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RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE
To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as
follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency
of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough.
Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned
up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry
in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature.
Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and
of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples;
aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron;
add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder
on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies.
Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.
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RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE
Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory
berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former
into the water. Continue the boiling and evaporation
until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee
and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree;
then set aside to cool. Now unharness the remains of a
once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press,
and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that
pale-blue juice which a German superstition regards
as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket
of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the
beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep
a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement.
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TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION
Use a club, and avoid the joints.
CHAPTER L
[Titian Bad and Titian Good]
I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed
as much indecent license today as in earlier times
- but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been
sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years.
Fielding and Smollett could portray the beastliness
of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty
of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are
not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice
and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art.
The brush may still deal freely with any subject,
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze
sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see
what this last generation has been doing with the statues.
These works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages,
are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can
help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous.
But the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf
is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still
cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious
symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.
At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted
by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with
accumulated grime - they hardly suggest human beings
- yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and
conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation.
You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little
gallery that exists in the world - the Tribune - and there,
against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf,
you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest,
the obscenest picture the world possesses - Titian's Venus.
It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed - no,
it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I
ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine
howl - but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat
over that wants to - and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges.
I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw
young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged,
infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her - just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world - just to hear
the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says
that no worded description of a moving spectacle is
a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen
with one's own eyes - yet the world is willing to let its
son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast,
but won't stand a description of it in words.
Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it
might be.
There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure
thought - I am well aware of that. I am not railing
at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that
Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it
was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong.
In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public
Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune;
persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am
referring to.
In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures
of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction - pictures
portraying intolerable suffering - pictures alive
with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail - and similar pictures are being put on the canvas
every day and publicly exhibited - without a growl from
anybody - for they are innocent, they are inoffensive,
being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured
to go into a painstaking and elaborate description
of one of these grisly things - the critics would skin
him alive.
