As I hear... A piece of gastronomy lost to posterity

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 23

As I hear... A piece of gastronomy lost to posterity

(By JJi.ES.)

Turning over in a desperate way one of the piles of papers on my table I came on a short letter from a Darfield correspondent, who (as an old and odd reader may recall), put me right when I had said something about mulberries. I had said that white mulberries were inedible; the only edible ones were the fat, purple ones. This correspondent told me I was wrong, for she had lately been in Teheran, where a street was lined with trees bearing white mulberries, which obliging urchins climbed up and shook down; and they were by no means inedible. I had gathered my fact (as I believed it to be) from Vol. 5 of the Concise Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy, issued by the Wine and Food Society under the direction of the eminent Andre L. Simon.

So corrected, I wrote to the society, offering my correspondent’s matter -of - fact correction in the event of a reprint of Vol 5; but my letter was returned: gone, no address. I was not wholly surprised; for the cost of revising and reprinting the encyclopaedia, priced in 1947 at £4 odd, would be far too high to return the cost. And so my friend’s correction will never see official print. 4 4 4

But I’ve gone off the track, as my dear old Uncle John used to say when he lost himself in the rambles of one of his pet stories. I go back to the letter I’ve uncovered from this Darfield correspondent, who closes by asking me about “gust,” “host/’ and “guest” as verbs, as she often sees them used in the press, and (no doubt) hears them used on the air. "Winds gusted up to 70 miles an hour; the party was hosted by Mr McGuffey; Miss McGuffey and Miss J. McGuffey were guested by Mr and Mrs Slaughter.” Do I approve these usages? Well, I unhesitatingly assent

to winds gusting. I almost subscribe unhesitatingly to a party’s being hosted by Mr McGuffey. But I am not so sure about guests being guested. To act as a host naturally enough gives you the verb “to host,” as to take the chair gives you the verb “to chair,” which one of my old colleagues has told me I violently and abusively rejected years ago. But to be a guest? Does that naturally acquire a passive form, “to be guested”? And I don’t think so. 4 4 4

While I am being finical about words, HI say that, being recently house-bound by a small accident, I began re-reading Charles Dickens, to my enormous pleasure. But I noticed something I’d never noticed before. Dickens commonly wrote “out of window,” where the common English is “out of the window,” against the usage of American and Scottish English. I cannot account for this peculiarity. I’ll add defiantly that I repudiate those critics who say that Dickens could not write and will lay it down that he wrote according to his genius and that his genius made him write supremely well. He had his tricks of style, and you may like them or not; but he wrote supremely well. See the opening chapter of “Bleak House.” 4 4 4

I cannot help commenting on the Social Credit Party’s appeal to the Opposition to resign and precipitate either a General Election or about 40 by-elections. I remember the fable of the cat and the chestnuts, when the monkey induced the cat to rake out the hot chestnuts from the fire; and I can’t help thinking that the Social Credit Party plays the monkey. But I can’t help thinking also, that the monkey will lose, for the Opposition members are, I’d think, not at all inclined to allow Social Credit a chance to sneak in a

member or two, or to take their chance just now on a head-on collision with the Government. Not just now... But why don’t we hear a first-hand report of Social Credit’s one-man mission to England to propagate New Zealand’s opposition to Britain’s entry into the E.E.C.? 4 4 4

So I read in the cabled news, that a Los Angeles judge has dismissed charges against the owners of a house-trained, indeed a toilettrained, chimpanzee, which he described as “somewhat better behaved than some people." So not a wild animal, debarred from the custody of citizens. But, said his Honour, “We’re all descendants of Moe and his relatives.” So there you are: the Scopes trial all over again, but this time the learned judge goes to the right conclusion though, as before, entirely mucking up the theory of evolution.

The Scopes trial? Well, it was because a teacher had propounded in class the theory of evolution and was prosecuted for this fearful heresy. Whoever wants to read the story of this heresy and the trial should read H. L. Mencken’s account of it in the paperback, “The Vintage Mencken,” gathered by Alistair Cooke. Two pieces by Mencken shine in this collection, one of which shows us Bryan in bulk and sweat, reduced to impotence by Clarence Darrow. 4 4 4

So I read, in the cabled news, that John Ricky, an American screen actor, has had his hand caught in a car-door, carelessly closed by a London commissionaire, and has lost one finger and had three damaged. So I read. But I can’t help wondering why London entertains or informs me about this empty person but does not tell me of the death of Sir Stanley Unwin, the doyen of London publishers and a very notable character.