The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (12 page)

The Complaint of Gluttony

The Roman emperors that succeeded Augustus were exceedingly given to this horrible vice, whereof some of them would feed on nothing but the tongues of pheasants and nightingales; others would spend as much at one banquet as a king's revenues came to in a year; whose excess I would decipher at large, but that a new laureate
²³⁵
hath saved me the labour, who, for a man that stands upon pains and not wit, hath performed as much as any story-dresser may do, that sets a new English nap on an old Latin apothegm. It is enough for me to lick dishes here at home, though I feed not mine eyes at any of the Roman feasts. Much good do it you, Master Dives, here in London; for you are he my pen means to dine withal.
Miserere mei
²³⁶
what a fat churl it is! Why, he hath a belly as big as the round church in Cambridge, a face as huge as the whole body of a base viol, and legs that, if they were hollow, a man might keep a mill
in either of them.
Experto crede
,
²³⁷
Roberto
, there is no mast
²³⁸
like a merchant's table.
Bona fide
, it is a great misture,
²³⁹
that we have not men swine as well as beasts, for then we should have pork that hath no more bones than a pudding and a side of bacon that you might lay under your head instead of a bolster.

Nature in England is but Plain Dame, but in Spain and Italy, because they have more use of her than we, she is dubbed a Lady

It is not for nothing that other countries, whom we upbraid with drunkenness, call us bursten-bellied gluttons; for we make our greedy paunches powdering-tubs
²⁴⁰
of beef, and eat more meat at one meal than the Spaniard or Italian in a month. Good thrifty men, they draw out a dinner with sallets,
²⁴¹
like a
Swart-rutter's
²⁴²
suit, and make
Madonna
Nature their best caterer. We must have our tables furnished like poulters' stalls, or as though we were to victual Noah's ark again wherein there was all sorts of living creatures that ever were, or else the good-wife will not open her mouth to bid one welcome. A stranger that should come to one of our
magnificoes
' houses, when dinner were set on the board, and he not yet set, would think the goodman of the house were a haberdasher of wildfowl, or a merchant venturer of dainty meat, that sells commodity of good cheer by the great,
²⁴³
and hath factors in Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Barbary, to provide him of strange birds, China mustard, and odd patterns to make custards by.
²⁴⁴

Lord, what a coil
²⁴⁵
we have, with this course and that course, removing this dish higher, setting another lower, and taking away the third. A general might in less space remove his camp, than they stand disposing of their gluttony. And whereto tends all this gourmandise, but to give sleep gross humours to feed on, to corrupt the brain, and make it unapt and unwieldy for anything?

The Roman censors, if they lighted upon a fat corpulent man, they straight away took away his horse, and constrained him to go afoot; positively concluding his carcase was so puffed up with gluttony or idleness. If we had such horse-takers amongst us, and that surfeit-swollen churls, who now ride on their foot-cloths, might be constrained to carry their flesh-budgets from place to place on foot, the price of velvet and cloth would fall with their bellies, and the gentle craft
²⁴⁶
(alias, the red herring's kinsmen) get more and drink less.
Plenus venter nil agit libenter, et plures gula occidit quam gladius
.
²⁴⁷
It is as desperate a piece of service to sleep upon a full stomach as it is to serve in face of the bullet; a man is but his breath, and that may as well be stopped by putting too much in his mouth at once, as running on the mouth of the cannon. That is verified of us, which Horace writes of an outrageous eater in his time,
Quicquid quæsierat ventri donabat avaro
; ‘whatsoever he could rap or rend, he confiscated to his covetous gut.' Nay, we are such flesh-eating Saracans
²⁴⁸
that chaste fish may not content us, but we delight in the murder of innocent mutton, in the unpluming of pullery,
²⁴⁹
and quartering of calves and oxen. It is horrible and detestable; no godly fishmonger that can digest it.

A Rare Witty Jest of Doctor Watson

Report, which our moderners clep
²⁵⁰
floundering Fame, puts me in memory of a notable jest I heard long ago of Doctor Watson,
²⁵¹
very conducible to the reproof of these fleshly-minded Belials.
*
He being at supper on a fasting or fish night at least, with a great number of his friends and acquaintance, there chanced to be in the company an outlandish
²⁵²
doctor, who, when all other fell to such victuals (agreeing to the time) as were before them, he over-slipped them, and there being one joint of flesh on the table for such as had weak stomachs, fell freshly to it. After that hunger, half conquered, had restored him to the use of his speech, for his excuse he said to his friend that brought him thither,
‘Profecto, Domine, ego sum malissimus piscator
,'
²⁵³
meaning by
piscator
, a fishman (which is a liberty, as also
malissimus
, that outlandish men in their familiar talk do challenge, at least above us).
‘At tu es bonissimus carnifex
,'
²⁵⁴
quoth Doctor Watson, retorting very merrily his own licentious figures upon him. So of us may it be said, we are
malissimi piscatores
, but
bonissimi carnifices
. I would English the jest for the edification of the temporality,
²⁵⁵
but that it is not so good in English as in Latin; and though it were as good, it would not convert clubs and clouted shoon from the flesh pots of Egypt to the provant of the Low Countries; for they had rather (with the servingman) put up a supplication to the Parliament
House that they might have a yard of pudding for a penny, than desire (with the baker) there might be three ounces of bread sold for a halfpenny.

The Moderation of Friar Alphonso, King Philip's Confessor

Alphonsus, King Philip's confessor, that came over with him to England, was such a moderate man in his diet, that he would feed but once a day, and at that time he would feed so slenderly and sparingly, as scarce served to keep life and soul together. One night, importunately invited to a solemn banquet, for fashion sake he sat down among the rest, but by no entreaty could be drawn to eat anything. At length, fruit being set on the board, he reached an apple out of the dish and put it in his pocket, which one marking, that sat right over against him, asked him,
‘Domine, cur es solicitus in crastinum?
– Sir, why are you careful for the morrow?' Whereto he answered most soberly,
‘Immo hoc facio, mi amice, ut ne sim solicitus in crastinum
. No, I do it, my friend, that I may not be careful for the morrow.' As though his appetite were a whole day contented with so little as an apple, and that it were enough to pay the morrow's tribute to nature.

The Strange Alteration of the County Molines, the Prince of Parma's Companion

Rare, and worthy to be registered to all posterities, is the County Moline's
²⁵⁶
(sometime the Prince of Parma's companion) altered course of life,, who, being a man that lived in as great pomp and delicacy as was possible for a man to do, and one that wanted nothing but a kingdom that his
heart could desire, upon a day entering into a deep melancholy by himself, he fell into a discursive consideration what this world was, how vain and transitory the pleasures thereof, and how many times he had offended God by surfeiting, gluttony, drunkenness, pride, whoredom, and such like, and how hard it was for him, that lived in that prosperity that he did, not to be entangled with those pleasures. Whereupon he presently resolved, twixt God and his own conscience, to forsake it and all his allurements, and betake him to the severest form of life used in their state. And with that called his soldiers and acquaintance together, and, making known his intent unto them, he distributed his living and possessions, which were infinite, amongst the poorest of them; and having not left himself the worth of one farthing under heaven, betook him to the most beggarly new erected
²⁵⁷
Order of the Friar Capuchines. Their institution is, that they shall possess nothing whatsoever of their own more than the clothes on their backs, continually to go barefoot, wear hair shirts, and lie upon the hard boards, winter and summer time. They must have no meat, nor ask any but what is given them voluntarily, nor must they lay up any from meal to meal, but give it to the poor, or else it is a great penalty. In this severe humility lives this devout County, and hath done this twelvemonth, submitting himself to all the base drudgery of the house, as fetching water, making clean the rest of their chambers, insomuch as he is the junior of the order. Oh, what a notable rebuke were his honourable lowliness to succeeding pride, if this prostrate spirit of his were not the servant of superstition, or he mispent not his good works on a wrong faith.

Let but our English belly-gods punish their pursy
²⁵⁸
bodies with this strict penance, and profess Capuchinism but one month, and I'll be their pledge they shall not grow so like dry-fats as they do. Oh, it will make them jolly longwinded,
to trot up and down the dorter
²⁵⁹
stairs, and the water-tankard will keep under the insurrection of their shoulders, the hair shirt will chase whoredom out of their bones, and the hard lodging on the boards take their flesh down a button-hole lower.

But if they might be induced to distribute all their goods amongst the poor, it were to be hoped Saint Peter would let them dwell in the suburbs of heaven, whereas otherwise they must keep aloof at Pancredge,
²⁶⁰
and not come near the liberties by five leagues and above. It is your doing, Diotrephes
²⁶¹
Devil, that these stall-fed cormorants to damnation must bung up all the wealth of the land in their snap-hance
²⁶²
bags, and poor scholars and soldiers wander in back lanes and the out-shifts of the city, with never a rag to their backs. But our trust is, that by some intemperance or other, you will turn up their heels one of these years together, and provide them of such unthrifts to their heirs, as shall spend in one week amongst good fellows what they got by extortion and oppression from gentlemen all their life-time.

The Complaint of Drunkenness

From gluttony in meats, let me descend to superfluity in drink: a sin that, ever since we have mixed ourselves with the Low Countries, is counted honourable, but, before we knew their lingering wars, was held in the highest degree of hatred that might be. Then, if we had seen a man go wallowing in the streets, or lain sleeping under the board, we would have spit at him as a toad, and called him foul drunken swine, and warned all our friends out of his company
. Now, he is nobody that cannot drink
super nagulum
,
*
carouse the hunter's hoop,
²⁶³
quaff
upsey freze cross
,
²⁶⁴
with healths, gloves, mumps, frolics,
²⁶⁵
and a thousand such domineering inventions. He is reputed a peasant and a boor that will not take his liquor profoundly. And you shall hear a cavalier of the first feather, a princox
²⁶⁶
that was but a page the other day in the Court, and now is all-to-be-frenchified in his soldier's suit, stand upon terms
²⁶⁷
with ‘God's wounds, you dishonour me, sir, you do me the disgrace if you do not pledge me as much as I drunk to you;' and, in the midst of his cups, stand vaunting his manhood, beginning every sentence with, ‘When I first bore arms', when he never bare anything but his lord's rapier after him in his life. If he have been over and visited a town of garrison, as a traveller or passenger, he hath as great experience as the greatest commander and chief leader in England. A mighty deformer of men's manners and features is this unnecessary vice of all other. Let him be indued with never so many virtues, and have as much goodly proportion and favour as nature can bestow upon a man, yet if he be thirsty after his own destruction, and hath no joy nor comfort but when he is drowning his soul in a gallon pot, that one beastly imperfection will utterly obscure all that is commendable in him, and all his good qualities sink like lead down to the bottom of his carousing cups, where they will lie like lees and dregs, dead and unregarded of any man.

Clim of the Clough,
²⁶⁸
thou that usest to drink nothing but scalding lead and sulphur in hell, thou art not so greedy of thy night gear. Oh, but thou hast a foul swallow if it come once to carousing of human blood; but that's but seldom, once in seven year, when there's a great execution, otherwise thou art tied at rack and manger, and drinkest nothing but the
aqua vitæ
of vengeance all thy life-time. The proverb gives it forth thou art a knave, and therefore I have more hope thou art some manner of good fellow.
²⁶⁹
Let me entreat thee, since thou hast other iniquities enough to circumvent us withal, to wipe this sin out of the catalogue of thy subtleties; help to blast the vines, that they may bear no more grapes, and sour the wines in the cellars of merchants' store-houses, that our countrymen may not piss out all their wit and thrift against the walls.

King Edgar's Ordinance Against Drinking

King Edgar, because his subjects should not offend in swilling and bibbing, as they did, caused certain iron cups to be chained to every fountain and well's side, and at every vintner's door, with iron pins in them, to stint every man how much he should drink; and he that went beyond one of those pins forfeited a penny for every draught. And, if stories were well searched, I believe hoops in quart pots were invented to that end, that every man should take his hoop, and no more.