Elie Berthet tells us of a poor wretch, who, on being offered the usual refreshment, quietly swallowed the wine, and coolly put the bread in his pocket. When again in the cart, his observant Confessor asked him his reason for the act. “I suppose, Father,” answered the moribund, “that the good sisters furnished me with the bread that it may serve me in paradise; on earth, at all events, it can no longer be of use to me.” “Be of good cheer,” said another Confessor, who was encouraging a criminal on the Grève; “be of good cheer. To-night you will sup in paradise.” “Tenez, mon Père,” answered the poor fellow; “allez-y-vous à ma place; car, pour moi, je n’ai pas faim.” This incident has been made good use of by the “ballad” writers both of England and France.
“Bowl-yard,” St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, preserves in its name the memory of a similar custom in England. This yard, or alley, adjacent to the church, is a portion of the site of the old Hospital for Lepers, the garden of which was a place of execution. Lord Cobham, under Henry V., and Babington and his accomplices, for conspiring against Elizabeth, were executed here. Stow tells us that, “at this hospital, the prisoners conveyed from the city of London toward Tyburn, there to be executed for treason, felonies, or other trespasses, were presented with a great bowl of ale, thereof to drink at their pleasure, (?) as to be their last refreshment in this life.” In later days, the criminals were sometimes supplied by their friends from the public-houses on the line of road. In one case, a convict happily tarried drinking for a longer space of time than usual. The rope was just round his neck, when the arrival of a reprieve saved him. Had he drunk a glass less, he would have been hanged a moment sooner; and society would thus have been deprived of his valuable services. He was a luckier man than the saddler in Ireland, who, on his way to the gibbet, refused the ale and wine offered him on the road, who was accordingly very rapidly dispatched, and for whom a reprieve arrived a minute too late for him to profit by it. Hence the proverb, applied by those who press reluctant people to drink, “Ah, now go away wid you. Ye’re like the obs’inate saddler, who was hanged for refusing his liquor.” It certainly was not a custom with Irish convicts to decline the “thrink,” before trial or after. “The night before Larry was stretch’d,” is a slang lyric, graphically illustrative of the grace with which Irish criminals took leave of life. The most singular thing, however, connected with the popular lay in question, is, that it was written by a Clergyman. But, at the time of its production, such authorship excited no surprise in the literary public. The “cloth” was still of the quality of that in which Fielding’s Newgate Chaplain walked; and he, it will be remembered, was a pious gentleman, who candidly avowed that he was the rather given to indulge in punch, as that was a liquor nowhere spoken against in Scripture!
But it was not English or Irish Chaplains, of the olden time, who stood by themselves in their respect for good liquor. If that reverend and rubicund gentleman, Walter de Mapes, wrote the best Latin drinking-song that Bacchanalian inspiration ever produced, so did a German Prelate preach the best sermon on the same text. I allude to the Bishop of Triers, or Trèves. Here is an odour, caught by the way, of the full bottle of counsel which he poured out to his hearers:—
“Brethren, to whom the high privilege of repentance and penance has been conceded, you feel the sin of abusing the gifts of Providence. But, abusum non tollit usum. It is written, ‘Wine maketh glad the heart of man.’ It follows, then, that to use wine moderately is our duty. Now there is, doubtless, none of my male hearers who cannot drink his four bottles without affecting his brain. Let him, however,—if by the fifth or sixth bottle he no longer knoweth his own wife,—if he beat and kick his children, and look on his dearest friend as an enemy,—refrain from an excess displeasing to God and man, and which renders him contemptible in the eyes of his fellows. But whoever, after drinking his ten or twelve bottles, retains his senses sufficiently to support his tottering neighbour, or manage his household affairs, or execute the commands of his temporal and spiritual superiors, let him take his share quietly, and be thankful for his talent. Still, let him be cautious how he exceed this; for man is weak, and his powers limited. It is but seldom that our kind Creator extends to any one the grace to be able to drink safely sixteen bottles, of which privilege he hath held me, the meanest of his servants, worthy. And since no one can say of me that I ever broke out in causeless rage, or failed to recognise my household friends or relations, or neglected the performance of my spiritual duties, I may, with thankfulness and a good conscience, use the gift which hath been intrusted to me. And you, my pious hearers, each take modestly your allotted portion; and, to avoid all excess, follow the precept of St. Peter,—‘Try all, and stick by the best!’”
The sermon is not a bad illustration of what was, and remains, historical fact. The first Archbishop of Mayence was the Englishman Boniface; and most of his successors might have been characterized by his name. They were more powerful than the Emperors, and more stately than Moguls. The Canons of the Cathedral, supported by its enormous revenues, lived a jovial life. The Pope, indeed, reproved them for their worldly and luxurious habits; but they uproariously returned for answer, “We have no more wine than is needed for the Mass; and not enough to turn our mills with!”
Good living, as it was erroneously called, was certainly, at one time, an universal observance in Germany, when the sole wish of man was, that he might have short sermons and long puddings. When this wish prevailed, every dining-room had its faulbett, or sot’s couch, in one corner, for the accommodation of the first couple of guests who might chance to be too drunk to be removed. Indeed, in German village-inns, the most drunken guests were, in former days, by far the best off; for, while they had the beds allotted them, as standing in most need of the same, the guests of every degree, whether rich or poor, the perfectly sober—wherever such phenomena were to be found—and those not so intoxicated but they could stagger out of the room, all lodged with the cows among the straw.
Probably, no country on the earth presented such scenes, arising from excessive drinking, as were witnessed in Saxony and Bohemia, a few generations back. These scenes were so commonly attended by murder, or followed by death, that it was said to be better for a man to fall among the thickest of his enemies fighting, than among his friends when drinking. There were deadly brawls in taverns, deadly drunken feuds in the family circle, and not less deadly contentions in the streets. When the city-gates were closed at night, the crowds of drunkards, issuing to their homes in the suburbs, were met by as dense and drunken a crowd, returning from their revels in the country. And then came the insulting motion, the provoking word, the hard blow, and the harder stab. Then fell the wounded and the dead; then rose the shrieks of women and of children, and, loud above them, the imprecations and blasphemies born in the wine-sodden brains of men. Suddenly, a shot or two is fired from the walls, right into the heaving mass below. And then ensue the flying of the people, and the venting of impotent rage from the rash and resolute. But, gradually, the two opposing streams glide through each other, the gates are at length closed; and, by the light of the moon, on the almost deserted esplanade, may be observed, stretched on the ground, some half-dozen human forms. Some of these are dead, some are still drunken and helpless, and both equally uncared for.
This is no overdrawn picture of an ancient German period. It is on record that once, on the banks of the Bohemian Sazawa, a party of husbandmen met for the purpose of drinking twelve casks of wine. There were ten of them who addressed themselves to this feat; but one of the ten attempting to retire from the contest before any of his fellows, the remaining nine seized, bound him, and roasted him alive on a spit. The murderers were subsequently carried to the palace for judgment; but the Duke’s funeral was taking place as they entered the hall, and the Princes who administered justice were all so intoxicated, that they looked upon the matter in the light of a joke that might be compensated for by a slight fine.
There was a joyous revelry at that time in every direction. A father would not receive a man for a son-in-law who could not drink; and in Universities the conferring of a degree was always followed by a carouse, the length of which was fixed, by College rules, as not to exceed eight hours’ duration. Yet, during this generally dissolute period, a strange custom was prevalent at the tables of Nuremberg. In all well-regulated households, there used to hang a little bell beneath the dining-table; and this bell was struck by the master of the family, if he were sober enough, whenever any one uttered an unseemly phrase.
Even so, in public, a voice of indignation was sometimes raised against the profligacy of the period. The voice to the people at large was as the bell to the guests at Nuremberg. Its effects who can tell? It may have induced Luther to be content with dignified Virgil rather than with unclean Plautus; it may have driven the Monk Schwartz from the refectory to the alembic; and it may have called Gutenberg from the brutalities of the camp to the wonders of the printing-press. In the two latter cases, the consequences bear a very tipsy appearance; for it was a soldier who invented printing, and a Monk who first manufactured gunpowder!