallest one of the half-dozen (rejecting a larger one because, as he said, it resembled the High Priest’s servant’s ear that Peter cut off), and then bowed his head as though he were saying Grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. ‘Profoundly grateful,’ he said, ‘as if I had swallowed a small baby.’”

But Thackeray was not an authority, for he ranked “the dear little juicy green oysters of France” above the “great white flaccid natives in England that look as if they had been fed on pork.” This is ungenerous.

The poet Gay wrote in praise of Oysters when Fleet Ditch, now turned into the Farringdon Street sewer, was still a London eyesore. It appears to have been a centre of London Oyster hucksters.

Oysters are not unconnected with Pearls, although a real Oyster-lover must necessarily regret that a large number of his darling food is sacrificed for the trivial purpose of feminine adornment. It seems such waste! It were well to cast pearls before swine, if the molluscs were reserved for the pig-keepers. The pearls, by the by, which are used in heraldry to denote the gradations of rank in the coronets of peers, are the produce of the Pinna marina, the large pearl-oyster of the East Indies.

A curious pearl case came before the law courts in Hamburg recently. A merchant and his wife, dining at a local restaurant, began their dinner, as right-minded folk always should, with oysters. In one of the shells they found quite a considerable-sized and admirably formed pearl. They were about to carry it off in triumph, when the restaurant-keeper interfered and claimed it as his property. This was disputed, and the matter taken to law, the pearl in question being valued by experts at one hundred and fifty pounds. Eventually the decision was given against the restaurant proprietor, the judge holding that by purchasing the oysters the guest was entitled to anything found in them. A just and upright judge!

Between 1775 and 1818 there lived and flourished (more or less) in Malta, Naples, Paris, and elsewhere, a notable composer, Nicolo Isouard, more generally known as Nicolo. He wrote many operas, all of which are now forgotten. Having lived in Naples he was a great macaroni eater, and prepared the dish himself in a somewhat original manner. He stuffed each tube of macaroni with a mixture of marrow, pâté de foie gras, chopped truffles, and cut-up oysters. He then heated up the preparation, and ate it with his left hand covering up his eyes, for he asserted that he could not afford to allow the beautiful thoughts engendered by such exquisite food to be disturbed by any extraneous mundane sights. No wonder he died young.

There is a Russian story, averagely true I opine, of the emancipation of a serf through the agency of oysters. One of the ancestors of the banking firm of Sjalouschine was originally a serf of Prince Cheremeteff. The serf, by dealing in corn and cattle, had become very well-to-do, and he asked the Prince again and again to set him free, even offering him large sums of money as the price of his emancipation. But the Prince always refused, as he was rather tickled by the idea of owning a serf who was comparatively a rich man.

In the beginning of one September the serf went to St. Petersburg on business, and brought back with him a barrel of oysters, the first of the season. When he returned he asked to see the Prince, but was told that His Highness was in a terribly bad temper because his chef had forgotten to order any oysters. Whereupon the serf went straight to the Prince and offered him his barrel of oysters in exchange for his freedom. The Prince being, as aforesaid, of a humorous disposition, and besides, wanting the oysters badly, was taken by the notion. He agreed to the bargain, and clenched it by saying, “We will now lunch together on the oysters.”

The family of Sjalouschine is said to bear oysters on their coat-of-arms in memory of the emancipation.

At a dinner-party where there were twelve covers, one of the courses consisted of scalloped oysters in silver shells. The set of shells was broken—there were only eleven. The mistress, therefore, told the butler that she would not eat any oysters. When the oyster course came, he placed before his mistress one of the shells. To his horror she did not decline it. She took up her fork and was about to plunge into it, when the man flew to her side. “Pardon me, madam,” he murmured, “but you said I was to remind you that the doctor forbade your eating oysters on any account.”