Article in Stretton Focus, August 2015
This is a film set in the late 19th century. Babette was a brilliant cook and worked as chef in a Paris restaurant. Not an everyday café but the sort of place which today would be loaded with stars and rosettes and be the subject of articles in the weekend press. The Café Anglais had an enviable reputation, thanks to Babette. However, she ran into trouble. Not culinary but political and serious enough to force her to leave Paris. Thanks to a good contact she found refuge in Jutland in a house shared by two sisters. These were the daughters of the founder of a small, strict, Protestant sect. The pastor preached a harsh, simple life with no room for pleasure and he had discouraged suitors for his daughters who had remained unmarried. Their religion was as cold and uncompromising as the climate.
For years Babette acted as the sisters’ cook and housekeeper, making thin soup and drying fish, a life as different as could be from her Paris days. She did however keep up one tradition from her previous life – she bought a monthly lottery ticket. One month she won 10,000 francs!!! What was she to do? Here was an opportunity to return to France and maybe to resume her old way of life. However she had heard the sisters discussing the imminent 100th anniversary of the pastor’s birth and their plans to celebrate it with a gathering for tea. Babette asked the sisters if they would allow her to prepare for them a French dinner at her cost, paid for out of her winnings, and they agreed. Invitations were sent out to the community plus two additional guests, an aunt and her nephew. The nephew turns out to be a successful general who, when a young soldier had proposed to one of the sisters and had been rejected in obedience to the pastor.
Babette began preparations for the dinner. Soon the sisters began to see exotic foods and wines arrive and began to get nervous. This was not their style. Would the pastor have approved? They called a meeting to discuss the dilemma! They did not want to hurt Babette but neither did they want to tarnish the pastor’s memory. They reached a compromise. They would eat the food but not comment on it!
The great day came. The table was laid with fine linen and sparkling glass, the guests took their places and the food was served. And what food! Real turtle soup with an amontillado which the general declared “the finest wine I have ever tasted”. A game course consisted of quail served in a pastry case and christened ‘quails in their sarcophagi’. This was immediately recognised by the general as a signature dish of the Café Anglais and he knew who was cooking this splendid meal. The acid-faced members of the community ate without speaking as agreed. At first they were rigid and unyielding but gradually began to soften, perhaps helped by the champagne which one of the guests described as ‘excellent lemonade’.
When dinner was over the general made a speech in which he made it clear that he still loved the girl who rejected him and that whenever he dines she is with him in spirit. Members of the sect confess to one another that they have not always behaved as they should and breaches are healed. The sisters ask Babette what she plans to do now she has some money. But Babette does not have any money. Dinner for 12 at the Café Anglais costs 10,000 francs and that is what she has given the sisters and the community. She is now poor again and is going nowhere.
Babette’s Feast is a lovely story. Babette is in the biblical tradition of the widow who had almost nothing but gave everything and the nameless woman who anointed Jesus with expensive ointment. Like her Babette saw an opportunity for an act of lavish generosity and she seized the chance.
Howard Bridge