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