QI The Book of the Dead

his premises on the Strand. Gifted with an extraordinary memory, he began speaking, without notes, at seven in the morning continuing until ten. In spite of his reputation for rough manners, Fordyce was elected a fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society. He knew Dr Johnson, the artist Joshua Reynolds and the actor David Garrick, and was happy to sit quietly in the company of livelier and more famous men, many of whom shared his passion for consuming huge quantities of food.
    Fordyce was as regular in his eating habits as in his lecture timetable. For twenty years, he dined every day at four in the afternoon at Dolly’s Chop House near St Paul’s Cathedral. His theory, laid out in his Treatise on Digestion and Food (1791), was that people should emulate lions in the wild, eating just once a day, rather than over-working the digestive system with frequent meals. His dinner began with a tankard of strong ale, a bottle of port and a quarter-pint of brandy. The meal then gathered pace.
    For an appetiser, Dr Fordyce usually took something light –grilled fowl or a dish of whiting. After this had been washed down with a glass of brandy, he would tuck into two pounds of prime steak accompanied by the remainder of the brandy. For dessert, he had another bottle of port, after which he set off to his home where he would spend much of the night studying. Not surprisingly he was noted for a florid complexion – and for his scruffy appearance: he often appeared for his morning lectures in the clothes he had worn the previous day.
    Like many food theorists, Fordyce paid the price for his single-mindedness. For the last weeks of his life, he was bedridden with gout but refused to let any other doctors treat him. One night, while his daughter Maggie was reading to him, he suddenly exclaimed: ‘Stop! Go out of the room, I’m going to die!’ And so he did.

     
    If Fordyce was a typical eighteenth-century trencherman, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria (1837–98) comes straight out of a nineteenth-century romantic novel. Married to Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary and mother to Crown Prince Rudolf, Elizabeth was a society beauty obsessed with her physique. Throughout her adult life she was determined to maintain her 16-inch waist, which she set off to best advantage with tight corsets that took an hour to lace up. After having three children, her waist expanded to 18 inches but, at 5' 8" tall, she never let her weight go above 7½ stones. If it exceeded that, she ate nothing but oranges until she had lost the extra ounces.
    Elizabeth was beautiful and adventurous, famed for her fearlessness on horseback and for her thick dark hair, which fell to the backs of her knees. In public, even when out riding, she carried afan to conceal herself from sketch artists and photographers who might try to capture a view of her face for the press. Others said she did this to hide her teeth, which were always yellow.
    Born to Bavarian royalty at Possenhoffen Castle, Elizabeth was a favourite cousin of ‘Mad’ King Ludwig II, but her outwardly pampered life was marred by tragedy. She lost her youngest daughter Sophie at the age of two in 1857, and in 1889 her son Crown Prince Rudolf committed suicide in scandalous circumstances. Apart from his body being found with his young lover Mary Vetsera, there were rumours that he had been plotting against his father.
    Elizabeth’s marriage to the emperor was further strained by the formality of the Hapsburg court, where Franz Joseph was in complete control. When he finished a course at dinner, the other diners had to put down their knives and forks too. He was distrustful of modern inventions like telephones, cars and trains, and said that electric light irritated his eyes. On top of that, his wife’s repeated attacks of ‘nerves’ and her obsession with diet were a constant niggle. For her part, Elizabeth hated everything to do with childbearing, and found sex with the emperor a duty rather than a pleasure. Although she bore him four children, she left them in the care of their grandmother or the servants, and found it difficult to show them affection. She confessed to a friend that only riding helped dispel her frequent bouts of depression.
    Known as ‘Sisi’ to those closest to her, she generally preferred horses to people. She kept portraits of all her horses in her bedroom, describing the ones that had died as ‘lost friends’ who were ‘always more loyal