The Decadent Handbook

by Rowan Pelling

  The gallery has a long main hall, two storeys high, lit through large windows in the roof, overlooked by balconies on the second story, and a maze of interconnected rooms, leading off the main hall north, south, east and west. Small groups, couples and single visitors meandered through the hushed atmosphere, admiring the fine collections of 18th century art, sculpture, furniture and porcelain, and the display cabinets of art and curios from India and points further East.

  The Lady made her way unhurriedly, enjoying the echoing click of her heels that drew the glances, and sometimes the stares, of other visitors. Men’s eyes filled with desire as they saw her, their wives sometimes thin-lipped with jealousy and disapproval, or on occasion as enchanted as their husbands by the vision the Lady presented. Sweet scruffy art students sketching before classic Gericaults gawping openly, until the Lady inclined her head in greeting to them, prompting one or two to smile awkwardly, others to duck their heads down to concentrate a little too hard on their work, and one girl to blush crimson as she tried to tear her eyes away from the Lady, who smiled to herself as she imagined the flood of untamed thoughts and fantasies that would cascade through that girl’s dreams and imaginings that night.

  The Comte also draws looks, especially from women who catch a glimpse of the boots, the spurs, and the handle of the riding crop protruding from his boot. I have seen them go faint on occasion.

  That is the point of promenading. Not only is it pleasing for us to dress up and draw the public gaze, it is a kind of performance art – an awakening for those who see it, sometimes arousing them, sometimes alarming them – and, more even than that, it is a statement by those of erotic proclivity, that we are proud of what we are and what we delight in.

  This day was not merely a promenade, it was a hunt.

  Somewhere in the gallery, Charmian, our handmaiden, would be perusing the art. The rules of the game are simple. Whichever of us – the Comte or myself – finds Charmian first, takes her as personal slave for that day (although, in reality, it makes little difference, since she always ends up serving us both). In the meantime, should the Comte and I encounter, we do not greet one another in any way that passers-by would recognise. What any observer would see is the Lady dropping her glove and bending the knee to retrieve it, effectively curtseying to the Comte, although he does not acknowledge her gesture.

  After a delicious half an hour tinged with anticipation, I saw Charmian first, in the main hall, standing before a splendid Delacroix. A pretty girl in her mid-twenties with long straight black hair, she is a little shorter than me, with a rounded figure. But she was not dressed as I had instructed. I had told her to wear her long white dress and black velvet waistcoat, yet here she was in her ‘sexy secretary’ clothes – fitted grey suit jacket with a fine stripe, cream blouse with a floppy bow at the throat, an ostentatious display of pale yellow silk flowering in her breast pocket, one corner reaching up almost to her shoulder, the rest cascading almost to her waist, and a matching silk tied in a large bow in her hair behind the crown. She even had her half-rimmed glasses on! However, instead of the matching suit skirt, she wore a long skirt of black taffeta reaching to her ankles, raised just enough to show off her shiny pointed fetish ankle boots.

  As my heels clicked across the floor towards her (although I looked at the paintings as I went, so it was not obvious where I was heading), I could see out of the corner of my eye that Charmian had been attracting her own fair share of attention. This amused me. When she first offered herself to us, she had been as shy as a mouse – now she dressed extravagantly, even outrageously.

  As I approached her, she turned to look at me, and waited. Only when I was two paces away, did I look at her. She gave one of her slightly impish smiles, and without a word, placed her hands in the pit of her stomach, and bowed extremely deeply, her long black hair and silk at her breast pocket all but sweeping the ground before her.

  I looked down at her, savouring the gasps – half shocked, half enchanted – from those in the gallery. Few things are as exquisite as the sight of a young woman bowing herself down like this. How inept of the western world never to have really understood the delights of female obeisance – both to see, and to do. And what a perfect way to startle the innocent. I commanded her to rise, and I reached out to touch the smooth milky skin of her cheek, the cool silkiness of her hair, and allowed her gentle moist lips to kiss my fingers, which she did so sweetly, with utter submission, spiced with just a hint of girlish eagerness.

  ‘My Lady.’ she murmured.

  ‘You are mine today.’ I told her.

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’ she replied. One or two of the nearer visitors were straining to overhear the conversation. I did not mind.

  ‘You want to please me, don’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Whereas I want to hurt you.’ I said. She stiffened slightly.

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’ she said, very humbly.

  ‘You have disobeyed me, dressing like this.’ I went on.

  ‘Yes, Mistress.’ she whispered.

  ‘Why did you disobey?’ I demanded. There was a pause.

  ‘To make you want to hurt me more.’ she answered with a slight catch in her voice.

  I smiled, then slapped her across the face, making her cheek redden prettily. She whimpered, and kissed my hand with renewed passion and gratitude.

  ‘Thank you, Mistress!’ she whispered.

  I am very fond of Charmian. There is one simple thing about her, she loves to be humiliated and punished, and she loves those who humiliate and punish her.

  I let her take my arm, and we promenade across the floor, our heels clicking and echoing. At the foot of the staircase that leads to the upstairs balcony, the Comte awaits us. He had watched it all from the balcony. So he had seen Charmian first, but had wanted me to find her. Charmian and I stopped before him. I lowered my head, while the girl made another of her beautiful bows to him. The onlookers saw the Comte kiss both the women on the cheek, and offer the Lady his arm to promenade out with her, followed meekly by the girl.

  We walked out to the car, retrieved the glasses and the bottle of claret and sauntered in a leisurely manner into the park. Charmian serving us wine, my lord and I rewarding her with wine from our lips. We reached a secluded grove among the trees. There I told my lord how Charmian had disobeyed me in the manner of her dress.

  My lord decided she must be punished, and ordered her to bend, which she did, docile and obedient as ever. Taking the riding crop from his boot he surveyed her.

  ‘Raise her skirt,’ he commanded me. I obeyed, lifting the girl’s skirt over her back to reveal her buttocks, so smooth, so tender, so white. My lord swished the crop through the air and brought it down hard, making her whimper and leaving a scarlet mark across her flesh. He inspected the effect of the blow, then struck her again, and again, each time raising a perfect red weal across her buttocks.

  The sight of a girl suffering always has the same effect on me, arousal, pity and a burning desire to see more. I bit my lip and felt myself moisten. My lord looked at me. He always knows.

  He touched the girl between the legs. She sighed with pleasure.

  ‘She is soaking,’ he observed.

  ‘She is dressed extravagantly,’ I pointed out, ‘She has been bowing down. She has been kissed. Now she is whipped.’

  ‘She is soaking,’ he repeated. ‘Without permission.’

  He handed me the crop.

  ‘Punish her,’ he said.

  I took the crop, as was always the case, I could not help but beat her very cruelly until the poor damsel was sobbing and begging.

  ‘Have you had enough?’ I enquired, with no intention of stopping.

  ‘No, mistress!’ she exclaimed. I went on flogging her, my lord gave her permission to masturbate, and we let her climax noisily, again and again as she was thrashed and humiliated. I stopped whipping her and let her subside slowly to the ground, moaning her thanks to me.

 
Decadent Gastronomy

  The Decadent Sausage

  Medlar Lucan & Durian Gray

  Take pigs’ throats and cut out the fat, but keep the clean, smooth glands. Slice the loins finely; also the ears (well scoured), and the snouts; peel the tongues and wash them thoroughly in hot water; bone, scrub and singe the trotters; clean the testicles. Lay the ears, snouts and trotters on the bottom of a good clean pot and cover with coarse salt. On top put the tongues, then the throats, loins and testicles sprinkled with fine salt. Let the pot stand for three days then swill out with red wine. Soak the lot with red wine for another day. Drain, rinse several times to get rid of the salt, and dry with clean white cloths. Pack the ingredients tight into a sausage skin. Use at once or store.

  This recipe comes from a cookbook by Christoforo di Messisbugo, chef to the Duke of Este in Parma in the 16th century. They don’t make sausages like that any more – in Parma or anywhere else. But if size is what you’re after you can still, in Italy, get a massive thing called a bondola. It’s a kind of mortadella – with the weight and dimensions of a 12-inch naval cannon – fatty, pink and rather slimy on the tongue. Sometimes it has emerald pistachios set into its spam-like bulk. It’s rough peasant fare, as the cliché goes, and you eat it (when you’re extremely hungry) sliced very thick on bread.

  Elizabeth David said you could get good mortadella in Bologna. (A good one means pure pork, not ‘a mixture of pork, veal, tripe, pig’s head, donkey meat, potato or soya flour, and colouring essence’.) This was in 1954, but it’s probably still true. Italy, just as much as Germany, is good sausage country, and conservative in its cooking habits.

  Lucania, in southern Italy, was the place for sausages in ancient times. Apicius, the Roman gastronome, says the ingredients were pork or beef, nuts, parsley, cumin, laurel berries and rue. They were cased in long narrow pieces of intestine and hung in the chimney to smoke.Lucanicae was the Latin name, which lives on in Italian luganeghe (still long and thin, but unsmoked now) and Greek loukanika.

  You can make sausages out of practically anything, which may be why there are six hundred different kinds listed in that great sausage-hunter’s bible – Antony and Araminta Hippisley Coxe’s Book of Sausages. The Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is supposed to have invented the shrimp, crab, oyster, prawn and lobster sausage. Apicius gives a recipe that includes calf’s brains and almonds. Eskimos fill sausages with seals’ blood and offal. In Arles they use donkey or horse meat, in Madrid a mixture of veal and sardines, in Westphalia the brains of pigs. Traditional recipes boast delicacies such as black bear (Germany), porpoise (England), reindeer (Norway), rabbit (England again), and armadillo (Texas). Postmodernists may like to try another English recipe: Christmas pudding sausages, fried in egg and breadcrumbs and served with brandy butter.

  Sausage names can be very poetic. Larousse Gastronomique mentions the Gendarme – ‘very dry and heavily smoked’ – which suggests a philosophical detective out of the 1940s. Then there’s the Saucisson Princesse, made of diced ox-tongue, the Jagdwurst (or hunter’s sausage), the Punkersdorker, ‘a strong, juicy German salami’, the Puddenskins, the Felino, the Black Hog’s Pudding, the Alpiniste …

  Sausages are also medicinal, which is why great thinkers like Rabelais have always taken them seriously. They operate like wine, tobacco, jokes, sunshine, sex, anchovies, rock’n’roll, etc, according to their own arcane laws, which have nothing to do with the beliefs of men with stethoscopes and white coats. Someone who truly understood the healing power of sausages was that fabulous old queen Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. When she and le roi soleil were both very antiquated and sinking fast she recorded this touching little digestive swansong:

  ‘I seldom breakfast, and then only on bread and butter. I take neither chocolate, nor coffee, nor tea, being unable to endure these foreign drugs. I am German in all my habits. I eat no soup but such as I can take with milk, wine, or beer. I cannot bear broth – it makes me sick, and gives me the colic. When I take broth alone I vomit even to blood, and nothing can restore the tone of my stomach but ham and sausages.’

  Decadents, like clapped-out French monarchs, are always on the look-out for elixirs to restore their rogered constitutions. They should never overlook the sausage. In the words of the writer Francis Amunatégui, founder of the A.A.A.A.A. (Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Authentiques Andouillettes), ‘The appearance of a hot sausage with its salad of potatoes in oil can leave nobody indifferent…. It is pure, it precludes all sentimentality, it is the Truth.’

  Brekadence

  Malcolm Eggs

  The height of brekadence is not showing up mid-afternoon at a Primrose Hill gastropub and ordering a full English with, say, an extra sausage. It is not two plates of bacon and eggs, cooked at home and eaten in bed with a newly incumbent member of the opposite sex. The tasty orthodoxy of pork and eggs, widely regarded as the spiritual epicentre of today’s leisurely English breakfast, hogs more than its fair ration of the limelight. Measured against some of the extravagances of breakfasting history (the wild boars of ancient Egypt, the cacao and capsicum of Montezuma), these stalwarts of the full English can be a somewhat unadventurous snack. And if we are to find the perfect decadent breakfast, it won’t be achieved by staying in bed, affecting nonchalance – for that is to mistake the meaning of the search. For the determinedly decadent, breakfast is an event. It does not fuel a journey, as is the case with the Underground croissant: it is a destination. In a society that expects us, upon waking, to hasten to work without further ado, the act of breakfasting is itself an act of decadence – and the more serious our commitment to this least fashionable of meals, the closer we are to achieving a state of purest subversive opulence.

  Contemporary inspiration can be found at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien Hotel, New York, with their ‘Zillion Dollar Frittata’. Launched in the spring of 2004 with a price tag of $1000, it’s possibly the only omelette that has ever made the international headlines. It serves one and consists of six eggs, a tablespoon of chives, some butter, five tablespoons of heavy cream, a lobster and 10 ounces of caviar, Also of interest are the lavish country household offerings of late 19th century England. Writing in his masterful ‘Breakfasts, Luncheons and Ball Suppers’, Major L … prescribes: ‘fish, poultry, or game, if in season; sausages, and one meat of some sort, such as mutton cutlets, or fillets of beef; omelettes, and eggs served in a variety of ways; bread of both kinds, white and brown, and fancy bread of as many kinds as can conveniently be served; two or three kinds of jam, orange marmalade, and fruits when in season; and on the side table, cold meats such as ham, tongue, cold game, or game pie, galantines, and in winter a round of spiced beef of Mr Degue of Derby.’

  Now we don’t all have time for such a spread every day; and sadly none of us will now ever have the opportunity to taste the spiced beef of Mr Degue. But here is a grander vision of breakfast than that exemplified by the humble fry-up. Here is the breakfast as social crescendo – and the sleep of the night before as but a rest to prepare for breakfast-time. One suspects the mysteriously named Major L … would rather face the firing range than have to cram in a cereal bar at a bus stop on his way to a job flogging handsets from a call centre.

  So the perfect decadent breakfast can be eaten out or at home: as long as you give yourself up to it, utterly. Spare no expense and take your time. If you eat it out, decide on the venue weeks in advance and be sure to choose one that has the good taste and culinary gusto to include fish on their breakfast menu, as per Thomas Love Peacock’s wise assertion that ‘the breakfast is the prosopon of the great work of the day. Chocolate, coffee, tea, cream, eggs, ham, tongue, cold fowl – all these are good and bespeak good knowledge in him who sets them forth: but the touchstone is fish.’ Prepare your invite list with care – an uncomplimentary mix of people will be a pain during that time before you eat (one sensible modern convention is that breakfast is not just limited to the morning). Splash out on bottled water: tap water rarely arrives.


  If it will be cooked at home and you want to opt for something simple and traditional like bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, mushrooms, tomato, toast, black pudding and bubble and squeak, then be sure to ignore the supermarkets. Go to farmers’ markets, fruit & veg stalls and independent butchers: even a premium supermarket sausage bears no resemblance to the real thing. Time it well, serve it hot, and don’t let the beans take over. When choosing the number of guests, bear firmly in mind the demands each guest makes on the cooking process. When choosing the social mix, consider who will make it easiest to navigate the inevitable labyrinth of compliments and silences. You will arrive at the most decadent of all conclusions: the finest breakfast you have ever eaten, prepared for one.

  Eats

  Andrew Crumey

  Dining with friends in a Paris restaurant, I was overcome by an uncharacteristic urge to experience a frisson of gastronomic danger. Tete de veau; the face of a calf whose head has been boiled, brains and all, in a pot; seemed as close to the edge as I was likely to get, and having placed my order with the terminally harassed and engagingly insolent garçon, I sat back and relished the prospect of feasting on exquisitely tender meat of a kind banned in Britain, not because of the cruelty inflicted on the living calf, but because of fears that its cooked cranium might be a bouillon of BSE.

  My companions were unimpressed. ‘In Japan …’ said one, going on to tell us about the venomous puffer fish he had tasted in a restaurant there, a fabled delicacy that as a source of farcical death among corpulent businessmen is second only to auto-erotic asphyxiation. ‘In Indonesia …’ said another, explaining how he had feasted on raw otter, and telling us it was predictably vile before handing the conversational baton to Vera, the quietest and most unassuming of our group, who had nevertheless, it turned out, during her former career as a lab technician, imbibed alcoholic chemicals from the top shelf that ought to have left her blind, mad or dead, but had instead merely given her a hangover.