The Sacred King of Cheeses

29 May 2011

Just finished a mid-morning snack of the last of a wonderfully creamy slice of Brie De Mieux. This is officially Europe's King of Cheeses and I was delighted to find it on offer at the excellent butcher in Newton Stewart's main street.

Imagine the situation. The year is 1815. The French Revolution had broken out in 1789 and from then Europe was involved in chaos. The guillotine was invented. Napoleon seized power in France in 1799 and crowned himself emperor in 1804. Napoleonic armies ravaged Spain and across Europe, even pressing on to Moscow, and a famous defeat with enormous casualties. Not Napoleon himself, of course. Finally, the Allied Powers, including Britain, defeated Napoleon. Millions lay dead across the Continent, cities and regions devastated, old boundaries vanished.

There was a need for the victors to sit down and talk about the future of Europe, including the definition of French borders, the establishment of the Netherlands, the dismantling of the old Holy Roman Empire, many questions to be settled in what are now Germany and Italy. The Congress of Vienna was called and representatives of the great powers headed there in 1815 to discuss and deal with all these questions. And cheese.

The diplomats and VIPs quickly started to argue over their dinners as to which was the best cheese in Europe. A competition was announced to decide the matter. Cheeses of every type, colour and size flooded into Vienna. Countries each sent many different cheeses and the result was mayhem and even more argument. So, it was decided that a new competition should be arranged and that this time only one cheese from each country would be allowed.

The rules were strict and interest intense. Finally, the judges announced that Brie de Mieux was now officially Europe's “Sacred King of Cheeses.” So that was that settled. Now, onto re-drawing the boundaries of a continent...

Brie de Mieux is a beautiful cheese and it has since 1980 been protected by its own denomination of origin like Champagne and Melton Mowbray pork pies. Mieux is about 60 miles from Paris. The Emperor Charlemagne is said to have tasted it in 774AD and became an early fan. The brie from there is made with raw unpasteurised cow's milk and is, yellow, creamy and soft. There is a nutty smell and a faint whiff of fermentation. It is difficult to make and there are only five or six producers.

Now is the best time to get hold of some Brie de Mieux, as it is best between April to September. It goes very well with salty crackers and must be eaten at room temperature – not straight from the fridge – with a glass of good wine.

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Having been defeated by Facebook, I am reactivating this blog.

An ornate post box adds style to street

An ornate post box adds style to street

The post box in the picture is a fine example of the design excellence of the Victorian era.

The first post box in mainland Britain was set up in Carlisle, in the north of England near the border with Scotland, in 1853. More post boxes followed on the streets of the nation.

The post box in the picture is of the Penfold design, which was installed between 1866 and 1879, and it can be seen today on a street in Stoke Newington, London, where it is still in use.

Originally post boxes were painted green and they only changed to red with the adoption of the Penfold design. However, green is still the colour of post boxes in China, including Hong Kong and China, and in Ireland.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009

Ancestors of the TV evangelists

Anyone seeking fine entertainment and a good laugh need only turn to the television channels carrying the programmes of the con men engaged in separating the religiously inclined from their money.

These bunco artistes have a long heritage and their forerunners have preyed on the gullible from time immemorial.

In the 19th century British people, for some reason, felt that foreigners were in need of enlightenment and funds were enthusiastically raised to send out busybodies to interfere with native cultures around the world.

Then, as now, the Horn of Africa, was a constant source of tales of misery and woe.

A character called Chelsea George found himself in jail in Winchester, where he palled up with two other convicts, Russia Bob who was, in fact, Irish but who had visited Russia. Jew Jim was a fine impersonator of various characters. Chelsea George had acquired a dark tan from traveling overseas.

When they heard that a missionary from Sierra Leone had been rousing the faithful at packed meetings in Staffordshire, the jailbirds started planning. On release they printed some leaflets, bought costumes and hired a few assistants.

In no time at all, they were holding their own missionary meetings in small towns. Kellow Chesney, quotes an account in his excellent book “The Victorian Underworld,” 1970, Book Club Edition. He says an observer attended one of the meetings.

Jew Jim started things off, claiming to be a Jew who had converted to Christianity. He had become a minister and had traveled to the South Seas, Africa and India. Then Russia Bob appeared.

“…as his worthy and self-denying colleague, and Chelsea George as the first fruits of their ministry – as one who had left houses and land, wife and children, and taken a long and hazardous voyage to show Christians in England that their sable brethren, children of one common Parent, were beginning to cast their idols to the moles and bats…As argument always gains by illustration the orator pulled out a tremendous black doll dressed up in Orient style. This, Jew Jim assured his audience, was an idol brought from Murat in Hindoostan. He presented it to Chelsea George for his worship and embraces.

“The convert indignantly repelled the insinuation, pushed the idol from him, spat in its face, and cut as many capers as a dancing bear. The trio at this stage began ´puckering´ [talking privately] to each other in murdered French dashed with a little Irish; after which the missionaries said that their convert (who had only a few words of English) would now profess his faith. All was attention as Chelsea George came forward. He stroked his beard, put his hand in his breast to keep down his dickey, and turning his eyes upwards said: ´I believe in Desus Tist – dlory to ´is ´oly Name´.

“This elicited some loud `amens` from an assemblage of nearly 1000 persons, and catching the favourable opportunity, a ´school of pals,´ appointed for the purpose, went round and made the collection. Out of the abundance of their credulity and piety the populace contributed sixteen pounds. The whole scene was enacted out of doors, and presented to the stranger very pleasing impressions…One verse of hymn, and the blessing pronounced was the signal for separation. A little shaking of hands concluded the exhibition, and ´every man went to his own house.”

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©Phillip Bruce 2009

An early world opera tour

Opera stars frequently tour the world today playing to packed houses and commanding sky-high fees. They travel in luxury and with every comfort.

Things must have been a little different back in the 1830s but at least one opera company was engaged in a tour that took it very far from its Italian home.

John Francis Davis, records in his book “The Chinese”, published in 1836, that the small foreign community at Macau was delighted to have enjoyed a season of opera in 1833.

“A party of Italian opera-singers from Naples, consisting of two signoras, and five signors, after having exercised their vocation with success in South America, proceeded on their way across the Pacific westward towards Calcutta, as to a likely and profitable field. Circumstances having occasioned their touching at Macao, they met there with inducements to remain some six months, until the season should admit of their prosecuting the voyage; and a temporary theatre having been contrived, they performed most of Rossini´s operas with great success. The Chinese were surprised to find what, in the jargon of Canton (Guangzhou), is called a Sing-song, erected by the foreigners on the shores of the celestial empire, and in that very shape, too, which most nearly resembles their own performances, a mixture of song and recitative. As the nearest way home from Calcutta, for these Italians, was by the Cape of Good Hope, they were a singular instance of the Opera performing a voyage round the world.” Davis, John Francis, 1836. The Chinese. Volume Two, pages 186-187. Charles Knight, publishers. London.

The vastly-expensive grand new Opera House in Beijing floats like a giant egg in a lake. But it was back in 1833 in a temporary shed in Macau that the first Western opera arrived in the country and foreign residents and curious Chinese would have been able to enjoy Rossini´s works such as the Barber of Seville.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009

Two Hong Kong photographs

Here are two Hong Kong photographs from my collection. They were taken by a sailor of Britain’s Royal Navy who spent a considerable amount of time in Hong Kong in the 1930s. Click to enlarge the images.

The first photograph shows a procession in a street. Two large lanterns with big characters are in front, with a boy banging a drum and two boys beating gongs. Behind them is an ornate decoration, which would no doubt have been very colourful. Can anyone come up with any suggestions as to the purpose of the procession? Could it have been a funeral? Or was it the celebration of some happy occasion?

The second photograph was taken from Queen’s Road looking up Wyndham Street. With a magnifying glass it is possible to identify the distinctive striped building of the old Dairy Farm building, now home to the Foreign Correspondents´ Club and the Fringe Club. Many flower sellers can be seen. When first established, the Hong Kong Club moved into a club house at the junction of Queen’s Road and Wyndham Street. The gentlemen members of that club for the colony’s business elite liked to wear flowers in buttonholes in their jacket lapels. The flower sellers provided fresh blooms each day. The club later moved to its present location but the flower sellers remained behind. Today there are no flower sellers actually in Wyndham Street but some can be found in nearby side streets, a colourful and fragrant reminder of old times in Hong Kong.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009

Strong wheels for Beijing carts

This picture shows a workshop that made wheels for the tough carts that ferried goods and people around Beijing about a hundred years ago. The wheels had to be very strong to cope with the poor roads and the heavy loads.

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©Phillip Bruce 2009.