WHAT THE LONDONERS QUENCH THEIR THIRST WITH.
Speaking within bounds, I should say that one-half of England is engaged
in manufacturing beer for the other half. Possibly it takes two-thirds
of the entire population to make beer enough for the other third, but I
think an equal division would be about the thing. The British public is
very drouthy.
One is astounded at the amount of drinking that is done here. Go where
you will, turn whichever way you choose, the inevitable "public," or the
"pub" as they say between drinks, stares you in the face. And on the
streets almost every other vehicle you see is a vast, massive, clumsy
truck, loaded either with full kegs for the publics, or taking away
empty ones.
The British public house is not the same thing as the American. Except
in a few instances you see none of the glass and mahogany palaces of New
York, you see none of the flashy bars with plate glass, silver rails,
elegant glass-ware, and the gorgeous bar-tender with diamonds as large
as hickory nuts.
The London public house is a dingy affair, the dingier the better, with
barrels piled upon barrels, and cob-webs as plenty as liquor. There is a
wild superstition prevalent that age has something to do with the
quality of liquor, and therefore, every place devoted to the sale or
handling of the stuff, assumes as much of a Methuselean appearance as
possible. You are to have a party of friends at your lodgings, we will
say. You must have at least two kinds of liquor to entertain them
withal, for no Englishman does anything without moistening his clay, and
his clay is of a variety that absorbs a great deal of moisture. You pay
for it and the man sends home the bottles.
Now an American liquor dealer would carefully wipe the bottles, and they
would be delivered at your house as clean and tidy as a laundried shirt,
but not so here. They are sent with dust on them, and with cobwebs on
them, and to brush off the dust would be sacrilege. That dust is a sort
of patent--a testimonial to its age, and consequently a guarantee of its
excellence.
I mortally offended one liquor dealer by asking him to show me his
machine for dusting bottles, and also would he kindly explain to me his
process for cob-webbing them, and was it expensive to keep spiders? The
man actually resented it--was angry about it. Singular how sensitive the
Islanders can be about trifles like that! To keep spiders for the
manufacture of cobwebs would be more enterprising than to buy cobwebs,
and no American would dust bottles by hand, when a very simple machine
could be devised for the purpose.
The British landlord don't set the bottle before his customer as his
brother does in free and enlightened America. Now at home,--as I have
been told by those who frequent bar-rooms--the barkeeper sets before his
customer a bottle of the liquor he prefers, and the drouthy man helps
himself to such quantity as he deems sufficient for the purpose desired.
If he is fixing himself for a common riot, he takes a certain quantity;
if for a murder, more or less, according to how aggravated the crime is
to be. A man would take more to fit himself to kill his wife than he
would for his mother-in-law, and the wife-killing draught is at the same
price as the mother-in-law annihilator.
But over here the bar-maid measures your liquor. You may have three
penn'orth, four penn'orth or six penn'orth. It is measured out to you
and handed to you, and you swallow it and go away.
I remonstrated with one proprietor as to the absurdity of the custom,
and the meanness of it.
[Sidenote: THE REASON WHY]
"I will show you the reason for it," he said, quietly. Just then a bold
Briton came in and the landlord directed the maid behind the bar to set
down a bottle. The astonished customer was invited to help himself,
after the American custom. He _was_ an astonished Briton, but he managed
to express his gratification at the innovation. Seizing the bottle he
poured out an ordinary dinner tumbler full, and, looking grieved because
the glass was no larger, drank it off without a wink.
[Illustration: A BOLD BRITON TRYING THE AMERICAN CUSTOM.]
I could easily see why the British landlord measures the liquor to the
British public. Two such customers on the American plan would bankrupt a
very opulent proprietor.
The quality of liquor used by the better classes is perhaps a trifle
better than that consumed in America, at least so I have been informed
by those who use liquors. A vast quantity of brandy is imported from
France, and it is so cheap there that it doubtless approximates to
purity. The whiskies drank are entirely Scotch and Irish, the English
making none whatever. Wines are consumed in great quantities, and there
is no question as to the purity of the cheaper grades, which is to say
they are undoubtedly the pure juice of the grape. The duty on wines is
so small that there is no inducement, as in America, for the manufacture
of bogus varieties.
But the liquors consumed in London by the lower classes are probably the
most execrable and vile that the ingenuity of the haters of mankind ever
invented. The brandy they drink is liquid lightning--chain
lightning--which goes crashing through the system, breaking down and
destroying every pulsation towards anything good. The gin--well, their
gin is the very acme, the absolute summit, of vileness. There is a
quarrel in every gill of it, a wife-beating in every pint, and a murder
in every quart. A smell of a glass of it nearly drove me to criminal
recklessness.
[Illustration: A LONDON GIN DRINKING WOMAN.]
And yet they all drink it, and especially the women. The most disgusting
sight the world can produce is a London gin drinking woman standing at a
bar, waiting feverishly for her "drain," with unkempt hair, a small but
intensely dirty shawl, with stockingless feet, and shoes down at the
heel, with eyes rheumy and watery, that twinkle with gin light out from
the obscurity of gin-swelled flesh, with a face on which the scorching
fingers of a depraved appetite have set red lines, as ineffaceable as
though they had been placed there by red-hot iron, every one of which is
the unavailing protest of a long-outraged stomach.
[Sidenote: THE GENERAL BOOZE.]
There she stands, a blotch upon the face of nature and a satire upon
womanhood. It is difficult to realize that this bloated mass was once a
fair young girl, and had a mother who loved her, and it is equally
difficult to comprehend how any power, even that of Nature, could ever
make use of it. But the elements are kindly to man. When they have done
their work, sweet flowers may grow out of this putridity.
In America this sort of being exists, but it is herded somewhere out of
sight. It does not stand at the bars in the best streets to offend the
eyes of decent people. But it is everywhere here. It is in the Strand
and on Piccadilly and Regent street.
The average Englishman of the lower, and even the middle classes, dearly
loves to booze. Drunkenness is not the result either of conviviality or
desperation as it is in other countries. It is the one thing longed for
and set deliberately about.
[Illustration: THE POOR MAN IS SICK.]
Rare John Leech, illustrated it in his picture in _Punch_, years ago. A
man was lying very drunk at the foot of a lamp-post. A benevolent old
lady of the Exeter Hall school seeing him, called a cabman. "The poor
man is sick," quoth the kindly dame, "why don't you help him?" "Sick, is
he," replied cabby, "sick! don't I vish I 'ad just 'arf of vot ails
him?" The cabby spoke the honest sentiment of his heart. The Londoner of
his class loves it for the effect it has upon him, and as he
accomplishes his design with English gin, he carries with him a breath
that suggests the tomb of a not very ancient king, a breath which has a
density, a center, as one might say.
[Illustration: "THAT NIGGER IS MINE, AND WORTH FIFTEEN HUNDRED
DOLLARS."]
[Sidenote: THE KIND OF LIQUOR.]
At twelve o'clock, Saturday night, he would fight a rattlesnake and give
the snake the first bite. Were a venomous snake to bite such an
Englishman the man would never know it, for alcohol is a sure cure for
reptilian poison, but the poor snake would wriggle faintly away to some
secluded spot and die sadly. This is why, I presume, I have seen no
rattlesnakes in London; they cannot safely prosecute the business for
which they were created. They are similarly worried, I believe, in West
Virginia.
To drink this vile stuff successfully one would want his stomach
glass-lined and backed up with fire-brick. I never would attempt it
except as the man did in Kentucky. He walked into a bar, and distrusting
the quality of the whisky, called up a negro and gave him a glass before
drinking his own. The landlord, divining his purpose, knocked the glass
out of the negro's hand. "No you don't!" said the Boniface, "that nigger
is mine, and worth fifteen hundred dollars. Get an Irishman to try it
on."
And while I am about it I may say that alcoholization is not confined to
the lower order by any means. Almost every body drinks something beside
water. The tradesman who can afford it has claret at his table, and
during the day his "drains" of brandy are very frequent. The gentry and
nobility drink more costly wines and better brandy, but liquor is
everywhere. Nothing is done without the accompanying drink; it is
universal and in all places. The climate prevents the injury that would
visit the same man in America, but it hurts. If the English could only
live as temperately as the Americans they would be the greatest race of
people on earth.
The exclusiveness of the English is manifest in their vices as in their
virtues. Every bar is divided in the front by partitions, one for each
class. Over the one designated as "the private bar," you get precisely
the same liquors as at the others, but you pay more for it, because
laborers and the like are not admitted. One compartment exacts four
pence, the next three pence, and the last and lowest two pence. But all
are served out of the same wood.
But very few men are employed behind English bars, women filling those
places. The London bar-maid is an institution to be studied. To begin
with she must be pretty, for being pretty is a part of her
qualifications. As her feet cannot be seen, owing to her standing behind
the bar, she _is_ generally pretty. Then they are required to dress
well, and all in one establishment dress their hair alike. In one place
the maids part their hair on one side, in another on the other, and in a
third in the middle. They are alike in each shop.
They are required to make themselves pleasant to customers, for each one
is expected to influence an amount of trade to the house. They are
exceedingly free and easy damsels, without being positively indelicate,
and there isn't a cabman in the city who is so much a master of chaff as
they are. They will wink and leer at you in the most free way possible,
they will talk to the very verge of indelicacy if they think it will
please you, and if they form another judgment of your tastes they will
be as sedate as priests. These bar-maids were all born a great while
ago, and have improved all their time.
They are not only expected to be pretty, but they must have the power of
extracting drinks for themselves from the young or old fellows who
delight to chaff with them. If the young fellow who is enjoying the
delight of her conversation is not sufficiently prompt, the warning eye
of the landlord or landlady intimates that she has wasted enough time
upon him, and she simply asks him, when he has ordered a drink for
himself, if he won't treat her, and he always does. Per consequence by
eleven at night the gentle maids are in a condition highly satisfactory
to the house, for their drunkenness represents so much money in his
till. He who serves the British public with drink would utilize the very
soul of an employe to make money, man or woman.
As a rule the wife of the landlord of a popular drinking place takes
personal charge of the bar, and she is a thousand times more cruel and
grasping than her husband. When a woman does unsex herself, she can give
a man points in wickedness that he never dreamed of. These wives are as
eager to have liquor paid for for themselves as bar-maids, and the sharp
eye they keep upon the girls to see that they swallow enough to make the
business profitable is something wonderful.
They are invariably dressed very richly, with elaborate coiffures, and
sparkling with diamonds. As the British young man prefers blonde hair to
any other, the landladies are mostly of that persuasion. If they were
born brunettes there are arts by which they can be changed, and besides
wigs are very cheap in this country.
[Sidenote: THE EDIBLES ON THE BARS.]
The British woman drinks as much as the British man, and possibly more.
I am not speaking of the low, degraded woman, but of the
respectability. It is nothing singular to see women, respectable women,
sitting in bars with their husbands and lovers, and the amount of stout
and "brandy cold," they make away with is something wonderful.
I was through the wonderful park at Richmond the other day. It was a
holiday, and all London was out of the city in the parks. All the little
roadside inns were filled with the populace, women and children being
largely in the majority; and there was never a woman, no matter if she
had a child at the breast, who did not have a monster pot of pewter
filled either with porter or ale. And they gave it to their little
children as freely as an American mother would milk.
The drinking house in London is, as a rule, especially for drinking.
There are no free lunches, no nibbling bits, free on any bar. Nothing
but liquids are sold. An American speculator conceived the brilliant
idea of starting a bar with the addition of the American free lunch,
with which to attract trade. It did attract altogether too much. In
twenty minutes the lunch, which should have lasted all day, was gone,
and the British public was indignant that it was not renewed. They
pronounced the proprietor a swindle, and the speculation was a
disastrous failure.
At some of the bars an attempt is made to take the curse off the liquor
traffic by making some pretence of selling eatables. But the British
public knows this is a sham, and resents it by never buying any
comestibles at the counter. The British public scorns eating in such a
place, and insists upon drinks. Indeed, the British public won't eat at
all as long as it can drink.
What they generally have in these places under glass covers, are
curiously indigestible meat pies, sandwiches, cheese, cakes and buns.
Sometimes at railway stations a hungry Briton buys and partakes of these
things, but not often, and never without his glass of something to wash
it down. This is the time I forgive him for drinking. It is necessary.
The sandwich is made either of ham or beef, and may be said to be the
universal cold refreshment. It is about four inches long by two wide,
and is a miracle of thinness. It is the thinnest thing on earth. I have
often purchased them, not to eat, but to admire this quality. How bread
and meat can be cut so thin, especially bread, is one of the mysteries
that never will be solved till I penetrate a public kitchen and see the
operation. It is an art I suppose, and the professor of it gets, I
presume, a very high salary. He ought to. The bread is stringy enough
and the meat tough enough to be cut as thin as might be desired, but the
puzzle is how any one can acquire the skill to cut it, that way. But
they do it. The English sandwich is more an object of interest to me
than the obelisk, and is just about as digestible. I would as soon
undertake to eat the one as the other.
The meat pie is made of hashed beef, the fat being put in liberally,
enclosed in a wrapper of dough, and all baked together, in some sort of
way. I could procure and write out the process, but being a true
American and loving the American people I will not. It is utterly
indigestible. I ate one at eleven P.M. one night, and woke up in the
morning feeling as though I had swallowed the plaster bust of the infant
Samuel at prayer that stood on my mantel. The pie is a trifle worse than
the sandwich. The cheese cake may be dismissed with the simple remark
that it is a trifle worse than the meat pie. The bun is a stand-off as
to the others. Altogether they make a frightful stomachic quartet. But
the British public, who know nothing of our hash and other luxuries, are
content with them, and I don't know as I shall undertake to reform them
in this particular. I pity them, but there are so many things to reform
here that I shall not attempt any movement in that direction. Life is
very short.
[Sidenote: TOBACCO.]
The Englishman takes his liquor straight, or neat, as they call it.
Mixed drinks are entirely unknown. The sherry cobbler, the mint julep,
the fragrant cock-tail, are never heard of in regular English bars, but
the drouthy man who drinks, and they all do, takes either brandy or
Scotch or Irish whisky, raw from a barrel, and swallows his portion and
walks away satisfied. One woman in a famous drinking place was taught by
an American to make cock-tails, and the fame of the mixture drew all the
Americans to this particular place. The proprietor was sore displeased
at this trade, and raised the price two pence above what was regular,
to keep it away. It took too much of the girl's time to compound the
mixture.
Drinking does not have the effect upon an Englishman that it does upon
an American. The Englishman is a more stolid and phlegmatic man anyhow,
and the climate is less exciting. There is not the exhilaration in the
atmosphere that there is in America, and the moist humidity that you
exist in is very favorable to the consumption of alcoholic drinks. I had
got so before I had been here a week, that I think I could have endured
a glass of brandy and water. I did not do it, but I say I could have
done it.
The prices of liquors average quite as high as in America, and tobacco
and everything made of it, is much higher and the quality is vile. A
decent cigar, or one counted decent here, costs twenty-five cents, it
being of the grade that in New York sells for ten cents.
No tobacco is chewed except by sailors, and the Englishman, very
properly, considers it a disgusting habit, only to be practiced by very
low people. In consequence of the high price of tobacco, pipes and
cigarettes are very generally used. The Englishman of the better class
smokes his pipe upon the street, the same as an American does his cigar.
He prefers a pipe to a cigar, possibly because it is better, and
possibly because it is cheaper. Your Englishman loves dearly to get the
value of his money, and he generally does it.
The lover of drink in America, especially our German fellow citizens,
are emphatic in their denunciation of the liquor laws of the United
States. They ought to live in England a little while to appreciate the
privileges they have at home. Hartford, Connecticut, is, I believe, a
paradise to those who live there. One old lady who was born and had
always lived in Hartford, came to die--an impertinence of Nature, as all
Hartford people firmly believe. People should die in other places, but
not in Hartford. But this old lady had come to death, and her minister
was consoling her.
"I trust, Mrs. Thompson," he said, professionally, "that you are
prepared to die?"
"I am," was her answer; "I owe no pew rent."
"And are you content with the change?"
"Well, on the whole, yes. Heaven is no doubt a very nice place, but I
shall greatly miss my Hartford privileges."
There is no especial moral to this story, except that if our German
population were compelled to endure English law they would greatly miss
their American privileges. While you can get all the drink you want
during the day, you must either have it at home or go without it after
twelve o'clock at night.
In London no liquor can be procured after twelve o'clock at night. Every
bar, big or little, is closed, and this law is not evaded, for the risk
is too great. A man's license would be taken from him immediately, and
without remedy.
Persons are not licensed to sell liquor in England--it is the premises
that are licensed. The Board having it in charge license one public
house in a district, basing it upon the supposed necessity, and these
premises hold this license till deprived of it by violation of law. If
you desire to sell liquor you cannot go and rent a room and open your
bar; you are compelled to buy the lease of a place which carries the
license with it. Consequently a licensed place is a valuable piece of
property. One at the corner of St. Martin's street and Orange, a dingy
building in a dingy neighborhood, was bought by an American to be used
as an American bar, and he paid twenty-five thousand dollars bonus for
the lease. The annual rental of the place is fifteen hundred dollars,
and the lease for which he paid the bonus has forty-five years to run.
For any other business the bonus would have been next to nothing in that
neighborhood.
[Sidenote: EARLY CLOSING.]
Sunday is an especially drouthy day in London. All the bars are closed
till one o'clock P.M., and are then open but an hour. Then they are
closed till six, and are permitted to keep open from that hour till
eleven. And let it be remembered that law in England is law. You cannot
laugh at it as you do in America. There is no evasion of this law
attempted. The publics are required to be closed and they are closed.
There are no side-doors, as in New York--there is no selling on the
sly--they are closed. The only exception is at the railroad stations.
The refreshment bars there are permitted to be kept open as long as
trains arrive or depart, for the British Government recognizes the
necessity of an Englishman having his grog till the prescribed hour for
his getting into his bed. The thirsty soul who pants for beer after
twelve goes to Charing Cross station, and buys a ticket to the first
station out, which is "tuppence ha'penny," or five cents. Then he walks
into the bar, and being a "traveler," can buy, drink and pay for all the
stimulants he desires, till the last train has arrived or departed for
the night. His ticket he puts into his pocket, to be used when he
desires.
The night trade in liquor is something enormous. A landlord in the
Haymarket, whose lease is about expiring, is now paying one thousand
dollars a year rent, and the proprietors have notified him that his
renewal will cost him just five times that sum. He told me that he
should not renew, but that he would gladly if he were allowed to keep
open till half-past twelve, a half hour after the regular time. That
half hour each day would more than make the difference in rent.
A walk along Piccadilly after twelve explains this difference. The
street, from end to end, is crowded with prostitutes, and drunken rakes
who think they are having a good time, but they are not. They walk up
and down, chaffing with these poor unfortunates. They take them into the
publics, and pay for their drinks, all of which the landlord not only
approves of but encourages. And the English prostitute can drink as
heartily and just as long as any man alive. She has just as drouthy a
system, and it takes just as much to fill it. And there they sit, and
chaff, and booze, till the clock strikes twelve and the place is closed.
The landlord turns off the gas and puts up his shutters, cursing the law
that compels him to close just as his harvest begins.
As there are literally tens of thousands of these women walking the
street, and as ninety per cent of them are drunk at ten, with a carrying
capacity of continuing to drink every minute as long as anybody will pay
for it, and as there is an equal number of men prowling the streets
whose highest idea of amusement is to pay for it, the importance of an
extra half hour after midnight may be appreciated.
But it is of no use. Law is law in England, and whether the citizen
likes it or not, he is compelled to obey it in letter and spirit. Were a
public house to be open a minute after the hour, a policeman would walk
in and close it for him, and the next day the nearest magistrate would
revoke his license, and he could never get one again. No proprietor
would rent him a place, for the license is too valuable to be risked by
a violator of law.
There are a few bars in London that make a specialty of American drinks,
which are very curious. The names they palm off as American are very
funny to an American, because they are never heard of over there. None
of my readers ever go into bars, except for curiosity, but just imagine
this list of drinks:
"Copper-cooler," "Pick-me-up," "Our Swizzle," "Maiden's Blush,"
"Bosom-caresser," "Corpse-reviver," "Flash-of-Lightning," and so on.
And these names are actually believed by Englishmen to be genuinely
American, and in common use in the States.
Ice is about the scarcest thing in England, and cannot be had at the
majority of bars. At some of the very best it will be furnished, if very
forcibly asked for, but then in too small quantities to be satisfactory
to an American, who is accustomed to taking his drinks ice cold. The
frozen reminiscence of Winter is rather expensive here, and, besides
that, the Englishman very rightly considers it unhealthy. The water is
drank in its natural temperature, and it is really wonderful how soon
one becomes accustomed to it.
The prices of strong beverages run about the same as in the United
States. Brandy is three pence, six cents of our Bird of Freedom money,
and when the amount is considered, your three pence buys about the same
as twelve and one-half cents in New York. Malt liquors are about the
same. The glass is a trifle smaller, and the regular price at the small
publics is two pence, an equivalent, quantity considered, of five cents.
The quality of malt liquors is a long way below the American article,
and America, singular as it may seem, drinks better English ale than the
Englishman does. The ale made here for home consumption is vile stuff,
while that made for export is infinitely better. The Englishman eats
what he cannot sell.
To get at these facts concerning drinking has cost me an inconceivable
amount of wear and tear of feeling, which sacrifice I trust my readers
will appreciate.