LENTEN FARE

Festina lente

The most strenuous Lenten faster on record was, I venture to think, St. Macarius, who was annually in the habit of passing forty days and forty nights in a standing position with no more substantial support than a few raw cabbage-leaves on each recurring Sunday.

Simeon Stylites was even more abstemious, for he ate nothing from the beginning to the end of Lent, passing his time in praying and bowing from his columnar elevation. An admiring monk has placed it upon record that, possibly by way of assuaging the pangs of hunger, Simeon made on one day twelve hundred and forty-four separate and distinct bows.

It is doubtless an excellent thing to have the strength of mind and body to be able to act up to one’s convictions. We should find it difficult to realize the idea of a Bishop of London never breaking his fast till the evening, and then being satisfied with a solitary egg, an inch of bread, and a cup of milk and water; such, however, was the daily Lenten fare of St. Cedd, a predecessor of Dr. Winnington Ingram in the Metropolitan diocese.

It is told of St. Francis of Assisi that he ate nothing dressed by fire, unless he were very ill, and even then he caused it to be covered with ashes, or dipped into cold water. His common daily food was dry bread strewn with ashes, but—the historian adds—he did not condemn his followers to the rigorous diet which he himself observed. “Brother Ass,” as he familiarly called that self, was, in his own opinion, worthy of no better fare.

But there is another and lighter side to the picture. The Roman Catholic Church, especially the upper classes thereof, in long bygone times, did not always submit patiently to the stricter ethics of fasting. Kings and princes used to send medical and theological certificates to the Pope, begging humbly to be allowed to eat meat. The Holy Father was even begged to adjudicate on individual dishes. Pope Zacharias forbade roast hare. Under Pope John XXII the Franciscans were much vexed as to whether they really owned the soup that they ate, or whether they only had the bare usufruct thereof. As only three or four of them were burned as martyrs, and no thrones were overset nor provinces ravaged, Voltaire termed these debates about niceties of diet des sottises paisibles.

In the reign of Henry VIII the minutes of the Lenten dinner included such fish as: a whole ling, great jowls of salt salmon, great salt eels, great jowls of salt sturgeon, fresh ling, fresh turbot, great pike, great jowls of fresh salmon, great rudds, baked turbots, salmon chines, roasted lampreys and roasted lamprons, great burbutts, and—when the fishing season was favourable—porpoise, sea-wolf, grampus, and whale.

A fairly compendious epitome of fish-food, but information is lacking as to the modes of preparation.

The most sensible remark on the fasting question was probably made by Erasmus, who said, when he was asked why he did not fast: “My mind is Catholic, but my stomach is Lutheran.” But then Erasmus was a very broad-minded sort of person. It is only necessary to read the finest novel in the English language, Charles Reade’s “Cloister and the Hearth,” to realize that fact.

For the dozenth time I was rereading “Eothen” the other day, and came upon a curious passage. Speaking of Smyrna, Kinglake says: “The number of murders committed during Lent is greater, I am told, than at any other time of the year. A man under the influence of a bean dietary (for this is the principal food of the Greeks during their fasts) will be in an apt humour for enriching the shrine of his saint, and passing a knife through his next-door neighbour.” Que Messieurs les végéteriens commencent! What do they say to this? Do they feel especially bloodthirsty during Lent, or—being all-the-year-round vegetarians—do they lust after gore with any peculiar avidity?

It is curious to note that our favourite Lenten fare, salted cod and egg-sauce, to wit, is, strictly speaking, quite wrong. Eggs are not permissible food, and the orthodox eschew them altogether during their jejunium.

In Spain, during the crusades and the war with the Moors, a practice arose of permitting, in certain cases, the substitution of a contribution to the holy war for the observance of the Lenten abstinence, and although the object has long since ceased, the composition is still permitted under the same title of Cruzada.

In the seventh century a Council sitting at Toledo declared those who ate meat during Lent to be sinners unworthy to take part in the Resurrection. From that time until the eleventh century, when a gradual reaction set in, the laws of fasting and the punishments inflicted upon the transgressors became more and more strict; interdict and excommunication were among the penalties.

By degrees these became so numerous and different in kind that they were divided into

• Jejunium generale—a fast binding for all.
• Consuetudinarium—local fast.
• Penitentiale—atonement for all transgressions.
• Votivum—consequent upon a vow.
• Voluntare—for the better carrying out of an undertaking.

These again were kept as

• Jejunium naturale—an entire abstinence from food or drink.
• Abstinentia—certain food only, but several times a day.
• Jejunium cum abstinentia—the same food, but only once a day.
• Jejunium sine abstinentia—all kinds of food, but only once a day.

The prohibited food on partial fast days included, during certain periods, not only the flesh of quadrupeds, fowl, and fish, but also the lacticinia, which means all that comes from quadrupeds and birds, such as eggs, milk, butter, and the like.

There are many allusions in old plays to those folk who do not fast through Lent. For instance, in Skelton’s “Colin Clout” (1500) is the following passage:—

There is comparatively little strictness now as to Lenten food, but it is always an excuse for excellent maigre dining, and the cook who cannot prepare a thoroughly good appetising and satisfying maigre menu is unworthy of his calling.

One Good Friday I was dining at a very excellent French provincial hotel, the Hôtel du Chapeau-Rouge at Dunkirk, and the following most cleverly fashioned menu confronted me at dinner:—

MENU

Huîtres.
Potage Longchamps.
Bouchées Dunkerquoises.
Barbue, Sauce d’Isigny.
Pommes Nouvelles.
Petit Pois à la Française.
Salade Primeur.
Saumon à la Russe.
Ecrevisses de la Meuse.
Gâteau Pitheviers.
Fruits.

Here is another Lenten dinner, quite different in conception, but equally good in execution. It is a very artistic little production.

MENU

Caviar d’Astrackan.
Bisque d’Ecrevisses.
Truite braisée au Clicquot.
Sarcelle Rôtie.
Salade.
Petits Pois nouveaux à la Française.
Coupe Petit Duc.
Corbeille de Friandises.
Dessert.

A few years ago a noted French gourmet was taunted with the alleged fact that it was quite impossible to order a really expensive maigre dinner; he retorted, as any sane gourmet naturally would, that it was the easiest thing in the world. He was given carte blanche, and the following was the result:—

Caviar frais.
Huîtres (Natives).
Œufs Grand-Duc.
Bouchées Joinville.
Truite saumonée au Chambertin.
Sarcelles rôties.
Salade Espérance.
Aspic de homard en Bellevue.
Asperges sauce Mousseline.
Soufflé au kirsch.
Corbeilles de fruits.
Café.

VINS.

Eau-de-vie russe.
Chablis, 1890.
Johannisberg, 1886.
Château-Léoville Poyferré, 1878.
Romanée-Conti, 1865.
Champagne frappé Baïkal (extra-dry), ’84.
Château-Yquem, 1869.
Grande fine-champagne Napoléon, 1800.

The dinner for four was exquisite, and the wines extraordinary. The total cost was just over twenty-five pounds.

In that delightful book, “Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle,” by Charles and Frances Brookfield, there is this postscript to a letter written by the husband to his wife: “On the carte of the Carlton Club the day before yesterday (the General Fast) was to be seen these words: ‘The Committee, taking into consideration that the observance of a General Fast has been ordained, have directed that the coffee-room dinner shall be confined strictly to—Two Soups. Fish. Plain Joints. Spring Tarts. Omelettes. Cheese.’”

Another story from the same book, which although it has nothing whatever to do with Lent, has, perhaps, with food and feeding, runs as follows: “The new bishop of New Zealand, in a farewell and pathetic interview with his mother, after his appointment, was thus addressed by her in such sequence as sobs and tears would permit: ‘I suppose they will eat you, my dear—I try to think otherwise, but I suppose they will. Well!—We must leave it in the hands of Providence. But if they do—mind, my dear, and disagree with them.’”

That some at least of the less abstinent monks made very hearty meals and were quite valiant trenchermen, whether it were fast day or no, is a matter of history. At a splendid dinner given by the Legate of Avignon to the Prior of Chartreux, a superb fish, cooked to perfection and likely to have tempted the Pope himself had he been present, was handed to the Prior. He helped himself and was on the eve of eating, when one of the brothers said to him: “My father, do not touch that, it is not maigre. I went into the kitchen, and I saw things that would make you shudder; the sauce that you fancy is made from carrots and onions is made from ham and rabbits.” “My brother, you talk too much and are too curious,” replied the father; “the kitchen is not your place, and curiosity is a grievous sin.”

Beckford of “Vathek” fame gives a glowing account of the monastery of Alcobaça, and particularly of the kitchen thereof: “Through the centre of the immense and groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, flowing through pierced wooden reservoirs, containing every sort and size of the finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped up; on the other vegetables and fruit in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stores, extended a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour, whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay-brothers and their attendants were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a cornfield.” After describing the elaborate composition of the daily banquet of the monks, the author describes “a certain truffle cream which was so exquisite that the Lord Abbot piously gave thanks for it.”

A famous London character in the time of “Frazer’s Magazine” was Serjeant Murphy, M.P. for Cork. An acquaintance of Murphy’s was constantly addicted to boasting of his aristocratic friends. At a dinner-party where there were several Roman Catholics present, conversation centred round the subject of fasting, when the serjeant’s friend struck in: “It is very strange how little the highest ranks regard fast days. I was dining at the Duke of Norfolk’s on a fast day three weeks ago, and there was not a bit of fish at dinner.” “I suppose,” said Murphy, in the midst of the deep silence that followed, “that they had eaten it all in the dining-room.”

Chaucer writes of a man who

The stew was, of course, the monkish fish-pond, which has almost disappeared since the Reformation. The luce is the jack or pike of the fishermen, and is often found as a pun upon the family name of Lucy, which bears the pike as a charge. Richard de Lucie, who defended the castle of Falaise against Geoffry of Anjou, was Lord Diss in Norfolk; he was also Sheriff of Essex in the reign of Henry II, and built the castle of Ongar. Sir Richard Lucy, Lord Chief Justice of England, founded Lesnes Priory, near Erith, and dying in 1179, was buried within its walls. An antiquary named Weever, who had seen his tomb in 1630, states that upon the belt of the figure of the knight the fleur-de-lis, or fleur-de-luce, the rebus or name device of the Lucys, was sculptured in many places. The fleur-de-lis was here used in a doubly figurative sense for a pike or spear, to the head of which it bears some resemblance.

This is more particularly shown in the Cantelupe arms, gules, a fess vaire between three leopards’ heads jessant fleur-de-lis. The arms of Lucy are also among the quarterings borne by the family of Lowther, the head of which is, of course, Lord Lonsdale.

Certain fish, evidently intended for pike or luces, in the pavement of the Chapter House at Westminster may possibly allude to the early tradition that St. Peter’s Church was first built by King Lucius.

The ged and the pike are synonymous in North Britain, whence the Scots family of Ged bear for arms, azure, three geds, or pike, hauriant argent; Sir Walter Scott alludes to this play upon the name in Red Gauntlet. “The heralds,” he says, “who make graven images of fish, fowls, and beasts, assigned the ged for their device and escutcheon, and hewed it over their chimneys, and placed above their tombs the fish called a jack, pike, or luce, and in our tongue, a ged.”

Of this family was William Ged, an Edinburgh printer, who employed a stereotyping process as early as 1725. The Geddes, a very ancient family of Tweeddale, bear for arms, gules, an escutcheon between three luces’ heads couped argent.

Much of the good purpose of a close adherence to strict Lenten fare has no doubt been lost by our continued neglect of the manifold uses of herbs.

Amid all the talking and writing about vegetarianism very little attention seems to have been paid to the undoubted importance of the herb garden.

Our forefathers believed implicitly in the virtues of herbs, and extolled them in prose and verse. According to one of the old Roxburghe Ballads:—

Most of these formerly well-known herbs, each having its own peculiar curative quality, are nowadays practically unknown, but a reference to old John Parkinson, or the herbals of Gerard or Turner, or the “Acetaria” of John Evelyn, would readily show that they were good for the various ills to which flesh is heir. The very earliest medicaments were largely composed of herbs, and even to-day the learned prescription of a Harley Street two-guinea specialist usually contains at least one ingredient which, under a more formal Latin name, is neither more nor less than a “garden simple” or herb.

The common marigold, for instance, which Gerard calls “the Jackanapes-on-Horseback,” was at one time much used for soups or “pottages.” In Miss Edgeworth’s story of “Simple Susan” she explains how the petals of marigolds were added, as the last touch, to the broth made for an invalid mother. Evelyn compares the common bugloss to the nepenthe of Homer, but adds that what we now call bugloss was not that of the ancients, but rather borage, “for the like virtue named corrago.”

Smallage was, of course, simply wild celery, which Parkinson says is “somewhat like parsley, but greater, greener, and more bitter.” Sweet cicely, or sweet chervil, is a kind of myrrh—“it adds a marvellous good relish to a sallet,” and the roots may be preserved or candied. The genial Culpepper, in his “English Physician Enlarged” (1565), has much to say as to the astrological virtues of the different herbs, and although his ascription of plants to their respective planets must be taken cum grano salis, yet he is wonderfully near the mark in many instances which he quotes as to the effect of the herb if taken as a medicine. This, for instance, is what he has to say about balm: “It is a herb of Jupiter and under Cancer, and strengthens nature much in all its actions. It causeth the mind and heart to become merry and reviveth the heart, especially of such who are overtaken in sleep, and driveth away all troublesome cares and thoughts out of the mind arising from melancholy or black choler.”

Nowadays we certainly neglect herbs, although here and there an old-fashioned gardener plants his herbs from year to year. There are still quaint old herb shops in Covent Garden, where the “simples” of our grandmothers may be bought; and there are curious customs at the Guildhall and the Old Bailey of the presentation of bunches of herbs to the presiding justices as a reminiscence of the time when their perfume was supposed to counteract the germs of plague.

It is easy to cultivate a herb garden, and amid modern “improvements” of flowers of all sorts it imparts a delightful old-world fragrance to the completeness of the pleasaunce. Moreover, herbs make the most exquisite addition to nearly every form of cookery.

Reverting to Lent and its customs, it is notable, according to old John Selden’s “Table Talk” (1689), that “our meats and our sports, much of them, have relation to Church works. The coffin of our Christmas pies in shape long, is in imitation of the cratch; our choosing kings and queens on Twelfth-night hath reference to the three kings. So, likewise, our eating of fritters, whipping of tops, roasting of herrings, Jack of Lents, etc.—they are all in imitation of Church works, emblems of martyrdom. Our tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs; though at the same time, it was always the fashion for a man to have a gammon of bacon to show himself to be no Jew.”

We have it (on perhaps somewhat doubtful authority) that the most ingenious method of fasting is that recorded in the “Mappemonde Papistique,” wherein it appears that a Venetian saint had certain boxes made like mass books, and these book-boxes were filled, some with Malmsey wine, and some with the fleshiest parts of capons and partridges. These were supposed to be books of devotion, and the saint is said to have lived long and grown fat on them.

A peculiarly villainous form of torture was invented by Galeazzo Visconti (1355), which was known as Galeazzo’s Lent, because it was guaranteed to prolong the life of the unfortunate victim for forty days. This seems to have been one of the few traits of inherited family cruelty in a man who otherwise was a sort of Mæcenas of his time. He was a friend and patron of Petrarch, founded, under his direction, the University of Pavia, and brought together a considerable library.

According to Walsh, it is not generally known that the use of flesh, meat, eggs, and milk during Lent was forbidden in England, not only by ecclesiastical but also by statute law, even into the time of William III. Any violation of the law was followed by dire penalties. There is the case of the landlady of the Rose Tavern, St. Catherine’s Tower, London, in whose house during the Lent of 1563 was found a quantity of raw and cooked meat. She and four other women who were proved to have partaken of the forbidden viands were put in the stocks all night. In 1570 was passed a statute making the penalties for violating the Lenten laws sixty shillings and three months imprisonment.

Finally, as an apposite curiosity, I will quote a curious dispensation granted two hundred and seventy-six years ago and formally recorded in the parish register of Wakefield.

“To all people to whom these presents shall come, James Lister, Vicar of Wakefield, and preacher of God’s word, sendeth greeting: Whereas Alice Lister wife of Richard Lister Clerke who now soiourneth with her sonne Willm Paulden of Wakefield, by reason of her old age & many years & state, and long-contynued sickness is become so weake, and her stomack so colde, not able to digest colde meates and fish, who by the counsell of Physicions is advised to absteine from and to forbeare the eateng of all manner of fruits, fish and milk meates: Know yee therefoor for the causes aforesaide and for the better strengthening & recovery of her health, I the saide James Lister do hereby give & grant libertie and licence to her the saide Alice Lister att her will and pleasure att all tymes, as well during the tyme of Lent, as upon other fasting daies and fish daies (exhibiting by the laws to eate flesh) to dresse and eate such kind of fleshe as shal be best agreing to her stomach & weake appetite. In witnes hereof I the saide James Lister have hereunto sett my hand the eight day of ffebuary in the sixt year of the Reine of our Soveraigne Lord Charles by the Grace of God King of England Scotland ffrance and Ireland Defender of the Faith &c and in the yeare of our Lord god 1630 James Lister.”