EATING PEAS WITH HONEY (COMMENT). “Milton” posted a comment on a post I made here about Virginia Woolf’s snobbishness and about Mary Jane pointing out to me a “cavone” eating peas with his knife in Venice. I am grateful for the memories brought back by a poem he quoted in the comment.
Here is the poem:
“I eat my peas with honey; I’ve done so all my life;
It makes them taste real funny, but they sure stay on the knife..â€
I read the comment, and suddenly I could hear my father’s voice at the dinner table reciting that poem more than once in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. I also remembered the expression on his face when he recited it.
I did some Googling about the poem. This article by Patrick Sauer on the Signature website attributes the poem to the great Ogden Nash: “The poem was first recited in 1944 on a radio show called “It Pays to Be Ignorant,†a parody of high-minded academic quiz shows….”