Another simple meal. Any visitor to one of H.M. penitentiaries may have noticed in the cells a statement to the effect that “beans and bacon” may be substituted for meat, for the convicts’ dinners, on certain days. “Beans and bacon” sounds rural, if not absolutely bucolic. “Fancy giving such good food to the wretches!” once exclaimed a lady visitor. But those who have sampled the said “beans and bacon” say that it is hardly to be preferred to the six ounces of Australian dingo or the coarse suet-duff (plumless) which furnish the ordinary prison dinner. For the tablespoonful of pappy beans with which the captive staves off starvation are of the genus “haricot”; and the parallelogram of salted hog’s-flesh which accompanies the beans does not exceed, in size, the ordinary railway ticket.
[CHAPTER X]
VEGETABLES
“Herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses.”
Use and abuse of the potato—Its eccentricities—Its origin—Hawkins, not Raleigh, introduced it into England—With or without the “jacket”?—Don’t let it be à-la-ed—Benevolence and large-heartedness of the cabbage family—Peas on earth—Pythagoras on the bean—“Giving him beans”—“Haricot” a misnomer—“Borston” beans—Frijoles—The carrot—Crécy soup—The Prince of Wales—The Black Prince and the King of Bohemia.
Item, the Potato, earth-apple, murphy, or spud; the most useful, as well as the most exasperating gift of a bountiful Providence. Those inclined to obesity may skip the greater part of this chapter. You can employ a potato for almost anything. It comes in very handy for the manufacture of starch, sugar, Irish stew, Scotch whisky, and Colorado beetles. Cut it in half, and with one half you restore an old master, and with the other drive the cat from the back garden. More deadly battles have been waged over the proper way to cook a potato, than over a parish boundary, or an Irish eviction. Strong-headed men hurl the spud high in air, and receive and fracture it on their frontal bones; whilst a juggler like Paul Cinquevalli can do what he likes with it. Worn inside the pocket, it is an infallible cure for chronic rheumatism, fits, and tubercular meningitis. Worn inside the body it will convert a living skeleton into a Daniel Lambert. Plant potatoes in a game district, and if they come up you will find that after the haulms have withered you can capture all your rich neighbour’s pheasants, and half the partridges in the country. A nicely-baked potato, deftly placed beneath the root of his tail, will make the worst “jibber” in the world travel; whilst, when combined with buttermilk, and a modicum of meal, the earth-apple has been known to nourish millions of the rising generation, and to give them sufficient strength and courage to owe their back rents, and accuracy of aim for exterminating the brutal owner of the soil.
The waiter, bless ye! the harmless, flat-footed waiter, doesn’t know all this. Potatoes to him are simply 2d. or 3d. in the little account, according to whether they be “biled, mash, or soty”; and if questioned as to the natural history of the floury tuber, he would probably assume an air of injured innocence, and assure you that during his reign of “thirty-five year, man and boy,” that establishment had “never ’ad no complaints.”
The potato is most eccentric in disposition, and its cultivator should know by heart the beautiful ode of Horace which commences