Mr Reach, we trust, will do us the kindness to believe that these preliminary remarks have not been elicited by anything contained in his present volume, and also that we intend no insinuation derogatory of his contributions in the capacity of a commissioner. The fact is, that we have not read his papers on the social and agricultural condition of the peasantry of France, being somewhat more deeply interested in the condition of our peasantry at home; but we know quite enough of his talent and ability to make us certain that he has treated the subject both honestly and well. Fortunately we are not called upon now to investigate his statistical budget. He comes before us in the more agreeable character of a traveller in the sunny south of France. Led by a fine natural instinct, he has tarried in the vinous district until he has imbibed the true spirit of the region. His native Caledonian sympathies in favour of claret—a disposition in which we cordially participate, detesting port almost as intensely as Whiggery—were fully developed by a sojourn in the neighbourhood of the Chateau Lafitte. Of Ceres, at so much a quarter, he tells us nothing—of Bacchus, at so much a bottle, he speaks well and eloquently. Endowed by nature with a gay and happy temper, fond of fun, relishing adventure, and with a fine eye for the picturesque, he ranges from the Garonne to the Rhone, from the shores of the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean marshes, from the sterile wastes of the Landes, by the splendour of the Pyrenees, to the old Roman city of Nismes—making us wish all the while that we could have made the journey in such agreeable company. As a fellow-traveller, we should be inclined to say that he errs on the score of haste. Assuredly we should have lingered with reverence at some places which he passed with undue precipitancy. He had no right to hurry through Haut-brion as he did—he should have dwelt longer at Leoville. Our matured taste and experience of vintages would have mitigated the rapidity of his career.
Mr Reach has not done justice to himself in the selection of a title for his volume. Claret and Olives are rather apt to be misunderstood in the present day, owing to the practices of previous authors, who have been in the habit of vending the properties of the deceased Joseph Miller under some such after-dinner disguise. Wine and Walnuts was an old title, whereof we have an indistinct recollection; our impression at this moment being, that the wine was corked and the walnuts woefully shrivelled. Then followed Nuts and Nutcrackers—maggoty enough, and filled with devil’s-dust that might have choked a member of the League. Grog and Biscuits we presume to have been a feeble sort of production, emanating from a disappointed mind, working on a heritage of wrong. Sherry and Cheroots did not amalgamate. Alcohol and Anchovies gave token of a diseased intellect and a ruined constitution. Tumblers and Talk—a Glasgow publication, if we recollect aright—had little circulation except among bibulous members of town-councils, or similar corporations. Ale and Æsthetics was but an unfortunate specimen of alliteration. How many editions of Beer and ‘Baccy have been printed, we know not; but we are not aware as yet that the author has made his fortune. With all these beacons before him, we could wish that Mr Reach had announced his book under some other name. He is not to be confounded, as an author, with the issuers of such catch-pennies. Putting aside even his present work as one of limited interest—though we should be puzzled to name any tourist who writes more pleasantly than our author—his novel of Leonard Lindsay displays a carefulness of composition, and a life-like painting, in the style of Defoe, which contrasts remarkably with the slip-shod trash now forming the staple commodity of the circulating libraries. There is the right stuff in him, visible throughout whatever he attempts; and if at times his taste is liable to exception, we believe that aberration to be solely owing to the exigencies of the times, which leave far too little leisure to most men to revise and consider their productions.
The title, however, is unquestionably appropriate enough, though it may be calculated to mislead the reader. In his wanderings he has visited the home domain both of the vine and the olive—at least he has passed from the sanctuary of the one to the outskirts of the other; but we could really wish that he had not profaned the goodly vintage by reminding us of those lumps of vegetable fatness which sometimes, even now, are served up at an octogenarian symposium, in honour of the goddess Dyspepsia. We honour oil like the Sultan Saladin, and could wish to see it brought into more general use in this country; but there is something revolting to us in the sight and colour of the olive, which has neither the freshness of youth nor the fine hue of maturity. The last man whom we remember to have seen eating olives was an eminent manufacturer of Staleybridge, who helped himself to the fruit of Minerva with his short stubby fingers, descanting all the while on the propriety of the enactment of a bill for augmenting the hours of infant labour. He died, if we recollect aright, about a fortnight afterwards—perhaps in consequence of the olives: if so, we are not disposed to deny that at times they may be served up with advantage.
Mr Reach, however, loathes the olive as much as we do, and therefore there is no difference of opinion between us. We like the fine enthusiasm with which he does justice to the taste of our mother country—a taste which we are certain will not decay so long as Leith flourishes, and the house of Bell and Rannie continues to maintain its pristine ascendancy in claret. With us in the north, we are glad to say there is no recognised medium between Glenlivat and Bordeaux. Either have in the hot water, or produce your ’34; nobody will thank you for that port which you bought last week at an auction, and which you are desirous to represent as having been bottled for your use about the era of the Reform Bill. It may be both “curious” and “crusted,” as you say it is; but you had better have it set aside to make sauce for wild-ducks. Indeed, “curious” port is, for many reasons, a thing to be avoided. We remember once dining at the house of an excellent clergyman in the country, whose palate, however, might have undergone a little more cultivation, with mutual advantage to himself and to his acquaintance. On that occasion we were presented three times with a certain fluid, under three different names; but all of us afterwards agreed that it was the same liquor, varying simply in degree of temperature. First, it came in smoking in a tureen, and was then called hare-soup; secondly, it was poured out cold from a decanter, under the denomination of port; third, and lastly, it came before us tepidly, with the accompaniment of sugar and cream, and the red-armed Hebe who brought the tray had the effrontery to assure us that it was coffee. So much for the curious vintage of Oporto—but we are forgetting Mr Reach.
“It is really much to the credit of Scotland that she stood staunchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain—Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses a cask of claret stood in the hall, nobly on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter tappit-hen, holding some three quarts—think of that, Master Slender—‘reamed’ (Anglice, mantled) with claret just drawn from the cask; and you quaffed it, snapping your fingers at custom-houses. At length, in an evil hour, Scotland fell.”
We have more than half a mind to ascend the Rhine to Bacharach, and swear upon the altar of Lyæus—which must now be visible, if the weather on the Continent has been as dry as here—never to relax our efforts until either the Union, or the infamous duty on the wines of Bordeaux, is repealed! But we must calm ourselves and proceed moderately. Now, then, for the vineyards—here, as elsewhere, no very picturesque objects to the eye, but conveying a moral lesson that real goodness does not depend upon external appearances. We never saw a vineyard yet, whereof the wine was worth drinking, which a man would care to look at twice. Your raspberry-bush is, upon the whole, a statelier plant than the vine when fulfilling its noblest functions; nevertheless, we presume there are few who would give the preference to raspberry vinegar over veritable Lafitte. We have seen the vineyards in spring, when, as poor Ovid says—
“Quoque loco est vitis, de palmite gemma movetur;”
but they do not bud at all so luxuriantly as a poet would fancy. The only time for seeing them to advantage is at the gathering of the grapes, when the gay dresses of the vintagers give animation to the scene, and song and laughter proclaim the season of general jubilee. There is nothing in our northern climates to compare with it, especially of late years, since the harvest-home brings no certainty of added wealth. Just fancy Mr Cobden at a kirn! Why, at the very sight of him the twasome reel would stop of its own accord—the blind old fiddler, scenting some unholy thing, would mitigate the ardour of his bow—and the patriarch of the parish, brewing punch, would inevitably drown the miller. Lucky for the intruder if he made his escape without being immersed in a tub of sowens!
We shall let Mr Reach speak for himself, as to the complexion of his favourite vineyards.
“Fancy open and unfenced expanses of stunted-looking, scrubby bushes, seldom rising two feet above the surface, planted in rows upon the summit of deep furrow ridges, and fastened with great care to low fence-like lines of espaliers, which run in unbroken ranks from one end of the huge fields to the other. These espaliers or lathes are cuttings of the walnut-trees around, and the tendrils of the vine are attached to the horizontally running slopes with withes, or thongs of bark. It is curious to observe the vigilant pains and attention with which every twig has been supported without being trained, and how things are arranged, so as to give every cluster as fair a chance as possible of a goodly allowance of sun. Such, then, is the general appearance of matters; but it is by no means perfectly uniform. Now and then you find a patch of vines unsupported, drooping, and straggling, and sprawling, and intertwisting their branches like beds of snakes; and again, you come into the district of a new species of bush, a thicker, stouter affair, a grenadier vine, growing to at least six feet, and supported by a corresponding stake. But the low, two-feet dwarfs are invariably the great wine-givers. If ever you want to see a homily, not read, but grown by nature, against trusting to appearances, go to Medoc and study the vines. Walk and gaze, until you come to the most shabby, stunted, weazened, scrubby, dwarfish expanse of bushes, ignominiously bound neck and crop to the espaliers, like a man on the rack—these utterly poor, starved, and meagre-looking growths, allowing, as they do, the gravelly soil to show in bald patches of grey shingle through the straggling branches,—these contemptible-looking shrubs, like paralysed and withered raspberries, it is which produce the most priceless, and the most inimitably-flavoured wines. Such are the vines that grow Chateau Margaux at half-a-sovereign the bottle. The grapes themselves are equally unpromising. If you saw a bunch in Covent Garden, you would turn from them with the notion that the fruiterer was trying to do his customer with over-ripe black currants. Lance’s soul would take no joy in them, and no sculptor in his senses would place such meagre bunches in the hands and over the open mouths of his Nymphs, his Bacchantes, or his Fauns. Take heed, then, by the lesson, and beware of judging of the nature of either men or grapes by their looks. Meantime, let us continue our survey of the country. No fences or ditches you see—the ground is too precious to be lost in such vanities—only, you observe from time to time a rudely curved stake stuck in the ground, and indicating the limits of properties. Along either side of the road the vines extend, utterly unprotected. No raspers, no ha-ha’s, no fierce denunciations of trespassers, no polite notices of spring-guns and steel-traps constantly in a state of high-go-offism—only, where the grapes are ripening, the people lay prickly branches along the wayside to keep the dogs, foraging for partridges among the espaliers, from taking a refreshing mouthful from the clusters as they pass; for it seems to be a fact, that everybody, every beast, and every bird, whatever may be his, her, or its nature in other parts of the world, when brought amongst grapes, eats grapes. As for the peasants, their appetite for grapes is perfectly preposterous. Unlike the surfeit-sickened grocer’s boys, who, after the first week, loathe figs, and turn poorly whenever sugar candy is hinted at, the love of grapes appears literally to grow by what it feeds on. Every garden is full of table vines. The people eat grapes with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and supper. The labourer plods along the road munching a cluster. The child in its mother’s arms is lugging away with its toothless gums at a bleeding bunch; while, as for the vintagers, male and female, in the less important plantations, heaven only knows where the masses of grapes go to, which they devour, labouring incessantly at the metier, as they do, from dawn till sunset.”