The “Monteith” form of punch-bowl, with removable rim of scalloped form, made thus for the insertion of wine glasses, was known as early as 1701. Nobody can say why the term “Monteith” was applied to this, but presumably it was taken from the inventor or first user, much in the same manner as our current words, sandwich, orrery, cardigan, wellington, identify objects first used by, or contemporary with, the persons whose names they bear.
The punch-bowl is comparatively modern, inasmuch as the beverage itself is not of ancient date. The word “punch” is said to have been derived from the Hindustani, signifying the five ingredients—spirit, water, sugar, lemon, and spice. “A quart of ale is a dish for a king,” says Shakespeare in A Winter’s Tale; “Then to the spicy nut-brown ale,” says Milton in his L’Allegro. With the advent of William III there is no doubt that spirit drinking became prevalent, though it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that the evil became a national crime fostered by the greed of the Government for taxes. The drunkenness in the reign of George II was appalling. William Hogarth, the great satirist of the eighteenth century, holds the mirror to his day in the two prints, Beer Street and Gin Lane, published in 1751. In the former, though it cannot be said to be idyllic, the comparative prosperity of the populace under the beer-drinking regime is satirically compared with their condition under the dominion of Gin in his companion picture, where for gruesome details the graver of the satirist is unsurpassed. In the foreground of this truly horrible print is a woman half in rags, evidently in a drunken condition, while the infant is slipping from her arms into a cellar, from which hangs the distiller’s spirit measure. Hogarth does not believe in half-truths. A stupefied wretch close by is clutching a keg of gin. On an adjacent parapet a dog is sharing a bone with a sot. The pawnbroker is shown as doing a busy trade. A woman is giving gin to her infant from a glass. The tottering buildings with falling bricks are symbolic of the utter rottenness of the social fabric. The spire of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, stands out as indicative of the aloofness of the Church to this devilish orgy. St. Giles is triumphant. The lurid background completes a terrible indictment of the Government of the day—the ghouls lifting a man into a coffin with a naked child at the foot, the bandaged heads and lifted stools of a drunken mob, the drunken man in a wheelbarrow with more gin being poured down his throat. Hogarth with his touch of irony combines the pathos of tears, young children standing innocently apathetic to all this, the everyday environment of their lives. This was Hogarth’s biting criticism on the attempt to stimulate the drinking of spirits and decrease the consumption of beer. Hogarth is coarse, he is offensive, he is brutal; but he deserves well of all who love truth. Rabelais had to paint his satires in gigantic gruesomeness to reach the ear of his day. Brutishness cannot be exorcised by the sprinkling of rose-water.
The punch-bowl comes straight from this period. We take it as we find it, symbolic of days when Members of Parliament did not disdain to hiccough their drunken speeches in the House, when Cabinet Ministers were not ashamed of being drunk.
This belongs to the early Georgian era; it is associated with Jacobite plots, with suppers held in secret, with toasts drunk in solemn ritual to the King over the water. It belongs to the hunting squires and parsons too, to the nabobs from “John Company,” and to the nebulous period of Hanoverian ascendancy. The Stuarts were dead with their fateful, romantic, and final downfall. Their memory lingered in the people’s hearts; it was kept alive by the old religion, and it haunted the songs of the people. But the Georges, by law elect, had planted their feet firmly—and the House of Hanover survived all romance.
Among the classes of punch-bowls the Monteith takes the aristocratic place. Its decoration is pretentious. Its utility, with its removable rim with the scalloped edge, is its claim to recognition, by the collector. The specimen illustrated ([page 135]), in date 1704, comes straight from the days when Charles Mordaunt, Lord Peterborough, performed his marvellous exploits in Spain. He captured Barcelona in 1705. Scholar, wit, man of fashion, he was Commander-in-Chief of the armies and the fleet in the Spanish War. He was as chivalrous as Don Quixote. He married Anastasia Robinson, the prima donna of her day. “Brave to temerity, liberal to profusion, courteous in his dealings with his enemies, a protector of the oppressed, an adorer of woman—the last of the knights-errant. He lived,” says Walpole, his biographer, “a romance, but was capable of making it a history.” This specimen comes straight from these days of sea fight and land fight in Spain and in the Low Countries under Marlborough, when “our army,” to quote Uncle Toby, “swore terribly in Flanders.”
The Queen Anne soberness of design seems to have been discarded in these Monteiths. There is something rococo and elaborate, as though in defiance of established reticence. The heavy ornament of lion’s head and handles, the massive gadrooned edge of the scalloped design, the bowl deeply fluted, the embossed medallion with coat of arms, and the foot enriched with beaded ornament, all indicate that such specimens were regarded as the Standing Cup, so to speak, of the period.
With the punch-bowl an end practically is made of silver vessels for drinking. The sovereignty of glass was now established. Porcelain and even earthenware had made inroads into the silversmith’s domain. The age of modernity was at hand.
