I was once invited to the house of a certain writer who had made a name for himself by several very clever novels and had acquired a fortune by the publication of a successful journal. He was now living on an estate in the country, retired from active life, spending his days in luxurious peace. Much too soon, as I very quickly found out. For he was in no sense old. A man about fifty whose eyes still looked challengingly at the world. His look had in it nothing of the asceticism of one who is tired of life. No; here the fire of secret passions still blazed; here one could still detect power, ambition, and desires.
Much in his conduct seemed puzzling to me. A stony calm, a certain lassitude in his movements,—an enforced pose calculated to conceal the internal restlessness which his eyes could not help betraying.
Only when the time to eat came he became all life. Then he stretched his neck aloft, that he might see clearly the dish that was being brought in. His nostrils dilated as if the sooner to inhale the delightful aroma. His mouth made remarkable twitching movements and his tongue moved over his thin lips with that peculiar [Pg 81]rapid movement that one may observe in a woman when she is engaged in animated conversation with a man. He became restless, fidgetted nervously in his chair, and followed tensely the distribution of the food by his wife, a corpulent, energetic and almost masculine woman, who, very naturally and to his secret distress, helped her guests first. Finally—much too late to suit him—he received his portion. First he regarded his food with the eye of an expert, turning it from side to side with his knife and fork. Then he cut off a small piece and rolled it about in his mouth with audible clucking and smacking of his tongue, let it rest on his tongue awhile, his face the meantime assuming an expression of visionary ecstasy. It was easy to see that for him eating had become the day’s most important task. During the meal he never stopped talking of the excellence of the food, all the while smacking his tongue and lips, and literally expounding a system of culinary criticism.
When finally, to my great relief, the grace after dinner had been pronounced, I hoped at last to be done with the wearying, unpleasant chatter about eating. But this time I had really reckoned without my host.
“What shall we serve our guests to-morrow, my dear?” the gourmand inquired of his sterner half.
“To-morrow? The big white goose with the black patch.”
[Pg 82]
“The big white goose with the black patch! Ah! She’ll taste wonderful! You don’t know how childishly happy it makes me. Come, let me show you the white goose with the black patch!”
Resistance was useless. I had to go into the poultry-yard, where my host stopped in front of a well-fed goose. “She’ll make a fine roast! I am greatly pleased with this goose.”
No matter what subject was discussed, political, literary, or economic, the main motif kept recurring: “I love to think of the big white goose with the black patch!”
The meaning of gourmandism then suddenly flashed on me. What passions must this man have suppressed, how much must he have renounced, before his craving for pleasure had found new delights in this roundabout way! Behind this monomaniac delight in eating, thought I, there must lurk a great secret.
And such was indeed the case. My amiable host was really his wife’s prisoner. While he was residing in the capital he had begun to indulge in a perversion. His vice grew on him to such an extent that it threatened to destroy everything, health, fortune, mind, ambition, personality, spirit, everything. There was nothing left for him to do but to tell his wife all and implore her assistance in saving him. The virile woman soon hit on the only remedy. He became her prisoner. They broke off all relationships that bound them to their social group. Most of the year they spent in the [Pg 83]country and lived in the city only two or three winter months. The time was spent in eating and card playing, to which fully half of the day was devoted. He was never alone. At most he was permitted to take a short walk in the country. His wife had charge of the family treasury, with which he had nothing to do. Of course, this did not cure his pathological craving, but it made gratification impossible. And gradually there began to develop in him the pleasure for delicate dishes. In this indirect way he satisfied a part of his sensuous craving. Thus he transformed his passion. His meals took the place of the hours spent in the embraces of a lover. For him eating was a re-coinage of his sexuality.
Is this an exceptional case, or is this phenomenon the rule? This is the first question that forces itself on our attention. An answer to it would take us into the deeps of the whole sexual problem. But let us limit ourselves for the present only to what is essential for an answer to our immediate question. Between hunger and love there is an endless number of associations. The most important is this: both are opposed by one counter-impulse, namely, disgust. Both love and hunger are desires to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired object); disgust is the fear of doing so. Love is accompanied with a counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. But this very feeling, [Pg 84]shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in connection with eating. In Tahiti, says Cook, not even the members of the family eat together, but eat seated several metres apart and with their backs to one another. The Warua, an African tribe, conceal their faces with a cloth while they are drinking. The Bakairi are innocent of any sense of shame in connection with nakedness, but never eat together.
The Viennese psychiatrist Freud, the Englishman Havelock Ellis (“The Sexual Impulse”), and the Spanish Sociologist Solila, regard the sucking of the breast by an infant as a kind of sexual act which creates permanent associations between hunger and love. And the language we speak has coined certain turns of expression which bring these connections out unmistakably and which have great interest for us as fossilisations of primitive thought processes and as rudiments of cannibalism. Note, for example, the following expressions: “I could bite her”; or, “I love the child so I could eat it up!” But we express even disgust, aversion and hatred in terms of eating, e.g., “I can’t stomach the fellow,” or, “he turns my stomach,” “she is not to my taste,” etc.
On the other hand the names of certain dishes reveal connections with other emotional complexes than the pure pleasure of eating. There is an everyday symbolism which we all pass by blindly. Let him who has any interest [Pg 85]in this subject read Rudolph Kleinpaul’s book, “Sprache ohne Worte” (Language without Words). This symbolism plays a much more important r?le than we are wont to admit. For it alone is capable of interpreting the puzzling names of the various delicacies on the bill of fare. We are cannibals, for we eat “Moors in their ‘Jackets’” (a fine revenge on the tawny cannibals!) “poor knights,” “master of the chase,” “apprentice-locksmith,” and many more of the same kind. “Bridal roast” holds an important place in the menus of the whole world. Social inferiority ............