TWO BROTHERS

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 2

TWO BROTHERS

[Written by Panache for the ‘ Evening Star.’] It has often heen remarked how different arc the destinies of those that belong to the same family and are given the same chances in life. With the same environment, the same parents, the same godparents, the one is destined for fame or notoriety, the other for a humble and useful lot; Exposed on the same hillside, to the same hazards, one brother may be rescued to live and die a shepherd, while the other will be crowned a king. A striking example of this disparity in destinies is found in the life and adventures of two members of the one family Solanaecae, those little Spanish adventurers, potato and tobacco.

These eminently desirable aliens began their English careers under similar circumstances. They were naturalised about the same time, and whether they were sponsored by Sir John Hawkins or Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh is of vital, importance only to those who subscribed to the statue erected in Baden to Drake to commemorate the introduction of the potato. If the honour is not Sir Francis’s, the subscribers have a grievance, but those who in 1833 were monumentally enthusiastic are now either dead or too old to care. Whoever the godfather, he was certainly titled, of patriotic, buccaneering stock, and the Haytian nurslings were fortunate in being transplanted into the garden of England in her spacious days. From the beginning the young tobacco promised to be a problem. It drooped during the day, but became strong and firm towards evening. Temperamental and interesting, seductive, and with early signs of the influence it was later to exert, tobacco was naturally considered suspect by despotic kings and princes. Popes protested, kings'legislated, penalties were enforced aganist those who gave “ more work for chimney sweeps,” although in England the punishment was not as severe as in Turkey, where offenders had pipes thrust through their noses. Foremost among the enemies of tobacco was the most high and mighty prince. James, who stigmatised it as “ a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to tbe lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” James’s blast may have blown out a few contemporary pipes, but it had no effect on the son of Victoria, for the Queen notes with sorrow that Bertie was so unfilial as to smoke two weeks after the death of the Prince Consort. The potato, stolid and unenterprising, did not arouse animosity in spiritual or temporal breasts. Though cultivated in some parts as a curiosity it deserved no blame, and won but faint praise. " Cattle do not refuse it,” says one writer, and so the potato was given to “ swine, other cattle, and poor people.” Yet it enjoyed Royal patronage, was cultivated by Frederick the Great, and taken up by the Royal Society when there was fear of famine. The most striking event in the history of. the potato, and the one fraught with the gravest consequences, was the failure of the potato crop in Ireland in 1846. Thousands died, either from famine or from plague, among them', naively adds one chronicler, many priests and physicians. So much is heard of the evil effects ol tobacco that the unprejudiced grieve and are impelled to draw attention to the shady side of the potato. In France, it was once believed to cause leprosy and levers ; unripe potatoes may still give rise to cholera. Who would not recoil from a plant subject to fungous diseases, such as the phytophthora infestnns? If that conveys nothing to you, you may understand dry rot, scab, wet rot. When we come to physiological effects, we have to admit that tobacco rouses the sluggish mind from torpor and moderates extreme cerebral excitement; but potatoes lie heavily on many a stomach, and often cause indigestion. Ben Jenson has frequent references to tobacco, but one looks in vain for a Shakesperian allusion. It is easy to place an evil smelling pipe between Falstaff’s yellow teeth, or to watch Jacques .let his cigar go out as he ruminates. Orsino might elegantly have taken snuff, or Rosalind added to her swashing and martial outside with a cigarette. Lorenzo’s cigarette would glow ns he sat with Jessica in the avenue to Portia's house, and no other ever made such perfect smoke rings as Mercntio. ■

Spencer’s epithet for tobacco was “divine”; Lamb was willing to ’do anything but die for it; but the homely potato does not catch the poet’s • rolling eye, though Samuel Butler has a kindly word for it in his note book. The poor potato has few great moments. it must be happiest when the spade is loosening it, and children’s fingers, in danger of. being amputated, grub ecstatically in the earthy treasure hunt; or when, with lamb and green peas, it forms part of the spring trilogy; of when it is roasted in the blue-smoked rubbish of an autumn bonfire. Perhaps the potato enjoys these things so much that only the more narcotic specimens envy tobacco when it is wrapped in silver paper or carried 'in a tortoiseshell case, and becomes illegal /after 6 o’clock. Vet even the most sensible potato has one grievance. No one will wear its badge. The chariest maid, with pumice or with the juice of a lemon, removes potato stain from her thumb; but she will regard with complacence a nicotined forefinger. This must bo hard to bear, and the ambitious potato mus't wipe its many eyes when it thinks how often a mark of esteem takes the form of a smoker’s stand. Why not a frying pan, just Tor once? But the potato is fundamentally sensible, and reassures itself with ' the thought that most people enjoy the first potato, mashed on their baby’s plate, much more than their first cigarette, damp, and chewed, behind the. woodshed. The young potato who

longs for. adventure may be soothed with stories of fish and chips in pieearts. The ardent potato that yearns for persecution nv' v find it in the present slimming craze.

There is no reason for a feud in the Solanaeeao family. There arc potatoes for the hungry, and tobacco which 11 closes the orifice of the stomach against hunger when one cannot come by a dinner.” The depression is lifting, and we hope that none may have to live on potato poolings) nor yet on other people's butts.