Poor Parson Woodforde was no damned glutton
Poor Parson Woodforde, that good, if plain, man. He figures in a chapter on gluttony in Kenneth Baker’s new illustrated chrestomathy of vice, On the Seven Deadly Sins.
“We had for dinner a Calf ’s Head, boiled Fowl and Tongue, a Saddle of Mutton rosted on the Side Table, and a fine Swan rosted with Currant Jelly Sauce for the first Course,” runs James Woodforde’s diary entry for January 28 1780. “The Second Course a couple of Wild Fowl called Dun Fowls, Larks, Blamange, Tarts, etc, etc, and a good Desert of Fruit after, amongst which was a Damson Cheese. I never eat a bit of Swan before.”
Now, if he’d been sitting at home on his own and ordered that lot, he’d have been a glutton indeed, but that day he was the guest at the house of a local squire who was celebrating the christening of his child with half a dozen guests and wanted to making a special show. Formal dining in the 18th century meant the presentation of several dishes at once, and guests might be helped to a bit of some, as Woodforde was to the swan. He walked two miles to the dinner and two miles home afterwards.
According to Woodforde’s biographer, Roy Winstanley, the editing of his diary of 43 years (published between 1924 and 1931) gave food and drink such prominence that “an unwary reader might well be left with the impression that Woodforde produced little more than a chronicle of gluttony”. I’d hate to think Lord Baker of Dorking, a former education secretary, is an unwary reader, though he might have weak areas.
It comes as some surprise to read his admission: “I became aware of the seven deadly sins rather late in life.” Only when he began collecting old political cartoons did the sins force themselves upon him. It is rather like confessing: “I became aware of the seven dwarfs rather late in life.” Had he not been attending during life, but instead staring out of the window, waiting for the bell to ring?
“Gerard Manley Hopkins,” he declares, “reflected on the unending battle against sin, which he seldom won.” Well, Hopkins possessed a scrupulous conscience, but Lord Baker’s claim is not supported by the lines he quotes:
Why do Sinners’ ways prosper? And why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?
… Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, Sir, life upon thy cause.
Hopkins is complaining to God that the lustful and the drunkards do well, while he who eschews these sins finds that his projects come to nothing, leaving him as “Time’s eunuch”. He resolves the sonnet with the prayer: “O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.”
Baker’s tone is chatty. “Protestantism, as it developed, condemned immoral behaviour, but adopting a rigid line on personal sins was not at its core.” Is that so?
Many of the pictures are suitably as ugly as sin. In the chapter on anger, I don’t object to his mentioning the crucifixion of Christians by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), but I’m dubious about the inclusion of a photograph.
Someone should have read through the book before it was published. Lines by Byron on hock and soda water to cure a hangover appear under the heading: “Hock and soda wine”. Describing a mural by Diego Rivera, the author says: “A rich family is about to have a splendid dinner. They are rich enough to be gluttons.” He shows no sign of having noticed that their plates have nothing on them but gold coins. The Desert Father was John Cassian not John Cassain. St Augustine lived in the fourth century, not the third.