This week’s choice is “The Song Against Grocers” by G.K. Chesterton, which I have chosen to mark the passing of Brian, the popular and kindly man who ran the store in Weston for many years after owning and running a successful grocery before that. I hope he’d forgive me the choice of poem.
Where the bacon’s on the rafter
G.K. Chesterton (1874—1936)
And the wine is in the wood,
And God that made good laughter
Has seen that they are good.
Poem 352. The Song Against Grocers
(From “The Flying Inn”, 1914)
God made the wicked Grocer
For a mystery and a sign,
That men might shun the awful shops
And go to inns to dine;
Where the bacon’s on the rafter
And the wine is in the wood,
And God that made good laughter
Has seen that they are good.
The evil-hearted Grocer
Would call his mother “Ma’am,”
And bow at her and bob at her,
Her aged soul to damn,
And rub his horrid hands and ask
What article was next
Though MORTIS IN ARTICULO
Should be her proper text.
His props are not his children,
But pert lads underpaid,
Who call out “Cash!” and bang about
To work his wicked trade;
He keeps a lady in a cage
Most cruelly all day,
And makes her count and calls her “Miss”
Until she fades away.
The righteous minds of innkeepers
Induce them now and then
To crack a bottle with a friend
Or treat unmoneyed men,
But who hath seen the Grocer
Treat housemaids to his teas
Or crack a bottle of fish sauce
Or stand a man a cheese?
He sells us sands of Araby
As sugar for cash down;
He sweeps his shop and sells the dust
The purest salt in town,
He crams with cans of poisoned meat
Poor subjects of the King,
And when they die by thousands
Why, he laughs like anything.
The wicked Grocer groces
In spirits and in wine,
Not frankly and in fellowship
As men in inns do dine;
But packed with soap and sardines
And carried off by grooms,
For to be snatched by Duchesses
And drunk in dressing-rooms.
The hell-instructed Grocer
Has a temple made of tin,
And the ruin of good innkeepers
Is loudly urged therein;
But now the sands are running out
From sugar of a sort,
The Grocer trembles; for his time,
Just like his weight, is short.
This poem was included in Chesterton’s book The Flying Inn and led the editor of the trade journal Grocery to write to him to explain that his poem had damaged the grocery trade and appealing to him to put in a good word for the ‘good grocers.’
This poem is clearly tongue in cheek and it’s difficult to imagine how it might affect trade. Times have changed and most grocers have succumbed to the market pressures brought by the supermarkets who might often be addressed in the terms Chesterton uses here.
Chesterton lambasts the behaviour of “the wicked Grocer” and compares it against that of the virtuous innkeeper. The grocer is held up as an example of all that is evil in trade: the unctuous attitude of the second stanza (mortis in articulo is an ecclesiastical phrase from the Catholic church indicating an indulgence granted to those who had fulfilled certain obligations while in extremis) and his misuse of his staff in the third stanza are contrasted in the third stanza with the “righteous minds of innkeepers” who will sometimes offer a free beer to a friend or to someone in need. The Grocer has no such generosity—“who hath seen the Grocer/Treat housemaids to his teas.”
In the fourth stanza, we see Chesterton’s suspicions as to the wares peddled in the shops: sand sold as sugar, the sweepings from the shop floor becoming “the purest salt in town” and the tins of poisoned meat which he sells to people and then laughs heartily when they “die by thousands.”
The fifth stanza compares the spirits and wine in inns, enjoyed “frankly and in fellowship” with those sold clinically by the Grocer and “packed with soap and sardines” just as we put our shopping in a basket (and after purchase in a bag) and “carried off by grooms”—the manservant, rather than a soon-to-be-married man—for their employers to quaff guiltily while dressing for dinner.
In the last stanza, Chesterton predicts the fall of the Grocer (I suppose this came to pass with the advent of the supermarket, though the same practices persist)—just as the temples of tin in the Bible fell before the righteous wrath of God, those of the Grocer where “the ruin of good innkeepers” is urged also have a use-by date, for the Grocer’s time, ”Just like his weight, is short.”
I like this poem because it is so comic, though grocers in the Victorian era and before that often did adulterate their wares, often with substances that were actively harmful.
Chesterton had apparently already written a poem in praise of good grocers, though I haven’t been able to find it. I did find a performance of the poem by Brother Vincent on SoundCloud.
I hope that Brian, one of the good grocers and definitely in the camp of the inn-keepers rather than the wicked Grocer, would forgive me the choice of this poem. May he rest in peace.