GREAT WRITERS ARE GREAT EATERS

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 4

GREAT WRITERS ARE GREAT EATERS

JF anybody thinks that poets, and

literary men generally, are ethereal creatures who care little or nothing for solid sustenance he tor she) had better thing 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 warbling; and much the same thing applies to human songsters.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote beautiful love-lyrics. He restored the depleted system with most enormous meals. It is recorded that he would make a light breakfast of half a dozen eggs and a line 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 exhausing than the work of a farm-

labourer or a navvy. Brain, therefore, needs more sustenance than brawn. It needs it in large quantities and at more frequent intervals. The case of Thackeray was a case in point. The author of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes was a tremendous man standing well over six feet, and likewise a tremendous worker. And be had an appetite to correspond.

A pathetic story is told of Charlotte Bronte meeting Thackeray, who was to her a demigod, for the first time at a dinner-party. She watched with sorrowful amazement the immense in-

roads which her idol made on the food, and just as he was about to engulf •Ait 'ther big forkful, she involuntarily breathed, “Oh, Mr. Thackeray, don’t!" There is another well-authenticated anecdote of the great novelist. He was 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 poetical outburst in praise of roast *mr*on? The poet-novelist sang: “A good leg or mutton, my Lucy, I prithee have ready at 3, Have it tender ana smoking and juicy.

And what better meat can there be?”

Some Gastronomic Feats

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 roas! 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 ginDunch, 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 performances 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 later days were G. K. Chesterton and Arnold Bennett. The latter thought he was a gourmet, but he was more of a gourmand. At any rate, he knew less, really about good eating than he imagined he did. “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 hot 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 fellow-member 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 less liberally, and then 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 tor his dinner. It is thus obvious that, whatever “Uncle Dudley’s” literary output was, he needed plenty of support to achieve it