Perhaps it’s gossip, but according to Robert Lewis Taylor, Fields crammed his Lincoln or Cadillac, he was a collector, with hampers of watercress, chopped olives and nuts, tongue, peanut butter, and strawberry preserves, deviled eggs, and spiced ham sandwiches, celery stuffed with Roquefort cheese, black caviar, pâté de foie gras, anchovies; smoked oysters, baby shrimps, and crabmeat, tinned lobster, potted chicken and turkey, Swiss, Liederkranz, and camembert cheeses, olives, three or four jars of glazed fruit, angel food and devil’s food cakes, gin, wine, and a case of Lanson champagne.
As they were leaving, Taylor purports that Fields announced, “What we’ve missed, we’ll pick up on the way.”
* For other picnics, see Norman Z. McLeod’s It’s a Gift for another of Field’s rollicking picnic and Calvin Trillin’s “Fly Frills to Miami,” from Alice, Let’s Eat (1978) posted on PicnicWit.com
Featured Image: Fields’s 1938 Cadillac
See Robert Lewis Taylor. W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes Garden City: Doubleday, 1949