SC - OOP - How a British Subject Served Louis XIV

[Korrin S DaArdain]

If you are of a weak constitution then delete this now.

(No, I do not have a recipe!!)

Korrin S. DaArdain
Kitchen Steward of Household Port Karr
Kingdom of An Tir in the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Korrin.DaArdain at Juno.com, (www.geocities.com/NapaValley/Vineyard/1709)












>From "After The Funeral: The Posthumous Adventures of Famous Corpses" by
Edwin Murphy, ©1995 Edwin Murphy, Barnes and Noble Books:

Chapter 16
How a British Subject Served Louis XIV

Le Roi Soleil, Louis XIV, was king of France from 1643 until he died, on
September 1, 1715. During his long reign, he centralized almost all
effective power in his own hands, at the expense of the nobles and the
parliament. He also raised France and its monarchy to the pinnacle of
prestige and glory. He practically invented the concept of absolute
monarchy, and thus he was absolutely despised by the Jacobins of the
French Revolution. Grave robbers raided his tomb at St. Denis and stole
his embalmed heart. An English nobleman, Lord Harcourt, bought it. Later,
he sold it to the dean of Westminster Cathedral, the
scientifically-minded Reverend William Buckland. It passed by inheritance
to his equally scientific but decidedly eccentric son, Francis buckland.
Frank, as everyone called him, was a likable if unconventional scientist.
His first love was fish, but all forms of anatomy and other natural
sciences fascinated him.

Among his many enthusiasms, Frank Buckland was a founder of the Society
for the Acclimatization of Animals in the united kingdom, an organization
whose goal was to increase the national food supply by importing and
raising all kinds of exotic animals. As the society routinely feasted on
buffalo, kangaroo, ostrich, and many other outlandish species, Buckland
got into the habit of regarding anything organic as a possible meal, and
the more unusual the better. He was known to have consumed delicacies
ranging from sea slugs to garden slugs, from bluebottle flies to earwigs,
from moles to porpoise heads, the gastronomic merits or demerits of which
he reported in detail for the avid readers of his several periodiocals,
including 'Land and Water'.

When you dined at Frank Buckland's house, you could never be sure what
might turn up on your plate. Thus, it should come as no surprise what one
startled visitor reported about one of these repasts. Frank told him: 'I
have eaten many strange things in my lifetime, but never before have I
eaten the heart of a king.' Buckland then calmly proceeded to consume the
contents of his plate, which consisted of the heart of Louis XIV. He had
withdrawn it from his immense collection of curiosities and put it to
practical use. His collection also contained a lock of hair from Henry IV
and the poet Ben Jonson's heel bone. As far as we know, Frank Buckland
did not eat those.

Louis XIV had reigned longer than any other European monarch. he probably
would have tried to hang on even longer had he known his heart was
destined to become the supper of an irrepressibly unorthodox English
gourmet."

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