A sort of word from John Evelyn 1620-1706
"Explore everything; keep the best"
John Evelyn
Last night we had dinner with friends and during the conversation the name of John Evelyn came up. Which stirred distant memories to me of reading about him in some of Jane Grigson's books. I was right, but in my mind I had confused him with Culpeper - whom I might talk about some other time. The thing that really piqued my imagination though was that my friend mentioned that the second part of the famous beauty and fine foods brand of Crabtree and Evelyn refers to John Evelyn.
"Crabtree & Evelyn is inspired by John Evelyn, a 17th Century Englishman who was a visionary of his time. One of the first naturalists and conservationists, Evelyn travelled Europe experiencing the wonderful cultures and natural environments which he shared with his friends in British society. His great estate, Sayes Court, was planted with large expanses of elm trees, and the magnificent gardens Evelyn created were a wonder of the age." Company statement
The crabtree bit, which is their logo comes from the crab apple tree which they see as quintessentially English.
I was wrong about the book he wrote - he wrote lots, but not the one I was thinking of although he is most famous for his massive diary - kept throughout his life.
"When we look at events through the eyes of Evelyn we see clearly; when we look through the eyes of Pepys, we see Pepys." Frances Wilson - The Spectator
But I was right about Jane Grigson using him a lot. She has lots of one line quotes from him about various vegetables and fruits because one of his passions was gardening and not just flowers and trees. He even has recipes and she gives us a couple.
One is for a sweet spinach tart that a guy called Neil, tries out - he's working his way through her book English Food. First of all he gives us the original recipe:
"An Herb-Tart is made thus: Boil fresh Cream or Milk, with a little grated Bread or Naples-Biscuit (which is better) to thicken it; a pretty Quantity of Chervile, Spinach, Beete (or what other Herb you please) being first par-boil'd and chop'd. Then add Macaron, or Almonds beaten to a Paste, a littlesweet Butter, the Yolk of five Eggs, three of the Whites rejected. To these some add Corinths plump'd in Milk, or boil'd therein, Sugar, Spice at Discretion, and stirring it all together over the Fire, bake it in the Tart-Pan."
He goes on to give us Jane Grigson's version. In Her Vegetable Book she also gives us a recipe for John Evelyn's Buttered Parsnips.
Then she also gives us his thoughts on salad and salad dressings, that are remarkably familiar and relevant to any cook today:
"[The lettuce] ever was and still continues the principal foundation of the universal Tribe of Salads; which is to cool and refresh. ... In the composure of a salad, every plant should come in to bear its part, without being overpowered by some herb of a stronger taste ... but fall into their places, like the notes in music, in which there should be nothing harsh or grating." Jane Grigson then goes on to quote how, after washing and draining in a colander "Lastly, swing them all together gently in a clean coarse napkin" ... for the dressing the oil should be of a "pallid olive green ... smooth, light and pleasant upon the tongue; such as the genuine omphacine and native Lucca olives afford." The vinegar must be the best wine vinegar, infused with flowers or herbs. The salt should be "the brightest Bay grey-salt, clean, dry, without clamminess. Sugar must be perfectly refined, the mustard from Tewkesbury." The pepper should not be "bruised to too small a dust".
And as an aside the drying trick with the napkin was taught to us by the male half of the couple we dined with last night, whilst on holiday in France. I wonder whether he knew he got it from John Evelyn?
Evelyn must have been a remarkable man as this explanation of his work from the British Library tells us. They have his archive there.
"The Archive allows him to be seen in his true milieu, that of the community of seventeenth century intellectuals who aimed to establish a major programme of scientific and technological development, linked with social and economic progress. He emerges as this community's most long-lived and versatile member: scholar, connoisseur, bibliophile and horticulturalist, as well as a writer and thinker of sometimes startlingly current relevance, on everything from forestry, architecture and the formation of a universal library to fashion and air pollution." British Library
As to his life - he was born into wealth but being the second son wasn't going to inherit it. Nevertheless he had money. He was born at Wotton House in Sussex and in fact he did return to live there later in life.
As a Royalist he left England for a prolonged tour of France and Italy whilst Cromwell was in charge, ending up in Paris where he married the daughter of the English Ambassador - she was only 13! When Charles II was restored to the throne he returned to England and set up house in Deptford (in modern times a distinctly non desirable part of London, on the southern banks of the Thames). But it was the home of the Royal Navy Dockyards and much more rural than today. His home was Sayes Court and he set about creating a celebrated garden - heavily influenced by Jean de la Quintinie, the man who made the gardens at Versailles.
Alas Sayes Court no longer exists - at one point, after he returned to his childhood home he rented it out to Peter the Great of Russia for three months who basically vandalised both it and the gardens. I think it was destroyed much later than that though. Today I believe the land that was the garden is still 'vacant' or park land but the garden itself is lost. Just a couple of trees remain. Many want to restore it, but so far the local council is not playing along.
He was a founding member of the Royal Society and very interested in medicine. He held various government positions and, like Christopher Wren, made plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. And all the time he commented on it all in his diary.
"The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was still planted with booths in formal streets … so that it seem’d to be a bacchanalian triumph or carnival on the water, whilst it was a severe judgement on the land, the trees not only splitting as if lightning-struck, but men and cattle perishing in diverse places, and the very seas so lock’d up with ice, that no vessels could stir out or come in. London, by reason of the smoke, was so filled with the fuliginous steame of the sea-coale, that hardly could one see crosse the streets, and this filling the breast, so as one could hardly breath. Here was no water to be had from the pipes and engines, nor could the brewers and divers other tradesmen worke, and every moment was full of disastrous accidents." (1683-84)
But food is what I'm supposed to be writing about and this is also supposed be a sort of 'A word from' piece, so here are a very few choice quotes from the man himself. (Not all about food - but worth posting)
"An honest laborious country-man with good bread, salt, and a little parsley will made a contented meal with a roasted onion."
"Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity"
"Fruit, as it was our primitive, and most excellent as well as most innocent food, whilst it grew in Paradise; a climate so benign, and a soil so richly impregnated with all that the influence of Heaven could communicate to it, so it has still preserved, and retained no small tincture of its original and celestial virtue." Even in its fallen state, fruit is still the most "agreeable closure" to a meal, however grand and princely. And so it is the gardener's labour "to repair what the choicest and most delicious fruit has been despoiled of, since it grew in Paradise" To aim, in other words, at recovering the original flavour of Eden, even if such transcendent perfection can never quite be achieved." John Evelyn with comments from Jane Grigson
"Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world."
