Alexis Soyer [was] as kind a
hearted Christian as you might find, an admirable cook,
an inventive genius, a brave, devoted, self-denying
man, who served his adopted country better in the
Crimea than many a starred and titled CB [Companion of
the Order of Bath] . . . . He had no call to be a
quack; there was no earthly reason why he should
inundate the newspapers with puffs, and wear impossible
trousers, or cloth-of-gold waistcoats, cut diagonally.
The man had a vast natural capacity, could think, ay,
and do things; yet he quacked so continually, that many
people set him down as a mere shallow pretender, and
some even doubted whether he could cook at all. He was,
nevertheless, a master of his difficult art . . .
.
—George Augustus Sala (1859, 382-383)
-
Alexis Soyer (1809-1858) was a colorful character,
one of the most famous chefs of his day, and a key
precursor of our modern celebrity chefs. While largely
forgotten today, he has nonetheless been the subject of
three recent titles: a children's book, Ann Arnold's
Alexis Soyer: The Adventurous Chef (2002); and
two biographies, Ruth Brandon's The People's Chef:
The Culinary Revolution of Alexis Soyer (2005), and
Ruth Cowen's Relish: The Extraordinary Life of
Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef
(forthcoming, 2006). Soyer does merit a closer
look—in particular, at the role he played in the
broader evolution of the chef as a public figure. But,
before this, some more general background is
needed.
The Chef as man of letters
-
Antonin Carême (1783-1833) was, arguably, the
first celebrity chef. Yet, in the best-known
portrait of him, the Blanchard engraving after the
Steuben painting [fig.
1], nowhere to be seen are the chef's toque, or
any other culinary attributes. Instead, with unruly
hair, broad thinker's forehead, dark eyes gazing into
the unknown, and body wrapped in swirling drapery,
Carême appears a Romantic genius—a Lord
Byron perhaps, or a young Victor Hugo. But why should
this be?
-
The now international phenomenon of the celebrity
chef—which has found its most emphatic expression
in the largely Anglo-American model of television chefs
like Julia Child, James Beard, Graham Kerr, Emeril
Lagasse, or Nigella Lawson—originated in
post-revolutionary France. Across the nineteenth
century, and into the twentieth, in concert with the
rise of culinary nationalism in France (Ferguson),
French chefs achieved unprecedented prestige and
authority, both at home and abroad. Yet, from Antonin
Carême through Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935),
famed culinarians were rarely depicted as chefs.
Rather, the various portraits, frontispieces, and
prefaces constructing their public image would invoke
well-worn paradigms of literary distinction—for
example, highlighting Carême's signature and pen,
his accomplishments as a writer, and the monumentality
of his creative aspirations (Ferguson 49-82). Likewise,
if Carême's portraits recall a young Victor Hugo,
then Escoffier's cast him as an older Hugo, minus the
trademark white beard but with a Clemenceau-like
moustache: a paradigm of grandfatherly authority, and
universal ambassador of French culture. Even in a
frontispiece portrait commemorating the silver jubilee
of his culinary career [fig.
2], Escoffier strikes a contemplative pose,
surrounded with conventional writerly
paraphernalia—pen, paper, inkwell, books, desk.
Rather than seasoning a sauce, he seems to ponder his
next sentence.
-
Such contradictions point to an underlying dilemma:
how to envision this new category of public
figure? Mentalities often lag behind innovations,
and we see new things in terms of older
ones, making sense of novelty through reassuring
precedent. Much as early automobiles resembled
horse-drawn carriages, the apotheosis of the writer in
France, from Voltaire through Hugo, was modeled largely
on pre-existing paradigms of military and aristocratic
glory; in turn, chefs' new-found fame emulated
established modes of literary renown. Under the ancien
régime, chefs had long been lowly, largely
itinerant domestic servants, giving rise to a
persistent vision of them as comical, subservient
figures, which survived well into the
post-revolutionary period, in popular and humorous
contexts, like this 1898 illustrated menu [fig.
3]. Casting chefs as monkeys implies clownish
behavior, subhuman status, and ability only for clumsy
imitation, far from the transcendent culinary artistry
posited by gastronomic writers from
Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la
Reynière (1758-1838) onward.1
In order to be seen as important personages and artists
in their own right, figures like Carême and
Escoffier would be styled, and style themselves,
as great men of letters. Indeed, by the middle of the
nineteenth century, chefs' writerly pretensions were so
familiar that they became the butt of satire. In
Briffault's Paris à table (1846), for
example [fig.
4], illustrator Bertall puts the would-be cook
of letters back in his place, in the kitchen, an
ill-fitting chef's uniform accentuating his ungracious
form, the toque turned into a nightcap, pulled down
over the forehead for a more neanderthal effect, his
brain taxed by the effort of composing a treatise on
"the influence of foodstuffs upon the dispositions of
the soul." If a chef could be lampooned for trying to
be a writer, so too could a writer for trying to be a
chef, guilty not of aspiring beyond his station, but
rather of stooping below it. So it was for Baron
Léon Brisse (1813-1876), a provincial
aristocrat, former bureaucrat, and minor man of
letters, who achieved notoriety late in life by
publishing recipes, menus, and gastronomic advice: his
culinary dabbling made him a favorite target of
contemporary caricaturists, dismissed by Lemot as a
third-rate rôtisseur [fig.
5], and quite literally roasted by Gill
[fig.
6].2
-
As Baron Brisse's example suggests, gastronomic
writers and professional chefs were closely
interrelated, but not parallel public figures. This is
all the more apparent in the Galerie des Gastronomes
et Praticiens français, de Brillat-Savarin
à nos jours, a revealing collective portrait
in Chatillon-Plessis's La Vie à table
à la fin du XIXe siècle (1894)
[fig.
7]. The title appears to promise equal
treatment, and gastronomic writers and chefs do stand
together in the print, but all styled as debonair men
of letters at an elegant garden party. With nary a
toque nor skimmer to distinguish practitioners from
theoreticians, chefs seem subsumed into the domain of
writers.
-
Despite its focus on personalities since
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), the
Galerie includes statues of the medieval chef
Taillevent (Guillaume Tirel, 1310-1395) and renaissance
writer François Rabelais (1494-1553), both
placed in the garden, as well as of the
seventeenth-century officier de bouche
François Vatel (1631-1671), installed beyond
them, on the balustrade.3
Seeking prestige and legitimacy through venerable
predecessors, revered all the more emphatically through
public "statufication," the print indulges in a
combination of self-serving strategies—genealogy
and monumentalization—not limited to, but
particularly characteristic of nineteenth-century
French literary culture (Garval 2004a). Among the
precursors invoked and honored here, there are two
hands-on culinarians, and only one man of letters,
which might seem to suggest the primacy of praxis over
commentary, at least historically. Among the moderns
however, writer Brillat-Savarin, not chef Carême,
is highlighted as number one, both in the print and in
its numerical key [fig.
8]. Indeed the whole composition, and
particularly this detail, recall Nadar's 1854 pantheon
of literary luminaries, where Victor Hugo plays the
equivalent starring role (Garval 2004a, 17-19). The
Galerie offers chefs a place of honor within an
analagous gastronomic pantheon but, alongside this
consecration, it also reveals the limits of their
new-found status for, nearly a century after
Carême rose to prominence, chefs' fame was still
filtered through the lens of literary renown.
-
Unfortunately, there has been little critical
reflection on how chefs from Carême to Escoffier,
as well as self-styled public gastronomes from Grimod
de la Reynière to Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond
Sailland, 1872-1956), shaped the development of the
modern celebrity chef. But, as Chatillon-Plessis's
Galerie suggests, chefs long remained formulaic
and fundamentally conservative in their relationship to
fame: content to continue emulating men of letters;
reluctant to abandon this flattering literary guise. On
the whole, gastronomic writers proved more daring and
entrepreneurial vis-à-vis their public image, as
evidenced for example by the provocative and
self-promoting frontispieces to the eight volumes of
Grimod's ground-breaking Almanach des gourmands
(Garval 2004b), or by Curnonsky's much-touted election
to the fanciful post of "Prince des Gastronomes"
(Vrinat). Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about
the extraordinary Alexis Soyer is that, while he too
fashioned himself a man of letters, he would also
transcend the constraints of this literary model and,
far ahead of his time, prefigure the flamboyant
personas of today's celebrity chefs.
Fame à la zoug-zoug
He wore a kind of paletôt
of light camlet cloth, with voluminous lapels and
deep cuffs of lavender watered silk; very baggy
trousers, with lavender stripes down the seams; very
shiny boots and quite as glossy a hat; his attire
being completed by tightly-fitting gloves, of the hue
known in Paris as beurre frais—that is
to say, light yellow. All this you may think was odd
enough; but an extraordinary oddity was added to his
appearance by the circumstance that every article of
his attire, save, I suppose, his gloves and boots,
was cut on what dressmakers call a "bias," or as he
himself, when I came to know him well, used to
designate as à la zoug-zoug. He must
have been the terror of his tailor, his hatter, and
his maker of cravats and underlinen; since he had, to
all appearance, an unconquerable aversion from any
garment which, when displayed on the human figure,
exhibited either horizontal or perpendicular lines.
His very visiting-cards, his cigar-case, and the
handle of his cane took slightly oblique
inclinations.
—George Augustus Sala, on meeting Soyer in the
Hungerford Market (Sala 1894, II, 240-241)
-
Alexis Soyer was born in France and raised there,
first in Meaux-en-Brie—known for its
cheese—then in Paris. During the Revolution of
1830, he was working in the kitchen at the Foreign
Office, when it was attacked by angry insurgents. He
ended up singing, not for his supper, but for his
life:
The cooks were driven from the palace, and in the
flight two of Soyer's confrères were
shot before his eyes, and he himself only escaped
through his presence of mind, in beginning to sing
'la Marseillaise' et 'la Parisienne;' when he
was in consequence carried off amid the cheers of the
mob. (Volant and Warren, 6)
Soyer soon fled to England, where he would make his
reputation, notably as chef of London's prestigious
Reform Club from 1837 to 1850. But his close call
during the July Revolution remains an oddly revealing
point of departure for his later, successful career.
Casting him in the suggestive role of the
faux-revolutionary, it already offers a glimpse at his
general propensity for theatrics; his talent for
rallying the public, and for making the most of
unlikely opportunities; as well as his ambivalent class
status and loyalty. A modestly-born opportunist,
slaving away in service to the upper crust, and belting
out Rouget de Lisle's or Casimir Delavigne's
rabble-rousing lyrics at gunpoint, he appears at once a
man of the people and lackey of the elite.
-
Soyer was, in so many ways, a study in
contradictions, "who drew the breath of his being from
the French Romantics and who won the respect of
Victorian England for his practical resourcefulness and
powers of administration" (Morris 1). He served refined
food to the rich and powerful, and strained to
ingratiate himself to them as well. But, amid the
social and intellectual ferment over the problem of
poverty, in the years surrounding the Revolution of
1848, he also put his skills to more humanitarian and
egalitarian use. He toiled to feed Ireland's poor in
the 1840s, or starving British soldiers in the Crimea a
decade later, and published invaluable information to
help the needy better feed themselves: first in a
booklet, "The Poor Man's Regenerator" (1847), from each
copy of which he gave a penny to the poor; then more
extensively in his Shilling Cookery for the
People (1854). A versatile, compassionate, and
inventive cook, he was a prolific inventor as
well—of bottled sauces and drinks, culinary
gadgetry of all sorts [fig.
9], numerous innovations in the Reform Club's
celebrated new kitchens, and many other things,
including an excellent field stove [fig.
10], a variant of which, still called the Soyer
stove, was used by the British army through the first
Gulf War (Brandon 241).
-
Soyer was known for his exuberance, and eccentric
style. A wit, prankster, raconteur, fine
singer—and not just of revolutionary
ballads—his first ambition was to be a comic
actor, and for much of his life he frequented theaters
and theatrical performers. A dapper Frenchman among
drabber Victorians, he dressed as a Romantic dandy, in
a style no longer the height of fashion at the height
of his career in the 1840s and 50s—and did so
even in the kitchen, eschewing the conventional chef's
uniform. Beyond their rich embroidery, lavish silks,
and extravagant colors, Soyer's clothes were
characterized by their insistent cut on a bias,
"à la zoug-zoug" in his own coinage, an
idiosyncratic rendering of "zig-zag," the English
phrase itself taking on the gallic flair of its
inventor. Indeed, this predilection for diagonal lines
was not limited to clothing designed and worn
"studiously awry" (Sala 1894, II, 241), but rather part
of a broader pattern. As biographer Helen Morris
notes,
Soyer's desire to be noticed, to be admired, above
all to be extraordinary, grew ever more dominant. He
tried not only to cook differently from everyone
else, but to dress and talk and walk differently too.
. . . [H]e would not wear a single garment with
either horizontal or perpendicular lines. His hats
were specially built so that when clapped on at any
angle they slanted in a coquettish way—in his
own phrase, à la zoug-zoug. His coats
had to be cut on the cross . . . . His visiting card
. . . was not a rectangle but a parallelogram; so was
his cigar-case, and even the handle of his cane
slanted obliquely. (25)
To this list could be added many things:
advertisements for Soyer's products, like these for his
Sultana's Sauce, one with the central bottle tilted
diagonally through the copy [fig.
11], the other with the copy inside a
parallelogrammic field [fig.
12], recalling the shape of his carte de
visite [fig.
13]; a whimsical dish created in honor of the
ballerina Fanny Cerrito [fig.
14], with whispy diagonals spiraling round a
conical base, surmounted by a dancing figurine on
pointe atop a thunderbolt-like stand composed of
alternating angles; "a zig-zag passage," which Morris
calls a "true Soyer touch" (78), leading into the model
soup kitchen that Soyer designed in Dublin; his
fanciful menu for a "GRAND SUPPER LUCULLUSIEN À
LA ZOUG-ZOUG" (Volant and Warren 152); and, as we shall
see, numerous diagonal elements in the portraits of
Soyer that accompany his published work. As such varied
examples suggest, à la zoug-zoug might
best be understood as the central trope in Soyer's
creative imagination, and in his dandified public
persona, emblematic of his drive to distinguish
himself —both to achieve distinction, and to
do so by being different.
-
Soyer's position as chef of the Reform Club secured
him some prominence but, in itself, does not explain
the magnitude of his fame. His constant letters to
various London papers, particularly the
Times—touting his own accomplishments,
promoting his latest schemes, weighing in on the
questions of the day—helped keep him in the
public eye. So too did the extensive marketing of his
products, notably "Soyer's Sauce" [fig.
15], as well as his several successful books on
food and cookery. Combined with his flamboyant personal
style, these forms of exposure made Soyer a favorite
target of popular satire which, for better or worse,
only increased his renown. He "figured more often in
the pages of Punch than many a Cabinet Minister"
(Morris 1), as in this rendering of his resignation as
chef of the Reform Club [fig.
16]. His face remains hidden by his hand, all
the better to draw attention to him, and to point up
the extent of his celebrity.4
Soyer's face is so familiar that its features have
become superfluous. Other attributes suffice to
identify him: the hat rakishly askew, his chef's
knives, and stylish street clothes that contrast with
the ordinary kitchen garb of his staff, whose faces
register varying degrees of shock and dismay at their
sovereign's abdication. "King Soyer" himself stands
above them, in front of an armchair throne beneath a
coat of arms, with kitchen utensils replacing heraldic
symbols in the quadrants.5
The accompanying text below the caricature mocks
Soyer's "pride," his "gigantic" schemes, his supposed
"genius," and concludes with a swipe at his
publicity-mongering, that plays on the double meaning
of "puff" as both pastry shell and undue or exaggerated
praise: "As to the puffs, the loss of SOYER will not be
so severely felt, as most of the puffs he was so famous
for manufacturing were for his own use."
-
Other contemporary satirical treatments of Soyer
include, notably, his parodic double Alcide Mirobolant,
in Thackeray's novel Pendennis (1849). Thackeray
and Soyer had known and esteemed each other since
meeting at the Reform Club in 1837, and the novelist
often poked fun at his friend the chef in his
contributions to Punch, which also afforded
Soyer considerable free publicity. In Pendennis,
Mirobolant—whose surname means "dazzling" in
French—arrives in a small English town to become
chef to the local lord, and creates a stir among the
inhabitants. Thackeray has also made him a Gascon, that
legendary figure of strutting braggadocio. To wit,
Mirobolant strides about town of a summer afternoon, in
outlandish attire reminiscent of Soyer's:
his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet
waistcoat with blue glass buttons, his pantalon
Écossais of a very large and decided check
pattern, his orange satin neckcloth, and his
jean-boots, with tips of shiny leather,—these,
with a gold embroidered cap, and a richly-gilt cane,
or other varieties of ornament of a similar tendency
. . . in which he considered that he exhibited the
appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian
ton. (Thackeray 1898, 222; all references to
this edition, unless noted otherwise)
Fancying himself irresistibly attractive, he "walked
down the street, grinning and ogling every woman he met
with glances, which he meant should kill them outright"
(222) for, as a Frenchman, he was "accustomed to
conquer" (225). Recalling Soyer's own histrionic bent,
he declares "with a deep bass voice, and a tragic
accent worthy of the Porte St. Martin and his favourite
melodrames" that he is "a fatal man," destined to
inspire "hopeless passion" (226). Mirobolant's
self-proclaimed "determination to marry an Anglaise,"
to find a mate among "[t]he blonde misses of Albion,"
(225) perhaps alludes to Soyer's own marriage to an
Englishwoman (cf. below), or even to the dedication of
The Modern Housewife, or Ménagère
to "The Fair Daughters of Albion" [fig.
17]. In any case, it is left to the reader's
judgment "[w]hether Alcide was as irresistible a
conqueror as his namesake, or whether he was simply
crazy" (226). This remark calls attention to the chef's
given name, which is both reminiscent of Soyer's
(Alcide-Alexis), and echoes that of the
protagonist in Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Alceste,
ou le Triomphe d'Alcide (1674), as well as in the
lesser-known Alcide, ou le Triomphe d'Hercule
(1693, written by Jean Galbert de Campistron, with
music by Louis Lully and Marin Marais)—ironic
associations for, while a conqueror of men and even of
death, and despite vigorous attempts at amorous
conquest, the Alcide figure in both these operas ends
up unhappy in love.
-
Mirobolant harbors artistic pretensions as well:
It was a grand sight to behold him in his dressing
gown composing a menu. He always sate down and
played the piano for some time before. If
interrupted, he remonstrated pathetically with his
little maid. Every great artist, he said, had need of
solitude to perfectionate his works. (Thackeray 1849,
I, 218)
One of Thackeray's own illustrations for the novel
depicts this scene [fig.
18], with the maid scolded by the chef in his
elegant dressing-gown, and diagonally-slanted cap
reminiscent of Soyer's. In the Frenchman's quarters, a
saucepan stands next to a couple of thick volumes, and
on the wall above this hang portraits honoring two key
culinary figures: Louis-Eustache Ude, the best-known
French chef in England before Soyer; and, the Marquis
de Béchamel, a seventeenth-century nobleman and
supposed inventor of the famed sauce bearing his name.
Mirobolant worries, moreover, that his "genius" is
wasted upon England's "dull inhabitants": "the poesy of
my art," he laments, "cannot be understood by these
carnivorous insularies" (225). Indeed, so emphatic is
his artistic and, with it, social affectation that,
when the novel's title character calls him a cook, he
takes this as an affront to his honor: "'I am Chevalier
de Juillet,' said [Mirobolant] . . ., slapping his
breast, 'and he has insulted me. . . . Il m'a
appelé—Cuisinier'" (258). Others
intercede to avert a duel, a possibility hinging,
precisely, on the cook's problematic social status.
Pendennis contends that he "can't fight a cook"
(261)—a domestic, hence an inferior—and is
furious that Mirobolant accosts him, as if his
equal:
To be tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a
piece of familiarity which made the blood of the
Pendennises to boil up in the veins of their
descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than
enraged, at such an indignity. (257)
In contrast, Mirobolant sees himself, not only as an
exalted artist, but as an heroic insurgent, a
"Chevalier de Juillet" who "killed four gardes du
corps with his own point in the barricades" (261).
This claim to glory, doubtless exaggerated in
stereotypical Gascon fashion, caricatures, indeed
cleverly reverses the terms of Soyer's own, far less
swashbuckling role in the July Days—Mirobolant
would have slain elite troops while standing his ground
in the street, whereas Soyer was nearly lynched by a
revolutionary mob while fleeing from a palace
kitchen.
-
To be sure, Thackeray's treatment of this fictional
chef—and, by extension, of his model
Soyer—is hyperbolic, yet good-hearted, even
tender, conceived "in the fulness of our love and
respect for Monsieur Mirobolant" (212). Satirical barbs
are aimed as much at the English townspeople as at the
colorful Frenchman in their midst: "Not having been
accustomed to the appearance or society of persons of
the French nation, the rustic inhabitants . . . were
not so favourably impressed by Monsieur Alcide's
manners and appearance" (222). Curious little children
begin to follow him, soon joined by older ones,
"laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious
names to the Frenchman" who "at length . . . began to
perceive that he was an object of derision rather than
of respect to the rude grinning mob" (223). So too does
another of Thackeray's illustrations evoke the
misunderstandings between the locals and their foreign
visitor, with a group of children forming behind the
bizarrely-clad Mirobolant—the older ones seem
amused, while the youngest, clutching her doll, appears
frightened—and a young woman looks baffled and
perhaps scared as well by the predatory stare he fires
her way [fig.
19]. On another level, Mirobolant's misfortunes
during his stroll about a small English town—his
hapless pursuit of local ladies, and persecution
at the hands of a juvenile "mob"—offer an ironic
counterpoint to his supposed heroism on the street, in
the French capital, during the July Revolution.
-
In his day, Soyer even enjoyed considerable renown
in America, where his books were widely read and
admired, and his various schemes, inventions, and
exploits received ample coverage in the popular press.
For example, a review of the American edition of
Soyer's The Modern Housewife or
Ménagère, in the Southern Literary
Messenger, accords the author great reverence:
We sit down to discuss a volume of M. Soyer as the
undergraduate rises to address an assemblage of
professors and doctors of divinity; that is to say,
with an unaffected sense of our own incapacity, and
an overwhelming conviction of the magnitude and
difficulty of the task. (210)
Similarly, the review of Soyer's Culinary
Campaign, in Harper's Monthly, declares,
"Every one has heard of Alexis Soyer, the celebrated
chef de cuisine, . . . [a] litterateur,
as well as the greatest living master of the mageric
art" (325).
-
While multiple factors contributed to such far-flung
fame, Soyer's publications were the most important.
Long before chefs could serve themselves up to a mass
public on television, Soyer's books were both widely
distributed, and offered ample opportunity for
self-presentation, in prefaces and title pages,
frontispieces and other illustrations, and even
throughout the text, as we shall see in the case of his
Culinary Campaign, in which he stars as the hero
of this autobiographical narrative.
-
Soyer published his first book in 1845, in French,
called Délassements culinaires, which
features a ballet, "La Fille de l'Orage," dedicated to
dancer Fanny Cerrito. The slim volume also includes
gastronomic essays—like the recipe for La
Crème de la Grande Bretagne, actually an
elaborate compliment to British society
ladies—more reminiscent however of
Brillat-Savarin's entertaining "Variétés"
than of the practical culinary advice Soyer would
proffer, with such success, in the years ahead. Oddly
enough, the part of Délassements
culinaires most suggestive of the future course of
Soyer's career is the curious frontispiece portrait of
the author [fig.
20]. Like other prominent nineteenth-century
figures—notably Napoleon, Byron, Hugo, P.T.
Barnum, and Sarah Bernhardt—Soyer seems to have
intuited much about the importance of images within the
period's burgeoning fame culture. He no doubt benefited
in this respect from marriage, in 1837, to the artist
Emma Jones (1813-1842) [fig.
21], an accomplished portraitist, whose work he
venerated, and all the moreso after her untimely death
in childbirth—as in this print from The
Gastronomic Regenerator (1846) [fig.
22], in which Emma's absence from Soyer's
"table at home" is made all the more poignant by the
presence of her canvases, and by the caption, with its
Lamartinian undertones, deploring the barrenness of a
gastronomic gathering "sans Dames." In the frontispiece
portrait for Délassements culinaires
Soyer's face appears elongated, as if distorted in a
fun-house mirror. This seemingly unflattering likeness
nonetheless inspired a "complimentary epistle,"
reported in Volant and Warren's Memoirs of Alexis
Soyer, that ends revealingly:
Behold this phiz, of awful length,
Equipped with brains of wondrous strength,
Compared with which Carème's [sic] were
dull,
And Ude can scarcely boast a skull.
Long-headed Soyer, long may thy name
Be stretched upon the rolls of Fame.—L.
(57)
While in jest, Soyer's anonymous contemporary
(presumably a friend, based on the familiar tone) makes
a key connection between the elongation of Soyer's
physiognomy ("phiz"), and his desire for renown.
Aspiring to rival, even to surpass the most celebrated
French chefs of the previous generation, Soyer does not
hesitate to bend and stretch the lines of his portrait,
to manipulate his image both literally and
figuratively. We shall see how his penchant for
self-aggrandizement, for diverging from constraining
norms, and for reinventing himself, all in the service
of his reputation, informs his later works,
particularly their frontispiece portraits. But this
propensity is already here, in embryonic form.
-
Délassements culinaires seems to have
been well-received. In particular, Fayot, the editor of
Les Classiques de la Table, who prided himself
on having befriended such seminal gastronomic figures
as Carême, Brillat, Grimod, and the Marquis de
Cussy, congratulated Soyer at once on the work's
culinary and literary merits: "Chez vous, monsieur," he
wrote, "le cuisinier rempli de goût et d'une
charmante élégance, étincelle dans
l'écrivain" (Morris 46). Here, if needed, was
ample encouragement for Soyer to continue in this
writerly path. But, in fact, his next publication had
already been announced, on the last page of
Délassements culinaires: "a work on a
very different scale, . . . which was to set the seal
on his reputation and give him his nickname, The
Gastronomic Regenerator" (Morris 46). What needs to
be remembered though is that writing of any sort was a
dubious proposition for Soyer, whose scant formal
education—typical for a chef of his
generation—had left him in a state of "uneasy
semi-literacy"; specifically,
He could read and write French, though his spelling
was shaky and his orthography laborious. But he never
learned to write English, though he spoke it, and may
have been able to read it . . . . He was therefore
forced to rely upon amanuenses, . . . [a] role . . .
filled by his wife, . . . and after her death, by a
series of secretaries. (Brandon xiii-xiv)
In short, Soyer's books were always a pose, passing
him off as something that, on the most basic level, he
was not: a writer. This necessarily involved wrestling
with deep-rooted societal prejudices against cooks,
still seen largely as lowly domestic help—indeed,
"when, in the 1841 census, Soyer gave his occupation as
a cook, the census-taker automatically listed him among
the servants, when in fact he was the householder"
(Brandon 73). So too might chefs, whatever their
pretensions, be dismissed as ill-educated
simpletons—like the dim-looking gent in Bertall's
illustration [fig.
4]—the antithesis of the urbane men of
letters whom ambitious sorts like Soyer sought to
emulate. As a follow-up to Délassements
culinaires, The Gastronomic Regenerator
exhibits both the contradictions inherent in Soyer's
status as would-be man of letters, and his efforts to
make the most of this tenuous situation. The
Gastronomic Regenerator would appear, at first
glance, to be more of a challenge for his questionable
literacy. It was much longer, and written in English, a
language he mastered even less than his native French.
Yet it was also far less literary than its predecessor,
not a gastronomical essay but rather a practitioner's
compendium of useful advice, that fit easily within a
long tradition of similar efforts by distinguished
French culinarians, from Taillevent to Menon to
Carême, and continued afterward by figures like
Jules Gouffé, Escoffier, or Bocuse. Despite
whatever difficulties English presented—largely
mitigated by the efforts of his
secretaries—The Gastronomic Regenerator
staked out familiar territory, in which Soyer could
operate from a position of greatest strength.
Addressing the public of his adopted land in its
vernacular, and in a popular format that showcased his
expertise, Soyer hit upon a combination most likely to
boost his fame, but not to raise doubts about his
qualifications as an author.
-
The preface of The Gastronomic Regenerator is
particularly revealing. Soyer begins with his supposed
reluctance to embark on a project of this sort, despite
requests from distinguished visitors to the Reform
Club, especially ladies:
Why do you not write and publish a
Cookery-book? was a question continually put to
me. For a considerable time this scientific word
caused a thrill of horror to pervade my frame, and
brought back to my mind that one day, being in a most
superb library in the midst of a splendid baronial
hall, by chance I met with one of Milton's
allegorical works, the profound ideas of Locke, and
several chefs d'oeuvre of one of the noblest
champions of literature, Shakspeare; when all at once
my attention was attracted by the nineteenth edition
of a voluminous work: such an immense success of
publication caused me to say, 'Oh! You celebrated
man, posterity counts every hour of fame upon your
regretted ashes!' Opening this work with intense
curiosity, to my great disappointment what did I
see—a receipt for Ox-tail Soup! The
terrifying effect produced upon me by this succulent
volume made me determine that my few ideas, whether
culinary or domestic, should never encumber a
sanctuary which should be entirely devoted to works
worthy of a place in the Temple of the Muses.
(vii-viii)
Tellingly, the idea of producing his own cookbook
conjures up in his mind the most prestigious works in
the British literary canon, mentioned ostensibly in
contrast with culinary works not worthy of such
elevated status. Yet it is precisely such a book that
beckons him. Its numerous editions, its "immense
success of publication," and the extraordinary fame of
its author arouse his "intense curiosity," even if he
feigns "great disappointment" upon discovering it to be
a cookbook. Through this amusingly contrived anecdote,
Soyer grapples with traditional notions of literary
glory, in order to stake his own, alternate claim
within the world of letters. Within this context, it
does not seem coincidental that he refers to great
works of literature as "chefs d'oeuvre"—he could
have used the English term "masterpieces"—making
"chefs" intrude into a category that would seem to
exclude them. This turn of mind becomes all the clearer
in the preface's concluding sentence. Having now
written a book of recipes, he begs the reader to "put
[it] in a place suited to its little merit, and not
with Milton's sublime Paradise, for there it certainly
would be doubly lost" (viii). This last phrase is
particularly suggestive for, if side-by-side with
Milton, Soyer's volume would be condemned to nether
regions of literary endeavor, yet also, in the rarefied
space of a baronial library, it would not be available
to the far broader public it targets. Foregoing the
"sublime," Soyer aims instead at popular "success."
Perhaps most tellingly, and notwithstanding his
pretense of modesty throughout the preface, the last
line is followed by a large, bold facsimile of Soyer's
signature—the graphic measure of his authorial
ambition.
-
The frontispiece portrait of Soyer in The
Gastronomic Regenerator [fig.
23] is far less unusual than the one in his
first book. It is a flattering likeness, lovingly
rendered by his wife, in which, with his dark eyes and
sensuous mouth, he appears handsome, sensitive,
thoughtful, and also younger than at the time of the
book's publication (necessarily so, since Emma had died
four years earlier). There is no border here, in
contrast to the increasingly elaborate ones that would
frame his portrait in his next two major publications,
The Modern Housewife, and The
Pantropheon. His attire is also more restrained
than in other likenesses, though he does wear his
signature cap on a characteristic diagonal—a
hint, at least, of the sitter's eccentricity.
-
The frontispiece for The Modern Housewife, or
Ménagère [fig.
24] uses the same portrait by Emma Soyer, but
surrounds it with a fanciful border that combines
floral garlands with other decorative motifs which, at
the level of the author's head, morph into chimera-like
winged creatures, likely an allusion to the flights of
his creative imagination. Above his head we find a
fleur-de-lys-like motif, perhaps betokening the
author's Frenchness, and below him the border forms a
frame around his signature, the quintessence of
authorial identity. Already, this image tries harder to
portray Soyer as an important personage and,
specifically, as an author.
-
Soyer seems to have found himself increasingly
emboldened by the success of these books. His authorial
pose thus continues, indeed culminates in his next
publication, the Pantropheon (1853). The
frontispiece [fig.
25] offers an elaborate iconographical program,
seemingly appropriate for an ambitious work subtitled
"History of Food, and its preparation, from the
earliest ages of the world." The central portrait of
the author—again, the same one by Emma
Soyer—is surrounded by a gastronomic allegory
spanning food production, preparation, service, and
writing, in vignettes organized clockwise, around five
putti figures. In addition, parallel staffs flank the
composition: at left, topped by a pineapple and hung
with fowl, symbolizing hospitality and plenty; at
right, topped by a trident and hung with fish,
symbolizing the ocean's bounty.
-
At lower left, one putto sits wedged between a sheaf
of wheat that rests upon a pile of game, and grape
vines surmounted by a cluster of hanging fowl. He gazes
downward at the bunch of grapes in his hands, which he
squeezes into a chalice, the fruits of the natural
world thus transformed by human hands. Above, three
more putti display finished products, in divergent
realms of gastronomic endeavor: wine and spirit-making,
as the figure at left hoists a massive, crystal
decanter; pastry-making, as the one at right holds up a
decorative, circular confection upon a platter; and
cooking, as the central putto lifts the lid from a
steaming cauldron set upon a lively fire, an archetypal
pot au feu. There is upward movement throughout,
accentuated by ardent flames and ascending puffs of
smoke and steam, figuring a Hegelian Aufhebung,
toward what Brillat-Savarin called "transcendent
gastronomy." Indeed, this whole scene is reminiscent of
the upper vignette in Bertall's "Les Aliments"
[fig.
26], a plate for the 1846 (and then still
recent) edition of Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du
goût, in which the raw is cooked,
transfigured through the alchemy of fire and artistry
of a professional chef, as smoke and steam billow up,
into a celestial vision of gastronomic delight, crowned
by a giant mouth, from which beatific rays project
outward—illustrating both Brillat's concept of
transcendent gastronomy, and the broader French ideal
of cultural "rayonnement."
-
Returning to the Pantropheon frontispiece
[fig.
25], the final vignette shows another seated
putto, his right (and writing) hand resting upon a pile
of giant books marked with the names of classical
authors; his left held pensively to his mouth, pathway
to gastronomic experience; his head tilted and brow
furrowed, further signifying thoughtfulness; with, at
his feet and alongside the oversized tomes, water
running across and down, toward the lower right
corner—spilling over, as it were, into the text
that follows. In this way, it depicts the contemporary
food writer's work, his reflections both inspired
by gustatory remembrances and flowing from classical
'sources,' thus completing the sweep of this
gastronomic allegory, from raw ingredients, through
prepared food and drink, on to the written appreciation
thereof.
-
The five putti, as well as the branch and vine motif
linking them, recall another Bertall plate for the 1846
Physiologie du goût, "Les Sens"
[fig.
27], and through this the long philosophical
and iconographical traditions of five senses
allegories, so often invoked in gastronomic contexts
like this (Garval 2005). In addition, the allusions
here to earth, air, fire, and water call to mind
allegories of the four elements. Together, the
intimations of these two venerable allegorical
traditions elevate the gastronomic allegory at hand,
lending classical resonance and philosophical depth to
the engraving and, by extension, to the work that
follows. Indeed, the next plate in the volume continues
in this vein, suggesting yet more emphatically the
scope of Soyer's ambition. Set opposite the dedication
"To the Genius of Gastronomy," the print shows the
earth, floating in space, amid the brilliant rays of
the sun and dramatically-shaded masses of clouds, and
encircled by a giant banner inscribed with the motto
"DEUS CREATOR, TERRA NUTRIX." Soyer's seemingly humble
subject—food—takes on cosmological
dimensions. [fig.
28]
-
But what of the central author's portrait in the
frontispiece [fig.
25]? At bottom center, an antler projects
into this space on a bias, directing our gaze toward
Soyer, and drawing attention to the diagonal skew, not
only of his hallmark hat, but also of the oval frame
surrounding his effigy. These angles are likewise
echoed and emphasized by those of the wheat sheaf and
books below, as by the decanter and pot lid above, with
the uppermost putto similarly coiffed but facing the
opposite way, at once a visual counterpoint in the
composition and mirror image of the mature chef he
emulates. While less obvious, the upright staffs and
the portrait itself also lean slightly in the same
direction as the oval vignette, as if pulled by an
alternate, tilting gravitation, a subtle warping of
ordinary physical laws. Contemplating this
idiosyncratic rendering of an eccentric figure, who
looks out at us, and we in at him, through an unusual,
diagonal window, we stand before a portal into Soyer's
realm—into a text that promises his peculiar,
gastronomic slant on the world, and world history.
-
We thus might well expect the originality of Soyer's
thought in this work to rival the legendary originality
of his appearance. However, the biggest put-on here is
not the pretentious frontispiece, but the text that
follows. Soyer's contemporaries did not know it, but it
has since been revealed that he most likely did not
compose it himself, with the exception of the chapter
on "Modern Banquets" (McKirdy). The rest of this
sizable work was probably written by a certain Adolphe
Duhart-Fauvet, an obscure French teacher living in
London at the time, whose knowledge of ancient Greek
and Latin (in contrast to Soyer's marginal literacy in
modern French and English) would have enabled him to
handle the book's roughly 3,000 classical references.
Soyer seems to have paid Duhart-Fauvet for his efforts,
had the work translated into
English—"misérablement traduit en Anglais
par je ne sais quels manoeuvres littéraires,"
according to Duhart-Fauvet's hand-written notes on his
copy of the book (McKirdy 19)—and then he took
all the credit. Perhaps, as Brandon suggests, this "one
truly dishonest act of his life" can be explained
through his state of mind at the time, which she
qualifies as "something as near depression as was
possible in so buoyant a character," following the
collapse of his grandiose Symposium of All
Nations restaurant project, in 1851 (Brandon 228).
But, as the visual evidence of his increasingly
elaborate frontispieces suggests, this was also a
logical next step in Soyer's ongoing, authorial
masquerade: to appear in the most exalted of guises, as
a savant who appropriates the wisdom and prestige of
the ancients. This was an ideal all the more desirable
for a man with Soyer's great ambition but negligeable
education. After realizing it, however disingenuously,
he retreated from this encroachment upon the hallowed
ground of classical scholarship, and returned in short
order to more familiar territory, publishing another
cookbook the following year. Perhaps, a fundamentally
decent man, he found it impossible to continue such a
flagrant imposture. Perhaps he just decided that it
didn't pay, since the Pantropheon sold
badly.
-
In contrast to the Pantropheon's arid
classical erudition, the lively popularizing bent of
Soyer's Shilling Cookery for the People (1854)
made it a great publishing success. In the frontispiece
[fig.
29], Soyer's portrait has, finally, been
updated, and looks more like the 45-year old he had
become. It does appear again inside an attractive, oval
vignette, but this time standing sensibly upright, and
minus the surrounding decorative and allegorical
program: a more sober presentation, seemingly in
concert with this work's common-sense, no-frills theme.
There are still however three "signature" elements,
within the oval frame, that all run on the same jaunty
slant: his hallmark hat; a copy of this book, which its
author holds in his hand (the spine reads "Soyer's
Shilling . . ."); and, his signature itself, far larger
and bolder than those, on either side, of the artist
and engraver. Soyer cuts a rakish figure in this
portrait, with his elaborately-knotted cravat,
embroidered vest, and silk moiré-trimmed
waistcoat. To be sure, there is some contradiction in
such a self-presentation leading off a volume
"embracing an entirely new system of plain cookery and
domestic economy." Yet, while his writerly pose is less
emphatic here than in the Pantropheon
frontispiece, Soyer still aims to fashion himself in a
literary mold, not so much as the author of this work,
but more generally as an Author, whose oeuvre
projects well beyond this particular volume. To this
end, on the title page, his name is followed by an
implicitly expansive list of his works: "Author of 'The
Modern Housewife, Etc., Etc." Similarly, beneath this,
he quotes from the Pantropheon:
"Religion feeds the soul, Education the mind, Food
the body."
His would-be pearl of wisdom is doubly unoriginal:
"Food feeds" is the most uninspired of gastronomic
reflections and, like the rest of the
Pantropheon, probably plagiarized. But, this
irony notwithstanding, by citing his Pantropheon
at the head of a new volume, Soyer points toward his
larger oeuvre and also indulges in a
quasi-Napoleonic gesture of auto-apotheosis, anointing
himself as an Author and, in the original sense of the
word, as an Authority. This suggests, once again, the
lengths to which he might go to advance his reputation.
Yet Shilling Cookery also found Soyer at a
crossroads of distinct but related evolutions within
his career. On the one hand, his literary pretensions
had risen in a crescendo, from The Gastronomic
Regenerator, to The Modern Housewife, to a
veritable paroxysm of bad faith in the
Pantropheon. On the other, his popularizing bent
had grown more pronounced over the years as well, from
The Gastronomic Regenerator, aimed at well-to-do
readers; to The Modern Housewife, which targeted
a bourgeois audience; to Shilling Cookery
(anticipated by his earlier booklet, "The Poor Man's
Regenerator") which catered to the working class. In
short, in his ongoing quest for fame, he had already
pushed his authorial masquerade to the maximum in the
Pantropheon, and now retreated from this extreme
stance; so too he had worked his way from the top to
the bottom of the social ladder in his cookbooks,
striking an egalitarian note as well with his
interesting though short-lived Symposium of All
Nations.
-
Within Soyer's career there were also suggestive
parallels with that of another ambitious Frenchman
living in London in the 1840s: Louis-Napoléon
Bonaparte. In 1846, Napoléon Bonaparte's nephew
published De l'extinction du paupérisme,
a utopian socialist tract on the problem of poverty; in
1847 Soyer did much the same, in a gastronomic
register, with "The Poor Man's Regenerator." Both works
appealed to the masses and, riding the wave of social
unrest leading to the Revolution of 1848, cast their
authors advantageously as concerned champions of the
people. Louis-Napoléon's populism, which helped
get him elected President of the French Republic,
turned authoritarian and megalomaniac with his coup
d'état of December 2, 1851, and ascent to
the imperial throne as Napoléon III, on the
coup's anniversary (these dates deliberately echoed the
glory of Napoléon I, who crowned himself Emperor
oòn December 2, 1804, and prevailed at
Austerlitz exactly one year later). Soon Soyer ventured
an analogous self-promotion, with the publication of
his Pantropheon (1853), a gesture likewise
imperialist in scope—covering food across the
globe, throughout history—while also
fundamentally bogus. But, at least at this point in
history, a Bonaparte could still get away with a level
of dubious self-aggrandizement that a chef, however
renowned, could not. Faced with the lukewarm reception
accorded his most recent work, Soyer was wise to stake
his reputation instead on a more genially
crowd-pleasing volume: the flatulent pretense of the
Pantropheon thus yielded to the frank populism
of Shilling Cookery.
-
One could imagine that a less restless, more
boringly sensible sort would feel that he had found his
path at last and, nearing 50, would settle down to a
comfortable life writing popular cookbooks. But not
Soyer. So what would this peripatetic figure do
next?
The Logistician as Romantic hero
M. Soyer's account of the Crimean
campaign . . . . magnifies his office. He has no
misgiving that cookery is not the most sublime and
important of professions. He has immense faith in
himself and his noble art. He writes of the campaign
as Lamartine writes of the last French Revolution,
making himself the central figure . . .
—Review of Soyer's Culinary Campaign, in
The North American Review, January 1858
-
The Crimean War offered Soyer an unexpected
opportunity to try something new, to reinvent himself
yet again and, in the process, to further his renown.
Dismayed by the newspaper accounts of British troops
starving, Soyer volunteered his expertise. He designed
a superior field stove [fig.
10] and, despite the many dangers, traveled to
the Crimea where, from the Spring of 1855 to the Spring
of 1857, he reformed the British Army's kitchens, as
well as its inefficient ways of provisioning them.
While there, he also hobnobbed with British and French
high commanders, and with the war's other humanitarian
celebrities, Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. His
efforts attracted attention in the press, and provided
fodder for contemporary satirists, as in the comic
sketch "Camp Cookery"—attributed to "Alicksus
Sawder" and published in the humorous collection Our
Miscellany (1856)—which poked fun at the
preparations Soyer designed for the troops [fig.
30]. His work did, nonetheless, improve the
plight of British soldiers, making a real contribution
to the war effort.
-
When Soyer returned to London, he published an
account of his adventures in the Crimea, entitled
Soyer's Culinary Campaign (1857). Reviewers
ridiculed the beau rôle Soyer accorded
himself in these historical events, their criticisms
enlivened with abundant culinary references: The
Times of London remarked, for example, that "Alexis
the Savoury opens his box of condiments, and shows us
indisputably how fields are won. Such and such
proportions of pepper and salt went to make such a
breach or to repulse such a night attack." The North
American Review, while published in faraway Iowa,
also refused to be duped by the famed foreign chef's
visions of grandeur, and decried "this very inordinate
vanity, this exaggeration of the value of his services
and the importance of his reforms, this singular
simplicity of egotism" (262). But, if nothing else, the
book brought Soyer renewed attention—and perhaps
there is no such thing as bad publicity, as P.T. Barnum
is supposed to have said.
-
In his previous published works, Soyer's efforts at
self-presentation were limited largely to the paratext,
i.e. the prefaces, title pages, and especially
frontispieces. His Culinary Campaign however
offered Soyer an unprecedented forum for
self-fashioning and promotion, turning himself into a
sort of bold, humanitarian Mirobolant—the
multifaceted if deluded hero of his own narrative. As
the Times review remarks, "Soyer the Great, like
the heroes and demigods of ancient mythology, . . .
with his compound functions, is nevertheless a
consistent personage, except where, possibly from his
wanting a little medicine, he forgets for a moment that
he is the centre of creation."
-
Conversely then, the paratext here is remarkably
understated, giving little hint of the fanciful memoir
that follows. The frontispiece [fig.
31] is sober, with no tell-tale borders,
depicting "The Author" simply as the tired, aging,
ailing veteran of this "culinary campaign," without
even his signature cap. While the engraving of his
likeness "From a Photograph" does, at this early point
in the history of photography, confer upon the sitter a
certain stylish and modern air, it also suggests a kind
of documentary seriousness, which Soyer's grave facial
expression seems to confirm. So too does the title page
present the work in earnest tones, as
BEING HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES
OF THE LATE WAR.
WITH
THE PLAIN ART OF COOKERY
FOR
MILITARY AND CIVIL INSTITUTIONS, THE ARMY,
NAVY,
PUBLIC, ETC. ETC. (Soyer 1857)
His "principal object," he claims in the preface, is
to "perpetuate the successful efforts made by him" to
improve British soldiers' diet. The preface also
alludes to the book's "literary portion [which] the
Author has dished up to the best of his ability," yet
downplays it, allowing that readers may not "relish"
this, and hoping that the work's "literary
deficiencies" would be compensated for by the
"succulence" of "the many new and valuable receipts,
applicable to the Army, Navy, Military and Civilian
Institutions, and the public in general" (Soyer 1995,
xiii; all references to this edition, unless noted
otherwise). His use of culinary vocabulary ("portion,"
"dish up," "relish," "succulent"), like the title
page's qualification of him as "Author of 'The Modern
Housewife,' 'Shilling Cookery for the People,' Etc.,"
underscore the modesty of the role he seems to be
assuming, as no more than a simple cookbook author.
-
Should all this make one expect a dull treatise on
mess-hall dining, the book's opening plate and opening
line promise far more spectacular fare instead, in line
with Soyer's well-known histrionic proclivities.
"'HURRAH! hurrah! Bravo! Bravo!'" (1) begins the
narrative, with "rounds of applause" that mark the end
of a show Soyer attended at "Old Drury," making the
reader wonder what other sorts of performances lie
ahead. So too the opening plate [fig.
32], by illustrator G.H. Hine, on the preceding
page, offers a kind of alternate frontispiece, far more
theatrical, and suggestive of what is to come, than the
official one, with its subdued portrait. Here Soyer
stands center stage within a scene that, in concert
with the work's title, juxtaposes kitchen and
battlefield. He stands in the foreground, next to one
of his field stoves, from whence rise smoke and steam
that mix with the surrounding battlefield haze, the
literal fog of war, to form a cloud in which appear the
work's title and author's name, the latter on a
characteristic, sharp diagonal. At Soyer's feet
lie battlefield debris, like broken wood or
various-sized cannonballs, and, most prominently, next
to the stove, provisions for cooking. These include a
large cabbage beside a large cannonball, and smaller
soup vegetables (onions, turnips) that resemble the
smaller cannonballs nearby. The similar size and shape
of foodstuffs and munitions, and their proximity,
suggest their affinity—their parallel role in a
"culinary campaign." In the hazy background we can just
make out the silhouettes of two cannoneers, who load
guns to be fired out, beyond our field of vision, into
the battle, thus placing Soyer and his field kitchen
squarely behind the lines and, paradoxically it
seems—given his starring role here—behind
the scenes.
-
In the middleground two soldiers carry a stockpot,
suspended on a pole, toward the line of battle. A few
steps away, a kneeling artilleryman lifts one
cannonball from a pile, presumably to bring it to the
cannoneers for loading. He faces us, his back to the
hostilities, but when he has lifted the cannonball, he
will no doubt turn and head the same way as his
stockpot-toting comrades. In the other direction, in
the space separating him from Soyer, providing a visual
link between the two men and the spaces they occupy,
sits an unidentified case, fitted with wooden supports
to facilitate carrying, suggesting its use transporting
supplies to and fro, yet the nature of these
contents—culinary, or military?—remains
indeterminate. Along similar lines the Times
reviewer asks, about the "spherical objects" in this
print, "Are they cannon-balls to be stewed into cannon
broth, or Dutch cheeses about to be fired from a
mortar? . . . the culinary and combative emblems are so
mixed that our judgment is perplexed and we stumble
over our history." Indeed, starting from the provisions
at lower right, sweeping across and upward like the
stove's copious exhaust, through chef Soyer, to the
kneeling artilleryman, to the soup carriers, and on to
the distant cannoneers at upper left, the composition
traces a supply chain, visually compelling and
coherent, yet heterogeneous, systematically mixing food
and weapons. Despite the scene's apparent seriousness
and sense of purpose, there also lurks, just beneath
the surface, the carnivalesque spectacle of a
Rabelaisian food-fight, with cabbages as cannonballs,
and stockpots as war engines.6
-
This plate reverses conventional battlefield
imagery, highlighting not some bold cavalry officer's
charge into hostile territory, but rather the chief
culinary campaigner's efforts behind the lines. The
focal point of the composition, Soyer stands next to
both his signature invention and byline writ large, his
name and hat both on a characteristic diagonal, the
latter less emphatically so, however, than in other
portraits. Indeed, his garb is less dandified than
elsewhere, and generally martial, but still with
original twists—in addition to the cocked hat,
his extra-wide trouser stripe, or broad, flaring
lapels. "Standard issue" was just not Soyer's
style.
-
The small cannonballs on the ground around him,
whether stray British munitions or vestiges of enemy
volleys, signal the nearness of hostilities, and thus
danger to the would-be warrior-chef, who strikes an
appropriately resolute pose. On some level, this may be
a wishful reworking of Soyer's far less heroic stance
under fire during the July Revolution. But, more than
just unflappable here, Soyer appears virtually
immobile. His hands are absent, lost in his pockets.
His tiny feet, while signifying elegance and refinement
to the nineteenth-century viewer, also seem inadequate
for his well-nourished frame, offering dubious support
for a man of action. These apparent handicaps only make
sense within the context of his broader efforts to
fashion himself an author and inventor. A man not so
much of action, but of ideas—less a warrior, than
a wizard—he accomplishes extraordinary things
less through physical agency than through sheer force
of will, as if by magic.
-
There are indeed, in this plate, intimations of
something greater, grander, beyond the seemingly
mundane, repetitive tasks being performed. These
include the eerily bright light bathing Soyer, the high
seriousness of his facial expression, or various
literary and cultural resonances—from the
Rabelaisian undertones, to the message emerging from a
puff of smoke, shades of Aladdin's lamp, the sorcerer's
cauldron, and even the Angel of God in the burning
bush. So too, in Soyer's narrative, what seems ordinary
never is: thus, a ragged young stowaway, "in spite of
his attire, looked as brisk and independent as a modern
Diogenes" (300); or, Lord Raglan's headquarters which,
while "by no means grand nor imposing," brings to mind
illustrious comparisons, "Shakespeare's house at
Stratford, or the humble cot of the poet Burns in
Ayrshire" (124). Likewise, a visit to the hospital and
barracks at Kululee, to take stock of kitchen utensils
and provisions (including "some very nice calfs'-foot
jelly"), and to evaluate the inefficiency of the stoves
(which used "about 170 per cent. more wood than was
necessary"), is framed by astonishing panoramas of
Constantinople, spied from the road—first under
the blazing midday sun, then by "beautiful Oriental
moonlight" on the return trip—views "so sublime
and picturesque . . . that in an enchanted dream alone
one could hope to realize the effect of the mirage"
(77-79). In Soyer's Romantic turn of mind, the sublime
always looms on the horizon.
-
Much like his contemporary Victor Hugo who, in exile
during the Second Empire, turned increasingly to
distinguished precursors (e.g. Moses, St. John the
Baptist, Dante, or Voltaire) to defend and illustrate
his reputation (Garval 2004a 177-187), Soyer conjures
up notable ghosts. At an unexpected luncheon encounter
with "the scion of a celebrated epicure," his
apostrophe to the departed gourmand recalls
Hugo's dabbling in spiritism at the time: "Oh! Sefton,
Sefton! may your noble ashes repose in peace in your
tomb! The glory of your name has not faded: your
grandson, the youthful Lord Sefton, is an epicure!"
(284). The other gastronomic and culinary figures he
invokes include the ancients Apicius (196) and Lucullus
(278); his "countryman" Brillat-Savarin (166); and
especially Vatel, the patron saint and holy martyr of
French cuisine—actually an officier de
bouche or steward, whom Soyer, like many others,
mistakes for a chef de cuisine, an inaccuracy
that exaggerates chefs' social status at the time: "O
Vatel! my noble master . . . . Fortunately you lived in
an era of gastronomic grandeur, when a chef de
cuisine bore a high rank, and had your own
aristocratic weapon wherewith to do the noble deed
which gilds your name" (280-281; cf. also 229). With no
such weapon at hand, but likewise facing a grand dinner
"in jeopardy," the incurably cheerful Soyer does not
imitate his paragon's suicide; instead, he opens a
bottle of champagne and, he notes, "At the second glass
. . . everything appeared couleur de rose . . .
I felt that success was certain" (280).
-
Soyer relishes basking in the reflected light, not
just of such past "gastronomic grandeur" but,
revealingly, of grandeur tout court. Napoleon,
Romantic paradigm of glory, is of course an unavoidable
reference. En route from Marseille to Constantinople,
Soyer stops at the emperor's birthplace in Corsica, and
provides an account of the visit, reproduced in his
Culinary Campaign.7
Always eager to distinguish himself, he turns this
by-then standard pilgrimage into an original, and
appropriately culinary one: presumably mustering the
same lady-killing charm as his sosie Mirobolant,
he convinces La Signora Grossetti, the Buonaparte
family's 83-year old housekeeper, to show him the
kitchen, "a request having never before been made by
the numerous travellers who daily visit" (40). Relating
to Napoleon by examining the "ruins" of his kitchen,
chef Soyer stakes out an idiosyncratic, personal
connection with the now-defunct great man. He thus pens
his narrative of the visit "upon the stove in this
celebrated kitchen—which first alimented the
brain of that great hero," and which, we infer, now
inspires these lines. He lays claim to culinary
souvenirs "from that epoch"—"a piece of tile from
the charcoal stove, and a rough wooden meat-hook . . .
found in the larder"—which he intends to place in
his kitchen at Scutari. In questionable taste, but
likewise revealing of this keen desire to establish an
intimate link with Bonaparte, he boasts to his travel
companions of his "amorous adventure with the nurse of
the first Napoleon" (40-41). In the accompanying
illustration [fig.
33], Soyer stands alone, peering into the
shadowy opening of the stove, as if contemplating the
mysteries of Napoleon's destiny, the darkness that
emanates and enshrouds him suggesting both the stove's
erstwhile radiance, and that of the luminary it once
nourished.
-
In much the same way, Soyer takes pains to place
himself in the footsteps of that other great Romantic
hero, Lord Byron, epitome of passion and flair, and
celebrated champion of the underdog, who wrote famously
of his travels in Greece and Turkey, and perished on a
mission to free the Greeks from Turkish rule. Byron,
like Napoleon, was an exemplar for nineteenth-century
glory-seekers, and particularly for creative figures
like Soyer, but the latter's affinity for the Romantic
poet and ill-starred revolutionary was especially
wide-ranging and long-standing. Soyer dressed with the
exuberance of the 1820s well into the sober 1850s, a
dashing, Byronic character amid dour, black-suited
Gladstones. His culinary campaign aided the British war
effort in general, yet benefited most directly the
undernourished rank and file, much like his crusade to
feed the Irish poor during the Potato Famine, or like
his increasingly popularizing cookbooks, which offered
the masses appetizing but inexpensive recipes. In
addition, Soyer's humanitarian mission to the Crimea
took him to the same part of the world, and even to
some of the same locales Byron had visited decades
earlier; he too fell gravely ill while away and, though
he did return to London, his health was altered, and he
would survive just over a year, before his untimely
death.
-
While Soyer's career ended on this dramatically
Byronic note, it had also begun—and, in large
measure, played out—in the same "key of B."
Arriving in London in 1831, the strains of a
fortuitously-intoned Marseillaise still ringing
in his ears, the young faux-revolutionary took on, and
took off with, the recently-defunct radical Romantic's
dandified persona. Not unlike the beret-coiffed,
baguette-toting American exchange student in Paris,
straining to be more French than the French, Soyer came
to London and strove to out-Byron Byron. And,
throughout his career, Soyer's fervent emulation of the
Byronic model largely defined the tenor of his fame,
fashioning a figure at once endearing and ridiculous,
avant-garde and retrograde, a champion of the common
people cloaked in the most uncommon frippery, his
extraordinary singularity served up in frenzied pursuit
of mass-market ubiquity.
-
As in the case of Napoleon, Soyer's Culinary
Campaign stresses his personal connection to Byron.
He notes of his "first-class interpreter" at Scutari,
Mr. Black:
. . . what was more remarkable still, he was the
husband of the celebrated Maid of Athens, whose
company I had the pleasure of enjoying several times;
and although this interesting personage is now in her
tenth lustre, some remains of the great Byron seem
still engraved on the physiognomy of the once
celebrated Greek beauty; and she informed me that
when Lord Byron wrote his poem on her, she was but
ten years of age, he at the time residing opposite
the house of her parents at Athens. (75)
Here, as with Napoleon's housekeeper, Soyer makes
this connection through a very old woman, who spans the
generations separating him from these illustrious
predecessors. Soyer even finds Byron worth mentioning
when this is not really relevant, quoting his dragoman
who recounts a "curious tale" about the Leander Tower,
but then remarks that "it has not the least relation to
the legend of the two lovers celebrated by Lord Byron,
who also swam from Sestos to Abydos" (49).8
In Soyer's narrative, he includes as well a letter he
addressed to the London Illustrated News, dated
"ACROPOLIS, ATHENS, March 18": "At the present
time," he notes, "in the ancient Parthenon, I am
cooking, with my new camp-stove, on a fallen capital of
the stupendous ruins, a petit déjeuner
à la fourchette, with Greek and Sicilian
wines, for my distinguished fellow-travelers" (42-43).
His choice of a cook-out site is strategic, for this is
not only one of the most prestigious monuments in
western civilization but, more specifically, a place
haunted by the memory of Byron, whose impassioned
defense of the Greek claim to the Parthenon friezes so
identified him with the ancient temple that it was even
suggested he be buried there. The accompanying
illustration [fig.
34] parallels the earlier one of Soyer at
Ajaccio. As his travel companions look on, Soyer once
again stands in the foreground, toward the left, facing
a stove that effects his communion with the "ruins" of
a distinguished past. What indeed might emerge here
from his suggestively-named "Magic Stove"? A trio
of hungry officers watch and gesture at the flash of
light rising from the pan Soyer heats over the stove: a
vision of the fork-breakfast ahead, and perhaps also
the ghostly afterglow of Byron's presence.
-
But summoning spirits is a tricky business. Implied
comparisons between the great men of yore and the
contemporary aspirant can backfire, as the example of
Napoléon III so amply demonstrated at the time,
with tragedy repeating as farce, and grandeur shrinking
to pettiness.9
Still, the temptation to invoke the prestige of past
glory can be irresistible, even for those who should
know better. Victor Hugo excoriated Napoléon III
for emulating an illustrious uncle, while he himself
indulged in far greater genealogical pretensions,
verging on messianic delusion, for which he in turn was
lampooned by contemporary commentators and artists
(Garval 2004a 178-179). What then of Soyer, who rivaled
Hugo in his verve and hunger for fame, but without a
shred of the critical perspective that, alas, would
fail the exiled poet? Not surprisingly, Soyer cuts
a ridiculous figure vis-à-vis his chosen
exemplars. Where Vatel once brandished a sword, he
wields a champagne bottle; where Bonaparte led la
Grande Armée, he commands a field kitchen;
and, where Byron leapt to the defense of the Greek
people, he prepares an omelette.
-
Soyer can seem ridiculous in many ways, both as
protagonist and narrator of his Culinary
Campaign. He cannot resist a gag or pun, no matter
how awful—for instance, about Mary Seacole, a
Jamaican mother figure or mère noire, at
the Black Sea or Mer Noire. He also interlards
his narrative with copious commercial plugs, dropped
names, celebrity endorsements, and testimonials. Yet,
amid such manic foolishness and puffery, there remains
the admirable spectacle of a man who, in a very real
way, contributed more to the war effort than the
military commanders of this dismally mismanaged
conflict. Since then, Soyer's innovations have also
been recognized for their more general usefulness, by
militaries worldwide. Already in 1861, for example, in
U.S. Army Colonel H. L. Scott's influential Military
Dictionary, the "Cooking" entry quoted 16 pages
worth of Soyer's recipes, directly from his Culinary
Campaign. Similarly, an online "Short History" of
logistics, maintained by the Canadian armed forces,
still notes Soyer's "quantum leap in the art and
science of food services during the Crimean War . . . .
[He] invented a mobile kitchen, which virtually took
military cookery from the Middle Ages into the modern
world."
-
Soyer's Culinary Campaign is remarkable as
well for the way it renegotiates his public persona
and, in a larger sense, redefines prominent chefs'
place in society. The book's prefatory material already
resists the literary pretense so prevalent elsewhere in
his oeuvre, the standard recourse of
image-conscious chefs for a half-century already, and
at least another half-century to come. Turning away
from the the man of letters paradigm allowed Soyer to
envision other possibilities. In his Crimean
adventures, he adopts the seemingly most unglamorous
role for a chef, presiding over poorly-appointed
military kitchens, performing an institutional function
far from the ideals of genius and artistry invoked by
ambitious chefs from Carême onward, to boost
their prestige and authority. It is a paradoxical,
almost Christ-like ploy, embracing the most humble of
incarnations, in order to propel himself to the
loftiest of heights. He takes the obscure realm of the
chef or logistician—behind the scenes, behind the
lines, or "back of the house," in contemporary
restaurant lingo—and thrusts it into the
limelight. He thus emerges in a novel role, as an actor
not just in the Crimean theater of operations, but on
the greater stage of world events, a bold
Napoleonic-Byronic man of destiny, making his mark on
history. In this, as in so many other ways, Soyer was a
hard act to follow, but whether or not another chef
would assume such a grandiose role anytime soon is
beside the point. What matters is the underlying shift
here in the vision of the chef as a public figure.
Soyer's example established that chefs did not have to
pretend to be great writers in order to be seen as
noteworthy personages. And this is precisely the change
in perspective underpinning the later emergence of
chefs as broadcast stars.
Soyer's Legacy
-
Alexis Soyer was an odd, anomalous figure,
reminiscent of Grimod de la Reynière in seeming
at once quaintly behind and radically ahead of his
time. While Soyer's ostentatious personal style struck
his contemporaries as outmoded, his ideas and
initiatives anticipated much of our own culinary and
gastronomic modernity. His unconventional dress in the
kitchen prefigured the vogue today for "non-traditional
'fun' chef's attire" (George 9). Even allowing for the
ambiguities and contradictions in Soyer's relation to
the masses, he had a degree of social conscience not
seen again in a prominent chef before Alice Waters
(who, in a book jacket endorsement for Ann Arnold's
The Adventurous Chef: Alexis Soyer, praises
"this chef who cooked with great talent and
compassion"). Soyer was interested in regional and
foreign cuisines and even, in his Symposium of All
Nations, as well as in the book he did not live to
write—to be called The Culinary Wonders of All
Nations—anticipated what has come to be
known, for better or worse, as "world cuisine."
Likewise, long before Julia Child or Emeril Lagasse, he
was an unapologetic popularizer, an enterprising
promoter of his own image and marketer of associated
products, as well as an extraordinary performer and
impresario. Indeed, his Symposium, with its
diverse attractions, strolling entertainers, fireworks,
and other visual effects, was more than a restaurant,
"it was also what would today be called a theme park"
(Brandon 197). So too the contradictions of Soyer's
existence as a famed French chef in Victorian
England—caught between ridicule and veneration,
Bonaparte and Byron, Cailles en sarcophage and
Yorkshire pudding—already acted out something
much like the "cosmic ambivalence about French culture"
which Toby Miller identifies as characteristic of
"Anglo-speaking countries," and central to the rise
there of food television (223).
-
How then to gauge Soyer's legacy? Questions of
cultural transmission and transformation become all the
more thorny when dealing with such a forward-thinking
figure. Much of his originality was misunderstood in
his day—misconstrued as just vanity, dismissed as
simple eccentricity—and largely forgotten
afterward. By the 1880s, his books were out of print,
and long remained unavailable. In the early years of
the twentieth century, "the grandson of 'the great
Soyer'" (9) did revive his ancestor's memory a bit. In
a career reminiscent of his grandfather's,
French-born-and-trained Nicolas Soyer rose to
prominence as chef of an exclusive London club
(Brooks's), and achieved considerable though
short-lived renown for his popularizing efforts and
technical innovations—in particular, for what he
called "Soyer's Paper-Bag Cookery" [fig.
35].10
Despite the "great furor" (5) this caused at the time,
the "era of Paper-Bag Cookery" (99) turned out to be
brief.
-
There is, however, a suggestive if indirect
connection to be made between Alexis Soyer and the
stars of today's televised food shows. Like Soyer,
Xavier Marcel Boulestin (1878-1943) was, for his
generation, the best-loved French culinarian in
England. His life also began and ended in ways that
recall Soyer. He was born and raised in France
(actually a native of the Périgord, thus a
Gascon like Thackeray's Mirobolant); toward the end of
his life, at the start of the Second World War, and in
the spirit of Soyer's "culinary campaign," he
petitioned the British government (unsuccessfully) to
let him use his expertise to help the war effort, by
reforming the country's rationing system.
-
As a young man, Boulestin came to Paris to pursue
his literary ambitions, and was engaged as secretary
and collaborator by Willy, husband of the novelist and
performer Colette. He also performed opposite Colette,
and with some success, in a couple of
plays, including one by Willy "in which Colette
appeared as a gigolo and Boulestin as an English barman
speaking poor French" (Hooker 7). Wary though of
Willy's character and motivations, he left
Paris—like Soyer before him—to seek a new
life in London. There, he frequented leading artists
and writers of the day, and was even invited to Soyer's
old haunt, the Reform Club. He tried his hand at many
things, including interior decorating in the modern
style, translating plays, editing and publishing luxury
editions, and writing theatrical reviews and other
commentary for the French and British press. In late
1922 or early 1923, seemingly in spite of himself,
Boulestin stumbled upon cookbook writing. His account
of this turning point recalls Soyer denying his own
interest in writing cookbooks, in the preface to The
Gastronomic Regenerator. Boulestin had met with an
acquaintance in publishing, about another matter:
Just before leaving and hardly realizing what I was
saying, I said:
'By the way, you would not be interested in a cookery
book, would you?'
'It's exactly what we want', answered Byard. The
contract was signed there and then. Not a line was
written, and I was given £10 in advance of the
royalties. (Hooker 20)
Thus began a series of successful cookbooks and,
with it, Boulestin's unexpected new career as an expert
in French cuisine. He opened his first restaurant, the
Restaurant Français, in 1925, at Leicester
Square; the even more successful Restaurant Boulestin
opened in 1927, in Covent Garden, with walls and
ceilings painted by Jean-Émile Laboureur and
Marie Laurencin, curtains designed by Raoul Dufy, and a
cosmopolitan clientele of London's high society and
distinguished foreign visitors. Boulestin came to be
known however for his simple, unpretentious, but
delicious food, and soon began disseminating his
culinary ideas in various ways. He opened "X.M.
Boulestin's School of Simple French Cookery" (Hooker
26), realizing Soyer's unfulfilled dream of founding a
"College of Domestic Economy" (Volant and Warren 192);
he wrote articles for the Daily Telegraph, the
Evening Standard, Country Life, and
Harper's Bazaar; he made sound recordings of
cookery lessons for H.M.V.; he was featured in British
Movietone News, showing how to prepare the famed
Omelette Boulestin; and, on January 21, 1937, in
a BBC studio in London, he hosted the first installment
of a television series called "Cook's Night Out."
Sharing Soyer's penchant for popularization, Boulestin
took his message to the new media of his day, and
reached an ever-larger public. He was Soyer's spiritual
heir in many ways and, not surprisingly, he was the
world's first television chef.
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