Winter picnics are few, and among the best is Elizabeth von Arnim’s on a freezing afternoon on a bluff above the Baltic. On a brilliant January day, Elizabeth’s birthday, she travels about three hours in a horse-drawn carriage over deep snow to a bluff...
Le Pique-Nique was probably not Toulouse-Lautrec’s title because the French did not use pique-nique for such a meal. The subject is the Pierrot, the sad-sack clown, with whom Lautrec identified as a man who does not get the genuine affection of the woman he loves....
Situated on the bluff near St. Tropez overlooking the brilliant blue ocean, Bonnard’s picnic is one delightfully cheerful mood. Everything is gold, yellow, brown, and green around the woman, a man, a child, and a recumbent dog. It’s a palette suggesting happiness and...
Fisher’s What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Etc. (1881) Is the second oldest African-American cookbook. When she does relate food to a particular meal, it’s Breakfast cream cake or Waffles for breakfast. She does not mention a...
Harland’s Brunswick Stew in Common Sense in the Household (1871) Brunswick Stew is a thick tomato-based stew usually made with lima or butter beans, okra, corn, and meats such as beef, pork, chicken, or squirrel. In Harland believes the stew is named after New...
The second oldest African American cookbook is Fisher’s What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Etc. She does not mention picnics in her text, but fried chicken is a picnic staple. Fried Chicken: Cut the chicken up, separating every...
![James [Jacques] Tissot’s Picnic on the Grass (1881/82)](https://picnicwit.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/James-Jacques-Tissot-Le-dejeuner-sur-lherbe-1881-82.jpg)
Elizabeth Newton and her children enjoy a birthday party in Tissot’s garden in St. John Wood, London. The partygoers sit on cushions beside a picnic cloth laden with food and drinks prominently placed in the immediate foreground. The children are of secondary...
Trollope’s Phineas Redux is the fourth book in the Phineas Finn Series. It was among his most popular novels. Numerous hunt scenes and references suggest Finn’s plight evading his enemies. A halt during a fox hunt provides the opportunity for a simple picnic lunch in...
Pickwick’s picnic on a hunt in Dingley Dell is part of an abortive hunting expedition. It’s famous for Pickwick getting drunk and Sam Weller’s discussion of veal pies, pronounced “weal” in Weller’s Cockney accent. This picnic is...
Grahame’s Dream Days are more evidence of his affinity for boats and picnics. Before Ratty’s picnic in Wind in the Willows, Grahame relates a pleasant dream about boating on a river in an Arcadian world. “I just go. But generally, it begins...
