Your right to chews
Sir: Paul Johnson asks (And another thing, 3 November) if it is true that Gladstone chewed his food 39 times. Horace Fletcher writes in Fletcherism: What It Is or How I Became Young at Sixty (Frederick A Stokes, New York, 1913): 'Mr Gladstone's advice to his children which has become classic, viz.: "chew your food 32 times at least, so as to give each of your 32 teeth a chance at it" was a general recommendation. Mr Gladstone was observed once at "high table" at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the average number of "bites" (masticatory movements) as far as they could be counted, was about 75. That did not speak very well for Trinity fare, unless Mr Gladstone happened to choose food that required that amount of chewing.'
David Macfadyen Isle of Skye
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