A MUSE BOUCHE

I’ve been rereading (in some cases reading for the first time) parts of Francine Prose’s book The Lives of the Muses: Nine women and the artists they inspired.

It turns out – and very possibly we knew this all along – that it’s very hard being a muse.  And it’s no picnic having a muse, either.  Prose discusses Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll, Gala and Dali, Hester Thrale and Samuel Johnson, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, among others It’s surprising how often food crops up.

There’s John Lennon baking his own bread, taking Polaroids of it (way ahead of the Instagram game there, John) and bringing all the staff in for lunch.  Yoko says, ‘He makes the bread, and if they don’t eat it it’s a personal insult.’  Muses are, I suppose, allowed to make the occasional snide remark.

There’s Hester Thrale, Samuel Johnson’s muse, even while she was married to Henry Thrale, a brewer and MP. After Henry had had three strokes he started to eat and drink compulsively.  I haven’t been able to find exactly what he consumed but Johnson, who was no stranger to heroic eating, was so appalled that he said, ‘Sir—after the Denuriciation of your Physicians this Morning, such eating is little better than suicide.’  True enough.  Thrale didn’t stop eating and he died.  Johnson apparently though that Hester would then marry him, but in fact she married an Italian tenor named Gabriel Piozzi.   Muses, eh? Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

Gala and Salvador Dali we know were sufficiently food-obsessed that there were two books: Les Diners de Galaand The Wines of Dali. (Gali?), though they never looked as though they did much actually eating. And yes, that is Gina Lollobrigida

I had some idea about all the above people but I didn’t know the full story of Lee Miller.  I knew her as a model (OK, muse) for Man Ray, then a collaborator, then as a photographer in her own right, photographing fashion, portraits, and then by force of circumstances becoming a war photographer, largely for Vogue. I knew that she’d married Roland Penrose but I didn’t know that after the war she suffered terribly from depression and alcoholism, (and probably boredom) and had developed a new, consuming interest in cooking, as a partial consolation.

There’s even a recent book. Lee Miller: A Life of Food, Friends and Recipes. Recipes include champagne and camembert soup, marshmallow-cola ice cream, carrots in whiskey, and chicken in edible gold and pink cauliflower breasts. I guess you could describe this as influenced by Surrealism.

Francine Prose finds this ‘dismaying’ and quotes from Roland Penrose’s Scrapbook to reinforce her point.  ‘Devoted to parlour games, she found a fascinating pastime in kitchen games, competitions which she often pursued with success, winning countless gadgets for the kitchen and at one time a triumphant tour of Norway … as a reward for a most startling and succulent open sandwich.’

Yes, this does sound like a bit of a comedown after Miller’s previous activities, but then, if you’ve washed yourself in Hitler’s bathtub, and photographed at Dachau and Buchenwald, well, what wouldn’t be?

         

The internet being the fine thing it is, I was able to find a description of her tour-winning entry, in an article in Gastronomica magazine by Becky E. Conekin.  It’s for something called a Penrose; mushrooms stuffed with pink foie gras mousse, seasoned with paprika and Madeira, and made to resemble roses.  I gotta say that doesn’t sound like quite enough to merit a triumphant tour, still according to the article, Miller won first, second, and third prizes, which I suppose does deserve some serious recognition.

DRINKING FOR EFFECT (VISUAL)

A couple of years ago I was vaguely and briefly in the frame to write the text for a book about cocktails.  It never happened, obviously, because if it had, I’d have told you. 
       The problem I had was that the project would have involved a fair amount of “research” - i.e. cocktail drinking - and I realized that when it comes right down to it, I only really like two cocktails: the martini and the gimlet.  I can slug down a Manhattan or a Marguerita without complaint, but when cocktail makers start messing with hibiscus syrup and orgeat, then my taste buds rebel pretty fast.

Of course the book would have had a considerable visual component and the great thing about a lot of cocktails is that they look so much better than they taste.

I mean what exactly is Dephine Seyrig drinking in that image above, from Daughters of Darkness? Is the drink that color just because it contrasts nicely with her dress?  I’m going to say it is. 

And is Tilda Swinton drinking a martini up there or not?   The color doesn’t look quite right to me and there are no olives or a twist of lemon, but she still looks good, of course.  But then she’d look good drinking an Irn-Bru.

And what’s going on in the picture above?  It’s Salvador Dali with Joan Crawford; the guy in the middle is Philip Terry, Crawford’s third husband.  OK, that may be a cocktail  in front of Dali or it may be a glass of wine, but what on earth is in Joan’s glass? We may never know.  

The photograph does however depict one of those rare moments when Dali looks less affected and phony that anybody else in the scene.

Still, whatever Joan's drinking with Dali, it’s probably better than what’s in the glass above. Ostensibly it’s just Pepsi Cola, served in a really not all that stylish vessel, but I like to think that Joan may have “cocktailed” it up with something a bit more zesty.  Hope so anyway.  I would of.

CHEESE ANTICS

So I got in late-ish on Saturday night having been out to see a band, and I hadn’t managed to get anything to eat.  So I opened the fridge took out a camembert, ate a wedge, and went to bed.  Got up Sunday morning and there it was:

 - a scene from Salvador Dali.  I’d neglected to put the camembert back in the fridge and the ants were having a big cheese orgy.

Actually the Dali-allusion helped me feel better about it somehow – especially given that Dali’s recent exhumation is much in the news.  "The orgies and sex life of Salvador Dali as paternity claim questions his lifelong 'I am impotent' boast" says the Daily Mirror.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the ant-colonized cheese so I put it in the freezer.  I assume the ants are dead by now or at least in cryogenic suspension.  I wonder if it’ll ruin the taste of the cheese.  I’ll find out soon enough, I expect.

And, for further Dali-esque surrealist food fun, here's a photograph of the man himself with a 12 meter long loaf of bread.  Staff of life, I suppose: