Mind your language | 9 December 2006

A lovely framed photograph of some rhubarb, which Veronica took, hangs on the kitchen wall as I write — white where it has been pulled from the root, and then juicy red in the stalk against the fresh green leaves. So it was quite interesting to discover that when Thackeray wrote of a ‘rhubarb-coloured coat’ he meant one that was yellowish-brown.

The rhubarb that Thackeray had in mind was the medicinal sort made from the root. This was the stock-in-trade of the old Jewish rhubarb-seller from Mogador interviewed in the mid-19th century by Henry Mayhew for his London Labour and the London Poor. The rhubarb-seller, in the speech represented by Mayhew, remembered a ‘very old Arabian in de streets wen I first come; dey call him Sole; he been 40 year at de same business. He wear de long beard and Turkish dress. He used to stand by Bow Shursh, Sheapside.