It seemed to us that we saw a deep significance in the fact, told
by Lytton Strachey in his _Queen Victoria_, that the Queen’s pious
governess, Lehzen, was a fanatic about caraway seeds. Mr. Strachey says:
Her passion for caraway seeds, for instance, was
uncontrollable. Little bags of them came over to her from
Hanover, and she sprinkled them on her bread and butter, her
cabbage, and even her roast beef.
Surely throughout the whole Victorian era the attentive observer
can discern the faint but pungent musk of the mild, bland, uncandid
caraway. We ourself, in our early youth, crossed the trail of that seed
more than once, in small cakes and patties, and instinctively revolted
from it. If there is any emblem symbolic of the Victorian age, perhaps
it is the caraway seed, a thing that Greenwich Village, we dare say,
has never encountered even in its most enterprising tea-room. The
kingdom of Victoria, we suggest, was like a grain of caraway seed;
but it became a tree so vast that the fowls of the air lodged in the
branches thereof.
* * * * *