Chapter XI: Hanoverian Period (2)

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:--