What do you think of this sentence about afternoon tea?

[MsAmerica]

I thought you might like this:

What do you think of this second sentence, purely as a sentence, but also in terms of punctuation?

There was a silver tea-pot, and a silver kettle with a little spirit-lamp underneath, and a silver cream jug and a covered silver dish full of muffins. There was also hot buttered toast and honey and gentleman’s relish and a chocolate cake, a cherry cake, a seed cake and a fruit cake and some tomato sandwiches and pepper and salt and currant bread and butter.

Why have you reposted virtually the same thread that you posted in Cunning Linguists?

It's Evelyn Waugh and he and his editors probably have serious thought to this construction would be fine, though.

If you look at the passage in context, we're getting a very direct perspective on affairs from our hero (Adam) and Waugh describes things in fairly laconic style, through Adam's eyes. Adam is exhausted and just back from Italy, where his meals haven't been up to scratch. He is relaxing into an English country house and has just woken up for his tea. He sees the spread described here and thinks of a happy future with his wife to be when he will come here to nurse hangovers.

So the repetitive, undulating style is Adam sleepily taking in the splendid and unexpected spread before him (it's only tea), with the comfortable assurance that he is back in a well ordered English household. His host, we've already been shown at lunchtime, takes food very seriously.

Great writing - I have favourites among Waugh's books and others I don't like at all. I've just read this chapter of this one but I should probably give the whole thing a try.

Ratty’s hamper shows how it should be done. This sounds like a jumbled mess.

It's not punctuated correctly. Too many 'ands' .

I would say it's meant to sound messy. Waugh writes that way deliberately. His hero is just waking up.

I don't think you can judge this paragraph in isolation to be honest

I think Gentleman's Relish should have capitals because it was the name of a product. It's an anchovy paste, I think. Now I'm not sure if that was indeed the name of the spread and I'll go away and look it up in a minute.
The punctuation is a bit strange but I can live with it happily because the writer wanted it to sound like that. It creates a feeling of noticing this and that and, oh look, more and more.

Yes, Gentleman's Relish. We had some a long time ago and we had it on the pantry shelf for a long time.

Salt, butter and anchovies, pounded together. The salt content is high enough to preserve it. The plastic container is based on the appearance of the old glazed china one.

Polysyndeton! A stylistic choice rather than an error, and I think it works well.

I hadn’t recognised it. My first thought was that if this is from something like a restaurant review it’s unbearably affected! Very acceptable in a novel, though.

So you prefer and and and and and and and and and and and, do you?😉

Yes, in this case. Waugh's a humorous writer. It gets you into the mind of his character and stops the whole scene from just reading like a shopping list 🙂

Literary device. Setting the scene. As your mind’s eye imagines the table, more and more delicious delicacies are unveiled.
At times, the strict rules of grammar can be left aside in the hands of a competent writer!

In this forum? No, I don't think so. Apologies if I did.

Now, THAT I liked. But I don't like this sentence here.

Ha! Yes!

Well, @dailyconniptions, isn't wrong, though. Invite is just the lazier modern version.

Because initially I wasn't sure which it was right for, and the question was enthusiastically received there, so I thought I'd cross-post it. It seems to have been a good idea, because most here don't seem to have seen it there.
What's your objection? Why do you care?

Hm. I'll note down the word.

:)

I've run into it in one other novel, but I can't recall where.

Seems fine to me and makes sense to wonder what pedants would make of it.

But I think it wouldn't be anything like so interesting and not even mildly funny if Waugh had been pedantic about conventional use of commas and conjunctions here.

He writes ice-pure prose in something like Brideshead Revisited. He knows what he's doing here. Humour lands differently with different people and this definitely works for me.

Is it Pater Peperium? I'm not just sure of the Latin and I don't know how to pop over to check in Google/Wiki when I'm in the middle of a sentence on Mumsnet. I wonder if Gentleman's Relish appears in 'Three Men In A Boat' or in any novel by Angela Thirkell.

Gentleman's Relish - Wikipedia https://share.google/NrlG3vGjSq48oFXQt

I can look past most of it but will never accept ‘pepper and salt’ as being correct!

Three men in a boat has a picnic described like this.