APOTHEOSIS OF THE OYSTER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 803, 25 October 1929, Page 18

APOTHEOSIS OF THE OYSTER

HECTOR BOLITHO’S TREATISE 'J’HE glory of the oyster lives for ever, but his pearls will moulder away,” says Mr. Hector Bolitho, and in that fine sentence sets the note for this timely book of praise, which appears so appropriately after too long an interval of months which lacked the vital ”r.” So writes a • ritic in “The New Statesman” of the Aucklander’s latest book “The Glorious Oyster.” It has been proved that pearls, if buried in a damp tomb with a dead princess, become yellow and decay; a paltry twelve hundred years is sufficient to reduce them to a chalky powder. The glory of the oyster knows no such time limit. But in the case of the English “native” —the greatest of all oysters—there is, alas! one reservation to be made. We are, at this moment, face to face with the question of whether he is to be a present glory for generations yet unborn, or only a glorious memory. In those old, careless days of the last century, when they were dragged up anyhow in thick clusters from their beds, it was nothing for Whitstable to sell 3,250,000 best “natives” in a single season. Now, when we search feverishly through mud-laden nets to And, perhaps, a dozen in a haul, and when some of the best scientific brains in England are concentrated upon the preservation of the “native” and his continued increase—now we think ourselves lucky if we get half a million in a year. And things are getting worse; there is, at present, no ray of hope. All these dismal facts are brought out very clearly in Mr. Bolitho’s more technical chapters, which have been edited for him by Mr. Maurice Burton, of the Natural History Museum. No satisfactory explanation of the decline of the “native” has yet been offered. It is not that this generation has failed to treat him with proper respect. Mr. Bolitho concludes his book with a number of irreverent recipes for cooking the oyster; but he must surely have meant them for American readers. Americans have more oysters than they know what to do with. The men of the Middle Ages, too, abused their privileges by pickling good Kentish oysters, and even boiling them, and drinking with them red Bordeaux and another wine called “muskadylle”—which sounds suspiciously like muscatel. And to them also the incomparable native offered himself in profusion—casting himself and his pearls before swine. But he is a poor sort of modern Englishman who will allow the cook to bully him into eating his oysters any wav but raw. Mr. Bolitho, in one of his weaker moments. prates of vinegar and ketchup; but it is a fact significant of the spirit of this age i hat at the annual Colchester Oyster Feast no condiments of any sort appear upon the table. Discreet inquiry may produce a little pepper—that is all. Yet the oyster rejects our respectful advances; he coyly continues to decline in numbers. The observation of Mr. Samuel tVeller, that the poorer the London district the more oysters were oaten in it. has long been out of date. At the same time it must be remarked that the difference between, the old price of one-and-six a bushel and the fifteen shillings a dozen at which Colchester natives were being sold in London restaurants at the beginning of this year is out of all proportion to the difference between the catches. It is wildly extravagant, and one feels that there must be some typical modern jiggery-pokery here—part of that fetish of “keeping up prices” which results in all good food becoming a monopoly of the rich—the very class which least appreciates it. Thousands of middle-aged Englishmen today must l>e learning to do without oysters, and hundreds of thousands of the rising generation must be failing to acquire tiie taste. It is a short-sighted policy. Oysters make a homely dish. and 1 should he eaten in homely surroundings, without fuss. It is alleged I

against the plutocrats of ancient Rome that they masticated their oysters before swallowing them; and it may be that a good many modern gourmets, if they were honest, would own to just one bite. But Crassus and his friends, at any rate, shared their pleasures with.- the poor. They made artificial oyster-beds, as we do today; but more successfully, and, from all accounts, they hardly needed them. Men of the Bronze Age and the Stone Age, primitive men without palates, got their oysters dirt cheap, and have left great mountains of empty shells behind them for our envious archaeologists to unearth. Only we must sigh in vain. It is a saddening thought. But from the point of view of the “native,” his very rarity has brought him his apotheosis. It is probable that he was never venerated as he is today. Mr. Bolitho, of course, could do little more than play with his great subject. He does it very well. The history of the oyster is lightly but pithily told, and, if there is a certain amount of repetition, his collaboration with Mr. Burton no doubt made that inevitable. It is a lively, informative book, and it only uses the words “succulent” and “bivalve” thrice—a remarkable achievement.