Again, the social usages of society have a powerful tendency to indulgence. Friendship and good cheer seem indissolubly intertwined. Cups that cheer have long been regarded as essential items. But it must be set down as an unquestionable fact that in the higher circles of society, far less is drunk than formerly. The London clubs are a very fair index of the condition of things existing within that sphere. In them, excess is now practically unknown; at any rate in the more select clubs. Their cellars teem with good wine now, as they did half a century ago, when we read:—
The value of the stores found in the cellars of the various Club-houses in London, may be adduced in evidence of the estimation in which wine is held, by a portion, at least, of the higher classes in the metropolis. Carlton Club, 1,500l.; United University Club, not much under 2,000l. The Literary and Scientific Athenæum, 3,500l. to 4,000l. The Union Club appears to exceed the rest in the contents of its cellars, which remarks the writer, from whose work we extract this information, ‘disguise it as people will, is the most important matter after all.’ The stock of wine (the Chairman declares it to be an under-estimate) according to a recent valuation, amounts to 7,150l. The Junior United Service Club values its stock of wines at 3,722l. Those of the United Service Club are worth, it is said, 7,722l.[244]
But riot and rowdyism are things of the past.
Among the middle classes, many of the compulsory drinking usages are swept away. In Mr. Dunlop’s interesting volume, no less than 297 of these usages are specified as then rife.[245] A much improved tone is observable amongst commercial travellers than some fifty years ago, when the modern Ramazzini wrote:—
Well fed, riding from town to town, and walking to the houses of the several tradesmen, they have an employment not only more agreeable, but more conducive to health than almost any other dependent on traffic. But they destroy their constitutions by intemperance; not generally by drunkenness, but by taking more liquor than nature requires. Dining at the traveller’s table, each drinks his pint or bottle of wine; he then takes negus or spirit with several of his customers, and at night he must have a glass or two of brandy and water. Few commercial travellers bear the employ for thirty years—the majority not twenty.[246]
And Mr. Samuelson, in his History of Drink, sees traces of an improving tone amongst the operative classes; of which, amongst other things, the dissociation of benefit and other clubs from taverns, is an index.
There are fewer now to sneer at the efforts for a moral regeneration. It may be doubted if Mr. Barham would to-day gloat over his lines in the Milkmaid’s Story:—
Mr. David has since had a ‘serious call,’
He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all,
And they say he is going to Exeter Hall
To make a grand speech, and to preach, and to teach
People that ‘they can’t brew their malt liquor too small.’
That an ancient Welsh Poet, one Pyndar ap Tudor,
Was right in proclaiming ‘Ariston men Udor!’
Which Means ‘The pure Element is for Man’s belly meant!’
And that Gin’s but a Snare of Old Nick the deluder!
Some of the finest writers of our time have exercised their pen in describing the horrors of intemperance. Charles Kingsley writes:—
Go, scented Belgravians, and see what London is. Look! there’s not a soul down that yard, but’s either beggar, drunkard, thief, or worse. Write anent that! Say how ye saw the mouth o’ Hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry—the Pawnbroker’s shop o’ one side, and the Gin-palace at the other—twa monstrous deevils, eating up men and women and bairns, body and soul. Look at the jaws o’ the monsters, how they open and open and swallow in anither victim and anither. Write anent that!... Are not they a mair damnable, man-devouring Idol than ony red-hot statue of Moloch, or wicker Magog, wherein the auld Britons burnt their prisoners? Look at those bare-footed, bare-backed hizzies, with their arms round the men’s neck, and their mouths full o’ vitriol and beastly words! Look at that Irishman pouring the gin down the babbie’s throat! Look at that rough of a boy gaun out o’ the pawnshop, where he’s been pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning, into the ginshop, to buy beer poisoned wi’ grains of paradise and cocculus indicus, and salt, and a’ damnable, maddening, thirst-breeding, lust-breeding drugs! Look at that girl that went in with a shawl on her back, and cam’ out without ane! Drunkards frae the breast!—harlots frae the cradle!—damned before they’re born![247]