Can bacon or beans suggest some sort of alcohol?
I just read this poem:
The Englishman
by G.K. ChestertonSt George he was for England,
And before he killed the dragon
He drank a pint of English ale
Out of an English flagon.
For though he fast right readily
In hair-shirt or in mail,
It isn’t safe to give him cakes
Unless you give him ale.St George he was for England,
And right gallantly set free
The lady left for dragon’s meat
And tied up to a tree;
But since he stood for England
And knew what England means,
Unless you give him bacon
You mustn’t give him beans.St George he is for England,
And shall wear the shield he wore
When we go out in armour
With battle-cross before.
But though he is jolly company
And very pleased to dine,
It isn’t safe to give him nuts
Unless you give him wine.
My question is about the line about the bacon and beans. The first stanza is about food and beer, the third stanza is about food and wine. But the middle stanza seems to be about food and food, but are one of those words (bacon or beans) suggestive of beer?
The collocation cakes and ale goes back to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby Belch (drunk, as always) rounds on the sanctimonious courtier Malvolio with "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?".
The Englishman first appeared in The Flying Inn (1914), some months after Nuts and Wine a theatrical revue with lyrics by C. H. Bovill and P. G. Wodehouse was staged in London. Walter Dendy Sadler's painting Over the Nuts and Wine (1889) was extensively reprinted as an icon of relaxed camaraderie among English gentlemen.
I'm not aware of any special connection between Englishmen and bacon and beans, but if you compare that chart with pork and beans it's obvious Brits prefer bacon where Americans go for pork. I suspect the English connotations for bacon and beans were more akin to Jeffrey Archer's Krug (champagne) and shepherd's pie (simple yet convivial fare), where to the average American [salt-]pork and beans would be dreary trail/frontier rations.
The first stanza isn't "about" food and beer, nor is the third stanza "about" food and wine. It's just that every stanza ends with a whimsical couplet involving two things that Chesterton's archetypal Englishman would see as a natural pairing.
EDIT: At the risk of steering into litcrit / social history territory, thanks to OP himself for ferreting out the crucial context. The Flying Inn (a novel interlaced with poems) is set in a future England where the Temperance movement has allowed a bizarre form of "Progressive" Islam to dominate. Chesterton is satirising the fact that from an Englishman's perspective, the natural pairings for cakes, beans, and nuts (i.e. - ale, bacon, and wine) would be prohibited in a Islamic state.
Neither is suggestive of beer. Instead, along with the other contrasts, this one is between meat and non-meat, saying he requires both.
It also gives a suitable rhyme, of course.
Sounds to me like the suggestion is that an english breakfast should always have bacon, and if you're going to provide beans then there'd better be bacon with them. This might sound bizarre but if I was served an English breakfast that didn't contain both, then as an Englishman (or partly at least) I wouldn't call it a full English breakfast.
In this case at least, I would not expect that either the bacon or beans reference alcohol, but are there purely to convey what constitutes a proper english breakfast.