As illustrative of the sustaining powers of brown beer, we may mention an instance which recently came under our notice. A valuable horse belonging to a member of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, & Co. had a serious attack of influenza, with slight congestion of the lungs, and was so ill that it could take no food, and was evidently dying. As a last resource it was offered stout, which it drank greedily. For two weeks it entirely subsisted on this novel diet, and at the end of that time the bad symptoms had almost disappeared. The horse subsequently recovered.
The name Stout was used originally to signify strong or stout beer. This excellent brown beer only differs from Porter in being brewed of greater strength and with a greater proportion of hops. Swift thus mentions the liquor:—
“Should but the Muse descending drop A slice of bread and mutton chop, Or kindly when his credit’s out, Surprise him with a pint of stout; Exalted in his mighty mind He flies and leaves his stars[69] behind.”
[69] Cf. Horace’s “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice,” which was once construed by an ingenuous school-boy, “I will whip the stars with my sublime top ! !”
Many actors, actresses and singers imbibe largely of porter, both for its excellent effects upon the voice and for its restorative and sustaining powers. Fanny Kemble used frequently to apply herself to a vulgar pewter pot of stout in the green room both during and after her {375} performances. Peg Woffington was president of the Beefsteak Club, then held in the Covent Garden Theatre; and after she had been pourtraying on the stage “The fair resemblance of a martyr Queen,” she might have been seen in the green room holding up a pot of porter, and exclaiming in a tragic voice, “Confusion to all order, let liberty thrive.”
Macklin, the actor, who lived to be a centenarian, was accustomed to drink considerable quantities of stout sweetened with sugar, at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden. Porson used to breakfast on bread and cheese and a pot of porter.
A favourite mixture of modern Londoners is known by the name of “Cooper,” and consists of porter and stout in equal proportions. The best account of the origin of this name is one which attributes it to a publican by the name of Cooper, who kept a house in Broad Street, City, opposite to where the Excise Office stood. Cooper was a jolly, talkative host, and associated a good deal with his customers—principally officers of the Excise, bankers’ and merchants’ clerks, and men of that stamp. His guests found on bits of broken plates, pieces of beef steak and mutton chops already priced with paper labels. These they had but to choose, mark their name on the ticket, and carry to the cook at the gridiron, which was in the room in which they dined. Cooper drank and recommended a mixture of porter and stout, the fame of which spread very rapidly. The combination became the fashion in the City, and finally it was brewed entire.
An equally plausible but more invidious derivation of the name is given by Andrew Halliday in his Every-Day Papers. His account is that “Some brewers who are jealous for the reputation of their beer employ a traveller, who visits the houses periodically, and tastes the various beers, to see that they are not reduced too much. This functionary is called the ‘Broad Cooper.’ When the Broad Cooper looks in upon Mr. Noggins, and wants to taste the porter, and the porter is below the mark, Mr. Noggins slyly draws a dash of stout into it; and this trick is so common, and so well known, that a mixture of stout and porter has come to be known to the public and asked for by the name of ‘Cooper.’”
It has been well observed that “Porter-drinking needs but a beginning: whenever the habit has once been acquired, it is sure to be kept up. London is a name pretty widely known in the world; some nations know it for one thing, and some for another. But all nations know that London is the place where porter was invented: and Jews, Turks, Germans, Negroes, Persians, Chinese, New Zealanders, {376} Esquimaux, copper Indians, Yankees and Spanish Americans, are united in one feeling of respect for the native city of the most universally favourite liquor the world has ever known.” When the Persian ambassador left England some years ago, many of his suite shed tears. One of them, struck with the security and peace of an Englishman’s life, when compared to a Persian’s, declared that his highest ideal of Paradise was to live at Chelsea Hospital, where for the rest of his life he would willingly sit under the trees and drink as much porter as he could get.
Much as porter’s praises have been sung, one depreciatory remark is recorded to have been made by the late Judge Maule. “Why do you, brother Maule, drink so much stout?” he was asked by one of the judges. “To bring my intellect down to the level of the rest of the bench,” was the not very flattering reply. It may be mentioned that Judge Maule’s joke was not a new one, for L’Estrange has it thus: “One ask’t Sir John Millesent how he did so conforme himself to the grave justices his brothers when they mette. ‘Why, in faith,’ sayes he, ‘I have no way but to drink myselfe downe to the capacitie of the Bench.’”