The Social Cohesion of Food - by way of Introduction

This blog begins on the streets of London, where each night soup is supplied to the homeless; and this sets the tone for all the subsequent posts of Philanthropic Food in its exploration of the Social Cohesion of Food. Philanthropic Food investigates how food is used as an agency of positive change, drawing communities together. 

In SW19 there are school children who lack food! As a school governor I witnessed a swarm of students gather around one of their peer group in the hope of getting one of the Dairy-lea Dunkers from the pack he opened. It would be funny if they were not seriously hungry; but it was commonplace for students to arrive at school having eaten no breakfast. 

  

Philanthropic Food is not just a blog about giving food to the hungry though, it asks important questions about the ethics of food distribution, about the moral responsibilities, and about how to become an active member of society.The literary texts woven into the posts help to illustrate how the question of philanthropic food is addressed in narrative forms; the big question is how does one make the transition from being a passive reader into being an active philanthropist? 

This blog asks the question 'which type of food philanthropist are you?'

Where do you volunteer? 

What do you know about food politics?

How are you an ethical consumer?

When do you share?

Who would you give you last Dairy Lea Dunker to? 

....Please read on to consider what it is that you can do.

Fetefulness

The Chair of the W.I accepted my offer to help at the Devon 'Pie Fete', but I was unaware of the hierarchical toes upon which I was about to step. Fetes, Fairs, Fayres, Fests and Festivals; I was as naive as Lucia thinking that "the fete would be an admirable occasion for entering the arena of activities" (Mapp and Lucia 17).
For I too was an interloper, merely a transient resident of the village; I was a female trespasser and my urban ideology could be scented at a thousand paces. 

Beneath canvas, in open fields, playgrounds, church halls and libraries, a trestle table resplendent with cake simply refuses to be ignored; it will simultaneously satisfy both your Freudian pleasure principle and at least one of the three Virtues: Charity. The economy of cake has built church roofs, floors, organ lofts and pews....

It began with one of the pleasantest French imports to form a marriage with the British cake, the Fete. 

La Fete a St. Cloud 1775-8 
 Jean Honore Fragonard

Henrietta of England staged legendary Fetes in the 17th century at St Cloud.   

Horatio Walpole

Taking up his quill in 1752 Horatio Walpole caught the French Zeitgeist and wrote to his friend Sir Horace Mann about the Fete  phenomenon. Of Lord and Lady Coventry Walpole gossiped: "They were pressed to stay for the great Fete at St. Cloud", and thus returning movers and shakers anglicised La Fete on the English side of La Manche.

So, I crossed the threshold of the village hall to serve tea and cake from behind the division of the trestle table. It is a rare man who ventures behind the trestle table, for men, along with cakes which fail to pass stringent 'committee' quality control standards, are not infrequently requisitioned to the back kitchen. I busily swept up scattered cake crumbs and criticisms about the portion control of my cake slices.

The Women's Institute in my London home town has an enormous waiting list, and this is providential, if Georgie's caution to Lucia is correct: "I wonder if you're wise to join the committee" (Mapp and Lucia). Committee membership can be a poisoned chalice; one which has often been passed around a circuit of 'same olds, until somebody yields.
Lucia prepares a tableau to receive the honour, and deceive the giver, of her invitation to 'join the committee', within the "Shakespearean scope" (Mapp and Lucia) of Perdita's garden. The illusion is complete, she would be chanced upon cherishing Pepito's poetry; enter stage left Daisy Qantock: "...so good of you to see me, and I'll come to the point at once. The Elizabethan fete, you know. You see it won't be till August. Can't we persuade you, as they say, to come amongst us again? We all want you: such a fillip you'd give it" (17).
A wiser Lucia might have anticipated the sting in Daisy's tail: "My dear, none of us thought of asking you to be Queen Elizabeth" (17); Lucia was still not 'one of them'. 
The spotlight refocuses on Lucia when, like a moth to a flame, she cannot resist the lure of the camera lens: "...the clic of cameras throughout the whole performance had been like the noise of cicalas in the south...(Lucia was most indulgent), and she was photographed at her piano and in Perdita's garden, and musing in an arbour..." (Mapp and Lucia 88).

I too turned to camera, when the photographer from the local newspaper pointed his lens, and I crunched the hierarchical toes of my W.I 'country cousins'; a 'fillip' I was not!

Village Pie Fest 2011

Village Pie Fest 2010 

Bibliography

Benson, E.F.  Mapp and Lucia.  London: Penguin, 2004.

Fragonard, J.H.  Le Fete a St. Cloud.  Banque de France, Paris.

The Women's Institute.  www.thewi.org.uk

Walpole, H.  Letters of Horace Walpole.  London: Harrap, 1926.

Soup Run Gleanings

I joined my local Soup Run group, and this is what I gleaned....

Gleaning No.1: the distinction between soup and Soup Run soup.

"Great care must be taken to respect the dignity of our 'clients'...both their teeth and digestive health are questionably robust,...so prepare finely diced vegetable soup"

Mindful of the advice I set about sauteeing finely sliced chestnut mushrooms in unsalted butter according to Gleaning No.2: cook seasonably without seasoning. 

Gleaning No.3: Soup Run linguistics, the dignity of the 'homeless' is addressed by the syntax 'our clients'. This pasteurization of the lexis infers an attempt by Soup Runners to endear themselves to the undomiciled. 
My repertoire of Soup Run recipes remained at an unimaginative mushroom, vegetable and tomato, so it was time to leave the kitchen, get in the minibus and meet the 'clients'.

"always wear the surgical gloves, and don't speak to the 'clients'"

The paradox of Gleaning No.4 is embedded in its antithesis to my objective; the chasm between me and the clients was widening. Distributing soup to people I should neither touch nor talk to constricted every emotional knot in my body like a gastric band. I was wearing Blake's "mind forged manacles", of twenty-first century disposable sterile latex. 
Soup Run politics are complex, with an infrastructure and remit extending beyond tea and sympathy. Alexis Soyer crossed a continent to dirty his hands at the Crimea, and his example is echoed now by Soup Runners in latex, nitrile rubber, vinyl and neoprene. 

Having subverted a Westminster Council by-law to ban Soup Runs in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, current issues of concern for Soup Runners include the problem of 'Gangs' in white vans. Circulating around the Soup Run sites, vans lure 'rough sleepers' in with the promise of work. Soup Runners distribute leaflets in Polish and Romanian to inform Asylum Seekers and beggars of the potential risks to their health and safety if they accept the non-specific 'work' being touted. Our 'clients' sail close to virtual slavery in their quest for a better life.    

Soyer attempts to coerce the 'haves' to improve the welfare of the 'have-nots': "He badgered his well-heeled friends for subscriptions. He organised an exhibition ...under the title of 'Soyer's Philanthropic Gallery" (The Selected Soyer "Soup for the Poor"1849).

                                           
"The Modern Housewife" (Alexis Soyer 1849) provides a clear picture of Soyer's social conscience about the policies of food distribution and his inventiveness towards finding solutions to the problems of food scarcity, indeed: "A new challenge was needed, and he found it in the streets of London" ("Soup for the Poor"). Soyer's letters 'To the Editor' of the Times take the form of advertorials; he infers that the "benevolent intentions" of the Editor indicate the publication's endorsement of his ambitions. Soyer's persuasive language echoes the persuasive techniques he employs, using The Times as a distribution vehicle for "immediate publicity"  of the recipes he wishes to share ("M. Soyer's Kitchen And Soup For The Poor"). 

Driving his philanthropic ideologies further forward, Soyer seeks to convince the readers by implied endorsements from "noblemen, members of Parliament, and several Ladies" ("The Receipt for Soup No.1"). It is to be assumed that the bourgeoisie reader is impressed by the influence of educated and elegant people of both genders from the upper classes.
Soyer is an unashamed marketeer, promoting both his "subscription"  and the "benevolent contributors" who are sponsoring his highly proactive and "simple plan" to create "one of those kitchens" ("The Receipt for Soup No.2").  

Soyer aspired that: "no one, it is hoped, hereafter, would hear of the dreadful calamity of starvation" ("The Receipt for Soup No.1"), but social inequalities continue to provide a platform of need from which his ideologies have thrived into the twenty-first century. I hope Soyer would approve of the current Soup Run Code of Conduct and feel that we have advanced his mission.      

Bibliography

Langley, A.                                         The Selected Soyer.  Bath: Absolute Press, 1987.    

Wu, D., Ed.                                         Romanticism An Anthology Fourth Edition.    "London"                                                                  Songs of Experience, William Blake, 1794.   England:                                                                        Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.