20th May 1813 The Birth of Richard Wagner

Full many a wonder is told us in stories old,

of heroes worthy of praise, of hardships dire,

of joy and feasting, of weeping and of wailing;

of the fighting of bold warriors, now ye may hear wonders told.

From The Ring of the Nibelungen (12th Century Anonymous)

One of the things that someone said to me when I was much younger, is 'It's the song and not the singer.' What she meant was that great art should stand independently of its creator. We must judge the art as art, not as the creation of a person whose views or actions we might abhor. It's a useful counteraction to the views of someone like my mother, who when I expressed an admiration for Picasso at the age of about thirteen, said 'Yes, but dear, he's not a nice man.'

I think the doctrine, like all doctrines, has its limits and that brings me to Wagner. Definitely not a nice man. A man to whom you should never lend money, or with whom you should never leave your wife, or go into business, or enter into political dialogue. Although - given the penchant of other mens' wives for Wagner, he must have had something! But whatever we think of the man and his politics and the taint of history, Wagner made the musical world anew and he can't be ignored.

Richard Wagner was born two hundred years ago today in Leipzig. That makes him contemporary with the publication of 'Pride and Prejudice' - which just goes to show how the world changed during his lifetime. Here's the man himself.

Wagner's father died when he was a baby, his mother quickly remarried and his step father (who may have been his real father anyway) was an actor and playwright. This early influence must have contributed to Wagner's comfortable accommodation of all the aspects of theatrical production. Before Wagner, composers made music and writers wrote their libretti. Wagner did it all, including in later life, building the theatre at Bayreuth as a shrine to his own musical genius. His masterpiece, 'The Ring of the Nibelungen' is based on a long anonymous poem written in Middle High German in the 12th century. The Ring is similar to the old Norse sagas, and not surprisingly also fascinated J.R.R.Tolkien.

On the whole - and certainly in my sitting room, I like my music on a small scale - I'd much rather have a song than a symphony. But you have to admire Wagner's mighty vision and his iconoclasm. His early music education was sketchy and maybe that was the reason that later on he reached beyond the conventions of the time and put together those gigantic, crashing, unresolved chords. 

Emperor Joseph II said about 'The Marriage of Figaro', "Too many notes Mozart!", so goodness knows what he would have made of 'Gotterdemmerung'. I'm not a natural Wagnerite and bizarrely I came to Wagner through the wonderfully funny Anna Russell. She does the most hilarious analysis of 'The Ring' - and it is all absolutely correct. Her 'Ring' contains such gems as ....

The Rhine Maidens - "a sort of aquatic Andrews Sisters" and of Siegfried - "He's very young. He's very handsome. He's very stupid!" Of Alberich, the horrible dwarf who made the Ring of the Nibelungen, she says, "As you can see he's excessively unattractive." Judge for yourself.

Russell came from Suffolk but spent so much time in the US and Canada, her accent is a delightful transatlantic drawl which suits her deadpan delivery perfectly - I do recommend her, especially to Wagner virgins.

Wagner had an extraordinary impact on the cultural world of the nineteenth century; music, poetry and theatre all reeled under his impact and the artistic universe was never quite the same again - a new star had entered the firmament. So BBC Radio 3 - the soundtrack to my life, has lots of Wagner this week and I’m going to make something that's been on the 'to be cooked' list since I ate it a month ago in Germany. I wonder if Wagner, as he languished (briefly) in a debtors' prison in Riga, fantasised on the food of his childhood? He would certainly have eaten this seasonal treat from Bavaria.

Bärlauch Knödel - Wild Garlic Dumplings with (Fake) Wild Mushroom Sauce 

You need the wide leafed wild garlic here - ramsoms, not allium triquetrum, the chive like weed of West Country lanes. This is a traditional recipe, but you can also see Kerstin Losch's recipe at http://foodforagingcourses.co.uk/german-wild-garlic-dumplings-barlauch-knodel-made-with-wild-garlic-paste-barlauchpaste/

Make the wild garlic paste first.

Blitz 250g wild garlic leaves with 125ml of sunflower oil and a tsp salt. Store in a screw top jar - it keeps ages.

For the knödel:

225g good stale bread torn into small pieces, bigger than breadcrumbs - about the size of a fingernail. Too small and your mixture will be gluey, too big and it won't hold together. It all depends on the bread.

150 ml warm milk.

Pour the milk over the bread and leave to stand until all absorbed. Add more milk if it still seems dry.

Now add 2 tablespoons of the wild garlic paste and 50g wild garlic leaves finely shredded

Fry 3-4 chopped spring onions in a little butter with a chopped clove of garlic (or use the wild garlic stalks finely chopped). Cool, add to the rest of the ingredients and mix together. You now need to add plain flour, spoonful by spoonful, until you have a soft dough that will hold its shape. Mould it with your hands into balls about the size of a golf ball and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes. It makes about a dozen balls.

Line a steamer with greaseproof paper and gently put in your knödel. Steam for 20 minutes.

Fake wild mushroom sauce

This couldn't be easier. Chop 4 large mushrooms into chunks and fry in a walnut sized lump of butter. Meanwhile soak a few dried porcini shreds in hot water. Add to the fried mushrooms together with the soaking liquid (take care there's no grit) and 60ml white wine. Reduce until the liquid is nearly gone. Tip in a 200g tub of crème fraiche and heat through gently. The full fat crème fraiche is much better here, the low fat version goes a bit claggy - (good Yorkshire word that :) For extra authenticity, season with truffle salt or add a smidgeon of truffle oil.

Spoon some sauce onto the plates, add three dumplings per person and garnish with the garlic flowers. I steamed a few leaves to add as well. 

There are lots of German recipes that use stale bread - German bread is too good to waste, but I especially love these.

Trompettes tout haut d’or pâmé sur les vélins

Le dieu Richard Wagner irradiant un sacre

Mal tu par l’encre même en sanglots sibyllins.

from: 'Hommage Á Richard Wagner' by Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)

9 May: Ascension Day in Venice

This where I would like to be today....


…She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea…

From: ‘On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic’ by William Wordsworth (1770- 1850)

Every Ascension Day for over a thousand years, the city of Venice -‘La Serenissima’ has renewed her wedding vows with the sea. The famous ceremony when the Doge sailed out in his golden barge 'The Bucintoro' first cast a wedding ring into the Adriatic was called ‘La Sensa’ and began in 997AD, following the Venetian conquest of Dalmatia, which brought the whole of the Adriatic under Venetian control.  The ceremony was symbolic of Venice’s dependence on and dominance of the seas.

 'Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day' by Giovanni Antonio Canal known as Canaletto, 1730.

The ceremony still happens every Ascension Day and takes the form of a water procession from the Basilica of St. Mark to the Church of San Nicolò on the Lido. The Patriarch of Venice blesses a golden ring, which is then tossed into the sea by the Mayor.  The ceremonial boat leads a procession of little ships and gondolas out of the city and onto the glittering Adriatic and for an hour or two Venice remembers her glory days.

I cried the first time I saw Venice. One blazing August day we parked in an ugly multi-storey car park at Piazzale Roma, went a few yards down a short flight of stone steps and suddenly I was in the middle of a Canaletto painting. The Grand Canal curved away from me; edged by fabulous palaces, bobbing boats and the striped mooring poles called ‘palo da ormeggio’.  To time travel from the twentieth century back to the sixteenth in a few seconds, was all too much and I found tears rolling down my cheeks at the sheer beauty of it all.

It is a city like no other, and it’s the place that the expression ‘shabby chic’ was designed for.  Through the window of a faded palace you catch a glimpse of rooms gilded and emblazoned with paintings and chandeliers. The sound of someone practicing the violin drifts from an attic window; a cat slinks past, a woman calls across the narrow fondamente to her neighbour a few feet away, the garbage boat chugs along the canal. There is the smell of water, diesel, coffee and Italian cigarettes. I love it. I just love it.

Of course Venice is heavy with tourists, but head away from the Rialto and St Marks Square (once you’ve had your Bellini at Florians), scuttle away down a side canal and you can be quite alone and in the ‘real’ Venice, just a few streets away from the day trippers. Seek out the Venetian Ghetto or the Arsenale where only the more adventurous tourists venture. Lose yourself in the narrow alleyways, drink coffee, sit on steps (you’ll be hard pressed to find a public bench in Venice), open the heavy creaking door of an old church and look through the incense scented gloom at smoke stained altar pieces. Sit at the back in the cool air and think of – nothing - just be in the moment. It can refresh your spirit for a lifetime.

One of my favourite places in Venice is the fish market on the Campo della Pescheria near the Rialto. Here’s Elizabeth David in her book ‘Italian Food’

‘The light of a Venetian dawn is so limpid and so still that it makes every separate vegetable and fish luminous with a life of its own, with unnaturally heightened colours and clear stencilled outlines…..In other markets, on other shores, the unfamiliar fishes may be vivid, mysterious, repellent, fascinating, and bright with splendid colour; only in Venice do they look good enough to eat. In Venice even ordinary sole and ugly great skate are striped with delicate lilac lights, the sardines shine like newly-minted silver coins, pink Venetian scampi are fat and fresh, infinitely enticing in the early dawn.’

Alongside the Grand Canal, the embankment wall of the Campo is fourteenth century and although the covered open sided market was built five hundred years later, its cheerful red awnings and elegant balcony make it blend seamlessly with the older buildings around it.

So Venice is a magical place; read Donna Leon or James Morris or Ruskin or Thomas Mann or Henry James or Byron or Truman Capote or Shakespeare….but actually nothing prepares you for the reality.  Although Mary Shelley said it best….

'There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave... all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.'

This is based on a scallop salad from ‘The Harry’s Bar Cook Book’ by Arrigo Cipriani. I’ve deleted mushrooms and added polenta croutons.

Scallop and rocket salad with polenta croutons

3 fat scallops per person – with coral
1 ripe tomato per person deseeded and cut into thin slices
Half packet of ready made polenta or make your own with 50g polenta meal and 200ml water
5 tablespoons olive oil.
3 tablespoons good balsamic vinegar
Rocket – or a bag of rocket, watercress and spinach salad
Handful of finely chopped flat leaved parsley or tarragon
Salt and pepper.

Put the sliced tomato, vinegar and parsley or tarragon into one bowl and season well and keep ready. Cut rounds of polenta with a small circular cutter a bit smaller than the scallops. Fry in olive oil until golden, set aside for a moment. In the same hot pan very quickly sear the scallops over a high heat - but go carefully you don’t want hockey pucks, turn them over. After no more than two minutes tip the tomato mixture on top of the scallops and combine well. Dress the leaves and put onto your plates, tip the scallops and tomatoes over them, add the polenta croutons.

Serve instantly.

My only Venice - this is breath!
Thy breeze
Thine Adrian sea-breeze, how it fans my face!
Thy very winds feel native to my veins,

And cool them into calmness!


 From ‘The Two Foscari’  by  George Gordon Lord Byron (1788 -1824)

May Day: The Green Man.

Green man in the garden, staring from the tree
Why do you look so long and hard, through the pain in me?
Your eyes are dark as holly, of sycamore your horns,
Your bones are made of elder branch; your teeth are made of thorns
 Your hat is made of ivy leaf, of bark your dancing shoes
And evergreen and green and green, your jacket and shirt and trous.

From 'Green Man in the Garden' by Charles Causley (1917-2003)

It’s been a long, cold spring, so the turning of the year celebrated on May Day is very welcome. Mind you, given that we’ve barely got used to the slightly warmer weather, summer still seems far away. How much more keenly appreciated must May Day festivities have been for our ancestors, un-cushioned as they were by central heating, cars and the benefits of Gortex?

I’ve been thinking about the Green Man; that spring symbol of fertility and fruitfulness whose face often adorns churches and other buildings and who pops up as an image right across the world.  Like the three hares motif that can be tracked back from the medieval churches of Cornwall and Devon right along the Silk Road to China, the origins of the Green Man are mysterious. Eleventh century masons certainly didn’t think his image was incongruous carved alongside the faces of saints and angels and once you start looking you can see him everywhere. Both these images are of roof bosses in York Minster.

Maybe he was a pre-Christian symbol, or perhaps he stems from the mediaeval taste for weird animals in bestiaries. There is a well-documented connection between illuminated manuscripts and stone carving, so we perhaps should place the Green Man in the company of wyverns, dragons and other mediaeval images of the dark side. Anyway whatever his origins, these days we think of him as the symbol of unrestrained nature that comes with the first warm days of spring.

The Green Man takes life on May Day when up and down the country there are still towns and villages where it is traditional to dress one man from the community as Jack in the Green. Hastings even has a Jack in the Green Festival. In Clun in Shropshire there is a fight between the Green Man and the Frost Queen. In Pilton in Devon, he faces up to the mediaeval Prior of the Abbey and forces his way into the sacred space. In Rochester where the Cathedral has a magnificent painted Green Man, there is a Chimney Sweep Festival – it was often the sweeps who got the role of the Green Man - maybe there’s some symbolism in that too and like dairy maids, sweeps also got a holiday on May Day.

There’ll be lots of Morris Dancing today, May Day being the start of the Morris season and there are two famous dawn events; the annual dawn meet at the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset and the singing of the Hymnus Eucharisticus on top of Magdalen Tower in Oxford, followed by the communal jumping from Magadelen Bridge into the river. Although these days, ‘elf and safety decide whether the water is deep enough to jump into.

So I must cook something green.  I've been pulling wild garlic out of my garden. It's a ruthless coloniser down here. What we have in Cornwall is allium triquetrum - the three cornered leek. It's like garlicky chives and not to be confused with what everyone up country calls wild garlic, which is allium ursinum or ransoms. I had wild garlic dumplings in Germany a couple of weeks ago - with wild mushroom sauce and very delicious they were. So inspired by that, I've made wild garlic scones.

Here is the recipe. Use chives or spring onions (scallions) if you are not cursed with wild garlic.

Wild Garlic Scones

8oz plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 heaped tsp mustard powder
1/2 tsp salt
2oz cold butter
4oz grated hard cheese
Small handful of finely chopped wild garlic/chives/scallions
1/4-1/2 pint of milk, buttermilk, plain yoghurt or a combo thereof.

Rub the butter into the dry ingredients then add the grated cheese and the wild garlic. Add enough liquid to make a soft dough and rill to about 3/4 inch thick. Cut into squares or rounds - I made cocktail sized ones. Bake for 15 minutes at 200c - I've just got a new oven without a fan so I'm getting used to its gentler heat. You know your oven best.

Split and spread with butter or cream cheese.


The cherry trees bend over and are shedding,
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed. 

'The Cherry Trees' by Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

27th April: St Sitha

“I suppose you all saw in the paper this morning

A volume of Poems advertised—’tis said

They’re produced by the pen of a poor servant-maid.”

“A servant write verses!” says Madam Du Bloom:

“Pray what is the subjectd—a Mop, or a Broom?”

“He, he, he,” says Miss Flounce: “I suppose we shall see

An ode on a Dishclout—what else can it be?”

 'A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant-Maid'

by Elizabeth Hands (1746-1815)

I was in Germany last week and took my twelve-year-old niece to the church of Alte Peter in the centre of Munich. She was astonished by its baroque splendour – all that gold! But we were both fascinated by the finely bedecked skeleton of St Munditia who lies there in a glass case for all to see.  She was put there in the late seventeenth century, about the same time as today’s saint also had her uncorrupted body put on public display. Here's St Sitha in all her dead glory.

St Sitha is the saint you invoke when you’ve lost your keys and as I lose my keys with increasing regularity, maybe I should restart her cult. She is the patron saint of housekeepers and domestic servants and she’s the one you think of when you cross a bridge.

She’s quite late as saints go; she was born in Mansagrati near Lucca in Italy about 1218 and at the age of twelve was sent to be a maidservant in the household of a weaver called Fatinelli.  Her employers were rich and Sitha gave generous gifts of left over food to the poor. Her fellow servants slacked in their work at every opportunity but Sitha saw housework as an opportunity to perform her religious duty;  as a result she was beaten by her employer and reviled by her lazier fellows.

One morning, Sitha left her daily chore of baking the family bread to see a beggar outside the house. The other servants told the family of her absence, but when they went to investigate, there were angels in the Fatinelli kitchen, baking Sitha’s bread for her.  Eventually her good example and her punctilious attitude made her a heroine in the city. Her employers came to see her as a treasure and she became their much loved and confidential friend. Her good deeds made her famous and many propitious events were attributed to her divine influence.

She stayed with the Fatinelli family until her death forty-eight years later, by which time she was thought of as one of the family. A star appeared over the attic room when she died and she was deemed to be responsible for over one hundred and fifty miracles.  We know about her life from a manuscript belonging to the Fatinelli family, which was published at Ferrara in 1688.  Sitha was canonized in 1658 and her body is currently on display for public veneration in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca.

Sitha became the subject of a European wide cult and it’s not uncommon to see representations of her in churches in the south of England. The church of St Benet Sherehog in the City of London, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, had a chapel dedicated to her. That was the fire that started in a bakery in Pudding Lane – so obviously the angels weren’t on baking duty that day. 

The mediaeval wall painting you can see above is in painted on a pillar in St Ethelreda's Church in Horley. St Sitha is surrounded by household articles - what seems to be a series of plates and dishes at the left and at the top left, beside her head, something that might be a chatelaine with keys. At the right is a wooden spoon, with below it a pair of bellows in red, and below that a three-legged cooking pot with a handle. I wonder why she was painted there? Who painted her? Who paid the artist? Was it to have a model servant portrayed in the church so the lower orders could be reminded of their duty? Who knows?

Bringing it right up to date, there’s a Ruth Rendell novel in the Inspector Wexford series called the ‘St Zita Society’ which focuses on the relationship between the rich and their servants…so her influence lingers on.

It’s customary to bake bread on St Sitha’s day.  Lucca is the source of the very best Italian olive oil. So I made olive oil bread – simples.

 St Sitha's Olive Bread

2 tsp easy blend yeast
1.5tsp salt
500g strong white flour
75ml (+) olive oil
75ml vermouth
175ml (+) water
200g black olives (pitted)
1 tsp dried thyme
fresh sage, thyme or marjoram leaves (I used the latter)
Sea salt and extra oil to decorate

Mix the dry ingredients (not the olives or fresh herbs) together and then add the vermouth, oil and water. Knead with a dough hook or your hands until you have a soft, sticky, elastic dough. Add more water if you think it necessary. Leave to prove in a warm place for a couple of hours. Knock the dough back and put onto an oiled work surface. Oil your hands. Put the olives on top of the dough and fold over, then knead until the olives are well distributed. Form into a round about 8-10 inches across and leave to prove again. When well puffed up, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, the fresh herbs and a little more oil. Bake in a hot oven (200c) for about thirty five minutes until golden. Lift the base and check that the bread is cooked by tapping the bottom. You should get a hollow sound.

Delicious with soup, cheese, ham, on its own, dipped into oil...whatever.


This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.


From: 'This Bread I Break' by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

April 23: St George and Shakespeare

It's a saintly week this week, so this is just to keep you going until the 27th!


'Farewell, my masters; to my task will I;
Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make,
To keep our great Saint George's feast withal:'

Henry VI Act I, Scene (i) by William Shakespeare (23 April 1564 - 23 April 1616)

The English have a strange relationship with their Patron Saint George. Before 1530 there were numerous local feasts and processions in his name; St George however might have been able to vanquish the dragon, but not the Reformation. In 1538 Henry VIII condemned the use of saintly images in processions, so banners were banned. The lone survivor of this celebration (featuring a dragon called ‘Old Snap’) was in Norwich, where it was incorporated into the Lord Mayor’s procession and went on until the 1830s. In 1961 the Catholics themselves abandoned St George leaving him, as Ron Hutton says in ‘The Stations of the Sun’, with impeccably Anglican qualifications. The Duke of Bedford in Henry VI above is referring to the English festivities and saying that if he goes to fight the French in St George’s name then the bonfires he makes will celebrate the saint there. Shakespeare would certainly have known about the St George Feasts of his parents’ generation.

The Scots have managed to make a national celebration out of their greatest poet’s birthday and providence has smiled by giving William Shakespeare the same anniversary as St George, but we still don’t get it. The English lack modesty in so many other things, but in giving themselves an excuse to celebrate their own history and culture they seem to lack confidence. Our history may not always have been glorious but our language is, surely? My scholarly friend Mary reminds me that Shakespeare was a Taurean, and as he gets Sir Toby to say in ‘Twelfth Night’ ‘Were we not born under Taurus?’ – indeed he was. So it has to be beef doesn’t it?

The French habit of referring to the British as ‘rosbifs’ is not just to do with our predilection for large joints of meat, but with our way of cooking it, to the extent that in French a ‘rosbif’ can be of any roasted joint of meat, not just beef. As an insulting way of referring to the English, ‘rosbif’ was not firmly established until the middle of the nineteenth century, whereas the use of the term ‘frog’ dates back to at least five hundred years before then.

Shakespeare often refers to the English and their beef habit, here’s what the Constable of France says in Henry V (Act 3 scene 7)

'….. the men do sympathize with the
mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on, leaving
their wits with their wives: and then give them
great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will
eat like wolves and fight like devils.'I like the idea of the women having the wits and the men having the beef.

The Big Chop


I’m going to cook what my Mother calls 'The Big Chop'. This is a single rib of beef suitable for two or three people to share. Season the meat well and dust it with flour and dry mustard. Seal in a frying pan over a high flame then put in a roasting tray and roast at a high temperature for about 40 minutes or so if you like it rare, a little more for a just-pink centre. We had it with Yorkshire puddings as you can see, new potatoes and broccolli with lemon crumbs.

Do you remembering the chap who used to walk up Oxford St with a placard saying ‘Less Lust, By Less Protein’? Here’s the wonderfully funny Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night.

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit
than a Christian or an ordinary man has:
but I am a great eater of beef
and I believe that does harm to my wit.

Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene 3

21 April: A Literary Radical.

Long ago I wished to leave 


"The house where I was born”

Long ago I used to grieve, 


My home seemed so forlorn. 


In other years, its silent rooms 


Were filled with haunting fears; 


Now, their very memory comes 


O'ercharged with tender tears.

From 'Regret' by Charlotte Bronte  (1816-1855)

Round the corner from where I live, there is a small square Georgian house opening right on the pavement and made of warm red brick – unusual in a town of granite and stucco buildings. On the house is a plaque on that commemorates it as the childhood home of Maria and Elizabeth Branwell. They were the daughters of Thomas Branwell, a local merchant and they grew up as a contemporary of Penzance’s most famous son, Sir Humphry Davy. In the tiny professional and merchant class of Penzance at the end of the eighteenth century, the families must have known each other well.

Maria left Cornwall after the death of her parents and found refuge and work with the family of her aunt and uncle in Yorkshire. In due course she married and had her own children; one of them was born today on the 21^st April. Maria called her Charlotte. We know her as Charlotte Bronte and after Maria's death, sister Elizabeth moved in to the vicarage at Howarth look after Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell.

Who hasn’t read Charlotte’s most famous book, Jane Eyre - but on the other hand, who has read ‘Villette’ ‘The Professor’ or ‘Shirley’? They are deeply unfashionable these days and a bit heavy going, although I love the semi- autobiographical ‘Villette’. It's the tale of a lonely schoolteacher far away from home in flighty Brussels, who falls in love with a married man. Quel scandale!

Here’s Virginia Woolf on Charlotte;

‘There is… some untamed ferocity perpetually at war with the accepted order of things, which makes (her) desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently. This very ardour, rejecting half shades and other minor impediments, wings its way past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their more inarticulate passions.’

Inarticulate passion? There’s a good subject for the daughter of a nineteenth century vicar. It’s hard to imagine now that one of the reasons ‘Jane Eyre’ sold so well was that it was considered a ‘bad’ book. Not ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ bad; but risqué, inappropriate and in poor taste. Not the sort of thing any woman should read and not at all the sort of thing an unmarried woman should write. A plain, poor governess has the audacity to fall in love with her rich, handsome employer – that’s against the natural order of things. Said employer keeps a mad wife in the attic and suggests governess become his mistress – what a scandal! Plain heroine ungratefully refuses offer of marriage from saintly missionary type because she doesn’t fancy him – whatever next? 

Like ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ which was published ten years earlier, ‘Jane Eyre’ brought to public attention the plight of children in the harsh boarding schools conveniently situated far away from London in the north of England. Dickens highlighted the private establishments where unwanted children were sent and which were run commercially. Lowood Hall in ‘Jane Eyre’ is a charitable institution run by the clergy. Once you start digging, you realise Charlotte broke all the rules of how a Victorian maiden should think.

‘Jane Eyre’ is not at all the ‘sort of book you’d want your wife or servants to read’ (thank you for that quote Mervyn Griffiths-Jones – look it up, if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and that’s why it sold. So well done, all you Victorian girls who bought it. This is my great grandmother's copy, there's no date but I think it's about 1870.

It’s also worth mentioning that ‘Jane Eyre’ contains one of the most embarrassing faux pas in literary history. Charlotte dedicated it to William Thackeray, the greatest contemporary figure of English letters. What she didn’t know was that Thackeray had an insane wife who had been shut away for years (although in Paris - not in the attic). Oh dear! But in making her blunder, Charlotte highlighted the problem shared by the fictional Mr Rochester and the very real Mr Thackeray; that they were forced into compromising moral choices because the law would not allow them to set their marriage aside to marry again.

Charlotte uses food in Jane Eyre as a symbol for wholesomeness or the lack of it. The food at Lowood is horrible and inadequate; at Thornfield it's rich and luxurious, at the home of the pious Rivers family - it's plain and wholesome. Hannah, the much loved servant makes a gooseberry pie and Jane sits and tops and tails the berries for her. I would have made that, I love gooseberry pie, but we're a bit early.  The book contains a lot of pastry and on one occasion Jane collects cold chicken and tarts from the sumptious party Mr Rochester throws for his rather despised, but fashionable, friends.

Here is Eliza Acton - from 'Modern Cookery for Private Families' published in 1845, two years earlier than Jane Eyre. She talks at length about the different ways fruit pies were glazed both before and after cooking.

Bilberry or Blueberry Pie

Make a fruit pie with shortcrust pastry in the normal way. Whilst it is cooking, sift 4 oz icing sugar into a little beaten white of egg, beating it until smooth. It should be stiff enough to stand up in peaks...Ten minutes before the pie is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool slightly. Reduce the oven heat to 350F ( C) . Cover the top pie crust thickly with the icing spread on roughly with a palette knife. Put the pie back in the oven for 10 minutes for the icing to harden slightly and toast slightly on the top. Serve with cream.

I didn't beat the topping enough, but it was actually very nice, if toothachingly sweet....

Here's my Mum's pastry recipe. I've probably given it before, but it really does work.

2oz of cold butter and 2oz cold lard (or white veg fat) cut into dice sized cubes
4oz self raising flour and 4 oz plain flour
Pinch salt
I egg yolk and 2 egg cups of water

Blitz the fats, salt  and flours together with in a food processor until like fine breadcrumbs.

Put into another bowl and add the egg and one egg cup cold water bring together with your fingers, add the rest of the water if necessary.

 Chill for half an hour before use.

Pastry is not my natural metier, but this works every time.

The room is quiet, thoughts alone 


People its mute tranquillity; 


The yoke put on, the long task done, 


I am, as it is bliss to be, 


Still and untroubled…

From 'The Teacher's Monologue' by Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

10th April 1633: The Introduction of the Banana

The banana tree 
blown by winds pours raindrops 
into the bucket.

'The Banana Tree' by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Once upon a time I was a Brownie. It was fun; especially the stop off at the chip shop on the way home for six penn’orth and scraps – all those crunchy bits of batter from the warming cabinet. Then I became a Girl Guide and it got a lot more pressurised and I started to think like one of my first boyfriends who, at the tender age of eight, told his Mum he wouldn’t to be a Wolf Cub, because he ‘didn’t want to belong to a para-military organisation’.

Anyway, I did get to go to camp. It’s been the story of my life that I remember things by what I ate at the time and we ate bananas at camp; split down the middle, filled with chocolate, wrapped in foil then put in the embers of the campfire and baked. I never avoided burning my mouth - so anxious was I to scoff the melted contents of the little silver parcel.

Bananas were first imported into Britain in the seventeenth century and were put on sale in the window of one Thomas Johnson, 'Citizen and Apothecarye' of Snow Hill, London on the 10^th April 1633.

You can just make out his name on the frontispiece below.

Johnson included a woodcut of a bunch – actually for obvious reasons, it’s called a ‘hand’ of bananas, in his 1633 edition of Gerard's Herbal. Johnson’s bananas might have came from Bermuda, where there was a British Naval Base, though how they managed to reach this country in a fit state to eat is not known. However in 1999, archaeologists excavating near the River Thames in Southwark, found a banana skin, tossed into a rubbish pit with other items, enabling them to date it to about 1560. It belies the above tale, but it might have just been a curiosity I suppose, preserved by a fluke of fate, although I favour a mischievous archaeology student myself.

Thomas Johnson is an enigmatic figure. We don't know that much about him, except he was a highly esteemed herbalist and physician who died during the Civil War of wounds received during the siege of Basing House near Basingstoke. I couldn’t find out which side he was on; I do hope he was a Roundhead..

The banana plant originated in New Guinea but got to India in the Bronze Age and thence to Africa. The enterprising Portuguese were the first to spot its potential and set up banana plantations as early as 1502. In the nineteenth century, Edward Fyffe, a tea merchant, imported them into the UK from the Portuguese Canary Islands and we now eat on average 25lb of bananas per person per year. As I eat about four bananas a year; someone must be eating an awful lot more than that. They are the most popular item on the supermarket shelves and that's why they are so often discounted. Cheap bananas tempt you in there and then you buy other stuff. As ever, Fairtrade ones are the ones to get, the Co-op always have them.

You can stuff a banana with chocolate, or drizzle with maple syrup, mash on toast, bake in breads and cakes, flavour with cinnamon, snuggle into a pancake, flambé with brandy – whatever - it's an amenable fruit, the banana.

This is my secret banana treat.

A thick slice of hot wholemeal bread well toasted; spread with roughly mashed banana, topped with Greek yoghurt, drizzled with honey, sprinkled with chopped toasted nuts - eaten privately with knife and fork. If I'm feeling really extravagant, I might substitute maple syrup for the honey and toasted pecans for the topping. I tried it with pine nuts this time, their waxy texture worked well, but walnuts are good too.

 I like a small glass of whisky on the side. Actually - I like a large glass of whiskey on the side.

Under my tree-roof
slanting lines of april rain
separate to drops.

'Under my tree roof'  by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

PS. Why did I choose Basho? It's a riddle....