De Kock sometimes styled the French Dickens, is known for his broad portrayals of the Parisian working-class society, affairs, cabarets, and other entertainment. In Monsieur Dupont, the entertainment spotlighted is a tumultuous picnic at Romainville, still a popular...
As a passionate hunter, Brillat-Savarin enjoyed traditional midday luncheon trysts or haltes de chasse. he describes the gathering in “Meditation XV” in Physiologie du Gout, or The Psychology of Taste. According to French usage, the halte de chasse is not...
Five couples picnicking on the grass are upset by a swarm of bees. Their table is in disarray as people run helter-skelter; hats fly, tempers flare, and a dog barks. A man pours water on a fainting woman that misses her mouth but not her breasts. Round up the usual...
Barbauld’s etiquette book A Legacy for Young Ladies Consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse was an important social resource. Like Miss Manners or Emily Post, Barbauld is sure that what she has to say is correct. Barbauld’s explanation of “pic nic” then...
Another picnic ruined, etc., etc. See George Cruikshank. The Gipseying Party Alarm’d at the Uninvited Guest (1827), engraving. London: John Fairburn, 1827....
Child’s The Frugal Housewife is among the most popular American cookery and domestic manuals but has no specific recommendations for picnics. The 1830 edition does have a recipe for buffalo’s tongue; “Buffalo’s tongue should soak a day and a...
Bennett added picnickers to his Niagara Falls landscape to make the vastness of the falls seem more accessible. He placed a group of picnickers on Goat Island in the left foreground and positioned the falls beyond them. The inclusion of picnickers was pleasing and...
Birch’s View of the Delaware is a landscape embellished with a picnic party just arriving by boat to a destination on the shore near Philadelphia. See Thomas Birch. View of the Delaware near Philadelphia (1831), oil on canvas. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,...
Among Suetonius’ apocryphal stories in The Lives of the Caesars (121c. CE) is Emperor Caligula’s three-mile bridge across the Bay of Naples from Baiae to Puteoli. It’s the kind of folly you associate with Caligula in one of his less savage moods, and...
Sandwiches in the United States are mentioned first by Frances Trollope in Domestic Manners of the Americans. Their contents are unknown, and they were brought along for a hellish “pic-nic” party in the woods in the environs of Cincinnati circa 1829....
