Mrs Beeton plaque and statue

Photo of Mrs Beeton plaque by Angela Lansbury. Copyright 2016.

We need a statue to Mrs Beeton. Why? I'll tell you.

I am pleased to see that the plaque to Mrs Beeton is still on the outside of a new restaurant in Hatch End, a Lebanese restaurant, which has taken over from Serrata. That plaque, on one of Hatch End's many restaurants, recalls Mrs Beeton who is Hatch End's link with keen cooks of the past.

Mrs Beeton lived in Hatch End with her husband, the publisher who inspired her to write the book of household management. How did she find a publisher for her book? She didn't. Her publisher husband inspired her.

I suppose the moral is that I should first marry a publisher. So here's my quotation for the day, 'Authors, to succeed, first marry a publisher."

As a child, I thought Mrs Beeton was merely a pioneer cookery writer, merely an anachronism. My mother used to quote, 'Take a dozen eggs,' which seemed absurdly extravagant, in post war Britain. Another line which seemed funny to both mother and me when I was a child, because nobody had chickens in post-war Britain, 'First kill your chicken.' (In those days, mother read the recipe, then phoned the grocery shop to deliver our groceries.)

Much later in life when I was an adult, I discovered that Mrs Beeton had copied the system of writing recipes in a standard format. She started with the list of ingredients for you to shop or gather in the kitchen. Now it seems the obvious and natural way to start because that is how it is always done. Apparently somebody else had done it previously, one of many writers who all had different systems. Mrs Beeton chose and made popular the system every recipe writer and reader uses today.

Since Mrs Beeton, many others have written cookery books. Cookery books are still best sellers.

My friend Ruth, who used to run a tea-shop in Pinner, and now gives cookery classes to U3A and others, says she uses Mrs Beeton's cookbook regularly.

Another mystery about Mrs Beeton solved, why did she die so long. I don't like to be the bearer of bad news. But my book group read her biography and modern writers reveal that Mrs Beeton probably caught what I shall politely describe as an infection from her husband. He had visited a prostitute either while she was pregnant or earlier, before marrying her, or both. Such was life, in her day and modern times, that when men cannot get sex at home they sometimes look elsewhere and fall sick. How lucky we are that women have better medical care and nowadays most survive childbirth.

I was reading about a campaign to add to the number of statues of women in London and Britain. Apart from Queen Victoria, we have few statues of women. Most worldwide are royals, Goddesses or mythical characters.

Mrs Beeton is a great character for a statue. Where should we put it? Hatch End has no statues. A good location where more can see it would be Pinner Park, near the Heath Robinson museum. But a better statue there would be Heath Robinson, shown sitting drawing. In Hatch End we should have a statue of Mrs Beeton, either writing her book, or cooking, or sitting in a kitchen of the day, or perhaps with eggs and a chicken. Not a dead chicken. Not a horizontal chicken. A live chicken, sitting on eggs. Does a chicken have more than one egg at a time? How little I know about eggs. Yes, we need a statue of Mrs Beeton, a cookery book, a chicken and an egg.

Where should the statue go? On the same side of the road as where her house was standing.

I used to wonder who had knocked down her house and why. I assumed that it was destroyed to make way for the row of shops. But a book in the new Heath Robinson museum shows Hatch End and Pinner and Ruislip and other areas of North West London destroyed by bombs in World War II. One tends to think of the East End of London being bombed, near the docks, and Coventry. But even the little suburban houses were destroyed. So sad.

The bright note is that now no trace of that remains, except the war memorials. Hatch End has bustling restaurants, employing people from around the world, who have chosen to come to England, not just the city centre but the suburbs, serving a range of cookery styles.

The restaurants have started to put chairs and tables in the open air on pavements. This began when smoking was banned indoors. On the Mrs Beeton side of the road is the slip road for parking.

On the other side of the road you have more space for a cordoned off area. Sea Pebbles fish restaurant, Fellini restaurant and Italian caffe on the corner. As we drove through Hatch End I remarked that it was a street wide enough for all the pavement seating. 'Yes,' said a member of my family, 'That's why it's called The Broadway.'

The Broadway must have room for a statue. Hatch End makes room for a giant Christmas tree at Christmas time. We could have an area of seating around the statue of Mrs Beeton.

I think a statue should perform two functions. Remind us of a person who inspires us. Show them in action to remind us to copy that action. So Mrs Beeton should be shown either cooking or writing a book. Hatch End is in the London Borough of Harrow, and Hatch End and Harrow are known for good writers and good restaurants.

I must write to a newspaper, or two, or three, and propose a statue to the wonderful Mrs Beeton. Will you help me?
Isabella Mary Beeton (née Mayson; 14 March 1836 – 6 February 1865).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_Beeton
This should be the first step towards a museum, or a room in the heath Robinson Museum, about famous writers and personalities of Pinner and Harrow.

WHAT TO SEE
* Plaque to Mrs Beeton on wall outside restaurant on Hatch End Broadway
* Gravestone of Mrs Beeton and her husband in Norwood cemetery, south of the Thames river, in historic Norwood cemetery, one of London's magnificent seven cemeteries.

Angela