I once marveled over the Giant Cheese of Perth, Canada, but my daughter pointed out it had an exalted predecessor: the Mammoth Cheese given to Thomas Jefferson on New Year's Day, 1802.
| Actually there may have been TWO predecessors - Jeffrey Pasley opines there was "a similar large dairy product made in Cheshire, England, to celebrate George III’s recovery" from porphyria.
I'm not sure I believe in this proto-cheese - jeez, they didn't even MENTION it in The Madness of King George - which was a really great movie and in which we see George blogging on July 4, 1776: "Nothing of importance happened today." |
The cheese had been en route for more than a month by the time a Baptist preacher, John Leland, finally got it to the White House from Cheshire Massachusetts. It wore a sign saying: "The Greatest Cheese in America for the Greatest Man in America!"
The previous year, Leland had preached from his pulpit the idea of making a giant cheese to celebrate Jefferson's election. The congregation was enthusiastic and plans were made.
On July 20 1801 the "Ladies of Cheshire," dressed to the nines, assembled at a big cheese bee with pails of curds from "900 cows at one milking." These had all, by the way, been Republican cows - the milk of Federalist cows was "scrupulously excluded." During a day of hymn singing the curds were packed into a giant cider press.
The finished cheese was ungainly: more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, weighing 1,235 pounds, it would have sunk into muddy spring roads. Therefore it was decided to make delivery in winter, by sled and boat.
Leland and a member of his congregation travelled with the cheese for a month, causing a sensation wherever they stopped. Leland, an enthusiastic evangelist, preached along the way to the crowds (whom he framed as "large congregations") under his new moniker, The Mammoth Priest. He was of the old school: "Such a farrago," it was reported, "bawled with ... horrid tone, frightful grimaces, and extravagant gestures ... was never heard by any decent auditory before."
"By the time it reached Baltimore, one wag reported, the ripening cheese, now nearly six months removed from the cows, was strong enough to walk the remaining distance to Washington." (Daniel Dreisbach)
Jefferson, "whose typical manner on public occasions was low-key to the point of sedation," appeared "highly diverted" by the arrival of the cheese. He stood in the doorway of the White House, arms spread wide, to receive the emissaries and their cargo.
| Edward S. Ellis wrote: "Mr. Jefferson was not in the habit 'of deadheading at hotels,' nor of receiving presents, however inconsiderable in value, which would place him under any obligation to the donor. His financial diary contains the following minute regarding the cheese: 1802. Gave Rev'd Mr. Leland, bearer of the cheese of 1235 Ibs weight, 200 D." (About sixteen cents a pound) |
The Federalists blogged furiously about the cheese. "If we were not so convinced of the stupidity of the Jacobin encomium-mongers," snarked one, "we should imagine the whole introduction to the cheese vat to be conceived in a vein of irony." It was they who coined the nickname "Mammoth Cheese." They intended to mock simultaneously the cheese and Jefferson's interest in science: it was with government assistance that woolly mammoth (mastodon) bones had just then been dug up, a silly enterprise in their opinion.
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