I spent the last two weeks of September living in the lap of luxury on a Viking cruise ship in France. First there was Paris – my third visit to that magnificent city. The timing was perfect to experience Christo’s wrapped Arc de Triomphe. I was riveted; it was profound, otherworldly. Bless the man, and all those who worked to make this huge project live.
Paris has the most incredible food. The bread! As a young man said, while waiting in line with me to get covid tests in order to enter France: “France’s cheapest bread is better than our most expensive bread”, haha! Of course there are people here making great bread, but the bread in France really is uniformly amazing. Then after three days in Paris I took the high speed train – the TGV – to Lyon. Why do we not have trains here in the US like the trains in Europe? Fast, clean, beautiful, and they go everywhere. What fun strolling through Lyon, gastronomic capital of the world, wide-eyed in the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of vieux Lyon, the old city. After several days there, back to the ship to continue floating down the Rhone River, through the locks, each day docking and exploring a new town. The charming medieval town of Perouges. Arles. Vienne. Avignon, with the Pope’s palace. Followed by three days in Nice. My favorite restaurant there is Le Cocodile, great food, open to the Mediterranean Sea right across the street. A perfect Salade Nicoise. Drinks at the grand, historic Negresco hotel, marveling at the chandelier that is fifteen feet tall, pure Baccarat crystal, ordered by Tsar Nicholas II for the Kremlin. Its delivery to him was interrupted by the Russian Revolution!
It was an idyllic way to spend two weeks. Do I enjoy living in the lap of luxury? You bet I do.
There is much of Susannah in me, but there is also much of David, he of missing the King’s table, of relishing the food that the richest of the rich ate in medieval times in that world. At the inn, he surprised Susannah with his harsh critique of the food there (“Mutton three times a day? And everything stewed, or smothered in that awful gravy?…And the ale was pure horse piss.”. Susannah: “I thought it was good… You’d never last in the army. Talk about terrible food! Moldy biscuit, rotten meat…I don’t usually notice what I eat anyway.”). My Dear Ones, how I love you both!
And what would Susannah’s life at the farm have been like after she was honorably discharged from the army? We can assume she was a terrible cook. I can just see her banging a ladle of some ghastly mixture (that she was attempting to pass off as stew) into Richard’s bowl. Or, at that time, they were probably still eating their meals on trenchers, slabs of bread instead of plates. It’s no fun cooking three meals a day for years when you hate cooking in the first place, as I well know from my own experience. And the choices of ingredients and spices would have been severely limited for Susannah – not that she would have known how to use them, or cared, or wanted to experiment or learn. She had other skills, other loves. She was simultaneously proud and ashamed that she did not fit the wifely role; it’s difficult to escape one’s societal conditioning.
Of course David, the elegant and gracious Earl of Brixton, lord of his castle by the sea, with his sophisticated palate, was used to the finest and appreciated good cooking. He took being waited on and cooked for as a fact of course. Coming back to the castle after riding to the hunt with a hawk on his wrist, someone would take his horse and care for it, respectfully allowing him to dismount and seek a hot bath, clean elegant clothes, perhaps listen to the music of a troubadour or watch the antics of jesters while he savored the delicate flavors of well-prepared foods. No wonder he missed that! He was high-born, used to wealth and comfort. Of course there was no indoor plumbing, which would be a hardship for me, I’ll tell you what. But there was so much beauty in that time.
For one thing, think of how quiet it would have been. There were no motors – no trucks, no motorcycles, no machinery of any kind. No TV, no radios, no boom boxes. Yesterday while waiting for a red light, the car next to mine had such loud music blaring inside it that it was much too loud for me, even with my windows closed! And they had a “baby on board” sticker! Poor baby, they’ll be deaf by the time they’re thirty. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there was none of that. Introvert paradise – all that quiet! I would love it. If you wanted music you made it yourself, with the instruments of the day. Only live music, there was no other kind – think how rare and valued and magical it would be to hear music, something we take for granted and can listen to any time we please! Think how monks’ and nuns’ chants and plainsong would thrill an ear that was almost never exposed to those harmonies. One could actually hear the exquisite sounds of nature, the birdsong, the wind in the trees and the rush of water. How wonderful it would have been to live in the natural world in that way. No telephone poles, no wires, no city light to obstruct your view of the stars; how vividly bright they would have looked then! Nature was so much more present in daily life. The seasons marched along with dignity, the cycle of the year much slower. It would take a long time to do something as simple as send a letter or get news. One could remain blissfully ignorant of current events. And yes, I know – plague, terrible sanitation, disease, etc. But there was beauty, too. There was beauty.