BRAINS NEED SUSTENANCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 April 1938, Page 4

BRAINS NEED SUSTENANCE

GREAT WRITERS GREAT EATERS.

If anybody thinks that poets, and, literary men generally, are ethereal 1 creatures who care little or nothing ■ for solid sustenance he (or she) had better think again, writes Michael Compton in the “Evening Dispatch.” Naturalists have noticed that the song birds of our woods and gardens are always eating when they are not warb-. ling; and much the same thing applies to human songsters. j Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote beau- 1 tiful love-lyrics. He restored the depleted system with most enormous meals. It is recorded that he wouldj make a light breakfast of half a dozen, eggs and a like number of rashers of; bacon.

Physiologists calculate that literary work carried on for one hour “takes more out of” a man than manual work done for three hours. In other words, literary work is three times more exhausting than the work of a farmlabourer or a navvy.

Brain, therefore, needs more sustenance than brawn. It needs it in large quantiies and at more frequent intervals. The case of Thackeray was a case in point. The author of ‘Van-, ity Fair’ and ‘The Newcomes’ was a tremendous man standing well over' six feet, and likewise a tremendous worker. And he had an appetite to correspond. , . A pathetic story is told of Charlotte Bronte, meeting Thackeray, who was to her a demi-god, for the first time at a dinner party. She watched with sorrowful amazement the immense inroads which her idol made on the food, and just as he was about to engulf i another big forkful, she involuntarily breathed, “Oh, Mr. Thackeray, don’t'"] There is another well-authenticated 1 anecdote of the great novelist. He was j engaged to dine with a very important personage, when he heard that a favourite dish, broad beans and bacon, was on the dinner menu at his club. He could not resist it. He sent a message to his expectant host to say that he had met "a very old friend” and could not tear himself away. Then he made a solitary and very hearty meal of beans and bacon. Then, who does not recall Thackeray’s poetic outburst in praise of roast mutton? The poet-novelist sang: A good leg of mutton, my Lucy, I prithee have ready at three, Have it tender and smoking and juicy, And what better meat can there be? DUMAS OMELETTE. Another big man and great novelist was Alexandre Dumas, and he, too, was a redoubtable trencherman, besides fancying himself as a cook. It was said that he could make, and dispose of, an omelette comprising a dozen eggs, and that to-him a whole roast fowl was a mere snack. Dumas’s interest in good food and drink is evinced every now and then throughout the pages of his novels. Allusion to great feats of eating and drinking abound. . _ Dickens, too, revelled in descriptions of comestibles, and could become lyrical over the making of a steak-and-kidney pudding, as all readers of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ know. He was proud of his skill at concocting gin-punch, and always wound up the day with a jorum of that seductive fluid. Oliver Goldsmith was no mean performer with a knife and fork, and even wrote a poem on a haunch of venison. The gastronomic perform ances of his friend and contemporary, Samuel Johnson, are notorious.

Tennyson was not a puny trencherman, either, “I like my mutton cut in chunks,’ was the only remark he vouchsafed to his dinner neighbour on a certain memorable occasion.

Two hearty eaters of late days were G. K. Chesterton, and Arnold Bennett. The latter thought he was a gourmet, but he was more of a gourmand. At good eating aso ‘amesev inced.Oquill any rate, he knew less, really, about “G.K.C.” was devoted to good Burgundy and it has been recorded that once when he had been out in the rain and caught a bad cold he preferred to chase it away with Burgundy rather than 'with any of the more orthodox hut drinks. The generous wine had the desired effect.

A literary man whose feats of gluttony were incredible, was an editorial writer on the,, ‘‘New "York Press, known as “Uncle Dudley.” A fellowmember of the paper writes of him like this:

“His appetite was beyond belief. I saw him one morning break a dozen eggs into a huge tumbler, butter the mess liberally and get away with it down to the last scraping. This achievement would have not seemed so amazing had he not followed the eggs with a two-pound steak, garnished with onions. His appetite for luncheon three hours later was not so good. But he was ready for his dinner.” It is thus obvious that, whatever “Uncle Dudley’s” literary output was, he needed plenty of support to achieve it.