* I would like to thank John Pollack and Elton-John Torres of the Rare Book Room at Van PeltLibrary for their assistance in researching and illustrating this essay, for which two of Penn’s Spe-cial Collections have been invaluable: the Esther B. Aresty Collection of Rare Books in the Culi-nary Arts and the Chef Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library.

1 Mrs. W.G. WATERS, The Cook’s Decameron: A Study in Taste, London, William Heinemann,1901, and New York, Brantano’s, 1901; EAD., Just a Cookery Book, London, The Medici Press,1924.

2 VESPASIANO DA BISTICCI, The Vespasiano Memoirs. Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Cen-tury, William George Waters and Emily Waters, trans., London, Routledge & Son and New York,Dial Press, 1926; rpt. Renaissance Princes, Popes, and Prelates: the Vespasiano Memoirs, Lives ofIllustrious Men of the XVth Century, Myron P. Gilmore, intro., New York, Harper Torchbooks,1963; The Vespasiano Memoirs…, RSART, Renaissance Society of American Reprint Text Series,Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1997.

VICTORIA KIRKHAM

THE COOK’S DECAMERON,OR, BOCCACCIO TO THE RESCUE OF THE DULL BRITISH DIET*

The Cook’s Decameron, its punning subtitle promises, is «A Study in Taste»,literally a recipe collection – Italian dishes, of course – embedded in a Britishadaptation of Boccaccio’s Tuscan masterpiece, playfully reconceived as a modelof Victorian etiquette. The author, Mrs. W.G. Waters, brought her clever hybrid toprint on both sides of the Atlantic in 1901, at London with William Heinemannand at New York with Brentano. Success led to reprints in 1920 and encouragedher second venture in the same field, Just a Cookery Book, which appeared at thepresses of the Medici Society in 1924. Linked by title to its older sibling, this se-quel drops the Boccaccian frame tale, presenting simply («just») recipes, twice asmany as before, for a total of 4001. Out of her kitchen-apron, as Emily Waters shecollaborated in translating Vespasiano da Bisticci’s fifteenth-century biographiesof famous men with her husband, William George Waters, distinguished for hisreputation as a leisured scholar with a love of Italy2. His credits include biogra-phies of Girolamo Cardano and Piero della Francesca, art historical studies ofearly Italian Sculptors, and a string of translated novelle in the tradition of Boc-caccio, beginning in 1894: The Facetious Nights of Straparola, The Novellino ofMasuccio, The Pecorone of Ser Giovanni. Laid to rest in 1928, Mr. W.G. Watersleft lasting impressions in other writings of trips to the Continent with his wife as

10 Victoria Kirkham

companion, Baedeker at the ready. He whisks us away most pleasurably for in-formed turismo in Five Italian Shrines: An Account of the monumental tombs ofS. Augustine at Pavia, S. Dominic at Bologna, S. Peter Martyr at Milan, S. Do-nato at Arezzo, and of Orcagna’s Tabernacolo at Florence, with a Prefatory Essayon Tuscan Sculpture, fully illustrated and published by John Murray in Albe-morle Street, 1906. Just three years before, with the same house, W.G. Waters hadbrought out in three volumes The Journal of Montaigne’s Travels in Italy by Wayof Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 15813. Together Mr. and Mrs. Waterstake us back to an elite society centered in late-Victorian and Edwardian Londonwith cultural tastes enthusiastically Italianate. Their Anglo-Italian world comesimaginatively to life in the humorous lessons of The Cook’s Decameron.

Contemporary pulp desktop copies have fallen far from the book’s originalstatus as a publication of William Heinemann4. Until Doubleday took over thatvenerable press in 1920, it was Heinemann who published in London the LoebClassical Library and introduced such authors as H.G. Wells, Robert LouisStevenson, and Rudyard Kipling. Its logo was the windmill, from a woodcut bythe prominent artist William Nicholson, a stalwart of London’s prestigious Sav-ile Club, which took its name from their meeting house on Savile Row. Theirmembers, distinguished men from many walks of life – writers, ministers, artists,

3 William George Waters, aka W.G. Waters (1844-1928), was a modest man who sometimespublished his novels and fiction anonymously. See his obituary in The Times, June 18, 1928, p. 18.Here follows a partial bibliography: My Friend Bellamy, London, F. Warne, 1886; ElizabethChudleigh, Duchess of Kingston (1720-88) and Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), in Lives of TwelveBad Women: Illustrations and Reviews of Feminine Turpitude set forth by Impartial Hands, ArthurVincent, ed., Boston, L.C. Page and Co., 1897 (rpt. 1911, 1973); Jerome Cardan [Girolamo Car-dano]: A Biographical Study, London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1898; Piero della Francesca, London,G. Bell and Sons, 1901; Five Italian Shrines: An Account of the Monumental Tombs of S. Augus-tine at Pavia, S. Dominic at Bologna, S. Peter Martyr at Milan, S. Donato at Arezzo, and ofOrcagna’s Tabernacolo at Florence. With a Prefatory Essay on Tuscan Sculpture, London, Murray,1906; Italian Sculptors, London, Methuen & Co. and New York, George H. Doran Company, 1911(rpt. 1926, 78 illustrations); W.G. Waters, ed., Traveller’s Joy. An Anthology, New York, E.P. Dut-ton, 1906 and London, J. Cape, 1928; W.G. Waters, trans., The Facetious Nights of Straparola. Nowfirst translated into English, London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1894 (numerous reprintings, e.g.,Boston, Private printing for members of the Burton Ethnological Society, n.d.; 4 vols. choicely il-lustrated by Jules Garnier and E. R. Hughes, London, Private printing for members of the Societyof Bibliophiles, 1898 [rpt. 1901, 1908, 1909, 1923]); The Novellino of Masuccio. Now first trans-lated into English. Illus. E. R. Hughes, London, Lawrence and Bullen, 1895 (rpt. London, privatelyfor members of the Aldus Society, 1903); The Pecorone of Ser Giovanni. Now first translated intoEnglish. Illus. E.R. Hughes, London, Lawrence and Bullen, Ltd, 1897 (rpt. 1923); W.G. Waters,trans. and ed., Journal of Montaigne’s Travels in Italy, London, Murray, 1906.

4 Since Project Gutenberg reissued it in 1997, cheap out-of-copyright copies have proliferated:from Kessinger Publishing (with a cover that gives the author’s last name as «Water»); GeneralBooks (the author on the cover is her husband, «W.G. Waters»); Echo Library (bibliographically cor-rect). Available free as an instant eBook, it has been issued in Japanese, German, Spanish, andCzech. For $2.99 one can now also have it on Kindle. In this forest of philologically dubious texts,Cornell’s digital version should be more reliable, its source being identified as the 1920 imprint, ofwhich the University of Pennsylvania also has a copy in our Rare Book and Manuscript Librarycookbook collections.

“The Cook’s Decameron” 11

5 Waters was elected to the club in 1886 and served as Honorary Librarian beginning in 1911.Stevenson became a member in 1874; Kipling belonged from 1891-1905. Food was important tothe Savilians, whose motto was «Sodalitas Convivium», and where the practice was to dine familystyle at a shared table, «table d’hôte». See The Savile Club: 1868-1923, Privately Printed for theCommittee of the Club, Edinburgh, Neill & Co., Ltd., 1923. The painter Nicholson crops up re-peatedly in Garrett ANDERSON, Hang Your Hat in the Hall: The Savile Club from 1868, Savile Club,London, 1993. He reports that Nicholson’s portrait of the Queen won praise from Oscar Wilde,who hung it on the wall of his chalet in Dieppe (p. 257). The logo Nicholson designed for Heine-mann was inspired by a historic windmill at Rottingdean, near Brighton. It appears, for example ina book dealer’s ad for the 1920 edition of The Cook’s Decameron at <http://chestofbooks.com/food/recipes/Cook-Decameron>.

6 «The Book Buyer. A Review and Record of Current Literature», XXIII,6, 1902, pp. 524 and537.

7 A similar collection, with New World folktales of priapic exploits, is Paulo DE CARVALHO

NETO, Decameron ecuatoriano, Mexico City, Editorial V Siglos, 1975. The Decamerón cordobés,Córdoba, Argentina, Editorial Babel, 2006, collects tales by 20 different authors, divided into twoparts: «De los cuerpos» and «De la soledad». The title of one in the first half gives an idea of itsregister, Diario íntimo o de cómo una vulva transitó por el cielo y el infierno.

actors, barristers, and bankers – included the above trio of authors and W.G. Wa-ters, for many years one of the Club’s directors and its Librarian5. Brentano’s,serving the American public and Christmas holiday trade in 1901, advertisedThe Cook’s Decameron clothbound (as opposed to leather) in «The BookBuyer», a monthly published by Charles Scribner and Sons, for exactly $1.00.By comparison, an ad placed by Thomas Crowell and Company on the next pageof «The Book Buyer» offered a twelve-volume set of Robert Browning’s Com-plete Poetical works for $.75 each and The Complete Poetical Works of Mrs.Browning in six volumes as a set clothbound for $4.506.

The Cook’s Decameron belongs to an eclectic family descended from a mas-ter text, famously risqué in its post-Renaissance reputation. Rebaptized, it car-ried a classic collection of African folk tales published in 1910 by the Germanethnographer Leo Frobenius, Das schwartze Dekameron. Printed copies of TheBlack Decameron today, whether in the original or a translation, seem to be muchscarcer than Piero Vivarelli’s film adaptation, marketed as Il Decamerone neroin Italy and internationally as Africa Erotika. Produced in 1972, its closer an-tecedent by genre is Pasolini’s Decameron of 1971, which rolicked sexually butmade serious points about politics and money. Political in tenor too was TheWomen’s Decameron of 1986, stories narrated by ten patients in a Russian ma-ternity ward. Il Decameron popolare (1990), in a return to Frobenius’s ethno-graphic model, records phallic tales from oral tradition gathered throughinterviews with Calabrian villagers – Calabria, one supposes, being a sort of Ital-ian Africa7. With Nuda e cruda: Il Decameron siciliano we descend further southon the peninsula and stumble upon a cross between Giovanni Boccaccio andGiovanni Verga, not particularly appealing.

From Italy in the 1970s, erotica masquerading as classic comics seized onBoccaccio’s name and chose for its premier issue the novella of Alatiel, with«perhaps 10,000» sexual couplings, more by count than for any other story in the

12 Victoria Kirkham

Decameron (fig. 1). Nor does tasteful subtlety complicate the program for a 1975Broadway musical, Boccaccio (fig. 2). During a pre-New York run, efforts tosalvage the disaster were compared by the New York Magazine reviewer to cur-ing the Black Death with a Band-Aid8. Selected novelle have also been adaptedto the Italian stage, most recently in a comic romp performed on tour by thetroupe of Ugo Chiti, a versatile Tuscan prominent both as a director and screenwriter.9 A certain dignity seems to invest The Gay Decameron, a novel whosewell credentialed author was educated at Cambridge and Perugia. Ten success-ful, middle-class gay men assemble on a long, light summer night in Edinburgh– all related as relatives or lovers. «As the hours wear away», so a publisher’sblurb informs us, «they tell their stories of love and sex, loyalty and betrayal,death and survival, before the novel ends with a passionate paean to love». An-nounced by the book’s cover design, its setting is an elaborate dinner party10.

The name «Boccaccio» sparks associations with good living and sensualpleasures of all sorts. A whole chain of enticing «Decameron» resorts has latelysprung up – in the Caribbean, Central America, Texas, and Spain11. Long beforethose playgrounds began dotting the planet, San Francisco in the 1970s boasteda «Bocaccio Massage Studio for Men», aptly located just next door to the Gar-gantua Restaurant (fig. 3)12. That same decade saw an English folk-rock groupcalled «Decameron» assemble its first anthology of songs, an album cut on theVertigo label. Twenty years later a lugubrious heavy metal quartet, tagged «blackdeath», belted out song-stories under the same name, «Decameron»13. The «Boc-caccio Life» disco in Belgium, born in 1987, drew enthusiasts of New Beat musicfrom all Europe who continued to flock there for nightly physical exertions until

8 See Victoria KIRKHAM, John Badmouth: Fortunes of the Poet’s Image, in «Studi sul Boccaccio»,XX, 1991-92, pp. 356-57. The play ran at the Edison Theater from Nov. 24-30, 1975, closing after only7 performances. See the Internet Broadway Database, <http://www.ibdb.com/show.php?ID=10951>.

9 Decamerone, amori e sghignazzi, began touring late in 2007 at Florence, Rifredi, reviewed byIgor VAZZAZ, Nov. 11 of that year, <http://www.loschermo.it/articoli/view/2999>. See also the web-site Cuore Sacro, <http://cuoresacro1.splinder.com/post/20012067>, for a comment with photos ofthe play’s run at Brescia in spring, 2009.

10 Christopher WHYTE. The Gay Decameron, London, Victor Gollancz, 1998. See the blurb andcover on this book’s page at Amazon.com.

11 See Decameron All Inclusive Hotels & Resorts («Relax, Decameron has done the thinking!»)at their website: <http://www.decameron.com>.

12 The «Bocaccio [sic] Massage Studio for men only» was located on O’Farrell street, as doc-umented in two black and white photographs of August, 1969, in the Nick DeWolf Photo Archive,one depicting the elaborate domed, scalloped marquee, <http://www.flickr.com/pho-tos/47391132@N00/2852144460>, and a second with a close-up of the store-front window adver-tising «10 young attractive Japanese & American girls . . . steam baths» <http://www.flickr.com/photos/dboo/2851311137/in/photostream/>. As of 1974, the date of the photo in fig. 3, the «Studio»was still in business, but it has since disappeared. Pictured is the author’s brother in a snapshottaken by his wife. They were not patrons, merely passing tourists who sent this memento to theBoccaccio scholar in the family.

13Information on both is plentiful on the web if one Googles, e.g., for the first Decameron + Ver-tigo, or for the second, Decameron + “My Grave is Calling” (the title of their 1991 demo).

“The Cook’s Decameron” 13

14 For samples of lyrics from «Boccaccio Life» and Suppé’s operetta, see KIRKHAM, op. cit.,notes 35 and 36. The «Boccaccio Waltz», based «on airs from the successful comic operetta by F.von Suppé», circulated independently as sheet music.

15 Since the contest to choose vocalists took place in Città di Saluzzo, naturally patientGriselda’s story had a prominent place in the opera – the finale, in fact. The novelle chosen for Act1 are: I,1, V,9, VIII,3, IV,1; for Act 2: IX,2, V,8, and X,10. «Calandrino», sung by the baritoneBernard Bygott, son of the stage director Karen Saillant, appeared in a prologue, epilogue, and be-tween the episodes, weaving in and out of view like an agile Harlequin or court jester, and provid-ing recitative to help the audience understand the opera, composed in English by Saillant andtranslated into Italian by Tommaso Sabbatini. The other singers were: Yasko Fuji, soprano, Japan;Kathryn Krasovec, mezzo soprano, USA; Son Jae Yeon, tenor, South Korea; and ChristopherGrundy, baritone, USA. This «Decameron» production (12-13-14 Nov. 2010), received one review,an enthusiastic response on the Philadelphia website Edge, by Lewis WHITTINGTON, Nov. 29, 2010:«Under the direction of Karen Salliant, Philadelphia’s International Opera Theater and their coun-terpart company in Italy have turned Boccaccio’s text into a raucous opera of dramatic and comedicgrandeur. [...] Great costuming of different textures (medieval headdress; wedding gowns, viscountcapes and celestial tunics) play off an ocean of tulle, which morphs into clouds, sickbeds and ethe-real set pieces at any moment. Musical director Gianmaria Griglio achieved fine detailing from theInternational Opera Theater Chamber Orchestra». See the full review at <http://www.edgephiladel-phia.com/entertainment/theatre/reviews/performance/113449/decameron>.

16 See further Kirkham, op. cit., n. 7.17 See Victoria KIRKHAM, Breve storia del chianti «Boccaccio», in Letteratura e industria. Atti

del XV Convegno dell’Associazione Internazionale per gli Studi di Lingua e di Letteratura Italiana.Torino, 14-18 maggio, 1994, Giorgio Bárberi-Squarotti and Carlo Ossola, eds., Firenze, Olschki,1997, pp. 1217-26.

drug problems closed the club in 1993, a loss lamented by fans. Our Tuscanraconteur has lent his persona to lyrics and dance less sexually suggestive, waltz-ing into a jaunty role as lady’s man and protagonist of Franz von Suppé’s operettaBoccaccio (1879)14. In 2010 the International Opera Theater of Philadelphia, di-rected by Karen Saillant, presented in that city’s Prince Music Theater the worldpremiere of her newly composed opera, Boccaccio, based on seven novelle withmusic by the seven winners of a recently held international competition in mu-sical composition (fig. 4)15.

Although not as plentiful as Dante restaurants, commercial dining establish-ments around the globe have suggested the satisfactions awaiting their patronsby invoking the name Boccaccio. One of the most successful continues to flour-ish after thirty years at Toronto’s Columbus Centre. Websites announce others inthe Eastern United States (Long Island, Baltimore) and in Europe (Nice, Frank-furt)16. Wine, too, lifts the spirits by association with the Certaldan. In the late1980s the Esselunga supermarket chain in Italy offered customers a «BoccaccioChianti» (fig. 5), its label copied from a Certaldo centenary poster of 1913,adapted in turn from Henry Holiday’s familiar Dante and Beatrice of 188417.

Boccaccio, a man of girth, must have himself liked to eat and imbibe, perhapsfavoring Tuscan wines that were ancestors to the chianti bottled to make a tonyproduct for twentieth-century supermarket shoppers. His merry brigata, whomake music, sing, and dance, enjoy abundant repasts in clean, beautiful sur-roundings. On their first day in the country, after strolling in a garden, weaving

14 Victoria Kirkham

chaplets for themselves and singing, they return to their villa:

a casa tornati trovarono Parmeno studiosamente aver dato principio al suo uficio [disiniscalco], per ciò che, entrati in una sala terrena, quivi le tavole messe videro contovaglie bianchissime e con bicchieri che d’ariento parevano, e ogni cosa di fiori diginestra coperta; per che, data l’acqua alle mani, come piacque alla reina, secondo ilgiudicio di Parmeno tutti andarono a sedere. Le vivande dilicatamente fatte venneroe finissimi vini fur presti; e senza più, chetamente le tre famigliari servirono le tav-ole. Dalle quali cose, per ciò che belle e ordinate erano, rallegrato ciascuno, con pi-acevoli motti e con festa mangiarono18.

Mrs. Waters would have taken note and approved. Attentive to the civilizedrituals of his frame tale brigata, Boccaccio carries his culinary consciousnessbeyond the cornice into the novelle. In Cisti the baker (VI, 2) he crafts a noble-hearted wine connoisseur, and he sets many a Decameron scene at mealtime –from the chaste Marchioness of Monferrato’s dinner of hens (I, 5) to the cher-ished falcon served up by Federigo degli Alberigi (V, 9); from Nastagio degliOnesti’s didactic feast (V, 8) to the Marchese of Saluzzo’s banquet of reconcili-ation with patient Griselda (X, 10).

In Boccaccio’s frame tale, Parmeno’s preparations establish a pattern of dailydining, important less for what the brigata eats (that Boccaccio does not tell us)than for how their meals function as a sign of order: «dalle quali cose, per ciò chebelle e ordinate erano, rallegrato ciascuno, con piacevoli motti e con festa man-giarono»19. The beautifully set tables, the servants who glide silently about topresent exquisitely prepared dishes and «finissimi vini» – altro che aqua del-l’Arno – cheer the company and unite them in witty conversation. If the tenyoung Florentines in their country retreat reconstitute the polis as a utopian mi-crocosm; then mealtimes become a «minicosm», an occasion for civil intercoursethat tropes the little kingdom in its larger constructive purpose, to recreate soci-ety in response to the chaotic disintegration of Florence devastated by plague.

This is the Decameron that inspires Mrs. Waters’s cookbook. She connectsnot with the racy, transgressive novelle that so typically determine modern rein-carnations, but rather with the frame tale, which counters the impetus towardrule-breaking and lays down boundaries to assert social harmonies. In its way,Boccaccio’s Decameron is an etiquette book – or better, to use Pier MassimoForni’s broader term, a «civility» book – as I have suggested writing about thenarrators’ conversational decorum, what Aristotle would have called their eu-trapelia20. Mrs. Waters, in other words, does just the opposite of Pasolini, who

18 Decameron, Vittore Branca, ed., vol. 4 of Giovanni BOCCACCIO, Tutte le opere, Milano, Mon-dadori, 1976, I, Intro., 103-06.

19 Laura SANGUINETI WHITE fixes on these key narrative moments in La scena conviviale e lasua funzione nel mondo del Boccaccio, Firenze, Olschki, 1983, pp. 40-41.

20 Victoria KIRKHAM, The Word, the Flesh, and the ‘Decameron’, «Romance Philology», XLI,2,1987, pp. 127-49. Cf. Pier Massimo FORNI, Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Consid-erate Conduct, New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003.

“The Cook’s Decameron” 15

21 The book is available online at Google books. Cf. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Printers’ Devices:being a partial reprint of the fifth and sixth days delectable discourses thereon from the Biblio-graphical Decameron (London: The imprint, E. Fetterolfs, 1920). For color reproductions and di-scussion of the princely Crivelli Decameron manuscript, see Vittore Branca, ed., Boccacciovisualizzato: narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 3 vols., Torino, Ei-naudi, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 288-95.

in his cinematic version all but suppresses the frame tale. Her Decameron is allframe tale, until the recipes in its second half, substituted for Boccaccio’s nov-elle. It is an adaptation that hovers on the higher register of English antecedents,which cleanse sex from their Decamerons, much like the book’s bowdlerizedBritish translation history, until John Payne finally Englished it complete andfaithfully in 1886. The Payne translation, although privately published by theVillon Society, was reprinted in the 1890s and would have been circulatingamong Mrs. Waters’s social set. Talk of that naughty book would have been «inthe air» and constituted a climate favorable to the reception of her «new De-cameron».

What are some of the other distinctly English «Decamerons» that line up be-hind «the study in taste» by Mrs. Waters? Several cluster celibately in the earlynineteenth century. Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin turned the Tuscan talesinto a reference book, The Bibliographical Decameron: or Ten Days PleasantDiscourse upon Illuminated Manuscripts and Subjects Connected with EarlyEngraving, Typography, and Bibliography (London, Shakespeare Press, 1817).Among copious illustrations in Reverend Dibdin’s delightful and very scholarlyannotated catalogue, the first are from the magnificent Holkham Hall Decameronpainted by Taddeo Crivelli and now at the Bodleian. Its illuminations articulatethe frame with a cameo portrait of each narrator at the beginning of that person’sday of rule21. Mrs. Waters, a scholar in her own right, like Crivelli and Dibdin em-phasizes the armature of the Decameron, its novella portante. Dibdin’s high-brow Bibliographical Decameron, a history of the European book as proper asthe sermons that must have flowed from that Reverend’s pen, prompted anothergentleman three years later to a comparably serious endeavor. J. Payne Collier,in 1820, composed the two-volume Poetical Decameron, or Ten Conversationson English Poets and Poetry, particularly of the Reigns of Elizabeth and JamesI (Edinburgh, Archibald Constable and Co.). Cast in the form of a dialogue, it de-scribes three young friends, Elliot, Morton, and Bourne, who travel by boat ona serene evening in August to spend a fortnight at Bourne’s lakeside house. Theirconversation turns to Poetry, especially by those creative spirits who made theThames their «great example and theme»: Gray, Collins, Drayton, and Spenserto begin with. Soon many more names crowd into their minds, including Shake-speare, Fletcher, Jonson, Chapman, Nast, Greene, Lodge, Hall, Marston, Peele,Marlow, Daniel, Byron, Southey, Scott, Campbell, Chaucer. Upon arrival at theircountry destination, they decide to deepen the discussion of Britain’s classic lit-erature by spending the middle of each day in the library – mutatis mutandis,

16 Victoria Kirkham

their «garden» – while reserving mornings and evenings for outdoor recreationlike sailing. The subject of their first dialogue is Charles Fitzgeoffrey’s lamen-tation on the death of Sir Francis Drake, 1596.

The Cook’s Decameron does not descend exclusively from national ancestorsnever touched by the salt of wit. It has another possible English precedent in acharming anthology of 1823, Horae jocosae; or The Doggerel Decameron, beingTen Facetious Tales in Verse To which are added Some Miscellaneous pieces,published at London by Joseph Lunn, Esq.22. This rhymester’s chatty socialsatire, The Bibliographical Decameron, and The Poetical Decameron deserveconsideration as plausible intermediaries between Boccaccio and Mrs. Waters.We find in them educational purpose entertainingly couched, the vehicle of di-alogue, and comédie de moeurs, all of which return in The Cook’s Decameron.A first hint of Mrs. Waters’s values and wit as a writer comes in the subtitle ofher book, «a study in taste». Her program is to link politesse and the palate.

Decameronian parallels govern her plan. It opens most properly to the au-thor’s preface, a polemical defense of Italian cookery vis-à-vis French cuisine,which she judges much degenerated in typical European table d’hôte fare. Aprologue follows, introducing the Marchesa Livia Sant’Andrea, who visits Lon-don annually. This year, in response to a crisis, she receives nine London friendsin her Mayfair Hotel drawing room, «the dominant subject of discourse being theapproaching dissolution of London society from the refusal of one human tocook food for another»23. «Plague-stricken» owing to the disappearance of theircooks, the company of ten retreat to the countryside, where at a villa called «Lau-restinas», over a ten-day period the Marchesa teaches each one recipes in theItalian style. At each day’s end, in place of Boccaccio’s ballata, Mrs. Watersgives the menus. For example, lunch on the Fifth Day is Gnocchi alla Romana,Filetto di Bue ai pistacchi, Bodini marinati; for dinner the selections are ZuppaCrotopò (croûte au pot soup), Sogliole alla Veneziana, Ateletti alla Sarda (hateletsof ox palates), Costolette di Montone alla Nizzarda (mutton cutlets), Pollo allaFiorentina (fowl with maccaroni), Crema Tartara alla Caramella, and Uovarimescolate ai tartufi. Neither meals nor recipes are simple. Ingredients for«zuppa crotopò» are «clear soup» (described in recipe no. 19, it should simmerall day and include, beyond three pounds of stock meat, vegetables, herbs, mace,

22 The versatile Lunn’s humorous vein is clear from some of his other titles: Family Jars, a mu-sical farce in two acts; Fish out of Water, a farce in two acts. (Joseph LUNN, Fish Out of Water.Family Jars, London, John Dicks, 1883.) His Amor patriae: A Dramatic Poem (London, T. Geeves,1823), based on Pietro Metastasio’s Attilio Regolo and dedicated to the Duke of Wellington, be-speaks more serious Italian cultural interests.

23 Mrs. W.G. Waters, The Cook’s Decameron: A Study in Taste containing over two hundredrecipes for Italian dishes, 2nd ed. (New York: Brentano’s, 1920), 8. Cited from the copy in the Es-ther B. Aresty Collection of Rare Books on the Culinary Arts, Rare Book and Manuscript Collec-tion, University of Pennsylvania. Textual divisions (preface, prologue, ten days, and 230 numberedrecipes) make the book easy to navigate in the currently available computer-generated reprints (seeabove, n. 3).

“The Cook’s Decameron” 17

24 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Prologue, p. 15.25 Conversation comes around to breakfasts as the Third Day opens. The Marchesa vigorously

defends this institution in which «England stands supreme» (p. 29). No wonder, considering the«Breakfast Dishes» listed in the famous Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household management, first pub-lished in 1861 (see below, n. 38) An edition of ca. 1923 (see below, n. 38) in the University of Penn-sylvania Rare Book Collection, chap. 38, pp. 951-72, itemizes among other foods: fish, bacon andmacaroni [similar to spaghetti alla carbonara], fritters, croquettes, devilled chicken, clam chowder,codfish pie, cod’s roe, cold curry ramekins, gateau of cold meat, haddock and oyster fritters, her-rings, kidneys, lobster, mutton, omelet, salmon, sausage croquettes, truffles Italian style, waffles(both American and French style), and of course, bacon and eggs. Table settings come up in con-versation on Day Nine, reflecting the ideals Mrs. Beeton defines (see figs. 13a and 13b).

and «liquor in which a calf’s head has been cooked»), veal, ham, eggs, salt, pep-per, nutmeg, and rolls. For «ateletti alla Sarda» (no. 103), one begins by soak-ing two ox palates in salted water for four hours; after cooking them in stock forsix hours, one adds forcemeat of veal or fowl rolled in flour, tongue, truffles,butter, mushrooms and sweetbread, then a crouton stuffed with fried slices ofcucumber and truffles boiled in a little Chablis.

Mrs. Waters, who knows the Decameron backward and forward, synchro-nizes her calendar with Boccaccio’s. Like the Florentine brigata, la Marchesa diSant’Andrea leaves London on a Tuesday to make advance preparations for this«new Decameron», as the cooking school decides to christen their society24.Under her queen-like rule, their villeggiatura begins on a Wednesday, as doesPampinea’s inaugural giornata. Each Day, the British company converses onsundry topics, often food and its consumption – peppery seasoning, mushrooms,sirloin, proper table settings, Italian ices, how to make vegetables tasty, the for-midable English breakfast, travel in Italy and the fine fare to be tasted at Italianinns25. On the Fourth Day, curiosity drives one of the guests to ask the March-esa why she loves to cook. In her response, a manifesto like Boccaccio’s «Difesadell’Autore» at the corresponding point in his Decameron, she too cites poeticantecedent. One day, strolling among the flea market venders in Rome’s PiazzaNavona, she came upon «a little yellow paper-covered book with the title LaCucina Partenopea, overo il Paradiso dei gastronomi». This gastronomic guideto Naples must be an amusing invention, like the manuscript Alessandro Man-zoni claimed as his source for the Promessi sposi, but her «yellow paper-cov-ered» treasure has the cachet of a connection with Robert Browning. He likewisefound a «yellow volume» at a seller round the corner from Palazzo Riccardi inFlorence, the Romana homocidiorum, from which the British chef quotes:

................. These [companion volumes]I picked the book from. Five compeers in flankStood left and right of it as tempting more – A dog’s eared Spicilegium, the fond taleO’ the frail one of the Flower, by young Dumas,Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools,

18 Victoria Kirkham

The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody,Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life.

The «Roman Murder Case», true testimony of a trial in 1698, inspired Brown-ing to write his 21,000-verse novel, The Ring and the Book. Appearing in fourinstallments between 1868 and 1869, the epic falls into twelve books, each adramatic monologue by one of the historical personages involved in the case,principal among them the nobleman, Guido Franceschini, found guilty of mur-dering his young wife Pompilia, whom he suspects of having an affair with acleric, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Pope Innocent XII refuses to overturn his con-viction26.

Not surprisingly, on Day Six The Cook’s Decameron pops from the oven itsvariant on the servants’ quarrel. Tindaro’s counterpart is Narcisse, formerly cookto Sir John Oglethorpe, whom the Marchesa met before her widowhood whileshooting woodcock in Sardinia. Oglethorpe is navré by the loss of Narcisse. Po-lice spirited away in cuffs from his kitchen this master French chef for murder-ing his wife with the aid of an accomplice, Mlle. Sidonie, a songstress who hasbecome the darling of the Parisian boulevards. Before he could «sneeze in thebasket» (give up his head to the guillotine), Narcisse sent Sir John the recipe forhis «incomparable sauce», which Oglethorpe is now thinking of marketing27.This subplot, announced as the first sign of the plague on Day One, develops indetail on Day Six, and will come to resolution on Day Ten:

The sun rose on the tenth and last day at the “Laurestinas” as he was wont to rise onless eventful mornings. . . an unwonted silence fell on the party under the chestnuts... [Sir John] could not banish the figure of Narcisse from his reverie ... he felt hewould give a good deal to be assured that on this the last evening of the New De-cameron he might sit down to a dinner prepared by the hand of his departed chef28.

That evening, as the dinner courses roll by, Sir John’s amazement grows andwhen he tastes the venison, he cannot mistake the sauce. The marchesa rings ahand-bell on the table, and lo, «The door opened, and a little man, habited in acook’s dress of spotless white, entered and came forward»29. While Narcisse,

26 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Four, pp. 37-38. Mrs. Waters must have been struck byBrowning’s colorful description of Piazza San Lorenzo, a place she herself surely knew well:«Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths, / Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time; / Toward Baccio’s marble, ’ay, the basement-ledge / o’ the pedestal where sits and menaces /John of the Black Bands with the Upright spear, / ’Twixt palace and church . . . / ’Mongst odds andends of ravage, picture-frames / White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces chipped, / Bronzeangel-heads once knobs attached to chests, / (Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade) /Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude, / Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry / Pol-ished and rough, sundry amazing busts/ In baked earth ... / From these Oh, with a Lionard goingcheap … / I picked this book».

27 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Six, p. 50.28 Ivi, Day Ten, pp. 78-81.29 Ivi, Day Ten, p. 84.

Tavole

Photo credits

Figs. 1a-1b: Author, from the original comic book provided by Paul. F. Watson.Figs. 2a-2b. Author.Fig. 3. Courtesy of Collier and Ann Kirkham.Fig. 4. Courtesy of Karen Saillent.Fig. 5. Author, from a label provided by Paola Navona.Figs. 6-14. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.

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1. Il Boccaccio, I, 1. Classic comic with story of Alatiel, Italy, 1970s.

22 Tavole

2. Playbill for Boccaccio, failed Broadway musical of 1975.

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3. Boccaccio Massage Studio for Men, now defunct. O’Farrell Street, San Fran-cisco, 1974.

24 Tavole

4. Decameron, program cover for the International Opera Theater of Philadelphiaproduction, 2010.

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5. Wine label for «Boccaccio» Chianti, distributed by Italian Esse Lunga super-market chain, late 1980s.

26 Tavole

6a. Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book (1893), flyleaf:Advertisement for Liebig’s Meat Extract. 6b. Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management: A Complete Cookery Book (1923?),flyleaf, advertisement for Oxo bouillon cubes.

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7. Antoine Carême, Le maître d’hotel français (1822), frontispiece with uni-formed chefs facing title page, a hall of fame featuring «Vatel» at top left.

28 Tavole

8. Félix Urbain-Dubois, Cosmopolitan Cookery (1886), following p. 68:«Saumon de Vatel» and «Chapon de Lully».

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9a. C.E. Francatelli, The Modern Cook (1860), 404: Chicken mayonnaise, Darneor slice of salmon à la Montpellier. 9b. C.E. Francatelli, The Modern Cook (1860), 405: Trout a la Vertre; LobsterSalad.

30 Tavole

10. Félix Urbain-Dubois, Cosmopolitan Cookery (1886), following p. 67:«Hatelet-skewers».

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11. Félix Urbain-Dubois, Cosmopolitan Cookery (1886), following p. 68: Suck-ling pig decorated with hatelet-skewers.

32 Tavole

12a Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. (1893), facingp. 172: «Fish». 12b. Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. (1893), facingp. 402, «Sweets».

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13. Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. (1893), facingp. xlii, «Supper Table».

34 Tavole

14. Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. (1893), facingp. xlvi, «Table Decorations».

“The Cook’s Decameron” 35

30 Ivi, Day Ten, pp. 85-86. Mrs. Waters conspicuously spices her satire with French: «sergentsde ville» (police); «cette coquine anglaise» (this English tart); «en course» (at the gallop); «l’affaireNarcisse» (the Narcisse affair); “À bas les Anglais, à bas les Juifs» (Down with the English, downwith the Jews); «Conspuez Coco» (Jeer at Coco); «la haute gomme» (the très chic social set).

31 Ivi, Prologue, p. 5.

back from the grave, and Sir John rejoice in a private reunion, the Marchesa tellsthe others how she helped secure the murderer’s pardon, an account liberally in-terlarded with French.

As it turned out, she explains, the so-called Parisian songstress Mlle. Sidonie, was re-ally a Miss Adah Levine, who had graduated from a music-hall in East London:Then it was that the reaction in favor of Narcisse set in; the boulevards could notstand this. The journals dealt with this new outrage in their best Fashoda style, thecafés rang with it: another insult cast upon unhappy France, whose destiny was, itseemed, to weep tears of blood to the end of time. . . . the position of the Minister ofthe Interior was spoken of as precarious ... Pockets were picked under the eyes ofsergents de ville, who were absorbed in proclaiming to each other their conviction ofthe innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en courseran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l’affaire Narcisse to an ac-companiment of whip-cracking. In front of the Café des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie’s great song Bonjour Coco,whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, “À bas les Anglais, à basles Juifs”. “Conspuez Coco”. In less than five minutes the organ was disintegrated,and the luckless minstrel flying with torn trousers down a side street. For the next fewdays la haute gomme promenaded with fragments of the piano organ suspended fromwatch chains as trophies of victory. But this was not all. Paris broke out into poetryover l’affaire Narcisse, and here is a journal sent to me by my friend which containsa poem in forty-nine stanzas by Aristophane le Béletier, the cher maître of the “Mori-bonds”, the very newest school of poetry in Paris30.

The poor little organ-grinder, we can assume here, was Italian, driven off thestreets by crazed, stereotypically chauvenistic French, as Mrs. Waters imaginesthem in her humorous satire. Newspapers, we hear from her mouthpiece theMarchesa, have fastened on the story «Fashoda style», blowing up this minus-cule bit of fictitious cronaca nera into the equivalent of an international inci-dent. In historical fact, the Nile village of Fashoda, in the southern Sudan, hadbecome in 1898 the center of Anglo-French conflict in Africa to consolidatecolonies and claim a right-of-way across the continent: England wanted an un-interrupted route from Cape Town to Cairo; France, from its western colonies onthe Atlantic coast eastward to the Red Sea. Victory went to the British, whoseglobal empire in Mrs. Waters’s era was still in its glory days. That climate ofcolonialism explains another of her chefs-in-training at Laurestinas, Colonel Tre-strail, back in England after service in India, where he had acquired a Bengalicook specialized in curries. That genius, alas, had abandoned his master «at aday’s notice, in order to embrace Christianity and marry a lady’s-maid who hadjust come into a legacy of a thousand pounds»31.

36 Victoria Kirkham

Quoting «Aristophanes the Bleater» in verses she herself has composed, Mrs.Waters takes a poke at modern French poetry, morbid verse by sickly men. Mon-sieur «goat-voice» pleads with Narcisse to leave the horrors of England – «lesbrouillards maudits» and «saignants bifteks» – and come back to heal with hishands wounded Mother France, «le sein meurtri de ta mere». One thinks ofBaudelaire, «poète maudit», and perhaps more obscurely, the Parnassien who,having lost his mistress, weeps on another «murdered breast» (sein meurtri), thearmless Venus de Milo: «Où “puis-je mieux pleurer, poète sans maîtresse, / Quesur le sein meurtri de la Vénus sans bras?»32.

The «affaire Narcisse», twice so labeled by Mrs. Waters as she scripts theMarchesa’s conclusion to the picaresque tale of Narcisse, replays parodistically«l’affaire Dreyfus». Like Fashoda, it was very much in the news as The Cook’sDecameron was incubating. Convicted of treason in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus hadbeen sent to French Guiana and imprisoned on Devil’s Island. In 1899, after ev-idence of his innocence had surfaced, he was brought back to France for a newtrial. The clamorous case divided the public, but the Dreyfusards ultimately won,led by Émile Zola. With her reductio ad absurdum, is she ridiculing those whoconvicted the Jewish officer, or does she announce sympathies with his anti-Se-mitic opponents? Whatever the answer, amusing irony leads The Cook’s De-cameron to end with the triumph of French cuisine, for the last dinner has a menuall written out in French and prepared supremely by none other than Narcisse.

In an epilogue, the final twist reunites at a London chop house called Mor-ton’s the three male protagonists – Sir John Oglethorpe, Colonel Trestrail, andthe painter Mr. Sebastian Van der Roet. Vander, as his friends call him, lost hiscook in the «plague» when that light-fingered person suddenly decamped withmany of his master’s valuables. Each gentleman separately has searched the cityfor a good Italian restaurant, only to meet with disappointment. As a last resort,they gravitate to this place, remembered from youth, banal for cooking but com-fortingly familiar.

“Oh, Colonel, Colonel,” said Van der Roet. “You know you’ve been hungering afterthe cookery of Italy, and trying to find a genuine Italian lunch, and have failed, justas Sir John and I failed, and so, have come here in despair. But never mind, just waitfor a year or so, until the ‘Cook’s Decameron’ has had a fair run for its money, andthen you’ll find you’ll fare as well at the ordinary Italian restaurant as you did at the‘Laurestinas’, and that’s saying a good deal”33.

With that, the half-way point in her book, Mrs. Water’s closes her «new De-cameron» and turns to the recipes, presented in the following order: Sauces;Soups; Minestre; Fish; Beef, Mutton, Veal, Lamb, etc.; Tongue, Sweetbread,

32 Alexis MARTIN, A Vénus de Milo (Statuette), «Le Parnasse contemporain», I, 1866, pp. 268-72. See Gretchen SCHULTZ, The Gendered Lyric: Subjectivity and Difference in Nineteenth-CenturyFrench Poetry, West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University Press, 1999, 128-29.

33 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., The Tenth Day, p. 93.

“The Cook’s Decameron” 37

34 One of the circle suggests to Sir John Oglethorpe that he should sell the sauce from Nar-cisse’s secret recipe as «New Century Sauce». Humor aside, E. Lazenby and Son was a real em-porium specializing in pickles, sauces, and condiments. In the 1869 issue of the Medical Times andGazette Advertiser, that purveyor announced that their postal address (but not place of business)would change from Edwards Street to Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, after the London Boardof Works merged the two under the name of the latter. See «Medical Times and Gazette», 1, 1869,p. 648. The 1920 edition of The Cook’s Decameron, omitting any reference to this sauce, ends with«Sweets and Cakes».

35 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., The Seventh Day, pp. 57-58.36 For a brief history, see Wikipedia, s.v. «Ketchup».37 This list, typical of the Edwardian period, is much simplified compared with information in

the original version of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), where a chapter on«The Mistress» compares the home-maker to an army commander, her soldiers being the hiredhelp. First come the male domestics: house steward, valet, butler, cook, gardener, footman, underbutler, coachman, groom, under footman, page or footboy, stableboy; second, the female: house-keeper, lady’s-maid, head nurse, cook, upper housemaid, upper laundry-maid, maid-of-all-work,under housemaid, still-room maid, nursemaid, under laundry-maid, kitchen-maid, scullery-maid.The full 1861 text is available at a site dedicated to this classic of home economics:<http://www.mrsbeeton.com>.

38 See Wikipedia, s.v. «Campbell Soup Company»; Ivi, s.v. «Oxo»; and Ivi, s.v «Marmite». ForLiebig’s Meat Extract (fig. 6a), see Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book: APractical and Useful Guide for all Mistresses and Servants, new ed. rev., London, Ward, Lock,

Calf’s Head, Liver, Sucking Pig, etc.; Fowl, Duck Game, Hare, Rabbit, etc.; Veg-etables; Macaroni, Rice, Polenta, and Other Italian Pastes; Omelettes and OtherEgg Dishes; Sweets and Cakes, New Century Sauce. The last is a surprise be-cause it comes ready-made, for sale at Messr’s. Lazenby’s, Wigmore Street34.

As a general rule, Mrs. Waters objects to commercial preparations. Speakingof consommé («Like the poet, the consommé is born, not made»), the Marchesahas «a charge to bring against contemporary cookery. I mean the neglect of nat-ural in favour of manufactured flavorings»35. The «New Century Sauce» coda toher cookbook in its 1901 edition sounds like a relative of ketchup. A fish-basedsauce old and Asian in its origins, this condiment débuted with the Americanpublic at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, bottled by Henry J.Heinz36. Such mass-marketed products were beginning to make inroads inkitchens, just as social changes were gradually eroding the old domestic system,dependent on a crew of servants: butler, footman, page, chauffeur, valet, lady’s-maid, parlour-maid, housemaid, general servant, dairymaid, and laundry-maid37.Campbell’s, founded in 1869 and headquartered for many years just across theDelaware River from Philadelphia in Camden, New Jersey, produced cannedtomatoes, vegetables, jellies, soups, condiments, and minced meats. Its red andwhite design dates from end of the nineteenth century, its gold medal seal fromthe 1900 Paris exhibition. From 1866 Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company wasproducing the ancestor of Oxo bouillon cubes, «a viscous liquid containing onlymeat extract and 4% salt» (figs. 6a, 6b). Published in 1901, The Cook’s De-cameron circulated in the same era as another similar product, Marmite, an en-during British favorite first sold in 1902. Salty like soy, it was made from yeastextract and sold in earthenware pots38.

38 Victoria Kirkham

Mrs. Waters belongs to a time of transition. She and her social set are heirsto the «Upstairs, Downstairs» style of living, dramatized in a popular BBC tel-evision series of the 1970s. Fundraisers for public television offered a «cookerybook» (Simon and Schuster, 1974), with recipes from the program’s fictitiouscook, «Mrs. Bridges», pictured on the cover with the family Butler, Hudson,standing proudly on duty in the background. But democracy is creeping into thekitchen. The social reformer in Mrs. Waters’s brigata, an amusing stereotype, isMrs. Gradinger, «a gaunt, ill-dressed lady in spectacles, with a commanding noseand dull, wispy hair». She boasts, «Ours is a democratic age, and the wants anddesires of the many [...] override the whims of the pampered few, the employersof such costly luxuries as men cooks»39. Yet she too had a cook before the«plague». They parted company when that upstart woman, of all things, refusedto keep working for pecuniary compensation and declared her social equalitywith the lady of the house.

Just as her book belongs to the turn of a century, Mrs. Waters sits astride twoeras in the history of cookery. The wife of a wealthy, leisured gentleman scholar,she herself had a cook, Mrs. Mitchell, whom she thanks in her Preface alongwith her spouse, «for his courage in dining, “greatly daring”» as her recipe tester.«He still lives and thrives», she proclaims with a smile40. The style in which shewrites and the company she assembles attest to her life of privilege, but a spiritof practicality dictates her book.

It is noted in the following pages how rarely English people on their travels penetratewhere true Italian cookery may be tasted, wherefore it has seemed worth while toplace within the reach of English housewives some Italian recipes which are espe-cially fitted for the presentation of English fare to English palates under a differentand not unappetising guise. Most of them will be found simple and inexpensive41.

She has studied the tradition of French haute-cuisine, citing Brillat-Savarinexplicitly in her preface and embedding a quote from his Physiology of Taste(1825) in dialogue on the Fourth Day. «And I think some wise man once re-marked», says Sir John, «that the discovery of a dish is vastly more importantthan the discovery of a star, for we have already as many stars as we can possi-bly require, but we can never have too many dishes»42. On Day Eight, one of the

Bowden & Co., 1893; and for Oxo (fig. 6b), Mrs. Beeton’s Household Management: A CompleteCookery Book with sections on household work, servant’s duties, labour-saving, laundry work, eti-quette, marketing, etc., carving and trussing, the art of “using-up”, table decoration, the homedoctor, the nursery, the home lawyer, etc., new ed., London, Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd., ca. 1923.

39 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Six, p. 53.40 Ivi, Preface, pp. ix-x.41 Ivi, Preface, p. ix.42 Ivi, Day Four, p. 36. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) was a French lawyer and

politician famous for his epicurean tastes and for creating the genre of gastronomic writing. Mrs.Waters cites from his classic Physiologie du goût. There he in turn quotes Henrion de Pensey, min-ister of justice, who said in 1812, «I hold the discovery of a new dish, which sustains our appetiteand prolongs our sense of pleasure, to be a far more interesting event than the discovery of a star;

“The Cook’s Decameron” 39

of stars we seen enough already». See Jean Anthelme BRILLAT-SAVARIN, The Physiology of Taste,Minneola, NY, Dover Books, 2002, p. 318.

43 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Eight, p. 65. Mrs. Wilder remarks that the English are moreutilitarian than artistic. Francois Vatel (1631-1671), chef to King Louis XIV, was a perfectionist fa-mous for his suicide and the invention of crème chantilly, named for Chateau Chantilly, where hewas Maître d’hotel. His death was treated as a national tragedy. See Wikipedia, s.v., «FrançoisVatel».

44 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Four, p. 41. Francatelli, afterwards chef at the Reform Club,wrote several cookbooks including The Modern Cook, London, Bentley, 1846; A Plain CookeryBook for the Working Classes, London, Bosworth and Harrison, 1861, frequently reprinted, andThe Royal English and Foreign Confectioner, London, Chapman and Hall, 1862.

45 Recipe no. 103, “Ateletti alla Sarda,” is made as follows: “Soak two ox palates in salted waterfor four hours, then boil them until the rough skin comes off, and cook them in good stock for sixhours, press them between two plates and let them get cold. Roll some forcemeat of veal or fowlin flour, cut it into small pieces about the size of a cork, boil them in salted water, let them get coldand cut them into circular pieces. Cut the ox palates also into circular pieces the same size as thebits of forcemeat, then thinner circles of cooked tongue and truffles. String these pieces alternatelyon small silver skewers. Reduce to half its quantity a pint of Velute sauce (No. 2), and add the cut-tings of the truffles, mushroom trimmings, bits of sweetbread, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Let itget cold and then mask the atelets (or skewers with the forcemeat, &c.) with it, and fry them quicklyin butter. Fry a large oval crouton of bread, scoop out the centre and fill it with fried slices of cu-cumber and truffles boiled in a little Chablis. Stick the skewers into the crouton and pour the sauceround it.” For illustrations of such hatelet-skewers in the high style, see figs. 10 and 11, from FélixUrbain-Dubois, La Cuisine de tous le pays, published in English as Cosmopolitan Cookery: Pop-ular Studies (London, Longmans, Green, & Co., 1886).

ladies laments the English tendency to lavish energy on utilitarian tasks, «butwe never throw ourselves into the arts with the enthusiasm of the Latin races. […][E]very one knows the story of Vatel’s suicide because the fish failed to arrive».For the diners’ last country evening, «Turbot à la Vatel» appears on the menucourtesy of Narcisse, a tribute to the maitre d’hotel at Chateau Chantilly, who ranhimself through with a sword when the fish were late arriving for a banquet of2,000 guests gathered in 1671 to honor King Louis XIV (figs. 7, 8)43. Discussinghow to gauge the quantities of ingredients, Mrs. Waters has her marchesa stressmodest amounts, in contrast to «Francatelli’s quantities […] prodigious, as, forinstance, when to make a simple glaze he calls for three pounds of gravy beef,the best part of a ham, a knuckle of veal, an old hen, and two partridges». Bornin London of Italian extraction, Charles Elmé Francatelli (1805-1876) studiedcuisine in France and served as head chef to Queen Victoria (figs. 9a, 9b)44.

Mrs. Waters brings cooking down to the possibilities of a single householdfrom the lavish extravagance of those past palace maîtres who served Europe’sroyalty and aristocracy with concoctions that were as much to be seen as tasted,dazzling to the eye and titillating to the palate, adorned for special effect withbeautiful hatelet-skewers carved and stacked from natural objects (figs. 10, 11).For its period and public, The Cook’s Decameron (which carries two recipes for«ateletti»)45 could be considered an English cousin to Pellegrino Artusi, whoseScienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene of 1891, was the first middle-class

40 Victoria Kirkham

cookbook for the newly United Italy46. Across the ocean, Artusi has an Ameri-can counterpart in Fanny Merritt Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cookbook,published in 1896 and a perennial best-seller47. Boston, however, plays no morepart in the Englishwoman’s conception of the kitchen than homespun advicefrom Signor Artusi. Instead she writes – and signs herself like the fictional «Mrs.Bridges» – in a British tradition tied to the genre’s celebrated founding mother,«Mrs. Beeton». Primarily a recipe book, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Man-agement first appeared in 1861, undergoing simplification in successive editions.A copy from 1893, for example, with an ad for Liebig’s Meat Extract, includesinterleaved illustrations of full-color plates with displays of food by groups, suchas fish and sweets (figs. 12a, 12b) as well as graphic help for an “every-day”table setting and ornaments for the diners’ pleasure (figs. 13a, 13b)48. Tightened,it eventually became Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book. So, too, The Cook’s De-cameron led to a second book by the same author with a similar title, Just aCookery Book. This latter is not «just» an abridgment minus the frame tale thatmade its predecessor a «Decameron». It is an entirely new book. Its introduction,from which Waters has removed all fictional veiling, allows her to speak directlyas an author learned and professional in her science. The book’s seriousnessmatches the prestige of its publisher, the Medici Society, specialized in highquality art books, cards, and calendars illustrated with works by the old masters.Waters traces a history of English cookery and knows that «the Italian master-cooks, brought by Catherine dei Medici to France, were the true pioneers ofmodern French cooking». The former in turn, descend from founding fathers asancient as Apicius and Lucullus49.

46 For modern editions, see Pellegrino ARTUSI, La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene,Torino, Einaudi, 1970; and Pellegrino ARTUSI, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well,Murtha Baca and Stephen Sartarelli, trans., Luigi Ballerini, intro., Toronto, University of TorontoPress, 2003.

47 Fanny FARMER, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, first appeared in 1896 and has beenin print ever since. The Boston publisher, Little, Brown, and Co., made her pay for the first edition,and she kept the rights, becoming wealthy. More than 300,000 copies had sold by 1915, the yearof her death. This remains one of the best-selling cookbooks of all times, reaching 4,000,000 by1990, as reported at: <http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/html/books/book_48.cfm>.

48 Elizabeth BEETON, Mrs. Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. A Practicaland Useful Guide for all Mistresses and Servants, rev. ed., London, Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co.,1893, depicts «Fish», facing p. 172, in the section on vegetarian dinners for February, hence theLenten season. From the top and left to right and bottom they are: dressed crab, oysters, whitebait,lobster, brochet of smelts, red mullet, salmon (the central choice), brill, turbot, whiting, eels, mack-erel, haddock, cod, trout, and soles. The sweets, facing p. 402, are marbled jelly, trifle, blanc-mange;almond puddings, rout cakes, jam pudding, tartelets, vanilla cream, mince pies, apple marmaladetart, pear and apple dumplings, cherry tart; charlotte russe, dessert biscuits, gingerbread pudding;fruit tart, Christmas plum pudding, milk pudding; apples and rice, and pancakes.

49 Mrs. Waters’s brief history of English cookery goes back to the time of Charles I (Robert May,The Accomplished Cook) and contines with George Elliot (1539), Abraham Weale (1575), and SirKenelm Digby (The King’s Closet Opened). French authorities she names are such great restaura-teurs as Beauvilliers, Robert, Very, Henneveu, Baleine, and of course, Brillat-Savarin. See her in-troduction to Just a Cookery Book, op. cit., pp. 8-9. The book’s dust-jacket displays a fanciful

“The Cook’s Decameron” 41

dialogue between Lucullus and the «Author», who convincingly argues the need for «yet anothercookery book».

50 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Two, p. 23.51 Ivi, Day Two, p. 24.52 Sextus Aurelius PROPERTIUS, The Elegies of Sextus Propertius, James Cranstoun, trans., Ed-

inburgh and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1875, p. 161, emphasis added.53 I thank my colleague Lance Donaldson-Evans for identifying the source of the Montaigne

quotation.54 For a bit of pedagogy on French prosody, the grim Mrs. Gradinger recites verses from the

tragedy by Racine on Day Ten, op. cit., pp. 87-88. For dialogue dressed with Dickens, see Day Six,op. cit., p. 54: «Into the dining house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window, of artificiallywhitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of peas, cooly blooming cucumbers, and jointsready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads the way […] It is of no use trying him with anything less

Unlike Just a Cookery Book, with eclectic selections including many Frenchdishes, The Cook’s Decameron eulogizes Italy’s gastronomic culture. The Britishare better at war and breakfast, but the Italians have a way with food far supe-rior to pale modern imitations of grand French cuisine and comparable to thegreat masterpieces of Renaissance art. Sir John, rhapsodizing over the inspired«Tenerumi di Vitello» they have just tasted on the Second Day, asserts:

In the construction of this dish there is to be recognised a breath of the same afflatuswhich gave us the Florentine campanile, and the Medici tombs, and the portrait ofMonna Lisa. […] with the savour of the Tenerumi di Vitello still fresh, I feel that itdeserves to be added to the list of Italian capo lavori50.

Defending Italy, Mrs. Waters teasingly targets both the French and the Eng-lish. She spoofs her compatriots when she speaks of that «Italian terror» – moredire to many English than paper-money or brigands – garlic». And yet, as shecontinues in a quotation that has found its way into many websites: «garlic, usedas it should be used is the soul, the divine essence, of cookery»51.

These allusions to high Italian art and the axiomatic truth about garlic give asense of Mrs. Waters’s intellectual sophistication and stylistic elegance. To adedicatee identified only by the initials A.V., she sends a tag line at the beginningof her book, «In memory of certain Ausonian feasts». The Latinism «Ausonian»for «Italian» echoes an 1875 English translation of Propertius, from a passage inthe Elegies praising «the Roman land / Where Nature all her choicest charmshas strown with lavish hand … / Here doth Tiburtine Annio flow; here sweetClitumnus’ river / From Umbrian hill; … Here crawl no hornèd serpents … Norfrom Ausonian feasts doth Phoebus, shuddering, hide his head»52. The sentencethat launches her Preface begins: «Montaigne in one of his Essays mentions thehigh excellence Italian cookery had attained in his day». (The source, unidenti-fied, is «De la vanité des paroles», attesting her own familiarity with the authorwhose travel memoire of Italy her husband had translated53.) Her characters canrecite Racine’s Phèdre, too, and they are conversationally fluent with Dickens,recalling Mr. Mantallini from Nicholas Nickelby and from Bleak House Mr.Smallwood, «who in the matter of gravy was adamant»54. Shakespeare, too, they

42 Victoria Kirkham

happily plunder, as when one of the ladies on Day Eight allows that her «with-ers are unwrung» (Hamlet III, ii)55. In defense of the British, the artist Vandereven finds occasion to quote the German poet Heine:

We are not a nation of cooks […] We can’t be everything. Heine once said that theRomans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obligedto learn the Latin grammar. And it is the same with us. We can’t expect to found anempire all over the planet, and cook as well as the French56.

Sometimes Mrs. Waters’s wit is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde: «Dull people oftenenjoy themselves immensely when they meet dull people only»57. Food inspiresother aphoristic moments that spice her dialogues: «Pepper properly used is themost admirable of condiments»58. These memorable quotes and bons mots aresigns of the repartee that must have sparkled at the Waters’s house in MansefieldStreet, which «hospitality made a delightful centre in the intellectual life of Lon-don» – so reports W.G Waters’s obituary, carried by The Times on June 18, 1928.

The Cook’s Decameron creates its own salon, flipped from urban evenings tocountry days. Mirroring the Waters’s lives as a creative couple in England duringlate-Victorian and Edwardian times, it has a pedagogical purpose that sets socialrules and points the way to proper values. Guests about whom there clings theodor of last year at Monte Carlo won’t do. Neither will the dull, who make forgrim, «penitential» dinners. Even worse is to mix the dull with social climbers,«people who give themselves airs of finding more pleasure in reading Stevensonthan the sixpenny magazines, and who don’t know where Hurlingham is»59. Theseare pretentious individuals, false intellectuals, gauche social climbers. They makea conspicuous show of perusing books by serious contemporary authors likeRobert Louis Stevenson, but those are only props in a masquerade to appear morethan they are. If they led a life to match their reading, they would belong to theHurlingham Club, a beautiful park on the Thames maintained for a leisured classwhose sports counted polo and croquet. Not mentioned in Mrs. Waters’s book –but in the background of her marriage – is London’s most famous literary haunt,the Savile Club, where her husband was librarian and a member of the governingcommittee. Founded in 1868, its members included Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling,H.G. Wells, Max Beerbohm, and W.B. Yates60.

People who read Stevenson for pleasure, who frequent Hurlingham and haveentrée at the Savile Club, ride steeplechase at home, and they trek to the Conti-

than a full-sized “bread,” or proposing to him any joint in cut, unless it is in the very best cut. Inthe matter of gravy he is adamant». Charles DICKENS, Bleak House, Boston, Ticknor and Fields,1867, p. 157.

55 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Eight, p. 64. 56 Ivi, Day Eight, p. 6557 Ivi, Day Nine, p. 73.58 Ivi, Day Two, p. 22. 59 Ivi, Day Nine, p. 73.60 See above and, for its history, see The Savile Club, op. cit., and Garrett ANDERSON, op. cit..

“The Cook’s Decameron” 43

61 As Day Five opens, Lady Considine remarks, «Last year, on this very day, I started for Hom-bourg», a place Sir John knows for its beneficial effects in curing the gout (The Cook’s Decameron,cit., p. 42).

62 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Eight, pp. 66-67. L’angelo custode (1640) by GiovanniFrancesco Barbieri, known as il Guercino, today hangs in the Museo Civico awaiting restoration ofthe church of Sant’Agostino, where the Waters would have seen it. For Fano in the late nineteenthcentury, on the railroad route from Pesaro to Ancona, see Karl BAEDEKER. Italy. Handbook for Trav-ellers. Central Italy and Rome, Leipzig, Karl Baedeker, 189010, p. 100. The Albergo del Moro, atthe beginning of the entry, receives a star.

63 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Eight, p. 61.64 The Cook’s Decameron, cit., Day Nine, p. 71.

nent to hunt woodcock in Sardinia or take Hessian spa waters at Bad Hombourg61.They round out their lives as Montaigne did, in «le grand livre du monde», byvisiting Italian cities rich in art and history. Mr. Waters, editor and translator ofMontaigne’s Italian journal, and his wife, who opens her culinary «Decameron»by quoting Montaigne, discovered Italy not just as travelers but in the spirit he hadadvocated when he wrote his charming guidebook on «five Italian shrines». Theygo as «pilgrims» reverently prepared with knowledge from literature and chron-icle of what they have come to see.

It should not surprise us that Mrs. Waters finds room, in the social and culi-nary compendium of her «Decameron», to inscribe a travel diary with just sucha pilgrimage destination. As her fiction has it, the Marchesa once traveled in atouring party led by Sir John, but that trip must correspond to a real itinerary, aroute Mr. and Mrs. Waters traced from Tuscany to the Adriatic shore. Via Arezzo,Cortona, Perugia, Gubbio, Città di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, and Urbino theMarchesa reaches Fano, «whither we had gone on account of a strange romanticdesire of Sir John to look upon an angel which Browning had named in one of hispoems». Robert Browning’s «The Guardian Angel: A Picture at Fano» (1848),takes its inspiration from a panel by Guercino still to be seen in that ancientRoman Adriatic city. The inn to which, after their viewing, the Marchesa’s partyretired for a memorable lunch, Albergo del Moro, lives on, too – and starred – butonly as a ghost in the pages of the 1890 Baedeker for Central Italy and Rome62.

That vanished world returns in the Marchesa’s circle and their model con-versations. They preserve the ideals of a cultured social elite at the turn of a «newcentury» in a «new Decameron». What the Marchesa says of an education incookery could well apply more broadly: «Education, I maintain, is something farhigher than the mere imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of peo-ple to teach themselves»63. Like the order of mealtime rituals in Boccaccio’sframe tale, what comes out of the kitchen, as Mrs. Waters sees it, stands as asynecdoche for civility: «A dinner-party with well-chosen sympathetic guestsand distinguished dishes represents one of the consummate triumphs of civi-lization»64.