Reading · Change Everything

Little reminder that if you’re taking a country walk (hopefully in the relative cool of morning or evening, given current conditions), Change Everything is available wherever you get your audio books, as well as of course from Wilton Square for the print version.

No, it can’t all be deeply serious reading over the summer, so I’ve been enjoing consuming Insatiable Appetites: Eating Out in Georgian London by Peter Ross. Although I do have to make the point that it is a reminder how many foods and varieties we’ve lost from general consumption in the Great Homogenisation of global cultures.

And also how many people came to London and brought new food traditions from across Europe and beyond these hundreds of years ago, including the fascinating saloop/salep. Which sounds just the thing to finish an evening. (Got to try it some time, apparently it can be made from orchids in the UK, so this could be a domestically grown substitute for tea and coffee - food security in action!)

There’s also a reminder of how much the globalisation of cafes and restaurants has been its homogenisation also in the setting. My heart always sinks finding yet another identikit “posh coffee shop” in yet another city, rather than something speaking to its history and traditions.

Who wouldn’t love to visit Don Saltero’s Cofffee House, located on what would later be Cheyne’s Walk in Chelsea, which “curated an impressive collection of curiosities”.

“Catalogues of Salter’s collection survive, and list an array of fascinating items displayed in 17 glass cases, as well as attached to the wall and hanging from the ceiling. Thse included tiger ‘tusks’, the skeleton of a guinea pig, a piece of the True Cross, the Four Evangelists’ heads intricatedly carved into a cherry stone, an Eskimo canoe, Mary Queen of Scot’s pin cushion, Queen Elizabeth’s prayer book, and a pair of nun’s stockings. In 1756, at the opposite end of London, Adam’s Coffee House near Shoreditch Church displated… over 500 objects… some satirizing the relics to be found in Catholic Europe, including the very comb used by Abraham on the heads of his sons Isaac and Jacob, and, most amusingly of all, Adam’s keys to the front and back doors of the Garden of Eden.” (p. 68)

Those who think social media can be nasty about different cultures and traditions might be reminded that the past had its own ways of so behaving.

Lunch in Georgian London typically would not involve meat in any quantity (although it might include eels or in hot weather whelks, when the standard fare of pea soup was less attractive).

“Green pea soup, made from fresh peas, would have been a seasonal dish… Soup made from dried peas could be prepared year-round, making it a more versatile and probably cheaper option. Another popular Georgian soup was gravy soup, … the process involved simmering shin of beef, dried peas and onions to create a rich stock, to which diced vegetables were then added. [The cook at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street] Richard Brigg’s recipe suggests finishing it with crisp French bread croutons for added texture. Onion soup was also well regarded, with Briggs including five different recipes for it in his book. Soups featuring pasta, such as vermicilli or macaroni, were also popular. In 1815 Signor Pagliano’s moderately priced establishment near Leicester square offered vermicilli soup for 6d a bowl, with herb soup and broth available as more economical options at 4d a bowl.” (p. 81)

While women’s chances to eat respectably in public were limited, they did exist.

“When Louis Simond made a visit to Britain in 1810-11 he described a ‘lunch’ [still quite a new idea] that ‘decent persons’ could obtain from pastry shops, typically ‘a slight repast of tarts, buns &c with a glass of whey; it costs 6 or 8d sterling. A young and pretty woman generally presides behind the counter, as in the coffee-houses of Paris’.” (p. 82)

Soft drinks go back a long way, and not so soft, include spruce (made from new growth) beer and ginger beer.

“Non-alcoholic options encompassed soda water, natural mineral waters, orgeat, lemonade and capillaire… the English scientist Joseph Priestley published a paper on his process for “impregnating water with fixed air” in 1772…. men like Johann Jacob created successful businesses bottling soda water. Schweppe moved from Switzerland to London in 1792 … Orgeat is a drink that mixes barley water with a syrup prepared from bitter and sweet almonds, sugar, lemon rind, and rose water or orange flower water. The resulting cordial could be dilued with water or added to other drinks. Capillaire was a syrup made from maidenhair fern. Ann Shakelford gives a recipe for the drink in her cookbook of 1767, which involves infusing 1 ounce of the best maiden hair fern leaves, (probably dried) in boiling water for 12 hours before adding soft brown sugar. The mixture is then filtered and orange flower water is added. The writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson frequently enhanced his glass of port with some capillaire.” (p. 86-87)

There was some help, sometimes, for those who struggled to feed themselves, although with an all-too-common through the ages strongly expressed desire to separate the “deserving” from the “undeserving” poor.

“In 1979 the Scottish merchant and statistician Patrick Coluquoun, who also served as a magistrate in London, documented an initiative to provide affordable meals to some of the East End’s improverished residents. Coluquoun led a committee formed at Lloyd’s Coffee House to establish what became known as the ‘Meat and Soup' Charity’. Its mission was to distribute tickets to the ‘deserving’ poor across several East End parishes, enabling them to purchase hot meals at a reduced cost, Applicants for these tickets underwent careful vertting by local parish officers to confirm their eligibility, with particular scrutiny to avoid those struggling with alcohol addiction. Widows and infirm men received single tickets, while families were allocated up to four. … The committee believed people would not value comething given for free, but also wanted to ensure that the poor received the same quality of food as full-paying customers.” (p. 93)

There were also ulterior, supposedly educative if patronising, intentions.

“Colquhuon envisioned that, over time, those taking part would come to appreciate the nutritional value and cost-effectiveness of leg-of-beef soup, understanding that it was far cheaper and healthier than spending their limited funds on roast meat once a week. In a more ambitious effort, the charity sought to promote better financial habits among the poor, helping them break the cycle of pawning their work clothes and tools each work to retrieve their Sunday clothes from ‘hock’ and pay for some food. By encouraging budgeting and saving, the goal was to enable individuals to gradually escape this fragile and precarious financial situation.” (p. 93-4)

But no new funders emerged and the programme ended after five months. But its a reminder of how many struggled in Georgian London, a situation that would only worsen into Victorian times.

Street food was the norm for many, including costermongers, who had their own culture and customs.

“For 2 pence, costmongers could buy half a pound of ‘black ornaments’ - small pieces of meat that were discoloured and dirty but not spoiled, usually sold from a butcher’s block. These would be taken to the taproom of a public house to be cooked. Alternatively, they might purcahse a hot pie, either savoury or sweet, to eat on the street or in the pub… Other costermonger dinners included tripe, cow heel, beef sausages or soup from an inexpensive cookshop… A typical meal might consist of a saveloy … paired with a pint of beer or a glass of gin.” (p. 95)

And the semi-equivalent of internet ordering ahead was available.

“At the Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court just off Fleet Street - a venue that still exists, though now called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Rylance tells us: ‘The moment you enter, you give your order to the waiter, he calls to the cook below with the voice of a Stentor. So great is the afflux of diners in this house, between noon and six in the evening, that many persons find it convenient to call and order their dinner an hour or two beforehand, go out to transact business, and then on returning, their dinner is instantly served up smoking, and their porter foaming.” (p. 103)

But Londoners have long had a sweet tooth, for which we can’t forget slavery was delivering the ingredients.

“A wide variety of sweet treats were … available from street sellers. These included raspberry biscuits, conkeys (mincemeat baked in a crust), Dutch butter cakes and Jew’s butter cakes (both may have been shortbreads), Dutch biscuits, Bowlas tarts (made of sugar, apple, and bread), jumbles (crisp cakes made of treacle, butter and flour), jam tarts, Coventry's (three-cornered puffs with ham inside), plum cakes, sponge cakes, flay cakes (using cheap sheep or pig fat instead of butter), along with muffins, crumpets, cheesecakes and pastry pigs. This impressive array does not include the numerous varieties of gingerbread.” (p. 121)

Although a Guildhall Library post explains some of the troubles sellers could get into.

They might not have been able to make ice, but they sure did store it.

“Gould’s ice house in the basement of Grantham Place would have been stocked with lake or pond ice collected during the winter months … Gould may have sourced his from Grange & Moore in Piccadilly, who delivered ice at a rate of 7 guineas a ton. Private visitors to the shop could also buy a pound of ice for two pence. However in 1789-90 the winter was unusually mild, sparking concerns among confectioners and pastry cooks about a potential shortage of lake and pond ice. In January 1790 a group of worried confectioners petitioned Parliament for permission to import ice from Greenland and other distant sources. Anticipating the need, they had already begun outfitting three or four shops to fetch the ice.. In June, the St James Chronicle reported that one of the vessels had already returned with 100 tons of ice, which was rapidly sold at £10 a ton, including import duties of just over 27 per cent.” (p. 128)

If all this looks rather richer and more prosperous than our ideas of Victorian times, there may well be reasons for that. (Not to mention the relative ecological richness.)

“Because oysters were so plentiful and inexpensive in Georgian London, oyster warehouses and stalls could also be found in the East End… Like many street foods, shellfish sold best on Saturday nights and Sundays. In the 1820s and 1930s one oyster seller reported strong sales, making a good profit at a penny an oyster. But by the early Victorian period his earnings had dropped - he now sold three oysters for a penny. This decline, echoes by many street sellers interviewed by Mayhew, reflected broader changes. By the late 1840s the same seller observed that the poor - his main customers - were even worse off than in the late Georgian period. Those with just a penny to spend were more likely to choose bread and cheese over oysters for supper.” (p. 198)

Thinking a lot about security, I’ve been enjoying a neat little book The Web Beneath The Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World, which starts with the widely covered, massive disruption in Tonga when a volcanic disruption broke its one digital connection with the outside world, and the connection between two of its main islands. And covers the grave security concerns that affect the UK, and the world, given the fragility of our digital connections.

What I learnt that was new, however, was how crowded the “historically optimimum routes” - often those taken by the first telegraph cables - are becoming: the need for a gently sloping beach to bring the cable ashore, the desire to avoid offshore hazards like undersea canyons, and above all the continuing focus of internet traffic on what were colonial metropoles, mean a concentration of routes.

The explanation of The Real St George and the Dragon on Dan Snow’s History Hit won’t come as a surprise to most readers: I suspect you mostly know that he was a Roman soldier in what is now Turkey. You might also know that the dragon was not his contemporary, but a figment of medieval imagination.

But I didn’t know that his countrywoman who we know as St Margaret - to which a church just opposite parliament is dedicated - was also a dragon-slayer. And a very famous and celebrated one in medieval times: one more female character once central who now has almost been forgotten.

The podcast is an interview with Jasmine Elmer, author of Slay: Ancient legends of female slayers and the hidden mythology of dragons. Which is definitely going on my reading list.

Source

I have recently been engaging with campaigners for the rights of Antarctica campaign, which says that current protections are inadequate. Which led me to look into the evisting framework through another handy little book, The Antartic: A Very Short Introduction by Klaus Dodds. Published in 2012, it helps demonstrate how fast this area is moving, for it tells the current Antarctic Treaty primarily as a success story.

“Why has it endured? I think there are three fundamental reasons, aprt from all the original parties getting something tangible from the 1959 negotiations. First, the 12 parties produced an attractive creation myth: they used science and scientists to portray themselves as political visionaries seeking to introduce peace and harmony to a remote continent. … Second, the treaty endured because there were provisions (and opportunities taken) to not only accommodate new members but also to deal with issues such as conservation, environmental protection, and living resource exploitation as they arose. … by inviting some of the most powerful critics such as India and China to join the treaty and by signing a Protocol on Environmental Protection, which banned all forms of mining in the Antarctic Treaty Region… The earliest any review conference can be called in 2048. Third… the provisions of Aricle IV [sovereignty claims] were sufficiently vague to allow competing positions to co-exist.” (pp. 86-7)

It is a measure of how fast the global position has changed that the climate emergency barely gets a mention in the book. Instead it says:

“Human impact on the Antartic’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems derives principally from the exploitation of living natural resources such as seals, whales, fish and krill… the Antartic bears witness to the capacity of humanity to exploit massively non-human populations in ways that have proved anything but sustainable.” (p. 109)

It notes that seal populations had largely recovered at the time of writing. Sadly, that’s no longer true, with the climate emergency having major impacts. As for whales, recovering after “changing public opinion in Europe and North America” combined with the rise of commerical alternatives in the form of tropical vegetable oil plantations [which of course has just transferred the biodiversity destruction elsewhere], is its explanation for the end of commercial whaling. Not in the book but now of considerable concern is the impact of krill harvesting on their food availability.

You probably know about leaf-cutter ants farming fungus, but this is not an isolated practice. Other ants, multiple species of them, sometimes in cooperation, farm Squamellaria, a plant that grows high in the canopy of tropical forests in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

The ant plants seeds on tree branches and then cultivates the plants, by fertilizing and defending them from herbivores, and finally harvests them, too.

A researcher has uncovered the plants’ secret to maintaining harmony (build a separate home for each ant). But some species of plant are specialist, only hosting one species, which - and I bet you can see this coming - is now a problem.

“On Fiji, there is an invasive ant species — the white-footed ant — that sometimes replaces Philidris colonies. Within six months, the plant dies. That cannot happen to generalist plants, because they benefit from any species of ant, including the invasive one.”

What a mess we are making of this planet; how many more mutalisms like this might we be disrupting without evening being aware of them?

But the good news is there’s evidence across the primates that we do as a group want to - sometimes at least - make friends with other species. A survey article finds:

“Heterospecific sociality … may be more widespread among primates than previously recognized.”

But oh the way this article is written is frustrating… based on the assumption that everything an animal does must be essentially an economic calculation of benefit to itself, a form of utilitarian calculation.

Maybe - let’s be radical here for a second - a monkey simple enjoys playing with a puppy, and sharing food when you’ve more than you need (or even if you don’t) is a satisfying gesture of altruism beyond our species.

What did you think?

Change Everything No 95: Insatiable, and well-fed, Georgians

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