Not just Porridge: English Literati at Table Archaeopress Open Access © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Archaeopress Open Access © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Not just Porridge: English Literati at Table edited by Francesca Orestano and Michael Vickers Archaeopress Open Access © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978 1 78491 578 0 ISBN 978 1 78491 579 7 (e-Pdf) © Archaeopress and the authors 2017 Originally published in 2015 as Non solo porridge: letterati inglesi a tavola by Mimesis Edizioni Translated into English by the contributors Cover image; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_skeletal_figure_surveying_three_doctors_ around_a_cauldron,_Wellcome_L0001225.jpg Archaeopress Open Access All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Contents Francesca Orestano Introduction. Food tasted and described: a kind of literary history .......iii Cristina Paravano Roger of Ware: a medieval masterchef in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales �������� 1 Margaret Rose Caliban’s dinner ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13 Giovanni Iamartino At table with Dr Johnson: food for the body, nourishment for the mind 17 Chiara Biscella Jane Austen: appetite and sensibility ....................................................... 35 Anna Rudelli Romantic food at Dove Cottage: Dorothy Wordsworth’s cookery and kitchen garden ..............................................................................................43 Marco Canani Percy Bysshe Shelley, a vegetarian poet .................................................. 57 Beatrice Moja Mrs Beeton: cooking, science, and innovations in the Victorian kitchen 69 Claudia Cremonesi Charles DickensArchaeopress from street food to the Open restaurant Access ................................ 81 Elena Ogliari Henry James goes on a diet: a chronicle of a private drama .................... 93 Karin Mosca Bennett, Strachey and the preparation of the omelette ........................ 107 Maria Cristina Mancini Leopold Bloom’s grilled mutton kidneys ................................................ 117 Francesca Orestano Virginia Woolf and the cooking range.................................................... 125 Francesca Gorini A. A. Milne: Tea (and lots of honey) in the Hundred Acre Wood ........... 135 i © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Angela Anna Iuliucci Roald Dahl’s revolting food fantasies ..................................................... 145 Ilaria Parini Bridget Jones and the temptations of junk food ���������������������������������������������153 Dalila Forni Coraline: frozen food vs a warm-hearted family? ................................... 165 Notes on the authors ............................................................................... 177 Archaeopress Open Access ii © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Giovanni Iamartino At table with Dr Johnson: food for the body, nourishment for the mind Johnson’s life and Johnson’s ‘Lives’ Samuel Johnson epitomises the spirit of the eighteenth century in England. His life (1709-1784) spans three quarters of the century; his literary and critical output both embodies and shapes the taste of the day, connecting himself and his readers to other great names of the English and European literary traditions. His famous Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson 1755) provides evidence of both the linguistic usage of his world and the literary and scientific culture which lay at the heart of that world. Extraordinary as a writer, therefore; but also unique as a man, both for his personality and the events of his life, and for the fact that a number of differing accounts of this personality and these events were compiled and published from soon after Johnson’s death in 1784. Most outstanding and best known is James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., first published in 1791; but we must not forget that this work was preceded, and also followed, by many other versions of the life of the man who was already recognised as exceptional by his contemporaries. I will use the Life (Boswell [1791] 1980) and three other early biographies – those by Hester Lynch Piozzi (1786), John Hawkins (1787) and Arthur Murphy (1792) – to take a ‘gastronomicArchaeopress journey’ through Open the world Access of eighteenth-century England, well aware that, despite his uniqueness, Samuel Johnson is the figure who, perhaps paradoxically, best represents this world. Why draw upon several biographies and not just Boswell’s Life alone? Because every biography reveals, but at the same time conceals – so it would seem expedient to integrate the different perspectives and interpretations present in each one, especially here, where the intention is not to contemplate Johnson the writer, seated at his desk, but Johnson the man, seated at the dining tables of his affluent friends or in the tavern. Boswell, a Scot, had already developed an extraordinary admiration for Johnson long before he knew him personally and, once they had met, he consciously and intentionally became his biographer. Hester Lynch, on the other hand, knew Johnson through being married to Henry Thrale, a wealthy beer magnate who often welcomed Johnson into his home and who sought his company at the seaside (at Brighton, then known as Brighthelmstone) and on 17 © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. 18 NOT JUST PORRIDGE pleasure trips to Wales and Paris. Hester’s vision of Johnson was more personal and feminine; she was a brilliant, cultured woman, who cooked – or rather had someone else cook – meals for the great man and did her best to keep up with him in conversation. Sadly, the relationship came to an end after Thrale’s death, when Hester married her social inferior, the Italian maestro Gabriele Piozzi. In a sense, John Hawkins and Arthur Murphy – both of them men of letters – complement each other quite well. Hawkins had known Johnson since the beginning of his writing career and was a founding member of the Literary Club in 1764; however, a quarrel with Edmund Burke – the famous politician and writer, a friend of Johnson’s and a member of the club – led to Hawkins’s resignation and his estrangement from Johnson. The Irish comedy writer Arthur Murphy, who had introduced Johnson to the Thrales, enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Johnson, marked by mutual admiration. Smiling with the wise, and feeding with the rich To introduce my story, I quote two episodes from Boswell. In the first, Johnson is commenting on the line ‘I’d smile with the simple, and feed with the poor’ from Florizel and Perdita, the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale by Johnson’s friend, David Garrick: Poor David! Smile with the simple! What folly is that! And who would feed with the poor that can help it! No, no: let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. (Boswell 1980: 408) In the second, as a dinner guest at the home of Edward Dilly, the bookseller: Before dinner Dr. Johnson seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan’s Account of the late Revolution in Sweden, and seemed to read it ravenously, as if he devouredArchaeopress it, which was to all appearance Open his Accessmethod of studying. ‘He knows how to read better than any one (said Mrs. Knowles;) he gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.’ He kept it wrapt up in the table-cloth in his lap during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one entertainment in readiness when he should have finished another; resembling (if I may use so coarse a simile) a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he eats something else which has been thrown to him. (Boswell 1980: 942) This is Johnson in a nutshell: the ‘rational’ Johnson, who rejects commonplaces and poetic posturing; Johnson the man of the world and Johnson the man of letters; and, most importantly for my story, the Johnson who drew nourishment from both books and food, with the same insatiable appetite. This last image, and its implications, are confirmed by Boswell when he describes the lifestyle of his idol: © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. GIOVANNI IAMARTINO: AT TABLE WITH DR JOHNSON 19 His general mode of life, during my acquaintance, seemed to be pretty uniform. About twelve o’clock I commonly visited him, and frequently found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he drank very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters […] He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom every body thought they had a right to visit and consult; and doubtless they were well rewarded. I never could discover how he found time for his compositions. He declaimed all the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend’s house, over which he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must have read and wrote chiefly in the night, for I can scarcely recollect that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation. (Boswell 1980: 437) It is striking that this uniformity in Johnson’s ‘general mode of life’ should be so irregular: still in bed at midday, sometimes till two in the afternoon (Murphy 1792: 88), Johnson dines at an hour that we would consider very late, has tea at a friend’s house, and generally skips supper. Then he works – reading and writing – at night. Indeed, it was very noticeable to his friends that his wigs were often singed on the side of his good eye by being too near to the candle he used for reading. Johnson’s habits were undoubtedly odd and he maintained them even when staying with the Thrales, provoking remonstrations from the lady of the house, who was obliged to serve him breakfast when everyone else was expecting to hear the dinner bell (Lynch Piozzi 1786: 292).