Another voice
Grande Bouffe
Auberon Waugh
Montmaur, Aude ome years ago, it may be remembered, 10 the journalist Alan Brien announced that he had seen the light. Up to that mo- ment he might have been considered rather a bedraggled, drunk, indifferent sort of person, scribbling away in such disreputable organs as the Spectator about his various disgusting habits. Then he mar- ried a fine, upstanding woman, and the new Brien emerged. He told us how his wife had trained him to clean the lavatory after use, and of the feeling of liberation which this activity afforded him. He started to take his socialism seriously. Most particularly, he announced that he had read somewhere how grain fed to animals to produce meat for humans was a less efficient method of protein conversion than the same grain in- gested by humans; and so, to give the Third World a fair crack of the whip, he had decided to become a vegetarian. If we all did the same, he explained hopefully, the world would be a better place.
My purpose in recalling the incident is certainly not to mock Mr Brien. If he has kept to this vow, I have no doubt he is a better, cleaner and more agreeable person to have around the house. Vegetarian ex- creta are generally less offensive than the carnivorous variety, although sheep at Combe Florey generally manage to set up quite a pong at this time of year, which is as good a reason as any for spending summer in the corn- and sunflower-growing Lauragais. Perhaps his gesture has made no very significant contribution to feeding those parts of the Third World afflicted by drought, or to relieving starvation among the urban poor of Calcutta, but if that had been his intention, there were easier ways of achieving it, like sending a cheque to any of the charitable bodies concerned. His pur- pose was presumably to achieve that degree of self-respect which can come only from self-denial.
Perhaps he has succeeded in adding a cubit or two to the Common Market beef mountain while simultaneously reducing the grain mountain by a billionth part of an inch. Since the grain is destined to be sold to undeserving Russians in the Soviet Union at knock-down prices, I suppose he might be said to have achieved something. I sometimes wonder whether we in the West have a patriotic or humane duty to eat our way through the various food mountains which keep accumulating, but am unable to work out the principles involved. How, for instance, could this activity influence the mysterious entity called M3 on which Mr Lawson, in his extraordinary cleverness, has decided our future liberty and prosperi-
ty (not to mention the future of the Conser- vative Party) depend? Those less clever than Mr Lawson may suppose that we voted for a Conservative government in order to remove the shackles of punitive and discriminatory taxation, but he knows better. At any rate until such time as he has stopped his government's persecution of workers and savers, I see no reason why we should help him out by eating an ounce more beef than we feel like eating.
But I always think of Alan Brien whenever I sit down to a particularly large meal. At Easter time it might be a Paschal lamb or a sucking pig, but it always begins to assume the well-known features. Dear old Alan. Does he still wear a little beard under his Alpine hat, does he still carry a handbag when he leaves his duffel coat behind? I thought of him last week when, at the end of a two-and-a-half-hour drive to meet some friends who had bought a house in the Dordogne, we all sat down to one of M. Andre Daguin's seven-course luncheons at the Hotel de France in a beautiful town most appropriately called Auch. This is what we ate: Five types of goose liver Salmon in pastry with tvtio sauces Hot duck's liver with raspberry Sorbet of melon with smoked meat Roast preserved goose Green salad with grilled goat's cheese Four types of chocolate pudding
The menu cost 300 francs, or about £25, which seems extraordinarily reasonable when one reflects that the amount of goose and duck liver given to each person would cost 150 francs in any of the local char- cuteries. I do not propose to dwell on the excellence of M. Daguin's cooking for fear of infuriating or disgusting my readers still further — it is almost impossible to have any other effect when one writes about eating, as opposed to cooking; this is something Bernard Levin has yet to learn. In any case, my intention is to discuss the theological and political import of the meal, rather than its gastronomic aspects. But if anyone is interested, I might reveal that we drank two little-known local wines — a red Madiran and a white Colombard — and before leaving the matter entirely, I should mention that one of the five preparations of goose liver — raw, pickled in Bros sel — was the most subtle and exquisite new taste ex- perience of the year. Hot ducks' livers, of course, never fail to produce the sort of ecstasy familiar to religious mystics.
On the Brien coda, these goose and duck livers must be as wicked as wicked can be, like neat whisky to a Jehovah's Witness, since they are produced by the process call- ed gavage, or stuffing the animal with maize corn until its liver becomes bloated. A further objection is sometimes made on the grounds of cruelty, but my own obser- vation does not confirm it. One sees the geese honking happily as they queue up to have the corn forced down their throats, running up to the gaveuse and stretching their necks enticingly as soon as she aP' pears. Many Englishmen appear to believe that geese are nailed to the floor, but I have never seen it done and doubt that anything useful would be achieved by nailing them in this way. I suspect that the falsehood is kePt alive by some Pilgerish Animal Liberation News Service or other.
But there can be no doubt that it is an ex' travagant sort of food. Christian tradition has never frowned on occasional bouts of gluttony at Christmas, Easter or other great feasts of the Church — on this occasion, I like to think we were celebrating the life of St Leotade, the ninth-century bishop and martyr whose startling polychrome effigY, dominates the sanctuary of Auch's unusual Renaissance cathedral. After luncheon, we waddled benignly around this most unex' pected building before the long drive home. But the essence of all interdiction against luxury, at any rate in traditional morality' lies in Brien's point that by over-indulgence we deprive others of wholesome sufficien' cy. On this question, it may be significant that the cost of the menu — £25 — was ex- actly the same as Britain's basic unemploY- ment benefit, the weekly sum on which unemployed people are expected to subsist once their rents or mortgage interest have been paid. Should one, perhaps, be a trifle indignant, or at any rate self-reproachful, about this apparent anomaly? I am not sure. From Benidorm, in Spain, we learn that 80 British holidaymakers of the lower class, about a quarter of theth unemployed, have been arrested every week throughout the season. They have been rampaging through the town, urinating In cars, smashing glasses, vomiting everywhere, smashing everything they can lay hands on, and generally celebrating the proletarian ascendancy as best they knovi how. Perhaps, indeed, it was revolting and obscene of us to celebrate our annual hop' day with a large meal. Perhaps it is self- evident that even more money should be given to these unemployed lads and lasses from Toxteth for their own pleasures, but I am not convinced.
The friends with whom we shared the lunch — she is a legendary West Country beauty, now married to one of the more enterprising stately home enterprises in th, Home Counties — confessed to a general hatred of people. Next week, they had to welcome 20,000 Christians on some Wilt or other. Too many, we agreed, far too many. It is all very well for Alan Brien, from the height of his ivory tower in Haar stead, to open his arms, Jesus-like, and declare how much he loves the human race, But some of us, sometimes, have to Meet the brutes.
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