Cobblers have already been mentioned as devotees of strong malt drinks, and many a cozier’s catch celebrates this propensity. Here is one:—
Come, sit we here by the fire-side, And roundly drink we here, Till that we see our cheeks ale-dyed, And noses tanned with beer.
Shoemakers and cobblers used to call a red-herring a pheasant, and in the same inflated style term half a pint of beer half a gallon, and a pint of beer a gallon, much after the manner of Caleb Balderstone in The Bride of Lammermoor.
Tinkers, too, swore by Ceres and not by Bacchus, as Herrick shows in his Tinker’s Song.
Along, come along, Let’s meet in a throng Here of tinkers; {292}
And quaff up a bowl, As big as a cowl, To beer-drinkers.
The pole of the hop Place in the ale shop, To bethwack us, If ever we think So much as to drink Unto Bacchus.
Who frolic will be For little cost, he Must not vary From beer-broth at all So much as to call For canary.
Last century may be said to have brought the vice of heavy drinking to its highest pitch. Statesmen, Judges, dignitaries of the Church—all joined in the riotous living of the time. The usual allowance for a moderate man at dinner seems to have been two bottles of port. Men were known as two-bottle men, three and four-bottle men, and even in some instances six-bottle men. Lord Eldon, who was himself inclined to get a little merry after dinner, relates an amusing story in his Anecdote Book, which is illustrative of the habits of the day. He tells how Jemmy Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s Biographer, while on assize, so exceeded the bounds of moderation one evening, that he was found by his friends lying on the pavement very drunk. His comrades, of whom Lord Eldon (then Mr. Scott) was one, subscribed a guinea amongst them, and sent Boswell a bogus brief, instructing him to move the Court the next day for a writ of Quare adhæsit pavimento. Much to the astonishment of the learned Judge who presided, Mr. Boswell actually made the application in due course. The whole court was convulsed with laughter, and the unfortunate counsel, turning this way and that in his perplexity, knew not what to make of it. At last a learned friend came to his assistance. “My lord,” he said, “Mr. Boswell adhæsit pavimento last night; there was no moving him for some time. At length he was carried to bed, and has been dreaming of what happened to himself.” Where such manners prevailed in the {293} upper ranks of life, the lower orders were not likely to be more sober. As a matter of fact, gin ran riot amongst the working classes in the great centres of population, spreading corruption of morals and ruin of health on every side.
One more instance of a huge drinker may be given: One Jedediah Buxton was curious enough in his drinking habits to calculate the number of pints of ale or strong beer that he had drunk free of cost to himself since he was twelve years of age, and the names of the gentlemen at whose houses he had consumed them. The list began with the Duke of Kingston, 2,130 pints; Duke of Norfolk, 266 pints; Duke of Leeds, 232, and so on through a long list, of which it need only be said the total amounted to 5,116 pints or winds, as he termed them, because, he said, he never took more than one wind, or breath, to a pint and two to a quart. Surely this man deserves to rank among the curiosities of the subject. Happily times have changed and drunkenness, we may hope, will soon cease to be counted a national vice. Bearing in mind the excesses to which drinking was carried in the last century, it cannot be denied that much progress has been made in the direction of moderation; and that the habits of the whole people—slow and difficult as such habits are to change—have undergone a very marked improvement. Ere the next century has had time to grow from youth to old age, it may be impossible to find in any rank of the population a man who could say of an evening’s amusement like the old Scotch Shepherd, “It was a grand treat, for before the end o’t there was na ane of us able to bite his ain thoomb!”