The French and Their Food - Part I

This is another post about a programme we watched a few weeks ago on BBC's iPlayer. It’s been a few weeks since I drafted this and I didn’t think to note the name of the programme, but never mind. I will long remember the content and, if I write this up at all well, perhaps so will you. Mind, some of it is a bit gory, so be warned!

So, what is it about the French and their food? Apparently it all began with Louis the 14th (1638-1715), the Sun King, whom the programme quoted as having said ‘I AM The State’ (Wikipedia says this is historically inaccurate). He is also the builder of Versailles, not exactly a humble undertaking. The size of this man’s ego is difficult to actually comprehend.

Apparently he formed the habit of eating dinner, a vast number of courses all exquisitely prepared, in front of his court where they could all watch him eat with wonder and awe. Image was all, in his book. This took him from night into the wee hours of the next day to do. It was all about ‘Look at me. Look how well I eat.’ This BBC programme said that this was when and where the benchmark was first set, requiring that French food be fit for a king.

Of course there was a steep divide between the royalty and the peasants. The latter lived on watery vegetable soup with, on a good day, a lump of pig fat; in hard times they ate rats. In fact, there was a premium paid for brewery rats; after all, they ate grain, more desirable than your average sewer rat. I know someone who has eaten guinea pig, but never met anyone who admitted to consuming rat; how far a jump would that be?

Fast forward to Louis the 16th (1754-1793) and his wife Marie Antoinette. She didn’t actually say ‘Let them eat cake’. It was brioche she was suggesting (sort of a sugary bread) and it was a practical idea in that it takes less flour to make brioche than bread. However, in the heat of a revolution no one wanted to give her any credit and ‘Let them eat cake’ was held as the perfect example of how stupid the upper classes were and how heartless about the conditions of the poor.

They were to a large extent a heartless lot, mind. There was a tale of Louis XIV's chef, Francois Vatel, who had made his reputation feeding the Sun King these amazing meals. Louis decided to have a banquet for ‘2000 of his nearest and dearest friends’ as it were. It was to be on a Friday, when there had to be fish; even the aristocracy had to bow to the church. The fish had to come some long distance from the sea and if the weather were bad it might not arrive. The chef, thinking it hadn’t and his reputation was in tatters not to mention that his boss would be upset, committed suicide, slicing his femoral artery with a kitchen knife. Ironically, the fish did arrive very shortly thereafter. The guests had their feast and comments all around were how delicious it was, shame about the chef, but you know those artistic types… You can read a bit more about the Chef Vatel here.

Under Napoleon III (1808-1873), France lived very well. Then came the German invasion. During the 1870 Seige of Paris, starvation was again a very real problem. Except for at one particular restaurant, Voison, on the rue Saint Honore, where there was a zoo involved.


I read a historical novel once (Burning Paris, by Nicholas Blincoe) that included this business, so it was the second time I'd come across the story. Monkey brains, elephant soup and kangaroo were all on the menu. (Well, some people eat kangaroo today, don’t they?)

According to the programme, there was a story which circulated of a woman whose two children had died of starvation and she was soon to follow, so she cooked them and ate for a few weeks. She was discovered and carted off to prison but the neighbours moved in and made soup from the bones. I don’t know if the story is true, but perhaps it is possible. (Though I read recently that the Donner party probably didn’t actually resort to cannibalism after all).

My point is, most of us have no idea about real hunger. I’m pretty certain in saying that about people who sit at computers in their homes. To have that recurring problem of starvation in one’s history it’s no wonder that a nation could become obsessed with food.

Becoming My Grandparents

I started nagging Bill about getting his cholesterol checked earlier this year. Eventually I just made an appointment for him and poor guy had to do the 12 hour fasting thing before he went. To make it worse, I thought when the nurse said 'No food or drink' she meant not even water; turns out by 'drink' she mean alcohol...I don't really speak English yet.

A few days before his appointment, however, he was having particular trouble with his fingers being very white and very cold, to the point of being painful, so he made himself an appointment to look into what could be done. As it happened, that doctor appointment was in the morning on the day when we both had dentist appointments around noon.

As we got into the car, I remarked that I felt we were beginning to resemble my Grandma and Grandpa, whom I remember filled in a good part of their day's routine with appointments, tablet schedules, eye drops, etc. I think they were supposed to be Christian Science but obviously theirs was a variation on the mainstream of that church. Bill said he'd been thinking along similar lines about our day's activities, though he never met my Grandparents.

I'm happy to report that Bill's chipped tooth is now beautifully repaired, the dentist declared my teeth to be very clean (me being the very dutiful flosser that I am) and Bill's cholesterol -- and all the other blood work they ran at the same time -- came out just fine. He now has a prescription for his Raynaud's. It turns this is a rheumatory rather than a circulatory matter, which was news to both of us. The prescription, unfortunately, requires that he give up grapefruit, which is rather sad. It's not that he ate it all the time or loved it that much, it's more the principle of being denied that option. In the back of my mind is the thought that all this is the beginning of a new chapter for both of us.

The good news is that the medication appears to help his running, particularly at the very beginning of a run when his heart rate used to go quite high before settling down. I'm guessing he thinks that's a pretty fair trade for grapefruit.

Dorothy and the Metro Cat

Whenever a house near us goes on the market, of course, it prompts discussions about what this one might be worth, not that I'm thinking of selling. What with estate agents on the internet one can find out all sorts about the amenities various homes have on offer and at what price.

The house next door suddenly went up for sale last month. In spite of being a 'semi-detached' with mine, it isn't quite a mirror image of this house though perhaps it once was. It has 3 bedrooms like mine, 'another room' which may equate to my large upstairs landing, and picture rails. We have a garage and the original fireplaces, which they do not. They have a downstairs loo and the original 1920's stained glass door, which we do not. Updating inside and replacing the roof was costed at about £40,000 and they were asking £210,000. There was practically a queue of people to view it and the house was sold within a couple of weeks. We are waiting to see who are our new neighbours.

Bill talked with Marjory's grandson a couple of times and learned that she is now in a very nice residential home in another village. He didn't say, but we surmise that Dorothy passed away. She will have been in her 80s at least. Up until about 5-6 years ago, she walked daily into the next village to do her grocery shopping. She told me once that she had been walking along the riverside and heard the ferry tooting, as it does each afternoon when it leaves for Amsterdam. She was excited and ran to see the ship. This brought on a heart attack and she told me she was doing less and less ever since. She said she missed her freedom sorely. I try to remember that story for when I'm reluctant to go for my run. I've written about Dorothy before.

It's quiet now, but for the comings and goings of carpet fitters and the grandson and his wife who are moved in for the interim. I'm sad that Dorothy is gone, but happy that she had a long life and that she wasn't lonely in her old age. We were never in and out of one another's houses, only speaking when out in the gardens at the same time, so it's not as though we were particularly close. Still, she was a very nice lady.

About the time all this started happening, the local free paper had an article in it about the big fluffy black and white cat that used to wait with me for the train that would take me to work. It lived at the metro station and it wasn't until I was writing about the flea market there that I discovered the cat had a name. Iggy, too, has passed on.

Financial Literacy

I moaned sometime back about wishing I'd learned earlier to understand more about money, beyond how not to spend it. Since then, I notice that the politicians here in the run up to the election (today, in fact) are talking about financial education in schools. Also, the Freakonomics people have written on the topic. I got interested in their blog after having read The Undercover Economist, which I can recommend as entertaining as well as informative. I also noticed that the Get Rich Slowly blog does a series of articles on the subject in April. The list of issues he covers includes a lot that I know, and much that I will be catching up with.

I keep running into references to Warren Buffet's annual letters to shareholders which supposedly share all his financial wisdom. As I understand it, he makes his money buying whole companies rather than just stocks, so I don't know how applicable it might be, but if I could understand half of what he writes I'd think I was pretty smart.

There is also a lot about these days on blogs I read about the relationship between money and happiness. Despite what is commonly thought, unless one has very little money to start with, more money doesn't equate with more happiness. I would be lying if I said I wouldn't like to have more money, but my own experience of a frugal existence tells me I wouldn't be more happy. I would be happier, however, if I felt confident that I was making the most of what I do have, being a good steward as it were.

Until I get caught up with all this study, I'm thinking I shall take on board the financial advice given by Scott Adams in his Happiness Formula. At least I can understand that, and most of the Dilbert strips, without too much study.

Are there any sources of financial information that you would recommend for someone wishing to be better educated on the subject?

Edward FitzGerald

I'm still talking about a wonderful TV programme I watched the other day, about Omar Khayyam (and yes, it is a very long post; and I've had to fight with Blogger for every word).

Sir Nicholas Barrington (former British High Commissioner to Pakistan) was interviewed about the connection between Khayyam, of 11th century Persia, and the British Victorian, Edward FitzGerald. FitzGerald was the son of an Anglo-Irish family of fabulous wealth and was friends with people like Tennyson and Thackaray.

The programme didn’t go so far as to say FitzGerald was homosexual, though they described his great emotional loss when his friend, Edward Byles Cowell left England for Calcutta. It was Cowell who found an obscure book of Persian poetry at the Bodleian Library at Oxford and translated ‘Who is the Potter and Who is the Pot?’ for FitzGerald. [Or, according to Wikipedia, he found the book of poetry in Calcutta and sent it to FitzGerald].

Shortly after Cowell left, FitzGerald made a ‘disastrous marriage’. Those two words are linked both in the BBC programme and in the Wikipedia entry for FitzGerald, though no blame is placed on his unfortunate wife. It is said that FitzGerald was drawn to the poetry of Khayyam because of the latter’s understanding of the human soul, of loneliness and of the complexity of the inner self. I've always assumed that the word 'gay' was an ironic term, but apparently not.

In the late 1850’s, FitzGerald published his translation of the Rubyiat, to no great acclaim. The programme attributes its initial success to an Irish scholar, Whitley Stokes, who in 1861 found a copy of FitzGerald’s book selling for a mere penny, the bookseller keen to unload his stock. Stokes liked the poetry, went back for more copies to send to friends and the fire of fame has burned brightly ever since. I’d bet money you’ve heard the phrase, “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou”. Guess where it comes from.

One of the interviewees describes that the translation was rather loose and that FitzGerald ‘gave’ to Khayyam as many of the gifts of the notable English poets as he could. It does seem rather a stretch too far to believe that by happy coincidence the final words from the first, second and fourth lines of each of Khayyam's verses just happened to rhyme when translated into English! There are no doubt many scholarly books written to discuss the translation in further depth than I could hope to understand. I suspect, not being poetically minded, I will be challenged to comprehend even FitzGerald’s translation, but after seeing this programme I certainly plan to give it a go.

The programme gave examples of the many notable fans of Khayyam’s poetry as translated by FitzGerald. Folks like Arthur Conan Doyle, T.S. Eliot and Thomas Hardy were avid fans. The latter particularly identified with Khayyam/FitzGerald’s recognition of 'man’s inevitable defeat at the hands of the world'.

“…Make game of that which makes as much of thee…”

“…Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days where destiny with men for pieces plays…”

Dick Davis from Ohio University says this is about questioning faith. FitzGerald was also a questioner. Davis also said something to the effect that this work uncovered to the Victorians the fact that there was an enormous amount of unknown history, I think he meant as in Eastern history, about which they had not been aware. [He used the word ‘unknown’, but if it wasn’t ‘known’ somewhere in Victorian days, we couldn’t ‘know’ about it now, could we?] I suspect that most of us are still very much unaware of history of other than the Western world; I certainly am.

Another interviewee described FitzGerald’s translation as ‘shaping and re-ordering’ Khayyam’s stanzas. I don’t know what point he was making but my notes include this, which I think is beautiful, whose ever words they are:

“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight”

Should I mention here that the interviews either took place in museum settings or at garden parties with everyone holding a glass of wine? I guess they were taking the subject to heart.

The programme went on to discuss that in Victorian times it was of course the British thing to plunder the assets of the colonies and that FitzGerald may have added a bit of ‘otherness’ to ensure that the poetry would be received as ‘exotic’. This could have been patronizing, but FitzGerald also included an element of humour or irony and thus saved the work from being … whatever it might have been with out.

There was also discussion about how the book was presented, for example the English text was written in the style of Iranian calligraphy with lots of extra dots, you know, --very beautiful, in fact -- but the supposedly Iranian illustrations were very Western.

Another Professor Davis, this time Janet from a university in Austin Texas, said that during the last part of the 19th century, America seized on the ideas of seeking pleasure, of fate and the unknowns of afterlife. The popular concepts embodied in the Rubaiyat were ‘massified’. [I thought she’d made up this word, but apparently not. This spawned such diverse products as playing cards and Omar tooth powder. (She said she didn’t get the connection with tooth powder, but I think it was so that when one was smiling from joyful living in the present, one could make sure one’s teeth looked good!).

There was also an Omar Khayyam Club of America which met for grand dinners where an ‘obscene amount of food was eaten’ and there was lots of drink. The menus and souvenirs from their meetings are collectable works of art and she showed a beautifully illustrated menu from a dinner held on 2 April 1921. Here we are back in that interwar period again!

(I would have put that picture at the top here, but Blogger wasn't having it).

The narrator commented on the American reference to ‘Omar’ and her response was that they spoke so familiarly because he so seemed to speak to them (Quick response, I thought).

Walt Whitman link was also a fan of not only FitzGerald’s translation but his introduction to the book. Whitman's 1872 edition of the Rubaiyat shows he his underlining of all the phrases about Khayyam that he felt applied to him: his poetry not appreciated in his own time, is a challenger of society’s norms, etc. I had no idea what this was about until I went and scanned the Wikipedia entry for Whitman. Turns out he wasn’t just a poet who wrote about the beauty of nature.

The Rubaiyat may well still be the most frequently illustrated book of poetry today. In the US the illustrations were some of the largest and most beautiful. However, the book was published in all shapes and sizes. A very small copy, carried in 1917 by a British soldier in Cairo, shows the soldier has underlined all the passages about the inevitability of death.

This book obviously spoke to the heart of many people and its application goes far beyond a simplistic justification for American consumerism, an interviewee stated. She went on to say how much of history we have forgotten, being caught up in the ‘contemporary geopolitical problem’ (How I would have loved playing with that phrase as a child). There is much to remember, she said, about this Persian astronomer, poet and mathematician. I think she said something about lessening the polarity between Islam and Christianity.

Mind, Khayyam’s views don’t fit well with current dogma in Iran. He might be paraphrased along the lines of ‘We have to make our own reason and to live for this life, there may not be another’. Though they celebrate an Omar Khayyam day (at which on this programme they were unveiling a statute of Edward FitzGerald), one interviewee said that the official view does not approve of Khayyam’s poetry. However, his influence in Iran is so great, they cannot really do anything about it; any attempt would only increase his popularity.

“…one thing is certain, life flies;”

Khayyam died about 1131, in his 80s. FitzGerald died in 1883, aged 74. He is buried in Suffolk. There is a rosebush growing on FitzGerald's grave which is from a cutting from a bush near Omar Khayyam's mausoleum in Neyshapur.

Omar Khayyam

We've recently discovered BBC's iPlayer and watching it has been added to our possible activities between dinner and bedtime. I enjoyed the first few programmes so well that I found myself making notes about what I remembered; ever since I've started making notes while I watch. Sad, I know, but I enjoy it and writing about things might help me remember what I learned. One of the great luxuries of retirement for me is having the time and energy to investigate topics such as this.

I seem to remember saying certain words over and over as a child, words that sounded exotic and interesting, not that I knew much about what they meant. I'm pretty sure that 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' was one of those phrases that grabbed me, but I've never had occasion to know anything about it; I think I always assumed it was fictitious novel about a character with that name.

One of the BBC programmes I watched recently was about just this person and it turns out he was very real. The TV programme jumped around quite a lot with beautifully colourful scenes from Persian art and exotic music in the background. I will try to put things more into a chronological sequence. As usual, I've ended up doing a bit of internet research (fun!) and discovered little tidbits like 'ruba'i' is a form of Persian poetry, and a rubaiyat is a collection of them.


Omar Khayyam was a man who lived in 11th century Persia. He was born in a city called Neishabour (Neyshapur...there are a number of spellings), now in Iran, which at its time was about a very cosmopolitan and learned city in the East, second only to perhaps Constantinople. Neishabour has over time suffered destruction by earthquake and by Mongul invasion. It was a strategic location on the Silk Road between China and Europe and so would have been attractive to invaders.

One such invasion by a nomadic tribe was in 1040, a few years before Khayyam was born. They set up a new empire and established the schools at which Khayyam was to study. The knowledge and skills that he acquired allowed him to become a part of the Sultan's Court. Medieval Islam was the golden age of Science in the East and this man was part of that age.

Khayyam’s knowledge of astronomy was valued because it was important for Muslims to know when to pray and where to find Mecca. Mosques at that time were not just concerned with religious protocol, but also with the computing and writing of tables to provide that information. Star gazing was one of their main occupations.

If I understand my notes properly, the Muslim year begins in spring and is based on Khayyam’s calculations. Before these, they used a Yazgerdi calendar, which was lunar based and had only 355 days. Taxes were collected following the crop harvesting and this calendar was problematic. Not only did they sometimes find themselves absurdly celebrating spring in the middle of winter, but in some years there were two tax collections. Even worse, from the Sultan’s point of view, some years had none!

In 1074, the Sultan appointed Khayyam and other astronomers to make a new calendar. They studied the night skies for four years. The stars they used as reference points became known as the signs of the zodiac. Khayyam slightly overstated his calculation (expressed to twelve digits after the decimal); it is only accurate, apparently, to the fifth but as such is still more accurate than the Gregorian calendar we use today, according to someone from the University of Wisconsin.

The cutting edge tool they used back then was an astrolabe. It looked to be a brass disc about 10” in diameter with lots of engraved information. There were the four main Islamic cities, each with their latitudes and a star chart to enable finding Mecca and offering timely prayer in each location using the altitude of the sun.

Khayyam was interested in not only astronomy and math, but also algebra. I thought the programme said he contributed to the Copernican Revolution, which rejected the concept that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, in favour of the sun. However, according to Wikipedia that all happened several hundred years later in Europe, which is what I vaguely remember; perhaps I misunderstood. The programme did say that the Western version of history often fails to recognise the contributions of the East. It was Eastern mathematicians who discovered 'zero' and negative numbers. These ideas were carried West via the trade routes through North Africa.

Khayyam was particularly interested in cubic equations, necessary to measure volume. He wasn't able to fully solve the problems he set for himself, but he apparently enjoyed the challenge. The Wikipedia entry for Khayyam shows a graph with a hyperbola and a circle and that's about all I can tell you about it! One of the people interviewed on the programme suggested that his love of poetry was linked with his mathematical background in that he saw patterns in language. I've heard of links between math and music, but not with poetry; this might explain why I'm not much into poetry, math having never been my strongest point.

In 1092, the Sultan Malik Shaw died and Khayyam virtually disappeared from court and scientific circles. It was during this time that he wrote his rubaiyat. The programme stops focussing on Khayyam’s life time and turns its attention to the impact of his poetry.

One of the Iranian interviewees pointed out that there are 'subversive messages and metaphors' in Khayyam’s writings, though not everyone chooses to take note of them. For example, ‘Drink wine for this is the essence of life.’ might be another way of saying ‘Take joy in living in the moment, for we do not know if there is another life’. This will have been an unorthodox view in that place in his time, as it is now in Muslim country. The programme showed a number of famous people quoting from the Rubaiyat, including Dr. Martin Luther King and Bill Clinton.

It is presumably Khayyam's contribution to science that caused a crater on the moon to be named for him, as all other names I looked at appeared to be scientists. Nevertheless, it is for his poetry that Omar Khayyam is most recognised. The programme went on to talk about how the Western world in Victorian times became aware of this man's poetry and I will share what I learned about that in my next post.

Louisa May-Day Alcott

"The first of May came on Sunday, so all the celebrating must be done on Saturday, which happily proved fair, though too chilly for muslin gowns, paper garlands, and picnics on damp grass. Being a holiday, the boys decided to devote the morning to ball and the afternoon to the flower hunt, while the girls finished the baskets; and in the evening our particular seven were to meet at the Minots to fill them, ready for the closing frolic of hanging on door-handles, ringing bells, and running away."

-- from Jack and Jill, one of my favourite childhood books