The Art of the Stationary Travel Writer.

The manner in which a chap is forced to earn a his daily crust forces some into many strange backwaters of life.  I, myself, one summer, was forced to become HM Military Attache on Canvey Island and as a result was present during the, now, famous defence of the Legation against a raid by Corsairs operating out of the Medway towns, forming quite and effective scratch militia out of the gardening staff and a party of businessmen from the Cotswolds who were there to investigate the possibilities of bilateral trade with the Thames Estuary.

 

It was with that in mind that I came across Whistley, sitting in his usual place a little to the left of the fire place in the Reading Room within easy reach of any biscuits that may have found their way in – he was a devil for Garibaldi's.  Whistley was as pleasant a fellow as you could meet but not one of life’s more adventurous souls.  Harsher critics than I had suggested he was too honest for a clergyman and too timid for the military, which was a shame as his upbringing had prepared for nothing but one or other of these eventualities.  He hated travel and would only come up to the club once his local parson had granted absolution and had the Cloakroom nearest the Porter’s Lodge declared part of the diocese of the Bishop of Oxford.

 

When the time came for him to leave Sandhurst Whistley used all the guile at his disposal to avoid a posting out of county –having already hidden for three weeks when it was suggested he went to Aldershot, which he regarded as having an unsuitable climate and unpalatable food.  He eventually found service as one of those useful coves who look after the sons of foreign potentates who go to the Royal Military College to learn a thing or two about soldiering before returning home to put the theory into practice. 

 

Then, at last, his time had come to take shillings which hadn’t come from the Queen-Empress and Whistley was at a bit of a loss.  It was at that point I was called away to deal with that unfortunate business where a day trip to Calais by a  Suffolk branch of a certain voluntary and charitable organisation had ended in a siege and the dear ladies had to be persuaded to lay down their crochet hooks, release the hostages they had taken and just accept it is impossible to get a decent scone south of the Channel.

 

Several months later, upon my return,  that I came across Whistley in his familiar haunt looking as pleased as Punch and knocking back the red stuff as if it was to be banned tomorrow.  He was in an expansive mood and willing to spill the beans, which he did.  Apparently he had moped about a bit until a chance encounter with a chum had left them both in a delicate state and his better nature had been prevailed on to agree to ‘write a column’.  Said chum was responsible for the colourful supplements that cause backache in the young who have to deliver the Sunday news to the nation.  The usual blighter who wrote the cookery section, in which, with a sprig of thyme and the application of a ‘le’ or ‘el’ the dishes of common fayre became exotic meals to be aspired to by the toast munching masses the length and breadth of the nation, had been called up before the beak for being drunk in charge of the Royal Swans somewhere near Dorney Reach and was spending a bit of time thinking about the wrong life choices he had made.  Whistley was in an advanced state of conviviality and it was only in the cold light of morning he realised what he had signed up for.

 

It is said that travel broadens the mind.  Clinging limpit like to your own parish may not broaden but it can, in some cases, deepen the intellect and in mortal terror Whistley plumbed ever darkening depths to discover a way he could find to get out of the fix his nature had landed in him.  He looked in on himself and confessed repentance more thoroughly than any cabinet minister found with his hand where it should not have been.  He was done for; he was bereft for he knew nothing of the lands south of Salisbury Plain and then it struck him – neither did most of the coves who would read the paper.  What is more, he was convinced that no one ever actually made the dishes he would described.  Salvation!  Armed with a first edition of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and a French Primer he got to work.  An early, experiment, turning Baroness Pudding into Mme Le Tableau's Suet dessert by the conceit of adding some garlic, was a little avant garde even for Bohemian tastes however as Empress Pudding became ‘Napoleon Desert’ and  then Sago Soup ‘Soupe de Sagou avec ail’ all was well.  Mrs B even provided a few handy fall backs in her own Crecy Soup and a dish involving Spanish chestnuts.

 

Success is a cruel mistress but one Whistley was prepared to flatter.  His public demanded a biography.  He decided to create a nom de cuisine.  Robin, he felt would make a good Christian name,  suggesting a certain levity yet old world depth.  Couldn’t agree with him there, neither a one thing nor the other sort of name if you ask me but the public took to it.  Watson, he felt would serve him as a sire’s name and allowed him to divert tricky questions by proclaiming he was nothing like Holmes’s Aide de Camp.

 

Fortified with a personality Whistley fed the reader’s demand for details of how he found these gems of culinary conceit.   He reasoned that those who consumed books on foreign food felt themselves a little superior to their ‘cod and chip’ companions so he created a conspiracy for them.  He described his own dear parish, turning St John’s into the ancient chapel of San Juan; apple orchards were transformed into vinyards in his imagination and the snug at the ‘Trumpeter on Horseback’, became a darling little bar whose poor opening hours and surly service explained away by the fact the owner was Spanish and not, as the case was, a miserable git.  The point, Whistley explained, was to be as vague as possible but suggest that ‘those in the know’ would be able to recognise the little villages either side of the Pyrenees he described.  Apparently it worked a treat and on commuter trains from Chigwell to Collier’s Wood superior looking chaps would tell their companions that clearly the tiny hamlet described in such loving detail was a little place he had visited near Figueres described their landlord down to a tee.

 

Well, Whistley is now established in his new career and is less likely to move than ever before.  He has been asked to do a culinary travel book about the Alps and is wondering what his imagination can do with Walbury Hill.