Charles Dartiquenave

Charles Dartiquenave, also known as Charles Darteneuf (baptised 166419 October 1737) was an English epicure and courtier. Origins Dartiquenave was rumoured to be the illegitimate child of Charles II. Biographers who have accepted the tradition of his royal paternity have suggested that his mother was a Frenchwoman. A more likely supposition is that he was the élève of a refugee French family, whose name he assumed, Another theory is that he was related to John James Dartiquenave, who was buried at Fulham 25 September 1709. Epicure Dartiquenave was very fond of fine dining and convivial society, a bon-vivant. Jonathan Swift and Dartiquenave were friends, and frequently dined and drank with Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. ‘My friend Dartineuf,’ says Swift in his ‘Journal to Stella,’ ‘is the greatest punner of this town next myself,’ and in another passage of the same journal Swift dubs his friend ‘the man that knows everything and that everybody knows; that knows where a knot of rabble are going on a holiday and when they were there last.’ Alexander Pope in his imitations of Horace, ‘Satire I.,’ allows to each mortal his pleasure, and asserts that none deny Scarsdale his bottle and Darty his ham-pie. In ‘Satires’ (II. ii), Pope mentions ‘Darty’ as a culinary judge. Lord Lyttelton, in his ‘Dialogues of the Dead’ (dialogue xix.), made Apicius and Dartiquenave represent the epicures of ancient and modern history. Samuel Johnson recorded (in 1776) that when this book came out Dodsley the publisher remarked to him, ‘I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.’ Tradition has assigned to Dartiquenave some contributions to the ‘Tatler,’ e.g. a letter in No. 252, ‘On the Pleasure of Modern Drinking.’