Seneca says that eating ripe figs at a picnic brings “me a New Year feast every day, and I make the New Year happy and prosperous by good thoughts and greatness of soul.” Figs—only figs—that he claims is a substitute for bread. It is among the oddest main dishes for a picnic, so odd that […] read more

Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, is the second person to use picnic in English and spell it in a modern way. His son Philip, living in Leipzig, wrote that he attended a picnic gathering at Madame Valentin’s salon, but this 1748 letter is lost. Chesterfield was familiar with the salon assembly but not a picnic. […] read more

Keats uses the phrase “pic nic scandal” to suggest something silly, and he tosses it off as if it’s a common phrase, but it’s unique to him. Writing to his brother George and his wife Georgiana, he writes, “Perhaps as you were fond of giving me sketches of character you may like a little pic […] read more

Writing to his dear friend (and probable mistress) Martha Blount, Pope related his adventure at Netley Abbey and his alfresco luncheon there. He does not call it a picnic because the word was not used in English parlance until 1806. (See Harris’s The happy courtship, Merry Marriage, and Pic-Nic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny […] read more