CHAPTER XI.

HANOVERIAN PERIOD.

A change of dynasty brought with it no amelioration of manners. The

fatal permission to set up distilleries, which was granted after

the Revolution of 1688, and which was not withdrawn by William, was

encouraged by the Legislature in the reign of the first George. The

consequence was natural: distilleries multiplied, and drink was sold

so cheap that unrestrained indulgence prevailed. The condition of

things has been ably recorded by Mr. Lecky.[206] It was not till about

1724 that the passion for gin-drinking infected the masses of the

population, and spread with the violence of an epidemic.

Small as is the place which this fact occupies in English

history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences

that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the

eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the

purely political or military annals of the country. The average

of British spirits distilled, which is said to have been only

527,000 gallons in 1684, had risen in 1727 to 3,601,000. Physicians

declared that in excessive gin-drinking a new and terrible source

of mortality had been opened for the poor. The grand jury of

Middlesex declared that much the greater part of the poverty, the

murders, the robberies of London, might be traced to this single

cause. Retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards

announcing that their customers could be made drunk for a penny,

dead drunk for twopence, and have straw for nothing; and cellars

strewn with straw were accordingly provided, into which those who

had become insensible were dragged, and where they remained till

they had sufficiently recovered to renew their orgies.

What preventive measures had soon to be taken, we shall learn later on.

But the home distilleries were not the only bane. In consequence of the

heavy duty to which foreign spirits were subjected, the smuggling trade

began to be brisk. Rum, brandy, and hollands were brought over from

the Channel Islands in small barrels, and were either landed at once

or sunk in rafts to be taken up when convenient. The smuggling trade

threw into the country immense quantities of spirits. Indeed ale and

beer were almost superseded by spirits and water, or ‘grog,’ as it then

began to be called.

The origin of the term ‘grog’ may interest, and is as follows:--The

British sailors had always been accustomed to drink their allowance

of brandy or rum clear, till Admiral Vernon ordered those under his

command to mix it with water. The innovation gave offence to the

sailors, and for a time rendered the commander unpopular. The admiral

at that time wore a grogram coat, for which reason they nicknamed him

‘Old Grog’--hence by degrees the mixed liquor that he ordered obtained

universally the name of ‘grog.’

The brewing of _porter_ began about the year 1722. It is a drink

which chiefly differs from beer by being made with higher dried

malt. It was then the common practice in taverns to call for a pot

of _half-and-half_, meaning half ale and half twopenny, or sometimes

an equal portion of ale, beer, and twopenny, which was called _three

threads_. To avoid the trouble of drawing these liquors from their

respective casks, a person named Harwood formed the plan of brewing

a drink that would at once yield the flavour of these combined

ingredients. He effected his object, calling the beverage ‘entire,’

or _entire butt_, because it was taken from one butt or vessel. And

inasmuch as it was purchased by porters and such like persons, it

became ever afterwards distinguished by the name of _porter_.

The drink called _saloop_ came into vogue at this time. Reide’s

coffee-house, in Fleet Street, was one of the first houses in which it

was sold. Called also _salep_, and _salop_; it was a greasy-looking

beverage, sold much on stalls in the early morning. It was prepared

from a powder made of the root of the _Orchis mascula_, and from

the green-winged meadow orchis. Salep was long imported from the

Levant, till it was discovered that our native plants could supply

it, specially the early purple orchis. It used, like porter, to be a

favourite drink of porters, coal-heavers, &c. It is said to contain

more nutritious matter in proportion to its bulk than any other known

root: an ounce of salep was thought to be support for a man for a

day. It is still much used in the East. In Hindoostanee it is called

_salab-ee-misree_, in Persian _sahleb_. In the present century it has

been superseded by coffee-barrows; but Charles Lamb has left some

account of this drinkable, which he says was of all preparations the

most grateful to the stomachs of young chimney-sweeps.[207]

Ales commonly became known by the name of the _district_ that produced

them--e.g. _Dorset_ beer, _Oxford_ ale. Thus, John Byrom writes:--

_May 18, 1725._--I found the effect of last night’s drinking that

foolish _Dorset_, which was pleasant enough, but did not at all

agree with me, for it made me very stupid all day.[208]

_Oxford Ale_ was the subject of a panegyric written by Warton in

1720--and a panegyric from such a man would be, in the opinion of many,

a boon of immortality.

The drinking at this time has already been spoken of as an epidemic.

Wine was necessary on all occasions. The _marriage_ ceremony was

incomplete without it, as is abundantly evident from contemporary

verse. More than one ridiculed the notion so prevalent, that

Wine must seal the marriage-bands.

But the Church had long since sanctioned a belief in its spell. The

Sarum Missal had taught that the bridal cup must be blessed by the

priest:--

Post missam, panis et vinum, vel aliud bonum potabile, in vasculo

proferatur.

And so the hallowing of wine and sops was usual from the court to the

cottage.

_Burials_ were imperfect without the cup. M. Misson, in his

_Observations_, notes:--

Butler, the keeper of the Crown and Sceptre Tavern in St. Martin’s

Lane, told me that there was a tun of red port drunk at his wife’s

burial, besides mulled white wine.--No men ever go to women’s

burials, nor women to men’s, so that there were none but women at

the drinking of Butler’s wine. Such women in England will hold it

out with the men, when they have a bottle before them, as well as

upon the other occasion, and battle infinitely better than they.

The number of _public-houses_ was excessive. In 1725 a report from a

committee of Middlesex magistrates stated that at that period there

were in the metropolis, exclusive of the City of London and Southwark,

6,187 houses and shops wherein ‘geneva, or other strong waters,’ were

sold by retail. The population was then about 700,000. In some cases

every seventh house was employed in the sale of intoxicants.

We get a life-like picture of the times from Daniel Defoe; and if it be

objected that his writing is fiction, we reply with Thackeray that the

fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume

which purports to be all true. On the subject of drink amongst _women_,

and drink as a medicine, what can be more touching than the following

from his _Life of Colonel Jack_?--

The hero, Colonel Jack, is giving an account of his third wife:--

I was infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was, indeed, the

best-humoured woman in the world, and a most accomplished

beautiful creature--indeed, perfectly well bred, and had not

one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without

the least interruption for about six years. But I at last had a

disappointment of the worst sort even here. She caught cold, and

grew very sickly. In being so continually ill and out of order, she

very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors.

Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but

a little, goes on by little and little to their destruction; so

in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this

cordial, then that--till, in short, she could not live without

them; and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram

to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to

what we call drinking.

As I likened drink to the devil in its gradual possession of

the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its

encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. In short, my

beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife, grew a beast, a

slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table, nay,

in her own closet by herself, till she lost her beauty, her shape,

her manners, and at last her virtue.

Oh! the power of intemperance! And how it encroaches on the best

disposition in the world; how it comes upon us gradually and

insensibly, and what dismal effects it works upon our morals,

changing the most virtuous, regular, well-instructed, and

well-inclined tempers into worse than brutal! Never was a woman

more virtuous, sober, modest, and chaste, than my wife. She never

so much as desired to drink anything strong. It was with the

greatest entreaty that I could prevail with her to drink a glass or

two of wine, and rarely, if ever, above one or two at a time; even

in company she had no inclination to it. Not an immodest word ever

came out of her mouth, nor would she suffer it in any one else in

her hearing without resentment.

But during her illness and weakness, her nurse pressed her,

whenever she found herself faint, and a sinking of her spirits, to

take this cordial, and that dram, till it became necessary to keep

her alive, and gradually increased to a habit, so that it was no

longer her physic but her food. Her appetite sunk and went quite

away, and she ate little or nothing, but she came at last to a

dreadful height, that, as I have said, she would be drunk in her

dressing-room before eleven o’clock in the morning, and, in short,

at last was never sober.

Let any one judge of my case now; I, that for six years thought

myself the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable

distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her well and pitied her

heartily. I almost locked her up, and set people over her to take

care of her; but her health was ruined, and in about a year and a

half she died.

Rightly did the poet Gay in his _Court of Death_ make Death give the

palm to _intemperance_ amongst the claimant diseases:--

Merit was ever modest known.

What, no physician speak his right!

None here! but fees their toil requite.

Let then Intemperance take the wand,

Who fills with gold their zealous hand:

You, Fever, Gout, and all the rest--

Whom wary men as foes detest--

Forego your claims. No more pretend;

Intemperance is esteemed a friend;

He shares their mirth, their social joys,

And as a courted guest destroys.

The charge on him must justly fall,

Who finds employment for you all.

Amongst the many who shortened their days through excess, must be

mentioned the name of Thomas Parnell. Dr. Johnson, in his _Lives of the

Poets_, observes:--

Pope represents him as falling into intemperance of wine after

Queen Anne’s death, in consequence of disappointed ambition. That

in his later life he was too much of a lover of the bottle is not

denied; but I have heard it imputed to a cause more likely to

obtain forgiveness from mankind, the untimely death of a darling

son; or, as others tell, the loss of his wife, who died 1712.

The latter is probably the true solution. He had married a woman of

great beauty, Miss Anne Minchin, who died soon after that event,

and grief probably preyed upon his fitful spirits, and led him into

intemperance. He died before he was forty. Well for him had he imitated

the character drawn in his exquisite poem _The Hermit_:--

The great vain man who fared on costly food,

Whose life was too luxurious to be good;

Who made his ivory stands with goblets shine,

And forced his guests to morning draughts of wine;

Has, with the cup, the graceless custom lost,

And still he welcomes, but with less of cost.

The most advanced exponent of the conviviality of the time was William

Congreve, at one time commissioner of wine licences. His comedies are

steeped in vice. Congreve’s comic feast (says Thackeray) flares with

lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and

exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited

on by rascally valets and attendants--perhaps the very worst company

in the world. To him (says the same author) the world seemed to have

no moral at all. His ghastly doctrine seemed to be that we should eat,

drink, and be merry when we can, and go to the deuce (if there be one)

when the time comes!

The experience of the self-made Franklin is very suggestive as to the

drinking habits of working men in London 160 years ago. For from the

habits of printers one may infer the habits of other craftsmen.

When the famous Dr. Franklin was a printer’s boy in England--he came to

England in 1724 or 1725--he found all his companions in the printing

office drank five pints of porter daily at their work, and one of them

even six. He was himself a water-drinker, but could not get any of them

to see his argument ‘that bread contained more materials of strength

than beer, and that it was only corn in the beer that produced the

strength in the liquid.’

Now, as it is quite clear that, if these printing ‘prentices drank five

pints of porter at their work, they would have extra drink out of work

hours, we have in this anecdote an appalling picture of the drinking in

England 160 years ago. What working man now _averages_ five pints per

diem?[209]

A useful little work was published in 1725, entitled _The

Publick-House-keeper’s Monitor_. The author prefaces, that the reigning

vices of the age make it a duty to consider and use any practicable

methods to put a stop to ‘that deluge of Impiety which overflows

almost this whole nation.’ He complains that there are _too many_ of

these houses which enjoy ‘a legal allowance,’ that _many_ ought to be

suppressed, but that it is persistently urged

that they are beneficial to the Publick; that they raise the

Revenues of the Crown, and must therefore be supported in

Complaisance to the Government. So far have Political Motives in

this, as well as many other cases, got the better of religious

ones; the Almighty must be serv’d last, if at all: And too many

of the Substitutes of an Earthly Power, are apt to forget whose

Vicegerent he is, and consequently from whom originally they

derive their Authority, which would discover to them to whom they

principally owe their Duty.

For indeed the same Argument, which prevails for the allowing of

so many publick Houses, must, and, I fear, too often does prevail

for the Neglect of a careful Inspection into the Management of

them, and for a Connivance at the many Irregularities committed in

them; ‘twould be a Means of sinking the Publick Revenues, if they

were strictly confin’d to the Observance of those Laws, which were

made for good Purposes. And what does all this amount to, but that

_Cæsar_ must have his Due, with a _non obstante_ that the Almighty

is defrauded?

He then proceeds to discuss the legitimate uses of taverns:--

The First Use of Publick-Houses is, to refresh hungry or weary

Travellers; to receive those, whose Time or Strength permits them

not to go farther, and to furnish them with such Lodging and

Provision, that being recruited, they may be the better able to

proceed in their Journey.

But such houses are too numerous:

Instead of their being too few, there are upon most Roads

abundantly too many Houses of Reception; so many, that they not

only destroy one another’s lawful and honest Maintenance, but lie

like so many Snares in the way of Travellers. There are but few

Parts of this Kingdom, if any, where Market-Towns are not near

enough together, to serve all the Ends and Purposes of Publick

Houses; and I may say, there are but few, if any, Market-Towns,

which are not greatly over-stock’d with them. However, as to

the Usefulness of them in general, let it suffice to observe,

that where they stand conveniently situated, and are wisely and

honestly manag’d, they are undoubtedly a very great Advantage to a

Nation.

Another use, he tells us, is to receive and provide for those who live

in the same place and who are not housekeepers themselves, but who,

being sojourners, journeymen, or servants, find it a great conveniency

to repair to such houses for their meals.

Then again they are useful (he urges) to receive persons who meet

together

upon making Contracts or Bargains in the Way of Commerce; and

whether this be done at common and ordinary Times, or at the more

publick and stated Seasons of Fairs and Markets; or lastly, whether

the publick Business of the Nation, or the more private Affairs of

Lordships, Parishes, &c., do require the Meeting together of many

Persons; so that the most convenient Places for these are generally

esteemed such Houses as I am treating of. However, this may be

affirm’d of them all in general, that the Design of them is to be

useful; and that their Usefulness consists in their being duly

and regularly kept, according to the several Laws of the Nation,

provided for that purpose, and founded upon the necessities and

Conveniences of the People.

He proceeds to lay down stated rules to be observed by such persons as

keep taverns. He urges upon them first of all, personal sobriety, a

strict regard to chastity, a scrupulous regard to honesty, that every

one have goods, in quantity and quality, according to the value of

their money. He exposes fearlessly the injustice of the

high Rents, to which Publick-Houses are generally advanced, so

as very often to exceed double the Rents of private ones of the

same real Goodness. This tempts the Land-lords of Houses to let

them for that Purpose; and this tempts, and, as they will probably

urge, obliges the Tenants, by some Means or other, to make more

than ordinary Gains upon their Guests; but surely neither of them

consider what they are about; how they jointly conspire to carry

on a Trade of Iniquity, and are Partakers of each other’s Sins. He

that lets his House for a publick one, only because he can thereby

advance his Rent, is not aware how deeply he is concern’d in all

the Wickedness that is consequent thereupon; and he who gives above

the just Value of an House upon the same Account, does not regard

how many Tricks and Frauds, what Impositions and Extortions, what

Allowance of Wickedness and Debauchery, what a continued Scene of

Iniquity, in short, he will be tempted to go through, in Order

to discharge so heavy a burthen of expences, and yet to maintain

himself and his family.

Secondly, he urges that the landlord should avoid and decline every

thing that may encourage intemperance.

The World is indeed sufficiently inclin’d to Sensuality of all

Sorts, and Multitudes do frequent Publick-Houses, especially with

a previous Purpose and Design of committing Excess. But even

those, who design it not, are often betray’d into it by the Arts

and Contrivances of them, who are to be Gainers by it, by drawing

them on from one Quantity to another, by helping ‘em to Companions

that will set forward Intemperance, or by doing it themselves; but

especially by giving Credit to those of the meaner Sort, who must

otherwise be sober upon Necessity.

‘Tis surprizing to observe, what Scores a Sot shall be allow’d

to contract at some Houses for Liquor, who would not be trusted

for half the Sum by any of his Neighbours, to provide Bread for

his Family; one, who thus reduces them to a Necessity of begging,

stealing, or perishing, whilst he riotously consumes what might

preserve them from all; but this he finds Means to do, through the

Encouragement of those who have so little love for their neighbours

that they care not how many families they starve to support their

own.

The little book is thoroughly worthy to be reprinted. Would that every

one engaged in ‘the trade’ would lay its maxims to heart!

About this time was published a guide-book, under the title of

_Vade-mecum of Malt-worms_, containing a list of all the ale-houses

in London, &c. Some of these, says Wright, in his _Caricature History

of the Georges_, under the name of _mug-houses_, became the resort of

small societies or clubs of political partisans. Some of these were

the scenes of terrible party turbulence.

But we cannot leave the first Hanoverian reign without noticing another

treatise much needed--quite as much--viz. that of Dr. Peter Browne,

Bishop of Cork, who in 1716 wrote _A Discourse of Drinking Healths_.

By this time the abuse of the practice of _toasting_ had become a

national disgrace.

The way in which anything or anybody that one drank a health to,

came to be called a _toast_ has baffled derivation hunters of all

degrees, and we are no wiser to-day than we were in 1709, when Isaac

Bickerstaffe, in the twenty-fourth number of the newly-established

_Tatler_, attempted to settle the matter by saying how, at Bath, in

the time of Charles II., a celebrated beauty happened to be in the

Cross-Bath, and out of the crowd of her admirers who were in the

room, one of them took from her bath a cup of the water in which the

lady was standing and drank her health to the company. Another of her

admirers who was present, being half intoxicated, instead of pledging

or drinking in response to the sentiment, announced his attention of

jumping into the water and carrying off the bather, swearing that

though he liked not the liquor, yet he would have _the toast_. He was

opposed in his resolution, yet this whim gave foundation to the present

honour which is due to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has

ever since been called a toast. It is far more likely that, as Ellis

observes, the use of the word on this occasion was a _consequence_ of

its previous employment for a like purpose, and not the cause of its

being adopted. It is probable that _toast_ came to be used in the sense

it is stated to have been by the bath gallant, gradually, at first

meaning a mere material relish or improvement to a glass of liquor,

and afterwards getting to be applied to the ‘sentimental relish,’ or,

as Sheridan truly calls it, the ‘excuse for the glass.’ Toasted bread

formed a favourite addition to English drinks so early as the sixteenth

century, and in the cups of sack and punch, brown toasts frequently

floated at the top. In Wyther’s _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ (published

1618) mention is made, as has been already noticed, of a draught ‘that

must be spiced with a nut-browne tost.’

Hall states that there were some who drank healths upon their knees;

some put their own blood into their drink and then drank a health to

the king. So that the young Hectors not only cultivated habits of

barbarity, but also linked themselves with blasphemy. But there was one

other way of drinking healths still to be told, a piece of unparalleled

tomfoolery--that of toasting a lady in some nauseous decoction. When

this fashion was popular, two students at Oxford were each enamoured

of the reigning belle of that sober University, and, as a test of the

relative depth of their devotion, they applied themselves to toasting

her in the manner we have mentioned. One, determined to prove that his

love did not stick at trifles, took a spoonful of soot, mixed it with

his wine, and drank off the mixture. His companion, determined not to

be outdone, brought from his closet a phial of ink, which he drank,

exclaiming, ‘Io triumphe and Miss Molly.’ These crackbrained young

men also esteemed it a great privilege to get possession of any great

beauty’s shoe, in order that they might ladle wine out of a bowl down

their throats with it, the while they drank to the ‘lady of little

worth’ or the ‘light-heeled mistress’ who had been its former wearer.

Is there any wonder that Dr. Peter Browne spoke out? He strongly

condemned the practice on theological, moral, and common-sense grounds,

of opinion that it had its origin in Pagan usages, though he is vague

as to the particular custom out of which it arose. He classifies the

various acceptations of a _health_ under six heads:--(1) When a curse

or imprecation is intended upon the person drinking, or (2) upon any

other person; (3) when one drinks in honourable remembrance of absent

living friends; or (4) by way of wishing others health and prosperity;

or (5) in token of our respect and good-will to another, or approbation

of any affair; and (6) as an outward indication of our loyalty. All

such health-drinking, the learned prelate urges, is incompatible with

the duty of good Christians, whom he exhorts to suppress the practice.

He also cites an interesting formula used by the Jews in drinking,

which is the first instance, to my knowledge, of a curse being intended

instead of an expression of good-will; the words, upon the authority of

Buxtorf, meaning, in their ordinary signification, ‘much good may it

do you;’ but the utterer thereof, by a kind of mental reservation or

adaptation, implied a curse--nay, as many curses as the letters stand

for, viz. 165.[210]

From incidental notices we discover how very exceptional was the

absence of toasts. Thus, in a description of home life at Badminton, we

read:--

If the gentlemen chose a glass of wine the civil offers were made

to go down into the vaults, which were very large and sumptuous,

or servants, at a sign given, attended with salvers, &c., and many

a brisk went round about; but no sitting at table with tobacco and

healths, as the common use is.[212]

But the full extent of the unbridled excess of the period can best be

estimated from a survey of the legislative enactments of the reign of

the second George. They are worthy of careful consideration.

In the second year of this reign such a duty was placed upon spirits

as to be nearly tantamount to a prohibition of their retail sale. A

duty of 20_l._ was imposed on the spirit retail licence, which for

the first time was ordered to be renewed annually. Moreover, dealers

in spirits were placed under the same regulations as _Publicans_,

in respect to Licences. This Act, after reciting the inconveniences

arising from persons being licensed to keep inns and common ale-houses

by justices living at a distance, who were not truly informed as to the

need of such inns, or the character of the persons licensed, provides

that no licence to keep an inn, ale-house, or victualling-house, or

to retail strong waters, should be granted, but at a general meeting

of justices of the division. This Act failed to answer the purpose of

its promoters. Hawkers went about the streets selling coloured spirits

under feigned names; so in the sixth year of the same reign the Act

was repealed, and in its place an Act was passed (1732) which imposed

a penalty of 10_l._ upon the retail sale of spirits, except sold in

dwelling-houses. By this masterpiece of wisdom (!) every householder

was potentially converted into a publican; nor did they fail to avail

themselves of the permission. Intemperance spread like a plague.

When matters had reached a pitch absolutely intolerable, a petition

was presented to Parliament (Feb. 20, 1736) from the magistrates of

Middlesex assembled at quarter sessions. In this petition it was

stated:--

That the drinking of Geneva, and other distilled liquors, had for

some years past greatly increased:

That the constant and excessive use thereof had destroyed thousands

of his Majesty’s subjects:

That great numbers of others were by its use rendered unfit for

useful labor, debauched in morals, and drawn into all manner of

vice and wickedness:

That those pernicious liquors were not only sold by distillers and

geneva shop-keepers, but by many persons in inferior trades, by

which means journeymen apprentices and servants were drawn in to

taste and by degrees to like, approve, and immoderately to drink

thereof:

That the public welfare and safety, as well as the trade of the

nation, would be greatly affected by it:

That the practice was dangerous to the health, strength, peace, and

morals; and tended greatly to diminish the labour and industry of

his Majesty’s subjects.[213]

Upon the petition being referred to a committee of the entire House, it

was resolved:--

That the _low price_ of spirituous liquors is the principal

inducement to the excessive and pernicious use thereof.

That in order to prevent this excessive and pernicious use, a

discouragement be given thereto by a duty to be laid on spirits

sold by retail.

That the selling of such liquors be _restrained_ to persons keeping

public brandy-shops, victualling-houses, coffee-houses, ale-houses,

innholders, _and to such Surgeons and Apothecaries as shall make

use of it by way of medicine only_.[214]

The Government were at last in earnest: a bill was introduced, the

intention of which was to strike a fatal blow, to annihilate the gin

traffic. But the blow was too sudden. A rebound was almost inevitable.

The Gin Act, which has rendered the year 1736 famous in the annals of

history, was introduced into and carried through Parliament by Sir

Joseph Jekyll. It runs thus:--

Whereas the excessive drinking of spirituous liquors by the common

people tends not only to the destruction of their health and the

debauching of their morals, but to the public ruin:

For remedy thereof--

Be it enacted, that from September 29th no person shall presume,

by themselves or any others employed by them, to sell or retail

any brandy, rum, arrack, usquebaugh, geneva, aqua vitæ, or any

other distilled spirituous liquors, mixed or unmixed, in any less

quantity than two gallons, without first taking out a licence for

that purpose within ten days at least before they sell or retail

the same; for which they shall pay down 50_l._, to be renewed ten

days before the year expires, paying the like sum, and in case of

neglect to forfeit 100_l._, such licenses to be taken out within

the limits of the penny post at the chief office of Excise, London,

and at the next office of Excise for the country. And be it enacted

that for all such spirituous liquors as any retailers shall be

possessed of on or after September 29th, 1736, there shall be paid

a duty of 20_s._ per gallon, and so in proportion for a greater or

lesser quantity above all other duties charged on the same.

The collecting the rates by this Act imposed to be under the

management of the commissioners and officers of Excise by all the

Excise laws now in force (except otherwise provided by this Act),

and all moneys arising by the said duties or licenses for sale

thereof shall be paid into the receipt of his Majesty’s Exchequer

distinctly from other branches of the public revenue; one moiety of

the fines, penalties, and forfeitures to be paid to his Majesty and

successors, the other to the person who shall inform on any one for

the same.

The Act was virtually prohibitive. But the people were too far gone to

bear it. It was ineffectual to check even the progress of intemperance.

The vices of the populace rendered them desperate. The Act, says Dr.

Lees, produced vast excitement.

The populace of London, Bristol, Norwich, and other towns, honoured

what they called the ‘death of Madame Gin’ with formal ‘funeral’

processions, whereat many of her devoted admirers, male and female,

got ‘gloriously drunk.’ The distillers took out _wine_ licences,

offered gin--spiced and wined--for sale, under a new name; while

_drams_ were sold in the brandy-shops, under the quaint appellations

of ‘Sangree,’ ‘Tom Row,’ ‘Cuckold’s Comfort,’ ‘Parliament Gin,’

‘The Last Shift,’ ‘Ladies’ Delight,’ ‘King Theodore of Corsica,’

‘Cholic-and-Gripe-Waters,’ &c. Lord Cholmondeley said, on the part of

the Government, that the law exposed them to _rebellion_, and that they

had information of its being designed; but by parading the troops in

the dangerous locality, they had probably prevented riot and bloodshed.

In March 1738 a proclamation was passed to enforce the Act and to

protect the efforts of the officers of justice.

The consumption of spirits in England and Wales rose from 13,500,000

gallons in 1734, to 19,000,000 in 1742, and there were within the

bills of mortality more than 20,000 houses and shops in which gin was

sold by retail. As might be expected, _informers_ became objects of

popular hatred, and were hunted through the streets. Of course, the

more respectable traffickers abandoned the proscribed business, which

fell into the hands of reckless and disreputable men, who set at nought

the provisions of the law. ‘Within two years of the passing of the

Act,’ says the historian, though 12,000 persons had been convicted

of offences against it, ‘it had become odious and contemptible;’ and

policy, as well as humanity, forced the commissioners of excise to

mitigate its penalties.

The House of Lords soon rang with impetuous debate; and the Act was

doomed to modification. In 1743, the Lords read a Bill for repealing

certain Duties on Spirituous Liquors and on Licences for retailing the

same. In the debate, Lord Hervey remarked:--

As it is the quality of this malignant liquor to corrupt the mind,

it likewise destroys the body.... Drunkenness not only corrupts men

by taking away those restraints by which they are withheld from

the perpetration of villanies, but by superadding the temptations

of poverty--temptations not easily resisted even by those whose

eyes are open to the consequences of their actions, but which will

_certainly_ prevail over those whose apprehensions are laid asleep,

and who never extend their views beyond the gratification of the

present moment.... Instead, therefore, of promoting a practice

_so evidently detrimental_ to society, let us oppose it with the

most vigorous efforts; let us begin our opposition by opposing

this bill, and then consider whether the execution of the former

law shall be enforced, _or whether another more efficacious can

be formed_.... No man, unacquainted with the motives by which

senatorial debates are too often influenced, would suspect that

after the pernicious qualities of this liquor, and the general

inclination among the people to the immoderate use of it, it could

be afterwards enquired, _Whether this universal thirst for poison

ought to be encouraged by the legislature?_

LORD LONSDALE said--In every part of this great metropolis, whoever

shall pass along the streets, will find wretchedness stretched upon

the pavement, insensible and motionless, and only removed by the

charity of passengers from the danger of being crushed by carriages

or trampled by horses, or strangled with filth in the common

sewers; and others, _less helpless perhaps, but more dangerous, who

have drunk too much to fear punishment, but not enough to hinder

them from provoking it_.... No man can pass a single hour in public

places without meeting such objects, or hearing such expressions

as disgrace human nature,--such as cannot be looked upon without

horror, or heard without indignation, _and which there is no

possibility of removing or preventing_, WHILST THIS HATEFUL LIQUOR

IS PUBLICLY SOLD.... These liquors not only infatuate the mind, but

poison the body; they not only fill our streets with madmen and our

prisons with criminals, but our hospitals with cripples.... Nor

does the use of spirits, my lords, only impoverish the public by

lessening the number of useful and laborious hands, but by cutting

off those recruits by which its natural and inevitable losses are

to be supplied. The use of distilled liquors impairs the fecundity

of the human race, and hinders that increase which Providence has

ordained for the support of the world. Those women who riot in this

poisonous debauchery are quickly disabled from bearing children,

or, what is still more destructive to general happiness, produce

children diseased from their birth, and who, therefore, are an

additional burden, and must be supported through a miserable life

by that labour which they cannot share, and must be protected by

that community of which they cannot contribute to the defence.[215]

Notwithstanding volleys of violent opposition, especially from the

Bishops, the Bill was carried: sixty per cent. of the House voting in

its favour. The law was again relaxed. Parliament was overwhelmed with

petitions which were the expression of a disappointed philanthropy.

The petitions of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, state,

‘that the common and habitual use of spirituous liquors by the

lower ranks of people, prevails to such a degree, that _it

destroys the health, strength, and industry of the poor of both

sexes and all ages, inflames them with rage and barbarity, and

occasions frequent robberies and murders in the streets of the

Metropolis_.’ The petition from the Minister and Churchwardens of

St. Martin’s, Westminster, recites that in consequence of the low

price of spirits, their use has become excessive--‘the substance of

the people is wasted--idleness and disorder have taken the place

of industry--and robberies and murders are committed under their

influence.’ The petition from Bristol states, ‘that the bad effects

of spirituous liquors have become apparent in the destruction of

the habits of the people--corrupting their morals, and rendering

them incapable of manly employments’--reducing them to poverty,

_and hardening them to the commission of crimes of the utmost

enormity_. That of the Merchants adds--‘commerce was injured.’

These crowds of petitions almost universally affirm that the _great

increase in the number of Gin-shops, and the low price of the

article_, were the causes of its excessive use _amongst the lower

orders_.

On these representations, the House again resolved ‘That it was

necessary to regulate the sale of spirits by retail.’ Measures were

adopted for the _suppression of smuggling_, and the celebrated

Tippling Act was passed.[216]

By this Act, no persons could recover for the price of spirits sold in

less quantities than 20_s._ at one time.

But just in proportion as spirits were rendered legally inaccessible,

appetite was diverted into the channel of beer. The rent was made

possibly worse. Hitherto it had been necessary to impose restrictions

upon the article sold; now the vendor must furnish guarantees. The

26th of the same George, after declaring former laws to be defective

and insufficient, required the justices, when they granted licences,

to take the recognisances of the _persons_ licensed in 10_l._, and two

sureties of 5_l._, for _good conduct_, with other restrictions.

The page of events at this time is eminently instructive. A government

cannot be far in advance of the people whom it governs. Extreme

repression has been and ever will be evaded. In the present instance,

not only was a demand for beer created, but resort was had to any

and every expedient to glut the appetite upon the favourite spirit.

The clandestine sale of gin was the natural consequence. The gaols

groaned under the burden of atonement for unpaid penalties. Within two

years of the passing of the Gin Act some twelve thousand persons had

been punished for its violation. The measure proved a failure, for

(as Smollett observes) though no licence was obtained, and no duty

paid, the liquor continued to be sold in all corners of the streets;

informers were intimidated by the threats of the people, and the

justices of the peace, either from indolence or corruption, neglected

to put the law into execution.

It is important to compare the consumption of low wines (weak spirits)

and spirits, before and after the passing of the Act. The total

consumption for England and Wales in 1733 was 11,282,890 gallons; and

in 1742 the consumption was 19,897,300 gallons. No wonder that the Act

was repealed. Had the Government imposed a graduated scale of duty upon

spirits, a scale ever sliding upwards, their price might have been

raised by almost insensible stages, till the means of purchase would

have been well-nigh precluded.

But in other directions a wiser legislation found favour. Distillation

from grain, malt, or flour was prohibited, and when it was proposed in

Parliament to relax this measure, abundant were the petitions for its

retention. It was therefore resolved that the law should be in force

till December 1759: and the success of the measure is established from

the fact that the consumption of spirits in England and Wales fell,

from the nineteen millions of 1742, to an annual average of about four

millions during the interval between the years 1760 and 1782.

Much is said in the present day of female intemperance. The Lords’

Committee had aroused public attention to the subject. But it was rife

enough in the period under discussion. A poet of the century makes no

secret of the proclivity.[217]

Britannia this upas-tree bought of Mynheer,

Removed it through Holland and planted it here;

‘Tis now a stock plant of the genus wolf’s bane,

And one of them blossoms in Marybone Lane.

The House that surrounds it stands first in the row,

Two doors at right angles swing open below;

And the children of misery daily steal in,

And the poison they draw they denominate _Gin_.

There enter the prude, and the reprobate boy,

The mother of grief and the daughter of joy,

The serving-maid slim, and the serving-man stout,

They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel out.

The following incident related in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1748,

points to a terrible condition of things:--

At a christening at Beddington in Surrey, the nurse was so

intoxicated that after she had undress’d the child, instead of

laying it in the cradle, she put it behind a large fire, which

burnt it to death in a few minutes. She was examin’d before a

magistrate, and said she was quite stupid and senseless, so that

she took the child for a log of wood; on which she was discharged!!

Nor was any class of society exempt from the imputation; but the

curtain need not be drawn.

And what a stream of ability and learning was polluted by those

mischievous compounds! Men of letters, tragedians, statesmen,

fell--ignobly fell--before the insidious destroyer.

Bolingbroke, when in office, sat up whole nights drinking, and in

the morning, having bound a wet napkin round his forehead and his

eyes, to drive away the effects of his intemperance, he hastened

without sleep to his official business.[218]

Lord Stair, in a letter to Horace Walpole, writes:--

Poor Harry (Bolingbroke) is turned out from being Secretary of

State.... They call him knave and traitor.... I believe all poor

Harry’s fault was that he could not play his part with a grave

enough face.... He got drunk now and then.

Lord Cartaret, afterwards Earl Granville, was a great scholar, and a

man of invariable high spirits.

The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the _Drunken

Administration_; and the expression was not altogether figurative.

His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne probably lent

its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in which his

life was passed.... Driven from office, he retired laughing to his

books and his bottle.... Ill as he had been used, he did not seem,

says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling

except thirst.[219]

Macaulay implies that Cartaret occasionally varied his champagne for ‘a

daily half gallon of Burgundy.’

William Pulteney, created ‘Earl of Bath’ on the resignation of Walpole,

has been generally reckoned amongst the men of the bottle. Indeed, Mr.

Lecky remarks (i. 478) that he ‘is said to have shortened his life by

drinking.’ But how can this be? He lived to the fairly respectable

age of 82. Has he not been confounded with some namesake? For what

says this same author in another volume?--‘Lord Bath, the old rival

of Walpole, subscribed liberally to the orphanage of Georgia, and was

a frequent and apparently devout attendant at Whitefield’s Chapel in

Tottenham Court Road.’ In fact in his old age he became a Methodist.

Was such a man likely to be a hard drinker?

Of Walpole, Mr. Lecky remarks, that when he was a young man, his father

was accustomed to pour into his glass a double portion of wine, saying,

‘Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once; for I will not

permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of

his father.’

It speaks volumes for the son of such a father, that when Mr. Chute

gibed him for stupidity, which he set down to ‘temperance diet,’

Walpole protested, saying, ‘I have such lamentable proofs every day of

the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted

a most religious veneration for your spiritual _nourriture_.’

Methodism, drinking, and gambling, were all on the increase. So says

Walpole. Of the first, he sarcastically says,--‘It increases as fast as

any religious nonsense did.’ Of the second he remarks,--‘Drinking is at

the highest wine-mark.’ But people were gluttons as well as drunkards.

The aristocracy of letters were infected, no less than that of rank.

Truly did Chesterfield observe, that wine and wassail have taken

more strong places than gun or steel. Jonathan Swift is generally

regarded as a free liver, though probably the company he kept is often

answerable for the imputation. The following notices must serve as

material for judgment. Dr. King states that about three years before

his death, he observed that he was affected by the wine which he drank

after dinner; next day, on his complaining of his health, he took the

liberty to tell him he had drunk too much wine. Swift was startled, and

replied that he always regarded himself as a very temperate man, and

never exceeded the quantity his physician prescribed. But, according

to King, his physician never drank less than two bottles of claret

after dinner. But King was a water-drinker.[220] Scott says of Swift’s

entertainments that they were economical, ‘although his guests, so

far as conviviality was consistent with decorum, were welcomed with

excellent wine. Swift, who used to declare he was never intoxicated in

his life, had nevertheless lived intimately with those at whose tables

wine was liberally consumed, and he was not himself averse to the

moderate use of it.’ The same author adds that Dr. King said that Swift

drank about a pint of claret after dinner, which the doctor considered

too much.

On the other hand his satirists accused him of excess. One of them

says, ‘He was heard to make some self-denying promises in prayer, that,

for the time to come, he would stint himself to two or three bottles in

an evening.’[221] Again, the Archbishop of Cashel seems to have known

his weak point. In a letter, inviting him on a visit, and giving him

minute instructions as to the route, he baits him by the intelligence

that he would pass a parson’s cabin where was a private cellar of which

the parson kept the key, in which was always a hogshead of the best

wine that could be got, in bottles well-corked, upon their side.[222]

His poems often betrayed the flavour of the bottle. Witness his

_Country Quarter Sessions_, which begins:--

Three or four parsons full of October,

Three or four squires between drunk and sober.

Again, in his _Baucis and Philemon_; Goody Baucis in bestirring herself

to provide the hermit’s hospitality--

Then stepp’d aside to fetch ‘em drink,

Fill’d a large jug up to the brink,

And saw it fairly twice go round.

Somerville, the author of _The Chase_, was no doubt fond of the bottle,

as we see very clearly from the letter of his friend Shenstone after

his death:--

Our old friend Somerville is dead! I did not imagine I could

have been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion.--_Sublatum

quærimus._ I can now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age,

and to distress of circumstances: the last of these considerations

wrings my very soul to think on. For a man of high spirit,

conscious of having (at least in one production) generally pleased

the world, to be plagued and threatened by wretches that are low in

every sense; _to be forced to drink himself into pains of the body,

in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a misery_.

James Quin the tragedian was a _bon vivant_. After being engaged at

Drury Lane Theatre, a tavern brawl involved him in law proceedings,

and he was obliged for a time to leave the country. His epitaph, by

Garrick, depicts the man:--

A plague on Egypt’s arts! I say;

Embalm the dead, on senseless clay

Rich wines and spices waste!

Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I,

Bound in a precious pickle, lie,

Which I shall never taste.

Let me embalm this flesh of mine

With turtle fat and Bordeaux wine,

And spoil th’ Egyptian trade.

Than Humphry’s Duke more happy I;

Embalm’d alive, old Quin shall die,

A mummy ready made.

Richard Savage lived a very profligate life. Johnson says that ‘in no

time of his life was it any part of his character to be the first of

the company that desired to separate.’ It was when inebriated that he

killed one Mr. James Sinclair, 1727, and was within an ace of being

hanged for the same. Lord Tyrconnel, who had been very kind to him, and

suddenly dropped him, gives a very bad account of his drinking habits.

He affirmed that it was the constant practice of Mr. Savage to

enter a tavern with any company that proposed it, drink the most

expensive wines with great profusion, and when the reckoning was

demanded, be without money: if, as it often happened, his company

were willing to defray his part, the affair ended without any

ill consequences; but if they were refractory, and expected that

the wine should be paid for by him that drank it, his method of

composition was to take them with him to his own apartment, assume

the government of the house, and order the butler in an imperious

manner to set the best wine in the cellar before his company,

who often drank till they forgot the respect due to the house in

which they were entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost

extravagance of merriment, practised the most licentious frolics,

and committed all the outrages of drunkenness.

No wonder Lord Tyrconnel dropped him. Even Savage himself admitted that

Lord Tyrconnel ‘often exhorted him to regulate his method of life, _and

not to spend all his nights in taverns_, and that he appeared desirous

that he would pass those hours with him, which he so freely bestowed

upon others.’ The poor fellow eventually, having estranged all his

friends by his petulance as well as his bad habits, got deplorably

poor, and ‘wandered about the town, slighted and neglected, in quest of

a dinner, which he did not always obtain.’ It was at this period that

we read the extraordinary account of him, that ‘he was not able to bear

the smell of meat till the action of his stomach was restored by a

cordial.’ On one occasion in great distress at Bristol, ‘he received a

remittance of five pounds from London, with which he provided himself

a decent coat, and determined to go to London, but unhappily spent his

money at a favourite tavern.’

The tale goes on, ‘Thus was he again confined to Bristol, where he

was every day hunted by bailiffs. In this exigence he once more

found a friend, who sheltered him in his house, though at the usual

inconveniences with which his company was attended; for he could

neither be persuaded to go to bed in the night nor to rise in the day.’

But if many were the victims of excess, many too were the champions of

restraint; and, first of all, we turn to Dr. Samuel Johnson. In his

early life he drank wine; let him testify for himself.

In an interesting conversation with an old college friend, one Edwards,

held April 17, 1778, he made a remark which Sir Wilfrid Lawson would

hail:--

_Edwards._ How do you live, sir? For my part, I must have my

regular meals and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.

_Johnson._ I now drink no wine, sir. Early in life I drank wine;

for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a good

deal....

_Edwards._ I am grown old: I am sixty-five.

_Johnson._ I shall be sixty-eight next birthday. Come, sir, DRINK

WATER, AND PUT IN FOR A HUNDRED.

When he first came to London, at the age of 29, he abstained entirely

(_teste_ Boswell) from fermented liquors, ‘a practice to which he

rigidly conformed for many years together at different periods of his

life.’ Upon this point Croker has a suggestive note, apropos of the

effect of drink on hypochondria:--

At this time his abstinence from wine may perhaps be attributed

to poverty, but in his subsequent life he was restrained from

that indulgence by, as it appears, moral, or rather medical,

considerations. He found by experience that wine, though it

dissipated for a moment, yet eventually aggravated the hereditary

disease under which he suffered; and perhaps it may have been

owing to a long course of abstinence that his mental health seems

to have been better in the latter than in the earlier portion of

his life. He says, in his _Prayers and Meditations_ (August 17,

1767), ‘By abstinence from wine and suppers I obtained sudden and

great relief, and had freedom of mind restored to me; which I have

wanted for all this year, without being able to find any means of

obtaining it.’ These remarks are important, because _depression of

spirits_ is too often treated on a contrary system, from ignorance

of or _inattention to what may be_ its _real_ cause.

Dr. Johnson was very often chiefly indebted to _tea_ for his literary

afflatus. ‘The quantities which he drank of the infusion of that

fragrant leaf,’ says Boswell, ‘at all hours were so great, that his

nerves must have been uncommonly strong, not to have been extremely

relaxed by such an intemperate use of it.’ In his defence of Tea

against Mr. Jonas Hanway, Johnson describes himself as ‘a hardened and

shameless tea-drinker, who has for many years diluted his meals with

only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely

time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the

midnights, and with tea welcomes the morning.’ This last phrase

his friend, Tom Tyers, happily parodied, ‘_te_ veniente die--_te_

decedente.’

Boswell often pauses to descant upon

_Dr. Johnson’s Temperance_.

_September 16, 1773._--Last night much care was taken of Dr.

Johnson, who was still distressed by his cold. He had hitherto most

strangely slept without a nightcap. Miss Macleod made him a large

flannel one, and he was prevailed with to drink a little brandy

when he was going to bed. He has great virtue in not drinking wine

or any fermented liquor because, as he acknowledged to us, he could

not do it in moderation. Lady Macleod would hardly believe him, and

said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry it too far.’--_Johnson._

‘Nay, madam, it carried me. I took the opportunity of a long

illness to leave it off. It was then prescribed to me not to drink

wine; and, having broken off the habit, I have never returned to

it.’

Again, says Boswell:--

A.D. 1776.--Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from

wine, I ventured to speak to him of it.--_Johnson._ Sir, I have no

objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation.

I found myself apt to go into excess in it, and therefore, after

having been for some time without it on account of illness, I

thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for

himself, according to the effects which he experiences. One of the

fathers tells us he found fasting made him so peevish that he did

not practise it.

Dr. B. W. Richardson’s ideas about the harm done to constitutions by

excessive palpitation of the heart (especially under the action of

alcohol) seem to have had shadows cast before. Boswell’s hero rather

pooh-poohed the idea, in a conversation after dinner at Thrale’s, April

10, 1776:--

Johnson mentioned Dr. Barry’s System of Physic. ‘He was a man,’

said he, ‘who had acquired a high reputation in Dublin, came over

to England, and brought his reputation with him. HIS NOTION WAS,

THAT PULSATION OCCASIONS DEATH BY ATTRITION, AND THAT THEREFORE

THE WAY TO PRESERVE LIFE IS TO RETARD PULSATION. But we know that

pulsation is strongest in infants, and that we increase in growth

while it operates in its regular course; so it cannot well be the

cause of destruction.’

This Barry became a Baronet--_Sir Edward Barry, Bart._ ‘He published,

in 1775, a curious work on the Wines of the Ancients.’

It should not be forgotten that when Dr. Johnson did drink, he drank

heavily. On April 7, 1778, he said he had drunk three bottles of port

at a time without being the worse for it. ‘University College has

witnessed this.’ He could practise abstinence, but not temperance.

Boswell’s own ideas upon drinking are worth recording:--

I observed [says he of himself, April 12, 1776] that wine did

some people harm, by inflaming, confusing, and irritating their

minds; but that the experience of mankind had declared in favour of

moderate drinking.

Sir Joshua Reynolds on the same occasion expressed similar ideas. He

argued that ‘a moderate glass enlivened the mind, by giving a proper

circulation to the blood.’

Probably Reynolds had studied the _Familiar Letters_ of the

Historiographer-Royal, Howell, who, as before noticed, thought that

‘good wine makes good blood.’

Johnson lived to see, as he believed, a change for the better, in the

direction of temperance.

_Anno Domini 1773._--We talked of change of manners. Dr. Johnson

observed that our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to

the change from ale to wine. ‘I remember,’ said he, ‘when all the

_decent_ people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not

the worse thought of. Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly.

When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste.’

[Johnson was sixty-four at the time.]

It seems strange that Johnson’s influence over his minion’s habits

was so slight. At any rate the following anecdote points to this

conclusion:--

Lord Eldon tells us, in his ‘Anecdote Book,’ that at an assize

in Lancaster about the year 1782, Jemmy Boswell, the biographer

of Dr. Johnson, was found dead drunk and stretched upon the

pavement. His merry colleagues, of whom the sage Lord Eldon was

one, subscribed among them a guinea at supper, which they sent next

morning to Boswell, with instructions to move in Court for the

writ of ‘Quare adhæsit pavimento.’ In vain did the perplexed and

bibulous barrister apply to all the attorneys of his acquaintance

for information as to the nature of the writ for which he was

instructed to move, and great was the astonishment of the Judge

when the application was made to him. At last one of the Bar,

amidst the laughter of the Court, exclaimed, ‘My Lord, Mr. Boswell

adhæsit pavimento last night. There was no moving him for some

time. At length he was carried to bed, and has been dreaming of

what happened to himself.’

It is unfortunate that Johnson should have been guilty of the _lapsus

linguæ_ for which Bacchanalians have often claimed him as their

hero, and by which careful historians have been misled. Mr. Mallet,

speaking of the Icelanders of the middle ages, tells that ‘after

they had finished eating their boiled horseflesh, they generally sat

swilling their ale out of capacious drinking-horns and listening to

the lay of a skald, or the tale of a Saga-man, until they were most

of them in that happy state of mind, when, according to Johnson,

man is alone capable of enjoying the passing moment of his fleeting

existence.’ He refers doubtless to a saying of the _savant_ recorded

by his biographer. Johnson being asked whether a man was not sometimes

happy in the moment that was present, answered, ‘Never but when he is

drunk.’ Most Johnsonians would readily admit that this was a _lapsus_,

a sally of the moment, not his deliberate judgment, such as is

obtainable from a set work like his incomparable _Rasselas_. There we

read:--‘Intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will

make life short or miserable.’

Oliver Goldsmith, in _The Bee_, has some pungent observations upon

_ale-houses_:--

Ale-houses are ever an occasion of debauchery and excess, and

either in a religious or political light it would be our highest

interest to have the greatest part of them suppressed. They should

be put under laws of not continuing open beyond a certain hour,

and harbouring only proper persons. These rules, it may be said,

will diminish the necessary taxes; but this is false reasoning,

since what was consumed in debauchery abroad would, if such a

regulation took place, be more justly and perhaps more equitably

for the workman’s family spent at home: and this, cheaper to them

and without loss of time. On the other hand, our ale-houses, being

ever open, interrupt business.

This same delightful author wrote that convivial satire entitled _The

Three Pigeons_, which he put into the mouth of Tony Lumpkin in _She

Stoops to Conquer_, of which the following is a part:--

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain

With grammar, and nonsense, and learning;

Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,

Gives _genus_ a better discerning.

When Methodist preachers come down,

A-preaching that drinking is sinful,

I’ll wager the rascals a crown,

They always preach best with a skin-full.

Then come, put the jorum about,

And let us be merry and clever;

Our hearts and our liquors are stout,

Here’s the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever!

Shenstone, another contemporary poet, though he spent so large a

portion of his time in adorning The Leasowes, till he had made it a

kind of rural paradise, could also rave about the _freedom_ of an

_inn_:--

‘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.

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,

Where’er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.

And the same spirit breathes again in the _Deserted Village_ of

Goldsmith. The village ale-house is clearly included among the ‘simple

blessings of the lowly train.’ Yet there is nothing to condemn in the

sentiments there expressed, and we may echo the words of Sir Walter

Scott:--

The wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and

expose vice; and he accomplished his task in a manner which raises

him to the highest rank among British authors.

But we pass on to notice the man who did more than any one of his time

to expose vice, and in particular the vice of intemperance. And this

is not surprising when we consider the remarkable manner in which his

genius for painting discovered itself.

Going out one Sunday with some companions to Highgate, they went into

an inn, where they had not been long, before a quarrel arose between

some persons in the same room. One of the disputants struck the other

on the head with a quart pot, which cut him badly, and the blood ran

down his face freely. This, with the contortions of his countenance,

afforded a striking object to Hogarth, who drew out his pencil and

sketched the scene.

It will be sufficient for the present purpose to note the part which

drink plays in his _Marriage à la Mode_, the _Rake’s Progress_, and

in two miscellaneous Plates. In the first mentioned, Counsellor

Silvertongue begins his vile work of ensnaring the Viscountess by

offering her a glass of light wine at an interval between the dances.

Plate ii. represents the Viscount returning home the day after the

entertainment. His appearance denotes that he has been involved in some

drunken fray. Plate vi. depicts ‘sin when it is finished,’ the suicide

of the beguiled Viscountess by means of laudanum.

Plate iii. of the _Rake’s Progress_ illustrates the ‘orgie at the Rose

Tavern.’ Young Rakewell is lavishly expending his money in plying with

drink the caressing courtesans. He himself becomes intoxicated, and is

of course robbed of his watch and jewellery; one of the wretched women,

in a fit of rage, sets fire to a map of the world, swearing that she

will burn the entire globe and herself with it. The reflections of the

morrow can be easily imagined.

In _Gin Lane_, the artist portrays a loathsome neighbourhood, the

presiding genius of which is _gin_. To procure it no means are left

untried. Every article of domestic comfort, even to the meanest shred

of raiment, is carried to the pawnbroker for the wherewithal to

purchase gin. The influence of this fire-water is everywhere apparent;

in the ruined dwellings, in the sickly looks, in the emaciated frames,

trembling limbs, carious teeth, livid lips, and sunken eyes. The very

children in that region are habituated from the cradle to love gin.

The one house that thrives is that of the pawnbroker. The details are

agonising! a child ravenous, gnawing a bare bone, which a dog, equally

the victim of famine, is snatching from him. A woman is seen pouring

a dram down the throat of an infant. In a ruined house, the corpse of

a hanging suicide is displayed. A drunken object is drawn, in female

shape, whose legs have broken out in horrible ulcers, and who is taking

snuff, regardless of her child slipping from her arms into the low area

of the gin vault. Gin too has killed the female whom we see two men

placing in a shell by order of the beadle, while the orphan child is

being conveyed to the Union.

Well did the Reverend James Townley underwrite:--

Gin, cursed fiend! with fury fraught,

Makes human race a prey;

It enters by a deadly draught

And steals our life away.

Virtue and Truth, driv’n to despair,

Its rage compels to fly;

But cherishes, with hellish care,

Theft, Murder, Perjury.

Damn’d cup! that on the vitals preys,

That liquid fire contains,

Which madness to the heart conveys,

And rolls it through the veins.

The general design of the Plate _Beer Street_ is to expose the deadly

habit of gin-drinking, and to teach that if man must drink strong

liquors, beer is far the best to indulge in.

Edward Young, courtier, poet, rector, a general genius, satirised

tea and wine as abused by the women of his day. After bemoaning the

hecatomb sacrificed upon the altar of _tea_, he exclaims:--

But this inhuman triumph shall decline,

And thy revolting Naiads call for wine;

Spirits no longer shall serve under thee,

But reign in thy own cup, exploded Tea!

Citronia’s nose declares thy ruin nigh;

And who dares give Citronia’s nose the lie?

The ladies long at men of drink exclaimed,

And what impaired both health and virtue blamed.

At length, to rescue man, the generous lass

Stole from her consort the pernicious glass,

As glorious as the British Queen renown’d

Who suck’d the poison from her husband’s wound.

Another champion of temperance was John Armstrong, who wrote in 1744

_The Art of Preserving Health_. But he was no ascetic, for he writes:--

When you smooth

The brows of care, indulge your festive vein

In cups by well-informed experience found

The least your bane, and only with your friends.

The effects of a surfeit of drink he has most ably drawn:--

But most too passive, when the blood runs low,

Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,

And bravely by resisting conquer fate,

Try Circe’s arts; and in the tempting bowl

Of poisoned nectar sweet oblivion swill.

Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves

In empty air; Elysium opens round,

A pleasing frenzy buoys the lightened soul,

And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;

And what was difficult, and what was dire,

Yields to your prowess and superior stars:

The happiest you of all that e’er were mad,

Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.

But soon your heaven is gone: a heavier gloom

Shuts o’er your head; and, as the thundering stream,

Swollen o’er its banks with sudden mountain rain,

Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook,

So, when the frantic raptures in your breast

Subside, you languish into mortal man;

You sleep, and waking find yourself undone,

For, prodigal of life, in one rash night

You lavished more than might support three days.

A heavy morning comes; your cares return

With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well

May be endured; so may the throbbing head;

But such a dim delirium, such a dream,

Involves you; such a dastardly despair

Unmans your soul, as maddening Pentheus felt,

When, baited round Cithæron’s cruel sides,

He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.

How does this remind of the rich fool in the parable! The earlier lines

of irony seem almost taken in idea from some sentiments of Hafiz, the

favourite poet of the Persians.

I am [says he] neither a judge nor a priest, nor a censor, nor a

lawyer; why should I forbid the use of wine?

Do not be vexed at the trifles of the world; drink, for it is folly

for a wise man to be afflicted....

The only friends who are free from care are a goblet of wine and a

book of odes.

Give me wine! wine that shall subdue the strongest: that I may for

a time forget the cares and troubles of the world.

Armstrong joined in the general growl at the substitution of port for

the lighter French wine.

In describing a man’s sensations on awaking he says:--

You curse the sluggish port, you curse the wretch,

The felon, with unnatural mixture, first

Who dared to violate the virgin wine.

Again, when speaking of wholesome wine, he praises:--

The gay, serene, good-natured Burgundy,

Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine.

Again, he describes Burgundy as the drink for gentlemen, and port as an

abomination:--

The man to well-bred Burgundy brought up,

Will start the smack of _Methuen_ in the cup.

What Armstrong said one hundred and thirty years ago I entreat my

medical brethren to believe now. I repeat it: if you want to prescribe

_spirits_, do so; if you want to give _wine_, give _pure_ wine. One

bottle of good Burgundy will give twice the flavour and half the spirit

that port does.[223]

In 1735 was published _A Friendly Admonition to the Drinkers of Brandy

and other Distilled Spirituous Liquors_. The author laments that man

has found means to extract from what God intended for his refreshment,

a most pernicious and intoxicating liquor. Singularly does this

anonymous writer anticipate the results of modern inquiries. He tells

us that distilled liquors _coagulate and thicken the blood, contract

and narrow the blood-vessels_, as has been proved by _experiments

purposely made_.

Whence [says he] we may evidently see the reason why those liquors

do so frequently cause _Obstructions_ and _Stoppages_ in the

_Liver_; whence the _Jaundice_, _Dropsy_, and many other fatal

Diseases: It is in like manner also that they destroy and burn up

the _Lungs_ too: Hence also it is, that by frequently contracting

and shrivelling, and then soon after relaxing, they weaken and wear

out the Substance and Coats of the Stomach, on which they more

immediately prey, every time they are drank: Hence, I say, it is,

that these spirituous Liquors rarely fail to destroy the Appetite

and Digestion of those who habituate themselves to them; for by

drying up, and spoiling the Nerves, they make them insensible; they

destroy also many of the very fine Blood-Vessels, especially where

their Fibres are most tender, as in the Brain; whereby they spoil

the Memory and intellectual Faculties: And by thus inflaming the

Blood, and disordering the Blood Vessels and Nerves, they vitiate

and deprave the _Natural Temper_.

When first drank, they seem to comfort the Stomach, by contracting

its too relaxed and flabby Fibres, and also to warm the Blood; but

as the Warmth which they give, on mixing with the Blood, soon goes

off, as it is in fact found to do, when we mix Brandy with Blood;

so also the spirituous Part of the Brandy being soon dissolved,

and soaking into the watery Humours of the Body, it can no longer

contract and warm the Substance and Coats of the Stomach and other

Parts; which therefore as soon relaxing, the unhappy persons are

thereby in a little time reduced to a cold, languid, and dispirited

state, which gives them so much uneasiness that they are impatient

to get out of it by Supplies of the same deadly Liquor, which,

instead of curing, daily increases their Disease more and more.

But the worst is not yet told.

As when immediately put into the Veins of an Animal they cause

sudden Death, so when drank in a large Quantity at once, they

coagulate and thicken the Blood to such a degree _as to kill

instantly_: And when they are not drank in such Quantities as to

kill immediately, but are daily used, then, besides many other

Diseases, they are apt to breed _Polypuses_, or fleshy Substances

in the Heart, by thickening the Blood there; which _Polypuses_, as

they grow larger and larger, do, by hindering and retarding the

Motion of the Blood through the Heart, thereby farther contribute

to the Faintness and Dispiritedness of those unhappy Persons, and

at length, by totally stopping the Course of the Blood, do as

effectually kill, as if a Dart had been struck thro’ the Liver.

And again, speaking of these same spirituous liquors, he adds:--

Some may indeed be more palatable than others, _but they are all

in a manner equally pernicious and dangerous, that are of an equal

Strength; and those most destructive and deadly, which are the

strongest, that is, which have most Spirit in them_. Which _Spirit_

being of a very harsh, fiery, and acrimonious Nature, as it is

found to seize on and harden raw Flesh put into it; so does it

greatly injure the Stomach, Bowels, Liver, and all other Parts of

human Bodies, especially the Nerves; which being the immediate and

principal Instruments of Life and Action, hence it is, that it so

remarkably enfeebles the habitual Drinkers of it; and also depraves

the Memory, by hardening and spoiling the Substance of the Brain,

which is the Seat of Life, and this is an Inconvenience which

the great Drinkers of _Punch_ often find, as well as the _Dram_

Drinkers.

Fifteen years later (1751) a Scotchman, James Burgh (cousin to the

historian Robertson), wrote _A warning to Dram-Drinkers_. Would that it

had been effectual!

At this time _cider_ seems to have risen to the dignity of civic

feasts. At a feast held Nov. 5th, 1737, at an inn, the following are

the charges:--

_£_ _s._ _d._

Ordinaries 1 10 0

Wine 2 6 0

Beer, _Cider_, Ale 0 8 10

Candles and tobacco 0 3 6

Beer, gunners and drummers 0 3 4

For firing 0 1 6

Sugar, lemons, and glasses 0 14 0

Wine after the bill delivered 0 6 0

Beer firing, tobacco 0 1 10

-----------

5 15 0

No bill for feast or treat at any place ... was found to have any

mention of cider as used at table, and charged for with beer and ale

before this one.[224]

In 1746 _A Bowl of Punch_ appears as a novelty in the bill of a

corporation dinner. When Coade was Mayor in 1737, sixteen bowls of

punch were drunk at a corporation banquet.

_Whitsun-ales_ were still in force. In the postscript of a letter from

a minister to his parishioners in the Deanery of Stow, Gloucestershire,

1736, the author writes:--

What I have now been desiring you to consider as touching the evil

and pernicious consequences of _Whitsun-ales_ among us, doth also

obtain against Dovers Meeting ... and also against _Midsummer Ales_

and _Mead-mowings_; and likewise against the ordinary violations of

those festival seasons commonly called _Wakes_.

In the year 1735 occurred a scene which fairly gives colour to the

_Secret History of the Calves’ Head Club_. The following account is

given in the letters of L’Abbé Le Blanc:--

Some young men of quality chose to abandon themselves to the

debauchery of drinking healths on the 30th of January, a day

appointed by the Church of England for a general fast, to expiate

the murder of Charles I., whom they honour as a martyr. As soon

as they were heated with wine, they began to sing. This gave great

offence to the people, who stopped before the tavern, and gave them

abusive language. One of these rash young men put his head out of

the window and drank to the memory of the army which dethroned this

king, and to the rebels which cut off his head upon a scaffold. The

stones immediately flew from all parts, the furious populace broke

the windows of the house, and would have set fire to it.

The Chapter Coffeehouse was opened at this time, famous for punch,

pamphlets, and newspapers. Buchan, of _Domestic Medicine_ fame, was an

_habitué_; so was Dr. Gower.

These eminent physicians sat and prescribed for the maladies of their

mates, _Chapter punch_; ‘If one won’t do, call for a second.’ But

clubs, whatever they may have been, are anything but unfavourable

to temperance _now_. The worst that can be honestly thought of them

is--that they _may_ minister to selfishness.

Thus are clubs an exception to the usual tendency of the moral law of

gravitation--downwards. What is there in common, save the name, between

the _Athenæum_ of to-day, and the _Roxburghe_ of the beginning of the

century?

The entertainments of the latter have found their way into print under

the title ‘_Roxburghe Revels; or, An Account of the Annual Display_,

culinary and festivous, interspersed incidentally with matters of

Moment or Merryment.’[225]

George III. was an example of _moderation_. One of his biographers,

Edward Holt, observes:--

Exercise, air, and little diet were the grand fundamentals in the

King’s idea of health and sprightliness: his Majesty fed chiefly

on vegetables and drank little wine. The Queen was what many

private gentlewomen styled whimsically abstemious.

The story is told that at Worcester, the mayor, knowing that the King

never took drink before dinner, asked him if he would be pleased to

take a jelly, when the King replied: ‘I do not recollect drinking a

glass of wine before dinner in my life, yet upon this pleasing occasion

I will venture.’ A glass of rich old _Mountain_ was served, when his

Majesty immediately drank ‘Prosperity to the Corporation and Citizens

of Worcester.’ This occurred in the twenty-eighth year of the King’s

reign (1788). The rigid rule was still observed by his Majesty, as we

learn from an incident which occurred twelve years later. One morning,

when visiting as usual his stables, the King heard the following

conversation between the grooms: ‘I don’t care what you say, Robert,

but every one agrees that the man at the _Three Tuns_ makes the best

purl in Windsor.’ ‘Purl, purl!’ said the King, quickly. ‘Robert, what’s

purl?’ This was explained to be warm beer with a glass of gin, &c.

His Majesty listened attentively, and turning round, said: ‘I dare

say, very good drink, but too strong for the morning; never drink in a

morning.’

In the description of the King’s visit to Whitbread’s brewery, we

learn incidentally the large scale on which even then the wholesale

trade was conducted--_e.g._ in the great store were three thousand and

seven barrels of beer. The stone cistern, into which he entered, held

four thousand barrels of beer. The royal party were offered some of

Whitbread’s _entire_.

The King drank and responded to _toasts_. Thus, at a dinner of _The

Knights_, we read that towards the end of the first course, a large

gilt cup was brought to the Sovereign by the cupbearer. The King drank

to the knights, who, being at his Majesty’s command, informed of the

same by Garter, stood up uncovered, pledged the King, and then sat down.

At the jubilee, the commemoration of the fiftieth year of the King’s

reign, the mayor at the banquet gave ‘The King, God bless him, and long

may he reign over a free and united people,’ which was drunk with three

times three.

The general habits of the time formed a striking contrast to the

personal example of the King. In the recently issued elaborate _Life

of George IV._, by Percy Fitzgerald, we get a picture into the social

manners and customs prevailing about 1787:--

‘How the men of business and the great orators of the House of

Commons contrive to reconcile it with their exertions I cannot

conceive,’ writes that most charming of public men, Sir Gilbert

Elliot, to his wife. ‘Men of all ages drink abominably. Fox (a

Prime Minister) drinks what I should call a great deal, though he

is not reckoned to do so by his companions; Sheridan (M.P. and

dramatist, and withal the bosom friend of the Prince of Wales,

afterwards George IV.) excessively; and Grey (Viscount Howick) more

than any of them. But it is in a much more gentlemanly way than

our Scotch drunkards, and is always accompanied with lively clever

conversation on subjects of importance. Pitt (a Prime Minister), I

am told, drinks as much as anybody.’

The same observer, Sir Gilbert Elliot (1787), describes a scene at

W. Crewe’s, where three young men of fashion, Mr. Orlando Bridgman,

Mr. Charles Greville, of the Picnic Club, and Mr. Gifford were so

drunk, ‘as to puzzle the whole assembly.’ The last was a young

gentleman lately come out, of a good estate of about five thousand

pounds a year, the whole of which he is in the act of spending in

one or two years at least (125,000_l._), and this without a grain

of sense, without any fun to himself or entertainment to others.

He never uttered a word, though as drunk as the other two, who

were both riotous, and began at last to talk so plain, that Lady

Francis and Lady Valentine fled from the side table to ours, and

Mrs. Sheridan would have followed them, but did not escape till her

arms were black and blue, and her apron torn off.

Pitt, the model young minister, broke down in the house in the

following year, owing to a debauch the night before at Lord

Buckingham’s, when, in company with Dundas and the Duke of Gordon,

he took too much wine.

Indeed, the manners and customs of the times (1780-1830) might be

called a ‘precious school’ for the young princes (Prince of Wales,

Dukes of York, Cumberland, and Kent), and there was no public

opinion to check these vices.

The lawlessness that was abroad reached even to the young, who

disdained the control of their parents.

To the same effect writes Dr. Doran:--

Any one who will take the trouble to go carefully through the

columns of the ill-printed newspapers of the last century,

will find that drunkenness, dissoluteness, and the sword

hanging on every fool’s thigh ready to do his bidding, were the

characteristics of the period. People got drunk at dinners, and

then slew one another, or in some other way broke the law.

The _taverns_ were crowded with morning drinkers. On the site occupied

by the Bank of England, four inns used to stand; one of them was called

_The Crown_. Sir John Hawkins, in his _History of Musick_, mentions

that it was not unusual to draw a butt (120 gallons) in half-pints in

the course of a single morning.

The drinking at the _Universities_ was terrible.

Henry Gunning, M.A., Christ’s College, Cambridge (a descendant of the

Bishop of Ely, who wrote the prayer for the Church Militant), had great

opportunities of judging of the Cambridge of his day, for he was born

1768 in a Cambridgeshire vicarage, went up to Cambridge at an early

age, was made Esquire Bedell 1789, and continued in that capacity

till his death early in 1854. In his charming _Reminiscences of the

University, Town, and County of Cambridge, from the year 1780_, he

observes:--

Drunkenness was the besetting sin of the period when I came to

college. I need scarcely add that many other vices followed in its

train.

Again, speaking of a college friend:--

I do not remember ever to have seen him guilty of drunkenness, _at

that time almost universal_.

Again (pp. 147-148):--

For many years during Rev. Charles Simeon’s ministry (I speak

from my own personal knowledge) Trinity Church and the streets

leading to it were the scenes of the most disgraceful tumults.

On one occasion an undergraduate, who had been apprehended by

Simeon, was compelled to read a public apology in the church.

Mr. Simeon made a prefatory address: ‘We have long borne during

public worship with the most indecent conduct from those whose

situation in life should have made them sensible of the heinousness

of such offences; we have seen persons coming into this place

in a state of intoxication; we have seen them walking about the

aisles, notwithstanding there are persons appointed to show them

into seats; we have seen them coming in and going out without the

slightest reverence or decorum; we have seen them insulting modest

persons, both in and after divine service; in short, the devotions

of the congregation have been disturbed by almost every species of

ill conduct.’

About 1788, Gunning was for some time a tutor in Herefordshire; there

he observed that immense quantities of cider were drunk:--

In years when apples were abundant, the labourers in husbandry

were allowed to drink as much cider as they thought proper. It

was no unusual thing for a man to put his lips to a wooden bottle

containing four quarts, and not remove them until he had emptied

it. I have myself witnessed this exploit; but I never ventured

to mention a circumstance apparently so incredible, until I read

Marshall’s _History of Herefordshire_, in which he relates the same

fact.

George Pryme (_b._ 1781, _obiit_ 1868) in his _Autobiographic

Recollections_, 1870, fully confirms Gunning’s picture of Cambridge:--

When I first went to Cambridge [in 1799] the habit of hard drinking

was almost as prevalent there as it was in country society....

‘Buzzing,’ unknown in the present day, was then universal. When the

decanter came round to any one, if it was nearly emptied, the next

in succession could require him to finish it; but if the quantity

left exceeded the bumper, the challenger was obliged to drink the

remainder and also a bumper out of the next fresh bottle. There was

throughout these parties an endeavour to make each other drunk, and

a pride in being able to resist the effects of the wine.

This Pryme was a person of distinction; sometime Fellow of Trinity,

first Professor of Political Economy in Cambridge University, and

thrice M.P. for the Borough. Moreover he was no teetotaller; though a

moderate man, he had full belief in the _medicinal_ virtue of brandy.

And he had reason; for he says:--

In the winter of 1788-9 I was attacked by a severe fever, and was

attended by Dr. Storer of Nottingham, the most eminent physician

in that part of the country. After prescribing every medicine that

he could think of as suitable to the case, he called one evening

on my mother but declined seeing me, as he said everything had

been tried, and that giving more medicine was only harassing me in

vain. He however asked a few questions about me, and was told that

I had repeatedly begged for brandy. He mixed some in a wine-glass

with water, which I eagerly drank and asked for more; he then mixed

a second glass. The next forenoon he called to inquire if I was

still alive, and was told that I had had a good night and was much

better. He saw me, and from that time I steadily recovered.

The habits of a University are very fair tests of the habits of the

more affluent, and upper middle classes of the nation. Outside this

for the most part is the great class generally known as _tradesmen_.

Probably nothing has contributed so much to the deterioration of this

class, as the almost invariable habit of spending the evening in some

hotel or tavern. It is still common in Germany. It is much to be hoped

that it is dying out in England. Charles Knight, in his _Passages of a

Working Life_, seems to speak of it as universally the case early in

the present century. He speaks of the tradesmen as habitually

Sallying forth to spend their long evenings in their accustomed

chairs at the ale-house, which had become their second home. Some

had a notion that they secured custom to the shop by a constant

round among the numerous hostelries. I knew a most worthy man,

occupying a large house which his forefathers had occupied from

the time of Queen Anne, who, when he gave up the business to his

son, who, recently married, preferred his own fireside, told the

innovator that he would infallibly be ruined if he did not go out

to make friends over his evening glass.

But does not every grade in society sensibly or insensibly take its cue

from that _immediately_ above it? And what were those who should have

set a virtuous example doing? How much have such men to answer for, as

Byron, Porson, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Smart, Lamb, and Churchill!

Of the first named, it has been observed that when he was not impairing

a naturally delicate constitution with drastic medicines and protracted

fasts, he would sometimes eat and drink excessively. And this was

especially the case in fits of mortification. Everyone will remember

the circumstance of the _Edinburgh Review_ proscribing Byron’s early

production, _Hours of Idleness_. Though he affected indifference, and

spoke of the critique as a paper bullet of the brain, yet he afterwards

acknowledged that he tried to drown his irritation on the day he

read it with three bottles of claret after dinner. His excesses of

all kinds, in his continental life, are matters of history. They are

usually considered to have contributed to terminate his fever fatally.

This recalls his clever lines:--

_On a Carrier who died of Drunkenness._

John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell:

A _carrier_ who _carried_ his can to his mouth well;

He _carried_ so much, and he _carried_ so fast,

He could _carry_ no more, so was _carried_ at last;

For the liquor he drank being too much for one,

He could not _carry_ off, so he’s now _carrion_.

Charles Churchill, the author of the _Rosciad_, was a sad drunkard.

The caricature drawn of him by Hogarth will be remembered. A number

of them had met as usual at their whist club in the _Bedford Arms_

parlour. There it was that Churchill insulted Hogarth, called him a

‘very shallow fellow,’ and afterwards in writing derided the man,

his productions, and his belongings. Hogarth revenged the sneer. He

converted an old copper-plate into a palimpsest, on which he drew a

caricature of Churchill as a growling bear with the ragged canonicals

of a parson (for such the poet had been), a pot of porter by his side,

and a ragged staff in his paw, each knot inscribed ‘lye.’

Theodore Hook was a highly convivial man. In a memoir of this once

popular man, it is stated that the disorder under which he long

laboured arose from a diseased state of the liver and stomach, brought

on partly by anxiety, but chiefly, it is to be feared, by that habit of

over indulgence at table, the curse of colonial life. (At the instance

of the Prince Regent he had obtained a Government appointment in the

Mauritius.)

A stanza of his own composition reveals in brief the man:--

Then now I’m resolved at all sorrows to blink--

Since winking’s the tippy I’ll tip ‘em the wink,

I’ll never get drunk when I cannot get drink,

Nor ever let misery bore me.

I sneer at the Fates, and I laugh at their spite,

I sit down contented to sit up all night,

And when my time comes, from the world take my flight,

For--my father did so before me.[226]

The name of Charles Lamb will naturally suggest itself. Of him one

would fain observe silence in this connection. He must at any rate

speak for himself: ‘A small eater but not drinker.’ He acknowledges

a partiality for the production of the juniper. This would probably

prepossess Hazlitt, who observes in his _Thoughts and Maxims_: ‘We

like a convivial character better than an abstemious one, because the

idea of conviviality in the first instance is pleasanter than that of

sobriety.’ Lamb considered it a great qualification in his father that

he made punch better than any man of his degree in England. C. Lamb was

a schoolfellow of S. T. Coleridge, and something more--a friend, not

of a day, but of a life. Severed during the University career of the

Lake poet, the friendship was maintained by occasional visits of the

latter to town, where at the _Salutation and Cat_, they supped, heard

the midnight chimes, and possibly heard the clock strike one several

times, in the little smoky room now historical. More than twenty years

passed, and Lamb is found dedicating his works, then first collected,

to the same old friend. Meantime, countless letters pass between them;

on Lamb’s part the lower side of the convivial blending too freely with

the literary. Does he anticipate a visit to his friend? The joy is

infinitely heightened by the prospect of the tavern and the ‘egg-hot.’

Nor does he blush to confess ‘I am writing at random, and half tipsy.’

In his _The Old Familiar Faces_, he writes:--

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom-cronies,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Reference need not be made to that terribly tragical dissertation in

his incomparable _Essays of Elia_, entitled _The Confessions of a

Drunkard_. The passage which begins: ‘The waters have gone over me,

but out of the dark depths could I be heard, I would cry out to all

those who have set foot on that perilous flood,’ is familiar to most

lovers of literature. But whether the dismal language is the mirror of

his own experience, may remain a moot point. However, facts contradict

the assertion of Barry Cornwall, that ‘much injustice has been done to

Lamb, by accusing him of excess in drinking,’ and Hazlitt was perfectly

justified in unequivocally stating what he had taken scrupulous pains

to verify. Thus much admitted, we may endorse the sentiment expressed

so feelingly:--

We admire his genius; we love the kind nature which appears in all

his writings; and we cherish his memory as much as if we had known

him personally.[227]

From the social man of letters, we turn to one who moved in a far wider

circle; who, in Byron’s opinion, wrote the best comedy, the best opera,

the best farce, the best address, and delivered the very best oration

ever conceived or heard in this country--Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

He, like Lamb, can be judged out of his own mouth. It was he who with

piquant humour declared that he could drink with advantage any _given_

quantity of wine. Wine, says his biographer, Tom Moore, was one of his

favourite helps to inspiration: ‘If the thought (he would say) is slow

to come, a glass of good wine encourages it, and when it _does_ come, a

glass of good wine rewards it.’ To the same effect, Leigh Hunt remarks:

‘His table songs are always admirable. When he was drinking wine he

was thoroughly in earnest.’ Lady Holland, at whose house Sheridan was

a constant guest, told Moore that he used to take a bottle of wine and

a book up to bed with him always; the _former_ alone intended for use.

He took spirits with his morning tea or coffee, and on his way from

Holland House to town, invariably stopped at the old roadside inn, the

_Adam and Eve_, where he ran up a long bill which Lord Holland was left

the privilege of paying.

In the very amusing and instructive _Reminiscences of Captain Gronow_,

speaking of Sheridan’s prosperity, the author urges:--

Many of the follies and extravagances that marked the life of this

gifted but reckless personage must be attributed to the times in

which he existed. Drinking was the fashion of the day. The Prince

[Regent], Mr. Pitt, Dundas, the Lord Chancellor Eldon, and many

others who gave the tone to society, would, if they now appeared

at an evening party, ‘as was their custom of an afternoon,’ be

pronounced fit for nothing but bed. A three-bottle man was not an

unusual guest at a fashionable table; and the night was invariably

spent in drinking bad port wine to an enormous extent.

The same writer observes:--

Drinking and play were more universally indulged in then [about

1814] than at the present time, and many men still living must

remember the couple of bottles of port at least which accompanied

his dinner in those days.... The dinner-party, commencing at seven

or eight, frequently did not break up before one in the morning.

There were then four and even five-bottle men; and the only thing

that saved them was drinking very slowly, and out of very small

glasses. The learned head of the law, Lord Eldon, and his brother

Lord Stowell, used to say that they had drunk more bad port than

any two men in England; indeed, the former was rather apt to be

overtaken, and to speak occasionally somewhat thicker than natural

after long and heavy potations. The late Lords Panmure, Dufferin,

and Blayney, wonderful to relate, were six-bottle men at this time;

and I really think that if the good society of 1815 could appear

before their more moderate descendants, in the state they were

generally reduced to after dinner, the moderns would pronounce

their ancestors fit for nothing but bed.

Sheridan’s success in life, as well as his attachment to party, was

mainly owing to his connection with one of whom we shall next speak,

viz. Charles James Fox. A few months after his first appointment to

office, Walpole went to the House to hear the young orator, and he

tells us--

Fox’s abilities are amazing at so very early a period, especially

under the circumstances of such a dissolute life. He was just

arrived from Newmarket, had sat up drinking all night, and had not

been in bed.

More than once is he said to have taken his place in the House of

Commons in a state of absolute intoxication.

Mr. George Otto Trevelyan, M.P., gives in his _Early History of

Charles James Fox_ a very bad picture of the drinking habits of great

men in England at that period.

These were the days when the Duke of Grafton, the Premier, lived

openly with Miss Nancy Parsons. _Rigby_, the Paymaster of the

Forces, had only one merit, that he drank fair. He used brandy as

the rest of the world used small beer. _Lord Weymouth_, grandson of

Lord Cartaret, had more than his grandfather’s capacity for liquor,

and a fair portion of his abilities. He constantly boozed till

daylight, even when a Secretary of State. His occasional speeches

were extolled by his admirers as preternaturally sagacious, and

his severest critics admitted them to be pithy. Walpole made the

following smart hit at him: ‘If I paid nobody, and went drunk to

bed every morning at six, I might expect to be called out of bed

by two in the afternoon to save the nation, and govern the House

of Lords by two or three sentences as profound and short as the

proverbs of Solomon.’ ‘They tell me, Sir John,’ said George the

Third to one of his favourites, ‘that you love a glass of wine.’

‘Those who have so informed your Majesty,’ was the reply, ‘have

done me great injustice; they should have said a bottle.’ ‘Two

of the friends of Philip Francis, without any sense of having

performed an exceptional feat, finished between them a gallon and

a half of Champagne and Burgundy, a debauch which in this unheroic

age it almost makes one ill to read of.’

The sobriety of Pitt has been the subject of much debate. Mr.

Jeaffreson has well said that free livers delight to attribute their

own failings to great people who are free from them. Till Lord Stanhope

relieved Pitt’s fame of groundless aspersions of intemperance, it

suffered from drunken epigrams, and the idle tales of pot-loving

detractors. Of the former, the following is a specimen:--

On folly every fool his talent tries;

It needs some toil to imitate the wise;

Though few like Fox can speak--like Pitt can think,

Yet all like Fox can game--like Pitt can drink.

Perhaps no form of detraction is so insidious as caricature, and Pitt

was its sport. The pencil of Gillray was busy in 1788 with a caricature

entitled, _Market Day--Every Man has His Price_. The Ministerial

supporters are represented as horned cattle exposed for sale. The scene

is laid in Smithfield. At the window of a public-house adjoining appear

Pitt and Dundas, a jovial pair drinking and smoking.

Again, when the dearth of 1795 was just beginning, a print by the same

Gillray represents a convivial scene at Pitt’s country house. It is

entitled, ‘_God save the King! in a bumper; or, an Evening Scene three

times a Week at Wimbleton_.’ Pitt is trying to fill his glass from the

wrong end of the bottle, while his companion, grasping pipe and bumper,

ejaculates the words, ‘Billy, my boy--all my joy!’

Still there is an element of truth underlying both epigram and

burlesque; but, having admitted this, we may assert that his wont

formed a contrast to the wild habits of many of his contemporaries,

and that with justice he was favourably compared by the Court with the

irregularities of Fox and his associates.

Professor Richard Porson was at one time a prominent figure in the

_Cider Cellars_ in Covent Garden. It was his nightly haunt. It was

there that one of his companions is said to have shouted in his

presence, ‘Dick can beat us all; he can drink all night and spout

all day.’ This sounds bad, but it must be remembered that Porson had

struggled long on the then miserable pittance attached to the Greek

Professorship at Cambridge, 40_l._ a year, and had suddenly obtained

the post of head librarian of the London Institution, with a salary

increased five-fold. He thus had facilities for indulgence, and with

them, possibly for a time, the appetite. An _habitual_ drunkard he

was not. Like Johnson, he could practise abstinence more easily than

temperance. He lived in days when the leading statesmen and politicians

were not ashamed of being seen under the influence of wine, and

though Porson has been vilified for his occasional intemperance, it

may, without much hesitation, be affirmed that it was his reforming

principles in Church and State that brought much of the obloquy upon

him.

Thomson, the author of the _Seasons_, was a convivial man.

Mrs. Hobart, Thomson’s housekeeper, often wished Quin dead, he made

her master drink so. He and Quin used to come sometimes from the

Castle together at four o’clock in a morning, and not over sober

you may be sure. When he was writing in his own house he frequently

sat with a bowl of punch before him, and that a good large one too.

The following anecdote is told of him:--

Mr. H. of Bangor said he was once asked to dinner by Thomson, but

could not attend. One of his friends who was there told him that

there was a general stipulation agreed on by the whole company,

that there should be no hard drinking. Thomson acquiesced, only

requiring that each man should drink his bottle. The terms were

accepted unconditionally, and when the cloth was removed a

three-quart bottle was set before each of his guests. Thomson had

much of this kind of agreeable humour.

His _Autumn_ came out in 1730, in which occur the lines:--

But first the fuel’d chimney blazes wide;

The tankards foam; and the strong table groans

Beneath the smoking sirloin, stretch’d immense

From side to side; in which with desperate knife

The deep incision make, and talk the while

Of England’s glory, ne’er to be defaced

While hence they borrow vigour; or amain

Into the pasty plunged at intervals,

If stomach keen can intervals allow,

Relating all the glories of the chace.

Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst

Produce the mighty bowl; the mighty bowl,

Swell’d high with fiery juice, steams liberal round

A potent gale, delicious as the breath

Of Mäia to the love-sick shepherdess

On violets diffus’d, while soft she hears

Her panting shepherd stealing to her arms.

Nor wanting is the brown October, drawn

Mature and perfect from his dark retreat

Of thirty years; and now his honest front

Flames in the light refulgent, not afraid

Even with the vineyard’s best produce to vie.

* * * * *

At last these puling idlenesses laid

Aside, frequent and full the dry divan

Close in firm circle; and set ardent in

For serious drinking. Nor evasion sly,

Nor sober shift, is to the puking wretch

Indulg’d apart; but earnest brimming bowls

Lave every soul, the table floating round,

And pavement, faithless to the fuddled foot.

* * * * *

Before their maudlin eyes

Seen dim and blue the double tapers dance,

Like the sun wading through the misty sky.

Then sliding soft, they drop. Confus’d above

Glasses and bottles, pipes and gazeteers,

As if the table even itself was drunk,

Lie a wet broken scene; and wide below

Is heap’d the social slaughter: where astride

The lubber Power in filthy triumph sits

Slumbrous, inclining still from side to side,

And steeps them drench’d in potent sleep till morn.

Perhaps some doctor, of tremendous paunch

Awful and deep, a black abyss of drink,

Outlives them all; and from his buried flock

Retiring, full of rumination sad,

Laments the weakness of these latter times.

In _Autumn_, somewhat later, he sings the praises of _cider_:--

The piercing cider for the thirsty tongue;

Thy native theme and boon inspirer too,

Phillips, Pomona’s bard, the second thou

Who nobly durst in rhyme-unfetter’d verse

With British freedom sing the British song;

How from Silurian vats high-sparkling wines

Foam in transparent floods; some strong to cheer

The wintry revels of the labouring hind;

And tasteful some to cool the summer hours.

Again, we read a few lines later of the autumnal vintage:--

Round the raised nations pours the cup of joy:

The claret smooth, red as the lip 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.

Wordsworth says of the _Seasons_:--‘Much of it is written from

himself.’ Probably this is true.

In 1798 was published a collection of the dramatic works of John

O’Keefe. In the following lines from his _Poor Soldier_ occurs a phrase

which has become household:--

Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale,

From which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Vale,

Was once Toby Filpot’s, a thirsty old soul

As e’er _cracked a bottle_ or fathomed a bowl.

The allusion is simply to drunken frolics, during which glass

was broken. Mr. Oldbuck says in the _Antiquary_:--‘We never were

glass-breakers in this house.’

In 1805 Robert Bloomfield published his rural poem, the _Farmer’s

Boy_. It is a very humorous and suggestive account of the manners

of clod-hopping England as engaged about the Harvest-home supper

in Suffolk and Norfolk, here entitled the _Horkey_. This has been

already discussed. Suffice it to add that Bloomfield’s charming little

provincial ballad, entitled, _The Horkey_, has been recently published

by Macmillan, and is abundantly illustrated.

But of all the marvellous issues from the press at the beginning

of the present century, nothing could be more monstrous than the

publication of a work entitled ‘_Ebrietatis Encomium; or, the Praise

of Drunkenness_, wherein is authentically and most evidently proved

the Necessity of Frequently Getting Drunk; and the Practise is most

ancient, primitive, and Catholick.’

The author, not unnaturally, thinks that some apology is needed in his

preface. He declares that he did not undertake the work on account of

any zeal he had for wine, but only to divert himself(!), and not to

lose a great many curious remarks he had made upon this most Catholic

liquid.