{"id":3043,"date":"2015-08-12T11:42:33","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T16:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/happycatholicbookshelf\/?p=3043"},"modified":"2015-08-12T11:44:58","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T16:44:58","slug":"dickens-and-the-sandwich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/happycatholicbookshelf\/2015\/08\/dickens-and-the-sandwich\/","title":{"rendered":"Dickens and the Sandwich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Sandwiches and Dickens<\/h3>\n

I was reading Barnaby Rudge and was startled by seeing a sandwich mentioned:<\/p>\n

He was not without some refreshment during the long lonely hours; generally carrying in his pocket a sandwich of bread and meat, and a small flask of wine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Now I know sandwiches were invented some time ago but I hadn\u2019t come across them in fiction this old, especially as a reflection of casual everyday life. And this book was set around the time of our Revolutionary War so I had 1776 firmly in mind. Did they eat sandwiches then? Finishing up Barnaby (not bad, not bad at all<\/a>), I picked up The Pickwick Papers for a bit of light bedtime humor. I was stunned to find \u2026 another sandwich in Mr. Jingle\u2019s shocking but funny story:<\/p>\n

Heads, heads \u2014 take care of your heads!\u2026 Five children \u2014 mother \u2014 tall lady, eating sandwiches \u2014 forgot the arch \u2014 crash \u2014 knock \u2014 children look round \u2014 mother\u2019s head off \u2014 sandwich in her hand\u2014no mouth to put it in \u2014 head of a family off\u2014shocking, shocking!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This made Tom look up the origin date of the sandwich which, of course, no one knows. The famous story about the Earl of Sandwich, all honor to this lazy but tidy card player (bread kept the meat grease off his hands and cards) who invented one of my favorite foods, is placed in the late 1700s. Of course, sandwiches were around before then but they weren\u2019t called sandwiches. They were known as \u201cmeat and bread\u201d or \u201cbread and cheese.\u201d It is when the name \u201csandwich\u201d became commonly used that is interesting. And then we have this bit of evidence:<\/p>\n

That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom, in point of fashion and fortune, supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch.<\/p>\n

Edward Gibbon, journal entry, November 24, 1762<\/i><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So that\u2019s all right then, for Dickens use in Barnaby Rudge. And it turns out that Dickens had his own sandwich memories, though this one doesn\u2019t seem happy at all:<\/p>\n

A longer time afterwards he recollected the stage-coach journey, and said in one of his published papers that never had he forgotten, through all the intervening years, the smell of the damp straw in which he was packed and forwarded like game, carriage-paid. \u201cThere was no other inside passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected to find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dickens writing of his journey when he was 10 to join his family in their new home, <\/i><\/div>\n
Life of Charles Dickens by John Foster<\/i><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I found a few more of Dickens\u2019 sandwiches when I was looking around.<\/p>\n

Great Expectations:<\/i> My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched, standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket flask of sherry (he seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements he had made for me. Bleak House:<\/i> \u201cMy dear son,\u201d said Mr. Turveydrop, \u201cyou have four schools this afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Mugby Junction:<\/i> \u201cWell!\u201d said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils. \u201cTake a fresh, crisp, long, crusty penny loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut it longwise through the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice of ham. Tie a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole to bind it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white paper by which to hold it. And the universal French Refreshment sangwich busts on your disgusted vision.\u201d Uncommercial Traveller<\/i>: Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre. The sandwich\u2013as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as cheap as possible\u2013we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dickens must have enjoyed a good sandwich as much as I do. I\u2019ll have one of those universal French Refreshment sangwiches for lunch, please!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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