My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

"That Jotham-first-fable, the bramble and vine,
Piles up to a climax the praise of good wine;
For in Judges we read—look it up, as you can—
'It cheereth the heart, both of God and of man;'
And everywhere lightness, and brightness, and health,
Gild the true temperance texts with their wealth,
Giving strong drink to the ready to perish,
And heavy-heartedness joying to cherish.

"What is wanted—and let some Good Templar invent it,
Damaging drunkenness, nigh to prevent it,
Is a drink that is nice, warm, pleasant, and pale,
Delicious as 'cakes,' and seductive as 'ale,'
Like 'ginger that's hot in the mouth' and won't hurt you,
As old Falstaff winks it, in spite of your virtue;
A temperate stimulant cup, to displace
Pipes, hasheesh, and opium, and all that bad race;
Cheap as pure water and free as fresh air—
Oh, where shall we find such a beverage—where?

"No wine for the pure or the wise—so some teach—
Abstinence utter for all and for each,
Total denial of every right use,
Because some bad fools the good creature abuse!
As well might one vow not to warm at a fire,
Nor give the least rein to a lawful desire,
Because some have recklessly burnt down their houses,
Because the rogue cheats, or the reveller carouses!
I see not the logic, the rational logic,
Conclusive to me, coherent and cogic,
That since some poor sot in his folly exceeds,
I must starve out my likings, and stint out my needs.

"Am I that brother's keeper? He is not an Abel,
Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table:
I know not his mates, we are not near each other,
He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!—
But there's your example?—The drunkards can't see it,
And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it;
Example?—Your children!—No doubt it is right
To be to them always a law and a light;
But moderate temperance is the vise way
To form them, and hinder their going astray;
Whereas utter abstinence proves itself vain,
And drunkards flare up because good men abstain.

"The law of reaction is stringent and strong,
A youth in extremis is sure to go wrong,
For the pendulum swings with a multiplied force
When sloped from its even legitimate course.
I have known—who has not?—that a profligate son
Has been through his fanatic father undone;
Restrained till the night of free licence arrives,
And then he breaks out to the wreck of two lives!

"A fierce water-fever just now is red-hot;
Drink water, or perish, thou slave and thou sot!
Drink water alone, and drink more, and drink much—
But, liquors or wines? Not a taste, not a touch!
Yet, is not this fever a fervour of thrift?
It is wine you denounce, but its cost is your drift;
The times are so hard and the wines are so bad
(For good at low prices are not to be had),
That forthwith society shrewdly shouts high
For water alone, the whole abstinence cry!
And, somehow supposed suggestive of heaven,
The cup of cold water is generously given,
But a glass of good wine is an obsolete thing,
And will be till trade is once more in full swing!
I hint not hypocrisy; many are true,
They preach what they practise, they say—and they do,
And used from their boyhood to only cold water,
Enjoin nothing better on wife, son, and daughter;
But surely with some it is merely for thrift,
That they out off the wine, and with water make shift,
Although they profess the self-sacrifice made
As dread of intemperance makes them afraid.
And so, like a helmsman too quick with his tiller,
Eschewing Charybdis they steer upon Scylla,
To perish of utter intemperance—Yes!
The victims of water consumed to excess.

"To conclude: The first miracle, wonder Divine,
Wasn't wine changed to water, but water to wine,
That wine of the Kingdom, the water of life
Transmuted, with every new excellence rife,
The wine to make glad both body and soul,
To cheer up the sad, and make the sick whole.
And when the Redeemer was seen among men,
He drank with the sinners and publicans then,
Exemplar of Temperance, yea, to the sot,
In use of good wine, but abusing it not!
We dare not pretend to do better than He;
But follow the Master, as servants made free
To touch, taste, and handle, to use, not abuse,
All good to receive, but all ill to refuse!
It is thus the true Christian with temperance lives,
Giving God thanks for the wine that He gives."

I once heard Mr. Gough, the temperance lecturer: it was at the Brooklyn Concert Hall in 1877. A handsome and eloquent man, his life is well known, and that his domestic experiences have made him the good apostle he is. I remember how well he turned off the argument against himself as to the miracle of the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee: "Yes, certainly, drink as much wine made of water as you can." It was a witty quip, but is no reply to that miracle of hospitality. Apropos,—I do not know whether or not the following anecdote can be fathered on Mr. Gough, but it is too good to be lost, especially as it bears upon the fate of a poor old friend of mine in past days who was fatally a victim to total abstinence. The story goes that a teetotal lecturer, in order to give his audience ocular proof of the poisonous character of alcohol, first magnifies the horrible denizens of stagnant water by his microscope, and then triumphantly kills them all by a drop or two of brandy! As if this did not prove the wholesomeness of eau de vie in such cases. If, for example, my poor friend above, the eminent Dr. Hodgkin of Bedford Square, had followed his companion's example, the still more eminent Moses Montefiore, by mixing water far too full of life with the brandy that killed them for him, he would not have died miserably in Palestine, eaten of worms as Herod was! Another such instance I may here mention. When I visited the cemetery of Savannah, Florida, in company with an American cousin, I noticed it graven on the marble slab of a relation of ours, a Confederate officer, to the effect that "he died faithful to his temperance principles, refusing to the last the alcohol wherewith the doctor wanted to have saved his life!" Such obstinate teetotalism, I said at the time, is criminally suicidal. Whereat my lady cousin was horrified, for she regarded her brother as a martyr.

I cannot help quoting here part of a letter just received from an excellent young clergyman, who had been reading my "Temperance," quite, to the point. After some compliments he says, "I need scarcely say I entirely agree with the scope and arguments of this vigorous poem. Nothing is more clear, and increasingly so, to my own perception than the terrible tendency of modern human nature to run into extremes" (quoting some lines). "Your reference to 'thrift' is especially true. I have often smiled at the pious fervour with which the heads of large families with small incomes have embraced teetotalism! I have long thought that the motto 'in vino veritas' contains in it far more of 'veritas' than is dreamt of in most people's philosophy, and that the age of rampant total abstinence is the age of special falseness. Of course, the evils of drunkenness can scarcely be exaggerated,—and yet they can be and are so when they are spoken of as equal to the evils of dishonesty: the former is indeed brutal, but the latter is devilish, and far more effectually destroys the souls of men than the former. Nevertheless in our poor money-grubbing land, the creeping paralysis of tricks of trade, &c., is thought little of; and the shopman who has just sold a third-rate article for a first-class price goes home with respectable self-complacency and glances with holy horror at the man who reels past him in the street.

"I desire to say this with reverence and caution. For we all need the restraining influences of the blessed Spirit of God, as well as the atonement and example of His dear Son. But when we see the present tendency to anathematise open profligacy, and to ignore the hidden Pharisaism (the very opposite to our Lord's own course), and the subtle lying of the day, it seems as if those who ponder sadly over it ought to speak out."