Of Things Balzacian

He Loved Pears (Factlet 14)

   It is much easier to find interesting things to relate than to create something interesting to read. I have not, however, used this stall tactic for a while. It was back in the spring of 2022 when I provided you with a "Factlet" and gave you three at once. If you want to learn more about the woman who ran 167 miles in one day, or high real estate prices around Toronto, or the number of First Nation communities in Canada see, "A Few More Factlets." While you are reading that and what is to follow, I will try to  create something interesting.

   Why I stumbled upon this fascinating food-related information, I don't recall. But, at least I remembered where it was found. It is in the New York Review of Books in a review written by Edmund White of the book: Balzac's Omelette: A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honoré de Balzac, by Anka Muhlstein, (Jan. 12, 2012.) Why I was reading such a review, I don't know, but was probably just stalling. 

    When Balzac worked, he didn't eat much:

"During his intense, prolonged bouts of composition all night long and well into the day he drank only water and coffee and ate nothing but fruit. Muhlstein adds:

Occasionally he took a boiled egg at about nine o’clock in the morning or sardines mashed with butter if he was hungry; then a chicken wing or a slice of roast lamb in the evening, and he ended his meal with a cup or two of excellent black coffee without sugar."

   But, when he was done writing he started eating:

"If Balzac was abstemious while writing, once he’d completed a book and the proofs were sent off to the printer, he sped to a restaurant, downed a hundred oysters as a starter, washing them down with four bottles of white wine, then ordered the rest of the meal: twelve salt meadow lamb cutlets with no sauce, a duckling with turnips, a brace of roast partridge, a Normandy sole, not to mention extravagances like dessert and special fruit such as Comice pears, which he ate by the dozen. Once sated, he usually sent the bill to his publishers."

  And here is the pear part:
"Parisians were obsessed with oysters; six million dozen were consumed a year. Pears had a special appeal for Balzac; he often kept bushels of them at home and could eat as many as forty or fifty in a day (one February he had 1,500 pears in his cellar). In any event, perfect fruits in a wide variety and even off-season were available only in Paris. As a young man Balzac was so poor and abstemious that he was very thin; only later did his binge eating result in his big stomach."

The Dying of the Rich or Famous
   Balzac may have died from the over consumption of caffeine. Most of you are morbidly curious, so I will remind you of an interesting book that deals with the diseases of those stationed above us, presidents, prime ministers, authors, actors, etc. It was written over 60 years ago, however, so you will learn from it, only information about the diseases of those long dead. If you are looking for a book project, an updating of the book mentioned below would be a worthy one. Although the Internet now makes it easy to learn how the famous have suffered or died, gathering such information in one place, along with the related medical information would be useful. For, as the author of this book says: “Interest and curiosity in the abnormalities of others is perhaps the most widespread human trait shared more or less equally by peoples everywhere, and of every time.” 
   The book is: Disease and Destiny: A Bibliography of Medical References to the Famous. For much more information see: "Judson Bennett Gilbert (1898 -1950)."

  If you are interested in things culinary see, "Food History." If you want to know more about "clean" eating or the eating of placentas see, "Forbidden Food."