Then gaily row his bark from shore;
While we and every jolly fellow
Hear unconcerned the oar
That dips itself in wine!’
By this time the inspiration and the Champagne were alike exhausted.
The history of Champagne in England during the latter half of the present century may be briefly summed up in the assertion of the ever-growing popularity of the wine, and the high repute attained by certain brands, which it would be invidious to particularise. Its success in oiling the wheels of social life is so great and so universally acknowledged that its eclipse would almost threaten a collapse of our social system. We cannot open a railway, launch a vessel, inaugurate a public edifice, start a newspaper, entertain a distinguished foreigner, invite a leading politician to favour us with his views on things in general, celebrate an anniversary, or specially appeal on behalf of a benevolent institution without a banquet, and hence without the aid of Champagne, which, at the present day, is the obligatory adjunct of all such repasts.
When the Municipality of London welcome the Khan of Kamschatka to our shores and to the Guildhall, Champagne flows in the proverbial buckets full. When the Master and Wardens of the Coalscuttle-Makers’ Company bid the Livery to one of their periodical feasts, scandal says that even this measure is exceeded. When Sir Fusby Guttleton gives one of his noted ‘little spreads’ at Greenwich, are not torrents of iced ‘dry’ needed to quench the thirst excited by the devilled bait? Aware, too, of the unloosening effect the wine exercises upon the strings of both heart and purse, Pomposo, as chairman at the annual festival of the Decayed Muffinmongers’ Asylum, is careful to see that the glasses of the guests have been well charged with it before he commences his stirring appeal on behalf of that deserving institution.
Does Ingenioso wish to introduce to the notice of the British public a new heating-power or lighting-apparatus or ice-making machinery, he straightway issues cards for a private view to critics and cognoscenti, and is careful that these shall observe the merits of his invention through the medium of a glass—bubbling over with Champagne. So it is at the openings of the latest extension of the Mugby Junction Railway and of the Palatial Hotel, at the private view of the Amicable Afghans, or Tinto’s new picture, or any one of Crotchet’s manifold inventions. If the bidding, too, flags at a sale of shorthorns or thoroughbreds, at a wink from the auctioneer the Champagne-corks are set a-popping, and advance promptly follows advance in responsive echoes.
Not less important is the part that Champagne plays in the City. Capel Crash, the great financier, literally floats the concerns he deigns to ‘promote’ by its agency. When Consol, the millionaire, makes one of a set for rigging the market, and the ‘ring’ thus formed has reaped the reward of their ingenuity, does he not entertain his intimate friends with the story and with the choicest Champagne? The amount of business, moreover, transacted by the aid of the wine is incalculable. Bargains in stocks and shares, tea and sugar, cotton and corn, hemp and iron, hides and tallow, broadcloth and shoddy, are clinched by its agency. On the other hand, many a bit of sharp practice has been forgiven, many a hard bargain has been forgotten, many a smouldering resentment has been quenched for ever, and many an enmity healed and a friendship cemented, over a bottle of Champagne.