[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.
[Illustration: man at outside table]
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.
[Illustration: child and old man]
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.
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