Part 6

That _Epitome Historiae Sacrae_ was a primer adapted to first year boys—a small buckram-bound book compendized, poetically expurgated, and made in truth singularly attractive to the young imagination—more attractive even, I fancy, than those Fables of La Fontaine and of Florian that, read in the light of “short stories,” were such favourites. It was, by the way, called _Epitome Sacrae_ or even _Sacrae_ pure and simple, in the same manner as the volumes allotted to the two subsequent years were known respectively as _Latinae_ and _Graecae_.

I would give a fairly large coin of our present money for a copy now, could I come across one in some old bookstall on the quays. But, from their very nature, the cheapest books are among the rarest things to recover at second hand.

[Sidenote: SCRIPTURE STORIES]

It was within the pale green covers of that queer little tome that I tasted for the first time the literary savour of the various _genres_ in tale-telling; of pastoral and romance, of idyll and tragedy. One could not truly say that any very strong impression of a sacred character was conveyed through the collection of Holy Scripture stories. But it is doubtful whether anything read in after-life was stamped so clearly on the imagination as the poetry of Ruth amid the ears of barley, of Rebecca and the pitcher of water, of Rachel; as the romance of Joseph and his brethren; as the tragedy of Samson and Delilah; as the war pictures of Jericho and Jerusalem. It may have been a jumble of disconnected tales—and, for the boys, nothing more than tales—but each remains cut out in clean outline and brightest colours that are never likely to fade. To this day a field of golden corn, newly reaped, in pastoral Dorset, under a hot harvest sun, will raise the bright phantom of Boaz and the gentle gleaner. A country lass at the fountain, or even merely the rim of some disused and filled-up well, aye even such cryptic names as Jakin and Boaz, the pillars, will conjure up again some picture first raised from the pages of that _Epitome Sacrae_, read under the light of the brown lamp gently swaying in the draught of the school-room above our ruffled heads ... and steadily smelling of petrol!

XII

Connected with those enthralling first tales, now that I come to think of it, is the development of certain simple tastes in food which have endured through a life not altogether devoid of gastronomic discrimination. Among these may be mentioned a special delight in lentils—later on extended to other members of the pulse tribe, but in its origin especially concerned with lentils. It is to be noted that the _Epitome_ rendering of what in the Authorised Version appears as red pottage is _un plat de lentilles_. Now lentils, stewed in some toothsome reddish sauce ‹not innocent of the savoury onion› was a standing Friday dish in the refectory at Delescluzes ‹together, be it said, with a _Saint Jean_ fish-pie—Saint Jean being the equivalent of our own mediæval “Poor John,” otherwise salt cod›. The small boy, however, who was destined, at the maturity of time, to become the Master of the House at the Villino Loki, was allowed a fair mutton chop of his own by special compact with M. Delescluze, as a concession to his Protestant heresy.

[Sidenote: THE DELECTABLE LENTIL]

The arrangement had been made when the dietary of the _jours maigres_ came, quite accidentally, to the knowledge of his anxious parents. Such a concession might have bidden fair to scandalize the youthful republic at dinner time—if not perhaps on purely dogmatic ground, at least upon a question of invidious privilege. But it happened that the intended beneficiary of the bi-weekly _côtelette_ had been struck by that puzzling tale of Esau’s birthright so readily exchanged for a _plat de lentilles_.—Red pottage had become invested with an almost mystical quality.

There is often a good deal of auto-suggestion connected with matters of food pleasure. At any rate the Friday _plat de lentilles_ ranked among the most desirable of eatable things, in his young opinion. The answer to the jeer that greeted him from the neighbour on his right, as the appetizing grill was laid by the grinning attendant for the first time upon the wooden board before him, was a prompt offer of half the flesh portion for the whole of his allowance of pulse—and a similar disposal of the remainder on the left-hand side. One chop for two plates of the savoury mess: the barter, as far as the pleasures of the table were concerned, was one of gain, for all parties. It had the further advantage of cutting at the root of conversational unpleasantness. The exchange of a single fat, heretical chop for two helpings of orthodox meagre fare became an established compact—one, it must be said, which demanded not only secrecy but adroitness for its fulfilment.

The redistribution of the courses was usually carried out under the shelter of an enormous _broc_ ‹a relic of conventual furniture›, the French representative of our old English Black Jack; an obese, jug-like, wooden contrivance with iron hoops, containing something better than a gallon of the anodyne mixture called _abondance_—one part thin red wine to four of water. It was a supply which could, without danger to sobriety, be drawn upon, as the regulation had it, _à discretion_.

The parties to this lentil transaction, which took place at the end of the long table farthest from the eyes of the presiding usher, had to bid for turns.... Where are you this day, you the only two whilom reprobate amateurs of chops on fast days whose names I can yet recall? You, Victor de Mussy, with the notable store of infantile catches and conundrums? And you, Guilleaume Moreau, of more plebeian stamp, who used to look up words for me in the dictionary—a task I truly loathed—at the rate of three words for one _bec-de-plume_? If you are still in the land of the living, I would take a fair bet that it never occurs to you now to order, of your own accord, a dish of lentils!

* * * * *

[Sidenote: THE INCOMPARABLE ORANGE]

Another persistent “nostril memory,” as I have said, is that of the orange. It is a curious one. Of a certainty I must have eaten of the golden apple many a time before that notable night when I was first taken to a theatre. And yet it is invariably that delirious occasion which is recalled, for however fleeting a moment, when the bursting of the essential oil cells of an orange peel sends forth its fragrance.

The drama was “_Bas-de-Cuir_”—an adaptation of Fenimore Cooper’s Red Indian tale “Leather Stocking.” When I say that the part of “Leather Stocking” was taken by Frederic Lemaitre—personified genius of the old Romantic Melodrama!—that the playhouse was _Les Folies Dramatiques_—it will be patent to anyone familiar with the annals of the Paris stage that I refer to a very distant period. I could not have been more than eight years old. In those days, apparently, the custom, delectable to the boys if less so to their elders, of consuming oranges between the acts had not yet fallen into desuetude.

It is very odd. There are as we know a large number of recognized methods of eating an orange: from the elaborate and super-epicurean Japanese dissection within the skin, which removes every pellicule and every pip out of the fruit, preparatory to “spooning” the pure pulp, with or without sugar, down to the simple suction known as “Mattie’s way.” Whatever be the process, the effect never fails if I stand by: as sure as the first puff of fresh orange peel meets me, so is my mind instantly brought back to some scene connected with “Leather Stocking”; to some sense of the very first dramatic emotion ever known—the silent laughter of the trapper; the faint, distant war yell of the Huron; the darting of the bark canoe down the rapid; the crack of a gun: the flare of the camp fire—what not? It is, of course, but a transient flash now, but there it always starts, harking, for a second or so, back half a century in the middle of completely unrelated thoughts and in surroundings the least likely to evoke the past—in the silence of a sick bedside, or amid the hot dustiness of a holiday crowd; or even, at dessert time, in the company of some fair neighbour whose young, healthy powers of table enjoyment enable her to conclude a regular dinner with a whole orange eaten in the appreciative and fragrant manner known as _à la Maltaise_.

Scent alone, and that only for a second at a time, possesses this fantastic power. The taste of marmalade, for instance, is fraught with no special memories. As for the pleasure of sight in connexion with the orange, it is now concentrated upon the half-dozen trees—in pots, but bravely bearing year by year their little burden of fruit destined to grow for purely ornamental and “Italian” effect within doors at the Villino.

What a marvel would an orange be considered, had it not become an object of our everyday life! We take it as a matter of course; but how much poorer would the world suddenly seem if oranges became henceforth unobtainable! And the lemon! If lemons cost a guinea apiece, I once heard a physician say who had a special experience of its wide-reaching healing powers, then would mankind appreciate the treasure it has at hand! One-half of its being, and by no means the less important, the rind, is deplorably neglected. We deal with it as with a practically worthless husk. If we more generally understood the value of its ethereal oil, we might save ourselves many a spell of unaccountable physical depression. I can personally testify to numerous instances of feverish bouts cured solely by a hot decoction of lemon zest.

A similar virtue, by the way, seems to reside in the leaves of the Citrus Limonum. In southern countries—especially, I am told, in Spanish America—these leaves are obtainable in the dry state, and used as a febrifuge and alternative “tea,” or rather tisane, with marked results.

XIII

[Sidenote: THE INVALUABLE ONION]

Talking of the proper need of appreciation that might be rendered to some of nature’s goodly gifts, if only they were presented to us as something rare and novel—what of the humble but invaluable onion? “The onion,” as Stevenson says in his masterpiece, Prince Otto ‹and great was my satisfaction when I first read the pronouncement›, “which ranks with the truffle and the nectarine in the chief place of honour of earth’s fruit.”

Truffle and nectarine are doubtless honourable terms of comparison, but I make bold to believe that any well-constituted jury of epicures would not hesitate to award the humble onion the place paramount among all the savours of civilized cookery. There are a certain number of curiously constituted people who absolutely refuse to countenance the onion in any connexion, however subdued and distant; who profess, whether in æsthetic affectation or through some innate queasiness, to look upon it as pure abomination. There are also those who assume a similar intolerant attitude towards tobacco. But who shall deny that, even as tobacco to the meditative and restful moments, the savoury onion has not added through the ages an incalculable zest to the hour of physical restoration? There could be no cuisine, on any varied scale, without it.

“If the onion did not exist,” said a great _cordon-bleu_, paraphrasing a well-known philosophical pronouncement, “it would have to be invented.”

Discreetly introduced, and subdued by happy blendings, it holds the finest of _fumets_ for your gastronomist’s palate: and, in all its own undisguised vigour, it will invest the coarsest or most tasteless food with never-failing allurement for robust appetites, whatever changes be rung upon the raw or pickled, the white-boiled, the golden-fried, or the brown-stewed.

It must have been that russet background of onion which justified my youthful preconceived notion of the pricelessness of “Red Pottage” as an article of food. It no doubt fixed the taste for life. Of course, in all matters of earthly enjoyment, the “psychological” moment ‹which, by the way, is so often purely physiological› plays an important part. Certain tastes reveal themselves only as pleasurable in certain surroundings. A draught of coarse, dark wine of la Mancha, sucked out of the goat-skin sack, with its obtrusive, pitchy twang, will be a pure delight on the side of some dusty, stony Castillian road. And no one who has not had, in some wild out-of-the-way mountain village, to break his fast at peep-o’-day upon a chunk of grey bread, stone-ground and tasting of the wheat-fields, a handful of salt and a couple of Spanish onions, will ever know all the excellences of that juicy bulb.

It is reported that, like his furiously assertive relation, garlic, the onion has very definite medical virtues. Some claim for it a power to cure sleeplessness—dreaded distemper—and also various antiseptic properties. This is as may be. The province of the precious plant, the duty which it fulfils well and simply, is that of supplying savour to things that may be nutritious but lack appetizing virtue. Many are the instances that might be adduced in support of this economic plea, but none more directly to the point than that of the _soupe à l’oignon_, which your thrifty French housewife contrives at shortest notice—the traditional “soup meagre,” object of such bitter contempt in our beef-gorging Hogarthian days.

* * * * *

This new culinary topic sets me once more back in the streets of old Paris, on the occasion when I made personal acquaintance with the possibilities of a penny meal—the best appreciated breakfast I have ever known.

It was in the very last of my French days. Paris had then recovered from the miseries of the German siege and the nightmare of Commune anarchy, three years past. Within the next few months a new life was to be opened to me in England. The prospect of the great change, albeit fraught with some features of gravity, was exhilarating.

The _Lycée_, for all its admirable scheme of studies, had lately been abandoned in favour of a quaint old British scholar, very poor, very learned, who lived on the heights of Montmartre, in the oddest little house—so filled with books that almost everywhere one had to move literally edge-ways. The very stairs, for lack of shelves, were piled on both sides with volumes, old and modern, tattered or nobly bound, stored regardless of subjects, merely in sizes for the sake of room.

Long could I talk about you, O my dear Mr. Gilchrist—you with the keen eyes and the vigorous hook nose ‹always half-filled with snuff›; with the flowing beard of venerable threescore and ten, who taught me to read “the classics” after the English manner, _i.e._ with a regard to quantities; who, for the modest and evidently much wanted fee agreed upon, gave me daily at least five hours tuition ‹sometimes more› instead of the stipulated three! Hours, be it said, that went by lightly enough in that queer, snuffy room, where we sat facing each other on two straight-backed chairs—eager boy and no less eager old man. For, the Latin and Greek tasks over, there always followed excursions, one more fascinating than the other, into the deep and still unknown forest of English letters. And such was the variety and the happy choice of excerpts that, incredible as it may seem, the scholar of fourteen was oftener sorry than elated to leave the garrulous and enthusiastic mentor on his hill-top and return to the paternal house in the lower planes of the Champs Elysées.

An odd way of life for a youth, during those last few months of spring and early summer in Paris! It was full of glad aspirations towards the future, it is true, but at the same time not without an almost regretful enjoyment of the present. The distribution of time was peculiar. There was in it a kind of unconscious anticipation of that light-saving Bill of Mr. Willet ‹which has so little chance of being embodied in an Act›. The queer boy, in his transition stage, had taken a cranky turn on the subject of hours. Having made up his mind, on the one hand, that he had an enormous amount of new things to read and assimilate before his fresh start in England; and, on the other, having heard that one hour of morning study was worth ‹on what authority it matters little now› two after noon, he had invested in a specially ferocious alarum clock. The merciless clamour of this machine drove him out of dreamland daily at a quarter to five _ante meridiem_; and, strange as it undoubtedly was, it is not on record that he ever failed during that period to obey the summons.

[Sidenote: A SEDULOUS SCHOLAR]

There must have been somewhere at the back of so unnatural a submission, of such a persistency in a purely self-imposed and unnecessary discipline, a sort of romantic smack of mediævalism.... The “sedulous _escholier_” ‹so warmly commended by Saint Louis› was found awake and already absorbed in his search for lore as returning day began to whiten his window.

The net result was a couple of hours of really earnest work before it was time to dispatch the morning bowl of _café au lait_ and the _pain de gruau_ and hasten to the ascent of Mons Martis, where impatient Mr. Gilchrist looked for his scholar’s appearance at eight sharp. It was very special reading—English History—a subject with which the _cours d’histoire_ at the Lycée could only deal in a sketchy manner; but the early-rising _escholier_, greedy of new knowledge, was fortunately helped by the appearance in that year of Green’s “Short History of the English People,” and fell under the charm of the captivating work.

XIV

[Sidenote: PLAYING TRUANT]

I have said that it is not on memory’s record that the whilom schoolboy, now in his mediæval student mood, failed to rise at the appointed clock crow. Of a truth he rarely had less than his eight hours good sleep, glad enough as he was to retire to rest at nine—“curfew time.” But it must be admitted that on one occasion or two he succumbed to the weakness of compounding with his studious resolutions. The French equivalent of playing truant is _faire l’école buissonière_—a taking term, redolent of the allurement of hedgerows and free green fields. And it is the memory of one of these _écoles buissonières_—or rather, in this case, _écoles riveraines_—that, through the usual devious paths, brings me back to the forgotten question of _soupe à l’oignon_.

It must have been a very early day in May, for at a quarter before five, when the imperative rattle was sprung, sun-rays were just beginning to dart between the curtains. The birds in the Champs Elysées kept up their concert through the morning silence of the gardens with more persistent enthusiasm than usual. And on looking out of window, under such a pure sky, the out-of-door world looked quite extraordinarily inviting. It would have been folly to decline such an invitation!

The “Short History,” opened at a chapter of the Hundred Years War, was left for the nonce undisturbed: the scholar sallied forth to roam under the tall trees of the _Cours la Reine_, intent, no doubt, on returning after a short stroll. But there is in the early morning hours, especially on such a morning, the spell of the “invitation to the road.” The river-side, so fresh and green, and the unending line of giant plane trees on the quays, as he swung along to meet the sun, still low behind the Isle of Notre Dame, drew him on and on. He decided only to return for breakfast and Gilchrist. Then he bethought himself there would be time to stroll through those populous quarters which, unlike the residential districts, were still in many ways the Paris of the Middle Ages. That was the Paris which held for him then so potent an interest—the Paris within the walls of Charles VI; the town of Armagnacs and Burgundians, which had been governed by Bedford for his infant English King; the crowded space, in short, between the old Louvres and the new Bastille, which had been kept in order by the tramping of English men-at-arms. One inquisitive excursion led to another—nearly two hours had been spent in delightful ferreting; there was no time to return home for breakfast before the Gilchrist-ward ascent. Meanwhile a positively wolfish hunger had begun to assert itself. The scholar “searched his pouch.” This was quite in mediæval style; and what was decidedly in the same style was the discovery of but two poor deniers for all asset! His usual pocket-money allowance was then reposing on the bed-side table, far away, save for these two pennies luckily forgotten in a waistcoat pocket.

This discovery was made, ruefully enough, as he was looking about in the vicinity of Saint Eustache for some respectable _restaurateur_ wherein to obtain the matutinal coffee. But two deniers—twopence, _vingt centimes_—would never purchase breakfast at any table under a roof. What the devil...! Well, twopence in this workmen’s district would buy bread enough, anyhow, to appease the sharpest-set morning appetite. Saint Eustache, as every one knows, is close to the Halles Centrales, the great food emporium of Paris—a kind of combined Smithfield, Billingsgate, Covent Garden, and Leadenhall Market. The now frantic owner of the two pence was darting about the galleries in search of the first bread-stall, when he was arrested by a floating savour, truly ambrosial. As he stopped and involuntarily, if quite obviously, sniffed, a tempting voice rose beside him, engagingly familiar: “_Oui, elle est bonne, ce matin. Tu en veux, beau garçon?_” And so saying, a fat smiling _dame de la Halle_, with an alert eye to business, plunged a ladle into a deep iron _marmite_ and filled a generous-sized white bowl, something a trifle under a pint in capacity, with a steaming brown pottage, that in the circumstances was positively irresistible: “_Combien, la mère?_” asked the truant scholar, falling into the speech suitable to the place, and fingering the two modest coins with doubt and anxiety, even as might a ravening Villon, a destitute Gringoire.

“_Combien, mon p’tit gros? Mais un sou, toujours!—Et au fromage_,” changing her tone to mock deference as one addressing a client of importance, “_au fromage, dix centimes_, _mon prince!—Mais, bernique! n’y en a plus!_”—she added, laughing complacently and tossing her head in the direction of a second cauldron that lay empty on her left.

The more luxurious cheese pottage being “off,” and time of importance ‹it would, volunteered the culinary Madame Angot, take ten minutes to prepare the next potful› the famished wanderer proffered his penny and received his grateful bowl together with some eight inches of “long bread” in lieu of his half-denier change. And, leaning against a pillar, he set himself to the enjoyment of what, as I have remarked before, was the best breakfast of his life.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: SAVOURY POTTAGE]

Hunger is the finest of all possible sauces—a truism even more than a proverb. The snatched crust, the draught of clear water in the palm of the hand, at some dire moment of want, is more welcome than the most cunning dish, the rarest cup in the easy tenor of life. But the plain bread and the clear water, however eagerly seized, must ever savour of hardship. Now this halfpenny worth of _soupe à l’oignon_ bore none of that character, for all that, as far as nutriment went, it consisted of naught but bread and water. It had all the attributes of a civilized meal: it was hot, savoury, immediately comforting.