er MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD
NICOLSON • WAS interested by a photograph which appeared in the news- • paper last week of a lady who keeps a turkey-farm in Norfolk.
Such are the depredations of those who supply the black market that this lady has been obliged to train her turkeys to roost in the trees at night. Ladders are provided by which the birds ascend to the high branches, and once they have reached their resting-places the ladders are removed for the night. The area which surrounds these dormitories is defended by trip wires, which sound alarms, and patrolled by watchmen armed with guns. These formidable devices and defences indicate that as the festive season approaches there is in this country a demand for turkeys so wide and deep that traffickers are tempted thereby to defy the law. This strikes me as strange. The turkey is a bad bird, edible only when accompanied by cran- berry sauce ; it is not even indigenous, and I fail to understand why it should be expected to grace our Saturnalia or the Thanksgiving Days of our American relations. The explanation, I suppose, is that the turkey, although dull, is large ; and that we retain sufficient Cromagnon instincts to enjoy encumbering our feasts with animals which are too big for any modern to eat. Within my own lifetime, and as a result of two major wars, the Englishman has lost his former capacity for absorbing enormous quantities of food. I am told by those who have recently visited Switzerland or the United States that our conditioned appetites actually _quail at the sight of the large lumps of meat which even the most fastidious Swiss or American ladies will consume. I have myself experienced a faint feeling of nausea when faced with the heavy meals which the debased consciences of my French friends allow them to acquire from the black market. And I rejoice that the restrictions which have for so long been imposed upon us have inculcated a habit of abstinence which even at Christmas renders us ascetic and extremely refined. Let other nations guzzle 'while we stick to our nice little ration-books.
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Plum pudding is a different matter. It is round and seasonal ; it carries a sprig of holly as its plume and contains sixpences inside ; it can be coaxed, with slight trouble and expense, to burst into blue flame ; and on the morning after the feast it can be eaten cold. Moreover it is a national institution, even when accompanied by its silly little satellite mince pies. I can. recall that when in extreme youth I visited France or Germany the urchins in the streets would greet my passage with derisive cries of " Oh Yes ! Plumpudding I " I was at the time wounded by these remarks, since they implied a criticism of our handling of the Boer war. I should welcome them today, since they suggest the rich and solid continuity of our national life. In fact plum pudding remains for me today the sole vestige of that high sense of occasion with which Christmas used to be invested. Even the least excitable among us should derive, when Christmas Day dawns, some stirrings at least of memory ; those who have the good fortune to have children in the house can even recapture something of that forgotten sense of wonder which that morning used to evoke ; and can ape the delighted surprise, or the carefully concealed disappointment, with which, many years ago, we used to receive our presents and, panting with anticipation, untie the strings. I have come to the conclusion, none the less, that I have never really enjoyed feasts, do not enjoy feasts today, and shall not, in such years as may remain to me, even pretend to enjoy a feast again. They are, in fact, a survival of barbaric times and are devoid of social value.
The Attic feasts of which we have read so much were not in practice very lavish. A few radishes to start with, a slice of anchovy, and thereafter eels from Lake Copais, a thrush perhaps, perhaps a hare or partridge, and biscuits to wind up with flavoured with sesame sand honey. To the Athenians (whose main diet was dried fish, oil and garlic) these dinners must have appeared most sumptuous. But there were no Lucullan banquets in the age of Pericles, and such
indulgence would have appeared to the Greeks of the fifth century as oriental and therefore to be despised. It is incredible to us that people could ever have eaten as much as the Romans ate or that any pleasure at all can have been derived from the long-drawn banquets of Tiberius and Nero and the truly revolting habit. of the vomitorium. Nor should I ever have enjoyed lying upon a sofa in order to eat my meals.. The modern man, and to some extent the modern woman, wishes to have his meals seated on a chair with a table in front of him ; he has become accustomed to such new- fangled instruments as knives and forks and spoons ; only on very rare occasions, and in conditions of great amenity, do the moderns (however much they may pretend) enjoy picnics. The clumsiness which I myself display when obliged to have breakfast in bed con- vinces me that I should have cut a poor figure when faced with a triclinium. Nor do I believe that the ancient practice of lying on sofas at meals can have contributed very readily to general conversa- tion. One could discuss the nature of the beautiful and the good with the persons reclining on each side of one and with the person immediately opposite ; but the space occupied by these large sofas must haw: rendered the rest of the company star-scattered, and have precluded even the most forceful conversationalist from being heard except by his immediate neighbours. I feel that I should have loathed a Tiberian banquet: I should have felt inaudible, deafened, uncomfortable and very ill.
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In centuries to come it may seem a primitive convention under which men and women gathered together and consumed food in each other's presence. Our remote descendants may swallow their vitamin tablets and their compressed essences in the privacy of their own bedrooms and may regard it as shocking and uncouth to absorb nutrition in public. Although I should regard such delicacy as morbid, and although r believe that the common consumption of liquids and solids contributes much to social intercourse, I would not claim that in these centuries of human progress we have yet discovered the ideal method of entertaining our friends. There was, I suppose, some point in the lavish dinners and receptions of the past, in that they enabled the rich to display their riches and furnished an opportunity for women to wear their diamonds and men to preen themselves with blue or scarlet ribbons across their chests. But there can surely be no point in the banquets of the present, at which the drab citizens of the modern world eat plaice together to the accompaniment of half a glass of Algerian wine. Nor should I wish to see introduced into this country the Spartan system of common meals, at which the men and maidens had their sparse messes in order 'to achieve Gleichschaltung. We have got to face the fact that big parties are only tolerable when they are very expensive ; that today no serious person would desire to give or to receive expensive parties ; and that therefore the whole system of entertainment ,must be changed. It should be established that no party can be a good party if there are more than eight people present, and there should 'exist rirtn and women of integrity and courage who should loudly proclaim (what everybody feels) that large banquets or receptions today cause, not pleasure, but pain.
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With what relief would my compatriots welcome a decree under which there should be no more public dinners, no more toast- masters and speeches, no more queuing up for coats and hats when the whole dreary business has come to an end, but only small quiet gatherings at which eight people would sit around a table in intimate contact and exchange their personal ideas regarding the nature of the beautiful and the good. It is not that I am unsociable in such matters ; it is that I am sociable and that I enjoy listening to good conversation. In such restricted company let there be mince-pies and plum pudding and even crackers ; and, if you insist, the descendants also of the. Meleagris Gallopavo, first introduced into Europe in 1533. That dull bird.
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