Postcards from the Edge
Mary Kenny bids a sad farewell to the feasts adored by Henry VIII
Now that we’re urged to embark on ‘ethical eating’ by going vegetarian, or vegan, I wonder how the French will exercise their gastronomic influence over the world of diplomacy and international relations.
The French claim to have invented the ‘diplomatic meal’, which brings nations together, makes summits successful and sends messages via superb food and wine.
Some historic menus have been gathered together in an archive, published as À la table des diplomates (edited by Laurent Stefanini), tracing what the big cheeses have been eating since 1520.
When Henry VIII and Francis I broke bread at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the menu offered beef, mutton, capons, chickens, pigs, rabbits, peacocks, venison, hares, goats, herons, woodcock, pigeons, plovers, larks, blackbirds and ‘the most noble dish of all’, partridge.
Things did trim down by 1869, at the inauguration of the Suez Canal dinner, but the menu still included roast beef, fish, turkey, ham, pheasant, game, tongue, venison and capons.
Meals again grew less sumptuous in the 20th century, but there was always meat, fowl, fish, sauces and sometimes a political message – be tough on the Germans (a Versailles menu of 1919 emphasised the afflicted French provinces). Later, Franco-german alliances would be assisted by a menu that highlighted reconciliation.
De Gaulle and Adenauer bonded over a simple lobster thermidor, saddle of veal, vegetables, salad and fruit in 1963. From the 1960s, ‘gigantic’ meals were out, but elaborate dishes were still needed to boost prestige, with China, Russia and the G7 –which Giscard d’estaing claims to have brought together most successfully over great French grub.
For the Paris Agreement of 2015, Paris provided a simple, very French lunch of Normandy coquilles Saint Jacques, poultry from northern France, a Savoy soft cheese and a dessert of Corsican clementines.
The longest bridge in Ireland was opened in January: the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Bridge, of nine spans and 970 yards long, across the River Barrow near New Ross, County Wexford, hereditary homeplace of the Kennedy political dynasty.
Ireland is an emphatically ‘woke’ society these days. So I’m mildly surprised that a deeply Catholic, IrishAmerican matriarch (ennobled as a Papal Countess by Pope Pius XII), who extolled the vocation of homemaker, was chosen as a symbol by the political establishment.
The Irish Constitution of 1937 has a clause that honours the work of ‘the woman in the home’ – ie the housewife – without which ‘the common good cannot be achieved’. Progressive ‘woke’ politicians – such as deposed Taoiseach Leo Varadkar – have vowed to expunge this totally outdated anachronism.
And yet there they were, elevating Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, stalwart of home and hearth, to preside over Ireland’s grandest bridge!
Ah, but … tribal loyalties often trump progressive ‘wokery’, and the links to JFK and the Kennedy dynasty run a lot deeper than political correctness.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890-1995) endured marriage to old Joe Kennedy, cruelly faithless husband and veteran bootlegger, for over 50 years. Personally, I think she deserves a martyr’s crown, let alone a 970-yard bridge.
The first book review I ever wrote was of Nicolette Devas’s memoir Two Flamboyant Fathers, published in 1966.
Nicolette grew up among Bohemian artists and writers – one of her father figures was Augustus John, while her sister Caitlin married Dylan Thomas. Nicolette married Anthony Devas, a portrait painter whose subjects included Dylan, Laurie Lee and the Queen, who allowed him 12 sittings back in 1957.
So it was a small-world moment for me when their son, Prosper Devas, came to live, part-time, in Deal, where his daughter Molly has made her home. Prosper was a successful designer and a lovely cartographer, composing engaging, narrative maps of Kent and elsewhere. He also found personal happiness with Frances Fyfield, Deal’s renowned thriller-writer.
Prosper Devas was a sunny-natured man who spoke, he said, 1950s French, since he had attended the London lycée as a child. He was popular in our Channel town and when at the age of 73 he died, shockingly swiftly from cancer, in January 2020, there was a packed funeral and much sadness at his passing.
When a contemporary dies, I often realise how much more I wanted to ask the dear departed.
‘Brits’ as a plural noun is often used in a friendly way – including by ‘Brits’ themselves, as in ‘Brits Abroad’ – although I believe it originated as a hostile term, coined by the IRA in the 1970s.
But now that Sinn Fein has emerged victorious in the Irish election, singing Come Out, Ye Black and Tans, I suspect that the more pejorative element of ‘Brits’ is returning.