SOUPSONG HAS GONE HARDCOPY!
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Release date: 12/28/2004.
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Deathbed Soup Tales
| Person (or whatever) | Favorite soup |
|---|---|
| BELUSHI, JOHN (U.S. comedian, Blues Brother, of Saturday Night Live Fame, d. 1982) |
LENTIL SOUP, his last meal at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, 9015 Sunset Boulevard, before overdosing on drugs |
| BORIS III (20th century King of Bulgaria) |
TYPHUS SOUP Alas a case of poisoning. In 1925, a palace chef allegedly put typhus germs into soup served to the King, who became extremely ill, causing marked excitement throughout the Balkans. Royal doctors insisted that the King suffered only a gastric disturbance due to the existing heat wave, but the full weight of the police force was dedicated to finding the chef...unsuccessfully, in the end. |
| CARSON, KIT (19rh century U.S. frontiersman) |
CHILI. Sounds suspect to me, but legend has it his last words were "I wish I had time for one more bowl of chili" when he died, age 59, from an aneurysm in the surgeon's quarters in Fort Lyon, Colorado. |
| CHILD, JULIA (U.S. chef and marvelous lover of life and food) |
FRENCH ONION SOUP, her last meal, at age 92, before succumbing on 8/13/2004. Read her amazing life story of onion soup. |
| COOK, CAPTAIN JAMES (18th century British explorer) |
DOG SOUP Actually a near death soup, as it ended by saving a very very sick Captain Cook. On his second voyage, intrepid explorer James Cook left England on The Resolution in 1772 to circumnavigate the south pole in an attempt to discover Terra austalis incognito. In his sweeps south into icepacked Antarctic seas, he was forced to retreat to New Zealand, Tahiti, and Tonga, but kept returning to the ice. Finally giving up for the winter, he headed for Easter Island in February but fell deathly ill and was forced to turn his command over to Lt. Cooper. Only constant nursing by Surgeon Patten kept him alive, but it was the ordinarily prickly naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster who saved Cook by having his pet dog slaughtered and made into a broth, which was carefully fed to Cook, spoonful by spoonful. |
| DAUDET, ALPHONSE (19th century French novelist) |
TERMINAL SOUP Daudet's Hungarian doctor prescribed a vegetable and grain soup for his irreversible syphilis that affected him so volcanically that he said death was preferable. When Daudet finally did die, it was with a soup spoon in his hand. It was September 1897; he was dining with his wife and children in his Paris home talking about Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," which had just gone into general rehearsal, when he took a few spoonsful of soup then, in mid chat, fell back in his chair and died (from Julian Barnes translation of Daudet's notebooks). |
| DIETRICH, MARLENE (Actress; 1902-92)) |
END-OF-LIFE SOUP Less a soup, than a story of the last hour of fabled Lola from The Blue Angel: After a stroke in 1992, which took away her appetite, her grandson Peter flew to her side, took the 70-pound woman in his arms and carried her into the living room. Wearing a white nightgown and a pink jacket, she spoke on the phone to her daughter Maria, obediently swallowing a spoonful of soup at Maria's instructions. Peter recalls, "She looked relaxed, saying simply, 'Maria.' Then she closed her eyes, as if she wanted to have her afternoon nap. And she was gone." |
| 41 DONNER PARTY VICTIMS (1846) |
HUMAN SOUP When members of the Donner party set out across the Sierras and were hopelessly trapped for months by unprecedented snow, they began by eating their oxen, their pets, soup made from boiling hides, and even fur rugs toasted over the fire, only resorting to eating the flesh of their dead comrades when faced with starvation. When rescuers arrived in February of 1847, they found the survivors boiling parts of their comrades into soup. 48 of 89 in the original party survived. The 41 who didn't make it died with soup in their stomachs...and, in turn, became the soup in their friends' bellies. |
| ERIK XIV (16th century King of Sweden) |
YELLOW PEA SOUP--until 1577, anyway, when he died after scarfing up a bowl that had been heavily laced with poison. For his brother's full imagined confession go to "My late brother Erik XIV" |
| FILLMORE, MILLARD U.S. President (1850-53) |
This tall handsome U.S. president was a nobody from nowhere when he was chosen to share the 1848 ticket as VP with Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor, a short, tubby bore. Then, when Taylor died in office after eating too many strawberries on a hot day, there he was. His tenure was...uneventful. To the point that he was passed over by his own party for reelection. He died in 1874. His last words, on being given a spoon of soup by his doctor, were the legendary "The nourishment is palatable." |
| GINSBERG, ALLEN (20th century American poet) |
FISH CHOWDER After making this soup and eating it with friends, Ginsberg succumbed to liver cancer. Remants of the soup are being kept carefully frozen in the interests of a future museum exhibit. Read the whole story. |
| LEE, ROBERT E. (General-in-chief of the Confederate armies in the American Civil War, 1807-1870) |
BEEF TEA "My dear Genl," Mrs. Lee wrote on Octover 10, 1870 to Francis H. Smith, superintendent of Virginia Military Institute, "the Drs. think it would be well for Genl Lee to have some beef tea at once and as I cannot get it at the market before night I send to beg a small peice [of beef]." Alas, it was his last meal: he died two days later. (from Anne Carter Zimmer's The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book) |
| MARIE ANTOINETTE (Queen of France, 1755-1793) |
CONSOMME, which may not have been her favorite, but it was certainly her last. The last thing she was able to eat, that is, before she was guillotined on October 16. |
| MOLIERE, JEAN-BAPTISTE [POQUELIN] (17-century dramatist/comedian under Louis XIV, 1622-1673) | In the words of his Russian soul-brother and biographer Mikhail Bulgakov: The house was still dark, for Armande, who had played Angelique, had just returned from the theater. Baron whispered to here that Moliere was ill. People began to hurry about the house with candles, and Moliere was led up the wooden stairs to his rooms. Armande was giving orders downstairs, and sent one of the servants fo a doctor. Meantime, Baron and one of the maids undressed Moliere and put him to bed. Baron was growing more apprehensive every moment. "Master, is there anything you want? Would you have some broth?" Moliere bard his teeth and said, with a testy smile: "Broth? Oh, no! I know what my wife puts into the broth; it's stronger than acid." ..."Moliere!" Armande said in a shaken voice, as she had never spoken to him before. But she received no answer. |
| PAUL, JEAN-CLAUDE (Haitian army colonel) | This army kingpin, commander of Dessaline Barracks who made $40 million dollars facilitating cocaine shipments from Colombia in the late 1980s, was found dead in November 1989 after eating poisoned Soupe Joumou (pumpkin soup)--reputedly administered by his wife, jealous that she'd been cut out of the cocaine profits. |