And I reign
Over e'en the sternest lasses,
When midst maddening song and shout
I gush out,
Flooding goblets, bumpers, glasses.
VII.
As thus spoke the generous wine,
Its benign
Influence her heart 'gan soften.
Who seeks such a cause to gain,
To Champagne
His success finds owing often.'[253]
[Illustration]
VI.
/Champagne in England./
The strong and foaming wine of the Champagne forbidden his troops
by Henry V.--The English carrying off wine when evacuating
Reims on the approach of Jeanne Darc--A legend of the siege
of Epernay--Henry VIII. and his vineyard at Ay--Louis XIV.'s
present of Champagne to Charles II.--The courtiers of the
Merry Monarch retain the taste for French wine acquired in
exile--St. Evremond makes the Champagne flute the glass of
fashion--Still Champagne quaffed by the beaux of the Mall and
the rakes of the Mulberry Gardens--It inspires the poets and
dramatists of the Restoration--Is drank by James II. and William
III.--The advent of sparkling Champagne in England--Farquhar's
_Love and a Bottle_--Mockmode the Country Squire and the witty
liquor--Champagne the source of wit--Port-wine and war combine
against it, but it helps Marlborough's downfall--Coffin's poetical
invitation to the English on the return of peace--A fraternity of
chemical operators who draw Champagne from an apple--The influence
of Champagne in the Augustan age of English literature--Extolled
by Gay and Prior--Shenstone's verses at an inn--Renders Vanbrugh's
comedies lighter than his edifices--Swift preaches temperance
in Champagne to Bolingbroke--Champagne the most fashionable
wine of the eighteenth century--Bertin du Rocheret sends it
in cask and bottle to the King's wine-merchant--Champagne at
Vauxhall in Horace Walpole's day--Old Q. gets Champagne from
M. de Puissieux--Lady Mary's Champagne and chicken--Champagne
plays its part at masquerades and bacchanalian suppers--Becomes
the beverage of the ultra-fashionables above and below
stairs--Figures in the comedies of Foote, Garrick, Coleman, and
Holcroft--Champagne and real pain--Sir Edward Barry's learned
remarks on Champagne--Pitt and Dundas drunk on Jenkinson's
Champagne--Fox and the Champagne from Brooks's--Champagne smuggled
from Jersey--Grown in England--Experiences of a traveller in the
Champagne trade in England at the close of the century--Sillery
the favourite wine--Nelson and the 'fair Emma' under the influence
of Champagne--The Prince Regent's partiality for Champagne
punch--Brummell's Champagne blacking--The Duke of Clarence
overcome by Champagne--Curran and Canning on the wine--Henderson's
praise of Sillery--Tom Moore's summer fête inspired by Pink
Champagne--Scott's Muse dips her wing in Champagne--Byron's
sparkling metaphors--A joint-stock poem in praise of Pink
Champagne--The wheels of social life in England oiled by
Champagne--It flows at public banquets and inaugurations--Plays its
part in the City, on the Turf, and in the theatrical world--Imparts
a charm to the dinners of Belgravia and the suppers of
Bohemia--Champagne the ladies' wine _par excellence_--Its influence
as a matrimonial agent--'O the wildfire wine of France!'
[Illustration]
So great a favourite as Champagne now is with all classes in England,
the earliest notice of it in connection with our history nevertheless
represents it in a somewhat inimical light. For, according to an
Italian writer of the fifteenth century, 'the strong and foaming wine
of Champagne was found so injurious that Henry V. was obliged, after
the battle of Agincourt, to forbid its use in his army, excepting
when tempered with water.'[254] Although this may be the earliest
mention of the wine of the Champagne by name in association with our
own countrymen, opportunities had been previously afforded to them
of becoming acquainted with its assumed objectionable qualities. The
prelates who crossed 'the streak of silver sea' with Thurstan of York
to attend the ecclesiastical councils held at 'little Rome,' as Reims
was styled in the twelfth century, and the knights and nobles who
swelled the train of Henry II. when he did homage to Philip Augustus at
the latter's coronation, may be regarded as exceptionally fortunate,
or unfortunate, in this respect, since the bulk of the English
wine-drinkers of that day had to content themselves with the annual
shipments of Anjou and Poitevin wines from Nantes and La Rochelle.[255]
But the stout men-at-arms and death-dealing archers who followed the
third Edward to the gates of Reims in the days when
''Twas merry, 'twas merry in France to go,
A yeoman stout with a bended bow,
To venge the King on his mortal foe,
And to quaff the Gascon wine,'
no doubt found consolation for some of the hardships they endured
during their wet and weary watches in the bitter winter of 1365 in the
familiarity they acquired with the vintages of the Mountain and the
Marne.
[Illustration]
And, their sovereign's prohibition notwithstanding, there is every
reason to believe that the heroes of Agincourt drank pottle-deep of
the forbidden beverage. The grim Earl of Salisbury bore no love to
the burghers of Reims;[256] but there is little likelihood that his
aversion extended to the wine of the province he ruled as governor,
and the garrisons of its various strongholds over which the red cross
of St. George triumphantly floated revelled on the best of 'the white
wyne and the rede.' In the days of hot fighting and keen foraging which
marked the close of Bedford's regency, there is ample evidence to show
that our countrymen had acquired and retained a very decided taste for
these growths. When Charles VII. entered Reims in triumph, with Jeanne
Darc by his side and the chivalry of France around him, the retreating
English garrison bore forth with them on the opposite side of the city
a string of wains piled high with casks of wine, the pillage of the
burghers' cellars.[257]
Tradition tells, too, how the English, besieged in the town of Epernay,
had gathered there great store of wine, and how this suggested to
their captain a cunning stratagem. Having caused a number of wagons to
be laden with casks of wine, he despatched them with a feeble escort
through the gate furthest from the beleaguering forces, as though
destined to Chalons as a place of safety. The French commander marked
this, and as soon as the convoy was well clear of the walls, a body
of horse came spurring after it in hot haste. The wagon-train halted;
there was a brief attempt to turn the laden vehicles homewards, and
then, seeing the hopelessness of this, the escort galloped back into
the town, and down swooped the Frenchmen on their prize. The ride had
been sharp; the day was hot, and the road dusty. So a score of the
captured casks were quickly broached; and as the generous fluid flowed
freely down the throats of the captors, it soon began to produce an
effect. Some of them, overcome by the heat and the wine, loosened
their armour, and stretched themselves at length on the ground; whilst
others, grouped around some fast emptying barrel, continued to quaff
from their helmets and other improvised drinking vessels confusion
to the 'island bull-dogs.' When lo, the gate of the town flew open;
an English trumpet rang out its note of defiance; and, with lances
levelled, the flower of the garrison poured forth like a living
avalanche upon the startled Frenchmen. Before they could make ready to
fight or fly, the foe was upon them, and their blood was soon mingling
on the dusty highway with the pools of wine which had gushed forth
from the abandoned casks. Hardly one escaped the slaughter; but local
tradition chuckles grimly as it notes that in revenge thereof every
man of the garrison was put to the edge of the sword on the subsequent
capture of the town by the French.[258]
[Illustration]
At the close of the fruitless struggle against the growing power
of Charles the Victorious, we were fain to fall back, as of old,
upon the strong wines of south-western France, the vintages of
Bergerac, Gaillac, and Rabestens, shipped to us from the banks of the
Garonne,[259] and the luscious malmseys of the Archipelago, to which
were subsequently added the growths of southern Spain. The taste of the
wine of the Champagne must have been almost forgotten amongst us when
the growing fame of the vineyards of Ay attracted the notice of Bluff
King Hal. Most likely he and Francis I. swore eternal good fellowship
at the Field of the Cloth of Gold over a beaker of this regal liquor.
Once alive to its merits, the King, whose ambassadors, _pace_ John
Styles, seem to have had standing orders to keep an equally sharp look
out for wines or wives likely to suit the royal fancy, neglected no
opportunity of securing it in perfection. Like his contemporaries,
Charles V., Francis I., and Leo X., he stationed a commissioner at
Ay intrusted with the onerous duty of selecting a certain number of
casks of the best growths, and despatching them, carefully sealed, to
the cellars of Whitehall, Greenwich, and Richmond. The example set
by the monarch was, however, too costly a one to be followed by his
subjects, and the very name of Champagne probably remained unknown to
them for years to come. The poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan
era, who have left us so accurate a picture of the manners of their
day, and make such frequent allusions to the wines in vogue, do not
even mention Champagne; Gervase Markham preserves a like silence in
his _Modern Housewife_,[260] while the passages in Surflet's _Maison
Rustique_ extolling the wine of Ay are merely translations from the
original French edition.[261] And though Venner speaks of these wines
as excelling all others, he is careful to attribute their consumption
to the King and the nobles of France.[262]
The captive Queen of Scots, whose consumption of wine elicited dire
lament from one of her lordly jailers,[263] may have missed at
Fotheringay the vintage she had tasted in early life when enjoying
the hospitality of her uncle, Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, at Reims;
but to the half-hearted pedant, her son, the name of Epernay recalled
no convivial associations--it was merely the title of a part of his
slaughtered mother's appanage. Spanish influence and Spanish wine ruled
supreme at his Court; and though Rhenish crowned the goblets of many of
the high-souled cavaliers who rallied round King Charles and Henrietta
Maria, the bulk of the English nation remained faithful, till the close
of the Commonwealth, to their old favourites of the south of Spain and
the fragrant produce of the Canaries.
[Illustration]
All this was altered when 'the King enjoyed his own again;' for
the Restoration made Champagne--that is, the still red wine of the
province--the most fashionable, if not the most popular, wine in
England. At the Court of Louis XIV. the future Merry Monarch and his
faithful followers had acquired a taste for the wines of France, and
they brought back this taste,[264] together with sundry others of a
far more reprehensible character, with them to England. One of the
first and most acceptable gifts of Louis to his brother-sovereign
on the latter's recall was 'two hundred hogsheads of excellent
wine--Champagne, Burgundy, and Hermitage.'[265] Returning home more
French than the French themselves, the late exiles ruminated on the
flesh-pots of Egypt, and sighed; and we can readily picture a gallant
who had seen hot service under Condé or Turenne exclaiming to his
friend and fellow-soldier:
'Ah, Courtine, must we be always idle? Must we never see our
glorious days again? When shall we be rolling in the lands of milk
and honey, encamped in large luxuriant vineyards, where the loaded
vines cluster about our tents, drink the rich juice just pressed
from the plump grape?'[266]
And that friend replying:
'Ah, Beaugard, those days have been; but now we must resolve to
content ourselves at an humble rate. Methinks it is not unpleasant
to consider how I have seen thee in a large pavilion drowning
the heat of the day in Champagne wines--sparkling sweet as those
charming beauties whose dear remembrance every glass recorded--with
half a dozen honest fellows more.'[267]
Demand created supply, until, in 1667, a few years after the
Restoration, France furnished two-fifths of the amount of wine consumed
in the kingdom;[268] and the taste of the royal sybarite for the
light-coloured wines of the Marne seems to be hinted at in Malagene's
exclamation:
'I have discovered a treasure of pale wine.... I assure you 'tis
the same the King drinks of.'[269]
St. Evremond, who, though not precisely cast by Nature from 'the mould
of form,' fulfilled for many years the duties of arbiter elegantiarum
at Charles's graceless Court, decidedly did his best to render the
Champagne _flûte_ 'the glass of fashion.' Ever ready to speak in praise
of the wines of Ay, Avenay, and Reims,[270] the mentor of the Count de
Grammont strove by example as well as by precept to win converts to
his creed. In verse he declares that the beauties of the country fail
to console him for the absence of Champagne; regrets that the season
of the wines of the Marne is over, and that the yield of those of the
Mountain had failed; and shudders at the prospect of being obliged to
have recourse to the Loire, to Bordeaux, or to Cahors for the wine he
will have to drink.[271]
[Illustration]
The lively Frenchman found plenty of native writers to reëcho him.
Champagne sparkles in all the plays of the Restoration, and seems the
fitting inspiration of their matchless briskness of dialogue. The
Millamours and Bellairs, the Carelesses and Rangers, the Sir Joskin
Jolleys and Sir Fopling Flutters, the _beaux_ of the Mall and the
rakes of the Mulberry and New Spring Gardens, the gay frequenters of
the Folly on the Thames and the _habitués_ of Pontack's Ordinary, whom
the contemporary dramatists transferred bodily to the stage of the
King's or the Duke's, are constantly tossing off bumpers of it. Their
lives would seem to have been one continuous round of love-making and
Champagne-drinking, to judge from the following 'catch,' sung by four
merry gentlemen at a period when, according to Redding, ten thousand
tuns of French wine were annually pouring into England:
'The pleasures of love and the joys of good wine,
To perfect our happiness, wisely we join;
We to Beauty all day
Give the sovereign sway,
And her favourite nymphs devoutly obey.
At the plays we are constantly making our court,
And when they are ended we follow the sport
To the Mall and the Park,
Where we love till 'tis dark;
Then sparkling Champaign[272]
Puts an end to their reign;
It quickly recovers
Poor languishing lovers;
Makes us frolic and gay, and drowns all our sorrow;
But, alas, we relapse again on the morrow.'[273]
[Illustration]
We learn, indeed, that under the influence of
'powerful Champaign, as they call it, a spark can no more refrain
running into love than a drunken country vicar can avoid disputing
of religion when his patron's ale grows stronger than his
reason.'[274]
Probably it was owing to this quality of inspiring a tendency to
amativeness that ladies were sometimes expected to join in such
potations.
'She's no mistress of mine
That drinks not her wine,
Or frowns at my friends' drinking motions;
If my heart thou wouldst gain,
Drink thy flask of Champaign;
'Twill serve thee for paint and love-potions,'[275]
is the sentiment enunciated in chorus by four half-fuddled topers in
the New Spring Gardens. At the Mulberry Gardens we find that
'Jack Wildish sent for a dozen more Champaign, and a brace of
such girls as we should have made honourable love to in any other
place.'[276]
With such manners and customs can we wonder at one gentleman
complaining how another
'came where I was last night roaring drunk; swore--d--him!--he had
been with my Lord Such-a-one, and had swallowed three quarts of
Champaign for his share;'[277]
or have any call to feel surprised that such boon companions should
'come, as the sparks do, to a playhouse too full of Champaign,
venting very much noise and very little wit'?[278]
Champagne remains ignored in such books as the _Mystery of
Vintners_;[279] but although technical works may be silent, the poets
vie with the dramatists in extolling its exhilarating effects--effects
surely perceptible in the witty, careless, graceful verse with which
the epoch abounds. John Oldham--who, after passing his early years as a
schoolmaster, was lured into becoming, in the words of his biographer,
'at once a votary of Bacchus and Venus' by the patronage of Rochester,
Dorset, and Sedley in 1681, and who realised the fable of the pot of
brass and the pot of earthenware by dying from the effects of the
company he kept two years later--has given a list of the wines in vogue
in his day:
'Let wealthy merchants, when they dine,
Run o'er their witty names of wine:
Their chests of Florence and their Mont Alchine,
Their Mants, Champaigns, Chablees, Frontiniacks tell;
Their aums of Hock, of Backrag [Bacharach] and Mosell.'[280]
He gives the wines of our 'sweet enemy' a high position, too, in his
_Dithyrambick, spoken by a Drunkard_, who is made to exclaim,
'Were France the next, this round Bordeau shall swallow,
Champaign, Langou [L'Anjou], and Burgundy shall follow.'[281]
Butler makes the hero of his immortal satire prepared to follow the old
Roman fashion with regard to his lady's name, and to
'Drink ev'ry letter on't in stum,
And make it brisk Champaign become;'[282]
and speaks of routed forces having
'Recovered many a desperate campaign
With Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champaign.'[283]
And Sir Charles Sedley, in an apologue written towards the close of
the century, tells how a doctor of his day was sorely troubled by the
unreasonable lives led by his patients, until
'One day he called 'em all together,
And, one by one, he asked 'em whether
It were not better by good diet
To keep the blood and humours quiet,
With toast and ale to cool their brains
Than nightly fire 'em with Champains.'[284]
In 1679 the peculiar ideas of political economy then prevailing led
to a formal prohibition of the importation of French wines, and the
consequent substitution in their place of those of Portugal. One can
imagine the consternation of the 'beaux' and 'sparks' at this fatal
decree, and the satisfaction of the few vintners whose cellars chanced
to be well stored with the forbidden vintages of France--with
'The Claret smooth, red as the lips we press
In sparkling fancy while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted Burgundy, and, quick
As is the wit it gives, the gay Champagne.'[285]
But, Port wine and prohibitions notwithstanding, men of fashion of that
epoch were not entirely obliged to abandon their favourite potations,
since five thousand hogsheads of French wine were surreptitiously
landed on the south-west coast of England in a single year.[286]
Fortunately, too, for them, the Government came to the conclusion that
it was for the time being futile to fight against popular tastes, and
in 1685 the obnoxious prohibition was removed, with the result that,
two years later, the imports of French wine were registered as fifteen
thousand tuns--that is, sixty thousand hogsheads.[287]
[Illustration]
On the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1689, the import of
French wines received a serious check, and as they vanished from the
revenue returns, so Champagne began to disappear from the social board
and the literature of the day. Strange to say, however, it was not only
the favourite wine of William III., but of his dethroned father-in-law,
James II. The red wines of the province of Champagne had always found
a ready sale in Flanders and the Low Countries,[288] and quickened the
minds of the stout seamen who fought against Blake and Rupert. The
variety produced from the Beaune grape at Vertus was the one patronised
by Macaulay's pet hero, the hook-nosed Dutchman,[289] whilst the exile
of St. Germain seems to have been more catholic in his tastes.[290]
Eagerly must the _gourmets_ of the day, when, 'if we did not love the
French, we coveted their wines,'[291] have hailed the return of a peace
which permitted them not only to indulge in their old favourites, but
to welcome a new attraction in the shape of sparkling Champagne. The
term 'sparkling' as applied to wine did not at the outset necessarily
mean effervescing, as in one of Farquhar's comedies we find Roebuck
comparing himself to 'a bumper of Claret, smiling and sparkling.'[292]
Towards the close of the century, however, we meet with sure proof of
the advent of the delectable beverage with which the worthy cellarer of
Hautvillers was the first to endow droughty humanity. The contemporary
dramatists were ever on the alert to shoot Folly as she flew. The stage
was really the mirror of that time, and those who wrote for it seized
on every passing whim, fashion, or fancy of the day. The introduction
of a new wine was certainly not to be missed by them, and the recently
discovered _vin mousseux_ of Dom Perignon is plainly referred to in
Farquhar's aptly-named comedy, _Love and a Bottle_, produced in 1698,
just after the Peace of Ryswick had allowed the reopening of trade with
France.
The second scene of act ii. represents the lodgings of Mockmode, the
country squire, who aims at being 'a beau,' and who is discovered in
close confabulation with his landlady, the Widow Bullfinch:
'_Mock._ But what's most modish for beverage now? For I suppose the
fashion of that always alters with the clothes.
_W. Bull._ The tailors are the best judges of that; but Champaign,
I suppose.
_Mock._ Is Champaign a tailor? Methinks it were a fitter name for a
wig-maker. I think they call my wig a campaign.
_W. Bull._ You're clear out, sir--clear out. Champaign is a fine
liquor, which all great beaux drink to make 'em witty.
_Mock._ Witty! O, by the universe, I must be witty! I'll drink
nothing else; I never was witty in my life. Here, Club, bring us a
bottle of what d'ye call it--the witty liquor.'
The Widow having retired, Club, Mockmode's servant, reënters with a
bottle and glasses.
'_Mock._ Is that the witty liquor? Come, fill the glasses.... But
where's the wit now, Club? Have you found it?
_Club._ Egad, master, I think 'tis a very good jest.
_Mock._ What?
_Club._ Why, drinking. You'll find, master, that this same
gentleman in the straw doublet, this same Will o' the Wisp, is a
wit at the bottom. Here, here, master, how it puns and quibbles in
the glass![293]
_Mock._ By the universe, now I have it; the wit lies in the
jingling! All wit consists most in jingling. Hear how the glasses
rhyme to one another.... I fancy this same wine is all sold at
Will's Coffee-house.'
Here we have a palpable hit at the source of inspiration indulged in
by many of the wits and rhymesters who gathered round 'glorious John
Dryden' within the hallowed walls of that famous rendezvous. And likely
enough, when they
'were all at supper, all in good humour, Champaign was the word,
and wit flew about the room like a pack of losing cards.'[294]
Farquhar seems, above all others, to have hailed the new wine with
pleasure. We all remember the 'red Burgundy' which saves Mirabel from
his perilous position in the cut-throats' den; but the flighty hero of
the _Inconstant_ is equally enthusiastic over sparkling wine when he
exclaims:
'Give me the plump Venetian, brisk and sanguine, that smiles upon
me like the glowing sun, and meets my lips like sparkling wine,
her person shining as the glass, and spirit like the foaming
liquor.'[295]
The benignant influence of the beverage is, moreover, referred to by
Farquhar in his epilogue to the _Constant Couple_, where, in alluding
to the critics, it is said that
'To coffee some retreat to save their pockets,
Others, more generous, damn the play at Locket's;
But there, I hope, the author's fears are vain,
Malice ne'er spoke in generous Champain.'[296]
Further, he makes Benjamin Wouldbe exclaim:
'Show me that proud stoick that can bear success and Champain;
philosophy can support us in hard fortune, but who can have
patience in prosperity?'[297]
Farquhar shows his usual keen observation of the minutest features
of the life of his day in his allusion to the flask--the pear-shaped
_flacon_ in which Champagne made its _entrée_ into fashionable
life.[298] Archer, in his ditty on 'trifles,' thus warbles:
'A flask of Champaign, people think it
A trifle, or something as bad;
But if you'll contrive how to drink it,
You'll find it no trifle, egad!'[299]
Congreve, in evident reference to the still wine, thus writes to Mr.
Porter, husband of the celebrated actress, from Calais, August 11, 1700:
'Here is admirable Champaign for twelvepence a quart, as good
Burgundy for fifteenpence; and yet I have virtue enough to resolve
to leave this place to-morrow for St. Omers, where the same wine is
half as dear again, and may be not quite so good.'[300]
Champagne suffered like other French wines from the War of Succession
and the Methuen Treaty, by which the Government strove to pour
Port wine down the throats of the people. The poets and satirists,
supported by Dean Aldrich, 'the Apostle of Bacchus;' the miserly Dr.
Ratcliffe, who ascribed all diseases to the lack of French wines, and
imputed the badness of the vintages he was wont to place upon his
table to the difficulty he experienced in obtaining them; the jovial
Portman Seymour; the rich 'smell-feast' Pereira and General Churchill,
Marlborough's brother, together with a host of 'bottle companions,'
lawyers, and physicians, united to fight against this attempt.[301]
They would drink their old favourites, in spite of treaties, and
would praise them as they deserved; and means were found to gratify
their wishes. According to official returns, the nominal importation
of French wines fell in 1701 to a trifle over two thousand tons; and
though this quantity was only once exceeded up to 1786, the influence
of a steady demand, a short sea-passage, an extensive coast-line,
and a ridiculously inefficient preventive service in aid of the high
duty need to be taken into consideration. The contraband traders of
the beginning of the century smuggled French wine into England, just
as they continued to do at a later period into Scotland and Ireland,
when the taste for ardent spirits which sprang up in the Georgian era
rendered the surreptitious import of 'Nantz' and 'Geneva' the more
profitable transaction as regarded England. Farquhar throws light on
one method pursued when Colonel Standard hands Alderman Smuggler his
pocket-book, which he had dropped, with the remark:
'It contains an account of some secret practices in your
merchandising, amongst the rest, the counterpart of an agreement
with a correspondent at Bordeaux about transporting French wine in
Spanish casks.'[302]
That the Champenois were themselves aware of the appreciation in which
their wine was held in England is shown by a passage in Coffin's
_Campania vindicata_. Writing in 1712, the year before the ratification
of the Treaty of Utrecht, he calls on the Britons in presence of
returning peace to cross the seas, and instead of lavishing their
wealth to pleasure blood-stained Mars, to fill their ships with the
treasures of the Remois Bacchus, and bear home these precious spoils
instead of fatal trophies.[303]
Addison, referring to one source whence French wines were derived,
remarks:
'There is in this City a certain fraternity of Chymical Operators
who work underground, in holes, caverns, and dark retirements,
to conceal their mysteries from the eyes and observation of
mankind. These subterraneous Philosophers are daily employed
in the Transmigration of Liquors, and, by the power of Magical
Drugs and Incantations, raise under the streets of _London_ the
choicest products of the hills and valleys of _France_. They can
squeeze _Bourdeaux_ out of a _Sloe_, and draw _Champagne_ from an
_Apple_.'[304]
He tells us that
'the person who appeared against them was a Merchant, who had by
him a great magazine of wines, that he had laid in before the war:
but these Gentlemen (as he said) had so vitiated the nation's
palate, that no man could believe his to be _French_, because it
did not taste like what they sold for such.'
For the defence it was urged that
'they were under a necessity of making Claret if they would keep
open their doors, it being the nature of Mankind to love everything
that is Prohibited.'[305]
The enquiry,
'And where would your beaux have Champaign to toast their
mistresses were it not for the merchant?'[306]
is from a panegyrist of the more legitimate school of trade.
Altogether it is tolerably certain that Champagne--genuine or
fictitious, from grape or gooseberry--played a more important part in
the conviviality of the early portion of the eighteenth century than
might be supposed from the imports of the epoch, whilst there is little
doubt but that it helped to inspire some of the finest productions of
the Augustan age of English literature.
Gay places it first amongst the wines offered to a party of guests
entering a tavern, making the drawer exclaim:
'Name, sirs, the wine that most invites your taste,
Champaign or Burgundy, or Florence pure,
Or Hock antique, or Lisbon new or old,
Bourdeaux, or neat French wine, or Alicant.'[307]
This reference to Champagne most likely relates to the still wine; but
it is probably the sparkling variety which is alluded to in the verses
which Gay addressed to Pope on the completion of the _Iliad_ in 1720,
and wherein he represents General Wilkinson thus apostrophising as the
ship conveying the poet passes Greenwich:
'Come in, my friends, here shall ye dine and lie;
And here shall breakfast and shall dine again,
And sup and breakfast on (if ye comply),
For I have still some dozens of Champaign.'[308]
Witty Mat Prior, poet and diplomatist, was always ready to manifest his
contempt for the heavy fluid with which the Methuen treaty deluged our
island in place of the light fresh-tasting wines of France that had
cheered and inspired his earlier sallies. Writing whilst in custody on
a charge of treason between 1715 and 1717, and referring to the mind
under the name of Alma, he tells us how
'By nerves about our palate placed,
She likewise judges of the taste,
Else (dismal thought!) our warlike men
Might drink thick Port for fine Champagne.'[309]
He likewise inculcates a lesson of philosophy, especially suited to his
own situation at that moment, when he remarks of fortune:
'I know we must both fortunes try,
And bear our evils, wet or dry.
Yet, let the goddess smile or frown,
Bread we shall eat, or white or brown;
And in a cottage or a court
Drink fine Champagne or muddled Port.'[310]
There were many, no doubt, ready to emulate the hero of one of his
minor pieces, and
'from this world to retreat
As full of Champagne as an egg's full of meat.'[311]
Shenstone gives expression to much the same sentiment as Prior when he
found 'his warmest welcome at an inn,' and wrote on the window-pane at
Henley:
''Tis here with boundless power I reign,
And every health which I begin
Converts dull Port to bright Champagne;
Such freedom crowns it at an inn.'[312]
[Illustration]
Vanbrugh, whose writings were of a decidedly lighter character than
the edifices he erected, probably had recourse to Champagne to assist
him in the composition of the former, and neglected it when planning
the designs for the latter. These, indeed, would seem to have been
conceived under the influence of some such 'heavy muddy stuff' as the
'Norfolk nog,' which Lady Headpiece reproaches her husband for allowing
their son and heir to indulge in, saying:
'Well, I wonder, Sir Francis, you will encourage that lad to swill
such beastly lubberly liquor. If it were Burgundy or Champaign,
something might be said for't; they'd perhaps give him some art and
spirit.'[313]
Swift has given in his _Journal to Stella_ extensive information as
to the wines in vogue in London in 1710-13. He seems for his own part
to have been, as far as nature permitted him, an accommodating toper,
indulging, in addition to Champagne, in Tokay, Portugal, Florence,
Burgundy, Hermitage, 'Irish wine,' _i.e._ Claret, 'right French
wine,' Congreve's 'nasty white wine' that gave him the heartburn, and
Sir William Read's 'admirable punch.' He acknowledges that the more
fashionable beverages of the day were not to his taste. 'I love,'
writes he, 'white Portugal wine better than Claret, Champaign, or
Burgundy. I have a sad vulgar appetite.'[314] Still, while observing
due moderation, he did not entirely shun the lighter potations with
which the table of the luxurious and licentious St. John was so freely
supplied. On one occasion he writes:
'I dined to-day by appointment with Lord Bolingbroke; but they fell
to drinking so many Spanish healths in Champaign, that I stole away
to the ladies and drank tea till eight.'[315]
And on another we find him refusing to allow his host to
'drink one drop of Champaign or Burgundy without water.'[316]
Our countrymen do not appear to have taken heed of the controversy
regarding the respective merits of Champagne and Burgundy, but
thankfully accepted the goods that the gods and the sunny soil of
France provided them. The accusation, however, banded about by the
partisans of these rival vintages, of their tendency to produce gout,
had apparently been accepted as gospel truth over here in the first
decade of the century. Thus the Dean notes that he
'dined with Mr. Secretary St. John, and staid till seven, but would
not drink his Champaign and Burgundy, for fear of the gout.'[317]
When suffering from a rheumatic pain he displays commendable caution at
dinner with Mr. Domville, only drinking
'three or four glasses of Champaign by perfect teasing,'[318]
for fear of aggravating his suffering. He is prompt, however, to
acknowledge himself mistaken:
'I find myself disordered with a pain all round the small of my
back, which I imputed to Champaign I had drunk, but find it to have
been only my new cold.'[319]
The Dean does not appear to have been the only sufferer, for we find
him writing:
'I called this evening to see Mr. Secretary, who had been very ill
with the gravel and pains in his back, by Burgundy and Champaign,
added to the sitting up all night at business; I found him drinking
tea, while the rest were at Champaign, and was very glad of
it.'[320]
Even Pope, the perforcedly abstemious, was lured into similar excesses
by the young Earl of Warwick and Colley Cibber, during his visits to
London, whilst engaged on his translation of the _Iliad_, and writes to
Congreve,
'I sit up till two o'clock over Burgundy and Champagne.'[321]
A proof of the popularity of French wines at this period is found
in the fact that in 1713, the year of the Peace of Utrecht, the
registered imports, despite high duties, reached 2551 tuns, an amount
not exceeded till 1786. The Treaty of Commerce, with which Bolingbroke
(whose partiality to Champagne we have seen) and M. de Torcy sought to
supplement that of Peace, having fallen through, the tavern-keepers
put such a price on these wines that it was only members of the
fashionable world who could afford to have what was termed 'a good
Champagne stomach.'[322] Their vogue is confirmed by the order given to
her servant by a lady aspiring to take a leading position in the _beau
monde_ to
'go to Mr. Mixture, the wine-merchant, and order him to send in
twelve dozen of his best Champaign, twelve dozen of Burgundy, and
twelve dozen of Hermitage,'[323]
as the entire stock for her cellar. 'Good wine' was indeed, in those
days, 'a gentleman.'
[Illustration: 'GOOD WINE A GENTLEMAN.']
The unvarying rule that the fashions set by the most select are
inevitably aped by the most degraded, so far as lies in their power, is
exemplified in the Tavern Scene of Hogarth's _Rake's Progress_, where
the table at which the hero and his _inamoratas_ are seated is set out
with the tall wine-glasses wherein
'Champaign goes briskly round.'[324]
[Illustration: TAVERN SCENE FROM 'THE RAKE'S PROGRESS.']
The Jacobites, faithful to their traditional ally, continued to toast
'the King over the water' by passing glasses charged with the sparkling
wine of France across a bowl filled to the brim with the pure element.
The middle classes clung to their beer, or at most indulged in Port and
punch; whilst the lower orders seem to have become seized with that
insane passion for ardent spirits which Hogarth satirised in his 'Gin
Lane,' and hailed with glee Sir Robert Walpole's
'attempt,
Superior to Canary or Champagne,
Geneva salutiferous to enhance.'[325]
[Illustration: 'THE KING OVER THE WATER.']
[Illustration]
The registered imports of the wines of France--though figures in this
respect are, we admit, exceedingly deceptive--show a continuous falling
off, which reached its lowest ebb in 1746, during war time; and we may
be certain that when, after supper,
'Champagne was the word for two whole hours by Shrewsbury
clock,'[326]
it was at the cost of a pretty penny. Although the recorded imports
of French wines show but little improvement with the return of peace
in 1748, we gather from other sources that the Champagne of 1749 met
with a ready market over here, and find Bertin du Rocheret writing
exultingly to his friend, the Marquis de Calvières, that the Champenois
were making the English pay the cost of the war.
The voluminous correspondence of Bertin du Rocheret gives some curious
information as to the manner in which the Champagne trade was carried
on with England during the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
From 1725 to 1754 he was in constant communication with Mr. James
Chabane, who seems to have been the Court wine-merchant, and to whom
he despatched at first ten, but during the latter portion of their
transactions seldom more than four, pièces of wine annually during
the winter months.[327] As regards the particular vintage consumed
in England, a preference evidently existed for that of Ay, though it
really appears as if Bertin was wont to introduce under this name the
then far cheaper growths of Avize. Such, at any rate, seems to have
been the case with the parcel of wine divided, in 1754, between King
George in London and King Stanislas at Nancy. Referring to the wines
of Hautvillers and Sillery, Bertin writes to Chabane in 1731, that a
year's notice must be given in advance to obtain them. A _liquoreux_
wine was then preferred, as in 1732 he remarks, respecting the yield
of the preceding year, that the English are as mad after _liqueur_ as
the French; and it is evident that the taste continued, as in 1744 he
announces the departure for London of eleven poinçons _liquoreux_.
Not only was Chabane accustomed to bottle these wines, but while
doing so was able to insure to them a semi-sparkling character. With
this view Bertin tells him, in 1731, that he must not keep them in
cask after the three _sèves_, or motions of the sap of April, June,
or August, except in the case of a pièce from 'the _clos_' reserved
'for the supply of the Court,' and intended to be drunk as still wine.
Some wine despatched in 1754 is recommended to be bottled during the
first quarter of the moon.[328] In addition to the wine thus sent
in casks, Bertin was also accustomed to send his correspondent a
certain quantity in bottles. In 1725 he quotes for him 'flacons blancs
mousseux liqueur,' at from 30 to 50 sols, and 'ambrés non-mousseux
sablant,' at 25 sols. These flasks were all despatched to Dunkirk or
into Holland, whence they were smuggled to their ultimate destination,
for the introduction of wine in bottles into England was rigidly
prohibited until the close of 1745, when it was legalised by Act of
Parliament.[329]
Horace Walpole, who deals with men rather than manners, with sayings
rather than doings, and whose forte is epigram and not description, has
little to tell us about the drinking customs of his day. The strictly
temperate regimen that marked his later years, and rendered him unfit
for mere convivial gatherings, extended to his writings, and he seldom
permits his pen to expatiate on those pleasures in which he sought no
share. Even in his letters from Reims, written in 1739, when he was
doing the grand tour, he omits all mention of the wine for which that
city is famed. Still he incidentally furnishes a few instances of the
esteem in which Champagne was held by the upper classes in the middle
of the eighteenth century. In a letter to George Montague, dated June
23, 1750, he describes how Lord Granby joined his party at Vauxhall
whilst suffering considerably under the influence of the Champagne he
had consumed at 'Jenny's Whim,' a noted tavern at Chelsea; and writing
to Sir Horace Mann, a year later, he says that the then chief subjects
of conversation in London were the two Miss Gunnings and an extravagant
dinner at White's.
[Illustration: SCENE AT VAUXHALL GARDENS
(From an engraving after a drawing by Gravelot).]
'The dinner was a frolic of seven young men, who bespoke it to
the utmost extent of expense; one article was a tart made of duke
cherries, from a hothouse; and another, that they tasted but one
glass out of each bottle of Champagne. The bill of fare has got
into print, and with good people has produced the apprehension of
another earthquake.'[330]
The Earl of March, afterwards 'Old Q,' in a letter to Walpole's friend,
George Selwyn, in November 1766, writes: 'I have not yet received
some Champaign that Monsieur de Prissieux has sent me.'[331] And we
find Horace Walpole's fair foe, that eighteenth-century exemplar of
strong-minded womanhood, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose letters
indicate a _penchant_ for Burgundy, acknowledging in verse the
exhilarating effects of Champagne. Of the _beaux_ of 1721 she says that
'They sigh, not from the heart but from the brain,
Vapours of vanity and strong Champagne.'[332]
Better known by far are her oft-quoted lines,
'But when the long hours of the public are past,
And we meet with Champagne and a chicken at last,
May every fond pleasure that moment endear,
Be banished afar both discretion and fear,'[333]
which drew from Byron the terror-stricken comment, 'What say you to
such a supper with such a woman?'[334]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
During the third quarter of the eighteenth century a cloud dims the
lustre of Champagne. It was then looked upon by a vast majority as
only a fit accompaniment to masquerades, ridottos, ultra-fashionable
dinners, and Bacchanalian suppers. 'The Champaign made some eyes
sparkle that nothing else could brighten,'[335] says the contemporary
account of one of those scenes of shameless revelry held under the
title of masquerades at the Pantheon, and the orgies that, under
the auspices of Mrs. Cornelys, disgraced Carlisle House were mainly
inspired by the consumption of the same wine. The citizens of the
Georgian era, who had lost the tastes of their fathers, hated French
wines simply because they were French; and the hundred thousand gallons
imported on an average annually from 1750 to 1786 were entirely
consumed amongst the upper or the dissipated classes. Though smuggling
was still looked upon as patriotic, if not loyal, those engaged in it
had discovered that, thanks to the combined effects of duty and demand,
Nantes brandy and Hollands gin paid better. What, indeed, is to be
thought of the taste of an era that produced poets whose muse sought
inspiration in punch, and who had the sublime audacity to extol the rum
of the West Indies above the produce of 'Marne's flowery banks'?[336]
Only a few of the higher-class men, however, engaged in literature and
art seem to have retained a preference for French wine. The accounts of
the Literary Club established by Sir Joshua Reynolds show the average
consumption at each sitting to have been half a bottle of Port and a
bottle of Claret per head. Johnson drank Port mixed with sugar from
about 1752 to 1764; became a total abstainer until 1781, and then seems
to have given the preference to Madeira.
[Illustration: THE LITERARY CLUB.]
In contemporaneous comedy we are pretty sure to find the mirror held
up to fashion, if not to Nature; and turning to the playwrights of
that day, it is easy to cull a few confirmatory excerpts. Thus we have
Sterling, the ambitious British merchant, in order to do honour to his
noble guests, preparing to
'give them such a glass of Champaign as they never drank in their
lives; no, not at a duke's table.'[337]
While Lord Minikin, the peer of fashion, makes his entrance on the
stage, exclaiming:
'O my head! I must absolutely change my wine-merchant; I cannot
taste his Champaigne without disordering myself for a week.'[338]
On Miss Tittup inquiring if his depression is due to losses at cards,
he replies,
'No, faith, our Champaigne was not good yesterday.'[339]
Jessamy, his lordship's valet, profits of course by so aristocratic an
example; and when speaking of his exploits at the masquerade, says,
'I was in tip-top spirits, and had drunk a little too freely of the
Champaigne, I believe.'[340]
With Philip the butler, 'Burgundy is the word,' and from the choicest
vintages of his master's cellar he places on the table 'Claret,
Burgundy, and Champaign; and a bottle of Tokay for the ladies;'[341]
while Port is characterised by the Duke's servant as 'only fit for a
dram.'[342] Mrs. Circuit presses the guests at a clandestinely-given
repast to 'taste the Champagne;' and her husband, the Sergeant, is
surprised on his return home to find that they have been so indulging:
'Delicate eating, in truth; and the wine [_Drinks_] Champagne, as
I live! Must have t'other glass ... delicate white wine, indeed! I
like it better every glass.'[343]
Such is his comment.
The effects of the wine are characterised in the following fashion by
Garrick, when Sparkish, entering, according to the stage directions,
'fuddled,' declares that
'when a man has wit, and a great deal of it, Champaign gives it a
double edge, and nothing can withstand it; 'tis a lighted match to
gunpowder; the mine is sprung, and the poor devils are tossed heels
uppermost in an instant.'[344]
[Illustration: LORD MINIKIN.]
We greet, too, what was perhaps the first appearance of a joke now
grown venerable in its antiquity in a farce of Foote's, the scene of
which is laid at Bath. He introduces us to a party of pseudo-invalids
devoting their whole time and attention to conviviality, recruiting
their debilitated stomachs with turtle and venison, and alternating
Bath waters with the choicest vintages, so that the hero Racket is fain
to observe to one of them,
'My dear Sir Kit, how often has Dr. Carawitchet told you that your
rich food and Champaigne would produce nothing but poor health and
real pain?'[345]
And how many gentlemen in difficulties have not since followed the
example set by Harry Dornton in the spunging-house, and ordered, as a
consolation,
'a bottle of Champagne and two rummers'![346]
Turning from fancy to fact, we find Sir Edward Barry furnishing some
particulars respecting the Champagne wines consumed in England during
the latter half of the last century.[347] He informs us at the outset
that
'the wines of Champaign and Burgundy are made with more care than
any other French wines; and the vaults in which the former are
preserved are better than any other in France. These wines, from
their finer texture and peculiar flavour, cannot be adulterated
without the fraud being easily discovered, and are therefore
generally imported pure, or by proper care may be certainly
procured in that state.'
His remarks evidently refer to the still wines, as he proceeds to
explain that 'the Champaign River Wines are more delicate and pale than
those which are distinguished from them by the name of Mountain gray
Wines,' the latter being more durable and better suited for exportation,
whilst the former, if allowed to remain too long in the cask, acquire a
taste from the wood, although keeping in flasks from four to six years
without harm. Referring to the taste of the day, he explains that
'among the River Wines the Auvillers and Epernay are most esteemed,
and among the Mountain Wines the Selery and St. Thyery, and in
general such as are of the colour of a partridge's eye. These are
likewise distinguished for their peculiar grateful pungency and
balsamic softness, which is owing to the refined saline principle
which prevails more in them than in the Burgundy Wines, on which
account they are less apt to affect the head, communicate a milder
heat, and more freely pervade and pass through the vessels of the
body.... To drink Champaign Wines in the greatest perfection, the
flask should be taken from the vault a quarter of an hour before it
is drunk, and immersed in ice-water, with the cork so loose in it
as is sufficient to give a free passage to the air, and yet prevent
too great an evaporation of its spirituous parts.'
[Illustration: HIGH LIVING AT BATH
(After Rowlandson, in the _New Bath Guide_).]
The foregoing practice still obtains with Sillery, classed by Barry as
the first of the Mountain growths, and in the highest favour in England
throughout the remainder of the century. Regarding sparkling wine, of
which he was evidently no admirer, he adds:
'For some years the French and English have been particularly fond
of the sparkling frothy Champaigns. The former have almost entirely
quitted that depraved taste, nor does it now so much prevail here.
They used to mix some ingredients to give them that quality; but
this is unnecessary, as they are too apt spontaneously to run into
that state; but whoever chooses to have such Wines may be assured
that they will acquire it by bottling them any time after the
vintage before the month of the next May; and the most sure rule to
prevent that disposition is not to bottle them before the November
following. This rule has been confirmed by repeated experiments.'
On the signature of the Treaty of Peace with France in 1783, it had
been stipulated that a Treaty of Commerce should likewise be concluded;
and in 1786, under the auspices of Pitt, a treaty of this character was
made, the first article providing that 'The wines of France imported
directly from France into Great Britain shall in no case pay any
higher duties than those which the wines of Portugal now pay.' Pitt,
spite of his well known _penchant_ for Port, had yet a sneaking liking
for Champagne, arising no doubt from his early familiarity with the
wine when he went to Reims to study, after leaving the University of
Cambridge. It was with Champagne that he was primed on the memorable
occasion when he, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and Mr. Secretary Dundas
galloped after dusk through an open turnpike-gate without paying toll,
and only just missed receiving the contents of a loaded blunderbuss,
which the turnpike man, fancying they were highwaymen, fired after
them. The party had been dining with the President of the Board of
Trade at Addiscombe, and a rhymester of the epoch commemorated the
incident in the following lines:
'How as Pitt wandered darkling o'er the plain,
His reason drowned in Jenkinson's Champagne,
A rustic's hand, but righteous fate withstood,
Had shed a premier's for a robber's blood.'
[Illustration: DUNDAS AND PITT AS SILENUS AND BACCHUS
(After Gilray).]
[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT
(After Gilray).]
Tickell has noted the appreciation of Brooks' Champagne shown by Pitt's
great rival in the lines addressed to Sheridan, and purporting to be an
invitation to supper from Fox. The illustrious member for Westminster
promises his guest that
'Derby shall send, if not his plate, his cooks,
And know I've bought the best Champaign from Brooks.'[348]
Brooks' Club enjoyed a high reputation for its Champagne, and we find
Fighting Fitzgerald emptying three bottles there without assistance,
the same evening on which he bullied the members into electing him.[349]
The year after the Treaty of Commerce was signed, we have an anonymous
writer remarking[350] that in time of peace the English drew large
quantities of wine from Bordeaux and Nantes, and that the other French
wines they were in the habit of consuming were those of Mantes,
Burgundy, and Champagne, shipped respectively from Rouen, Dunkirk, and
Calais. Arthur Young, writing at the same time, remarks, _apropos_
of Champagne, that the trade with England 'used to be directly from
Epernay; but now the wine is sent to Calais, Boulogne, Montreuil,
and Guernsey, in order to be passed into England they suppose here
by smuggling. This may explain our Champagne not being so good as
formerly.'[351] It is to be hoped that neither Arthur Young nor other
connoisseurs of Champagne had been enticed into drinking as the genuine
article any of the produce of the vineyard which the Hon. Charles
Hamilton had planted with the Auvernat grape near Cobham, in Surrey,
and which was said to yield a wine 'resembling Champagne.'[352]
The reduction of duty consequent upon the treaty as a matter of course
largely increased the importation of French wine. Respecting the taste
for Champagne then prevailing in England, and the price the wine
commanded, a few interesting particulars are afforded by the early
correspondence and account-books of Messrs. Moët & Chandon of Epernay,
which we have courteously been permitted to inspect. From these we find
that in October 1788 the Chevalier Colebrook, writing in French to
the firm from Bath, asks that seventy-two bottles of Champagne may be
sent to his friend, the Hon. John Butler of Molesworth-street, Dublin,
'who, if content with the wine, will become a very good customer, being
rich, keeping a good house, and receiving many amateurs of _vin de
Champagne_.' The writer is no doubt the 'M. Collebrock' to whom the
firm shortly afterwards forward fifty bottles of '_vin non mousseux_,
1783,' on his own account. Messrs. Carbonnell, Moody, & Walker,
predecessors of the well-known existing firm of Carbonnell & Co.,
London, in a letter dated November 1788, and also written in French,
say: 'If you can supply us with some Champagne of a very good body, not
too much charged with liqueur, but with an excellent flavour, and not
at all _moussu_, we beg you to send two ten dozen baskets. Also, if you
have any dry Champagne of very good flavour, solidity, and excellent
body, send two baskets of the same size.'
The taste of the day was evidently for a full-bodied non-sparkling
wine; and this is confirmed by Jeanson, Messrs. Moët's traveller in
England, who writes from London in May 1790: 'How the taste of this
country has altered within the last ten years! Almost everywhere they
ask for a dry wine; but they want a wine so vinous and so strong,
that there is hardly anything but Sillery that will satisfy them.'
Additional confirmation is found in a letter, written from London in
May 1799 to Messrs. Moët, by a Mr. John Motteux, complaining of delay
in the delivery of a parcel of wine said to have been sent off by way
of Havre, and very likely destined to be surreptitiously introduced
into England _viâ_ Guernsey. He asks for a further supply of Sillery,
if its safe arrival can be guaranteed, and remarks, 'There is nothing
to be compared to Sillery when it is genuine; it must not have the
least sweetness nor _mousse_.'[353]
During the great French war, patriotism and increased duties might have
been expected to check the import of French wines; yet, if statistics
are worth anything, the reverse would appear to have been the case.
The registered imports, which from 1770 to 1786 had fluctuated between
80,000 and 125,000 gallons, rose during the last fourteen years of the
century to an average of 550,000 gallons per annum. In those fighting,
rollicking, hard-drinking times, when it was a sacred social duty to
toast 'great George our King' on every possible occasion, Champagne
continued to be 'the wine of fashion.' The sparkling variety was
terribly costly, no doubt, and was often doled out, as Mr. Walker
relates, 'like drops of blood.'[354] But whilst the stanch admirers of
Port might profess to despise Champagne as effeminate, and the 'loyal
volunteers' condemn it as the produce of a foeman's soil, there were
plenty to sing in honour of 'The Fair of Britain's Isle:'
'Fill, fill the glass, to beauty charge,
And banish care from every breast;
In brisk Champaign we'll quick discharge,
A toast shall give the wine a zest.'[355]
Indeed, the greatest of England's naval heroes was not insensible to
the attractions of this gift from 'our sweet enemy France.' In October
1800 Nelson, together with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, was a guest
of Mr. Elliot, the British Resident at Dresden. At dinner Lady Hamilton
drank more Champagne than the narrator of this little incident imagined
it was possible for a woman to consume, and inspired thereby, insisted
on favouring the company with her imitations of classical statuary.
Nelson thereupon got uproarious, and went on emptying bumper after
bumper of the same fluid in honour of the fair Emma, and swearing that
she was superior to Siddons. The host kept striving 'to prevent the
further effusion of Champagne,' but did not succeed till Sir William
in his turn had astonished all present with a display of his social
talents. The grave diplomatist lay down on his back, with his arms and
legs in the air, and in this position bounded all round the room like a
ball, with his stars and ribbons flying around him.[356]
If we may give credit to Tom Moore, 'the best wigged prince in
Christendom,' who was subsequently to 'd---- Madeira as gouty,' and
bring Sherry into fashion, preferred stronger potations than those
produced on the banks of the Marne. In one of the poet's political
skits the Prince is introduced soliloquising _à la_ Jemmy Thompson--
'O Roman Punch! O potent Curaçoa!
O Maraschino! Maraschino O!
Delicious drams'[357]--
and describing his favourite luncheon as 'good mutton cutlets and
strong curaçoa.'[358] Nevertheless, the First Gentleman in Europe
did consume Champagne; but it was concentrated in the form of punch,
especially devised for him, and indulged in by him in company with
Barrymore, Hanger, and their fellows.[359]
His sometime model and subsequent victim, poor Brummell, is said to
have put the wine to a still more ignoble use. One day a youthful beau
approached the great master in the arts of dress and deportment, and
said, 'Permit me to ask you where you get your blacking?' 'Ah,' replied
Brummell, gazing complacently at his boots, 'my blacking positively
ruins me. I will tell you in confidence it is made with the finest
Champagne.'[360] Probably the great dandy was merely quizzing his
interlocutor, though such an act of extravagance would have been a pull
on even the longest purse in those days, 'your bottle of Champagne in
the year 1814 costing you a guinea.'[361]
[Illustration: THE PRINCE REGENT
(After Gilray).]
As to the Prince Regent's brothers, we know that the Duke of York
was such a powerful toper, that 'six bottles of Claret after dinner
scarce made a perceptible change in his countenance,'[362] and remember
the Duke of Clarence making his appearance at the table of the Royal
household at Windsor, and getting so helplessly drunk on Champagne as
to be utterly incapable of keeping his promise to open the ball that
evening with his sister Mary.[363] Two prominent orators of that day
are credited with _mots_ upon Champagne. Curran said, _apropos_ of the
rapid but transient intoxication produced by this wine, that 'Champagne
made a runaway rap at a man's head;' while Canning maintained that any
man who said he really liked dry Champagne simply lied.
After Waterloo, although a few _gourmets_ continued to prefer the
still wine, sparkling Champagne became the almost universally accepted
variety. Nevertheless, Henderson, while noting that 'by Champagne wine
is usually understood a sparkling or frothy liquor,' gives the foremost
place to the wine of Sillery, which, he remarks, 'has always been in
much request in England, probably on account of its superior strength
and durable quality.' He extols the Ay wine as 'an exquisite liquor,
lighter and sweeter than the Sillery, and accompanied by a delicate
flavour and aroma somewhat analogous to that of the pine-apple.'[364]
The poets of the first half of the present century have hardly done
justice to Champagne. Tom Moore, the most Anacreontic of them all,
although ready, like his Grecian prototype, to 'pledge the universe in
wine,' the merits of which he was continually chanting in the abstract,
has seldom been so invidious as to particularise any especial vintage.
Champagne, the wine of all others best fitted to inspire his bright
and sparkling lyrics, has received but scant attention in his earlier
productions. Bob Fudge, writing from Paris in 1818, is made to speak
approvingly of Beaune and Chambertin, but only mentions Champagne as a
vehicle in which to _sauter_ kidneys;[365] and in the _Sceptic_ it is
simply brought in to point a moral respecting the senses:
'Habit so mars them, that the Russian swain
Will sigh for train-oil while he sips Champagne.'[366]
In two instances only the poet who sang in such lively numbers of woman
and wine pointedly refers to the vintage of the Champagne. One is when
he says:
'If ever you've seen a party
Relieved from the presence of Ned,
How instantly joyous and hearty
They've grown when the damper was fled.
You may guess what a gay piece of work,
What delight to Champagne it must be,
To get rid of its bore of a cork,
And come sparkling to you, love, and me.'[367]
And his description of a summer _fête_ is indeed
'a mere terrestrial strain
Inspired by naught but pink Champagne;'[368]
such as might be penned
'While as the sparkling juice of France
High in the crystal brimmers flowed,
Each sunset ray, that mixed by chance
With the wine's diamond, showed
How sunbeams may be taught to dance;'[369]
with the final result that
'Thus did Fancy and Champagne
Work on the sight their dazzling spells,
Till nymphs that looked at noonday plain
Now brightened in the gloom to belles.'[370]
Moore's Diary, however, proves that if he did not care to praise
the wine in verse, it was not for want of opportunities of becoming
acquainted with it. Witness his 'odd dinner in a borrowed room' at
Horace Twiss's in Chancery-lane, with the strangely incongruous
accompaniments of 'Champagne, pewter spoons, and old Lady Cork.'[371]
As to that most convivial of songsters, Captain Charles Morris,
poet-laureate of the Ancient Society of Beefsteaks, he labours under
a similar reproach. Though he has filled several hundred octavo pages
of his _Lyra Urbanica_ with verses in praise of wine, the liquor
with which he crowns 'the mantling goblet,' 'the fancy-stirring
bowl,' or 'the soul-subliming cup,' usually figures under some such
fanciful designation as 'the inspiring juice,' 'the cordial of life,'
or 'Bacchus' balm.' Champagne he evidently ignores as a beverage of
Gallic origin, utterly unfitted for the praise of so true a Briton as
himself; and the only vintage which he does condescend to mention with
approbation is the favourite one of our beef-eating, hard-drinking,
frog-hating forefathers, 'old Oporto' from 'the stout Lusitanian vine.'
[Illustration: CAPTAIN CHARLES MORRIS (After Gilray).]
Strange as it may seem, the manlier Muse of Scott used at times to dip
her wing into the Champagne cup, although she has failed to express any
verbal gratitude to this source of inspiration. 'In truth,' says his
biographer, 'he liked no wines except sparkling Champaign and Claret;
but even as to this last he was no connoisseur, and sincerely preferred
a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most precious liquid ruby that ever
flowed in the cup of a prince. He rarely took any other potation when
alone with his family; but at the Sunday board he circulated the
Champaign briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of Claret each
man's fair share afterwards.'[372] Scott himself, wearied with a round
of London festivities, is impelled to write, 'I begin to tire of my
gaieties. I wish for a sheep's head and whisky-toddy against all the
French cookery and Champaign in the world.'[373] Lockhart, in his
_Life of Scott_, notes the excellent flavour of some Champagne sent
to Abbotsford by a French admirer of the Northern Wizard in return
for a set of his works, and more than once incidentally refers to the
presence of the wine at Scott's table on festive gatherings.
Byron, who furnished in the course of his career a practical
exemplification of the maxim that
'Comus all allows
Champaign, dice, music, or your neighbour's spouse,'[374]
did the vintage of the Marne justice in his verses. In _Don Juan_ he
shows himself not insensible to the charms of
'Champagne with foaming whirls
As white as Cleopatra's melted pearls.'[375]
The wine, moreover, furnishes two striking comparisons in that
poem--one when he observes that
'The evaporation of a joyous day
Is like the last glass of Champagne, without
The foam which made its virgin bumper gay;'[376]
and the other, where, in his sketch of Lady Adeline Amundeville, he
rejects the trite metaphor of the snow-covered volcano in favour of
'a bottle of Champagne
Frozen into a very vinous ice,
Which leaves few drops of that immortal rain;
Yet in the very centre, past all price,
About a liquid glassful will remain;
And this is stronger than the strongest grape
Could e'er express in its expanded shape:
'Tis the whole spirit brought to a quintessence;
And thus the chilliest aspects may concentre
A hidden nectar under a cold presence.'[377]
Although we find Henderson remarking, in 1822, that
'the pink Champagne is less in request than the colourless, and has
in fact nothing to entitle it to the preference,'
yet wine of this tint continued to reappear from time to time, securing
a transitory popularity from its attractive appearance, which caused
it to be likened to the dying reflection of the setting sun on a clear
stream. An interesting incident in connection with its advent on one
of these occasions at the table of Rogers, the banker-poet, has been
recorded by Mr. R. A. Tracy Gould of the American Bar. He was dining,
it seems, in company with Tom Moore and John Kenyon, with Rogers at
St. James's-place, when their host, who had recently received through
the French Ambassador a present of a case of pink Champagne from Louis
Philippe, had the first bottle of it produced at the end of the dinner.
The saucer-shaped Champagne glasses were then just coming into use, and
pink Champagne, which was a revived novelty in England at that moment,
looked singularly beautiful in them, crowned with its snow-white foam.
Kenyon, who, as Gould remarks, was nothing if not declamatory, held up
his glass, and apostrophised it as follows:
'Lily on liquid roses floating!
So floats yon foam o'er pink Champagne!
Fain would I join such pleasant boating,
And prove that ruby main,
And float away on wine!'
This being vociferously applauded, after a few minutes' pause he added
the second verse:
'Those seas are dangerous, graybeards swear,
Whose sea-beach is the goblet's brim;
And here it is they drown dull Care--
But what care we for him?
So we but float on wine!'
On being desired to continue, Kenyon declared that he had done his
part, and that it was now the turn of some one else. Moore and
Rogers both claimed exemption, as being on the 'retired list' of
the Parnassian army, and peremptorily demanded a contribution from
the Transatlantic guest, Tracy Gould, who thereupon, with 'great
diffidence,' as he tells us, delivered himself of the third and fourth
stanzas:
'Gray Time shall pause and smooth his wrinkles,
Bright garlands round his scythe shall twine;
While sands from out his glass he sprinkles,
To fill it up with wine--
With rosy sparkling wine!
Thus hours shall pass which no man reckons,
'Mongst us, who, glad with mirth divine,
Heed not the shadowy hand that beckons
Across the sea of wine--
Of billowy gushing wine!'
Kenyon then added another stanza, which suggested a final verse to the
American:
'And though 'tis true they cross in pain,
Who sober cross the Stygian ferry,
Yet only make our Styx Champagne,
And we shall cross right merry,
Floating away on wine!'
'Old Charon's self shall make him mellow,
Then gaily row his bark from shore;
While we and every jolly fellow
Hear unconcerned the oar
That dips itself in wine!'
By this time the inspiration and the Champagne were alike exhausted.
The history of Champagne in England during the latter half of the
present century may be briefly summed up in the assertion of the
ever-growing popularity of the wine, and the high repute attained
by certain brands, which it would be invidious to particularise.
Its success in oiling the wheels of social life is so great and so
universally acknowledged that its eclipse would almost threaten a
collapse of our social system. We cannot open a railway, launch a
vessel, inaugurate a public edifice, start a newspaper, entertain a
distinguished foreigner, invite a leading politician to favour us with
his views on things in general, celebrate an anniversary, or specially
appeal on behalf of a benevolent institution without a banquet, and
hence without the aid of Champagne, which, at the present day, is the
obligatory adjunct of all such repasts.
When the Municipality of London welcome the Khan of Kamschatka to our
shores and to the Guildhall, Champagne flows in the proverbial buckets
full. When the Master and Wardens of the Coalscuttle-Makers' Company
bid the Livery to one of their periodical feasts, scandal says that
even this measure is exceeded. When Sir Fusby Guttleton gives one of
his noted 'little spreads' at Greenwich, are not torrents of iced
'dry' needed to quench the thirst excited by the devilled bait? Aware,
too, of the unloosening effect the wine exercises upon the strings of
both heart and purse, Pomposo, as chairman at the annual festival of
the Decayed Muffinmongers' Asylum, is careful to see that the glasses
of the guests have been well charged with it before he commences his
stirring appeal on behalf of that deserving institution.
Does Ingenioso wish to introduce to the notice of the British public
a new heating-power or lighting-apparatus or ice-making machinery, he
straightway issues cards for a private view to critics and cognoscenti,
and is careful that these shall observe the merits of his invention
through the medium of a glass--bubbling over with Champagne. So it is
at the openings of the latest extension of the Mugby Junction Railway
and of the Palatial Hotel, at the private view of the Amicable Afghans,
or Tinto's new picture, or any one of Crotchet's manifold inventions.
If the bidding, too, flags at a sale of shorthorns or thoroughbreds, at
a wink from the auctioneer the Champagne-corks are set a-popping, and
advance promptly follows advance in responsive echoes.
Not less important is the part that Champagne plays in the City. Capel
Crash, the great financier, literally _floats_ the concerns he deigns
to 'promote' by its agency. When Consol, the millionaire, makes one of
a set for rigging the market, and the 'ring' thus formed has reaped the
reward of their ingenuity, does he not entertain his intimate friends
with the story and with the choicest Champagne? The amount of business,
moreover, transacted by the aid of the wine is incalculable. Bargains
in stocks and shares, tea and sugar, cotton and corn, hemp and iron,
hides and tallow, broadcloth and shoddy, are clinched by its agency. On
the other hand, many a bit of sharp practice has been forgiven, many a
hard bargain has been forgotten, many a smouldering resentment has been
quenched for ever, and many an enmity healed and a friendship cemented,
over a bottle of Champagne.
[Illustration: 'I say, old fellow, how do you go to the Derby this
year?'
'O, the old way--hamper-and-four.'
(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch.')]
[Illustration: AT THE DERBY
(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch.')]
The Turf is said to be our national pastime, and no one will deny
the close connection existing between sport and Champagne. From the
highest to the lowest of that wonderful agglomeration of individuals
interested in equine matters, it is recognised as the only standard
'tipple.' Champagne goes down to the Derby in its hamper-and-four, like
other pertinacious patrons of the race, and its all but ubiquitous
presence on the course is warmly welcomed by thousands of thirsty
visitors of very various grades. At Ascot, does H. R. H. the Prince of
Wales seek to congratulate the Marquis of Hartington on his success,
it is by wishing him further success in a glass of sparkling wine.
Does Mr. William Kurr, welsher, desire to make the acquaintance of Mr.
Druscovitch, detective, he seeks an introduction from Mr. Meiklejohn
over a bottle of 'fiz.' Does the favourite horse win--quick, fill high
the bowl with sparkling wine, to celebrate his triumph; does he lose,
the same vintage will serve to drown our sorrows and obliterate the
recollection of our losses. How many cunning _coups_, how many clever
combinations, have there not been worked out in all their details over
a bottle of 'Cham.' in quiet hotel-parlours at Doncaster or Newmarket!
How many bets have been laid and paid in the same medium! How many a
jockey has been bought, and how many a race has been sold, owing to the
moral as well as physical obliquity of vision which the ingurgitation
of the wine has induced! Nor should the existence of Champagne Stakes
be forgotten. There are now several races of this name at different
meetings; but the oldest is that established at Doncaster in 1828, and
taking its title from the fact of the owner of the winner having to
present six dozen of Champagne to the Doncaster Club.
[Illustration: _Jones_: 'I say, Brown, things are deuced bad in the
City.'
_Brown_: 'Then I'm deuced glad I'm at Epsom.'
(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch.')]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: AT THE STAR AND GARTER, RICHMOND.]
Look, too, at the influence exercised by the wine on the British drama,
or rather on what to-day passes as such. Plagioso the playwright freely
opens a bottle of Champagne with the object of stimulating the wit of
his friend and collaborateur in the task of adapting Messrs. Meilhac
& Halévy's latest production to the London stage. Adverse critics,
moreover, are said to be mollified by the subjugating influence of the
wine; while authors, enraged at the way in which their pieces have been
'cut,' are similarly soothed; squabbles too between rival _artistes_
as to parts and lengths are satisfactorily arranged in the managerial
sanctum over a bottle of fiz. Does Lord Nortiboy wish to smooth over a
tiff with the tow-haired young lady who is making ducks and drakes of
his money at the Gynarchic Theatre, and whose partiality for sparkling
wine is notorious, a dinner at Richmond and floods of 'Cham' for
herself and friends is the plan that naturally suggests itself. Should
the enterprising lessees of the Chansonnette Theatre determine to
celebrate the thousand and first night of the run of _Their Girls_, a
Champagne supper is recognised as the fit and proper method of doing
so. Supper is the favourite meal of the profession, and Champagne is of
course the best of all wine to take at that repast. On the stage itself
it has often proved of very serious service. Robust tragedians and
prima donnas in good training may indulge in stout, as more 'mellering
to the organ;' but by the judicious administration of Champagne many a
nervous _débutant_ has been encouraged to conquer 'stage fright' and to
face the footlights, many a jaded _tragédienne_ enabled to rally her
fainting energies in the last act, and to carry her audience with her
in a final outburst of pathos or passion.
Statesmen no longer prime themselves with Port before strolling down
to the House, till they get into the condition of the two members, one
of whom averred that he could not see any Speaker in the chair, whilst
the other gravely accounted for the phenomenon of this disappearance
by asserting that, for his part, he saw a couple. Perhaps it is to be
regretted that the records of the 'tea-room' do not vouch for a larger
consumption of Champagne, as then perhaps the reporters overnight and
their readers the nest morning might escape the wearisome reiteration
of purposeless recrimination and threadbare platitudes. Such should
certainly be the case, since the power of the wine as an incentive to
brisk and sparkling conversation has been universally acknowledged in
social life.
[Illustration: 'Now, George, my boy, there's a glass of Champagne for
you. Don't get such stuff at school, eh?'
'H'm! Awfully sweet. Very good sort for ladies. But I've arrived at a
time of life when I confess I like my wine dry.'
(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch.')]
To the dinners of Bloomsbury and Belgravia, as well as the suppers of
Bohemia, Champagne imparts a charm peculiarly its own by placing all
there present _en rapport_. The modern mind may well look back with
shuddering horror to that dreary period when Champagne, if given at
all, was doled out at dinner-parties 'like drops of blood.' No wonder
the ladies used to fly from the table and the gentlemen to slide
underneath it. And, speaking of the ladies, is not Champagne their wine
_par excellence_? How would the fragile products of modern civilisation
be able to outdo the most robust of their ancestresses--whose highest
saltatory feats were the execution of the slow and stately minuet,
the formal quadrille with its frequent rests, or at most the romping
country dance--by whirling almost uninterruptedly in the mazes of the
giddy waltz from nine in the evening until five in the morning, without
the sustaining power the sparkling fluid affords them? Has it not on
their tongues an influence equal to that which it exercises on their
swiftly-flying feet, inspiring pretty prattle, sparkling repartee,
enchanting smiles, and silvery laughter? Old Bertin du Rocheret was
quite right when he invited his fair friends to continue drinking
'De ce nectar délicieux,
Qui pétille dans vos beaux yeux
Mieux qu'il ne brille dans mon verre.'
Since these lines were penned, many thousands of bright eyes have so
borrowed an additional lustre.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
It would certainly be going too far to suggest that flirtation and
Champagne must have been introduced simultaneously, yet the former
can only have attained perfection since the advent of the latter.
Only consider what a failure a picnic or a garden-or water-party,
or any other kind of entertainment to which that much-abused term
_fête champêtre_ is applied, and where flirtation would be, without
Champagne! As a matrimonial agent, Champagne's achievements outdo those
of the cleverest of man[oe]uvring mammas. It was solely those two extra
glasses at supper which emboldened young Impey Cue of the Foreign
Office to summon up sufficient courage to propose in the conservatory
to Miss Yellowboy, the great heiress; and Impey Cue now lords it at
Yellowboy Park as though to the manor born. Nor must the part it plays
on the eventful day when the fatal knot is firmly tied be overlooked.
It has been cynically remarked that it is a painful spectacle even for
the most hardened to witness the consigning of a victim to the doom
matrimonial; and that it becomes all the more painful when, under the
futile pretext of festivity, bewildered fathers, harassed mothers,
sorrowing sisters, envious cousins, bored connections, and pitying
friends, arrayed in their best attire, meet at an abnormally early hour
round the miscalled social board. Still, fancy what a wedding breakfast
would be without the accompaniment of Champagne!
[Illustration: THE SOCIAL TREADMILL--THE WEDDING BREAKFAST
(From a drawing by John Leech in 'Punch').]
[Illustration: COMING OF AGE (Drawn by R. Caldecott).]
With mamma in tears and papa in the fidgets, the bride half-way towards
hysterics, and the bridegroom wishing from the bottom of his heart
that the crowded dining-room would suddenly transform itself into a
securely-locked first-class coupé speeding onwards in the direction
of Dover, the task of those speakers on whom devolves the duty of
descanting upon 'the happy occasion which has brought us together' is
of a surety no easy one. And it would be still more uphill work were
it not for the amount of cheerful inspiration fortunately to be drawn
from the familiar foil-topped bottles. By and by, when the more serious
speeches have been duly stammered through, and the jovial bachelor--a
middle-aged one by preference--rises to propose 'the health of the
bridesmaids,' bursts of laughter from the men and responsive titters,
bubbling up like the sparkling atoms in the wine which has inspired
them, from the lips of the damsels in question and their compeers,
prove beyond question that Champagne has done its duty in dissipating
the gloom originally prevailing.
A wedding, too, is the customary precursor of other family gatherings
at which the vintage of the Marne plays the same enlivening part.
There are, for instance, christenings where godfathers bring as their
offerings masterpieces of the silversmith's craft, and the infant's
health is quaffed by turns in
'Sherry in silver, Hock in gold, and glassed Champagne;'
for the wine of mirth is out of place in metal, however precious, and
needs the purest crystal to exhibit all its finer qualities. There
are also coming-of-age banquets, whereat young Hopeful is enabled to
stumble and stutter through a series of jerky and disjointed phrases
of thanks--commonplace as they may be, which never fail to awaken the
tenderest emotions in the heart of the maternal author of his being--by
the aid of sundry glasses of the sparkling wine of the Marne.
'O the wildfire wine of France!
Quick with fantasies florescent,
Rapturously effervescent,
How its atoms leap and dance!
Floric fount of love and laughter,
Where its emanations rise
All the difficulty dies
From the now and the hereafter.
Through the happy golden haze
Time's gray cheek is bright with dimples,
And his laugh more lightly wimples
Than the sea's on summer days.
Tongue and throat it makes to tingle,
Beats the blood from heart to vein,
And ascending to the brain,
Bids the spirit forth and mingle
With a world no longer grim,
But serene and sweet and spacious,
Where the girls are fair and gracious,
And the Cupids light of limb.
Soul and sense are all untethered!
Who would be an angel when,
Clement king of gods and men,
He can soar so grandly, feathered
With thy plumage, O Champagne?
Bottled gladness! thou magician!
Silver-bearded! mist Elysian!
Ecstasy of sun and rain!
Swift and subtle, glad and glorious,
O the wildfire wine of France!
How its atoms frisk and dance,
Over Fate and Time victorious!'
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
MAP OF THE
CHAMPAGNE VINEYARDS,
_Reduced, by permission, from the larger Map_.
Drawn by /M. J. Lignier/, Staff-Captain,
For Messrs. MÖET & CHANDON, of Epernay.
The purple tint indicates the Vineyards.
The yellow, the Woods and Forests.
The green, the Meadows.
The blue, the Ponds and Lakes.
The figures indicate the altitudes in metres above the level of the sea.
/Scale in Metres/:
(_2000 Metres are equal to 1-1/4 Miles._)]
[Illustration: THE VINEYARDS AND ABBEY OF HAUTVILLERS.]