Ford’s “Banquet at Calanques” makes his life in 1932 seem picnicky. He remembered that brilliant day and the “Homeric feast” enthusiastically. But by the time it was published in 1937, Ford was at various times ailing and depressed, quarreling with publishers and financially strapped.
Portrait of a Critic. Janice Biala’s portrait of Ford in 1932.
The scenery is an Impressionist’s dream: “Try then to figure for yourself blood-red cliffs into which a blue, shinning mirror should have introduced itself for miles-a fjord of the Mediterranean, a beach only to be approached by boats, with the dark-green, red trunked-stone-and umbrella-pines, the multicoloured boats grouped at the landing, the incredible blue of the sky, the incredible whiteness of the light, the ten-foot flames beneath the cauldrons but pale beneath the sun. And, beneath the mirror’s surface, shoals of vermilion, ultramarine, amethyst fishes and octopuses darting, like closed parasols, through the waving groves of algae.”
Fifty pounds of bouillabaisse was cooked in an immense cauldron over a driftwood fire. The rest was cooked elsewhere, lowered by pulley from the rocky cliff’s rim to the beach. As a practicing gourmand, Ford ensures enough to satisfy at least sixteen picnickers and “a shoal of children. He remembers twelve cocks stewed in wine with innumerable savory herbs, a salad as big as a cartwheel, sweet-cream cheese with a sauce made of marc and sweet herbs, apples, peaches, figs, and grapes. If he’s to be believed, they consumed sixty-one bottles of wine in four hours.
Ford’s friends Allen Tate and Carolyn Gordon attended the feast. Tate wrote “Picnic at Cassis,” later retitled “The Mediterranean.” and Gordon wrote “The Waterfall,” in which she alludes to a three-day picnic at Cassis hosted by a man (unnamed) who makes bouillabaisse and sings opera. Elizabeth David was impressed and mentions it as “A Provençal Picnic “in Summer Cooking.
Featured Image: Paul Signac. La Calanque (1906),
See Ford, Ford Madox. “Banquet at Calanques.” In Provence from Minstrels to the Machine (New York: Ecco Press, 1935. Reprint, 1979); Allen Tate. “The Mediterranean [1933].” In The Mediterranean and Other Poems. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1936; Caroline Gordon. “The Waterfall.” In The Complete Stories of Caroline Gordon. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1950; Elizabeth David.