Midnight Feasts

When we went upstairs to bed, [Steerforth] produced the whole seven shillings' worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying: 
'There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got.'

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

As a child I longed to go to boarding school.  Not because I hated my family, but because of the books I read about boarding school life.

The ones that stand out in my memory are the Malory Towers and St Clare's series by Enid Blyton. The varied personalities of the schoolgirls - who always included at least one 'foreigner' for added glamour - coupled with the eccentric teachers, created a tantalising world that was  so far removed from my Devon schooldays.  And the 'fun and mischief' they got up to - as it says on the blurb of my ancient copy of Third Year at Malory Towers - was equally appealing to my diligent and well-behaved nine year-old self;  I would never dare to be naughty, but I could live vicariously through Blyton's creations.

David Copperfield's Batter Pudding

In my last post, about eating other people’s food, I wrote about the episode in David Copperfield where the young David ‘loses’ his meal to the hungry waiter in the Yarmouth inn.  As well as drinking David’s ale and eating his chops, he also dives eagerly into his ‘batter pudding’:

'Why, a batter-pudding,' [the waiter] said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my favourite pudding!  Ain't that lucky?  Come on, little 'un, and let's see who'll get most.'
The waiter certainly got most.  

Eating someone else's food

When we had done, [the waiter] brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
'How's the pie?' he said, rousing himself.
'It's a pudding', I made answer. 
'Pudding!' he exclaimed.  'Why, bless me, so it is!  What!' looking at it nearer.  'You don't mean to say it's a batter-pudding!'
'Yes, it is indeed.'
'Why, a batter-pudding,' he said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my favourite pudding!  Ain't that lucky?  Come on, little 'un, and let's see who'll get most.'
The waiter certainly got most.   David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Why is it so often the case that what someone else is eating is so much more enticing than what is on our own plate?   I have vivid memories of primary school lunches when I would have done just about anything to eat my friend's white sliced bread sandwiches and chocolate bar rather than my Mum's home-made soup, though nowadays I think I got the better deal.

And how much more difficult it must be if you have nothing to eat, but all around you is food, as is the case with the waiter in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50).