Here’s a menu in what I call the Artist’s Series. We’ve previously seen Shakespeare, John Constable, and Robert Burns, all of which were dated 1957. This one honors John Milton and is dated 1961. Since all of the other steamship menus I have from 1961 are in a different series, this was probably the last year the Artist’s Series would have been used on CP trans-Atlantic ships.

Click image to download an 582-KB PDF of this menu.

The watercolor on the cover is signed Landon, about whom I haven’t previously been able to find any information–perhaps because I misread the name as Lendon. England did have a portrait and landscape painter named Brenda Landon (1907-2005), at least until 1961 when she remarried and became Brenda Pye. I haven’t verified that she did these menu covers, but since the covers include both portraits and landscapes, it seems possible.

I was a bit surprised that Landon’s menu cover for Major General Wolfe showed Wolfe’s hometown of Westerham as it looked in the 1950s, not in Wolfe’s time. This menu does the same for Chalfont St. Giles, a town where Milton retreated to in 1665 to avoid the Black Death. Milton’s cottage is still there as a museum, but I haven’t been able to find Milton’s elm as shown in the cover painting.

This menu was used on the Empress of Britain, the last ship of that name, on April 9. It has two fish, three entrées (one of which, celery hearts au jus, doesn’t sound like much of an entrée to me), ham steak to order, prime ribs as a joint, and roast duckling as a releve.

From the suggested menu on the left, it appears that diners were expected to select just one of these eight items as their main course, but as I understand they would have been free to try one from each course if they wanted. Notably, a lime sorbet separated the joint from the releve, and there wouldn’t be much need for a sorbet to clear the palette if (as the suggested menu suggests) the only one selected was the duckling.