‘Show me that proud stoick that can bear success and Champain; philosophy can support us in hard fortune, but who can have patience in prosperity?’[297]
Farquhar shows his usual keen observation of the minutest features of the life of his day in his allusion to the flask—the pear-shaped flacon in which Champagne made its entrée into fashionable life.[298] Archer, in his ditty on ‘trifles,’ thus warbles:
‘A flask of Champaign, people think it
A trifle, or something as bad;
But if you’ll contrive how to drink it,
You’ll find it no trifle, egad!’[299]
Congreve, in evident reference to the still wine, thus writes to Mr. Porter, husband of the celebrated actress, from Calais, August 11, 1700:
‘Here is admirable Champaign for twelvepence a quart, as good Burgundy for fifteenpence; and yet I have virtue enough to resolve to leave this place to-morrow for St. Omers, where the same wine is half as dear again, and may be not quite so good.’[300]
Champagne suffered like other French wines from the War of Succession and the Methuen Treaty, by which the Government strove to pour Port wine down the throats of the people. The poets and satirists, supported by Dean Aldrich, ‘the Apostle of Bacchus;’ the miserly Dr. Ratcliffe, who ascribed all diseases to the lack of French wines, and imputed the badness of the vintages he was wont to place upon his table to the difficulty he experienced in obtaining them; the jovial Portman Seymour; the rich ‘smell-feast’ Pereira and General Churchill, Marlborough’s brother, together with a host of ‘bottle companions,’ lawyers, and physicians, united to fight against this attempt.[301] They would drink their old favourites, in spite of treaties, and would praise them as they deserved; and means were found to gratify their wishes. According to official returns, the nominal importation of French wines fell in 1701 to a trifle over two thousand tons; and though this quantity was only once exceeded up to 1786, the influence of a steady demand, a short sea-passage, an extensive coast-line, and a ridiculously inefficient preventive service in aid of the high duty need to be taken into consideration. The contraband traders of the beginning of the century smuggled French wine into England, just as they continued to do at a later period into Scotland and Ireland, when the taste for ardent spirits which sprang up in the Georgian era rendered the surreptitious import of ‘Nantz’ and ‘Geneva’ the more profitable transaction as regarded England. Farquhar throws light on one method pursued when Colonel Standard hands Alderman Smuggler his pocket-book, which he had dropped, with the remark:
‘It contains an account of some secret practices in your merchandising, amongst the rest, the counterpart of an agreement with a correspondent at Bordeaux about transporting French wine in Spanish casks.’[302]