BryonySeries Throwback Thursday: "Of Diets Most Diabolical," by Sir Frederick Chook

hursday, December 29, 2011

"Of Diets Most Diabolical," by Sir Frederick Chook

Of Diets Most Diabolical
By Sir Frederick Chook

Sir Frederick Chook is a foppish, transcendentalistic historian and the author of FrillyShirt. He lives variously by his wits, hand to mouth, la vie bohème, and in MELBOURNE with his wife, Lady Tanah Merah. When not reading Milton and eating Stilton, he writes, ponders, models, delves into dusty archives, and gads about town. He has dabbled in student radio and in national politics, and is presently studying the ways of the shirt-sleeved archivist. He is a longhair, aspiring to one day be a greybeard. He has, once or twice, been described as “as mad as a bicycle.” Read his collected works at http://www.frillyshirt.org/. 

For a number of years, I have been a practising vegetarian (a curious expression - a non-practising vegetarian would, I suppose, be one brought up in the faith, but who now only forgoes meat at Easter and Christmas.) Meatless diets have been proscribed throughout history, by different persons and with different reasons. The Shelleys condemned the eating of flesh as causing disease and madness, including the social maladies of crime and tyranny. Many religions advocate against, limit or forbid the consumption of meat, ranging from the absolute reverence of life held by Jains to the pre-Flood vegetarianism described in Genesis. H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, with its description of captured humans used as a sort of cattle by the technocratic Martians, caused some popular revulsion to meat-eating, though the author's intention was more a metaphor for Britain's colonial expansion - but then, the reading public is terribly sensitive about its food. Upton Sinclar had a similar experience when describing the meat industry in The Jungle, I believe.

Compared to these varied schools and creeds, my own motives for vegetarianism are... astonishingly poorly thought out. They are, in part, moral: the receiving end of an industrial process is no place for anything with a brain. They are partly ecological - a perception that an overall reduction in demand for meat would be a good thing for the planet. Partly, it's because I know that without an absolute restriction, I wouldn't have the willpower not to gobble down every deep-fried burger strudle which passed across my plate, particularly given that I wouldn't necessarily know where it had come from. And, of course, some of it is simply a groaningly literal matter of taste. Now, you may have noticed that at least three of these concerns could be allayed by restricting myself to meat which I had secured myself - by hunting, for example, or at a traditional farm. Quite right, which leaves only the personal side of the equation: my sentimental discomfort with feasting on some doe-eyed creature who never meant me a moment's harm.

Obviously, the problem is irrational, but the solution is rationality itself: I should eat only malicious animals! Creatures whose designs against me are even now being spun; who would themselves, given half a chance, serve me up as rissoles. Why, such a diet would not only be perfectly justifiable, but is practically essential for my continued self-preservation! The only trifling objection - scarecely worth mentioning, really - is that it's questionable whether any such animal actually exists. Indeed, the overlap between those species which A: are mentally capable of understanding right and wrong, B: could pose a threat to me, C: are not justly protected against predation, owing to dwindling numbers, habitat, etc., and D: are edible, let alone tasty, is likely incredibly slight. In the face of this, there's only one thing to be done: if no candidate creatures exist, then I shall eat creatures which do not exist. Thus, I outline: the principles of a mythitarian diet!

There is no shortage of mythical beings who bear us ill will; indeed, the very names "ghouls", "goblins" and "bogeymen" are synonymous with, well, ghouls, goblins and bogeymen. Not all of these are edible - banshees, for example, are famously hard to trap and harder still to hold (not least for the municipal noise pollution restrictions.) The stony skin of the troll is impenetrable to mortal cutlery, while tasting the flesh of the wendigo puts the diner at considerable risk of becoming a wendigo, which is why it is rarely seen served in the best restaurants. Despite these drawbacks, fantastical meat is in surprisingly common use; many readers, for instance, will likely have eaten a Cornish pasty made with the traditional filling of diced onion, swedes and spriggan, or even participated in the gathering, plucking and carving of jack-o'-lanterns for Halloween.

Mythmeat has a culture all of its own, which seemed daunting when I first made the transition away from mundane meat. Centaur and gremlin are stock fare, found on every table, but bunyip is emerging as an affordable meat with a range to please the gourmet, comparable to the rise of beef in the American diet in the 20th century. The inner cities have seen something of a fad for corner-stand breaded ogre cutlets, which are easy to eat on the go, but prices are rising as ogre feed (children, mostly) is proving hard to secure in quantity. Now, vampire - vampire is an unusual case. It was never to everyone's taste - no matter how much you cook it, it always comes out rare - but the animal-rights crowd don't like to eat anything which was recently a living, breathing creature, while the fresh-food crowd don't like anything which wasn't. It's not even remotely sustainable, but a boutique industry has sprung up providing vampires which have felt the chill of undeath just long enough to forget their last shreds of humanity, without yet being twisted into something foul and chewy.

Naturally, when discussing moral or political issues, one must cast up the usual caveats: unlike a teacher on exam day, I cannot pretend to have all the right answers, every generation sows the seeds of the next generation's rebellion, and so forth. Perhaps, one day, the image of a bucolic gnomeherd stomping through a field full of scampering gnomes, all waving tiny pitchforks and swearing like sailors, grabbing them up by their little red caps and stuffing them into his sack, will come to be seen as comically backward. We must live in the house of cards we're dealt, to mangle metaphors, and as things stand, the best source of nutrition for many communities - particularly where crops are poor and grazing land scant - is to knock a faerie on the head and get in the icebox before it turns to soot with the dawn. I'm not saying there isn't excess and waste - the number of sky-buffalo killed for their wings alone is an outrage - but the ecological cost is minimal, and the pixie dust produced as waste is easily treated and recycled for use by the medicinal and aeronautical industries.

Well, thank you for hearing out the ramblings of a chap with mermaid stains on his cuffs! Now, if you'll excuse me, my dessert has just disappeared, so I've got to go will it back into existence. I -do- believe in coulis, I -do-, I -do-!

"Wigtraption" is now a word

 Or so says my publicist DulcineaHawksworth who, armed with photos, has been shopping 'round for the appropriate long locks to transform an ordinary twenty-first century mortal into the nineteenth century immortal John Simons, for book trailer purposes of course.

Yesterday, Dulcinea met me at the P. Seth Magosky Museum of Victorian Life in Joliet and helped me piece together men's period clothing for James Onohan and "John Simons" for Wednesday's shooting of the Bryony music video and trailers.

Dulcinea is full of modification tips and hopes to attend the filming where, with "pins and needles" she can give my pseudo-vampires the right late 1890s look. I sure hope she can make it, because I don't have her "nip and tuck" talent. I can tell if an outfit's right only after assembly.

Joining us were two of my sons, Christopher and Daniel, who received their first tour of the museum, including the awesome view of Joliet from the top floor. Daniel, who fancies himself the reincarnation of Henry Matthews, my dandy vampire, finally had his chance to don some real Victorian clothes.

Pictures to follow from Bryony's web administrator Sarah Stegall, as the author is technologically disadvantaged and hasn't learned (yet) how to do it.

I wouldn't say Daniel's garb is quite as impressive as past Bryony blog guest Sir Frederick Chook (http://www.frillyshirt.org/salon/portraits-of-the-editor/), but I must say he cuts quite the dashing figure. He may just be Henry yet.

As I write this blog, I'm reading a post from my dressmaker regarding my walking suits. One has red shimmer fabric; the other, blue. She has modified the pattern to make them appear "vampire-y" (whatever that means; can't wait to find out), and is currently ruffling twenty yards of satin.

Oh yeah, I'm as excited as Melissa approaching Halloween night!

Po’Boy and the Arcane Practices of History

By Sir Frederick Chook

Part Two, of a sort, of last week's post, So You've Travelled Back in Time. First published at http://www.frillyshirt.org/. Used with the author's permission.

My old chum Andrew has a new project which you really should see – a marvellous mag which goes by the name of Po’Boy! You can already read my debut article there – So You’ve Travelled Back In Time, a string of antique conchiolin deposits of wisdom for the cautious Connecticut Yankee. I thought I might expand on some of the topics I raise there, with particular reference to the esoteric study known to certain scientists and mystic thinkers as Retroprophecy.

I first discovered this discipline in my researches with the Antipodean League of Temporal Voyagers, assisting with their chronocartographical projections. The classic problems of time travel, well-known to physicists and logicians, remained stumpers – if it is possible to change the past, can one then paradoxically prevent one’s present actions? And why is there no evidence of any future travellers having passed by? If time travel were impossible, neither would be an issue – but the League’s experiments had demonstrated that time travel certainly was possible, and made for a charming Saturday outing at that.

With time, contemplation, and an endless parade of cheese sandwiches, I had a startling realisation – that the mystery suffered for being attempted by such strict rationalists as it had. Its framing assumed that all the variables were known, that motives and actions and consequences were perceptible and measurable – but this is history we’re talking about! If a historian says they’ve measured a motivation, you know it’s time for Nursie to come wheel them off to bed. History, like its practitioners, is vague, grimy and shrouded in mystery and inaccurate lecture timetables.

Another staple of history, like much of cautious academia, is the ornamentation of established ideas with small but striking adornments of revision – the buttonholes of progress, we might say. With this in mind, I recalled a popular theory: if we can travel to the past and still retain the present, then what has already happened – including what has happened to time travellers – is set, fixed, unchangeable. The present we now enjoy relies on time travellers having done their work, and could never have been otherwise! Our records show no evidence of time travellers, exactly… which proves that what time travellers there have been have avoided being recorded! What alterations they have made to the timeline (in order to keep it exactly the same) have been masterfully subtle, possibly by chance, or out of fear of discovery… or of those damnable time-moths!

*ahem* Sorry, became incautiously academic there. To return to my sound, valid, and extremely persuasive reasoning… the “closed loop” theory, as it’s titled by people a good deal clever than me, allows for time travel by predestining the actions of time travellers. In such a system, you can’t go back and prevent, say, World War II – and it’s entirely possible that your meddling in the affairs of the Weimar Republic actually contributed to causing it all along. Do you really want something like that on your conscience? Better to stay out of mid-twentieth-century politics altogether.

Now, you may well ask: does this mean I have no control over my own fate? If I would be powerless to act on past events, would it not be foolish to assume I had free will in the present? Perhaps, but, again, we must consider the possibility from a historic viewpoint. The closest we can come to knowing to determining for certain what may have happened to any given temporal voyager – barring chancing it ourselves – is through examining accounts and records the same as we would any other event. The future might be predetermined, but we cannot know it with certainty – and what difference is there between an uncertain future, and a certain future that is not known? Thus, Retroprophecy; the finding of future-knowledge in the study of the past, endowing visions and predictions with all the glorious uncertainty of historical fact.

The waters of this practice run deep, but I can think of an immediate application: the vetting of any potential time traveller against records of individuals of similar appearance, who have seemingly appeared from nowhere and who either disappeared just as mysteriously, or met nasty (possibly moth-related) ends. With the identification of these cases, and the blacklisting of any who may have been time travellers one doesn’t wish to become, I imagine the rates of death by Bronze Age-weaponry, matchlock pistol-fire and Borgia-related dismemberment could be reduced significantly. What do you think? If you have some ideas for Retroprophetic methods – or are even an established practitioner! – write to FrillyShirt here or at the address below, and share your views!

So You've Travelled Back in Time

By Sir Frederick Chook (http://www.frillyshirt.org/).
First published in Po'Boy magazine. (http://www.poboy.com.au/).
Used with permission of both the author and the publisher.

There comes a time in your life when – much as you’d love to avoid it – you just have to admit to yourself “Yep, I’ve gone back in time.” Now, ideally, all our time travelling would be prefaced with cybernetic learning implants, extensive briefings, and all the preparation a shadowy technocratic conclave can provide. Sometimes, though, life deals us an anomaly of physics which rudely plucks us from our daily grind and deposits us in the late nineteenth century, and you just have to play those cards as they fall.

Now, having suddenly become wise beyond your peers’ years, you may be tempted to revolutionise medicine, make a killing in electronics, be credited with a dance sensation, or some other joyride on your era’s coattails. Consider, though, the classic conundrum of time travel: if your actions can effect change on the past as we know it, you risk preventing your own having time-travelled in the first place; in short, a most peculiar paradox. Any attempt to alter history must, logically, be doomed to fail, and to pursue it is to ensure your own waylayment, destruction, or kidnapping by a flock of unusually vicious moths.

Thus, the lesson with which I wish to furnish you today is the simple necessity of blending in; of concocting a cover identity which might, within the bounds of reasonable eccentricity, explain away the oddities which come of being a chronological refugee. Sadly, this means resisting the temptation of an Austenian fantasy of socialising with the rich and beautiful. If you can’t recite in Greek and Latin, manage a dozen farms and dance a Viennese waltz – in short, enjoy all the ridiculous benefits of a classical education – the aristocracy will sniff you out and scandalise you so thoroughly, you’ll struggle to find a rubber duck that would be seen with you in the bath.
(I must admit, I’m being rather unfair to Austen there. So often, her comparatively humble heroes – self-made lineages, moderately successful gentry, impoverished military families, and so on – prove that at an open mind and a kind heart trump the best advantages of wealth and status. This only furthers my point, though: if you don’t have an Eton-and-Oxbridge-style education, there’s no shame in seeking out modest but good-natured company. If you do have an Eton-and-Oxbridge-style education, you’re the proud inheritor of a mindset which has resisted change for centuries, and this guide will be of little use to you anyway.)

Speaking of wealth, a pertinent issue if you wish to acquire any diggings more fashionable than a disused barn and a contemporary wardrobe without someone else’s nametags, you’ll need to determine if any of your saleable skills are backwards compatible. Thankfully, many professions change much less than they stay the same. Actors, journalists, waiters – anyone whose raw materials are human nature – will find there’s been little development in their field. Those whose training is of a more technical bent may struggle, though – computer programmers, aerospace engineers, photocopier repairers and what have you. If you’re a handy typist – and, face it, we all are, these days – you might find a job there, though it’s typically young ladies’ work. If you get desperate, chaps, remember that there’s be work for a sturdy pair of hands before mechanisation takes over, and a reliable fellow can get by without questions being asked as a hauler or lumper (like a hauler, but with fish.)

Now, even if you can fill some comfortable niche in the humdrum-but-welcoming ranks of the upper-working/lower-middle classes, you will need a backstory which accounts for any gaps in your knowledge of notable public figures, landmarks, pre-decimal currency, and how to maintain your toilet with hot irons and unscented sea creature extract. Being from a foreign country is always handy, and incidentally allows you to weave subtle Socratic critiques of your hosts’ social mores into your conversation, a la Voltaire. The danger there is that some wally will pop up and say “Hulloa! I’m from Persia too! آیا شما در تهران زندگی می کنند؟” A safer bet is to pass as a reclusive type from your own area – someone who might know the old houses and the church, but not the residents or the vicar.

Safest of all is probably to be an amnesiac; a shipwrecked colonist, a survivor of a factory explosion, anyone who might be forgiven for remembering how to ride a bicycle but not how to hold a nib-pen, and who’s Queen but not who’s First Lord of the Treasury. Don’t worry about the medicine behind it – the Victorians certainly didn’t. Nineteenth-century fictional characters suffer bouts of brain fever at the drop of a hat-pin (something both spontaneous and difficult to hear.) Complain of nervous flutters, fainting fits, and hysterical palpitations and/or moustache tremors, and you’ll probably manage a prescription for laudanum and perhaps one of those clinical vibrators. If you enjoy the attention, you might even become a cause célèbre – and, so long as no-one actually tries too hard to reunite you with your lost family and friends, a decent little source of discreet donations.

Whether you fly under the radar or above it, so long as you keep your actual origins out of the public light, causality dictates you should be able to live in frugal independence until a wandering temporal waterspout, dusty old relic or wild-eyed inventor with a shock of white hair manages to return you to your original point of departure. Until that point – or until a lonely grave decades before your own birth, if it never comes – remember, the past isn’t so bad! It’s another country; practically a holiday! There’s really nothing new under the sun; texts are called telegrams, but no less vapid for being composed by hand by a bespectacled clerk in sleeve-garters. Students are still students, with surprisingly vicious pranks, and portraits of revolutionary generals on their walls. Slang has always been ridiculous, but the better examples accumulate rather than expire, so you can’t go too far wrong. Incidentally, ‘gay’ has had double meanings of one kind or another far longer than anyone who complains about it has been alive. Otherwise, have fun, avoid crinolines (notorious firetraps, deadlier than any corset,) and if you happen to wander into 1888 Whitechapel, tell me who did it, won’t you?

Living the Foppish Life

Here is the final piece of a four-part interview on foppery and dandyism. Sir Frederick Chook, a romantic, transcendentalistic, overly brainful fop, the author of FrillyShirt (http://www.frillyshirt.org/) and inventor of leopoard oil, talks about his favorite dandies, influences, and creative expression.

11) Any dandies worth emulating and why?

"I've introduced a feature to FrillyShirt recently, called the Public's Peacocks - accounting the lives and lessons of clotheshorses who took up the cause of the poor and downtrodden, in practical politics or otherwise. There's quite a lot of them to work with, surprisingly enough! But, even leaving politics aside, there are many fine foppish sorts who lived beautiful, inspiring lives. Oscar Wilde stands out, as he always does - for all his caustic wit and regrettable legal decisions, he was the most kind and tender man, and he wrote the most marvellous essays on the spiritual life.

12) Anyone else?

"For a more quiet, practical sort of fop, I greatly admire the American Transcendentalists. Henry David Thoreau, in particular, was one who lived, worked, created and dressed all according to his own ideal - designing his own suits for country walking and for his scientific pursuits. By way of an example local to my hometown, I'd point to the Patersons - a whole family of artists, designers and philanthropists, who not only brought Aestheticism to Melbourne, but who did much to lay the foundation for Australian art as it exists today. A marvellous clan, the subject of my own continuing research and writing - and not once have I seen any of them looking less than stunning.

13) "When did your love for the nineteenth century begin?

"I suppose it was around when I began my history degree. I was a vehement radical in those days, utterly dedicated to improving the common lot by political action. Gradually, I discovered my love for history in general, the wonderfully bizarre nineteenth century in particular. At the same time, I was introduced to some wonderful artists and writers - the Romantics, the Post-Impressionists... Joseph Beuys was a big one, too - whose work celebrated the art of life. Studying under the philosopher Freya Mathews, and by her being introduced to Kant and Schelling and to Taoist thought, was the next big step - redefined my concept of the self in nature, of morality, and all that jazz.

14) What does creative expression mean for the fop?

"That the same skills which help us live beautifully can help us live well, That understanding and celebrating who we are can help us understand and celebrate the world around us. Painting, prose, weaving, dance - all means by which we comprehend what cannot be expressed more simply. I mustn't waffle on too long, but essentially, to live artistically is to grapple with Life's Big Questions, to go beyond pure reason and pure science, to seek the truth in your every pursuit."

The Lure of the Nineteenth Century

Here is part three of a four-part interview on foppery and dandyism. Sir Frederick Chook, a romantic, transcendentalistic, overly brainful fop, the author of FrillyShirt (http://www.frillyshirt.org/) and inventor of leopoard oil, explains his fondness for the nineteenth century.

7) So why does the 19th century attract you?

"For so much that defines modern life - mass production, urban industrial society, global electronic communications, capitalist class stratification, mass transit, the works - we can point to the 19th century and say "this is it. This is where it was born, or at least had its adolescence."

8) Why do you say that?

“The transition to a meritocratic, democratic, professional, educated, rational society - which we now take absolutely for granted - was so dramatic, written in such great letters across everyday life, that it produced some of the most wonderful, fascinating, sometimes genius, sometimes bizarre movements, practices and ideologies that have ever been seen."

9) Such as?

"Production and population rose, education and publication rose, world cultures blended, and more people were having more ideas than ever before. On the flipside, many of the efficiencies and simplifications of modern mass production hadn't caught on yet, so the new methods were being used to create richer or sturdier goods."

10) Like clothing?

"Clothing's a great example here - the modern suit is a loose, shapeless garment compared to its Victorian counterpart, being designed to fit as many potential customers with as little work as possible. Groups like the Arts & Crafts Movement sprung up, debating how to retain this quality of workmanship while cheap goods to those who needed them. That's a debate that's still going today, among - for instance - the steampunk community."

Dandyism, Fashion, and Art

In this second of a four-part interview on foppery and dandyism, Sir Frederick Chook, a romantic, transcendentalistic, overly brainful fop, the author of FrillyShirt (http://www.frillyshirt.org/) and inventor of leopoard oil, talks about the relationship among dandyism, fashion, and art.

4) Any particular fashion styles particularly associated with dandyism?

"Across foppishness as a whole, it matters less what is worn than that wearing it is considered a valuable pursuit - something artistic, something worth developing in their life. Dandyism in particular, well, I might call it "fashionable menswear, only more so" - their checks more checked, their ties more tied, their pressed lines more pressed. King Edward VII is a good example of this menswear-pushed-to-the-extreme - and speaking of extremism, he was a probable Nazi sympathiser to boot. Fascists' neckties aside, foppery covers many traditions - chaps in velvet and lace stand out, of course, but someone who really cultivated the cardigan could as well claim the name."

5) Why are dandyism, foppery and clothes-horsing around prickly subjects?

"Believe it or not, there are still dandies in the Brummellian tradition who get a bit narky about anyone else using the term. They're not all bad, but if you look, you'll find they're just some of many with very forthright opinions about the right way to dress up. Don't dress too ostentatiously, don't wear anything old-fashioned, don't wear dark colours, don't wear bright colours, don't wear this style of coat or that style of collar, don't answer back, respect your elders, God save the Queen, etc., etc. Folks to whom dressing is an act of social conservatism; a preservation of standards, in which fun and creativity play no part."

6) How do the arts fit into the dandy persona?

"It's true, the old chestnut, that to some, life itself is a work of art. Of course, given how difficult it is to find two people who would agree on a definition of 'art', that might not help us much. I have my own take, following my Transcendental leanings: that art is the creative process which brings together who we are and what we experience, "realism, spiritualism," and the "aesthetic or intellectual," as Walt Whitman put it. In other words, art is knowledge, art is thought, and nothing we do can but be artistic."

Dandy or Fop?

One of the vampires in Bryony describes himself as a dandy, although perhaps some might decide he’s a fop. How to know? Perhaps Sir Chook can help. In a series of posts over the next four weeks, Sir Chook offers some insight into both these lifestyles.

According to his website (http://www.frillyshirt.org/), Sir Frederick Chook is a romantic, transcendentalistic, overly brainful fop, and the author of FrillyShirt. He lives variously by his wits, hand to mouth, la vie bohème, and in MELBOURNE with his wife, Lady Tanah Merah. When not reading Milton and eating stilton, he writes, philosophises, assembles, models and studies history. He spent several years on youth radio and once ran for federal parliament on the anarchist ticket. He is a longhair, aspiring to one day be a greybeard. He has, once or twice, been described as “as mad as a bicycle.”

1) What is the difference between a dandy and a fop? How do you define yourself?

"'Fop' has long been an insult, meaning someone showy and silly, but in that role, it's entirely archaic now, so I've picked it up as an umbrella term for anyone who likes dressing up. Besides, being showy and silly sometimes - and a little self-deprecating, too - is fun! Being stylish is out of style, so there's no harm in acknowledging one is a bit of an oddbod for doing it."

2) And dandy?

"The dandy is a particular breed of fop - the two terms might have been synonymous once, but dandyism has since been associated with Beau Brummell and his crowd, and its ethos laid down by Baudelaire. The dandy is a creature of society and status - he dresses conservatively, but with great care to detail, to position himself at the very forefront of fashion. Essentially, he seeks to embody the aristocratic man - to demonstrate that he has absolutely no concerns beyond his own leisure.I... am not a creature of society and status. Not that they'd have me, of course, but I'm a quiet, uncompetitive sort of fellow, with no interest in the caprice of the fashionable elite. No more can I claim the aristocratic aversion to trade, and all that's practical, in dress or in life. What I wear, I wear in the interest of self-expression, not status - a pursuit that anyone with an interest should be entitled to follow, I think, so if clothes should be hardwearing and economical as well as beautiful, all the better."

3) Why do some people equate the terms with effeminate personalities?

"That's a bucket and a half of cultural hangups right there! Men are spatial, women are verbal; men are practical, women are social; men are timeless, women are fashionable... better scholars than I have written books upon books trying to figure out where and when these ideas came from, but their net effect is the conviction that any man who dedicates himself entirely to feminine pursuits - to looking nice, showing off, and so climbing the social hierarchy - must at least be effete, if not somehow flawed as a human being. It's hardly the worst thing to come of ingrained cultural sexism, though, and if a foppish chap has no insecurities on his own part, it shouldn't really bother him."