MORE FRIGHTFUL EXAMPLES
Eating and drinking the only work of the monks — Nunc est bibendum —
An apology for Herodotus — A jovial pope — Good quarters in Provence
— Intemperance of holy men — A tippling bishop — Alexander the Great
— “Lovely Thais sits beside thee” — A big flare-up — Awful end of
Alec — Cambyses always shot straight — Darius the strong-of-head —
Philip drunk and Philip sober — Dionysius gets blind — Tiberius loved
the bowl — So did Flavius Vobiscus, the diplomatist — Bluff King Hal
— The Merry Monarch and the Lord Mayor — Dear old Pepys — A Mansion
House wine-list — Minimum allowance of sack — A slump in brandy — A
church-tavern — Dean Aldrich — The Romans at supper — “The tippling
philosophers.”
Not even popes, saints, or bishops were exempt from accusations of
loving the juice of the grape, or of the apple, too well. We read in
the adages of Erasmus that it was a proverb amongst the Germans that
the lives of the monks consisted in nothing but eating and drinking.
One H. Stephens says on this subject, in his apology for Herodotus:—
“But to return to these proverbs, theological wine, and the abbot’s,
or prelate’s, table. I say {12} that without these one could never
rightly understand the beautiful passage of Horace:—
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus; nunc Saliaribus
Ornare pulvinar Deorum
Tempus erat dapibus sodales,
nor this other:—
Absumet haeres Caecuba dignior
Servata centum clavibus: et mero
Tinget pavimentum superbo
Pontificum potiore coenis.”
Modern popes have always had a reputation for abstemiousness; but this
same Mr. Stephens—who must have been somewhat of a slander-monger—in
his same apology for Herodotus (what about the apology for Stephens?)
mentions a popular little song of the day, which commenced:—
Le Pape qui est à Rome
Boit du vin comme un autre homme,
Et du l’Hypocras aussi.
And I can recall a cheery, albeit most likely libellous, song, which
some of us used to sing at school, beginning:—
The Pope he leads a joyous life.
It appears to be a fact that many former popes drank hard; and if
Petrarch is to be believed, the long stay made by the court of Rome
at Avignon was on account of the excellence of the French wines; and
that it was merely for that {13} reason that they stayed so long in
Provence, and removed with so much reluctance.
Now for the saints. Although the fact of his drinking deep has been
denied, St. Augustine appears to have confessed to “a day out”
occasionally, in some such words as these: “Thy servant has been
sometimes crop-sick through excess of wine. Have mercy on me, that it
may be ever far from me.”
Amongst the bishops one instance must suffice. “Pontus de Thiard,” as
appears from an old translation of the works of an eminent Frenchman,
“after having repented of the sins of his youth, came to be bishop
of Chalons-sur-Soane; but, however, he did not renounce the power of
drinking heavily, which seemed then inseparable from the quality of a
good poet. He had a stomach big enough to empty the largest cellar; and
the best wines of Burgundy were too gross for the subtility of the fire
which devoured him. Every night, at going to bed, besides the ordinary
doses of the day, in which he would not suffer the least drop of water,
he used to drink a bottle before he slept. He enjoyed a strong, robust,
and vigorous health, to the age of fourscore.” Dear old Pontus!
Of all other mighty men, Alexander the Great serves to best point the
moral of the evils of intemperance. Wearied of conquering, this hero
gave himself up to debauchery in its worst and wildest forms. He killed
his foster-brother in a fit of drunkenness, and subsequently, at the
bidding of “lovely Thais,” queen of the {14} Athenian _demi-monde_,
set fire to, and burnt to the ground, Persepolis, the wonder of the
world. What an awakening Alec must have had! Not that he was the first,
nor yet the last, man to make a fool, or rogue, of himself, at the
bidding of the (alleged) gentler sex. Cleopatra corrupted a few heroes,
and as for La Pompadour ⸺ but those be other stories. Alexander the
Great, who had lost most of his greatness by that time, died from the
effects of chronic alcoholism; although they didn’t tell me as much as
this at school.
Cambyses was but little removed from a sot. This prince, having been
told by one of his courtiers that the people thought Cambyses indulged
in too many “drunks” for the good of the nation, reached for his best
bow and his sharpest arrow, and, the courtier having retired out of
range, shot the courtier’s son through the heart; after which the
prince enquired of the courtier: “Is this the act of a drunkard?”
which reminds me of a more modern anecdote, of a Piccadilly roysterer.
But some men can shoot straighter, and ride better, and write more
poetically, when under the influence of the rosy god; and had this
courtier been a man of the world he would not have touched on the
subject of ebriation to his prince. For ebriates are but seldom proud
of their weaknesses.
Darius, the first King of Persia, commanded that this epitaph, which is
here translated, should be placed on his tomb: “I could drink much wine
and bear it well.” Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great,
took too much wine on {15} occasion; to corroborate which fact we
have the exclamation of the good lady whose prayer for justice he had
refused to hear—this is a quotation beloved of members of Parliament—“I
appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.” Dionysius the younger,
tyrant of Sicily, frequently had vine-leaves in his hair for a week
at a time; he drank himself almost blind, and his courtiers, in order
to flatter him, pretended to be blind too, and neither ate nor drank
anything unless it were handed to them by Dionysius himself. Tiberius
was called Biberius, because of his excessive attachment to the bowl;
and, in derision, they changed his surname of Nero to Mero. Bonosus,
according to his own historian, Flavius Vobiscus, was a terrible
soaker, and used to make the ambassadors, who came from foreign parts,
even more drunk than himself, in order that he might discover their
secret instructions.
I cannot glean from the ancient records that any monarch who reigned
over Great Britain was an habitual drunkard, an absolute and confirmed
sot. But many of them were given to conviviality, notably Richard
of the Lion Heart, Bluff King Hal—who had gout badly, and suffered
also from obesity and other things—and the Merry Monarch. A story is
told of the Second Charles, that when dining with the Lord Mayor,
Sir Robert Viner, on one occasion—it was probably a 9th of November
dinner at the Mansion House—the King noticed that most of the guests
were uncomfortably uproarious, and, with his suite, rose to leave the
banqueting chamber. Whereupon the Lord Mayor hastily {16} pursued him,
caught hold of his robe, and exclaimed: “Sire, you shall take t’other
bottle.” The King stopped, and with a graceful smile repeated a line
of the old song, “He that is drunk is great as a king,” and with this
compliment to his host, he returned, and took “t’other bottle.”
The immortal Pepys describes a Lord Mayor’s Feast which was given in
1663. It was served at one o’clock, and a bill of fare was placed,
together with a salt-cellar, in front of every guest; whilst at the end
of each table was a list of “persons proper” there to be seated. Pepys
was placed at the merchant-strangers’ table, “where ten good dishes to
a mess, with plenty of wine of all sorts.” Napkins and knives were,
however, only supplied at the Lord Mayor’s table to him and the Lords
of the Privy Council; and Pepys complains bitterly that he and those
who were seated with him had no napkins nor change of trenchers, and
had to drink out of earthen pitchers. He, however, took his spoon and
fork away with him, as was customary in those days with all guests
invited to entertainments. But as each guest brought his own tools,
nobody was the worse for this custom. The dinner, says Pepys, was
provided by the Mayor and two sheriffs for the time being, and the
whole cost was between £700 and £800.
We are not told what was drunk at the Mansion House on that occasion,
but I have a list before me of the potables served at the Lord Mayor’s
banquet in 1782—more than a century later—which seems deserving of
mention in this little work:— {17}
Port 438 bottles
Lisbon 220 „
Madeira 90 „
Claret 168 „
Champagne 143 „
Burgundy 116 „
Malmsey, or Sack 4 „
Brandy 4 „
Hock 66 „
────
Grand Total 1249 „
There be several remarkable features in the above list. I had imagined
that a taste for claret had not been fully acquired by the British
ratepayer until some years later than this; whilst the virtues of
champagne could not have been fully recognized. Lisbon, I conceive
to have been another sort of port, and this seems to have been
neck-and-cork above all other vintages in popular favour. The taste
for such mawkish stuff as malmsey must have been at vanishing point;
whilst one is led to ask what, with only such a minute allowance of
sack, did these feasters drink with their soup? Was the succulency of
calipash and calipee known in those days; and if so, where was the
harmless necessary milk-punch? But the most remarkable feature of all
in the above catalogue is the meagre allowance of brandy for the crowd.
The parable of the loaves and fishes would not appear more miraculous
than that, in these later days, a multitude could be filled, after
a big dinner, with _four_ bottles of cognac! And this despite the
fact of whisky having almost entirely usurped the place of the other
strong-water. {18}
One hundred years ago, to be “drunk as a lord” was considered the
height of human happiness. And at this period the Church had not
severed its old connection with alcohol. In fact intemperance was
encouraged by our pastors and masters; and in certain districts of
England the churchwardens, at Whitsuntide, made collections of malt
from the parishioners, and this was brewed into strong ale, and sold in
the churches, the money so obtained being expended on the repairs of
the sacred edifices; and it was a frequent and a saddening spectacle
to see men who had drunk not wisely reeling about the aisles. Until
as late as 1827—in which year the license was withdrawn—a church and
a tavern were covered by the same roof, in the parish of Deepdale, a
village between Derby and Nottingham; and a door which could be opened
at will led from the altar to the tap-room.
A Romish priest wrote in praise of the bowl as follows:—
Si bene commemini, causae sunt quinque bibendi:
Hospitis adventus; praesens sitis; atque futura;
Aut vini bonitas; aut quaelibet altera causa.
Which comforting and jovial sentiments were thus adapted for the use of
colleges and private bars, by Dean Aldrich, D.D., the great master of
logic at Oxford:—
There are, if I do rightly think,
Five reasons why a man should drink:
Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest you should be by and by⸺
Or any other reason why. {19}
But after all no nation ever did themselves so well, in the matter of
wines, as the inhabitants of bad old ancient Rome.
“It was to excess of drinking,” wrote Whyte Melville, in _The
Gladiators_, “that the gluttons of that period looked as the especial
relief of every entertainment; since the hope of each seemed to be
that when thoroughly flooded, and so to speak washed out with wine,
he might begin eating again. The Roman was no drunkard, like the
barbarian, for the sake of that wild excitement of the brain which is
purchased by intoxication. No, he ate to repletion that he might drink
in gratification. He drank to excess that he might eat again.”
Further on the same writer remarks: “Whilst marvelling at the quantity
of wine consumed by the Romans in their entertainments, we must
remember that it was the pure and unadulterated juice of the grape,
that it was in general freely mixed with water, and that they imbibed
but a very small portion of alcohol, which is the destructive quality
of all stimulants.”
As to the Roman vintages being “in general freely mixed with water,”
I have grave doubts. I have an idea that Maecenas would have made
it particularly warm for that slave who might have dared to water
his old Falernian; and, take them altogether, an amusement-loving,
and playgoing public, for whom the legitimate drama took the form of
certain brave men and fair women being torn and eaten by wild beasts,
would hardly have been content with such drink for babes as “claret
cold.” {20}
Ancient poets were not less backward than modern votaries of the muses;
and it is related of the poet Philoxenus that he was frequently heard
to express the wish that he had a neck as long as a crane’s, that he
might the longer have the pleasure of swallowing wine, and of enjoying
its delicious taste. I have heard the same wish expressed, during much
more recent years.
One more old song, translated from a French _chanson à boire_, and I
take my leave of the awful habits of the ancients (I trust) for ever.
It is called
THE TIPPLING PHILOSOPHERS.
Diogenes, surly and proud,
Who snarl’d at the Macedon youth,
Delighted in wine that was good,
Because in good wine there is truth;
But growing as poor as a Job,
Unable to purchase a flask,
He chose for his mansion a tub,
And lived by the scent of the cask.
[Neither the air, nor the chorus, of this song is given in the old MS.
But I would suggest the old air of “Wednesbury Cocking,” with a little
“tol-de-rol” at the finish of each verse.]
Heraclitus ne’er could deny
To tipple and cherish his heart,
And when he was maudlin he’d cry,
Because he had empty’d his quart;
Tho’ some are so foolish to think
He wept at men’s folly and vice,
’Twas only his fashion to drink
Till the liquor flow’d out of his eyes. {21}
Democritus always was glad
Of a bumper to cheer up his soul,
And would laugh like a man that was mad
When over a good flowing bowl.
As long as his cellar was stor’d,
The liquor he’d merrily quaff,
And when he was drunk as a lord
At those who were sober he’d laugh.
Aristotle, the master of arts,
Had been but a dunce without wine,
And what we ascribe to his parts
Is due to the juice of the vine.
His belly most writers agree
Was as big as a watering trough,
He therefore leap’d into the sea,
Because he’d have liquor enough.
Old Plato, the learned divine,
He fondly to wisdom was prone,
But had it not been for good wine,
His merits had never been known;
By wine we are generous made,
It furnishes fancy with wings,
Without it we ne’er should have had
Philosophers,
poets, or kings.
{22}