Table Steaks
French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley toured Georgian London just in time to witness a culinary revolution: the sandwich.
1770
King George III 1760-1820
French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley toured Georgian London just in time to witness a culinary revolution: the sandwich.
1770
King George III 1760-1820
In 1770, Frenchman Pierre-Jean Grosley delighted French readers with his account of a visit to London and of the habits of its citizens high and low. Two years later, Thomas Nugent translated it, and Grosley’s impressions found an equally delighted audience on this side of the Channel. It is to this work that we are indebted for an eyewitness account of the ‘sandwich’ and its ... spread.
THE English, who are profound thinkers, violent in their desires, and who carry all their passions to excess, are altogether extravagant in the article of gaming: several rich noblemen are said to have ruined themselves by it:* others devote their whole time to it, at the expense of their business, their repose and their health.
A minister of state passed four and twenty hours at a public gaming-table, so absorbed in play, that, during the whole time, he had no subsistence but a bit of beef, between two slices of toasted bread, which he ate without ever quitting the game. This new dish grew highly in vogue, during my residence in London: it was called by the name of the minister, who invented it.*
* English gentlemen had not reformed their reckless gaming habits a generation later, when George ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778-1840) won £26,000 in a night. “Pretty high play” wrote biographer William Jesse (1809-1871) “for a man whose patrimony did not much exceed that sum. His friends after this lucky hit strongly recommended him to buy an annuity; but he either refused to adopt the suggestion, or neglected to act with sufficient promptitude upon their advice, and a few nights after he lost it all again.” It was a vast sum, equivalent today to about £2m.
* Grosley forbears to reveal his name, but we all recognise it: John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792). At the time when Grosley’s book was published in 1770, Montagu was Secretary of State for the Northern Department (i.e. the Home Secretary) and Postmaster General; when Nugent’s translation came out two years later, the Earl’s term as Home Secretary had ended and he was once more First Lord of the Admiralty. Popping a slice of meat between two pieces of bread was hardly unknown before this, but the Earl’s patronage and name (not to mention his racy reputation) made it fashionable and in time quite normal.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.