Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1913 — SOME FAMOUS FFASIS RECALLED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SOME FAMOUS FFASIS RECALLED

by Edward 3. Clerk

i a ECENTLY there was given in Paris a great feast to the mayors of France. Some of the French newspaper men -■’il. y declared unthinkingly perhaps that in the point of the numbers fed and in the Bumptiousness of the banquet it f Ilf#* was the greatest afTair of the kind ever given In the II \ If the Paris correspondents are Frenchmen they are _to be forgiven, perhaps, for leaving out of their calculation another Parisian feast given nearly five hundred l iy#' years ago. At that banquet 100,000 people were fed. iflS Wine was not served from bottles, but the revelers filled their flagons and cups from fountains which ran the product of champagne and Burgundy throughout the *4 livelong day. It waß the English King Henry V. who

gave this feast, and it was in celebration of his conquest of France and of his being declared king regent of that country. Of a truth the Parisians may be forgiven if their minds revert not to that former festival. -As a matter of fact there are in gastronomic history scores of dinners that outdid in the number of diners and in the elegance of appointment the one which the government of France gave to the mayors of the country’s municipalities. The story of the banquet which Tigellinus gave to Nero, as it appears in “Quo Vadis,” has foundation in fact. That feast was held on a raft made of gilded timbers, the structure being moored to the shore by fheans of golden ropes. The whole earth contributed of its birds, mammals, fish and plants to the spreading forth of the table. The entire revenue of a Roman province for a year went to pay the cost. The canopy which was spread over the heads of the diners was of Syrian purple, while the glassware was “the plunder of Italy, Greece and Asia Minor.” The cost of the French mayors’ banquet, putting it at $250,000, sinks into the pit of insignificance compared with the amount of money which a single man, Marcus Gabius, spent on his appetite. This Roman epicure of the early empire ‘period paid $4,000,000 for the gratification of his palate. When he had spent all of his money barring a trifle of $400,000, he poisoned himself in order that he might avoid the misery of being forced to live on a plain diet. One needs to go no. farther than to England to find a feast at which more people were fed than partook of the French government’s hospitality. When Henry Ill’s daughter Margaret married Alexander 111 of Scotland, 60,000 people partook of the royal hospitality at one sitting. A curious feature of this banquet was the serving to the assembled multitude of whales and porpoises, sea mammals which the English of that day regarded as the chief of delicacies. That their taste may not haVe been of the most refined may be guessed perhaps from the fact that on the same day they ate gluttonously cranes, herons and hawks, birds that would turn the stomach of the bon vivant of today. The Scotch and English on that occasion, in addition to other edibles, disposed of 100 oxen specially fattened for the feast. The French people may find an instance in their own history of a dinner given by the government in the person of the king, which for novelty and cost far surpassed the gathering at the board of the mayors. Near the end of the fourteenth century Charles V of France wanted to do something nice for the emperor of Germany, so he' invited him to dinner, promising him as an inducement to come something which he had never seen before. The emperor came, and guests to the number of many hundreds were seated about the board in a great open pavilion. When the banquet had reached the point between fish and fowl a shadow fell athwart the table, and looking up the astounded banqueters beheld a full-rigged ship with'sails all set bearing down upon them. It was impelled across the land by unseen and noiseless machinery. At the edge of the pavilion thb vessel cast anchor.

On ft* deck was seen a knight representing Godfrey de Bouillon surrounded by .scores of men at arms. Nosooner had the anchor been dropped than there appeared at about one hhndred yards distance the city of .Jerusalem, with Its walls and turrets manned by Saracens. The knights, led by Godfrey, left the vessel, pitched a camp and then attacked the city. The Saracens defended Its walls vigorously, and so realistic was the fight that a large number of the besieged and besiegers were injured. When the affair was over Charles V and his German guest went back to their hotel. The stories of the Arabian Nights’ feasts are glittering. It is an easy matter to pick out three or lour which would surpass the French affair, , but the trouble Is the stories are fiction pure and simple. There, is, howv ever, one absolutely authentic account of an oriental feast, beside %hlch all the other banquets of history are but as candles to the Bun. The Caliph El-ma-Moon was to be married to the daughter of a rich dignitary. The

prospective son-in-law wished to do things in proper style, so he asked everybody, rich and poor alike, within 100 miles of his residence, to attend the marriage feast. The historical accounts of the affair say that ten great palaces with all their rooms could not have given standing room to the multitudes that came. When the people had assembled, the poor as if by instinct, herded together while the rich kept by themselves. In order that the common people might not become impatient while waiting for their dinner, the caliph and his bride stood upon a great platform and directed the movements of a Bcore of servants whose labor it was to shower ,the poorer guestß with gold coin. The coin storm was succeeded by one of small bags of ambergris as valuable as the glittering gold which it followed. Then, as a further diversion, balls of musk were thrown among the people, who scrambled and struggled mightily for their-'possession. Inside each musk ball was a ticket which entitled the lucky holder to enough land, slaves and horses to make him Independently rich. The guests all sat down to dinner together and were served by an army of attendants. If they had been at one long table the man whot sat at the head could not have seen the man who faced him at the foot. One of the features of this dinner was a candle of ambergris weighing 80 pounds. This candle, worth a fortune in itself, was kept alight for days by the eastern potentate, who literally had money to bum. The candle was In a gold candlestick weighing many pounds. The bride sat at meat with the guests, and as she took her place at the table her grandmother approached and emptied a bucket of pearls over her head. x The caliph’s father-in-law “went broke” over this banquet and in order that he might reimburse himself the caliph made him satraps of one of the richest Persian provinces. Inasmuch as the holding of this office carried with it the privilege of raising or lowering taxes at will, it may be imagined that the feast-giver was not long in getting even. The Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, if he could! have been consulted through a proper spiritualistic medium, would have been able to give the Parisians some sound advice on how to feed a multitude. There sat down daily as the guests and -retainers of the Earl of Warwick during the height of his power not less than 30,000 persons. The Earl was a good entertainer, and some of the banquets which he gave have lived in history, but more because of their size than because of their sumptuousness. He was a believer in beef and ale rather than in phasants and champagne. The kingmaker lived some four centuries or more ago, but may it not be said with some truth today that the different ideas that then existed in England and France as to the proper food exist in a large measure today and find soma reflex in the characters of two great peoples?