which drew from Byron the terror-stricken comment, ‘What say you to such a supper with such a woman?’[334]
During the third quarter of the eighteenth century a cloud dims the lustre of Champagne. It was then looked upon by a vast majority as only a fit accompaniment to masquerades, ridottos, ultra-fashionable dinners, and Bacchanalian suppers. ‘The Champaign made some eyes sparkle that nothing else could brighten,’[335] says the contemporary account of one of those scenes of shameless revelry held under the title of masquerades at the Pantheon, and the orgies that, under the auspices of Mrs. Cornelys, disgraced Carlisle House were mainly inspired by the consumption of the same wine. The citizens of the Georgian era, who had lost the tastes of their fathers, hated French wines simply because they were French; and the hundred thousand gallons imported on an average annually from 1750 to 1786 were entirely consumed amongst the upper or the dissipated classes. Though smuggling was still looked upon as patriotic, if not loyal, those engaged in it had discovered that, thanks to the combined effects of duty and demand, Nantes brandy and Hollands gin paid better. What, indeed, is to be thought of the taste of an era that produced poets whose muse sought inspiration in punch, and who had the sublime audacity to extol the rum of the West Indies above the produce of ‘Marne’s flowery banks’?[336] Only a few of the higher-class men, however, engaged in literature and art seem to have retained a preference for French wine. The accounts of the Literary Club established by Sir Joshua Reynolds show the average consumption at each sitting to have been half a bottle of Port and a bottle of Claret per head. Johnson drank Port mixed with sugar from about 1752 to 1764; became a total abstainer until 1781, and then seems to have given the preference to Madeira.
THE LITERARY CLUB.