Ale or beer are rarely if ever produced at regular set dinners now-a-days, though at quiet family parties of three or four, or in private houses en famille, table beer, ale, and stout are often used by invalids; and occasionally are taken from choice by young, middle-aged, and elderly people who drink both ale and wine. At the mid-day meal called lunch, also, beer is an article not unfrequently taken by those young ladies who exhibit so little appetite for dinner at fashionable tables at eight o’clock.
The beers most generally consumed in London are Bass’s and Allsopp’s bitter beer, and Guinness’s Irish stout. All these, when obtained genuine, are excellent, and I believe wholesome, but they should be used very sparingly indeed when wine is taken. Dr. Paris tells us that the most useful quality in the beer comes from the hop. “Independently,” says he, “of the flavour and tonic virtues which hops communicate, they precipitate by means of their astringent principle the vegetable mucilage, and thus remove from the beer the active principle of fermentation; without hops, therefore, we must either drink our malt liquors new and ropy, or old and sour.” The nutricious qualities of malt liquors, for those who live much in the open air, who hunt, shoot, or use much corporeal exercise, cannot be disputed. But the studious and the sedentary would do well to avoid beer, if wine be consumed by them at the same meal.
Good cider is an exceedingly wholesome beverage for persons who exercise much in the open air, and it relieves thirst better than malt liquors, but it is now never seen at a London dinner-table, and is only to be met at country houses in Devonshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, or Herefordshire, or occasionally in some of the common rooms of Oxford and Cambridge.
According to the accounts of some modern writers, it is not more than four centuries since cider has been introduced into France. Be this as it may, provincial academies in all parts of Normandy, Brittany, and the higher Pyrenees, have agitated the question for years and years together de origine cidri, and it seems now to be agreed by these men, or literati, that the invention is due to the Biscayans, who taught the natives of Barbary to fabricate it; who, in their turn, taught the art to the Normans. It is certain, if we are to believe Du Perron, that when the Normans, in the sixteenth century, had not sufficient cider for their own consumption, they drew their supply from Biscay; but long before the period contended for either by Normans or Biscayans, cider was drunk at the table of the French kings of the first race.
In France the best ciders are produced in the Pays de Caux, in the Valley d’Auge, and in the beautiful country of the Cotentin. Francis I., in passing by Morsalines in 1532, found the cider so good, that he purchased a considerable quantity, of which he drank so long as the provision lasted. The finest cider in England, taken in the gross, is made in Herefordshire; but there is a particular kind made in Somersetshire which, for softness, fulness, and velvety flavour, surpasses the Herefordshire cider. It is called by the extraordinary name of Cocky Gee. The best cider in France goes by as extraordinary a cognomen. It is called the Cue-Noué, and is pronounced by Charles Etienne unequalled for softness, bouquet, and beauty of colour. There was a college in Oxford in my younger days, two of the fellows of which used to yearly obtain hogsheads of this Cocky Gee cider from an old clergyman in Somersetshire, who made the liquor from the produce of his own orchard. Never was there a more delicious beverage. Full-flavoured, soft, creamy, yet vigorous, it was preferred to any champagne.
Of perry, it is not necessary I should say much, as it has a great affinity to champagne. The pious Radegonde, according to the legend, drank perry water to mortify herself. The three best species of perry are made with the Poire de Ciré, the Robert, and Carisi. The first does not keep, the second flies to the head, and the third, though it has the same effect, is renowned for its strength, limpidity, and muscadel flavour. Two centuries and a half ago this country imported much cider and perry from Normandy. About the same period, great quantities were sent to Paris from the provinces; but, so soon as it was perceived that the cabaretiers made use of it to adulterate their wines, the use of the beverage was forbidden.
It was not till about a century ago that the usage of hydromel at dinner and dessert altogether ceased. In the thirteenth century this beverage was made by adding twelve pints of water to one of honey; but it was then so insipid and flat, that aromatic herbs, foreign and domestic, were added to give it pungency. Hydromel thus prepared was called bogerase, borgerafre, or borgeraste. In the monkish houses it was used as a treat on feast-days. In the coutumes of the order of Cluni it is called potus dulcissimus. The clergy, in those days, had, like the laity, their periods of festivity and rejoicing. In the repasts of the northern nations, beer was always served with dessert, and, even in the present day, in Hamburg, Lubeck, Altona, Kiel, Dantzic, and many other of the northern parts of Germany, nuts and ale are considered a rare treat. It is a mistaken notion to think that beer is a modern beverage, or that its use is exclusively confined to England. The Egyptians had two sorts of beer, one called zythus, the other curmi or carmi. Belon, in his “Observations sur les Singularités trouvées en Grèce et en Asie,” inclines to the opinion that the curmi was made with the whole grain, and that the zythus was, like the posca of the Latins, a species of orgeat, made with the flour of the grain, which was kept in paste and diluted for the occasion. The ancient Gauls knew but two beverages, wine and beer. The use which they made of beer is attested by Diodorus Siculus, by Athenæus, by Theophrastus, and by Pliny. Diodorus and Theophrastus state that the Gauls called their beer zythus. If this be true, it is not improbable that they received from the Egyptians both the name and the beverage. Be this as it may, it is certain that the insensate order which Domitian gave, to tear up all the vines in Gaul, rendered the use of beer but the more general. Nor did the permission of Probus to replant the vine cause a more general use of the juice of the grape; for, about eighty years after his reign, the Emperor Julian complains of the general use of beer, and even condescends to brew an epigram against the bitter and wholesome beverage. To Probus, however, every lover of wine is indebted. The wines of Burgundy, Champagne, and even Tokay, owe to him their existence.[27] Speaking of this emperor, Crevier says:—“Je m’étonnerais que ce prince n’eût pas été célébré par les buveurs comme un nouveau Bacchus, si les buveurs étoient savans.[28] Il prit soin lui-même de faire planter en vigne par les soldats le Mont Alma près de Sermim sa patrie, et le Mont d’or dans le Moesie supérieure, et il donna ces vignobles aux habitans du pays, en les chargeant du soin et des frais de la culture.”
Julian, on the contrary, affected or followed sobriety, disdained the use of beer, and, though he praises the severe and simple manners of his beloved Paris, την φιλην Aευκετιαν,[29] yet he austerely chides the intemperance of the Gauls, while admitting the excellence of their vines. That the vines were rare in his time, and wine dear, is plain from the fact that the Parisians of that early day were in the habit of drinking beer, as the middle classes of England do in the year of grace, 1864. Thus, 1500 years ago, to speak in round numbers, the Parisians commenced their repasts with beer, and finished with wine. The custom still subsists both in England, Flanders, and Germany, though it may be said to be nearly fallen into disuse in France. At the table of the Burgundian kings it was customary to serve both wine and cider at the same time; and if Thierri, King of Burgundy, drank both wine and cider at the same meal, who will deny that the French kings may not have drunk wine and beer? Charlemagne, in his capitulary de villis, directs that among the workmen to be employed on his farms there shall be some who know how to make beer. It is a remarkable fact, that the fairest and most favoured countries of the earth—the countries producing the best wines, Greece, Gaul, Italy, and Spain—have simultaneously used beer. The council of Aix-la-Chapelle regulated the quantity of beer and wine which should be consumed by both sexes in religious houses. In a rich house, situated in an abundant wine country, each regular canon was daily allowed five pounds’ weight of wines, and each chanoinesse three. If it were a country not thickly studded with vines, the allowance was three pounds of wine with three of beer for the canon, and two of beer and two of wine for the chanoinesse. There were brewhouses in all the ancient monasteries. In going through Picardy, Normandy, and Brittany, even in our own day, the spot where the brewhouse formerly existed is always shown. When the monks drank beer they were wise enough to brew it themselves, and were not tributary to the Barclays, Meuxs, Calverts, Guinnesses, Basses, Hodsons, and Allsopps of the day. Within the walls of the convent were the ovens, the vats, and even the mills necessary for the grain. There exists a charter of Henry I. (1042) in favour of the monastery of Montreuil-sur-Mer, by which the monarch grants to that house two of those mills cerevisiæ usibus de servientes. In our own country the custom of brewing in religious houses survived the Reformation, and the beer of Trinity and Christchurch is now just as good as it was in the time of William of Wykeham, Archbishop Chichele, Hugh de Balsham, or William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich.
As the number of vineyards increased in France, the use of beer diminished, until it became at length uncommon to see it at the table of a layman. In the thirteenth century that very Paris, which under the Emperor Julian had scarcely any other beverage than beer, could hardly count a brewer. But the fraternity who delight in gentian, coculus Indicus, mazerion, liquorice root, and grains of paradise, again appeared in numbers towards 1428. The author of the “Journal de Paris,” composed under the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., attributes this descent from wine to beer to the oppressive taxation and heavy exactions of Charles VI. Among the memoirs furnished to the Duke of Burgundy in 1698 by the different intendants of the kingdom, on the state of France, the memoir of the intendant of Paris remarks that the misery and distress of the people had considerably diminished the commerce of wine in his district; whilst the consumption of beer, on the contrary, increased in proportion, so that in the same year the brewers had consumed 80,000 setiers (the setier was twelve bushels) of barley, without counting the corn employed for white beer. At this period beer in France was made of barley and rye, but meslin, corn, vetches, and lentils, were also added. The seeds or flowers of hops were added only when wheat or barley was used.