Earl of Sandwich – a bit of History after all

 

The Big Island of the Haiwaiian Islands -
The Islands formerly as the Sandwich Islands

lord sandwich said
himself a middle child
in between is the best

I wrote the haiku above in response to the prompt „Middle Child“ on Facebook's National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo) [1]. It was immediately clear to me that it would have nothing to do with the historical Earl of Sandwich. But it also says Lord of Sandwich. And it was clear to me that he could hardly have been a middle child, otherwise he would not have received  the title. I rejected the idea of looking it up on Wikipedia, but now I was seized by enthusiasm to do so.

Earl of Sandwich is a hereditary British noble title in England, named after Sandwich, a town in Kent [2]. This blogpost is about John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who lived from 1718 to 1792 and was a British diplomat and statesman [3]. He is known today for the sandwich, to which we will come later. John Montagu was the elder of two brothers who were abandoned by their mother after the death of their father, so that was the end for the concept of a middle child. He was accepted into Eton at the age of seven. It is not surprising that among his many letters, not one is from or to his mother. James Cook had named the Hawaiian Islands the Sandwich Islands, but this name did not stick. There are, however, the South Sandwich Islands, which lie about 700 km southeast of South Georgia [4].

Now let's get to the sandwich. Legend has it that the Eral of Sandwich did not want to interrupt his game of cribbage (a card game) and so he had this new type of bread slice handed to him, so he could eat while playing. At first it was beef between two toasted slices of white bread. That would be very similar to a hamburger of nowadays. But Pierre-Jean Grosley - the only source for the origin of the sandwich myth is a travel book by him - probably named his own creation after the Earl of Sandwich. He was a busy writer and also didn't want his writing by eating.

Should I have researched it when I was writing the haiku? No, absolutely not, maybe I would have got scruples and withdrawn it.

Links and notes:
[1] NaHaiWriMo / Write a haiku a day, inspired by daily prompts, especially in February, National Haiku Writing Month. https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Sandwich
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4._Earl_of_Sandwich and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sandwich_Islands

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