It is ten
weary years since I left England's shores
In a far distant country to roam.
How I long to return to my own native land! -
To my friends and the old folks at home.
— "The Miner's Dream of Home"
 obert
Browning, Rupert Brooke, and Will Godwin's Australian miner notwithstanding,
I don't think English people are much prone to homesickness. Quite
a large number of English expatriates are glad to be out of the
place. They will tell you what the sailor told George Borrow in
Lavengro: "England was a hard mother to me, as she has
proved to many." Now, I'm not in that category myself. I have
many fond memories of England, and no complaints. I don't think
I have ever shed a tear for the Ould Sod, though. I'm not the type
— not sentimental at all. There are, though, occasional moments
when I feel a lump in my throat. Certain hymns; a sighting of the
dear old Queen on TV news (you may say what you like about the rest
of the Windsors, I'll not hear a word against Betty); books about
the Great War (as the men of my father's generation called it, as
it will always be in my mind)... A few scattered things like this,
now and again, catching me in just the right mood, remind me that
a country, especially one you were born and raised in, is not just
a splotch of color on a map. Well, I had one of these moments the
other day, when a reader sent me a
clip from the Fox News website. The news item was about spotted
dick; and thinking of spotted dick, I sank into nostalgia.
Last night
as I slumbered I had a strange dream.
It seemed to bring distant things near.
I dreamed of old England, the land of my birth -
To the hearts of her sons ever dear.
Spotted dick,
I had better explain, is an English dessert: a cylinder of dense
spongy stuff (hey, I'm no cook, just a consumer) with raisins or
sultanas imbedded in it. The raisins make it "spotted";
"dick" is, I think, an ancient corruption of the word
"dough." The story on Fox is that England's biggest supermarket
chain — which is also, incidentally, an ex-employer of mine
— is going to stop calling this wonderful confection "spotted
dick" because people are embarrassed to ask for it. With that
dull-witted predictability that makes one think the European Commission
must be behind this somewhere, the stores will henceforth label
this material "spotted richard."
Reading this,
I was at once back in my childhood, among the glories of English
cuisine. It is a misconception, though apparently a universal one,
that the English are lousy cooks. Well, speak as you find: I have
never eaten food as varied, well prepared, and nourishing as that
I ate growing up in an ordinary working-class English household.
The truth of the matter is that English food is wonderful, but you
have to live in an English family to know this. We are not lousy
cooks; we are merely lousy restaurateurs. (Note to the editor, and
to all TV newspersons: THERE IS NO "N" IN THAT WORD, FOR
CRYING OUT LOUD.) "English restaurant" is almost an oxymoron;
though I should add that this is less true now than when I was growing
up. At home, though, we eat like kings. Our food has far more variety
than American food mainly because we are willing to eat things that
you won't even look at. There is, for example, no part of any edible
animal that can't be made into an English dish. Stuffed sheep's
heart: brains on toast: calf heel jelly: pig's trotters: chitlings:
tripe and onions: oxtail soup: tongue: blood pudding: devilled kidneys:
sweetbreads (which is some gland or other): donkey dong. All right,
I made that last one up, but the others are real. You dull Yanks
with your boring prime cuts — eat your hearts out (preferably
stuffed).
But it is in
the matter of desserts that the culinary genius of England takes
wing and soars above the Aónian mount. How I miss those English
desserts of my childhood! Bakewell tart! Queen of puddings! Rhubarb
crumble! Gooseberry fool! Apple turnover! Treacle sponge! Treacle
tart (a completely different thing)! Jam Roly-poly! Bread
and butter pudding! Blancmange! Trifle! Spotted dick! The pies and
tarts all smothered in thick hot custard! Now I think I am
going to cry. You simply can't get this stuff here, except occasionally,
by chance, and usually choked with cinnamon or buried under a deliquescing
mound of that filthy "cream topping" that sprays out of
a can.
Chorus: I
saw the old homestead and faces I love,
I saw England's valleys and dells.
And I listened with joy,
As I did when a boy,
To the sound of the old village bells.
Now, don't
get me wrong. The U.S.A. is a great country. I'm glad to be here;
I look forward to becoming a citizen; and I shall try my best to
be a good citizen. But let's face it, there are some things Americans
just can't do worth a damn, and dessert is up there at the top of
the list. This nation, so great and admirable in so many ways, is
a dessert desert. Ice cream, "fruit salad," cheesecake
— that's the entire repertoire in 90 percent of your eating
establishments, and in your homes too, so far as I can judge. Sometimes,
in very up-market places, you get offered something called "chocolate
mousse." This is rare, though — so rare than most Americans
think mousse is stuff you put on your hair. With American dessert
mousse, you might as well; it sure isn't fit to eat. American cakes
are pathetic. I worked in New York offices for some years,
and when a birthday came around in the department a cake would be
purchased. Frequently these were just large slabs of ice cream.
On other occasions they were weightless, tasteless, textureless
masses of sponge, smeared with some oily white slime that always
made me think of the stuff I found accumulated in my belly button
when, after three months' imprisonment, I was cut free from a full-torso
plaster cast I'd had to wear for a back problem. (Look, I'd been
doing my best to maintain my normal high standards of personal hygiene.
You try taking a shower while encased in plaster from crotch
to clavicles.)
Reader, I have
traveled all over this world (cue banjo here) and have found something
to like and admire in every place I have been — in America
most of all, the one country where the flame of liberty still gutters
faintly in the rising gales of bureaucratism, legalism, corporatism,
and globalism. Yet there are times when I would abandon everything
I have and jump on a plane back to London for just one mouthful
of warm spotted dick dripping with custard.
Once more
in the fireplace the oak log burned bright,
And I promised no more would I roam.
I sat in the old vacant chair by the hearth,
And we sang that dear song "Home Sweet Home."
Thinly disguised plug for my new novel.
In my
column last Thursday I passed some comments on the state of
modern literary fiction. Samples: "I do not read much current
Lit. Fic., except when paid to. My impression is that not much of
it is any good ... I can't see much that is Lit. Fic. about Fire
from the Sun... None of the characters is an angel, a space
alien, or a coprophagic dwarf... Magic realism? I shall die happy
if I can believe I have got real realism right..." I
had not, at the time I wrote that, read B.R.
Myers' piece on current fiction in the July/August Atlantic
Monthly. A kind reader pointed it out to me. Myers is way
better read than I am in the Lit. Fic. of our time, but his conclusions
agree pretty well with mine. Like me, he believes that the emperor
has no, or at any rate very few, clothes: that most of the "fine
writing" gushed over in the pages of the New York Times
Book Review is pretentious crap. It's an excellent article,
and I recommend it to you without reservation.
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