Things With Stories: the Lobster Neuberg Dish
Jul 15th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
“We’ve had this dish a long time” I said to the lady known as Ma’am when I was known as Sir.
I was helping to put leftover things away after after a film after dinner. Ma’am recalled who gave us this rather nice blue and white bowl. Francis and Angela, elderly neighbours of her parents. A retired teacher of Greek and his eccentric pipe-smoking wife who believed in eating vast quantities of garlic.
Suddenly I was transported back in time, longer than I care to remember, to a house in a rural village where things like electricity were still new. The village church, 700 years old, had a little timeline on the back of a brochure which showed America having been discovered rather recently.
My father-in-law’s study was full of books in near Eastern languages, old and new, that I couldn’t read. If his rustic neighbours didn’t discuss world affairs in ancient Greek it wasn’t because they couldn’t. Their missals in the church were in Greek.
However ancient Francis and Angela seemed at the time, my in-laws had been in the village long enough to know the previous owners of the house–for decades in fact. The Lobster Neubergs were famous in my wife’s family for Mrs.Neuberg’s curious habit of hiding her dead dachshunds, from whom she couldn’t bear to be parted, behind cushions on the sofa. Apparently the smell was considerable, that is to say, indescribable. In due course Mrs.N joined her dogs.
Only this evening did I learn that the Lobster appellation came from John Betjemen, a regular guest at my wife’s childhood home. She recalls him lying on the floor with his teddy bear and declaiming “I am enjoying myself”.
I knew the cast of characters, at least as part of family folklore, much of which I’d heard even if couldn’t recall all of it. However, I never realised until now that it was Betjemen who coined the Lobster prefix. Now, of course, it seems entirely characteristic of him and I will be reminded of it whenever I see that dish.
Somehow, the idea of the dish becoming dissociated from its history however trifling it may be seems regrettable, though I know this is the unavoidable fate of most objects. After all, not everyone has neighbours with such a glorious name as the Lobster Neubergs or with such eccentric habits when it comes to deceased dachshunds.
The nearest eccentricity in my own family was a neighbour whose dachshunds were whipped in the garden whenever the Germans scored a victory over allied forces during the 2nd world war. Even as a child I was appalled.
