"His Grace Archbishop Manners-Sutton
Could not keep on a single button.
As for Right Reverend John of Chester,
His waistcoats open at the breasts are.
Our friend has filled a mighty trunk
With trophies torn from Bishop Monk,
And he has really tattered foully
The vestments of good Bishop Howley.
No buttons could I late discern on
The garments of Archbishop Vernon,
And never had his fingers mercy
Upon the garb of Bishop Percy;
While buttons fly from Bishop Ryder
Like corks that spring from bottled cyder."
From Macaulay and bottled Cyder (or Cider) the transition is easy to that admirable delineator of life and manners, Mrs. Sherwood; she was pretty much a contemporary of Macaulay's, and was a native of Worcestershire, which in its Cider-bearing qualities is not far removed from Herefordshire, beloved of Philips. Few but fit is the audience to which Mrs. Sherwood still appeals; yet they who were nurtured on "The Fairchild Family" still renew their youth as they peruse the adventures of Lucy, Emily, and little Henry: "The farmer and his wife, whose name was Freeman, were not people who lived in the fear of God, neither did they bring up their children well; on which account Mr. Fairchild had often forbidden Lucy, Emily, and Henry to go to their house." However, go they did, as soon as their parents' backs were turned; and Mrs. Freeman "gave them each a large piece of cake and something sweet to drink, which, she said, would do them good." But it turned out to be Cider, and did not do them good, for, "as they were never used to drink anything but water, it made them quite drunk for a little while."
The mention of Worcestershire as a cider-growing county aptly introduces my unfailing friend Lord Beaconsfield, for, though he is less precise than I could wish in praise of Cider, he compliments it indirectly in his pretty description of "a fair child, long-haired, and blushing like a Worcestershire orchard before harvest-time." Once, indeed, the lover of Disraelitish romance seems to find himself on the track of Cider. Harry Coningsby is overtaken by a thunderstorm in a forest, and, taking refuge in a sylvan inn, makes friends with a mysterious stranger. The two travellers agree to dine together, when this eminently natural dialogue ensues. "'But Ceres without Bacchus,' said Coningsby, 'how does that do? Think you, under this roof, we could invoke the god?'
"'Let us swear by his body that we will try,' said the stranger.
"Alas! the landlord was not a priest of Bacchus. But then these enquiries led to the finest Perry in the world." If only the Perry had been Cider, this quotation had been more apposite; but the themes, though not identical, are cognate.
We have traced the praise of Cider in poetry and in romance, but it also has its place in biography, and even in religious biography. One of the most delightful portraits of a saint which was ever drawn is Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving." In the autumn of 1834—the last autumn of his life—that Prophet and man of God made a kind of apostolic journey through Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Wales. From Kington, in Herefordshire, he wrote to his wife: "My dinner was ham and eggs, a cold fowl, an apple tart, and cheese; a tumbler of Cider, and a glass of Sicilian Tokay." And he adds a tender reference to "Ginger Wine in a long-necked decanter." It is always satisfactory to find the good things of this life not reserved exclusively for bad people.
Sydney Smith, though a Canon of St. Paul's, was scarcely a Saint and not at all a Prophet; and through the study-windows of his beautiful parsonage in Somersetshire, he gazed on the glories of the Cider-vintage with an eye more mundane than that of Edward Irving. In 1829 he wrote from Combe Florey—"the sacred valley of flowers," as he loved to call it: "I continue to be delighted with the country. The harvest is got in without any rain. The Cider is such an enormous crop that it is sold at ten shillings a hogshead; so a human creature may lose his reason for a penny."
Cider is, I believe, still drunk at Oxford; and memory retains grateful recollections of Cider-cup beautiful as a liquid topaz, with a cluster of blue flowers floating on its breast. But the Cider-Cellars of London—places of, I fear, ill-regulated conviviality—have, as far as I know, long since closed their doors. Yet they, too, have their secure place in literature. The "Young Lion" of the Daily Telegraph, who looked forward to succeeding Dr. W. H. Russell as War Correspondent of the Times, thrilled with excitement at the prospect of inoculating the Leading Journal with "the divine madness of our new style—the style we have formed upon Sala. It blends the airy epicureanism of the salons of Augustus with the full-bodied gaiety of our English Cider Cellar." But that was written in 1870, and the style and the Cellars alike are things of the past. The official historian of Cider excels in that "dry light" which is the grace of history, and gravely tells us that "Cider (Zider, German) when first made in England was called wine." With a proper reluctance to commit himself to what is antecedently incredible, he adds that "the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador in France (1699), is said to have passed off Cider for Wine." It is more plausibly stated that in later days the innocuous apple has been artfully mingled with the "foaming grape of Eastern France," and has been drunk in England as Champagne. The Hock-cup at Buckingham Palace is justly vaunted as one of the chief glories of our ancient polity. It is certainly the most delectable drink that ever refreshed a thirsty soul; and the art of concocting it is a State-Secret of the most awful solemnity. But there never was a secret which did not sooner or later elude its guardians; and I have heard that a Royal cellarer, in an expansive moment, once revealed the spell. German Wine and English Cider together constitute the Kingly Cup,
"And, blended, form, with artful strife,
The strength and harmony of life."