excessive drinking, as were witnessed in Saxony and Bohemia, a few
generations back. These scenes were so commonly attended by murder,
or followed by death, that it was said to be better for a man to fall
among the thickest of his enemies fighting, than among his friends when
drinking. There were deadly brawls in taverns, deadly drunken feuds
in the family circle, and not less deadly contentions in the streets.
When the city-gates were closed at night, the crowds of drunkards,
issuing to their homes in the suburbs, were met by as dense and drunken
a crowd, returning from their revels in the country. And then came the
insulting motion, the provoking word, the hard blow, and the harder
stab. Then fell the wounded and the dead; then rose the shrieks of
women and of children, and, loud above them, the imprecations and
blasphemies born in the wine-sodden brains of men. Suddenly, a shot or
two is fired from the walls, right into the heaving mass below. And
then ensue the flying of the people, and the venting of impotent rage
from the rash and resolute. But, gradually, the two opposing streams
glide through each other, the gates are at length closed; and, by the
light of the moon, on the almost deserted esplanade, may be observed,
stretched on the ground, some half-dozen human forms. Some of these are
dead, some are still drunken and helpless, and both equally uncared for.
This is no overdrawn picture of an ancient German period. It is on
record that once, on the banks of the Bohemian Sazawa, a party of
husbandmen met for the purpose of drinking twelve casks of wine. There
were ten of them who addressed themselves to this feat; but one of the
ten attempting to retire from the contest before any of his fellows,
the remaining nine seized, bound him, and roasted him alive on a spit.
The murderers were subsequently carried to the palace for judgment; but
the Duke’s funeral was taking place as they entered the hall, and the
Princes who administered justice were all so intoxicated, that they
looked upon the matter in the light of a joke that might be compensated
for by a slight fine.
There was a joyous revelry at that time in every direction. A father
would not receive a man for a son-in-law who could not drink; and
in Universities the conferring of a degree was always followed by a
carouse, the length of which was fixed, by College rules, as not to
exceed eight hours’ duration. Yet, during this generally dissolute
period, a strange custom was prevalent at the tables of Nuremberg. In
all well-regulated households, there used to hang a little bell beneath
the dining-table; and this bell was struck by the master of the family,
if he were sober enough, whenever any one uttered an unseemly phrase.
Even so, in public, a voice of indignation was sometimes raised against
the profligacy of the period. The voice to the people at large was as
the bell to the guests at Nuremberg. Its effects who can tell? It may
have induced Luther to be content with dignified Virgil rather than
with unclean Plautus; it may have driven the Monk Schwartz from the
refectory to the alembic; and it may have called Gutenberg from the
brutalities of the camp to the wonders of the printing-press. In the
two latter cases, the consequences bear a very tipsy appearance; for it
was a soldier who invented printing, and a Monk who first manufactured
gunpowder!
Let us not hasten to condemn our fellows of the olden time and distant
land. Manners as fearfully outraging prevailed but very recently
among young Englishmen. M. de Warenne, a French officer in our Indian
army, describes the manners and customs there prevalent as any thing
but edifying. In his “_Inde-Anglaise_,” he describes himself, on one
occasion, as being disinclined for study, and consequently joining a
party of his comrades who were at the moment occupied in an unreserved
enjoyment of the pleasures of the table. They were from fifteen to
twenty in number, married and single, but all young, full of hope, good
prospects, and gaiety. Deep were the libations made by this riotous
company, seated at a festive board in the open air, looked down upon by
a brilliant moon, and gently fanned by the evening breeze.
“While the attendant servant,” says the author, “poured out, with
Indian profusion, fresh supplies of tea, coffee, beer, punch, and grog,
a dense vapour rose from our cigars, and joyous shouts rang from every
lip at the conclusion of songs, bacchanalian and anacreontic. Toasts
succeeded each other rapidly, alternately exciting the laughter or
approbation of the carousers. One of them caused in me, at the time,
a singular impression. A young, wild-brained fellow, in pouring out
a bumper, called on us to fill our glasses, in order to sanction the
strange wish of a rash ambition,--‘A bloody war, and a sickly season!’”
The blasphemous sentiment, as M. de Warenne rightly terms it, was
drunk with enthusiasm; and the gay and thoughtless drinkers had yet
the cup to their lips, when one of them was stricken with the cholera,
the presence of which in camp was hardly known;--the next day the
funeral salute was fired over his grave. The author adds, that the
music played on returning from the funeral was joyously and daily
hummed by the daily diminishing survivors. He says that there was a
mockery in the waltzes they continued to dance; for death was also
daily decreasing their orchestra. The stricken, we are told, felt
themselves relieved from further anxiety, recovered their temporarily
shaken self-possession, and died with indifference. The strong who
lived are described as, for the most part, diverting their thoughts,
outraging decency, and defying God, by composing or chanting songs
whose inspiration certainly savours of hell. Here is a specimen of one
of these devil’s canticles, roared over wine, to frighten away the
cholera:--
I.
“We meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter,
It seems as the dead were there.
Then stand to your glasses!--steady!
We drink ’fore our comrades’ eyes;
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
II.
“Not here are the goblets glowing,
Not here is the vintage sweet;
’Tis cold, as our hearts are growing,
And dark as the doom we meet.
But stand to your glasses!--steady!
And soon shall our pulses rise;
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
III.
“There’s many a hand that’s shaking,
And many a cheek that’s sunk;
But soon, though our hearts are breaking,
They’ll burn with the wine we’ve drunk.
Then stand to your glasses!--steady!
’Tis here the revival lies;
Quaff a cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
IV.
“Time was, when we laugh’d at others,
We thought we were wiser then:
Ha! ha! let them think of their mothers,
Who hope to see them again.
No! stand to your glasses!--steady!
The thoughtless is here the wise;
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
V.
“Not a sigh for the lot that darkles,
Not a tear for the friends that sink;
We’ll fall ’mid the wine-cup’s sparkles,
As mute as the wine we drink.
Come! stand to your glasses!--steady!
’Tis this that the respite buys;
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
VI.
“Who dreads to the dust returning?
Who shrinks from the sable shore,
Where the high and haughty yearning
Of the soul can sting no more?
No! stand to your glasses!--steady!
This world is a world of lies!
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!
VII.
“Cut off from the land that bore us,
Betray’d by the land we find,
When the brightest are gone before us,
And the dullest are most behind,--
Stand! stand! to your glasses!--steady!
’Tis all we have left to prize!
One cup to the dead already;
Hurrah for the next that dies!”
After this, the most rigid examiner of public morals in all countries
need not exclusively frown on the old Germans, nor on _their_ profane
canticle, the burthen of which is:--
“_Gaudeamus, igitur, juvenes dum sumus!
Post jucundam juventutem.
Post molestam senectutem.
Nos habebit, nos habebit, nos habebit tumulus!_”
There is, however, more reason, and healthy sentiment, and pure
principle, in such lines as the following,--extracted from Walter
Savage Landor’s “Last Fruit off an Old Tree,”--than in reams of such
fiery invocations to quaff deeply as those cited above. Hear the old
man:--
“The chrysolites and rubies Bacchus brings,
To crown the feast where swells the broad-vein’d brow,
Where maidens blush at what the minstrel sings,
They who have courted, may court now.
“Bring me a cool alcove, the grape uncrush’d,
The peach of pulpy cheek and down mature;
Where ev’ry voice, but bird’s or child’s, is husht,
And ev’ry thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure.”
There was a Persian sage, whose philosophy was of a different
complexion from that of the eloquent moralist of “the old garden
near Bath.” “In what can I best assist thee?” demanded the Minister,
Nizam-al-Mulk, as he warmly greeted his friend, Omar Keyoomee. “Place
me,” said Omar, enamoured of poetry and ease, “where my life may pass
without care or annoyance, and where wine, in abundance, may inspire my
muse.” A pension was accordingly assigned him in the fertile district
of Nishapour, where Omar lived and died. His tomb still exists, and
Mr. J. B. Fraser, in his “Persia,” informs us that he heard Omar’s
story told over his grave by a brother rhymester, and a most congenial
spirit. The system of Omar was explained by himself, in something after
this fashion:--
I ask not for much: let the miser seek wealth;
Let the proud sigh for titles and fame:--
All the riches I ask are a fair share of health,
And the hope of a true poet’s name.
Let the flatterer talk of his worth to the Shah,--
Of his greatness, too, all the day long;--
I envy them not, for I love better far
To pay my poor tribute in song.
A kaftan of honour! a gem from the King!
To be gain’d in the field or divan?
Ah! rather around me the bright mantle fling
Of the poets of gay Laristan.
Let the gems be for those of the glittering crowd,
Who would die, the Shah Inshah to please;
But _I’m_ not ambitious, I never was proud,
I sigh but for sherbet and ease.
Do I wish for command in dark history’s page,
Do I long in fond record to shine?
Yes, let me have sway, till the last sigh of age,
Over cohorts of old Shiraz wine.
And as for renown, it may be very well,
But Keyoomee the honour will wave;
Contented, if some brother rhymester will tell
Keyoomee’s glad life, o’er his grave.
THE MAKING AND MARRING OF WINE.
It used to be said of the old learned and liquor-loving Germans, that
they did not care what Latin they spoke, so long as it _was_ Latin; nor
what sort of wine they drank, so long as it _was_ wine. I have read
somewhere of a feudal German Baron becoming intoxicated upon pious
principles. He was seated, with his wife at his side, at the centre
of his own table, presiding at a banquet. He had drunk till he had
scarcely power left to carry the goblet up to his ever thirsty lips.
The Frau Baroninn had repeatedly remonstrated, in whispers, with her
lord; who replied, that he must needs drink when toasts were given,
or his want of faith would be marked by his guests. He was about to
raise a full goblet to his beard, when his lady, overturning, as if by
accident, the cluster of lights which illuminated the board, begged of
her consort to fling his wine away upon the floor; adding, “It is dark;
nobody will see you.” “Nay,” said the orthodox Baron, solemnly, “God
sees me!” and therewith he finished his draught, and was soon after
conveyed to his couch, under such benison as the Chaplain could give,
who congratulated his master upon the flavour of his wine, and the
strength of his principles!
In no country in the world has more wine been drunk than in Germany;
and no where has adulteration thereof been practised so systematically.
“_Vaticana bibis, bibis venenum_,” says Martial, in the sixth book of
his Epigrams. For “_Vaticana_,” read “_Germanica_;” and the line had,
at one time, as fitting an application. The method pursued appears to
have been of classical derivation; and the Germans, like the Romans,
adulterated their wine with lead. It has been a matter of vexation to
Teutonic scholars, that they have never been able to discover the name
of the ingenious person who first realized the deadly idea of employing
lead in the adulteration of wine. All that they can say of him is, that
he was very wicked, but decidedly clever.
The Roman wine-merchants treated the matter in a business-like way.
Lead arrested the acetous fermentation of wine, did not alter its
colour, and did improve its taste. This was all that was desirable, as
regarded _them_ as merchants. If the beverage gave death, by slow or
speedy means, to those who drank, that was an affair which concerned
the imbibers, their medical men, and their families. They were ignorant
and godless Heathens, of course, who committed this crime; and as
nothing like it has ever been known as a characteristic of some of the
professors of a better dispensation,--why, our righteous indignation
may be intense. One excuse, indeed, may be offered for the old Romans.
“At lover’s perjuries,” as they were told, “Jove himself condescended
to laugh;” and, if so, they might feel canonically certain, that
Mercury would not call them to account, but rather applaud their
proficiency in cheating. But Galen was more just than the gods of
either the Greek or Roman mythology, and sternly denounces the tricks
at which the son of Maia would have smiled.
The same ancients were accustomed to boil new wine in metal vessels;
and, when the quantity had been reduced by the process, to add
sea-water and bad wine, and send the mixture to market as something
that would make the very eyes of Bacchus twinkle with delight. A
process not less distasteful, if less deadly, was that of boiling
lime and plaster of Paris in inferior wine. The former was supposed
to add an intoxicating quality to the mixture, which must have
been as detestable as “Masdeu.” To this day, certain wines of the
Mediterranean are subjected to a similar process; and, perhaps, if lime
be judiciously used, the results may not be very injurious. It corrects
acidity; but too much of it would enable the drinker to find out, as
Falstaff did, that there was “lime in the sack.” We are wise in our
generation, in employing carbonate of soda for this purpose, rather
than lime, slaked or unslaked; and we also do well to reject gypsum,--a
compound of sulphuric acid and lime, and which is seldom procurable
in a sufficiently pure state to authorize its being employed. The
rejection of plaster of Paris, for the purpose of improving wine, is,
however, more general than universal. After all, it is not worse than
calcined shells, and is innocuous when compared with the use of sugar
of lead.
The Roman law was not levelled against the adulteration of wine; it
no more controlled the sale or manufacture, than, in Thevenot’s days,
the Tunisian Government interfered with the sale of wine at Tunis,
which was left to slaves, who did with it as they liked, for their own
profit, and the destruction of infidel stomachs. It was otherwise in
Germany, where Diets were assembled to discuss what was, in truth, no
unimportant matter; the members of which began to think, that if wine
was worth having, it was worth providing for its purity. For centuries
Governments made laws, but bad wine was drunk in spite of them.
Beckmann gives it as his opinion, that wines cannot be poisoned by
gypsum; but _that_ is more readily said than proved. The ancients
clarified their wine with it; but they did so at the expense of
a portion of the spirituous part. Old ordinances against the
adulteration of wine, in Brussels, by vitriol, quicksilver, and _lapis
calaminaris_,--and in France, by lead and litharge,--may still be read
as curiosities, but they have no present application.
A German Monk, named Martin Bayr, is damned to everlasting fame, as
the first who adulterated wines within the territory of the Kaiser.
Pickheimer, the friend of Albert Durer, is particularly inveterate
against Bayr and his followers in evil. The indignation of the lover of
pure wine is carried to an incredible extent. He narrates, in a rapt
fury, the consequences of drinking injurious wines; beginning with
an assurance, that adulterated wine keeps the married childless, and
adding, by a sort of bathos, that it causes certain inward pains, “than
which none can be more excruciating.” He mentions many ingredients
employed, and adverts to some, “the names of which I should be ashamed
to mention;” and then he calls for vengeance on the offenders, both in
this world and the next. “You hang the counterfeiters of the public
coin,” says he; “do not these miscreants, whose misdeeds have caused
indignant Nature to check the growth of our grapes, deserve something
worse? Cast their accursed beverage, I say, into the sewers, and
themselves into the flames: and so may Martin Bayr and his disciples
perish in this world, and inherit everlasting damnation in the next!”
Adulteration, however, still went on, until the penalty of death,
and confiscation of property, was levelled against the employment of
sulphur and bismuth,--used by the most noble of wine-makers to sweeten
their spoiled and sour commodity. Offenders, however, again grew bold.
The tribunals treated them leniently. First, fines were levied; then
came confiscation of property, imprisonment, and hard labour; next,
banishment: and none of these courses meeting the evil, the Judges at
length cut off the head of an incorrigible criminal, Ehrni of Erlingen;
and, for a while, terrified the whole brotherhood of wine-spoilers into
a temporary observance of honesty.
The next struggle which occurred in Germany, was between those who
applied tests to detect the presence of metals, and those who invented
processes to defy them. It was a scientific struggle between two
species of assassins,--those who swiftly killed by brewing poisonous
wine, and the physicians who racked their brains to invent detective
tests, and save their patients for a slower process of extinction. This
was very rudely said by rude people, who looked upon themselves as the
victims sought for by two contending parties,--the distillers on one
side, and the doctors on the other.
The use of milk by the Greeks was, probably, not for adulterating, but
for refining, their wines. Isinglass is at present generally employed
for the last-mentioned purpose.
As it is the tendency of the world to improve, so the not
inconsiderable world of adulterators in England has profited, like
philosophers, by the discoveries of those who have preceded them. A
mixture of strong port, rectified spirit, Cognac brandy, and rough
cider, can be concocted into what is called “fine old crusted port.” It
costs the maker about sixteen shillings a gallon, and is sold retail
at five shillings a bottle. Sloe-juice is another ingredient, and
poisonous tinctures give it a seductive hue. Powder of catechu does
for it what hair-powder does for the individual,--gives a crust of
antiquity to secure for it the veneration of the ignorant. A decoction
of Brazil-wood, and a little alum, will impart to the corks the
requisite air of corresponding age; and these the credulous gaze at and
believe.
“Madeira, neat as imported,” is the definition of a beverage cleverly
manufactured much nearer Fenchurch-street than Funchal. Home-made
Madeira is a compound of bad port, Vidonia, that African nastiness
called “Cape,” sugar-candy, and bitter almonds; and the Vidonia, which
is an ingredient in itself, often adulterated with cider and rum; and a
little carbonate of soda, “to contumace the appetite’s acidities.” The
lowest and cruellest insult to human taste and stomachs is, perhaps,
the adulteration of Cape. It is bad enough in itself; but Cape, with
something worse in it, is only fit for the thirsty hounds of Pluto.
Gooseberry, passed off as Champagne, is an impostor, and even with
strawberries in it, to give it an aristocratic pinkness, it is still
a deception; but, compared with Cape, even in its best condition,
gooseberry _may_ be imbibed without very much disgust.
A _fracas_ between the waiters and their employers at the last Lord
Mayor’s dinner, betrayed another pleasant process regarding wine. The
attendants in question declared that, after many hours’ toil, they
had not had a glass even out of a _dovered_ bottle. They were as much
surprised when the Magistrate asked the meaning of “_dovering_,” as
the sailor was, when he stood before a Lord High Chancellor ignorant
of the signification of “’baft the binnacle.” A complaisant Ganymede
enlightened the darkened mind of the metropolitan Cadi: “_Dovering_,”
said he, “is the collecting of three-quarter emptied decanters from the
dinner-table, and re-decantering the same, serving it up as freshly
uncorked.” Dover has the bad reputation of being the locality where
this process was first invented.
One of the most ingenious--perhaps we should say, one of the
most scientific--tricks that we have heard of, in connexion with
wine-doctoring, proves that the modern chymical brewers of superior
beverages, which seem what they are not, are vastly superior to the
mere experimentalists of former days. In the royal cellars of Carlton
House, there was enshrined, if we may so speak, a small quantity of
wine which, like the gems worn by the Irish lady, was both “rich and
rare.” It was only produced by George IV. when he had around him his
most select and wittiest friends. The precious deposit gradually
diminished; year by year, as in the case of the famous sha-green
skin of the French novelist Balzac, it grew less; until, at last, a
couple of dozen bottles only were left, gleaming at the bottom of
their bins like gems in a mine, and full of liquid promise to those
who needed the especial comfort which it was their duty to impart.
These, however, were left so long unasked for, that the gentlemen of
the King’s suite who had the control of the grape department, deemed
them forgotten, and at their own mirthful table drank them all but
two, with infinite delight to themselves, and to the better health of
their master. They soon found, however, that there was “garlic in the
flowers,” as the Turkish proverb has it; and their embarrassment was
not small, when the King, giving his orders for a choice dinner on a
certain night, intimated his desire that a good supply of his favourite
wine should grace the board. In Courts, “to hear is to obey;” and the
officials who had drunk the wine, at once resorted to an eminent firm,
well-skilled to give advice in such delicate wine-cases. The physician
asked but for a sample bottle, and to be told the exact hour at which
the favourite draught would be asked for. This was complied with, and
in due time a proper amount of the counterfeit wine was forwarded to
Carlton House, and there broached and drunk with such encomiums, that
the officers who were in the secret had some difficulty in maintaining
an official gravity of countenance. The brewer of the new wine was
certainly a first-rate artist; and if he ever achieved knighthood
and a coat-of-arms, I would give him a “Bruin” for his crest, and,
“The drink! the drink! dear Hamlet!” for his device. This anecdote,
I may farther notice, has often been told, and nearly as often been
discredited; but I am assured by an officer of the household, who
speaks “_avec connaissance de fait_,” that it is substantially true.
One of the merits of the wine above mentioned consisted in its great
age. There has, indeed, always been a sort of mania for wine that
bears the load of years. But this rage is pronounced by Cyrus Redding
to be one of the most ridiculous errors of modern epicurism. The “bee’s
wing,” the “thick crust on the bottle,” the “loss of strength,” and so
on,--all these are declared by the best judges to be nothing more than
forbidding manifestations of decomposition, and the disappearance of
the very best qualities of the wine. Many years ago, I made a “note” on
this subject, but am now unable to recollect from what work, nor can I
say whether the following remarks on the qualities of wine were made by
the author of an original work, or by a reviewer commenting thereon.
Such as they are, however, they are not without value.
“The age of maturity,” says the writer, “for exportation from Oporto,
is said to be the second year after the vintage; probably sometimes
not quite so long. Our wine-merchants keep it in wood from two to six
years longer, according to its original strength, &c. Surely this
must be long enough to do all that can be done by keeping it. What
crude wine it must be to require even this time to ameliorate it! the
necessity for which must arise either from some error in the original
manufacture, or a false taste, which does not relish it till time has
changed its original characteristics.