While I was refiling some of the postcards we examined in our meditations upon romance, the idea leaped out at me that we have been passing by a fairly common romantic association on postcards of the past. That is the connection between romance and food, the association of the stomach and the heart. The two requirements are basic and eternal, and our postcard people understood how natural was their association.
Think of how we express these things: our romantic target is often called “sweet” or “yummy”. We become “passionate” about a great restaurant, and I have seen more than one chef described as “creating dishes which call to your heart.” (Better than calling to your epiglottis, I suppose.)
Sometimes, of course, the two are seen in conflict, and a young man learns the lesson of taking his sweetness out to dinner, only to find out how much it costs to feed a relationship. (There are plenty of these postcards, but most deal with the price of champagne and other beverages. The link between romance and booze is a more complex topic, to be treated when we have more time on our hands.)
And on occasion, the postcard artists admit that two hearts can be set on fire so thoroughly that they don’t see their food through the resulting smokescreen. (Dorothy L. Sayers covers this in a scene where the hero’s mother, meeting her son’s fiancée, finds her so befuddled by the unexpected proposal that she can’t remember whether she’s eaten anything over the preceding twenty-four hours.) Just because the heart and stomach are close friends, they DO sometimes work at cross purposes.
Many times, though, the food directly brings on the romance. There are dozens of postcards which show grateful diners yearning for their waitresses. And how much milk must have been consumed by those men who pursue milkmaids! I’m surprised the dairy industry survived at all, between the delays in getting her back to the dairy, and the amount those suitors must have drunk (at least to suggest that was all they were really after.)
Some cartoonists were not afraid to become even more intimate in their connection of food and romance, moving on to topics where some artists would have given way to nausea. These are the postcards which show us lovers feeding each other. This is probably a game which goes back centuries, and the only reason we have no paintings of Cleopatra feeding Marc Antony grapes is that the painters just gave in to weak stomachs.
Playing this goes on well into the honeymoon period, and even reaches the kitchen of the couple.
See, our artists saved their closest associations of food and love to the couple which had set up housekeeping together. We have the couple warm and cozy in a meal just for the two of them,
And the newlyweds working together in the kitchen as they go through figuring out how this whole complex process really works (baking, I mean.)
A folksinger once came forward with a song about this, called “The Hugs In the Kitchen Are the Best.” Although the postcard folks were willing to point out they DID sometimes make the meal go wrong. BUT folks don’t live on broth alone.
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