Grandpa John

Good Food, a food column by Jennifer Brizzi

Grandpa John

Ran in Taconic Weekend, published by Taconic Press, Millbrook, New York

I'm borrowing heavily from a family member for this week's column, but I know he won't mind. He died in 1612.

Sir John Harington was my eight-greats grandfather on my father's side, and like me, he was a writer and loved writing about food. He dedicated this poem to his mother-in-law:

If Leckes you like, and doe the smell disleeke,
Eate Onions, and you shall not smell the Leeke:
If you of Onions would the sent expell,
Eate Garlick, that will drowne th'Onyons smell.

Although spelling wasn't his forte, Sir John ran around in posh circles; he was the godson and close confidante of Queen Elizabeth I, who called him "that saucy poet, my godson." Sir John spent a lot of time gallivanting around the court, planning big feasts, writing satire and telling racy jokes. In his spare time he fathered at least six children and did a lot of translating from Italian or Latin to English, including the definitive version of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. He was a Renaissance man in more ways than one.

In paintings he looks dashing, with a narrow aristocratic face, high arched eyebrows, jauntily curled moustache, and a Van Dyke beard that juts out over his huge ruffled Elizabethan collar.

Pithy quotations like "Hunger is the best sauce of all" and "Love me, love my dog" are attributed to him. He also wrote several books of satire and poetry, one of which got him in big trouble with the Queen and led to his banishment from the court for a while.

But later he was knighted while on a quest to conquer Ireland, and at one point did some jail time for his inability to pay a large debt. When all those pursuits left him with yet more time on his hands, he invented stuff, most notably the flush toilet, which was even named after him. Although one was installed in the Queen's chambers, Sir John caught a lot of flack for his invention; people thought it was pretty silly. He never built another one, although he wrote a potty-humor-laden book about it called "The Metamorphosis of Ajax." According to a show I saw on TV once, his original flush toilet is still in one of his old castles in England, one that now belongs to actress Jane Seymour.

Sir John could be preachy at times, like in this poem about one overindulgent associate of his called Marcus:

When Marcus makes (as oft he doth) a feast,
The Wine still costs him more then all the rest.
Were water in this towne as deare as hay,
His horses should not long at livery stay.
But tell me, is't not a most foolish tricke,
To drinke to others healths till thou be sicke?
Yet such the fashion is of Bacchus' crue,
To quaffe and bowze, until they belch and spue.

Sir John took great liberties with his translation of an ancient Roman text of medical advice called the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum, making the epic his own. Although there's a lot about blood-letting and herbal treatments, it's mostly about food. Here are some of my favorite parts (not in order):

Salt, Garlic, Parsley, Pepper, Sage, and Wine,
Make sauces for all meats both coarse and fine.

Great suppers do the stomach much offend,
Sup light if quiet you to sleep intend.

By Figs are lice engendered, Lust provoken.

All Pears and Apples, Peaches, Milk, and Cheese,
Salt meats, red Deer, Hare, Beef, and Goat: all these
Are meats that breed ill blood, and Melancholy,
If sick you be, to feed on them were folly.

The choice of meat to health doth much avail,
First Veal is wholesome meat, and breeds good blood,
So Capon, Hen, and Chicken, Partridge, Quail,
The Pheasant, Woodcock, Lark and Thrush be good,
The Heath-cock wholesome is, the Dove, the Rail,
And all that do not much delight in mud.

About wine, Sir John said:

Choose wine you mean shall serve you all the year,
Well-savored tasting well, and colored clear.
Five qualities there are, wine's praise advancing,
Strong, Beautiful, and Fragrant, Cool and Dancing.

The better wines do breed the better humors,
The worse are causes of unwholesome tumors.

And on cheese:

To close your stomach well, this order suits,
Cheese after flesh, Nuts after fish or fruits,
Yet some have said (believe them as you will),
One Nut doth good, two hurt, the third doth kill.

Old Haywood writes, & proves in some degrees,
That one may wel compare a book with cheese;
At every market some buy cheese to feed on,
At every mart some men buy bookes to read on.
All sorts eate cheese; but how? there is the question
The poore for food, the rich for good disgestion.
All sorts read bookes, but why? will you discerne?
The foole to laugh, the wiser sort to learne.
The sight, taste, scent of cheese to some is hateful,
The sight, taste, sense of bookes to some's ungratefull.
No cheese there was, that ever pleas'd all feeders,
No booke there is, that ever lik't all Readers.

Also on books, he wrote:

Books give not wisdom where none was before.
But where some is, there reading makes it more.

My very favorite is the one that I printed up in an Old English font and has decorated the wall over my desk for many years now:

The readers and the hearers like my books
But yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? For when I make a feast
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

Jennifer Brizzi would like to think that her Grandpa John would be pleased to have his words appear in Taconic Weekend in the year 2002.

Jennifer Brizzi | P.O. Box 48 | Rhinecliff, New York 12574 | U.S.A.

jenniferbrizzi@yahoo.com