During the War of the Fronde, hundreds of satires, vers burlesques, were published in Paris, read and forgotten. All parties in the war were satirized: Jules, Cardinal Mazarin (First Minister), the Queen Mother, under-age King Louis XIV, the Prince of Condé, members...
When audiences laughed at the pedant Vadius in Molière’s The Learned Ladies (1672), those in the know recognized Ménage shouting at a rival, “I defy you in verse, prose, Greek, and Latin.” When audiences laughed at the pedant Vadius in...
Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, is the second person to use picnic in English and spell it in a modern way. His son Philip wrote that he attended a picnic gathering at Madame Valentin’s salon, but his 1748 letter is lost. His father’s letter was published...
Samuel Foote’s The Nabob, now obscure, is the first link picnic with the compound word “nick-nack.” He used it in the sense of dining en piquenique, which suggests familiarity. The alliterative corruption is meant to be humorous for those who knew...
Georgina Battiscombe’s 1949 English Picnics is a pioneering study of English picnics in literature and art that has become a go-to standard. Battiscombe asserts the English picnicker “is a devotee of the simple life; for a brief moment, he apes the noble savage....
![Pic Nic: A Club for Gamblers, Actors, and Pic Nic Dinners (1801)]()
The Pic Nic Society attracted obsessive gamblers, eager amateur actors called Dilettanti, and gourmand diners. Taking advantage of a truce in a decade-long war with France (lead by Napoleon, then First Consul), the Pic Nics wagered (and lost) that London might have a...
Gillray’s Blowing up the Pic Nics; – or – Harlequin Quixote attacking the Puppets. Vide Tottenham Street Pantomime (April 2, 1802) is an important reason picnic entered English common parlance. Before Gillray, pique-nique was a trendy French word known to...
Elliott’s moral tale The Mice and Their Pic Nic failed to persuade readers that a “pic nic dinner,” especially in London, is sinful. Elliott’s readers were expected to recognize her mouse story as an adaptation of Aesop’s fable...
Corny picnic satire was in vogue among English music before Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1871 Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old. Typical “The Pic-Nic” is sung to the air of “Here’s the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen” from Sheridan’s The...
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...
