Lord Stair, in a letter to Horace Walpole, writes:—
Poor Harry (Bolingbroke) is turned out from being Secretary of State.... They call him knave and traitor.... I believe all poor Harry’s fault was that he could not play his part with a grave enough face.... He got drunk now and then.
Lord Cartaret, afterwards Earl Granville, was a great scholar, and a man of invariable high spirits.
The period of his ascendency was known by the name of the Drunken Administration; and the expression was not altogether figurative. His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous excitement in which his life was passed.... Driven from office, he retired laughing to his books and his bottle.... Ill as he had been used, he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or indeed any feeling except thirst.[219]
Macaulay implies that Cartaret occasionally varied his champagne for ‘a daily half gallon of Burgundy.’
William Pulteney, created ‘Earl of Bath’ on the resignation of Walpole, has been generally reckoned amongst the men of the bottle. Indeed, Mr. Lecky remarks (i. 478) that he ‘is said to have shortened his life by drinking.’ But how can this be? He lived to the fairly respectable age of 82. Has he not been confounded with some namesake? For what says this same author in another volume?—‘Lord Bath, the old rival of Walpole, subscribed liberally to the orphanage of Georgia, and was a frequent and apparently devout attendant at Whitefield’s Chapel in Tottenham Court Road.’ In fact in his old age he became a Methodist. Was such a man likely to be a hard drinker?
Of Walpole, Mr. Lecky remarks, that when he was a young man, his father was accustomed to pour into his glass a double portion of wine, saying, ‘Come, Robert, you shall drink twice while I drink once; for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of his father.’
It speaks volumes for the son of such a father, that when Mr. Chute gibed him for stupidity, which he set down to ‘temperance diet,’ Walpole protested, saying, ‘I have such lamentable proofs every day of the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual nourriture.’
Methodism, drinking, and gambling, were all on the increase. So says Walpole. Of the first, he sarcastically says,—‘It increases as fast as any religious nonsense did.’ Of the second he remarks,—‘Drinking is at the highest wine-mark.’ But people were gluttons as well as drunkards.
The aristocracy of letters were infected, no less than that of rank. Truly did Chesterfield observe, that wine and wassail have taken more strong places than gun or steel. Jonathan Swift is generally regarded as a free liver, though probably the company he kept is often answerable for the imputation. The following notices must serve as material for judgment. Dr. King states that about three years before his death, he observed that he was affected by the wine which he drank after dinner; next day, on his complaining of his health, he took the liberty to tell him he had drunk too much wine. Swift was startled, and replied that he always regarded himself as a very temperate man, and never exceeded the quantity his physician prescribed. But, according to King, his physician never drank less than two bottles of claret after dinner. But King was a water-drinker.[220] Scott says of Swift’s entertainments that they were economical, ‘although his guests, so far as conviviality was consistent with decorum, were welcomed with excellent wine. Swift, who used to declare he was never intoxicated in his life, had nevertheless lived intimately with those at whose tables wine was liberally consumed, and he was not himself averse to the moderate use of it.’ The same author adds that Dr. King said that Swift drank about a pint of claret after dinner, which the doctor considered too much.