Food
Wittgenstein didn't mind what he ate so long as it was the same every day. And he adopted much the same approach with his jokes.
When staying with friends in America in 1949, the philosopher demanded bread and cheese at all meals. Every time the dull repast was laid before him, he would exclaim, as if for the first time, "Hot diggetty!", a phrase he had picked up from the movies. It never failed to amuse or please him. But you get the feeling that if they had replaced his bread and cheese with a boeuf en croute, he would have been less enthusiastic. He was pickier about food than he pretended. Wittgenstein didn't mind what he ate so long as he ate what he liked - and what he liked was the opposite of what he had been brought up on.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was born the eighth and youngest child of Karl Wittgenstein, a wealthy Austrian industrialist. Karl's table was always crammed with fin de siecle Viennese goodies, laid on by servants in course after gleaming course. There were rich veloute soups and crusty, fatty roast goose. Souffles and boiled tongues and Sachertorte each demanded ritual veneration. For a sensitive boy like Ludwig, the ceremony was overwhelming. Sometimes he must have felt as trapped as the smothered carp on the platter before him.
Cutting himself off from the wealth and ways of his family meant putting aside the excess of Viennese cuisine. This wasn't hard. Neither Ludwig's palate nor his stomach desired fancy foods. One of his preferred lunches was a plain omelette and a cup of coffee. On holiday in Iceland before the Great War, there were picnics of tinned corned beef and cocoa, as Ludwig's beloved friend David Pinset recorded in his diary, with all the boyish enthusiasm of the Hugh Laurie character in Blackadder. But Ludwig himself hardly noticed what he ate, engrossed as he was in problems of logical symbolism. All he knew was that his entire system was prone to seize up after rich food. Late in life, he swore by Scragg's charcoal biscuits to combat indigestion.
Wittgenstein's moderation was more than hypochondria. It was a Weltanschauung. In 1934, 12 years after the publication of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he stayed in Ireland with his acolyte Frank Skinner. On the first night Wittgenstein rebuked their host for serving roast chicken followed by suet pudding and treacle. He stipulated that from then on they should eat nothing but porridge at breakfast, vegetables at lunch and a boiled egg for supper. As they ate the despised pudding, treacle became their own metaphor for the world they were trying to escape from. Wittgenstein and Skinner dreamed of a life without treacle - as manual labourers.
Wittgenstein's existence as a Cambridge lecturer had been thick with treacle. He saw in the university "the disintegrating and putrefying English civilisation". His relationships with other dons - from Bertrand Russell to F R Leavis - were prickly. He said that the kindest thing anyone said to him while at Trinity College was spoken not by a don but by a college servant. Wittgenstein was struggling with a creamy dessert on high table. The steward leaned over and whispered, "If you dig a little deeper, sir, you'll find a peach."
Wittgenstein's trifle
Put some tinned or bottled peaches in the bottom of a glass bowl. Cover with brioche slices dipped in Grand Marnier. Then a layer of proper custard, flavoured with orange zest. Chill to set. Spread over whipped cream and some flaked toasted almonds. Eat every day exactly the same. Just don't think about it too much.
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