On The Sweetness of Poets
Muse crack ahoy! I love my subscription to The Economist, and the year-end edition is particularly fine. Just this morning I read all about Shelley (the poet) and the sugar trade, and the world’s first propaganda-fueled boycott. (Though I am sure there were boycotts in Rome and China that we just haven’t heard about yet.)
Check out this nugget: (SarahF, this is for you)
Shelley, though he read accounts of the northern cotton mills, and was horrified by them, boycotted neither the coal nor the shirts. Like everyone else’s, his consumer rage was selective. And then there was his sweet tooth.
His friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg caught him one day making a peculiar dish called panada. He tore off “a surprising quantity†of bread, piled it in a bowl and poured on boiling water. Then he strewed it with nutmeg, which made it look interestingly gory. “I lap up the blood of murdered kings!†screamed the poet, applying the spoon. And then the finishing, irresistible touch: a sprinkling of loaf sugar, the blood of slaves. (The Economist)
Dude. I feel almost SANE now.
No, not really. Danny is still howling in derision at the thought that I might be in control of the story. She’s in for a rude awakening, that wench. It’s ON now.
Diving back into work…
PS: I really recommend picking up the print edition, both for this article and the one on Cobbett and the first free-press-fueled royal scandal in Britain, having to do with Princess Charlotte…
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