Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [61]
Maybe it’s appropriate that Twain, a man who lived in and identified with so many American places, never took a firm and final position on which sort, or which preparation, was best. Beyond his praise for the half shells of San Francisco, his menu included fried oysters, stewed oysters, bluepoints on the half shell, oyster soup, and oysters roasted in the shell “Northern style.” He ate them in all their varieties and in all styles; given how ebullient he was when praising fresh fruit, and his savagery in blasting tired meat, I’m guessing he enjoyed talking about oysters as much as eating them.
As to the pressing question of whether he thought that Olys were poor and insipid, I have to think that he was sucking up to Scoofy. There were, it seems to me, few men that Twain would have wanted to know more than the owner of literal shiploads of oysters; publicly praising Scoofy’s “delicious marine fruit” would have been one way to get in good. In this case, however, the young writer’s calculations backfired badly. After a night of debauchery by Twain, his friend Amigo reported in Gold Hill News that Twain “had abused the Scoofy oysters served in McDonald’s Saloon,” claiming hellish vomiting and diarrhea. Amigo declared the oysters wholesome, pointing out (reasonably enough) that “where there is a barrel of whiskey and only a half bushel of oysters, it is hardly fair to assume that the poison is all in the said oysters.” He added that “the next time Mark gets poisoned, the police propose to have him ripped open and analyzed at once by a practical chemist.”
As to the charges that Twain had feigned illness to avoid paying the bill . . . well, you couldn’t really expect him to come up with the money. After all, Amigo concluded, the man was a bohemian.
ROAST OYSTERS IN THE SHELL
Select the large ones, those usually termed “Saddle Rocks,” formerly known as a distinct variety, but which are now but the large oysters selected from any beds; wash and wipe them, and place with the upper or deep shell down, to catch the juice, over or on live coals. When they open their shells, remove the shallow one, being careful to save all the juice in the other; place them, shells and all, on a hot platter, and send to table hot, to be seasoned by each person with butter and pepper to taste. If the oysters are fine, and they are just cooked enough and served all hot, this is, par excellence, the style.
—FANNY LEMIRA GILLETTE, White House Cook Book, 1887
Mussels are less controversial than oysters—less prone to lead to violence. This may be because they’re eaten raw far less often; Twain, specifying steaming, was firmly among the majority. When you steam something in wine, then dip it in butter (and Lord knows I’m in favor of doing both), you’re getting a ways away from the immediate and pure experience of eating it raw. There are better mussels and worse mussels, for sure, but the differences simply don’t inspire the same kind of intense, nearly bloody debate as with oysters.
Still, all mussels are very much of a particular place. In Twain’s day, in fact, they were even more so than oysters—thin-shelled mussels didn’t ship nearly as well and couldn’t live as long without ice. In the waters around San Francisco, their huge beds caked any available substrate, growing even on oyster reefs. Beyond the Golden Gate, they colonized ocean rocks where nothing else could take hold. They thrived in the cold summer waters that welled up from the deep sea—waters that gave San Francisco its famous fogs, like the one that chilled Twain on the day he drank what may have been the greatest cup of coffee