The Origins of the Picnic
What better than the pleasure of a simple picnic? Where did this tradition begin–perhaps not the way you imagined.
The concept of a picnic has been existence for a very long time. (Of course, one could argue that eating outdoors was the very first way to eat, but let’s not go back quite that far.) Food historians suggest that the modern concept of the picnic evolved from traditional moveable outdoor feasts. The first English picnics were medieval hunting feasts staged before the chase (not after, I suppose, in case the hunt wasn’t particularly successful, but I digress.)
The word picnic (which the OED says did not occur in print in English until 1748, in a letter by Lord Chesterfield) probably originated with the French pique nique found in a 1649 satirical French poem in which Frères Pique-nicques is known for visiting friends “armed with bottles and dishes.” (Kennedy, 2013) The word later was used to mean to ‘pick a place’, typically an isolated spot, where a group could enjoy a pleasant meal together, free from distractions and demands of daily life.
The English word ‘picnic’ became associated with card-playing, drinking and conversation. By 1802, British Francophiles formed a Pic-Nic society in London devoted to eating, drinking and performing amateur theatricals. Dinners for this society were provided by the members who drew lots to determine who would be bringing which dish—we wouldn’t want thirty seven blancmanges to show up for the same picnic, would we?
The idea of a picnic also referred to a dinner where all those present contributed foods and was eaten indoors—rather like the modern pot luck meal. The meaning gradually changed to include the concept of eating out-of-doors and by 1860 (solidly in the Victorian era), the change in meaning—a meal eaten outdoors—was complete.
All right, no you have me curious. If “picnic” did not come into general usage to mean an outdoor meal hosted by – for example – Georgiana Darcy until the mid-Victorian period, might there be another term more appropriate for use in The Vicar’s Daughter? An al fresco gathering or meal, perhaps? That seems to be period appropriate from what little I’ve found, but I’m fresh out of time for diving down a rabbit hole. DARN! (Hmmmm, when did “darn” start to mean an expression of discontent rather than mending a hole in fabric? That could be interesting to find out but not now. Too many rabbit holes, too little time.)
And why does one always spot the typo just when it’s too late to fix it? Is there some sort of Universal Law of Aggravation to account for it?