Kitchen comforts

    "The floor was well-worn red brick, and on the wide hearth burnt a fire of logs, between two attractive chimney-corners tucked away in the wall, well out of any suspicion of draught. A couple of high-backed settles, facing each other on either side of the fire, gave further sitting accommodation for the sociably disposed. In the middle of the room stood a long table of plain boards placed on trestles, with benches down each side. At one end of it, where an arm-chair stood pushed back, were spread the remains of Badger's plain but ample supper. Rows of spotless plates winked from the shelves of the dresser at the far end of the room, and from the rafters overhead hung hams, bundles of dried herbs, nets of onions and baskets of eggs. It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment. The ruddy brick floor smiled up at the smoky ceiling; the oaken settles, shiny with long wear, exchanged cheerful glances with each other; plates on the dresser grinned at pots on the shelf, and the merry firelight flickered and played over everything without distinction."

    That passage from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (the illustration, by Robert Ingpen, comes from this edition, by the way) is quoted by Humphrey Carpenter in Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature; he goes on:

    "The Kitchen, described in these terms, is as universal a symbol as the River. Whereas the River is the expression of the adult Arcadia, with its challenges and its rules and its excitements, the Kitchen suggests another kind of Golden Age.

    Its appeal is multiple. It hints at the mead-halls of such poems as Beowulf ... To Grahame's generation it must also have had William Morris-like hints of an earlier, pre-industrial, and therefore ideal society where distinctions of class seemed unimportant when food was being dealt out, and men of all ranks sat together in the lord's hall or by the yeoman farmer's hearthside. And, more sharply for Edwardian readers than for those of the present day, there is a suggestion too of a return to childhood. Many of Grahame's generation spent much of their early life being cared for by domestic servants, and so as small children lingered often in the kitchen, watching the pots and the joints of meat cooking on the great ranges or spits."

    There are other excerpts from the book here and here, an interview with Robert Ingpen here, and if the above appeals, this post might, too.

Comments

[Val]

What a Lovely post lots of food for very pleasant thought...I am very fond of the descriptions and illustrations in Wind in the Willows and Brambly hedge. They are very comforting especially in the Odd cold empty spot between Christmas and the New Year ..I sometimes ponder that the Old start of the New Year on March 1st some how fit the feeling of the Seasons better?
There is a description of a room in an O. Douglas book that I believe you would find pleasing ..I just have to find the note book where I recorded it :o)
Badger's Settles remind me of a description of my Grand Mother's farm house Kitchen ..they had a very old settle that would fold over and become a table if necessary a ? plainer version of this I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monks_bench
Unfortunately the farm house is long gone and the bench's fate unknown but I wrote down my Mother's description of the kitchen so that is nice ...and the Kitchen cat (the only one that was allowed in the house) was a tortoiseshell and white cat called Tinker and that tradition we keep up! & Our new Tinker has spent her first Christmas triumphantly batting the decorations on the tree. Please excuse the epic length of this comment it was meant to be a sentence ..... I'll quite understand if you delete it and I'll not be offended.
Thanking you for a lot of reading pleasure and visual treats this year and wishing you and yours a very good New Year!

[rhondajean]

Thank you. That was a lovely reminder of a wonderful book. I hope the new year is a good one for you.

[Cornflower]

Thank you so much, Val, and how lovely that your grandmother's kitchen stays 'alive' through recollections passed on through the family!

[Cornflower]

Thank you, Rhondajean, and good wishes to you, too.

[Toffeeapple]

The picture looks much like the kitchen I used to work in when employed as General Staff for the Mayor of Newport (South Wales). It was such a lovely time of my life.

[Sarah]

I love reading The Wind in the Willows for its domestic detail. Almost every page has a reference to home comforts and dulce domum - no wonder it is such a favourite. We have a lovely collection, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, of excerpts from the children's classics. It used to offer a good entry point into finding and reading the whole book.