{"id":5461,"date":"2017-06-06T15:17:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T15:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/?p=5461"},"modified":"2017-08-04T11:29:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T11:29:33","slug":"for-the-love-of-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/for-the-love-of-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"For the love of cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"

Included in the latest volume of the Letters of T. S. Eliot<\/em> is a letter to the Editor of the Times<\/em> entitled \u2018Stilton Cheese\u2019, written on 25 November 1935 and published a few days later. Eliot is replying to a letter from poet and literary editor J. C. Squire and his \u2018spirited defence of Stilton Cheese\u2019. An expert on the cheese, Squire was heading up the Stilton Memorial Committee and had proposed the erection of a statue of the inventor of the Stilton \u2013 a Mrs Paulet of Wymondham. While Eliot could see the worthiness of a statue, he questioned whether anyone would bother to look at it \u2013 \u2018In a few years\u2019 time the Stiltonian monument would be just another bump in a public place, no more inspected than the rank and file of statesmen, warriors, and poets.\u2019 Instead, Eliot suggested the formation of a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Cheeses in a bid for cheese to be \u2018brought back to its own in England\u2019 (The Stilton Cheesemakers\u2019 Association was formed the following year in 1936). Part of the role of the Society would be to \u2018visit all hotels and inns in Gloucestershire, demanding Double Gloster\u2019. Ending his letter, Eliot confesses a greater love for the \u2018noble old Cheshire\u2019 which beats even the finest Stilton when in \u2018prime condition\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Carbon copy of T. S. Eliot’s original letter to the Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Eliot received several letters in response to his letter to the Times<\/em>. In reply to medieval historian G. G. Coulton, Eliot acknowledges Coulton as the originator of the project for a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Cheese and comments on the recent decline in the quality of Wensleydale, \u2018that great cheese\u2019, which he believes to have been taken over by the Rowntree family. After a lapse in correspondence, Eliot\u2019s banking friend J. D. Aylward was prompted to write \u2013 he was concerned Eliot\u2019s cheese tastes were too narrow and nationalistic and over nearly two sides of paper imparts his own wisdom on the subject. Among his recommendations is the little lunch room at the Grosvenor in Chester \u2013 the place to enjoy Cheshire \u2018as it should be\u2019. In reply, Eliot suggests cheeses Aylward should try \u2013 Fressingfield, the Bayerische Beerk\u00e4se and the Gammel Ost \u2013 \u2018the Mount Everest of cheeses \u2026 made of reindeer milk and then stored for years under the beds of Norwegian farm folk.\u2019 Eliot is glad too to learn of a new cheese from Aylward (Chabichou) \u2013 \u2018but a part of the reason for living is the discovery of new cheeses.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Eliot\u2019s appreciation of cheese did not go unnoticed by his friends and acquaintances. In his book, The Pound Era<\/em>, Hugh Kenner recalls Eliot the joker with a tale of a particular Eliot-cheese encounter when the two men lunched together at The Garrick Club in November 1956. Eliot fancied \u2018a fine stilton\u2019 and after ordering he confided in his companion: \u2018Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first …\u00a0examined<\/em> it\u2019. Eliot \u2018the Critic\u2019 proceeded to examine the Stilton by tapping it and digging about, eventually declaring the cheese \u2018Rather past its prime\u2019 and unable to recommend it. Eliot prodded his way through the cheeseboard (sans Stilton), eventually landing on \u2018An Anonymous Cheese\u2019 which could not be identified by any of the Garrick staff and which, after careful examination, he ate in its entirety. Eliot had been \u2018digging about\u2019 in cheeses for a good twenty years \u2013 J. D. Aylward wrote (in the same letter mentioned above) \u2018I can see in my mind\u2019s eye the real joy with which you dig into the middle of a real ripe Stilton\u2019. Sharing a cheeseboard with T. S. Eliot must have been quite a thing.<\/p>\n

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Harrods cheese list annotated by T. S. Eliot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Aside from the letters and published anecdotes, the\u00a0archive contains a small testament to T. S. Eliot the Cheese Connoisseur \u2013 an annotated cheese list from Harrods (c.1957\u20131964). Eliot has marked the cheeses he would like, including two types of Cheshire, a Double Gloucester, Port du Salut, a Swiss Emmental Gruy\u00e8re and, of course, a blue Stilton, and has asterisked those cheeses to be included \u2018only when in v. good condition\u2019. Over twenty years since his letter to the Times<\/em> Eliot is still enjoying a Cheshire, a Double Gloucester and a Stilton.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Included in the latest volume of the Letters of T. S. Eliot is a letter to the Editor of the Times entitled \u2018Stilton Cheese\u2019, written on 25 November 1935 and published a few days later. Eliot is replying to a letter from poet and literary editor J. C. Squire and his \u2018spirited defence of Stilton … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5461"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5461\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}