Fork, Knife, and Spoon

A Roadside Picnic

"'Now I call that kind and brotherly of you,' said the Sea Rat. 'I was indeed hungry when I sat down, and ever since I inadvertently happened to mention shell-fish, my pangs have been extreme. But couldn't you fetch it along out here? I am none too fond of going under hatches, unless I'm obliged to; and then, while we eat, I could tell you more concerning my voyages and the pleasant life I lead—at least, it is very pleasant to me, and by your attention I judge it commends itself to you; whereas if we go indoors it is a hundred to one that I shall presently fall asleep.'

'That is indeed an excellent suggestion,' said the Water Rat, and hurried off home. There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. Thus laden, he returned with all speed, and blushed for pleasure at the old seaman's commendations of his taste and judgment, as together they unpacked the basket and laid out the contents on the grass by the roadside."

It's late summer and already the animals are thinking of fall and the winter to follow. The Water Rat, who greeted the Mole in spring with a riverside picnic, greets the Sea Rat in-not-quite-fall with a roadside picnic. His heart yearns for the sunny south he has never seen and a madness comes upon him, He must follow the Sea Rat. It is, of course, Mole who stands in his way until the fit passes, and who completes the cure by suggesting the Water Rat write poetry about—the joys of autumn.

Kenneth Graham, The Wind in the Willows, 1908

A Dropped Tray

"Something appeared in her line of vision: the white lily on the tray.

'Take it, he said. 'I want to give it to you.'

She stared at him, She did not take the flower, but she felt her face rearrange itself in a very strange way and realized, as he smiled, she was smiling."

A singular meeting. A prince who is kind because he is kind and a kitchen drudge who scarcely knows she exists, only that the cauldron she scrubs pots in, day after day, dreams at night and is filled with visions she cannot tell because she is so lost she cannot even say her name, Saro.

The story is lavish in the sensory details of the vast palace kitchen, with its things simmering, roasting, and baking. There a constant bustle of food being prepared, served, stored and offered in new guise. Everything is seasoned with news and gossip from upstairs.

The young prince, his brother's heir, is just back from two year's study of magic, and has taken the blasted, haunted keep to study a mysterious book. A place too frightening to take dinner to, and so the tray-mistress sends the anonymous pot-washer who came from who-knows-where, for she is too insensible to be frightened.

Until the prince opens the door suddenly and she drops the tray.

Patrica A. McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe, 1995.

A Roast Chicken and Wine

"The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken. This, with some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old tokay, of which I had two glasses, was my supper. During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had experienced."

And so Count Dracula and Mr. Harker become acquainted with one another, although the knowing reader will observe that the advantage is all with the count. He is a courteous host, as Harker reports in the journal he has been keeping since he left England, in order that he be better able to tell his intended, Mina, everything that has happened to him while he is away from her. The opening of the journal is filled with homey little notes that he must get this or that recipe for Mina, descriptions of what people, especially women, wear, and impressions of the scenery.

It is very precise, and well-researched, and it is Stoker's way of lulling us into suspending our disbelief, something which is going to be taking a major shock quite shortly after this pleasant supper in which the count, having dined, does not join. Indeed, he will not take even a glass of tokay, for he does not drink. Or as they put it in the movies, but not the book, "I do not drink—wine."

Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897.