The Physiology of Taste (30 page)

5.
The notes on Gourmandism are appropriate to this section, if it be granted that conjugal happiness consists in shared pleasures. It is as impossible to enjoy a meal with a dour-faced, sour-voiced husband, for any woman, as it is for a man to lie happily with a stiff stick of a wife … and the other way about. One good thing leads to another, as the Professor points out with customary discretion.

6.
Nothing is easier than to paraphrase one of the Professor’s aphorisms, and here it is inevitable to observe, “Tell me
how
you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.” (IV.) Shakespeare said, in his
COMEDY OF ERRORS
, “Unquiet meals make ill digestion,” and any man alive can remember a meal eaten glumly, irascibly, and in the end dyspeptically. Acid words lead to acidity in the guts, and that in turn makes any soul a sourish thing.

7.
It was Samuel Richardson, not Fielding, who wrote
PAMELA;
OR VIRTUE REWARDED
, in 1740. This novel in letter form was as popular in its French translation as in English, and it is surprising that the Professor ascribed it to the wrong author.

60:
NO MAN IS
a gourmand simply because he wishes to be one. There are certain people to whom Nature has denied either an organic delicacy or a power of concentration, without which the most delicious dishes can pass them by unnoticed.

Physiology has already recognized the first of these abnormalities, and has showed us that the tongues of such wretches are so sparsely provided with the sensitive taste buds meant to absorb and appreciate flavors that they can awaken but vague sensations: indeed, such people are as blind to taste as true blind men are to light.

The second class of unfortunates is made up of the inattentive, the flighty, the overly ambitious and all those who try to do two things at once, and eat only to fill their bellies.

Such was, among many others, Napoleon: he was irregular with his meals, and ate quickly and untidily; but there was also in this characteristic that absolute determination which he felt about everything. As soon as he sensed the first twinge of hunger it must be satisfied, and his personal equipment was so arranged that at no matter what hour, no matter where, it was possible to serve him at his first word with poultry, some cutlets, and coffee.

But there is a privileged class of men whom a materialistic and organic predestination summons to the full enjoyment of taste.

I have always been a follower of Lavater and Gall:
¹
I believe in inborn tendencies.

Since there are people who have obviously been put into the world to see badly, walk badly, hear badly, because they are born myopic, limping, or deaf, why can it not be that there are others who are meant to enjoy more deeply certain series of sensations?

Moreover, no matter how unobservant one may be, he is bound to recognize on every side of him faces which bear the uncontradictable imprint of this or that dominant trait, such as impertinent disdain, self-complacency, misanthropy, sensuality, etc., etc. The truth is that anyone with an insignificant make-up can be all of these things unsuspected; but when a man’s aspect has strongly defined characteristics, it rarely gives itself the lie.

Human passions act on the muscles, and very often, no matter how much someone may hold his tongue, the various sentiments that surge in him can be read plainly on his face. This self-control, even if not habitual, will finish by leaving obvious traces, and give to the face a recognizable cast.

61: People predestined to gourmandism are in general of medium height;
²
they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips and rounded chins. The women so predisposed are plump, more likely to be pretty than beautiful, and have a tendency toward corpulence.

The ones who are most fond of tidbits and delicacies are finer featured, with a daintier air; they are more attractive, and above all are distinguished by a way of speaking which is all their own.

It is by these outer traits that the most agreeable dinner companions must be judged and chosen: they accept everything that is served to them, eat slowly, and enjoy reflectively what they have swallowed. They never hurry away from any place where they have been offered an unusually pleasant hospitality; they stay for the rest of the evening, since they know all the games and pastimes which are the ordinary accompaniment of any gastronomical gathering.

People to whom Nature has denied the capacity for such enjoyment, on the other hand, have long faces, noses, and eyes; no matter what their height, they seem to have a general air of elongation about them. They have flat dark hair, and above all lack healthy weight; it is undoubtedly they who invented trousers, to hide their thin shanks.

Women whom Nature has afflicted in the same miserable way are scrawny, and bored at table, and exist only for cards and sly gossip.

This physiological theory will not, I hope, find many readers to contradict it, for each one can verify it by looking around him: however, I shall add weight to it with some cold fact.

I was seated one day at a very important banquet, and saw across from me an exquisite girl whose face was completely sensual. I leaned toward my neighbor, and murmured to him that it was impossible that this young lady be anything but
gourmande
, given such physical characteristics.

“Ridiculous!” he answered me. “She is at most fifteen, and that is hardly the age for gourmandism. What is more, just let us watch her …”

The beginnings were not at all favorable for me, and I began to fear that I had made a foolish wager, for during the first two courses the girl ate so lightly that I was astonished and began to believe that I had fallen this time upon an exception, there being one, of course, to every rule. But finally the dessert arrived, a dessert as impressive as it was generous, and I felt more hopeful. I was not deceived: not only did she eat everything that was offered to her, but she even asked for portions from those plates which were farthest from her. Finally she had tasted every one; and my neighbor confessed his astonishment that this little belly could hold so many things. Thus my diagnosis was confirmed; thus science once more triumphed.

Some two years later, I met the same lady once again. It was eight days after her marriage. She had developed in the best possible way; she permitted herself more than a trace of coquetry; and in unveiling her charms to the last permissible limits of fashion, she was truly ravishing. Her husband was a study: he resembled a certain ventriloquist who knew how to laugh with
one side of his face and weep with the other, which is to say that he seemed delighted to have his wife admired, but that as soon as he felt the admiration too pressing he was wracked with a shudder of very obvious jealousy. The latter sentiment conquered; he took his wife off to a distant province, and as far as I know that is the end of the story.

Another time I made much the same kind of observation about the Duke Decrès, who was for so long Minister of the Marine.

It will be remembered that he was fat, short, dark, curly-headed and square-cut; that he had a round face, to put it mildly, with a prominent chin, fleshy lips, and the mouth of a giant; therefore I immediately designated him as a predestined lover of good food and beautiful women.

This physiological comment I slipped gently and in a low murmur into the ear of a very pretty lady who was, I believed, equally discreet. Alas, I was mistaken! She was a true daughter of Eve, and it would have stifled her to keep my secret. Thus it was that, the same evening, the Duke was fully informed of the scientific deduction I had made from his physical outlines.

I learned this the next day in a very amiable letter he wrote me, in which he modestly disclaimed possessing the two traits which I had credited to him, no matter how desirable both of them might be. I still did not feel defeated. I replied that Nature creates nothing in vain; that she had evidently shaped him to perform certain missions which, if he did not carry them out, simply contradicted his own destiny; and that, moreover, I had no right to be entrusted with such confidences from him, etc., etc.

Our correspondence ended there; but, a short time after, all Paris was told by means of the newspapers of the memorable battle between the Minister and his cook, a battle which was long and noisy, and in which the Duke was not always on top. Well, since after such a fracas the cook was not sent packing (as indeed he was not), I can, I believe, draw the conclusion that the Duke was completely dominated by the talents of this artist, and that he
despaired of ever finding another who would know so well how to flatter his palate; otherwise he would never have been able to endure his very natural distaste for being served by such a belligerent rascal.

As I was writing this little incident, one fine winter evening, Monsieur Cartier, formerly first violin at the Opera and an adept teacher, came in and sat down by my fire. I was full of my subject, and looking at him with great attention, “My dear fellow,” I asked him, “how does it happen that you are not a gourmand, when you have all the signs of being one?” “I was one of the first rank, once,” he replied, “but I gave it up.” “From common sense?” I asked him. He said nothing more, but gave a real Walter-Scott sigh, which is to say that it sounded much more like a dismal groan.

62: If there are gourmands by predestination, there are also those by profession; and here I must point out four great categories of them: the bankers, the doctors, the writers, and the men of faith—the
devout
.

Bankers are the real heroes of gourmandism. In this case
hero
is the proper word, for there was at one time a state of war: the landed nobility would have crushed the financiers under the weight of its titles and escutcheons, if the latter had not fought back with their sumptuous larders and their money boxes. Cooks fought genealogists, and even though the dukes did not wait to leave the banquet halls before they mocked their hosts, at least they had accepted the invitations, and their very presence attested to their defeat.

What is more, anyone who can pile up a great deal of money easily is almost forced, willynilly, to be a gourmand.

Inequality of conditions leads to inequality of wealth, but inequality of wealth does not necessarily lead to a corresponding inequality of needs! He who can pay each day for a dinner big enough to serve a hundred people is often stuffed from eating
no more than the leg of a chicken. It is necessary then that art summon all its resources, to enliven this feeble shadow of an appetite by dishes which will nourish without damaging, excite without exhausting. It is thus that Mondor
³
became a gourmand, and that fellow devotees from every walk of life have since imitated him.

And in all the series of recipes which the books of elementary cooking present to us, there are one or more which are labeled
à la financière
. It is well known, moreover, that it was not the king, but the bankers who collected his rents for him, who in the old days enjoyed the first dish of little green Spring peas, for which they always paid a good eight hundred francs.

Things are no different today: the bankers’ tables continue to offer everything that is most perfect in nature, that is earliest in the hothouses, that is most subtle in culinary art.

63: Causes of another order, although no less powerful, act on the doctors: they have gourmandism thrust upon them, and would have to be made of bronze to resist its seduction.

Our dear doctors are all the more welcome among us because health, which is under their special patronage, is the most precious of all our attributes; thus do they become spoiled children in the full force of the term.

Always waited for with impatience, they are welcomed with ceremony. It is a pretty invalid who summons them; it is a charming girl who greets them tenderly; it is a father, or a husband, who entrusts them with everything held most dear. Hope tugs at them from the right, and gratitude from the left; they are stuffed with dainties as if they were pet doves; they let themselves accept, and in six months they are used to it, and are hopeless gourmands [
PAST REDEMPTION
].

This is what I dared explain one day at a dinner party with eight others, under the chairmanship of Dr. Corvisart.
⁴
It was about 1806:

“You are,” I cried in the inspired voice of a Puritan preacher, “the last remaining members of a corporation which in the old
days took in the whole of France. Alas, the others have been destroyed or scattered: no more royal rent collectors, no more abbés, chevaliers, white monks; the whole gastronomical responsibility rests on you alone! Bear up bravely under this great responsibility, even if it means for you the fate of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae!”

I had spoken, and there was not a word of contradiction: we acted accordingly, and there the truth rests.

I made at this dinner an observation which is worth being made known.

Dr. Corvisart, who could be very agreeable when he wished, drank nothing but champagne chilled with ice. Thus, from the very beginning of the repast and while the other guests were eating, he was jolly, talkative, reminiscent. By the time for dessert, on the contrary, and when the general conversation began to grow more lively, he became solemn, taciturn, and even somewhat morose.

From this observation and from others like it I have deduced the following maxim:
Champagne, which is stimulating in its first effects
(ab initio),
is stupefying in those which follow
(in recessu); this is moreover a notorious effect of the carbonic acid gas which such wine contains.