The Curate’s Friend” is one of two Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus (1911). In “The Story of a Panic,” it’s Pan who rapes a young boy. But in “The Curate’s Friend,” it’s a Faun...
Contrast Rackham’s mice with Mary Belson Elliot’s The Mice and their Pic Nic and Mickey Mouse. See Arthur Rackham. “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” Aesop’s Fables. Translated by Vernon Jones. London: Heinemann, 1912
“The whole difference between Amundsen’s dash to the South Pole—a picnic as he characterized it, and actually that relatively as Antarctic trips go—and Scott’s heroic struggle and tragic finish may be expressed in four letters, dogs.” Nice. But...
Bellow’s A Day in June (1913) captures a picnicky day in Central Park, New York, where well-dressed crowds lounge in a meadow beyond the Plaza Hotel. Bellows painted his family in the left middle distance among those enjoying the summer day. He wears a dark tie and...
Hardy’s poems reveal an unhappy life with his wife, Emma Gifford. Perhaps the most definitive is “Where the Picnic Was,” in which he attempts to resolve their often “horrid shows” ends definitively: – But two have wandered far From...
Among the numerous illustrators of Paul Bransom’s standout because his portrayal of the character tends to look like animals they are. This is especially evident in the flyleaf illustration of “The River Bank.” Featured Image: Paul Bransom. “The River Bank,” In...
“Le Pique-nique,” a piano composition about 30 seconds long, is one of twenty-one very short musical interpretations in Sports et Divertissement [Sports & Entertainments] devoted to the happiness of people at play. Satie’s preface explains that two artistic...
During a luncheon on the grass at a suitably sylvan in Fontainebleau, Philip Carey, the protagonist Of Human Bondage, suffers a momentary fear that love will pass him by. It does in this instance, but after much hardship and bondage in an unrequited love affair, he is...
One January night, John Sloan and a boozy group climbed to the top of Greenwich Village’s Washington Arch. According to Sloan, they toted balloons, candles, food baskets, wine, a pot for boiling water, and the makings of a campfire. Fictionalized or not, No one...
Picnicking sandwiches and much more food play an important part in the courtship of Billy Roberts, a wagon driver, and Saxon Brown, a laundress, in Jack London’s Valley of the Moon. Intending to propose marriage, Billy and Saxon drive into the hills beyond...
Gaston Balande’s <em>Lunch on the Banks of the Seine </em> and <em>Camping</em> (1930s) Balande’s painting Déjeuner au bord de la Seine or Picnic by a River epitomizes Parisians at play along the Seine just at the start of World War I. Camping...
Claude Debussy and his daughter Claude-Emma (about ten years old) sit on a picnic carpet spread on the grass in a park. They are not dressed casually: he wears a summer suit, striped, white shirt with cufflinks, and a bow tie. He stares at wearing a summer dress,...
“The Piety And Eggs Of Paterson” is Dreiser’s version of a picnic gone wrong. It’s strategically placed at the start of A Hoosier Holiday because Dreiser meant it as a metaphor for what is to come and how his motor trip from New York to Terre...
Woolf’s picnic on the summit of Monte Rosa, a fictional place in South America, is the high point (pun intended) of The Voyage Out (1915). Journeying on donkeys walking in a single file, the narrator creates the image of “a jointed caterpillar, tufted with...
Even after zeppelin attacks on London in May and June, Brits are undeterred and cannot refrain from picnicking even under the threat of being gassed. Acid satire by F.H. Townsend. Featured Image: Even under threat of attack, Upper-class Brits cannot refrain from...
Sherrill was sure that picnic was an English word for an English custom, he ridiculed his French visitors for not spelling the word correctly. “That pleasant word “picnic,” so popular at all times in our country, “he writes, “played havoc...
Douglas’s advice to his friend, Elizabeth David, set her path to becoming a food writer while walking and picnicking in the hills above Antibes in 1940. Known as a great exaggerator, Douglas describes a mountain festival as a picnic. In his travelogue in Old...
Leyendecker’s cover for The Saturday Evening Post portrays Main Street America, and it’s meant to be good fun. It’s a ‘typical” evocation * of a family on the way to a Fourth of July Picnic (1915). Mom carries a child waving a flag, Dad,...
Larned suggests any food is picnic food as long as it can be transported. The motorcar made this wish viable, if not practical, and One Hundred Picnic Suggestions is the first cookbook dedicated to picnicking. The cover shows a picnic basket, sandwiches, and thermos...
Sandburg’s “Picnic Boat” is a snapshot of the aftermath of a Sunday picnic. It’s a visual and musical image picnicker returning at the end of a long leisurely day. Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it is dark as a stack of...
