Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England: A History

by Richard Valpy French

When I first went to Cambridge [in 1799] the habit of hard drinking was almost as prevalent there as it was in country society....

‘Buzzing,’ unknown in the present day, was then universal. When the decanter came round to any one, if it was nearly emptied, the next in succession could require him to finish it; but if the quantity left exceeded the bumper, the challenger was obliged to drink the remainder and also a bumper out of the next fresh bottle. There was throughout these parties an endeavour to make each other drunk, and a pride in being able to resist the effects of the wine.

This Pryme was a person of distinction; sometime Fellow of Trinity, first Professor of Political Economy in Cambridge University, and thrice M.P. for the Borough. Moreover he was no teetotaller; though a moderate man, he had full belief in the medicinal virtue of brandy. And he had reason; for he says:—

In the winter of 1788-9 I was attacked by a severe fever, and was attended by Dr. Storer of Nottingham, the most eminent physician in that part of the country. After prescribing every medicine that he could think of as suitable to the case, he called one evening on my mother but declined seeing me, as he said everything had been tried, and that giving more medicine was only harassing me in vain. He however asked a few questions about me, and was told that I had repeatedly begged for brandy. He mixed some in a wine-glass with water, which I eagerly drank and asked for more; he then mixed a second glass. The next forenoon he called to inquire if I was still alive, and was told that I had had a good night and was much better. He saw me, and from that time I steadily recovered.

The habits of a University are very fair tests of the habits of the more affluent, and upper middle classes of the nation. Outside this for the most part is the great class generally known as tradesmen. Probably nothing has contributed so much to the deterioration of this class, as the almost invariable habit of spending the evening in some hotel or tavern. It is still common in Germany. It is much to be hoped that it is dying out in England. Charles Knight, in his Passages of a Working Life, seems to speak of it as universally the case early in the present century. He speaks of the tradesmen as habitually

Sallying forth to spend their long evenings in their accustomed chairs at the ale-house, which had become their second home. Some had a notion that they secured custom to the shop by a constant round among the numerous hostelries. I knew a most worthy man, occupying a large house which his forefathers had occupied from the time of Queen Anne, who, when he gave up the business to his son, who, recently married, preferred his own fireside, told the innovator that he would infallibly be ruined if he did not go out to make friends over his evening glass.

But does not every grade in society sensibly or insensibly take its cue from that immediately above it? And what were those who should have set a virtuous example doing? How much have such men to answer for, as Byron, Porson, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Smart, Lamb, and Churchill!

Of the first named, it has been observed that when he was not impairing a naturally delicate constitution with drastic medicines and protracted fasts, he would sometimes eat and drink excessively. And this was especially the case in fits of mortification. Everyone will remember the circumstance of the Edinburgh Review proscribing Byron’s early production, Hours of Idleness. Though he affected indifference, and spoke of the critique as a paper bullet of the brain, yet he afterwards acknowledged that he tried to drown his irritation on the day he read it with three bottles of claret after dinner. His excesses of all kinds, in his continental life, are matters of history. They are usually considered to have contributed to terminate his fever fatally. This recalls his clever lines:—

On a Carrier who died of Drunkenness.

John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell:
A carrier who carried his can to his mouth well;
He carried so much, and he carried so fast,
He could carry no more, so was carried at last;
For the liquor he drank being too much for one,
He could not carry off, so he’s now carrion.