Hardly an ideal landlord of the past, though, was old John Willet. A far better stamp of host was Gabriel Varden, the locksmith, who took deep draughts of sparkling home-brewed ale, from a goodly jug of well-browned clay, for breakfast, and who was one of the “Maypole’s” best customers. Mr. Chester—whose interview with his son will remind the student of Monsieur le Marquis’s interview with his nephew, in A Tale of Two Cities—was a judge of wine, though not given to over-indulgence in the bowl, like his bastard, Maypole Hugh; and Lord George {218} Gordon’s favourite brew appears to have been hot mulled wine. As for the rest of the rioters, they drank, after the manner of rioters, anything they could get.
The first mention of wine in A Tale of Two Cities is the fall and breakage, pro bono publico, of a large cask of inferior claret in the district of St. Antoine—emblematic of the blood to be spilt in Paris later on—which called forth the delightful, philosophic remark of Defarge, the master of the wine-shop to which the cask had been consigned: “It is not my affair. The people from the market did it. Let them bring another.” But the chief imbibers in the book are Sydney Carton and Serjeant Stryver, the pushing and successful advocate for whom the other “devilled.” Stryver, we gather from Edmund Yates’s Reminiscences, was modelled by Dickens, from Mr. Edwin James, Q.C., who at one time “stood high in popular favour,” and who “liked talking.” There is plenty of subsequent moderate drinking—in Defarge’s wine-shop principally—but with the exception of these two advocates, Stryver and Carton—“what the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas might have floated a king’s ship”—nobody appears to swallow an undue amount of alcohol, in this the most powerful, and the saddest, of all Dickens’s books.
I could never wade through Our Mutual Friend, and Little Dorrit is not one of my favourite books. It was ruthlessly mauled by the Saturday Review soon after its appearance, and Thackeray’s openly expressed opinion of the work was “Little D. is Deed stupid.” I have {219} heard another great man express the same opinion of it, in more elegant language. There is not much revelry in Little D. until we get to the second volume; and with the exception of Blandois the strangler and the romantic Flora nobody appears to have a really good thirst. In the Marshalsea the “collegians” were evidently worse provided with alcoholic comfort than in the Fleet; and this is all which can be written in this chapter about Little Dorrit.
Nicholas Nickleby, on the other hand, is full of allusions to the flowing bowl. Most of the characters—Smike being a notable exception—moisten their clay in some way or other, from dear old Crummles, who is introduced to our notice with a rummer of hot brandy-and-water in one hand, to the ruffian Squeers. Newman Noggs owed his fall in life to the bold, bad, bottle, and Mantalini presumably took to gin together with the washer-woman, in his declining years. The Brothers Cheeryble were evidently the right sort of people to dine with—although their dinner-hour would hardly suit the present generation—especially if they had many magnums of that famed “Double Diamond.” Sir Mulberry Hawk and his lordly victim drank deep, after the fashion of the day; whilst the keeper of the “rooge-a-nore from Paris” booth on Hampton race-course stimulates the energies of his patrons with excellent champagne, port, sherry, and (most likely) British brandy. Old Gride keeps a bottle of “golden water”—presumably the Dantzic liqueur, “Acqua d’Oro,” mentioned in my chapter on that form of fluid—in his cupboard, {220} and doles out on one occasion a minute glass thereof to Newman Noggs, who would evidently, like the farmer at the audit dinner, prefer it “in a moog.” Mr. Lillyvick, the collector of water-rates, was especially partial to punch—which was “cut off” so unexpectedly for the benefit of Nicholas, after his walk from Yorkshire to the metropolis; and the whole of Mr. Crummles’s company, ladies included, liked a taste of the same beverage. Finally, John Browdie, the good genius of the book, was a fellow of infinite swallow, always ready for his meals, and never behindhand when there was a full jug or bottle handy. And it is recorded that upon being knocked up by Nicholas, on the visit of the last-named to Yorkshire, with the news of Squeers’s trial and sentence, “forced him down upon a huge settle beside a blazing fire, poured out from an enormous bottle about a quarter of a pint of spirits, thrust it into his hand, opened his mouth, and threw back his head as a sign to him to drink it.” And before breakfast, too!
Bill Sikes, on occasion, drank brandy “at a furious rate”; but more often poverty prevented his slaking his thirst on anything more deadly than Spitalfields ale, or eleemosynary gin. The whole of Mr. Fagin’s pupils drank whenever opportunity offered, either malt liquor or gin-and-water out of pewter pots; but the Jew himself, with the innate caution of his race, avoided the wiles of the bowl. Nancy was an “habitual,” in her youth, most probably, or she would not have chummed up with such a criminal crew; and as for Monks, the disorder known as {221} delirium tremens was no stranger to him. Bumble and his wife were not averse to a social glass; and even the charity-boy, Noah Claypole, indulged, during the absence of his master, the undertaker, in oysters, porter, and some sort of wine, name not mentioned. As far as we are told, the decent members of society in Oliver Twist were very moderate in their potations; although it is in my mind that Mr. Fang, the stipendiary, was a port-wine man.
In The Old Curiosity Shop we get allusions to liquids of all kinds, from orange-peel and water, the favourite beverage of the Marchioness, to the truly-awful “wanities” of Quilp, which took the form of over-proof rum, boiled, burnt brandy, or raw Schiedam out of a keg. Quilp, by the way, if amusing enough, is the most exaggerated character ever invented by the great novelist, and has no business out of the realms of pantomime. But he was very, very funny, as impersonated by “Johnny” Clarke in the long ago. Dick Swiveller was a swindler by profession, although like many of these a boon companion, speechifier, and framer of jovial sentiments. The “rosy wine” was represented at his humble home by geneva-and-water, and his astonishment when Mr. Brass’ lodger made a brew of “extraordinary” rum-and-water in “a kind of temple, shining as of polished silver,” at the same time cooking a steak, an egg, and a cup of coffee, in the same temple, can only have been exceeded by his joy at getting something really decent to drink.
The strolling performers with whom Nell and Grandfather travelled did themselves {222} particularly well, especially dear old Mrs. Jarley, whose consideration for her own comforts was fully equalled by her desire for the worldly welfare of others.
In Bleak House allusions to the bowl are infrequent. The rag-shop “Lord Chancellor” cremated himself with the aid of gin, and Mr. Tulkinghorn had a weakness for old port. Mr. Bucket favoured brown sherry, and Harold Skimpole would nibble a peach and sip claret, with an execution in his house. This is one of the best characters drawn by Dickens; and although the type is not a familiar one, I have met him in the flesh.
Dombey and Son is by no means a “thirsty” work; though Joey Bagstock was a votary of the bowl, like old Mrs. Brown. The rest of the company put together (I except “the Chicken”) would not have enabled a publican to pay his rent, and one of the most melancholy parts of the book is the mention made therein of only one bottle of the old Madeira remaining in the cellar of Sol Gills, at a time when most of the other characters in the book—male and female—are making use of his house.
Next to my Pickwick I love my Great Expectations. Brandy-and-tar-water, imbibed by Pumblechook, in mistake, at the Christmas dinner, should properly come under the heading of “Strange Swallows”; but the capacity of those two bottles of port and sherry, which he brought as a present on that occasion, has always been a puzzle to me. Joe, probably, would not be allowed more than a glass, and, naturally, {223} little Pip would be out of it; but there remained Wopsle, Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and Pumblechook himself; whilst afterwards the sergeant joined in the treat, and had two glasses. And all these people were served from one bottle; for we are distinctly told that the second cork was not drawn until the first bottle had been emptied.