“If the partridge had but the woodcock’s thigh,
’Twould be the best bird that ever did fly.
If the woodcock had but the partridge’s breast,
’Twould be the best bird that ever was dress’d.”
The partridge is much on the ground, the woodcock ever on the wing; and these parts, and the immediate vicinity of them, acquire a muscular toughness, not admired by epicures.
The vegetarians may boast of a descent as ancient as that claimed by the Freemasons. In ancient days, if, indeed, flesh-meat was not denounced, unmeasured honour was paid to vegetables. Monarchs exchanged them as gifts, wise men and warriors supped on them after study and battle, Chiefs of the noblest descent prepared them with their own hands for their own tables, agricultural chymists tended their planting, and pious populations raised some of them to the rank of gods.
The Licinian Law enacted their use, while it restricted the consumption of meat; and the greatest families in Rome derived their names from them. Fabius was but General Bean, Cicero was Vice-Chancellor Pea, and the house of Lentulus took its appellation from the slow-growing Lentil.
The kitchen-garden of Henry VIII. was worse supplied than that of Charlemagne, who not only raised vegetables, but, as Gustavus Vasa’s Queen did with her eggs and milk, made money by them. He was a royal market-gardener, and found more profit in his salads than he did in his sons. A salad, by the way, was so scarce an article during the early part of the last century, that George I. was obliged to send to Holland to procure a lettuce for his Queen; and now lettuces are flung by cart-loads to the pigs. Asparagus and artichokes were strangers to us until a still later period.
The bean has, from remote times, held a distinguished place. Isidorus asserts that it was the first food used by man. Pythagoras held that human life was in it. By others the black spot was accounted typical of death; and the Flamen of Jupiter would neither look upon it nor pronounce its name. The Priests of Apollo, on the other hand, banqueted on a dish of beans at one of the festivals of their god. Those of Æsculapius taught that the smell of beans in blossom was prejudicial to health; and farmers’ wives, in the days of Baucis and Philemon, maintained that hens reared on beans would never lay eggs.
The “bean” was once the principal feature in the Twelfth-Night cake; and he to whose share fell the piece containing the vegetable was King for the night. The last Twelfth Night observed, with ancient strictness, at the Tuileries, was when Louis XVIII. was yet reigning. Among his guests was Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who was lucky enough to draw the bean, and thereby became Monarch for the nonce. “My cousin,” said Louis XVIII., “is King at last!” “I will never accept such title,” answered the over-modest Duke; “I acknowledge no other King in France but your Majesty, and will not usurp the name even in jest!” Excellent man! he was at that very moment intriguing to tumble from his throne that very King, loyalty for whom he expressed with so much of unnecessary and enforced ceremony.