[228] Les Célébrités du Vin de Champagne, Epernay, 1880.
[229] H. Taine’s L’Ancien Régime. At Rethel a poinçon of the jauge de Reims paid 50 to 60 francs for the droit de détail alone.
[230] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in 1787–9.
[231] H. Taine’s L’Ancien Régime.
[232] Crebillon the younger’s Les Bijoux Indiscrets.
[233] A MS. account of the wine culture of Poligny in the Jura states that in 1774 attempts were made to imitate the gray and pink wines of the Champagne, then selling at 3 livres 10 sous the bottle.
[234] Erckmann-Chatrian’s Histoire d’un Paysan.
[235] ‘Suppose Champagne flowing,’ says Carlyle, when describing this banquet in his French Revolution.
[236] Carlyle’s French Revolution.
[237] The date ‘An 1er de la liberté’ may possibly refer to the ‘Year One’ of the Republican calendar (1792), in which Mirabeau fell in a duel at Fribourg. But an earlier edition of the same caricature seems to have been published, according to De Goncourt in the Journal de la Mode et du Goût, in May 1790.
are the lines assigned to him in Le Vicomte de Barjoleau, ou le Souper des Noirs, a two-act comedy of the epoch.
LE GOURMAND: AN INCIDENT OF LOUIS XVI.’S FLIGHT FROM PARIS
(From a caricature of the period).
This caricature, which is neither signed nor dated, is simply entitled ‘Le Gourmand;’ though Jaime, in his Histoire de la Caricature, states that it represents Louis XVI. at Varennes. According to Carlyle, however, the king reached Varennes at eleven o’clock at night, was at once arrested in his carriage, and taken to Procureur Sausse’s house. Here he ‘demands refreshments, as is written; gets bread-and-cheese, with a bottle of Burgundy, and remarks that it is the best Burgundy he ever drunk.’ At six o’clock the following morning he left Varennes, escorted by ten thousand National Guards. Very likely there may have been a story current at the time to the effect that the arrest was due to the king’s halting to gratify his appetite. Or the caricature may represent some incident that occurred, during his return to Paris, as he passed through the Champagne district, and halted at the Hôtel de Rohan at Epernay.
[240] De Goncourt’s Société Française pendant la Révolution.
[241] Ibid.
[242] St. Aubin’s Expédition de Don Quichotte.
[243] Aux voleurs! aux voleurs! quoted by De Goncourt.
[244] Lettres du Père Duchêne, quoted by De Goncourt.
[245] Les Célébrités du Vin de Champagne, Epernay, 1880.
[246] Journal de ce qui s’est passé d’intéressant à Reims en 1814.
[247] Ibid.
[248] G. A. Sala’s Paris Herself Again.
[249] Gronow’s Celebrities of London and Paris, 1865.
[250] Gronow’s Reminiscences, 1862.
Béranger’s Chansons.
Poésies de J. Boese, de Blidah.
Le Parfait Vigneron, Paris, 1870.
[254] Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis Vita Henrici Quinti. The author was a protégé of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester.
[255] Francisque Michel’s Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation à Bordeaux. It was not till the marriage of Henry III. with Eleanor of Aquitaine that we began to import Guienne wine from Bordeaux.
[256] Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.
[257] Ibid.
[258] Victor Fiévet’s Histoire d’Epernay.
[259] Francisque Michel’s Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation à Bordeaux.
[260] Published in 1615.
[261] That of 1574. Surflet’s translation appeared in 1600.
[262] Venner’s Via recta ad longam Vitam, 1628.
[263] Writing to Sir Walter Mildmay in 1569, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had charge of the royal prisoner, complains that his regular allowance of wine duty free is not enough. ‘The expenses I have to bear this year on account of the Queen of the Scots are so considerable as to compel me to beg you will kindly consider them. In fact, two butts of wine a month hardly serve for our ordinary use; and besides this, I have to supply what is required by the Princess for her baths and similar uses.’
[264] Clarendon’s Memoirs.
[265] Letter of Guy Patin, 1660.
[266] Otway’s Soldier’s Fortune, act iv. sc. 1, 1681.
[267] Ibid.
[268] Redding’s History and Description of Modern Wines.
[269] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, 1678.
Œuvres de Saint-Evremond:
Sur la Verdure qu’on met aux cheminées en Angleterre.
In these verses we trace the custom, elsewhere spoken of, of drinking the Marne wines when new. St. Evremond himself, in a passage of his prose works, says that the wines of Ay should not be kept too long, or those of Reims drunk too soon.
[273] Sir George Etherege’s Man of the Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, act iv. sc. 1, 1676.
[274] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, act ii. sc. 1, 1678.
[275] Etherege’s She wou’d if she cou’d, act iv. sc. 2, 1668.
[276] Sir Charles Sedley’s Mulberry Garden, act ii. sc. 2, 1668.
[277] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, act i. sc. 1, 1678.
[278] Shadwell’s Virtuoso, act ii. sc. 2, 1676.
[279] By Dr. Charleton, and published as late as 1692.
[280] Oldham’s Paraphrases from Horace, book i. ode xxxi., 1684.
[281] Oldham’s Works, &c., 1684.
[282] Butler’s Hudibras, part ii. canto i., 1664. Stum is unfermented wine; and the term brisk applied to Champagne is here employed not to denote effervescence, but to indicate the contrast between the thick immature fluid and the clear carefully-made wines of the Champagne.
[283] Butler’s Hudibras, part iii. canto iii., 1678.
[284] Sedley’s The Doctor and his Patients. No date, but Sedley died in 1701.
[285] Thomson’s Poems.
[286] Cyrus Redding’s evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on the Wine-Duties, 1851.
[287] Redding’s French Wines.
[288] Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.
[289] Louis Perrier’s Mémoire sur le Vin de Champagne.
[290] St. Simon’s Mémoires.
[291] Redding’s French Wines.
[292] Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle, act ii. sc. 2, 1698.
[293] An evident allusion to its effervescence; whilst the words ‘straw doublet’ most likely refer to the covering of the flask.
[294] Cibber’s Love makes a Man, act i. sc. 1, 1700.
[295] Farquhar’s The Inconstant, or the Way to win Him, act i. scene 2, 1703.
[296] Epilogue to the Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee of Farquhar, spoken by Wilks in 1700. Locket’s tavern, which stood on the site now occupied by Drummond’s bank at Charing Cross, was especially famous for its Champagne. In the Quack Vintners, a satire against Brooke and Hilliers, published in 1712, we read:
[297] Farquhar’s Twin Rivals, act v. sc. 1, 1705.
[298] Several other writers, who speak of ‘bottles’ of other wines, use the word ‘flask’ when referring to Champagne.
[299] Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem, act iii. sc. 3, 1706.
[300] Memoir, prefixed to Leigh Hunt’s edition of Congreve’s works.
[301] Cunninghame’s History of Britain from the Revolution to the Hanover Succession.
[302] Farquhar’s The Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, act v. sc. 1, 1700. M. Francisque Michel, in his Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation à Bordeaux, clearly establishes that from the beginning to the middle of the eighteenth century all the best growths of the Médoc were bought and shipped for England. It was not until after 1755 that any went to Paris.
Coffin’s Campania vindicata, 1712. The force of the reference to England is better understood when it is mentioned that no other nation is alluded to as purchasing the wines of the Champagne.
[304] A practice not lost sight of at a later date, to judge from Borachio’s observation, ‘I turn Alicant into Burgundy and sour cider into Champagne of the first growth of France.’ Jephson’s Two Strings to your Bow, act i. sc. 2.
[305] The Tatler, No. 131, Feb. 9, 1709.
[306] Mrs. Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife, act v. sc. 1, 1718.
[307] Gay’s poem On Wine, published in 1708.
[308] Gay’s Welcome from Greece.
[309] Prior’s Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.
[310] Prior’s Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.
[311] Prior’s Bibo and Charon.
[312] Shenstone’s Verses written at a Tavern at Henley.
[313] Vanbrugh’s Journey to London, act i. sc. 2. Left unfinished at his death in 1726.
[314] Swift’s Journal to Stella, March 12, 1712–13.
[315] Ibid. Feb. 20, 1712–13.
[316] Ibid. April 9, 1711.
[317] Ibid. March 18, 1710.
[318] Ibid. March 29, 1711–12.
[319] Ibid. Dec. 21, 1711.
[320] Ibid. April 7, 1711.
[321] Letter to Mr. Congreve, April 7, 1715.
[322] Mrs. Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife, act i. sc. 1, 1718.
[323] Fielding’s The Miser, 1732.
[324] The Rake’s Progress, or the Humours of Drury Lane: a poem published in 1735, to accompany a set of prints pirated from Hogarth’s.
[325] Blunt’s Geneva: a poem dedicated to Sir R. Walpole, 1729.
[326] Hoadley’s Suspicious Husband, act iv. sc. 1, 1747.
[327] This wine, though sometimes sent by way of Dunkirk, was usually forwarded viâ Calais, by the intermediary of a Sieur Labertauche, a commission-agent at that port, the cost of transport from Epernay to Calais being from 70 to 75 livres per queue. A bobillon of wine was sent with each lot of casks for filling up. Moreover, from 1731 Bertin annually despatches a certain quantity of cream of tartar, destined to cure the ropiness to which all white wines were especially subject before the discovery that tannin destroys the principle engendering this disease.
[328] Chabane appears to have been fully cognisant of the method of collage and soutirage (fining and racking) practised in the Champagne; and Bertin, in one of his letters dated July 1752, mentions the enclosure of a receipt for a kind of collage, by following which all necessity to dépoter the bottles is obviated. This enclosure is unfortunately lost.
[329] Ms. correspondence of Bertin du Rocheret, quoted by M. Louis Perrier in his Mémoire sur le Vin de Champagne. M. Perrier states that the prohibition was removed by an act of the 1st Nov. 1745; and a letter of Bertin to Chabane, the following year, bears this out. It is therefore singular to find the following entry in Bubb Doddington’s Diary, under the date of Feb. 1, 1753: ‘Went to the House to vote for liberty to import Champaign in bottles. Lord Hillsborough moved it; Mr. Fox seconded it. We lost the Motion. Ayes, 74; Noes, 141.’
[330] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 18, 1751.
[331] Jesse’s Selwyn and his Contemporaries. It is very probable that the name printed as Prissieux is really Puissieux, a title of the Sillery family.
[332] Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s Letter from Arthur Grey, the Footman, to Mrs. Murray. Written in the autumn of 1721.
[333] Lady M. W. Montague’s The Lover. This is generally designated ‘a ballad to Mr. Congreve,’ but is headed in Lady Mary’s note-book, ‘To Molly,’ and, as Mr. Moy Thomas has suggested, was probably addressed to Lord Hervey, Pope’s ‘Lord Fanny.’
[334] Note to his Letter on Bowles.
[335] Westminster Magazine, 1774.
[336] Grainger’s The Sugar Cane, 1764.
[337] Coleman and Garrick’s Clandestine Marriage, act i. sc. 2, 1766.
[338] Garrick’s Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs, act i. sc. 2, 1775.
[339] Ibid.
[340] Ibid. act ii. sc. 1.
[341] Townley’s High Life below Stairs, act ii. sc. 1, 1759.
[342] So in Mrs. Cowley’s Which is the Man? Burgundy is extolled and ‘vile Port’ denounced; and in Cumberland’s The Fashionable Lover (1772) a sneer is levelled at a ‘paltry Port-drinking club.’ Burgundy, too, is in favour in Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin, 1792.
[343] Foote’s The Lame Lover, act iii. sc. 1, 1770.
[344] Garrick’s The Country Girl, act v. sc. 1.
[345] Foote’s The Fair Maid of Bath, act i. sc. 1, 1771.
[346] Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin, act iv. sc. 2, 1792.
[347] Sir Edward Barry’s Observations, Historical, Critical, and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients, and the analogy between them and Modern Wines, 1775.
[348] Tickell’s Poems.
[349] Timbs’ Clubs and Club Life.
[350] In the Encyclopédie Méthodique.