WINE.

From the time when Francis Bacon attributed a sharp attack of gout to his removal from Gray's Inn Fields to the river side, to a time not many years distant when Sir Herbert Jenner Fust[36] used to be brought into his court in Doctors' Commons and placed in the judicial seat by two liveried porters, lawyers were not remarkable for abstinence from the pleasures to which our ancestors were indebted for the joint-fixing, picturesque gout that has already become an affair of the past. Throughout the long period that lies between Charles II.'s restoration and George III.'s death, an English judge without a symptom of gout was so exceptional a character that people talked of him as an interesting social curiosity. The Merry Monarch made Clarendon's bedroom his council-chamber when the Chancellor was confined to his couch by podagra. Lord Nottingham was so disabled by gout, and what the old physicians were pleased to call a 'perversity of the humors,' that his duties in the House of Lords were often discharged by Francis North, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and though he persevered in attending to the business of his court, a man of less resolution would have altogether succumbed to the agony of his disease and the burden of his infirmities. "I have known him," says Roger North, "sit to hear petitions in great pain, and say that his servants had let him out, though he was fitter for his chamber." Prudence saved Lord Guildford from excessive intemperance; but he lived with a freedom that would be remarkable in the present age. Chief Justice Saunders was a confirmed sot, taking nips of brandy with his breakfast, and seldom appearing in public "without a pot of ale at his nose or near him." Sir Robert Wright was notoriously addicted to wine; and George Jeffreys drank, as he swore, like a trooper. "My lord," said King Charles, in a significant tone, when he gave Jeffreys the blood-stone ring, "as it is a hot summer, and you are going the circuit, I desire you will not drink too much."

Amongst the reeling judges of the Restoration, however, there moved one venerable lawyer, who, in an age when moralists hesitated to call drunkenness a vice, was remarkable for sobriety. In his youth, whilst he was indulging with natural ardor in youthful pleasures, Chief Justice Hale was so struck with horror at seeing an intimate friend drop senseless, and apparently lifeless, at a student's drinking-bout, that he made a sudden but enduring resolution to conquer his ebrious propensities, and withdraw himself from the dangerous allurements of ungodly company. Falling upon his knees he prayed the Almighty to rescue his friend from the jaws of death, and also to strengthen him to keep his newly-formed resolution. He rose an altered man. But in an age when the barbarous usage of toast-drinking was in full force, he felt that he could not be an habitually sober man if he mingled in society, and obeyed a rule which required the man of delicate and excitable nerves to drink as much, bumper for bumper, as the man whose sluggish system could receive a quart of spirits at a sitting and yet scarcely experience a change of sensation. At that time it was customary with prudent men to protect themselves against a pernicious and tyrannous custom, by taking a vow to abstain from toast-drinking, or even from drinking wine at all, for a certain stated period. Readers do not need to be reminded how often young Pepys was under a vow not to drink; and the device by which the jovial admiralty clerk strengthened an infirm will and defended himself against temptation was frequently employed by right-minded young men of his date. In some cases, instead of vowing not to drink, they bound themselves not to drink within a certain period; two persons, that is to say, agreeing that they would abstain from wine and spirits for a certain period, and each binding himself in case he broke the compact to pay over a certain sum of money to his partner in the bond. Young Hale saw that to effect a complete reformation of his life it was needful for him to abjure the practice of drinking healths. He therefore vowed never again to drink a health; and he kept his vow. Never again did he brim his bumper and drain it at the command of a toast-master, although his abstinence exposed him to much annoyance; and in his old age he thus urged his grandchildren to follow his example—"I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for it is become one of the greatest artifices of drinking, and occasions of quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onwards; and if you pledge as many as will be drunk, you must be debauched and drunk. If they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair answer, 'that your grandfather that brought you up, from whom, under God, you have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command with you, that you should never begin or pledge a health.'"

Jeffrey's protÉgÉ, John Trevor, liked good wine himself, but emulated the virtuous Hale in the pains which he took to place the treacherous drink beyond the reach of others—whenever they showed a desire to drink it at his expense. After his expulsion from the House of Commons, Sir John Trevor was sitting alone over a choice bottle of claret, when his needy kinsman, Roderic Lloyd, was announced. "You rascal," exclaimed the Master of the Rolls, springing to his feet, and attacking his footman with furious language, "you have brought my cousin, Roderic Lloyd, Esquire, Prothonotary of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, up my back stairs. You scoundrel, hear ye, I order you to take him this instant down my back stairs, and bring him up my front stairs." Sir John made such a point of showing his visitor this mark of respect, that the young barrister was forced to descend and enter the room by the state staircase; but he saw no reason to think himself honored by his cousin's punctilious courtesy, when on entering the room a second time he looked in vain for the claret bottle.

On another occasion Sir John Trevor's official residence afforded shelter to the same poor relation when the latter was in great mental trouble. "Roderic," saith the chronicler, "was returning rather elevated from his club one night, and ran against the pump in Chancery Lane. Conceiving somebody had struck him, he drew and made a lunge at the pump. The sword entered the spout, and the pump, being crazy, fell down. Roderic concluded he had killed his man, left, his sword in the pump, and retreated to his old friend's house at the Rolls. There he was concealed by the servants for the night. In the morning his Honor, having heard the story, came himself to deliver him from his consternation and confinement in the coal-hole."

Amongst the eighteenth century lawyers there was considerable difference of taste and opinion on questions relating to the use and abuse of wine. Though he never, or very seldom, exceeded the limits of sobriety, Somers enjoyed a bottle in congenial society; and though wine never betrayed him into reckless hilarity, it gave gentleness and comity to his habitually severe countenance and solemn deportment—if reliance may be placed on Swift's couplet—

"By force of wine even Scarborough is brave,
Hall grows more pert, and Somers not so grave."

A familiar quotation that alludes to Murray's early intercourse with the wits warrants an inference that in opening manhood he preferred champagne to every other wine; but as Lord Mansfield he steadily adhered to claret, though fashion had taken into favor the fuller wine stigmatized as poison by John Home's famous epigram—

"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood;
Old was his mutton, and his claret good.
'Let him drink port,' an English statesman cried:
He drunk the poison and his spirit died."

Unlike his father, who never sinned against moderation in his cups, Charles Yorke was a deep drinker as well as a gourmand. Hardwicke's successor, Lord Northington, was the first of a line of port-wine-drinking judges that may at the present time be fairly said to have come to an end—although a few reverend fathers of the law yet remain, who drink with relish the Methuen drink when age has deprived it of body and strength. Until Robert Henley held the seals, Chancellors continued to hold after-dinner sittings in the Court of Chancery on certain days of the week throughout term. Hardwicke, throughout his long official career, sat on the evenings of Wednesdays and Fridays hearing causes, while men of pleasure were fuddling themselves with fruity vintages. Lord Northington, however, prevailed on George III. to let him discontinue these evening attendances in court. "But why," asked the monarch, "do you wish for a change?" "Sir," the Chancellor answered, with delightful frankness, "I want the change in order that I may finish my bottle of port at my ease; and your majesty, in your parental care for the happiness of your subjects, will, I trust, think this a sufficient reason." Of course the king's laughter ended in a favorable answer to the petition for reform, and from that time the Chancellor's evening sittings were discontinued. But ere he died, the jovial Chancellor paid the penalty which port exacts from all her fervent worshippers, and he suffered the acutest pangs of gout. It is recorded that as he limped from the woolsack to the bar of the House of Lords, he once muttered to a young peer, who watched his distress with evident sympathy—"Ah, my young friend, if I had known that these legs would one day carry a Chancellor, I would have taken better care of them when I was at your age." Unto this had come the handsome legs of young Counsellor Henley, who, in his dancing days, stepped minuets to the enthusiastic admiration of the belles of Bath.

Some light is thrown on the manners of lawyers in the eighteenth century by an order made by the authorities of Barnard's Inn, who, in November, 1706, named two quarts as the allowance of wine to be given to each mess of four men by two gentlemen on going through the ceremony of 'initiation.' Of course, this amount of wine was an 'extra' allowance, in addition to the ale and sherry assigned to members by the regular dietary of the house. Even Sheridan, who boasted that he could drink any given quantity of wine, would have thought twice before he drank so large a given quantity, in addition to a liberal allowance of stimulant. Anyhow, the quantity was fixed—a fact that would have elicited an expression of approval from Chief Baron Thompson, who, loving port wine wisely, though too well, expressed at the same time his concurrence with the words, and his dissent from the opinion of a barrister, who observed—"I hold, my lord, that after a good dinner a certain quantity of wine does no harm." With a smile, the Chief Baron rejoined—"True, sir; it is the uncertain quantity that does the mischief."

The most temperate of the eighteenth-century Chancellors was Lord Camden, who required no more generous beverage than sound malt liquor, as he candidly declared, in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, wherein he says—"I am, thank God, remarkably well, but your grace must not seduce me into my former intemperance. A plain dish and a draught of porter (which last is indispensable), are the very extent of my luxury." For porter, Edward Thurlow, in his student days, had high respect and keen relish; but in his mature years, as well as still older age, full-bodied port was his favorite drink, and under its influence were seen to the best advantage those colloquial powers which caused Samuel Johnson to exclaim—"Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conversation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow: he fairly puts his mind to yours." Of Thurlow, when he had mounted the woolsack, Johnson also observed—"I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am to meet him, I would wish to know a day before." From the many stories told of Thurlow and ebriosity, one may be here taken and brought under the reader's notice—not because it has wit or humor to recommend it, but because it presents the Chancellor in company with another port-loving lawyer, William Pitt, from whose fame, by-the-by, Lord Stanhope has recently removed the old disfiguring imputations of sottishness. "Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority, but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor, Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and Streatham, thrown open. Being elevated above their usual prudence, and having no servant near them, they passed through the gate at a brisk pace, without stopping to pay the toll, regardless of the remonstrances and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them, and believing them to belong to some highwaymen who had recently committed some depredation on that road, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs. Happily he did no injury."

Throughout their long lives the brothers Scott were steady, and, according to the rules of the present day, inordinate drinkers of port wine. As a young barrister, John Scott could carry more port with decorum than any other man of his inn; and in the days when he is generally supposed to have lived on sprats and table-beer, he seldom passed twenty-four hours without a bottle of his favorite wine. Prudence, however, made him careful to avoid intoxication, and when he found that a friendship often betrayed him into what he thought excessive drinking, he withdrew from the dangerous connexion. "I see your friend Bowes very often," he wrote in May, 1778, a time when Mr. Bowes was his most valuable client; "but I dare not dine with him above once in three months, as there is no getting away before midnight; and, indeed, one is sure to be in a condition in which no man would wish to be in the streets at any other season." Of the quantities imbibed at these three-monthly dinners, an estimate may be formed from the following story. Bringing from Oxford to London that fine sense of the merits of port wine which characterized the thorough Oxonion of a century since, William Scott made it for some years a rule to dine with his brother John on the first day of term at a tavern hard by the Temple; and on these occasions the brothers used to make away with bottle after bottle not less to the astonishment than the approval of the waiters who served them. Before the decay of his faculties, Lord Stowell was recalling these terminal dinners to his son-in-law, Lord Sidmouth, when the latter observed, "You drank some wine together, I dare say?" Lord Stowell, modestly, "Yes, we drank some wine." Son-in-law, inquisitively, "Two bottles?" Lord Stowell, quickly putting away the imputation of such abstemiousness, "More than that." Son-in-law, smiling, "What, three bottles?" Lord Stowell, "More." Son-in-law, opening his eyes with astonishment, "By Jove, sir, you don't mean to say that you took four bottles?" Lord Stowell, beginning to feel ashamed of himself, "More; I mean to say we had more. Now don't ask any more questions."

Whilst Lord Stowell, smarting under the domestic misery of which his foolish marriage with the Dowager Marchioness of Sligo was fruitful, sought comfort and forgetfulness in the cellar of the Middle Temple, Lord Eldon drained magnums of Newcastle port at his own table. Populous with wealthy merchants, and surrounded by an opulent aristocracy, Newcastle had used the advantages given her by a large export trade with Portugal to draw to her cellars such superb port wine as could be found in no other town in the United Kingdom; and to the last the Tory Chancellor used to get his port from the canny capital of Northumbria. Just three weeks before his death, the veteran lawyer, sitting in his easy-chair and recalling his early triumphs, preluded an account of the great leading case, "Akroyd v. Smithson," by saying to his listener, "Come, Farrer, help yourself to a glass of Newcastle port, and help me to a little." But though he asked for a little, the old earl, according to his wont, drank much before he was raised from his chair and led to his sleeping-room. It is on record, and is moreover supported by unexceptionable evidence, that in his extreme old age, whilst he was completely laid upon the shelf, and almost down to the day of his death, which occurred in his eighty-seventh year, Lord Eldon never drank less than three pints of port daily with or after his dinner.

Of eminent lawyers who were steady port-wine drinkers, Baron Platt—the amiable and popular judge who died in 1862, aged seventy-two years—may be regarded as one of the last. Of him it is recorded that in early manhood he was so completely prostrated by severe illness that beholders judged him to be actually dead. Standing over his silent body shortly before the arrival of the undertaker, two of his friends concurred in giving utterance to the sentiment: "Ah, poor dear fellow, we shall never drink a glass of wine with him again;" when, to their momentary alarm and subsequent delight, the dead man interposed with a faint assumption of jocularity, "But you will though, and a good many too, I hope." When the undertaker called he was sent away a genuinely sorrowful man; and the young lawyer, who was 'not dead yet,' lived to old age and good purpose.

[36] In old Sir Herbert's later days it was a mere pleasantry, or bold figure of speech to say that his court had risen, for he used to be lifted from his chair and carried bodily from the chamber of justice by two brawny footmen. Of course, as soon as the judge was about to be elevated by his bearers, the bar rose; and also as a matter of course the bar continued to stand until the strong porters had conveyed their weighty and venerable burden along the platform behind one of the rows of advocates and out of sight. As the trio worked their laborious way along the platform, there seemed to be some danger that they might blunder and fall through one of the windows into the space behind the court; and at a time when Sir Herbert and Dr. —— were at open variance, that waspish advocate had on one occasion the bad taste to keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with characteristic malevolence of expression to say to the footmen, "Mind, my men, and take care of that judge of yours—or, by Jove, you'll pitch him out of the window." It is needless to say that this brutal speech did not raise the speaker in the opinion of the hearers.