Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and the _Times_ are all eloquent in the
praise of alcohol. It lifts us above this dull earth, it fires our
genius, it gives to us the large utterances of the gods. Barry Cornwall
tells us--
"Bad are the times
And bad the rhymes
That scorn old wine."
Leigh Hunt translates "Bacchus in Tuscany," and sanctions such lines as
the following--
"I would sooner take to poison
Than a single cup set eyes on
Of that bitter and guilty stuff ye
Talk of by the name of coffee;"
and the _Times_ everywhere inculcates the idea that, without wine, poetry
and eloquence and wit were dumb and dead. Was Sidney Smith witty, was
Shelley a poet, or was he who in old times drew away the Hebrew multitude
from the crowded streets of Jerusalem out into the desert, whose food was
locusts and wild honey, whose raiment was a leathern girdle--was he not
eloquent, as he warned the terror-stricken mob that hung upon his lips of
the wrath to come? Facts are not in favour of the wine-drinkers. Of
Waller Dr Johnson writes, "In a time when fancy and gaiety were the most
powerful recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller was
forgotten. He passed his time in the company that was highest both in
rank and wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did not exclude him.
Though he drank water, he was enabled by his fertility of mind to
heighten the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr Saville said that
'no man in England should keep him company without drinking, but Ned
Waller.'" "In Parliament," says Burnet, "he was the delight of the
House, and, though old, said the liveliest things of any of them." The
truth is, men have often reserved the outpourings of their mind for the
social glass, and have fallen into the natural mistake of believing that
it was the glass, and not the opportunity and the action of mind upon
mind, that elicited a certain amount of joyous fun. I must quote an
anecdote from Sir Walter Scott's Life to illustrate my meaning. He tells
us one of his school-fellows was always at the top of the class. Young
Scott found that when asked a question the lad alluded to was in the
habit of fumbling one peculiar button. Scott cut off that button. The
next time the poor fellow was asked a question, as usual he put his hand
to fumble the friendly button--alas! it was gone, and with it his power,
and he speedily lost his place. The writers I have quoted, to be
consistent, should argue it was the button that made that lad sharp and
clever.
But if you still doubt, let us test the thing practically. In
Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there is a tavern bearing the honoured name of
Dr Johnson. Dr Johnson lived in this court, and hence, I suppose, the
sign; but the Doctor was a total abstainer. He found he could not be a
moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink altogether. He told
that precious ass, Boswell, to drink water, because if he did that he
would be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank wine he was not so
sure; and Boswell, to whom the idea seems never to have occurred, prints
the remark as an astonishing instance of his hero's sagacity. But I pass
on to modern times. In this Dr Johnson's Tavern is situated "The City
Concert Room." I suppose the City does not care much about concerts, as
I have generally found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome room,
and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty gentlemen, chiefly young ones,
present. You do not see swells here as at Evans's. They are all very
plain-looking people, from the neighbouring shops, or from the warehouses
in Cheapside. Just by me are three pale heavy-looking young men, whose
intellects seem to me dead, except so far as a low cunning indicates a
sharpness where money is concerned. One of them is stupidly beery.
Their great object is to get him to drink more, notwithstanding his
repeated assurances, uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he must
go back to "Islin'ton" to-night. A lady at one end of the room, with a
very handsome blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is screaming
out something about "Lovely Spring," but this little party is evidently
indifferent to the charms of the song. Just beyond me is a gent with a
short pipe and a very stiff collar. I watch him for an hour, and whether
he is enjoying himself intensely, or whether he is enduring an
indescribable amount of inward agony, I cannot tell. A little farther
off is another gent with a very red scarf, equally stoical in appearance.
Behind me are two verdant youths, of limited means I imagine; but they
have the pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and take tickets for
that interesting gentleman's benefit. But the comic singer comes
forward, and sings with appropriate action of the doings of a little
insect very partial to comfortable quarters. That song I have known
fifteen years. I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell sing it.
Night after night in some drinking room in some part of London or other
is a beery audience told--
"Creeping where no life doth be,
A rare old plant is the lively flea."
And after a pursuit very vividly pantomimed, the little stranger is
suffered to be caught, and to tell the catcher that it is his father's
ghost, doomed for a season to walk the earth and nip him most infernally,
and so on. Now I am sure that every one in the room has heard this
dozens of times before, yet old men are laughing as if it was an absolute
novelty. Talk about alcohol brightening men's intellects! When I come
to such places as this, it always seems to me to have a precisely
contrary effect. Men could not sit and hear all these stale witticisms
unless they drank. Sober, I am sure they could not do it, not even if
they were paid for it; and yet all seem enraptured. I remark, however,
one exception. Two waiters help to a seat by my side a very dirty little
man with red eyes, and generally shabby appearance. The waiters set down
by him a glass of grog, offer him a cigar, and then playfully shaking
their fingers at him, as if to intimate he had better be quiet, leave him
to his fate. After a few minutes of deep thought, he looks to me and
beckons. I take no notice. He repeats the signal. I lean forward.
"Very o-old, sir."
"What do you mean?" we ask.
"The comic singer very o-old, sir."
We intimate as much.
"But get him on a fresh piece, sir, and see how he can go-o." Here our
friend began rolling one arm rapidly round the other, to give us an idea
of the comic singer's powers.
"Pity he don't give something new," repeats our friend. Another
assenting nod on our part and the conversation ceases. But we suppose it
is with comic singers as with others. "A man who has settled his
opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his convictions
disturbed," wrote Dr Johnson, and a comic singer does not like to have
the bother of learning fresh songs. But the comic singer was applauded
and encored, and then he treated us to a monologue, in which he describes
how he, the drunken husband, stays out all night, and makes it up with
his "old ooman" when he gets home; and in the course of his remarks of
course he declares teetotalism is humbug, that there was truth in wine,
but he'd be blessed if there was any in water; that the man who would
drink the latter would be a muddy cistern--forgetting all the while the
_tu quoque_ the water-drinkers would very fairly urge, on the authority
even of Mr Henry Drummond; and then I came away, thinking that if
drinking made men witty and light-hearted, I had been very unfortunate on
the night of my visit. Once upon a time, as the writer was in the Cave
of Harmony, the polite manager asked him his opinion of a new comic
singer. Having given it, the red-faced little man turned to us with a
sigh, and said, "Ah, sir, you have no idea what a dearth there is of
comic talent now-a-days." And truly he was right. There is little fun
and comedy and wit anywhere. I know not where they are; I know where
they are not. You will not find them in the taverns where men sit all
the evening listening to music for which they do not care, and drinking
all the while. How should there be, since wine is now admitted to be the
product of the laboratory, not of the grape?