Show guy (b n boLL ' I - jvS LtDE mm Cm n ing and overdrinking was to press a bell that summoned them V Th V VST The Duke of Norfolk's footmen used to come to the table at midnight with a stretcher to bear him away His last act before failing asleep from overeat- LC o r44 I - -- —""" Our ancestors of 'V fv J w W v - a century and more ago would have thought one of our "heavy meals" a mere snack — but we don't have to be carried from the table or shoved through narrow doors and we live longer! "ft i' x -- VV ft! "VV''vJs'- V liness vyJyyV w a of whom Walpol© said that he was in a habitually verminous condition "There was the future Philip Egalite looking already at 37 an old man: for his hair was falling out and his intensely dissipated appearance was in no way improved by a chronic skin infection of his face which after the fashion of a dolphin in its death throes assumed in turn every color conceivable "There was the Duke of Queensbury who was whispered to rejuvenate himself in baths of milk daily so that there were people in London who refused to buy that commodity for fear it might have in the figured Duke's ablutions v 'Vy'"X:"'NV' 'VV W'V7-- In "Don Quixote" Dieting was not unknown even in gluttony's heyday Panza Sancho who needed a poor atreally good meal was tormented tendants who snatched away his food lest it hurt his health by By Dr o CHRISTMAS us that they are H We are better of? more fit likely to live longer and die less unpleasantly "when our time doe? come because we have cut down the dimensions of the Christmas feast— -- and with them the dimen' sions of the Christmas feastet It is the modern cult of keeping fit that has No longer is "fair fat and turned the trick safe compliment 'to offer a matron forty" a Fashion as well as common sense demands that Madam maintain general outlines not too unlike those of Mesdemoiselles her daughters And if the head of the house has inches ia his to match the years in his age hia friends do not refer to it in the old complimentary French term "embonpoint" (which in English means literally "in good point")—-they- 'll josh him about his "German goiter" and indulge in similar heavy pleasantries until in sheer desperation he resorts to doctor dietitian and golf pro in an effort to get back in trim This does not mean that the present generaOn the contrary we eat tion feeds badly better than our ancestors did though we do eat less But we have a wider variety of foods from more lands and climates better kept and better prepared We really enjoy our modest festival meals with a greater relish than our did And we enjoy life better afterwards We have more pep and alertness we are more fit waist-measu- 1 o a Frank Thone feasting isn't what it The good old are gone And well for Such is the verdict of medical science (ml ?tr re with Currant Jelly Sauce for the first Course The Second Course a couple of Wild Fowl called Dun Fowls Larks Blancmange Tarts etc and a good Dessert of Fruit after amongst which was a Damson Cheese "I never eat a bit of Swan before and i think it good eating with sweet sauce The swan was killed three weeks before it Was eat and yet not the least bad taste in it Sister Clarke Nancy Sam and Myself all took it into our heads to take a good dose of Rhubarb before going to bed" And that was not Christmas either — just an dinner on an only slightly ordinary first-clamore than everyday occasion — maybe a Sunday The prosperous classes of that time evening crammed themselves with a diet like Eskimos but without the Eskimos' necessity for doing it and also (especially) without the Eskimos strenuous life in the cold outdoors to give it physiological justification ' And just to paint the lily of their gluttony they poured butter sauces over their dishes they swam them in thick gravies they sweetened already sweet foods with syrups and honey-- as we still do with a relatively limited number of things notably sweet potatoes But our even put honey on Is it any wonder that their circumference meat often exceeded their height or that their womenfolk tended to be — well billowy rather than willowy? l I f Kky :t 'x t - a: v f i K ss meat-tophea- vy too-numero- us I - J—-- - ' - - ' T Henry Vlil of England was able but not "fit" Holbein put all of the great king's gluttony and drunkenness into his celebrated portrait reproduced here — held in his home city of Cleveland Dr Todd went on to depict some of the unlovely effects of this kind of living on both the men and the women of those times: "The Duke of Norfolk ivhose four footmen were habitually summoned toward midnight with a stretcher to remove his THE modest evening repast here outlined huge bulk from the dining table of whom with only eight kinds of meat and game it is recorded that he never showed intoxiwas dug up out of the records of an overstuffed cation but would suddenly" fall asleep and full--I- -"VOU may think that a present-da- y age by Dr T Wingate Todd of Western Rewhose last act before sleep overtook him fledged Christmas dinner starting say serve University for the edification of a recent was to press the bell which summoned the with an oyster cocktail proceeding to the demo footmen to carry him off meeting of the American Dietetic Association lition of turkey dressing sweet po"There was the Lady Pom-fre- t tatoes and all the rest of the "trim'dancing away with all her mings" and- - winding up with hot fat loosely shaking like blancI mange that sporting Mr Clark if i mince pic nuts and bonbons is This is an admiral who defeated a French pretty formidable challenge to the who was found jammed in the " J" ' S f It is too fleet but he was so fat that a contemhuman digestive system staircase of his' lodging and it dietitians may shrug and Jet porary caricaturist showed him trundling go could only be extricated with his own paunch on a wheelbarrow for once or twice in the year but difficulty y J they will wash their hands of you if "There was Sir John Lade insist it with on doing any you the - wogden-face- d undersized and "There was Dr Johnson who could be regularity n not over-cleaMr n:phcw ql persuaded only by Henry Thrail to change his But your ancestors of only a cenhis mother Lady Lade six Thrale shirt and even then not before it became indis tury ago would have thought one feet tall in her shoes and completely pensably necessary and who at least once was of our "heavy dinners" only a step in appearance i Gibbon afTrohted by a Mr Mitchell on the subject of spherical or two above fare fit only for U at fleas fretting finding himself 'in ihe monks invalids or prisoners in jail servile state of a v married as "There they all were a host of loutish perman' '5 'J j Read the account of a really good he himself expressed his guardiansons of uncertain temper blotchy unlovely faces dinner recorded in the diary of an of Lady Sheffield at Brighton ship and staggering blood pressure whose physicians ordinary English country vicar ' in the morning lounging on working cupped them' by the quart who despite thqr ' t about tbet beginning of jhe J9th ' theSteine iri the afternoon and ocsagging paunches scurvy' skins their century i 'after due casionally and barbaric jokes knew well how to preparation "We bad for dinner a Calf's and advice' taking a bath choose an architect create a townscape or conhead boiled Fowl and Tongue A "There was Beauclerk duct a ceremonial affair" Topham Saddle of- Mutton rosted on the A "respectable" old age in the good old a cursed mixture of singular intellectual For that is the other and amazing side oI days— Side: Table and a fine' Swan rosted with gout the result of overfeeding fastidiousness and personal unclean the picture (Copyright J8SB by nrtryTeli Mapkxin and Selene Service) great-grandfathe- rs great-grandsir- es o i s "-- :-' ir: — o A & ll J JP 1 ce - p O " ' DIDIiniOilllllfllllllfM illllllllllliliiliDHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinii' wheezy apopletic creatures were not ignorant clowns or racetrack touts or or politicians of the lower sort gangsters among whom we might today seek the same repellent conditions (though in a milder degree): they were the rulers the masters of finance the literary and intellectual geniusej of their time They were as far from fit in the modern sense as can be imagined but they were effectual They produced works that we still wonder at: they set up political and economic arrangements that still dominate our daily lives Dr Todd emphasizes this point that fitness and effectiveness have no necessary connection with each other In researches conducted under the auspices of the Brush Foundation on the physical and mental condition of present-da- y school children many of the brightest were found among the most ailing and in the past "The whole history of literature and art is a history of invalids" "Fitness js quite another thing" Dr Todd declares "It is fitness that preserves for us a body and brain that can be trusted to do what the will commands The joys of health and have no necessary relation to the office strength or the workbench but they add to the excellence of life" Dickens who has become a sort of literary patron saint of Christmas and especially I of Christmas feasting "nursed a mistaken nostalgia for the overstuffed festivities of the generation which preceded his own For Dickens lived in the earlier days of Queen Victoria's feign when the conservative "New Deal" of 19th century Britain had banished the high feeding the drunkenness the frequent hostility tc soap that had character ized the intellectually more brilliant "society" of a few decades before y rpHESE i THE glowing descriptions of Christmas feasting and wassail one finds in many of his writings were backward glances toward "good old days" that were not much farther behind hfm than the "gay 90s" are behind their curious revival of the past couple of years And as wr forget the tela-liv- e crudities of those days so Dickens tor the got grossness of the epoch he liked to view through a rosy mist of sentiment Even without knowing it be painted the ill effects of overeating on the wrong kind of food in his caricature of thecSpirit of Old Scrooge Scrooge quarreled with his nephew browbeat his poor little clerk went home grouchily © the fog with a cold in his head — all the results of most palpable bad feeding and lom of fit condition When he saw the ghost of his former partner Marley he blamed it on indigestion Yet when Scrooge awakened on Christmas morning a 'changed man bis first acts were to provide a huge dinner for his poor little clerk and then go and eat a huge dinner It must not be thought that the gorging gentry of 1 00 years ago west unrebuked even ta their own day Some of the caricaturists of the late 18th and early I9th eeasturies unhampered by the restraints that have corse bto polite use since their time were simply merciless So a W were many of the earlier artists m their treatment of similar gluttons of preceding cenEven the great Holbein court painter turies was did not omit from his numerous he though paintings of Henry VIII the grossness sensuality and cruelty of that fat monarch Anti-Christm- as fj n |