AT THE STAR AND GARTER, RICHMOND.
Statesmen no longer prime themselves with Port before strolling down to the House, till they get into the condition of the two members, one of whom averred that he could not see any Speaker in the chair, whilst the other gravely accounted for the phenomenon of this disappearance by asserting that, for his part, he saw a couple. Perhaps it is to be regretted that the records of the ‘tea-room’ do not vouch for a larger consumption of Champagne, as then perhaps the reporters overnight and their readers the nest morning might escape the wearisome reiteration of purposeless recrimination and threadbare platitudes. Such should certainly be the case, since the power of the wine as an incentive to brisk and sparkling conversation has been universally acknowledged in social life.
‘Now, George, my boy, there’s a glass of Champagne for you. Don’t get such stuff at school, eh?’
‘H’m! Awfully sweet. Very good sort for ladies. But I’ve arrived at a time of life when I confess I like my wine dry.’
(From a drawing by John Leech in ‘Punch.’)
To the dinners of Bloomsbury and Belgravia, as well as the suppers of Bohemia, Champagne imparts a charm peculiarly its own by placing all there present en rapport. The modern mind may well look back with shuddering horror to that dreary period when Champagne, if given at all, was doled out at dinner-parties ‘like drops of blood.’ No wonder the ladies used to fly from the table and the gentlemen to slide underneath it. And, speaking of the ladies, is not Champagne their wine par excellence? How would the fragile products of modern civilisation be able to outdo the most robust of their ancestresses—whose highest saltatory feats were the execution of the slow and stately minuet, the formal quadrille with its frequent rests, or at most the romping country dance—by whirling almost uninterruptedly in the mazes of the giddy waltz from nine in the evening until five in the morning, without the sustaining power the sparkling fluid affords them? Has it not on their tongues an influence equal to that which it exercises on their swiftly-flying feet, inspiring pretty prattle, sparkling repartee, enchanting smiles, and silvery laughter? Old Bertin du Rocheret was quite right when he invited his fair friends to continue drinking