Literary Eats #4: Anatole, from P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves Novels

One of Wodehouse's finest.

One of the most delightful characters in the Jeeves novels is the luminous gastronomic MacGuffin Anatole, a highly strung ‘God of the gastric juices’ whose creations are dangled as bait in front of Bertie by the ever-manipulative Aunt Dahlia whenever she wants a service rendered. Conversely, sometimes she promises that never another bite of Anatole’s delectable dinners will cross Bertie’s lips if he fails her, as in this gem from Right Ho, Jeeves (1922):

‘You will do it, young Bertie, or never darken my doors again. And you know what that means. No more of Anatole’s dinners for you.’

            A strong shudder shook me. She was alluding to her chef, that superb artist. A monarch of his profession, unsurpassed – nay, unequalled – at dishing up the raw material so that it melted in the mouth of the ultimate consumer, Anatole had always been a magnet that drew me to Brinkley Court with my tongue hanging out. Many of my happiest moments had been those which I had spent champing this great man’s roasts and ragouts, and the prospect of being barred from digging into them in the future was a numbing one.

Anatole is Aunt Dahlia’s prize posession, stolen by her from Mrs Bingo Little (née Rosie M. Banks) in an attempt to soothe her husband Tom Travers, a martyr to stomach complaints. Somehow Anatole manages, with the aid of rich French food, to keep Tom humming along nicely and even to put him in a sufficient mood to bail out Dahlia’s pet project, the magazine Milady’s Boudoir (or, as Tom calls it, Madame’s Nightshirt), once in a while.

Despite Anatole’s need for constant soothing lest he succumb to his nerves and flee Brinkley Court to pastures new, he takes on the challenge of English cuisine with aplomb. In doing so he clearly fulfils an Edwardian British food fantasy: that it be French (at that time believed the most advanced cuisine in the world), but not too French: to wit., the roasts mentioned above, and the steak and kidney pie Tuppy Glossop steals from the larder, also in Right Ho, Jeeves. As Tuppy says,

the thing that I admire so enormously about Anatole is that, though a Frenchman, he does not, like so many of these chefs, confine himself exclusively to French dishes, but is always willing and ready to weigh in with some good old simple English fare such as this steak-and-kidney pie to which I have alluded.

Witness the unexpected British inclusions in the valedictory meal Bertie plans for himself in The Code of the Woosters (1938) after getting out of a prospective stay in chokey:

Caviar frais

Cantaloup

Consommé aux pommes d’amour

Sylphides à la crème d’écrivisses

Mignonette de poulet petit Duc

Points d’aspereges à la Mistiguette

Suprême de foie gras au champagne

Neige aux perles des Alpes

Nonnettes de la Maditerranée au fenoil

Selle d’agneau au laitues à la Greque

Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane

Salade d’endive et de celeri

Le plum pudding

L’étoile du Berger

Benedictins blancs

Bombe Nero

Friandises

Daiblotins

Fruits