I was walking in the Chiltern Hills with a friend not long ago when
we turned into the inn at Chenies for lunch. There were only two
people in the dining-room--a man and, I take it, his wife, who were
sitting at a table laden with a cold roast of beef, vegetables,
pickles, cheese and bread, and large tankards of beer. The man was a
hefty person with red hair, a red face, and a "fair round belly." He
took no notice of our entrance, and he took no notice of the timid
little woman in front of him. He gave his undivided attention to his
knife and fork and the joint before him. He cut and came again with
the steady gravity of a man who took his victuals seriously and had
no time for frivolous talk. When at last the fury of his appetite
abated, he took a last deep draught from the tankard, drew his napkin
across his mouth, stretched himself, and, speaking for the first time
to the timid little woman in front of him, said:
"Well, we'd better be getting on if we're going to catch that train
to Rickmansworth" (two stations or so off).
"But what do we want to stop at Rickmansworth for?" ventured the
timid little woman.
"What do we want to stop at Rickmansworth for?" repeated the man in a
tone in which astonishment and indignation struggled for mastery.
"_Well, I suppose we've got to have tea!_"
He spoke as though the deepest feelings of his nature had been
wounded. He was having a day's outing in the country, and here was
this insensible woman before him who actually wanted to know what
they were going to Rickmansworth for. What had they come out for if
it was not to have lunch at Chenies and tea at Rickmansworth? In his
mind Chenies lived as a place where you got lashings of cold beef and
pickles, washed down with good ale, at the inn, and Rickmansworth as
a place where you called to have tea and eggs and bread and butter
and jam. I do not speak disrespectfully of those to whom the memory
of good food hangs like a halo round a place. Hazlitt remembered
Llangollen, not merely because he first read the _New Eloise_ there,
but because he read it to the accompaniment of a bottle of sherry and
a cold chicken. And again: "I remember the leg of Welsh mutton and
the turnips that day had the finest flavour imaginable," he says,
when referring to his first meeting with Coleridge.
Indeed, not the least of Hazlitt's charms is his hearty delight in
the table. His adventures have a trick of ending in the cheerful
music of knife and fork. Thus he tells how in his youthful days when
he was trying to live by art he painted a portrait of a Manchester
manufacturer, and being very hungry, having lived for the past
fortnight chiefly on coffee, he slurred over the painting of his
sitter's coat in order that he might hear the five guineas reward
jingling in his pocket. Then, the guineas secure, he hurried to the
market-place and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes, "a noble dish
for strong stomachs; and while they were getting ready and I could
hear them hissing in the pan, I read a volume of _Gil Blas_
containing the account of the fair Aurora."
But with all the gusto of these and many similar allusions to food,
it will be observed that the pleasures of eating were incidental and
not primary. It was the associations of the food that made it
memorable. The sherry and the chicken, like Llangollen itself, were
irradiated by the spirit of Rousseau, and the Welsh mutton and the
turnips lingered on the palate of memory with the impression of
Coleridge's astonishing eloquence. It was the intellectual zest of
the occasion that added a touch of poetry to the food. The Welsh
mutton caught the rapture of the prophet, the sherry glowed with the
fire of new thought and the hissing of the sausages and mash in the
pan was mingled with the tale of the fair Aurora. That is the way to
dignify the remembrance of our creature comforts. It is no dishonour
even to the Finsteraarhorn to remember the noble bowl of steaming hot
soup that you had in the hut when the climb was done, and many a fine
walk is rounded off in retrospect by the fare that awaited us at the
inn. Even bread and cheese and beer may be suffused with the glory
of a great adventure and Mr. George Saintsbury, who has as much zest
over his food as Hazlitt had, will grow lyrical even over sandwiches,
taken to the right accompaniment of time and place.
But to remember Chenies for its beef and pickles is to exalt beef and
pickles to too high a place in our affections. I have known men who
have travelled much and who seem to have brought nothing back from
their travels but menu cards. Such a one was coming up the other day
from Devonshire, whither he had been for a holiday. I know no finer
country for a holiday, nor one better worth growing dithyrambic
about. After much travelling and many affairs of the heart with the
English counties I think my verdict has gone finally to Devonshire.
Where shall we find such colour, such moorlands, such a variety of
coast-line, so warm and generous a feeling about Nature and man? If
I had a second innings on earth and had my choice of birthplace I
think I should choose to be born a Devon man. So I think would that
man in the railway-carriage, but for other reasons than mine. He was
an amiable and gossipy man who babbled to the company about his
holiday experiences. He had been to many places on the South Devon
coast, but so far as one could gather he had been eating all the
time. Every place recalled some meal. There was Dartmouth, for
example. If you ever went to Dartmouth be sure to go to
such-and-such a tea-shop. Top-hole it was. Best place for tea in
the town. You could have what they called "a light tea," and a very
nice tea it was, with home-made jam and Devonshire cream. His face
glowed with the succulent thought. Or you could have a heavy tea, a
sort of a high tea, the constituents of which he recited with great
precision, as a man might particularise his strokes at golf or his
hands at cards or the mountains he had climbed.
Then there was Teignmouth. He went there and it was a fine place.
And if you ever went to Teignmouth he had one piece of advice to
give. Don't miss having lunch at the "Boar's Head" or some such
place. No end of a lunch. And reasonable too. Not cheap, mind you.
He was not a person who believed in cheapness. But the quality! And
with this introduction he travelled over the menu, the record of
which occupied quite a substantial part of the journey to London.
After this he continued the itinerary of his travels in quest of
meals. He went up the Teign to Newton Abbot, and there or
thereabouts he struck a most wonderful cockle tea. The cockles, it
seemed, came out of the river, and it was his solid conviction that
Newton Abbot was a place very well worth visiting if it was only to
know what cockles could be like when they came fresh out of the
water, and were taken to the accompaniment of the right sort of tea.
And so he babbled on about the places he had been to and the food he
had eaten in them until one might have thought that Devonshire was a
land strewn with tea-shops and restaurants. I offer him as a
cautionary tale for those who take the cult of the knife and fork a
thought too seriously.