A Month of Porridge

Porridge 2.0

I thought when I started this blog that it would be one of many by porridge obsessives, perhaps forming a ring of blogs or a PorridgeNet.  Apparently not. Something called ‘The Porridge Blog’ had a happy period of activity in 2010, mostly suggestions for toppings, and expressions of delight, but it was on Facebook, and is dormant.

Twitter is much more promising.  Almost any day, the tag #porridge will lead to a dozen or so tweets from around the world, often with pictures.  Yesterday’s feed included two tweets promoting @brewteabar on Bold Street in Liverpool (sounds good, must try it), a photograph of Korean porridge, an iPhone photo of the breakfast in bed made for a boyfriend.  Two were just using the phrase for disgust, ‘puts you off your porridge’, and three were using the #porridge tag to suggest what they think should happen to Tottenham Hotspur manager harry Redknapp (‘porridge’ is British slang for a term in prison).  That leaves two from the @porridgelady, who manages to get her porridge message across in 140 characters, but I don’t feel competitive because she is usually more interested toppings.  Porridge obsessives may want to follow her.

Twitter is much more promising.  Almost any day, the tag #porridge will get a dozen or so tweets from around the world, often with pictures.  Yesterday’s feed included two tweets promoting @brewteabar on Bold Street in Liverpool (sounds good,must ty it), a photograph of Korean porridge, an iPhone photo of the breakfast in bed made for a boyfriend.  Two were just using the phrase for disgust, ‘puts you off your porridge’, and three were using the #porridge tag to suggest what they think should happen to Tottenham Hotspur manager harry Redknapp (‘porridge’ is British slang for a term in prison).  That leaves two from the @porridgelady, who covers porridge, local foods, and organic foods, all in 140 characters.  

The Flickr ‘porridge’ tag leads to hundreds of images from around the world:  http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=porridge.  Even a glance teaches several lessons: 

1)  most people in the world are having some other grain than oats as the basis of their porridge, for instance rice in some sort of congee,

2) most attention is given to toppings, and

3) porridge is hard to photograph.  The smooth, beige surface doesn’t give much to go on, so most photos including mine) focus on the banana or the bowl.  See however the examples from  Drift Words and Island Vittles (both food photographers, it seems) for lessons in how to do it.

It’s not surprising that porridge flourishes in Twitter and Flickr rather than blogs.  As we saw in the last post, the pleasure of porride is in the routine, so while most people are not moved to essays on the topic, dozens every day look down at the steaming bowl and snap an iPhoto picture.

 

 

Porridge in Literature IV: Porridge Shared

In an earlier post I quoted a lovely poem by Elizabeth Burns.  She responded by leading me to two other poems about porridge – or about how one is linked to other people through preparing and eating it.

The first is by James McGonigal, and was published in The Dark Horse 24 (Winter 2009.2010) http://www.thedarkhorsemagazine.com (my thanks for the permission to quote it).

 

First Things

My granny made porridge first thing

with the same untroubled movements

of hand and eye, the same patience

that she gave to her night prayers.

 

It is a holy and wholesome thought

to eat porridge and pray for the dead

every day of your life, I now think,

reaching down a white bowl from its shelf.

 

The ‘first things’ are both the things he learned from his grandmother, the kind of life she represented, and the routine of porridge as the first thing in the morning, as prayers are for her the last thing as night.  I think I can call it a porridge poem, because the porridge is not incidental.  Porridge here can’t be replaced with bacon and eggs or muesli;  it is part of a routine, it takes time (particularly if one sets out the pinhead oats to soak the night before) and it takes attention, the ‘untroubled movements / of hand and eye’.  I like the way in the second stanza the line-ending noun ‘thought’ parallels and contrasts with the verb ‘I think’; the general moral, with the generic ‘you’, changes to ‘I now think’, and the ‘I’ in the present reenacting the movement and coming to this understanding. I’m thinking about the white bowl.

Elizabeth also led me to Galway Kinnell’s wonderful ‘Oatmeal’:

 

‘I am aware that it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.

Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you.'

 

So he invites Keats. 

I won’t quote more because the poem is on-line with the poet’s wonderfully deadpan reading:  http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=2641

Again the porridge is not incidental, not just what he happens to choose for breakfast.  In the lines I have quoted, there is an echo of the standard advice about alcohol, and he goes on to give one of the most unappealing descriptions in all these literary porridges, which is saying a lot. While in ‘First Things’ the porridge links to his grandmother and a tradition of living, in ‘Oatmeal’ it links to Keats and a tradition of poetry as a practical, everyday craft, the great poets sharing their working processes. 

Reading about the Kinnell poem led me to Jeffrey Cane Robinson, who tracked down another bit of porridge and poetry I’ve come across several times as a kind of proverbial expression: ‘What porridge had John Keats?’ OK, you knew already, but I didn’t, though I should have – it is the last line of Robert Browning’s ‘Popularity’.  It is a part of a very complex analogy to the poetic tradition, but if I read it right, the later flashier poets get the turtle soup and claret that comes with popular success, while the poet who made this possible (who fished out the source of the brilliant colour in the poem’s metaphor), eats porridge.  (Oh no, porridge as poverty again).  So I guess Browning's poem is one reason Kinnell invites Keats and not that other porridge eater, Wordsworth.

 

Porridge in Literature II - Who eats porridge?

Scots.  Poor people.  Invalids.  High-minded food faddists.  Children who have no choice in the matter. Characters in literature do not just happen to eat porridge, the fact that they eat it says something about them.

Usually what it says is that they are poor.  In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell has Margaret sing an 1815 Lancashire dialect song called ‘The Oldham Weaver’.  (Ewan MacColl sang it more recently, and Oldham Tinkers sing it on YouTube).

"We tow'rt on six week--thinking aitch day wur th' last,
We shifted, an' shifted, till neaw we're quoite fast;
We lived upo' nettles, whoile nettles wur good,
An' Waterloo porridge the best o' eawr food,
Oi'm tellin' yo' true,
Oi can find folk enow,
As wur livin' na better nor me."

In this version, the song is presumably referring to an economic downturn at the time of the Napoleonic Wars;  later it was rewritten for other crises.  (There is a somewhat unreliable discussion of the history of the song on Wikipedia).  I have not well-referenced explanation yet of ‘waterloo porridge’, but it’s probably not a good thing if one eats it after the nettles run out. 

Porridge takes on a different meaning in another novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (1855).  Margaret Hale is shocked to hear that the mill owner Mr. Thornton once worked in a shop, and Mr. Bell tells his story:

"Mr. Bell said they absolutely lived upon water-porridge for years--how, he did not know; but long after the creditors had given up hope of any payment of old Mr. Thornton's debts (if, indeed, they ever had hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) this young man returned to Milton, and went quietly round to each creditor, paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him" (Ch. 11).

Here the living on ‘water porridge’ is a sign of Mr. Thornton’s and his mother’s  moral fiber:  he worked hard and they lived in poverty until he could pay off his father’s debts, and now he is successful and presumably has a more varied diet.

The best novel in English literature, for porridge, is probably Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, where David Balfour, fleeing across Scotland in the 18^th century, comes across all sorts of porridge eater's good and bad.  Here is the first, his Uncle Ebenezer, who has greeted David with an offer of porridge while he himself has ale. Things get rather heated.

"Hoot-toot!" said Uncle Ebenezer, "dinnae fly up in the snuff at me. We'll agree fine yet. And, Davie, my man, if you're done with that bit parritch, I could just take a sup of it myself. Ay," he continued, as soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, "they're fine, halesome food—they're grand food, parritch." He murmured a little grace to himself and fell to. "Your father was very fond of his meat, I mind; he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, I could never do mair than pyke at food." He took a pull at the small beer, which probably reminded him of hospitable duties, for his next speech ran thus: "If ye're dry ye'll find water behind the door."

('Meat' here is the any food;  it is used earlier to refer to the porridge).  David is rather offended to be offered just porridge after his journey, and to be given water rather than ale, but later in the novel he is happy enough to have porridge on the ship, and ‘porridge and whey’ with Mr. Henderland in the Highlands.

Let us end with a more complicated mention – just mention – of porridge, in Edith Wharton’s excellent but little-read novel  The Custom of the Country (1913).  A bit of background:  the wonderfully-named Undine Spragg is a relentless and observant social climber who marries Ralph Marwell for his social position.  Now she is off having social engagements and ignoring their son Paul, even forgetting his birthday.  Ralph has come over to his sister Laura's house to be at the party, which hasn't happened.  Instead of Undine, Ralph’s cousin Clare van Degen comes in with a gift for Paul.  At first she satirises herself in terms of what others might think of her as a member of a wealthy family, but her offering turns out to have a different kind of value.

Slender and shadowy in her long furs, she bent to kiss Mrs. Fairford and then turned back to Ralph. "Yes, I knew I'd catch you here. I knew it was the boy's birthday, and I've brought him a present: a vulgar expensive Van Degen offering. I've not enough imagination left to find the right thing, the thing it takes feeling and not money to buy. When I look for a present nowadays I never say to the shopman: 'I want this or that'--I simply say: 'Give me something that costs so much.'"

She drew a parcel from her muff. "Where's the victim of my vulgarity? Let me crush him under the weight of my gold."

Mrs. Fairford sighed out "Clare--Clare!" and Ralph smiled at his cousin.

"I'm sorry; but you'll have to depute me to present it. The birthday's over; you're too late."

* * *

 He turned to his cousin. "Will you trust me with your present for the boy?"

Clare gave him the parcel. "I'm sorry not to give it myself. I said what I did because I knew what you and Laura were thinking--but it's really a battered old Dagonet bowl that came down to me from our revered great-grandmother."

"What--the heirloom you used to eat your porridge out of?" Ralph detained her hand to put a kiss on it. "That's dear of you!"

She threw him one of her strange glances. "Why not say: 'That's like you?' But you don't remember what I'm like."

So what is she like?  She is someone who values a gift for its associations with generations of her family rather than for its expense (as Undine, who finds out later, does not).  And she is an aristocrat who, as a girl, had porridge for breakfast.   Even van Degens are porridge eaters.