Of the other British shellfish the periwinkle is much appreciated by the epicurean French who, not satisfied with importing them from England in bulk have also brought them over to plant in their own beds. They are boiled a few minutes in salted water and served with butter as an entrée, usually at the second morning meal.
COVENT GARDEN MARKET SCENES.
That the English do not live on butcher's meats and marine food alone, is made manifest by a matutinal visit to Covent Garden.
"In Covent Garden a filthy noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Dunham"—such is Macaulay's picture of this market at the close of the seventeenth century. It is still given up entirely to vegetables, fruits, and flowers, but is now clean, orderly, and not especially noisy, as markets go—not so noisy, perhaps, as some of the operas performed in the neighboring Covent Garden Theater, the resort of fashionable society.
In September we found the flower pavilions the most interesting part of the market. Chrysanthemums with rich, deep-colored blossoms were the reigning favorites. Conspicuous among their rivals were the dahlias, gaudy and varicolored, some of them solid as cabbage heads, others strangely-quilled. Bright autumn leaves, recalling New England, attracted our attention. In one spot golden chrysanthemums and melons of exactly the same shade made a beautiful picture.
On the whole the vegetable quarters are not specially interesting, particularly when one has seen the Halles Centrales of Paris. Flowers do not, as in Paris, crowd in among them, nor are the streets picturesque and slippery with many shades of green refuse. The carts are not emptied as they are in Paris, but form each its own stall. All the vegetable pictures are "skied," and are far less attractive than when they lie, in orderly confusion, all over the market streets. Celery, the first we had seen, was enormous, but deep green, instead of white, like ours. Many of the provisions are packed and sold hidden in large round baskets. A perfect tower of Babel, ten baskets in all, is one man's load, carried on his head, but they are evidently empty, as two seem to be as heavy a weight as a man cares to balance when they are full.
George Meredith is quoted as having said to a friend that he would be a vegetarian if he could get his vegetables decently cooked.
There are a few vegetarian restaurants in London, and probably there would be many more if the English knew, as several Continental nations know, the art of cooking greens and roots in a savory manner. Sir Henry Thompson grew enthusiastic over the "delicious characteristic flavor" of English garden peas, picked young and cooked à l'Anglaise, which is a better way than any French fashion of cooking them. Vegetable marrow tastes better in England than anywhere else, and the mushrooms are good. But on the whole England has a great deal to learn from France regarding variety and the best ways of growing and cooking vegetables.