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DR JOHNSON'S TAVERN.
LEIGH HUNT, Barry Cornwall, and the Times
are all eloquent in the praise of alcohol. It lifts
us above this dull earth, it fires our genius, it
gives to us the large utterances of the gods.
Barry Cornwall tells us-
"Bad are the times
And bad the rhymes
That scorn old wine."
Leigh Hunt translates "Bacchus in Tuscany,"
and sanctions such lines as the following-
"I would sooner take to poison
Than a single cup set eyes on
Of that bitter and guilty stuff
we
Talk of by the name of
coffee;"
and the Times everywhere inculcates the idea
that, without wine, poetry and eloquence and
wit were dumb and dead. Was Sidney Smith
witty, was Shelley a poet, or was he who in old
times drew away the Hebrew multitude from the crowded streets of Jerusalem out into the desert,
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whose food was locusts and wild honey, whose
raiment was a leathern girdle - was he not eloquent, as he warned the terror-stricken mob
that hung upon his lips of the wrath to come?
Facts are not in favour of the wine-drinkers.
Of Waller Dr Johnson writes, "In a time
when fancy and gaiety were the most powerful
recommendations to regard, it is not likely that Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in
the company that was highest both in rank and
wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did
not exclude him. Though he drank water, he
was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten
the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies; and Mr
Saville said that 'no man in England should
keep him company without drinking, but Ned
Waller.'" "In Parliament," says Burnet, "he
was the delight of the House, and, though old,
said the liveliest things of any of them. The
truth is, men have often reserved the outpourings of their mind for the social glass, and have
fallen into the natural mistake of believing that
it was the glass, and not the opportunity and
the action of mind upon mind, that elicited a
certain amount of joyous fun. I must quote an
anecdote from Sir Walter Scott's Life to illus[-125-]trate my
meaning. He tells us one of his
school-fellows was always at the top of the class.
Young Scott found that when asked a question
the lad alluded to was in the habit of fumbling
one peculiar button. Scott cut off that button.
The next time the poor fellow was asked a question, as usual he put his hand to fumble the
friendly button- alas ! it was gone, and with it
his power, and he speedily lost his place. The
writers I have quoted, to be consistent, should
argue it was the button that made that lad sharp
and clever.
But if you still doubt, let us test the thing
practically. In Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there
is a tavern bearing the honoured name of Dr
Johnson. Dr Johnson lived in this court, and
hence, I suppose, the sign; but the Doctor was
a total abstainer. He found he could not be a
moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink
altogether. He told that precious ass, Boswell,
to drink water, because if he did that he would
be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank
wine he was not so sure; and Boswell, to whom
the idea seems never to have occurred, prints the
remark as an astonishing instance of his hero's
sagacity. But I pass on to modern times. In [-126-]
this Dr Johnson's Tavern is situated "The City
Concert Room." I suppose the City does not
care much about concerts, as I have generally
found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome
room, and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty
gentlemen, chiefly young ones, present. You do
not see swells here as at Evans's. They are all
very plain-looking people, from the neighbouring shops, or from the warehouses in Cheapside.
Just by me are three pale heavy-looking young
men, whose intellects seem to me dead, except so
far as a low cunning indicates a sharpness where
money is concerned. One of them is stupidly
beerv. Their great object is to get him to drink
more, notwithstanding his repeated assurances,
uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he
must go back to "Islin'ton" to-night. A lady
at one end of the room, with a very handsome
blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is
screaming out something about "Lovely Spring,"
but this little party is evidently indifferent to
the charms of the song. Just beyond me is
a gent with a short pipe and a very stiff collar.
I watch him for an hour, and whether he is enjoying himself intensely, or whether he is enduring an indescribable amount of inward agony, I
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cannot tell. A little further off is another gent
with a very red scarf, equally stoical in appearance. Behind me are two verdant youths, of
limited means I imagine; but they have the
pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and
take tickets for that interesting gentleman's
benefit. But the comic singer comes forward,
and sings with appropriate action of the doings
of a little insect very partial to comfortable
quarters. That song I have known fifteen years.
I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell
sing it. Night after night in some drinking
room in some part of London or other is a beery
audience told-
"Creeping where no life doth be,
A rare old plant is the lively flea."
And after a pursuit very vividly pantomimed,
the little stranger is suffered to be caught, and
to tell the catcher that it is his father's ghost,
doomed for a season to walk the earth and nip
him most infernally, and so on. Now I am sure
that every one in the room has heard this
dozens of times before, yet old men are laughing
as if it was an absolute novelty. Talk about
alcohol brightening men's intellects! When I come to such places as this, it always seems
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to me to have a precisely contrary effect. Men
could not sit and hear all these stale witticisms
unless they drank. Sober, I am sure they could
not do it, not even if they were paid for it; and
yet all seem enraptured. I remark, however,
one exception. Two waiters help to a seat by
my side a very dirty little man with red eyes,
and generally shabby appearance. The waiters
set down by him a glass of grog, offer him a
cigar, and then playfully shaking their fingers
at him, as if to intimate he had better be quiet,
leave him to his fate. After a few minutes of
deep thought, he looks to me and beckons. I
take no notice. He repeats the signal. I lean
forward.
"Very o-old, sir."
"What do you mean?" we ask.
"The comic singer very o-old, sir."
We intimate as much.
"But get him on a fresh piece, sir, and see
how he can go-o." Here our friend began rolling one arm rapidly round the other, to give us
an idea of the comic singer's powers.
"Pity he don't give something new," repeats
our friend. Another assenting nod on our part and the conversation ceases. But we suppose it
[-129-] is with comic singers as with others. "A man
who has settled his opinions does not love to have
the tranquillity of his convictions disturbed,"
wrote Dr Johnson, and a comic singer does not
like to have the bother of learning fresh songs.
But the comic singer was applauded and encored, and then he treated us to a monologue, in
which he describes how lie, the drunken husband,
stays out all night, and makes it up with his
"old ooman" when he gets home; and in the
course of his remarks of course he declares teetotalism is humbug, that there was truth in wine,
but he'd be blessed if there was any in water;
that the man who would drink the latter would
be a muddy cistern - forgetting all the while the
tu quoque the water-drinkers would very fairly
urge, on the authority even of Mr Henry
Drummond; and then I came away, thinking
that if drinking made men witty and lighthearted, I had been very unfortunate on the
night of my visit. Once upon a time, as the
writer was in the Cave of Harmony, the polite
manager asked him his opinion of a new comic
singer. Having given it, the red-faced little
man turned to us with a sigh, and said, "Ah, sir, you have no idea what a dearth there is
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of comic talent now-a-days." And truly he
was right. There is little fun and comedy
and wit anywhere. I know not where they
are; I know where they are not. You will
not find them in the taverns where men sit
all the evening listening to music for which
they do not care, and drinking all the while.
How should there be, since wine is now admitted
to be the product of the laboratory, not of the
grape?