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I

Introduction

By Sir John Squire

This book arose out of a correspondence in The Times at the end of 1935 and the beginning of 1936. M. Th. Rousseau, a French connoisseur, wrote to complain that when he visited England he could not get Stilton – the waiters said it was out of season. Many people wrote to explain that perhaps it was out of season, and that in most decent London restaurants Stilton, when in condition, could be obtained, if only after pressure. But the correspondence did attract attention to the neglect of English cheese generally, and to the gradual attrition of English cheeses by foreign invasion and native indifference and ignorance.

Now, no citizen of the world would wish to decry foreign cheeses, or foreign food either. As I write these lines I have just come back from a holiday in the mountains above Lake Como (staying with Italian friends, spaghetti, cheese and wine). In order to get to my destination I had to go to Como, which has silks and a lovely Cathedral, and wait for two hours in an out-of-doors café within sight of the pier. Lunch, as it was noon, was indicated, and I sat down, after two years’ absence from the Continent, metaphorically tucking a napkin into my neck below a non-existent beard, and looking forward to a really Italian table d’hôte, with all the dishes lingering on mind and tongue, with languishing vowels.

What did I find? Apparently they had become resigned to the coarser kind of German, American and English visitors, who haven’t the sense to adapt their food to climate or surroundings. ‘Coelum non animam mutant’:1 the sky may change but the set rules and regulations about filling the stomach do not.

The first course, as it were hors d’œuvres, consisted of eggs and bacon; and that at lunch-time, under a baking noon and an Italian sky, with blue lake and mountains all around. The second was ‘Mixed Grill’; and there was a great deal to follow. The mixed grill contained liver, bacon, kidneys and sausages, and was accompanied by thick fingers of fried potatoes. Fat women and young men were eating them all around me, terrified, apparently, lest they should shrivel. I ordered an omelette and a bottle of white Italian wine, and tried to keep my eyes off all those gluttons. Just as I was finishing with cheese, a tall thin Englishman and a flat-chested wife, wiping their brows, came and sat down at the next table to me; they looked at the menu and the beads multiplied on their brows. I couldn’t help speaking. I said: ‘Excuse me, sir, but I expect you find the lunch too much for you.’

‘I should think I do, in this climate,’ he replied.

‘If I may say so,’ I went on, ‘you’d better follow my example and have an omelette, with perhaps a little fruit to follow.’ He grunted assent and did so.

But he wasn’t really a citizen of the world. No sooner had he stopped grumbling about these foreigners supplying us with hot sausages at an Italian August lunch (and the supply simply must have responded to a demand) than he began complaining about the surroundings. A little rusty tram clattered by. ‘Look at that tram,’ he exclaimed to his dutiful wife, ‘absolutely filthy. I consider it a disgrace to a place like this.’ The word ‘insular’ rose, unspoken, to my lips.

And the word ‘insular’ cuts both ways. Most English people, living on this island, away from the Continent and full of compromises, will regard foreigners as strange beasts. Walking in Devonshire the other day, and talking in a country ale-house with a landlord who kept cows and poultry, I heard him sum up the world situation in these terms: ‘Zur, there bain’t no country but this.’ I had heard the sentiment often enough before; it spreads like a rash whenever them vurriners appear to be fighting one another all about nothing. But the insularity works another way, too; them vurriners are as marvellous as they are mischievous and unaccountable and incomprehensible. They can make, in their absurd way, music, art and cheese as we cannot. The result is that Miss Smith and Miss Jones, admirable ballet-dancers, have to appear in the Russian ballet as Smithova and Jonesova; that Mr. Robinson, the great tenor, appears as Signor Robinello; and that English cheese is without honour in its own country and amongst its own kin. Consequently it is without honour abroad. If we don’t celebrate it both at home and abroad, it will cease to be. The world will be the poorer. Our entertainment to visitors will be feebler. Couldn’t one give one’s French friends a better welcome were one able to say, ‘Come down to Dorset with me and we’ll taste the local cheese!’ Do they really want to go to Dorchester to be given a choice of Gorgonzola or Camembert?

There are few parts of England which do not remember cheeses extinct or nearly extinct. Not all of them, I dare say, deserve resuscitation; the evidence suggests, for instance, that the man who ate Suffolk cheese might just as well have been eating old motor tyres. But it was possible a century ago to travel throughout England and sample local cheeses everywhere. Today most of them are unobtainable unless in small quantities from eclectic merchants. Even in first-class chop-houses the only English cheeses on offer will be Stilton, Cheddar or Cheshire; in most places only Cheddar and Cheshire, more likely than not American. Gorgonzola (often, even before sanctions, made in Denmark) is more familiar to many English people than any English cheese; and such a notable cheese as Double Gloucester is known to few but epicures.

‘Might just as well have been eating old motor tyres.’

No sensible person would wish to exclude or decry foreign cheeses. It would be a calamity were no more Camembert, Brie or Bel Paese to land on these shores: Dutch cheese is a change and Parmesan is a necessary of life. But it is ridiculous that we should neglect our own fine cheeses to such an extent that a foreigner can visit these shores (Europe in fact knows as little of our cheese as it does of our landscape-painting) without discovering that we possess any, let alone thinking of importing some to his own country. Taste can only be improved and cheese-makers heartened if those who care for England, Cheese and Farming, indulge in vigorous propaganda. Supply will only come from demand, and there will be no demand unless the public is stirred from its present apathy and brought to realise the mechanical monotony of its present diet.

The causes of our present lack of pride in home produce and interest in the subtleties of the palate may be left to others to trace. Puritanism and Utilitarianism I dare say may be partly responsible; each despising art and taste. The neglect of cheese, at any rate, is no new thing: it is forty years since Mrs. Roundell, in one of the finest, amplest and best written Cookery Books ever published, said sorrowfully: ‘Some persons, however, still have the courage to enjoy cheese.’ Unless more acquire this well-rewarded courage it is likely that all our English cheeses will die out and that we shall end with a few European cheeses for the intelligent minority (for cheese in France and Italy will not die) and for the others mere generic soapy, tasteless stuff, white or red, called cheese, imported from across the Atlantic. The appetite may grow by what it feeds on: it may also diminish: another generation and our population may positively dislike the strong ripe cheeses of our fathers.

‘Can’t we even talk about the cheese?’

Of the chapters in this book all except two deal exclusively with English cheeses; those two are occupied with Scotch Dunlop and with Irish cheeses as a salute to neighbouring kingdoms. Many cheeses might have been added – such as Double Cottenham (made now only in a few farmhouses), the cheeses of Derby and Lancashire, and the various cream cheeses. But the book had to have limits.

The references to Canadian and other American cheeses are intended only to apply to the bulk of that which we import from North America; it is a scandal that names like Cheddar and Cheshire should be allowed to apply to the stuff. I have heard of, though never tasted, several American cheeses said to be individual and good, such as Rowland, Wisconsin, Redskin, Golden Buck and O.K.A., said to be made by Trappist Fathers. If these be good and will travel, by all means let us try some; there cannot be too many good cheeses within our reach. But at present it is English cheese that is most in need of trumpeting, just as it is the Roast Beef of Old England and not the Roast Lamb of New Zealand – which latter, by the way, some tuneful New Zealander ought by now to have gratefully celebrated in song.

(May I add, as a postscript, that I must not be held responsible for those of my colleagues who have called a Welsh Rabbit a ‘rarebit’ – a vile modern refinement.)