Rousseau and Abbé Etienne Condillac dined en piquenique sometime in 1745 or 1747. The date is uncertain because Rousseau is careless with dates related to the incident twenty years after in Confessions. Hard up and living in Paris in the rue Saint-Denis, Rousseau...
Tolstoy’s “The Hunt” from Childhood, Boyhood, Youth is a memoir episode of picnicking with his father during a hunt in which he remembers the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest: the chatter of the peasants, rumbling of horses, cries of quails,...
The custom of sharing food or eranos was common among the ancient Greeks. In The Memorabilia, Xenophon discusses a dinner party at which Socrates suggests that the food and drink be collected in common stock, so there is no social discord about who brought what to...
Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, “picnicked” in Hyde Park in 1654. According to Cromwell’s secretary of state Edmund Ludlow, “His highness, only accompanied with secretary Thurloe and some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take...
Hickey’s Memoirs included a picnic luncheon in Westminster Abbey during the coronation of George III in September 1762. His memory of the coronation is humorous if it’s true. Many of Hickey’s memories are lascivious, and he was regarded as a rake....
Les Rêvieries du Promeneur Solitaire or Reveries of a Solitary Walker was written in 1776-78, left unfinished, and published posthumously in 1782. It’s composed of ten “walks” or personal essays; the fourth includes the episode about dining in Madame...
Among his many adventures traipsing about England, John Byng was proud of picnicking on the far side of High Force though the experience left him miserably wet. After spending an uncomfortable night in an inn, Byng hired a guide and, stuffing his pockets with eatable,...
From 1780-1820, “Dilettanti,” or amateur theater aficionados, organized theater groups. Among the most passionate, Louise Craven, Margravine of Ansbach, who wrote plays, produced and acted in them, persuaded her doting husband, the Margrave of Ansbach, to...
Five years into his six-year exile on St. Helena, Napoleon was pale, tired-looking, and fat, though his face showed no fatigue or illness. Still, after a ten-mile journey on horseback (on hilly terrain), he uncharacteristically stopped for a social visit at Mount...
Writing in 1804, Longchamps suggests that sharing the bill at dinner, dîner en manière de pique-nique was stylish in the 1740s. Perhaps, but it was an old memory, and by then, dining en pique-nique was common. Longchamps explains that while in the employ of Emilie du...
