Chapter V: Part I: I (4)

On arriving at the town where it was to be drunk, the wine was subject to a fresh series of charges--_octroi_, _droit de détail_, _le billot_, _le cinquième en sus l'impôt_, _jaugeage_, _courtage_, _gourmettage_, &c.--frequently ranging up to 60 or 70 francs.[229] All this really affected the grower; for if the retail consumer, inhibited by high prices, could not buy, the former was unable to sell. At this epoch vine-grower and pauper were synonymous terms.[230] In certain districts of the Champagne the inhabitants actually threw their wine into the river to avoid paying the duties, and the Provincial Assembly declared that 'in the greater part of the province the slightest increase in duty would cause all the husbandmen to abandon the soil.'[231] It is scarcely to be wondered at that under such a system of excessive taxation the _fermiers généraux_, who all made good bargains with the State, should have amassed immense fortunes, whilst denying themselves no kind of luxury and enjoyment. They built themselves princely hotels, rivalled the nobility and even the Court in the splendour of their entertainments, grasped at money for the sensual gratification it would purchase, and loved pleasure for its own sake, and women for their beauty and _complaisance_. The _fermiers généraux_ of the province of Champagne had their bureaux, known as the Hôtel des Fermes, at Reims, and, after the town-hall, this was the handsomest civil edifice in the city. Erected in 1756 from designs by Legendre, it occupies to-day the principal side of the Place Royale. On the pediment of the façade is a bas-relief of Mercury, the god of commerce, in company with Penelope and the youthful Pan, surrounding whom are children engaged with the vintage and with bales of wool, typical of the staple trades of the capital of the Champagne.

(From a print published at the commencement of the Revolution).]

The revolutionary epoch presents a wide gap in the written history of sparkling Champagne which no one seems to have taken the trouble of filling, though this hiatus can be to some extent bridged over by a glance at the caricatures of the period. It is evident from these that Champagne continued to be the fashionable wine _par excellence_. We can comprehend it was _de rigueur_ to 'fouetter le Champagne'[232] at the epicurean repasts held at the _petits maisons_ of the rich _fermiers généraux_, and that the _talons rouges_ of the Court of Louis Seize were not averse to the payment of 3 livres 10 sols for a bottle of this delightful beverage[233] when regaling some fair _émule_ of Sophie Arnould or Mademoiselle Guimard in the _coulisses_. One evening Mademoiselle Laguerre appeared on the stage as Iphigenia unmistakably intoxicated. 'Ah,' interjected the lively Sophie, 'this is not Iphigenia in Tauris, but Iphigenia in Champagne.' A proof of the aristocratic status of the wine is furnished by a print entitled _L'Accord Fraternel_, published at the very outset of the revolutionary movement, when it was fondly hoped that the Three Orders of the States General would unite in bringing about a harmonious solution to the evils by which France was sorely beset. In this the burly well-fed representative of the clergy holds out a bumper of Burgundy; the peasant--not one of the lean scraggy labourers, with neither shirt nor sabots,[234] prowling about half naked and hunger-stricken in quest of roots and nettle-tops, but a regular stage peasant in white stockings and pumps--grips a tumbler well filled with _vin du pays_; while the nobleman, elaborately arrayed in full military costume, with sword, cockade, and tie-wig all complete, delicately poises between his finger and thumb a tall _flute_ charged with sparkling Champagne. Moreover, we can plainly trace the exhilarating influence of the wine upon the 'feather-headed young ensigns' at the memorable banquet given to the officers of the Régiment de Flandre by the Gardes du Corps at Versailles, on the 2d Oct. 1789.[235]

(From a sketch by Camille Desmoulins).]

Conspicuous amongst the titled topers of this period was the Viscount de Mirabeau--the younger brother of the celebrated orator and a fervent Royalist--nicknamed Mirabeau Tonneau, or Barrel Mirabeau, 'on account of his rotundity, and the quantity of strong liquor he contains.'[236] In a caricature dated 'An 1^{er} de la liberté,' and ascribed to Camille Desmoulins,[237] with whom the viscount long waged a paper war, his physical and bibacious attributes are very happily hit off. His body is a barrel; his arms, pitchers; his thighs, rundlets; and his legs inverted Champagne flasks; whilst in his left hand he holds a foam-crowned _flute_, and in his right another of those flasks, two of which he was credited with emptying at each repast.[238]

(From a caricature of the epoch).]

We have seen that the origin of many of the most famous _crûs_ of France was due to monkish labours, and that at Reims, as elsewhere, a large proportion of the ecclesiastical revenue was derived, either directly or indirectly, from the vineyards of the district. This was happily hit off in _Le Nouveau Pressoir du Clergé_, or _New Wine-Press for the Clergy_, published in 1789. A man of the people and a representative of the Third Estate, the latter in the famous slouched hat and short cloak, are working the levers of a press, under the influence of which a full-faced abbé is rapidly disgorging a shower of gold. A yet more portly ecclesiastic, worthy to be the Archbishop of Reims himself, is being led forward, in fear and trembling, to undergo a like operation; whilst in the background a couple of his compeers, reduced to the leanness of church-rats, are making off with gesticulations of despair.

'Ventre St. Gris! Is this my grandson Louis?'

(Facsimile of a woodcut of the time.)]

The chief personal traits of Louis Seize, as depicted in numerous contemporary memoirs, seem to have been a passion for making locks and a gross and inordinate appetite. High feeding usually implies deep drinking, and one may suppose that a wine so highly esteemed at Court as Champagne was not neglected by the royal gourmand. Still there seems to have been nothing in the unfortunate monarch's career to justify the cruel caricature wherein he is shown with the ears and hoofs of a swine wallowing in a wine-vat, with bottles, flasks, pitchers, cups, goblets, glasses, and _flûtes_ of every variety scattered around him; whilst Henri Quatre, who has just crossed the Styx on a visit to earth, exclaims in amazement, 'Ventre St. Gris! is this my grandson Louis?' In another caricature, entitled 'Le Gourmand,' and said to represent an incident in the flight of the royal family from Paris, Louis XVI. is shown seated at table--surrounded by stringed flasks of Champagne, with the customary tall glasses--engaged in devouring a plump capon. His Majesty is evidently annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of his repast, but it is difficult to divine who the intruder is intended for. He can scarcely be one of the commissioners despatched by the National Assembly to secure the king's return to Paris, as the German hussars drawn up in the doorway are inconsistent with this supposition. The female figure before the looking-glass is of course intended for Marie Antoinette, whilst the ungainly young cub in the background is meant for the Dauphin in an evident tantrum with his nurse.[239]

As to the pamphleteers, who advocated the Rights of Man and aspersed Marie Antoinette; the poets, who addressed their countless airy trifles to Phyllis and Chloe; the penniless disciples of Boucher and Greuze; and the incipient demagogues, briefless advocates, unbeneficed abbés, discontented bourgeois, whose eloquence was to shatter the throne of the Bourbons, they were fain for the time being to content themselves with the _petit bleu_ of Argenteuil or Suresnes, consumed in company with Manon or Margot, in one of the dingy smoky _cabarets_ which the _café_ was so soon in a great measure to replace. When, however, their day did come, we may be sure they denied themselves no luxury, and sparkling Champagne would certainly have graced Danton's luxurious repasts, and may possibly have played its part at the last repast of the condemned Girondins. In '93, we find Champagne of 1779--the still wine, of course--announced for sale at Lemoine's shop in the Palais Royal; while a delectable compound, styled _crême de fleur d'orange grillée au vin de Champagne_, was obtainable at Théron's in the Rue St. Martin.[240] The sparkling wine can scarcely have failed to figure on the _carte_ of the sumptuous repasts furnished by the _restaurateurs_, Méot and Beauvillers, to the _de facto_ rulers of France,[241] although in 1795 the price of wine generally in Paris had increased tenfold.[242] Ex-_procureurs_ of the defunct Parliament carefully hoarded all that remained of the Champagne formerly lavished upon them by their ex-clients;[243] whilst the latter had to content themselves with tea at London and beer at Coblenz.[244]

Although details respecting the progress of the Champagne wine-trade at home and abroad at the outset of the present century are somewhat scanty, we readily gather that the great popularity of the sparkling wine throughout Europe dates from an event which, at the time of its occurrence, the short-sighted Champenois looked upon as most disastrous. This was the Allied invasion of 1814-15. Consumption, so far as the foreign market was concerned, had been grievously interrupted by the great upset in all commercial matters consequent upon the wars of the Revolution and the Empire. It appears that the white wines of Champagne were sent to Paris, Normandy, Italy, and, 'when circumstances permitted of it,' to England, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and 'beyond the seas.' But the trade had suffered greatly during the wars with Austria and Russia in 1806 and 1807; and in the following years the consumption of white wine had fallen considerably, and a large number of wine-merchants had found themselves unable to meet their engagements.[245]

The wine which Napoleon I. preferred is said to have been Chambertin; still, his intimacy with the Moëts of Epernay could scarcely fail to have led to a supply of the best sparkling Champagne from the cellars he had deigned to visit in person. His satraps, who travelled with the retinue of sovereign princes, included the wine in their equipment wherever they went, and the popping of its mimic artillery echoed in their tents the thunder of their victorious cannon. But comparatively few foreign guests met at their tables; and as their foes had on their side few victories to celebrate in a similar style, the knowledge of sparkling Champagne outside France was confined to the comparatively small number of persons of wealth and position able to pay an extravagant price for it.

At length the fatal year, 1814, arrived, and the Allies swarmed across the frontier after the 'nations' fight' at Leipzig. The Champagne lying directly on the way to Paris saw some hard fighting and pitiless plundering. The Prussians of Baron von Tromberg got most consumedly drunk at Epernay. The Cossacks ravaged Rilly, Taissy, and the other villages of the Mountain; and not being able to carry off all the wine they found at Sillery, 'added to their atrocities,' in the words of an anonymous local chronicler,[246] by staving in the barrels and flooding the cellars. The Russians, under the renegade St. Priest, seized on Reims, whetted their thirst with salt herrings till the retail price of these dainties rose from 5 liards a pair to 3 sous apiece, and then set to work to quench it with Champagne to such an extent that when Napoleon suddenly swooped down upon the city like his own emblematic eagle, a large number of them, especially among the officers, were neither in a condition to fight nor fly.[247]

The immense body of foreign troops who remained quartered in the east of France after the downfall of the Empire continued to pay unabated devotion to the _dive bouteille_. Tradition has especially distinguished the Russians, and relates how the Cossacks used to pour Champagne into buckets, and share it with their horses. But the walking sand-beds of North Germany, the swag-bellied warriors of Baden and Bavaria, and the stanch topers of Saxony and Swabia must of a surety have distinguished themselves. The votaries of Gambrinus, the beer king, strove whether they could empty as many bottles of Champagne at a sitting as they could flagons filled with the amber-hued beverage of their native province; while the inhabitants of those districts where the grape ripens sought to institute exhaustive comparisons between the vintages they gathered at home and the growths of the favoured region in which they now found themselves.

(From a coloured print of the time).]

The Berliner was fain to acknowledge the superiority of the foam engendered by Champagne over that crowning his favourite _weissbier_, his own beloved _kuhle blonde_, and the beer-topers of Munich and Dresden to give the preference to the exhilaration produced by quaffing the wine of Reims and Epernay over that due to the consumption of _bockbier_. The Nassauer and the Rhinelander had to admit certain intrinsic merits in the vintages produced on the slopes of the Marne, and found to be lacking in those grown on the banks of the Rhine, the Ahr, the Main, and the Moselle. The Austrian recognised the superiority of the wines of the Mountain over those of Voslau or the Luttenberg; and the Magyar had to allow that the _crûs_ of the River possessed a special charm which Nature had denied to his imperial Tokay. Even the red-coated officers who followed 'Milord Vilainton' to the great review at Mont Aimé, near Epernay, proved faithless to that palladium of the British mess-table, their beloved 'black strop.' Claret might in their eyes be only fit for boys and Frenchmen, and Port the sole drink for men; but they were forced to hail Champagne as being, as old Baudius had already phrased it, 'a wine for gods.'

(After a coloured print of the time).]

The officers of the Allied armies quartered in Paris after the Hundred Days supplemented the charms of the Palais Royal--then in the very apogee of its vogue as the true centre of Parisian life, with its cafés, restaurants, theatres, gambling-houses, and Galeries de Bois--with an abundance of sparkling Champagne. Royalty itself set the example by indicating a marked preference for the wine, Louis Dixhuit, according to a statement made by Wellington to Rogers, drinking nothing else at dinner. To celebrate the victories of Leipsic and Waterloo or a successful assault on the bank at Frascati's, to console for the loss of a _grosse mise_ at No. 113 or of a comrade transfixed beneath a lamp in the Rue Montpensier by a Bonapartist sword-blade, to win the smiles of some fickle Aspasia of the Palais Royal Camp des Tartares or to blot out the recollection of her infidelity, to wash down one of the Homeric repasts in which the English prototypes of the 'Fudge Family Abroad' indulged, the wine was indispensable; until, as a modern writer has put it, 'Waterloo was avenged at last by the _gros bataillons_ of the bankers at _roulette_ and _trente et quarante_, and by the sale to the invaders of many thousand bottles of rubbishing Champagne at twelve francs the flask.'[248] The rancorous enmity prevailing between the officers of Bonapartist proclivities placed on half-pay and the returned _émigrés_ who had accepted commissions from Louis XVIII., resulted, as is well known, in numerous hostile meetings. Captain Gronow has dwelt upon the bellicose exploits of a gigantic Irish officer in the _gardes du corps_, named Warren, who, when 'excited by Champagne and brandy,'[249] was prepared to defy an army; and he tells us that at Tortoni's there was a room set apart for such quarrelsome gentlemen, where, after these meetings, they indulged in riotous Champagne breakfasts.[250] At home, the British Government were being twitted on their parsimony in limiting the supply of Champagne for the table of the exiled Emperor at St. Helena to a single bottle per diem, a circumstance which led Sir Walter Scott to protest against the conduct of Lord Bathurst and Sir Hudson Lowe in denying the captive 'even the solace of intoxication.'

As is not unfrequently the case, out of evil came good. The assembled nations had drunk of a charmed fountain, and it had excited a thirst which could not be quenched. The Russians had become acquainted with Champagne, which Talleyrand had styled '_le vin civilisateur par excellence_,' and to love this wine was with them a very decided step towards a liberal education. Millions of bottles, specially fortified to the pitch of strength and sweetness suited for a hyperborean climate, were annually despatched to the great northern empire from the house of Clicquot; and later on the travellers of rival firms, eager to secure a portion of this patronage, traversed the dominions of the autocrat throughout their length and breadth, and poured their wines in wanton profusion down the throats of one and all of those from whom there appeared a prospect of securing custom.

From this influx of sparkling wine into the frozen empire of the Czar the acceptance of civilisation--of rather a superficial character, it is true--may be said to date. Had Peter the Great only preferred Champagne to corn-brandy, the country would have been Europeanised long ago. As it is, the wine has to-day become a recognised necessity in higher class Russian society, and scandal even asserts that whenever it is given at a dinner-party, the host is careful to throw the windows open, in order that the popping of the corks may announce the fact to his neighbours. Abroad the Russians are more reserved in their manners; and though ranking amongst the best customers of the Parisian _restaurateurs_ for high-class wines, it is only now and then that some excited Calmuck is to be seen flooding the glasses of his companions with Champagne in a public dining-room. The Russians, it should be noted, have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to produce sparkling wines of their own, more especially in the country of the Don Cossacks and near the Axis.

Béranger might exclaim, with a poet's license, that he preferred a Turkish invasion to seeing the wines of the Champagne profaned by the descendants of the Alemanni;[251] but the merchants of Reims and Epernay were of a different opinion. _Les militaires_ have always affected Champagne; and a military aristocracy like that of the Fatherland, in the cruel days when peace forbade any more free quarters and requisitions, became as large purchasers of the wine as their somewhat scanty revenues allowed of. Their example was followed to a considerable extent by the self-made members of that plutocratic class which modern speculation has caused to spring into life in Germany. Advantage was speedily taken of this taste by their own countrymen, who aimed at supplanting Champagne by sparkling wines grown on native slopes. Nay more, the Germans, as a military nation, felt bound to carry the war into the enemy's territory, and hence it is that many important houses at Reims and Epernay are of German origin. Across the Rhine patriotism has had to yield to popularity, and the stanchest native topers have been forced to acknowledge, after due comparison in smoky _wein stuben_ and gloomy _keller_, that, though the sparkling wines of the Rhine and the Moselle are in their own way most excellent, there is but one _Champagner-wein_, with Reims for its Mecca and Epernay for its Medina.

Of England we shall elsewhere speak at length; but the speculative trade of her colonies, with its sharp bargains, dead smashes, and large profits could hardly be carried on without the wheels of the car of Commerce and the tongues of her votaries being oiled with Champagne. The Swiss have only proved the truth of the proverb that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery by producing tolerable replicas of Champagne at Neufchâtel, Vevay, and Sion. Northern, or, to speak by the map, Scandinavian, Europe takes its fair share of the genuine article; and although the economic Belgian is apt to accept sparkling Saumur and Vouvray as a substitute, both he and his neighbour, the Dutchman, can to the full appreciate the superiority of the produce of the Marne over that of the Loire.

The Italian and the Spaniard may affect to outwardly despise a liquor which they profess not to be able to recognise as wine at all; but the former has to allow, _per Bacco_, that it excels in its particular way his extolled Lacryma Christi, while the latter does not carry his proverbial sobriety so far as to exclude the wine from repasts in the upper circles of Peninsular society. Moreover, of recent years they have both commenced making sparkling wines of their own. The Austrian also produces sparkling wines from native vintages, notably at Voslau, Graz, and Marburg; still this has not in any way lessened his admiration for, or his consumption of, Champagne. The Greek is ready enough to 'dash down yon cup of Samian wine,' provided there be a goblet of Champagne close at hand to replace it with; and boyards and magnates of the debateable ground of Eastern Europe not only imbibe the sparkling wines of the Marne ostentatiously and approvingly, but several of them have essayed the manufacture of _vin mousseux_ on their own estates.

The East, the early home of the vine, and the first region to impart civilisation, is perhaps the last to receive its reflux in the shape of sparkling wine. But, the prohibition of the Prophet notwithstanding, Champagne is to be purchased on the banks of the Golden Horn, and has been imported extensively into Egypt in company with _opéra-bouffe_, French _figurantes_, stock-jobbing, and sundry other matters of foreign extraction under the _régime_ of the late Khedive. The land of Iran has beheld with wonderment its sovereign freely quaffing the fizzing beverage of the Franks in place of the wine of Shiraz. The East Indies consume Champagne in abundance; for it figures not only on the proverbially hospitable tables of the merchants and officials of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, but at the symposia of most of the rajahs, princes, nawabs, and other native rulers. The almond-eyed inhabitant of 'far Cathay,' reluctant to abandon that strange civilisation so diametrically opposed in all its details to our own, continues to drink his native vintages, warm and out of porcelain cups, and to regard the sparkling drink of the Fanquis as a veritable 'devils' elixir.' But his utterly differing neighbour, the Japanese, so eager to welcome everything European, has gladly greeted the advent of Champagne, and freely yielded to its fascination.

Turning to the undiscovered continent, we find sable sovereigns ruling at the mouths of the unexplored rivers of Equatorial Africa fully acquainted with Champagne, though disposed, from the native coarseness of their taste, to rank it as inferior to rum; whilst the Arab, filled with wonderment at the marvels of European civilisation which meet his eye at Algiers, bears back with him to the _douar_, wrapped up in the folds of his burnous, a couple of bottles of the wondrous effervescing drink of the Feringhees as a testimony, even as Othere brought the walrus-tooth to Alfred. One enthusiastic Algerian colonist has gone so far as to prophesy the advent of the day when the products of the native vineyards shall eclipse Champagne.[252] Let us hope, however, in the interest of Algerian digestions, that this day is as yet far distant.

With respect to the consumption of Champagne in the Western world, the United States' exceeds that of any European country, England and France alone excepted, despite the competition of sparkling Catawba and of a certain diabolical imitation, the raw material of which, it is asserted, is furnished not by the grapes of the Carolinas, the peaches of New Jersey, or the apples of Vermont, but by the oil-wells of Pennsylvania--in fact, petroleum Champagne. The _cabinet particulier_ seems to be an institution as firmly established in the leading cities of the States as in Paris; and rumour says that drinking from a Champagne-glass touched by a fair one's lips has replaced the New England pastime of eating the same piece of maple-candy till mouths meet. As regards the South American Republics, the popping of musketry at each fresh _pronunciamento_ is certain to be succeeded by that of Champagne-corks in honour of the success of one or the other of the contending parties.

In Europe Champagne has continued to be, from the days of Paulmier and Venner downwards, the drink of kings, princes, and great lords as they described it. Take a list of the potentates of the present century, and the majority of them will be found to have evinced at some time or other a partiality for the wine. Louis XVIII. drank nothing else at table. The late ruler of Prussia, Frederick William IV., had such a penchant for Champagne of a particular manufacture, that he obtained the cognomen of King Clicquot. The predecessor of Pio Nono, Gregory XVI., rivalled him in this appreciation, and, terrible to relate, so did the Commander of the Faithful, Abdul Medjid. The latter might, however, have pleaded the excuse put forward by Abd-el-Kader, that although the Prophet had forbidden wine, yet Champagne came into the category of aerated waters, concerning which he had said nothing, a remark justifying the title given to this wit-inspiring beverage of being 'the father of _bons mots_.' Prince Bismarck, in the stormy period of his youth, was in the barbarous habit of imbibing Champagne mixed with porter; but at present he judiciously alternates it with old Port. Marshal MacMahon and the King of the Belgians are said to drink the pink variety of the _vin mousseux_ by preference.

(From a print of the time of the Restoration).]

Naturally, in France as elsewhere, the sparkling vintage of the Marne maintains its claims to be reckoned the wine of beauty and fashion, and more especially in beauty's gayer hours. A glass of Champagne and a _biscuit de Reims_ has been a refection which, though often verbally declined, was in the end pretty sure to be accepted from the days of the _merveilleuses_ and _incroyables_, through those of the _lionnes_, down to the present epoch of the _cocodettes de la haute gomme_. Neither at ceremonial banquets nor at ordinary dinner-parties among our neighbours does Champagne hold, however, so prominent a place as amongst ourselves, owing to the great variety of other wines--all capable of appreciation by trained palates--entering into the composition of these festive repasts. In fact, a _repas de noces_ is the only occasion on which Champagne flows in France with anything like the freedom to which we are accustomed; and then it is that its exhilarating effect is marked, as some portly old boy rises with twinkling eye to propose the health of the bride, or of that _beau sexe_ to which he feels bound to profess himself deeply devoted. At such open-air gatherings as the races at Longchamps and Chantilly, the _buffet_ will be besieged by a succession of frail fair ones in the most elaborate _toilettes de courses_, seeking to nerve themselves to witness a coming struggle, or to console themselves for the defeat of the horse backed by their favoured admirer. And, when writing of this wine, it is altogether impossible to omit a reference to those _tête-à-tête_ repasts _en cabinet particulier_, of which it is the indispensable adjunct. Its mollifying influence on the feminine heart on occasions such as these has been happily hit off by Charles Monselet in his _Polichinelle au Restaurant_:

'/Polichinelle au Restaurant./

I.

In a cabinet of Vachette,
Pomponnette
Listens to the pressing lover;
Who, before they've done their soup,
Cock-a-hoop,
Dares his passion to discover.

II.

Elbows resting on the cloth,
Partly wrath--
So much do his words astound--
Resolute she to resist
Being kissed,
Draws her mantle closer round.

III.

Whilst in vain his cause he pressed,
A third guest,
Who in ice-pail by them slumbered,
Rears above his wat'ry bed
Silver head
And long neck with ice encumbered.

IV.

'Tis Champagne, who murmurs low,
"Don't you know
That when once you set me flowing,
This fair rebel to Love's dart
In her heart
Soon will find soft passion glowing?

V.

This, if you will list to me,
You shall see;
Cease to swear by flames and fire,
Cast aside each angry thought,
As you ought,
And at once cut through my wire,

VI.

For I am the King Champagne,
And I reign
Over e'en the sternest lasses,
When midst maddening song and shout
I gush out,
Flooding goblets, bumpers, glasses.

VII.

As thus spoke the generous wine,
Its benign
Influence her heart 'gan soften.
Who seeks such a cause to gain,
To Champagne
His success finds owing often.'[253]

VI.

/Champagne in England./

The strong and foaming wine of the Champagne forbidden his troops
by Henry V.--The English carrying off wine when evacuating
Reims on the approach of Jeanne Darc--A legend of the siege
of Epernay--Henry VIII. and his vineyard at Ay--Louis XIV.'s
present of Champagne to Charles II.--The courtiers of the
Merry Monarch retain the taste for French wine acquired in
exile--St. Evremond makes the Champagne flute the glass of
fashion--Still Champagne quaffed by the beaux of the Mall and
the rakes of the Mulberry Gardens--It inspires the poets and
dramatists of the Restoration--Is drank by James II. and William
III.--The advent of sparkling Champagne in England--Farquhar's
_Love and a Bottle_--Mockmode the Country Squire and the witty
liquor--Champagne the source of wit--Port-wine and war combine
against it, but it helps Marlborough's downfall--Coffin's poetical
invitation to the English on the return of peace--A fraternity of
chemical operators who draw Champagne from an apple--The influence
of Champagne in the Augustan age of English literature--Extolled
by Gay and Prior--Shenstone's verses at an inn--Renders Vanbrugh's
comedies lighter than his edifices--Swift preaches temperance
in Champagne to Bolingbroke--Champagne the most fashionable
wine of the eighteenth century--Bertin du Rocheret sends it
in cask and bottle to the King's wine-merchant--Champagne at
Vauxhall in Horace Walpole's day--Old Q. gets Champagne from
M. de Puissieux--Lady Mary's Champagne and chicken--Champagne
plays its part at masquerades and bacchanalian suppers--Becomes
the beverage of the ultra-fashionables above and below
stairs--Figures in the comedies of Foote, Garrick, Coleman, and
Holcroft--Champagne and real pain--Sir Edward Barry's learned
remarks on Champagne--Pitt and Dundas drunk on Jenkinson's
Champagne--Fox and the Champagne from Brooks's--Champagne smuggled
from Jersey--Grown in England--Experiences of a traveller in the
Champagne trade in England at the close of the century--Sillery
the favourite wine--Nelson and the 'fair Emma' under the influence
of Champagne--The Prince Regent's partiality for Champagne
punch--Brummell's Champagne blacking--The Duke of Clarence
overcome by Champagne--Curran and Canning on the wine--Henderson's
praise of Sillery--Tom Moore's summer fête inspired by Pink
Champagne--Scott's Muse dips her wing in Champagne--Byron's
sparkling metaphors--A joint-stock poem in praise of Pink
Champagne--The wheels of social life in England oiled by
Champagne--It flows at public banquets and inaugurations--Plays its
part in the City, on the Turf, and in the theatrical world--Imparts
a charm to the dinners of Belgravia and the suppers of
Bohemia--Champagne the ladies' wine _par excellence_--Its influence
as a matrimonial agent--'O the wildfire wine of France!'

So great a favourite as Champagne now is with all classes in England, the earliest notice of it in connection with our history nevertheless represents it in a somewhat inimical light. For, according to an Italian writer of the fifteenth century, 'the strong and foaming wine of Champagne was found so injurious that Henry V. was obliged, after the battle of Agincourt, to forbid its use in his army, excepting when tempered with water.'[254] Although this may be the earliest mention of the wine of the Champagne by name in association with our own countrymen, opportunities had been previously afforded to them of becoming acquainted with its assumed objectionable qualities. The prelates who crossed 'the streak of silver sea' with Thurstan of York to attend the ecclesiastical councils held at 'little Rome,' as Reims was styled in the twelfth century, and the knights and nobles who swelled the train of Henry II. when he did homage to Philip Augustus at the latter's coronation, may be regarded as exceptionally fortunate, or unfortunate, in this respect, since the bulk of the English wine-drinkers of that day had to content themselves with the annual shipments of Anjou and Poitevin wines from Nantes and La Rochelle.[255] But the stout men-at-arms and death-dealing archers who followed the third Edward to the gates of Reims in the days when

''Twas merry, 'twas merry in France to go,
A yeoman stout with a bended bow,
To venge the King on his mortal foe,
And to quaff the Gascon wine,'

no doubt found consolation for some of the hardships they endured during their wet and weary watches in the bitter winter of 1365 in the familiarity they acquired with the vintages of the Mountain and the Marne.

And, their sovereign's prohibition notwithstanding, there is every reason to believe that the heroes of Agincourt drank pottle-deep of the forbidden beverage. The grim Earl of Salisbury bore no love to the burghers of Reims;[256] but there is little likelihood that his aversion extended to the wine of the province he ruled as governor, and the garrisons of its various strongholds over which the red cross of St. George triumphantly floated revelled on the best of 'the white wyne and the rede.' In the days of hot fighting and keen foraging which marked the close of Bedford's regency, there is ample evidence to show that our countrymen had acquired and retained a very decided taste for these growths. When Charles VII. entered Reims in triumph, with Jeanne Darc by his side and the chivalry of France around him, the retreating English garrison bore forth with them on the opposite side of the city a string of wains piled high with casks of wine, the pillage of the burghers' cellars.[257]

Tradition tells, too, how the English, besieged in the town of Epernay, had gathered there great store of wine, and how this suggested to their captain a cunning stratagem. Having caused a number of wagons to be laden with casks of wine, he despatched them with a feeble escort through the gate furthest from the beleaguering forces, as though destined to Chalons as a place of safety. The French commander marked this, and as soon as the convoy was well clear of the walls, a body of horse came spurring after it in hot haste. The wagon-train halted; there was a brief attempt to turn the laden vehicles homewards, and then, seeing the hopelessness of this, the escort galloped back into the town, and down swooped the Frenchmen on their prize. The ride had been sharp; the day was hot, and the road dusty. So a score of the captured casks were quickly broached; and as the generous fluid flowed freely down the throats of the captors, it soon began to produce an effect. Some of them, overcome by the heat and the wine, loosened their armour, and stretched themselves at length on the ground; whilst others, grouped around some fast emptying barrel, continued to quaff from their helmets and other improvised drinking vessels confusion to the 'island bull-dogs.' When lo, the gate of the town flew open; an English trumpet rang out its note of defiance; and, with lances levelled, the flower of the garrison poured forth like a living avalanche upon the startled Frenchmen. Before they could make ready to fight or fly, the foe was upon them, and their blood was soon mingling on the dusty highway with the pools of wine which had gushed forth from the abandoned casks. Hardly one escaped the slaughter; but local tradition chuckles grimly as it notes that in revenge thereof every man of the garrison was put to the edge of the sword on the subsequent capture of the town by the French.[258]

At the close of the fruitless struggle against the growing power of Charles the Victorious, we were fain to fall back, as of old, upon the strong wines of south-western France, the vintages of Bergerac, Gaillac, and Rabestens, shipped to us from the banks of the Garonne,[259] and the luscious malmseys of the Archipelago, to which were subsequently added the growths of southern Spain. The taste of the wine of the Champagne must have been almost forgotten amongst us when the growing fame of the vineyards of Ay attracted the notice of Bluff King Hal. Most likely he and Francis I. swore eternal good fellowship at the Field of the Cloth of Gold over a beaker of this regal liquor. Once alive to its merits, the King, whose ambassadors, _pace_ John Styles, seem to have had standing orders to keep an equally sharp look out for wines or wives likely to suit the royal fancy, neglected no opportunity of securing it in perfection. Like his contemporaries, Charles V., Francis I., and Leo X., he stationed a commissioner at Ay intrusted with the onerous duty of selecting a certain number of casks of the best growths, and despatching them, carefully sealed, to the cellars of Whitehall, Greenwich, and Richmond. The example set by the monarch was, however, too costly a one to be followed by his subjects, and the very name of Champagne probably remained unknown to them for years to come. The poets and dramatists of the Elizabethan era, who have left us so accurate a picture of the manners of their day, and make such frequent allusions to the wines in vogue, do not even mention Champagne; Gervase Markham preserves a like silence in his _Modern Housewife_,[260] while the passages in Surflet's _Maison Rustique_ extolling the wine of Ay are merely translations from the original French edition.[261] And though Venner speaks of these wines as excelling all others, he is careful to attribute their consumption to the King and the nobles of France.[262]

The captive Queen of Scots, whose consumption of wine elicited dire lament from one of her lordly jailers,[263] may have missed at Fotheringay the vintage she had tasted in early life when enjoying the hospitality of her uncle, Cardinal Charles of Lorraine, at Reims; but to the half-hearted pedant, her son, the name of Epernay recalled no convivial associations--it was merely the title of a part of his slaughtered mother's appanage. Spanish influence and Spanish wine ruled supreme at his Court; and though Rhenish crowned the goblets of many of the high-souled cavaliers who rallied round King Charles and Henrietta Maria, the bulk of the English nation remained faithful, till the close of the Commonwealth, to their old favourites of the south of Spain and the fragrant produce of the Canaries.

All this was altered when 'the King enjoyed his own again;' for the Restoration made Champagne--that is, the still red wine of the province--the most fashionable, if not the most popular, wine in England. At the Court of Louis XIV. the future Merry Monarch and his faithful followers had acquired a taste for the wines of France, and they brought back this taste,[264] together with sundry others of a far more reprehensible character, with them to England. One of the first and most acceptable gifts of Louis to his brother-sovereign on the latter's recall was 'two hundred hogsheads of excellent wine--Champagne, Burgundy, and Hermitage.'[265] Returning home more French than the French themselves, the late exiles ruminated on the flesh-pots of Egypt, and sighed; and we can readily picture a gallant who had seen hot service under Condé or Turenne exclaiming to his friend and fellow-soldier:

'Ah, Courtine, must we be always idle? Must we never see our
glorious days again? When shall we be rolling in the lands of milk
and honey, encamped in large luxuriant vineyards, where the loaded
vines cluster about our tents, drink the rich juice just pressed
from the plump grape?'[266]

And that friend replying:

'Ah, Beaugard, those days have been; but now we must resolve to
content ourselves at an humble rate. Methinks it is not unpleasant
to consider how I have seen thee in a large pavilion drowning
the heat of the day in Champagne wines--sparkling sweet as those
charming beauties whose dear remembrance every glass recorded--with
half a dozen honest fellows more.'[267]

Demand created supply, until, in 1667, a few years after the Restoration, France furnished two-fifths of the amount of wine consumed in the kingdom;[268] and the taste of the royal sybarite for the light-coloured wines of the Marne seems to be hinted at in Malagene's exclamation:

'I have discovered a treasure of pale wine.... I assure you 'tis
the same the King drinks of.'[269]

St. Evremond, who, though not precisely cast by Nature from 'the mould of form,' fulfilled for many years the duties of arbiter elegantiarum at Charles's graceless Court, decidedly did his best to render the Champagne _flûte_ 'the glass of fashion.' Ever ready to speak in praise of the wines of Ay, Avenay, and Reims,[270] the mentor of the Count de Grammont strove by example as well as by precept to win converts to his creed. In verse he declares that the beauties of the country fail to console him for the absence of Champagne; regrets that the season of the wines of the Marne is over, and that the yield of those of the Mountain had failed; and shudders at the prospect of being obliged to have recourse to the Loire, to Bordeaux, or to Cahors for the wine he will have to drink.[271]

The lively Frenchman found plenty of native writers to reëcho him. Champagne sparkles in all the plays of the Restoration, and seems the fitting inspiration of their matchless briskness of dialogue. The Millamours and Bellairs, the Carelesses and Rangers, the Sir Joskin Jolleys and Sir Fopling Flutters, the _beaux_ of the Mall and the rakes of the Mulberry and New Spring Gardens, the gay frequenters of the Folly on the Thames and the _habitués_ of Pontack's Ordinary, whom the contemporary dramatists transferred bodily to the stage of the King's or the Duke's, are constantly tossing off bumpers of it. Their lives would seem to have been one continuous round of love-making and Champagne-drinking, to judge from the following 'catch,' sung by four merry gentlemen at a period when, according to Redding, ten thousand tuns of French wine were annually pouring into England:

'The pleasures of love and the joys of good wine,
To perfect our happiness, wisely we join;
We to Beauty all day
Give the sovereign sway,
And her favourite nymphs devoutly obey.
At the plays we are constantly making our court,
And when they are ended we follow the sport

To the Mall and the Park,
Where we love till 'tis dark;
Then sparkling Champaign[272]
Puts an end to their reign;
It quickly recovers
Poor languishing lovers;
Makes us frolic and gay, and drowns all our sorrow;
But, alas, we relapse again on the morrow.'[273]

We learn, indeed, that under the influence of

'powerful Champaign, as they call it, a spark can no more refrain
running into love than a drunken country vicar can avoid disputing
of religion when his patron's ale grows stronger than his
reason.'[274]

Probably it was owing to this quality of inspiring a tendency to amativeness that ladies were sometimes expected to join in such potations.

'She's no mistress of mine
That drinks not her wine,
Or frowns at my friends' drinking motions;
If my heart thou wouldst gain,
Drink thy flask of Champaign;
'Twill serve thee for paint and love-potions,'[275]

is the sentiment enunciated in chorus by four half-fuddled topers in the New Spring Gardens. At the Mulberry Gardens we find that

'Jack Wildish sent for a dozen more Champaign, and a brace of
such girls as we should have made honourable love to in any other
place.'[276]

With such manners and customs can we wonder at one gentleman complaining how another

'came where I was last night roaring drunk; swore--d--him!--he had
been with my Lord Such-a-one, and had swallowed three quarts of
Champaign for his share;'[277]

or have any call to feel surprised that such boon companions should

'come, as the sparks do, to a playhouse too full of Champaign,
venting very much noise and very little wit'?[278]

Champagne remains ignored in such books as the _Mystery of Vintners_;[279] but although technical works may be silent, the poets vie with the dramatists in extolling its exhilarating effects--effects surely perceptible in the witty, careless, graceful verse with which the epoch abounds. John Oldham--who, after passing his early years as a schoolmaster, was lured into becoming, in the words of his biographer, 'at once a votary of Bacchus and Venus' by the patronage of Rochester, Dorset, and Sedley in 1681, and who realised the fable of the pot of brass and the pot of earthenware by dying from the effects of the company he kept two years later--has given a list of the wines in vogue in his day:

'Let wealthy merchants, when they dine,
Run o'er their witty names of wine:
Their chests of Florence and their Mont Alchine,
Their Mants, Champaigns, Chablees, Frontiniacks tell;
Their aums of Hock, of Backrag [Bacharach] and Mosell.'[280]

He gives the wines of our 'sweet enemy' a high position, too, in his _Dithyrambick, spoken by a Drunkard_, who is made to exclaim,

'Were France the next, this round Bordeau shall swallow,
Champaign, Langou [L'Anjou], and Burgundy shall follow.'[281]

Butler makes the hero of his immortal satire prepared to follow the old Roman fashion with regard to his lady's name, and to

'Drink ev'ry letter on't in stum,
And make it brisk Champaign become;'[282]

and speaks of routed forces having

'Recovered many a desperate campaign
With Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champaign.'[283]

And Sir Charles Sedley, in an apologue written towards the close of the century, tells how a doctor of his day was sorely troubled by the unreasonable lives led by his patients, until

'One day he called 'em all together,
And, one by one, he asked 'em whether
It were not better by good diet
To keep the blood and humours quiet,
With toast and ale to cool their brains
Than nightly fire 'em with Champains.'[284]

In 1679 the peculiar ideas of political economy then prevailing led to a formal prohibition of the importation of French wines, and the consequent substitution in their place of those of Portugal. One can imagine the consternation of the 'beaux' and 'sparks' at this fatal decree, and the satisfaction of the few vintners whose cellars chanced to be well stored with the forbidden vintages of France--with

'The Claret smooth, red as the lips we press
In sparkling fancy while we drain the bowl;
The mellow-tasted Burgundy, and, quick
As is the wit it gives, the gay Champagne.'[285]

But, Port wine and prohibitions notwithstanding, men of fashion of that epoch were not entirely obliged to abandon their favourite potations, since five thousand hogsheads of French wine were surreptitiously landed on the south-west coast of England in a single year.[286] Fortunately, too, for them, the Government came to the conclusion that it was for the time being futile to fight against popular tastes, and in 1685 the obnoxious prohibition was removed, with the result that, two years later, the imports of French wine were registered as fifteen thousand tuns--that is, sixty thousand hogsheads.[287]

On the outbreak of hostilities with France in 1689, the import of French wines received a serious check, and as they vanished from the revenue returns, so Champagne began to disappear from the social board and the literature of the day. Strange to say, however, it was not only the favourite wine of William III., but of his dethroned father-in-law, James II. The red wines of the province of Champagne had always found a ready sale in Flanders and the Low Countries,[288] and quickened the minds of the stout seamen who fought against Blake and Rupert. The variety produced from the Beaune grape at Vertus was the one patronised by Macaulay's pet hero, the hook-nosed Dutchman,[289] whilst the exile of St. Germain seems to have been more catholic in his tastes.[290]

Eagerly must the _gourmets_ of the day, when, 'if we did not love the French, we coveted their wines,'[291] have hailed the return of a peace which permitted them not only to indulge in their old favourites, but to welcome a new attraction in the shape of sparkling Champagne. The term 'sparkling' as applied to wine did not at the outset necessarily mean effervescing, as in one of Farquhar's comedies we find Roebuck comparing himself to 'a bumper of Claret, smiling and sparkling.'[292] Towards the close of the century, however, we meet with sure proof of the advent of the delectable beverage with which the worthy cellarer of Hautvillers was the first to endow droughty humanity. The contemporary dramatists were ever on the alert to shoot Folly as she flew. The stage was really the mirror of that time, and those who wrote for it seized on every passing whim, fashion, or fancy of the day. The introduction of a new wine was certainly not to be missed by them, and the recently discovered _vin mousseux_ of Dom Perignon is plainly referred to in Farquhar's aptly-named comedy, _Love and a Bottle_, produced in 1698, just after the Peace of Ryswick had allowed the reopening of trade with France.

The second scene of act ii. represents the lodgings of Mockmode, the country squire, who aims at being 'a beau,' and who is discovered in close confabulation with his landlady, the Widow Bullfinch:

'_Mock._ But what's most modish for beverage now? For I suppose the
fashion of that always alters with the clothes.

_W. Bull._ The tailors are the best judges of that; but Champaign,
I suppose.

_Mock._ Is Champaign a tailor? Methinks it were a fitter name for a
wig-maker. I think they call my wig a campaign.

_W. Bull._ You're clear out, sir--clear out. Champaign is a fine
liquor, which all great beaux drink to make 'em witty.

_Mock._ Witty! O, by the universe, I must be witty! I'll drink
nothing else; I never was witty in my life. Here, Club, bring us a
bottle of what d'ye call it--the witty liquor.'

The Widow having retired, Club, Mockmode's servant, reënters with a bottle and glasses.

'_Mock._ Is that the witty liquor? Come, fill the glasses.... But
where's the wit now, Club? Have you found it?

_Club._ Egad, master, I think 'tis a very good jest.

_Mock._ What?

_Club._ Why, drinking. You'll find, master, that this same
gentleman in the straw doublet, this same Will o' the Wisp, is a
wit at the bottom. Here, here, master, how it puns and quibbles in
the glass![293]

_Mock._ By the universe, now I have it; the wit lies in the
jingling! All wit consists most in jingling. Hear how the glasses
rhyme to one another.... I fancy this same wine is all sold at
Will's Coffee-house.'

Here we have a palpable hit at the source of inspiration indulged in by many of the wits and rhymesters who gathered round 'glorious John Dryden' within the hallowed walls of that famous rendezvous. And likely enough, when they

'were all at supper, all in good humour, Champaign was the word,
and wit flew about the room like a pack of losing cards.'[294]

Farquhar seems, above all others, to have hailed the new wine with pleasure. We all remember the 'red Burgundy' which saves Mirabel from his perilous position in the cut-throats' den; but the flighty hero of the _Inconstant_ is equally enthusiastic over sparkling wine when he exclaims:

'Give me the plump Venetian, brisk and sanguine, that smiles upon
me like the glowing sun, and meets my lips like sparkling wine,
her person shining as the glass, and spirit like the foaming
liquor.'[295]

The benignant influence of the beverage is, moreover, referred to by Farquhar in his epilogue to the _Constant Couple_, where, in alluding to the critics, it is said that

'To coffee some retreat to save their pockets,
Others, more generous, damn the play at Locket's;
But there, I hope, the author's fears are vain,
Malice ne'er spoke in generous Champain.'[296]

Further, he makes Benjamin Wouldbe exclaim:

'Show me that proud stoick that can bear success and Champain;
philosophy can support us in hard fortune, but who can have
patience in prosperity?'[297]

Farquhar shows his usual keen observation of the minutest features of the life of his day in his allusion to the flask--the pear-shaped _flacon_ in which Champagne made its _entrée_ into fashionable life.[298] Archer, in his ditty on 'trifles,' thus warbles:

'A flask of Champaign, people think it
A trifle, or something as bad;
But if you'll contrive how to drink it,
You'll find it no trifle, egad!'[299]

Congreve, in evident reference to the still wine, thus writes to Mr. Porter, husband of the celebrated actress, from Calais, August 11, 1700:

'Here is admirable Champaign for twelvepence a quart, as good
Burgundy for fifteenpence; and yet I have virtue enough to resolve
to leave this place to-morrow for St. Omers, where the same wine is
half as dear again, and may be not quite so good.'[300]