‘Let’s quit this vain world, with its pleasures that cloy,A destiny tranquil and sweet to enjoy:Descend to my cellar, and there taste the charmsOf Champagne and Beaune;Our pleasure will there be without the alarmsOf any joy queller;For theennuithat often mounts up to the throneWill never descend to the cellar.’[190]
‘Let’s quit this vain world, with its pleasures that cloy,A destiny tranquil and sweet to enjoy:Descend to my cellar, and there taste the charmsOf Champagne and Beaune;Our pleasure will there be without the alarmsOf any joy queller;For theennuithat often mounts up to the throneWill never descend to the cellar.’[190]
‘Let’s quit this vain world, with its pleasures that cloy,A destiny tranquil and sweet to enjoy:Descend to my cellar, and there taste the charmsOf Champagne and Beaune;Our pleasure will there be without the alarmsOf any joy queller;For theennuithat often mounts up to the throneWill never descend to the cellar.’[190]
‘Let’s quit this vain world, with its pleasures that cloy,
A destiny tranquil and sweet to enjoy:
Descend to my cellar, and there taste the charms
Of Champagne and Beaune;
Our pleasure will there be without the alarms
Of any joy queller;
For theennuithat often mounts up to the throne
Will never descend to the cellar.’[190]
The poet appears to have rivalled one of the characters in his piece,Les Festes Sincères(represented on the 5th October 1744 on the occasion of the King’s convalescence), who, after describing how wine was freely proffered to all comers, said that he had contented himself with thirty glasses, ‘half Burgundy and half Champagne.’
In a piece of verse entitled ‘La Charme du Vaudeville à Table,’ Panard sketches in glowing colours the inspiriting effect of sparkling Champagne upon such a joyous company of periwigged beaux and patched and powdered beauties as we may imagine to be assembled at the hospitable board of some rich financier of the epoch.
‘’Tis then some joyous guestA flask, filled with the bestOf Reims or Ay, securely sealed, holds up;He deftly cuts the string,Aloft the cork takes wing;The rest with eager eyesThrust glasses t’wards the prize,And watch the nectar foaming o’er the cup.They sip, they drink, they laugh,And then anew they quaffTheir bumpers, crowned above the brim with foamThat gives to laughter birth,And makes fresh bursts of mirth.Its spirit and its fireUnto the brain aspire,And rouse the wit of which this is the home.’[191]
‘’Tis then some joyous guestA flask, filled with the bestOf Reims or Ay, securely sealed, holds up;He deftly cuts the string,Aloft the cork takes wing;The rest with eager eyesThrust glasses t’wards the prize,And watch the nectar foaming o’er the cup.They sip, they drink, they laugh,And then anew they quaffTheir bumpers, crowned above the brim with foamThat gives to laughter birth,And makes fresh bursts of mirth.Its spirit and its fireUnto the brain aspire,And rouse the wit of which this is the home.’[191]
‘’Tis then some joyous guestA flask, filled with the bestOf Reims or Ay, securely sealed, holds up;He deftly cuts the string,Aloft the cork takes wing;The rest with eager eyesThrust glasses t’wards the prize,And watch the nectar foaming o’er the cup.
‘’Tis then some joyous guest
A flask, filled with the best
Of Reims or Ay, securely sealed, holds up;
He deftly cuts the string,
Aloft the cork takes wing;
The rest with eager eyes
Thrust glasses t’wards the prize,
And watch the nectar foaming o’er the cup.
They sip, they drink, they laugh,And then anew they quaffTheir bumpers, crowned above the brim with foamThat gives to laughter birth,And makes fresh bursts of mirth.Its spirit and its fireUnto the brain aspire,And rouse the wit of which this is the home.’[191]
They sip, they drink, they laugh,
And then anew they quaff
Their bumpers, crowned above the brim with foam
That gives to laughter birth,
And makes fresh bursts of mirth.
Its spirit and its fire
Unto the brain aspire,
And rouse the wit of which this is the home.’[191]
Exuberant Festivity
To its praise he also devotes a poetictour de force, the concluding verses of which may thus be rendered:
‘Thanks to the bowlThat cheers my soul,No care can make me shrink.The foam divineOf this gray wine,[192]I think,When it I drain,Gives to each veinA link.Source of pure joy,Without alloy,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!Divine Champagne,All grief and painIn thee I gladly sink.All ills agreeAway from theeTo slink.Sweet to the noseAs new-blown roseOr pink.With gifts that easeAnd charms that please,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!’[193]
‘Thanks to the bowlThat cheers my soul,No care can make me shrink.The foam divineOf this gray wine,[192]I think,When it I drain,Gives to each veinA link.Source of pure joy,Without alloy,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!Divine Champagne,All grief and painIn thee I gladly sink.All ills agreeAway from theeTo slink.Sweet to the noseAs new-blown roseOr pink.With gifts that easeAnd charms that please,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!’[193]
‘Thanks to the bowlThat cheers my soul,No care can make me shrink.The foam divineOf this gray wine,[192]I think,
‘Thanks to the bowl
That cheers my soul,
No care can make me shrink.
The foam divine
Of this gray wine,[192]
I think,
When it I drain,Gives to each veinA link.Source of pure joy,Without alloy,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!
When it I drain,
Gives to each vein
A link.
Source of pure joy,
Without alloy,
Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!
Divine Champagne,All grief and painIn thee I gladly sink.All ills agreeAway from theeTo slink.
Divine Champagne,
All grief and pain
In thee I gladly sink.
All ills agree
Away from thee
To slink.
Sweet to the noseAs new-blown roseOr pink.With gifts that easeAnd charms that please,Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!’[193]
Sweet to the nose
As new-blown rose
Or pink.
With gifts that ease
And charms that please,
Come, dear one, fain I’d drink!’[193]
Despite the success achieved by thevin mousseux, merchants, owing to the excessive breakage of the bottles—of the cause of which and of the means of stopping it they were equally ignorant—often saw their hopes of fortune fly away with the splintered fragments of the shattered glass.[194]The following passages from theMS.notes of the founder of one of the first houses of Reims, written in 1770, would imply some knowledge of the fact that aliquoreuxwine was likely to lead to a destructivecasse, and also that the importance of the trade in sparkling Champagne was far greater during the first half of the eighteenth century than is usually supposed.[195]TheMS.in question says: ‘In 1746 I bottled 6000 bottles of a veryliquoreuxwine; I had only 120 bottles of it left. In 1747 there was lessliqueur; the breakage amounted to one-third of the whole. In 1748 it was more vinous and lessliquoreux; the breakage was only a sixth. In 1759 it was morerond, and the breakage was only a tenth. In 1766 the wine of Jacquelet was veryrond; the breakage was only a twentieth.’[196]
The writer then proceeds to recommend, as a means of preventing breakage, that the wine should not be bottled till theliqueurhad almost disappeared, and that, if necessary, fermentation should be checked by well beating the wine. But as at that epoch there was really no means of effectually testing this disappearance, and as the beating theory was an utterly fallacious one, the followers of his precepts remained with the sad alternative of producing in too many instances eithermousses follesand their inevitable accompaniment of disastrous breakage, or wine so mature as to be incapable of continuing its fermentation in bottle, and producingmousseat all.[197]
It is therefore evident that much of the sparkling wine drunk at the commencement of the last century was what we should callcrémant, or, as it was then styled,sablant,[198]as otherwise thebreakage would have been something frightful. Bertin du Rocheret plainly indicates after 1730 a difference between the fiercely frothing kinds, to which the termsaute bouchonor pop-cork was applied, and wine that was merelymousseux.[199]The price of the former is the highest, ranging up to 3 livres 6 sols, whilst that of thebon mousseuxdoes not exceed 50 sols, the difference in the two being no doubt based to a certain extent on the loss by breakage.[200]
Hence, too, a partiality for weak sour growths for makingvin mousseux, as, although science could give no reason, experience showed that with these the breakage would be less than with those of a saccharine nature.[201]Thus Bertin writes in 1744 that the vineyards of Avize, planted for the most part in 1715, and almost entirely with white grapes, only produced a thin wine, with a tartness that caused it to be one of the least esteemed in the district; but that ‘since the mania for thesaute bouchon, that abominable beverage, which has become yet more loathsome from an insupportable acidity,’ the Avize wines had increased in value eightfold.[202]To this acidity the Abbé Bignon refers in a poem of 1741, in which, protesting against the partiality for violently effervescing wines, he says:
‘Your palate is a crippleWorn out by fiery tipple,Or else it would prefer juiceOf grapes to fizzing verjuice.’[203]
‘Your palate is a crippleWorn out by fiery tipple,Or else it would prefer juiceOf grapes to fizzing verjuice.’[203]
‘Your palate is a crippleWorn out by fiery tipple,Or else it would prefer juiceOf grapes to fizzing verjuice.’[203]
‘Your palate is a cripple
Worn out by fiery tipple,
Or else it would prefer juice
Of grapes to fizzing verjuice.’[203]
This serves to explain the preference so long accorded bygourmetsto the finernon mousseuxwines, full of aroma and flavour, and often sugary andliquoreux, but looked upon by the general public up to the close of the eighteenth century as inferior to those which were sharp, strong, and even sourish, but which effervesced well.[204]Lingering relics of prejudice against sparkling wine existed as late as 1782, when that conscientious observer, Legrand d’Aussy, remarked that since it had been known that sparkling wines were green wines bottled in spring, when the universal revolution of Nature causes them to enter into fermentation, they had not been so much esteemed, thegourmetsof that day preferring those which did not sparkle.[205]
It was not till the close of the eighteenth century that any attempt was openly made to improve sparkling Champagne by the addition of sugar.[206]Science then came forward to prove that such anaddition was not contrary to the nature of wine, and that fermentation converted the saccharine particles of the must into alcohol, and increased the vinosity.[207]Several growers began to profit by this discovery of Chaptal, though, as a rule, those who followed his recommendations in secret were loudest in asserting that Providence alone had rendered their wine better than that of their neighbours.[208]M. Nicolas Perrier of Epernay, an ex-monk of Prémontré, pointed out, at the beginning of the present century, that up to that period sugar was only regarded as a means of rendering the wine more pleasant to drink, and had always been added after fermentation, and as late as possible. This practice was favoured by the tyrannical routine reigning among the peasants of not tasting the wine till December or January, when in 1800 a decisive experience confirmed the value of the new discoveries. Numerous demands for wine during the vintage led to anticipations of a brisk and speedy sale, and sugar was thereupon added at the time of the first fermentation, merely with the view, however, of bringing the wine more forward for the buyer to taste. The result went beyond the expectations entertained; and at Ay wines of the second class, commonly calledvins de vignerons, rose to a price previously unheard of.[209]
The present system of clearing the wine in bottles was not practised formerly. People were then not so particular about its perfect limpidity; besides which the wine consumed at the beginning of the year[210]had not time to deposit, and that bottled asmousseux, owing to its being originally made from carefully-selected grapes, formed very little sediment in the flask.[211]The method ofcollageemployed at the Abbey of Hautvillers is said to have preserved the wines from this evil. Whether this method transpired, or other people discovered it, is unknown; but certainly Bertin du Rocheret transmitted it, or something very similar, in July 1752 to his correspondent in London, who bottled Champagne wines regularly every year.[212]
The necessity of ridding the wine of the deposit which deprived it of its limpidity was, however, recognised later on. At first no other method suggested itself, excepting todépoterit—that is, to decant it into another bottle; a plan fraught, in the case of sparkling wines, with several disadvantages. At the commencement of the present century, however, the system ofdégorgeagewas substituted.[213]As at first practised, each bottle was held neck downwards, and either shaken or tapped at the bottom to detach the sediment, the operation being constantly repeated until the deposit had settled in the neck, when it was driven out by the force of the explosion which followed upon the removal of the cork. Somewhat later the plan now followed of placing the bottles in sloping racks and turning them every day was adopted, to the great saving of time and labour. Its discovery has been popularly attributed to Madame Clicquot; but the fact is the suggestion emanated from a person in her employ named Müller. The idea is said to have simultaneously occurred to a workman in Marizet’s house of the name of Thommassin.
Although the advent of such a delectable beverage as sparkling Champagne proved of much benefit to the world in general, and the wine-merchants of Reims and Epernay in particular, those most immediately concerned in its production had little or no reason to rejoice over its renown. The hapless peasants, from whose patches of vineyard it was to a great extent derived, were the last to profit by its popularity. Bidet, writing in 1759, foreshadows the misery which marked the last thirty years of theancien régime.[214]Speaking of the important trade in wine carried on by the city of Reims, he urges that this would in reality be benefited by the old decrees, prohibiting the plantingof new vineyards in the Champagne, being enforced to the letter. Extensive plantations of vines in land suitable for the growth of corn had doubled and even tripled the value of arable land, and caused a rise in the price of wheat. Manure, so necessary to bring these new plantations into bearing, and wood, owing to the demand for vine-stakes, barrel-staves, &c., had risen to thrice their former value. Recent epidemics had cost the lives of a large number of vine-dressers, and publiccorvéesoccupied the survivors a great part of the year, and hence a considerable increase in the cost of cultivation, landowners having to pay high wages to labourers from a distance. ‘Putting together all these excessive charges, with the crushing dues levied in addition upon vine-land as well as upon the sale and transport of wine, the result will infallibly be that the more profitable the wine-trade formerly was to Reims and to the vineyards of the environs, the more it will languish in the end, till it becomes a burden to all the vineyard owners.’ Happily these gloomy forebodings have since been completely falsified.
Arms of ReimsTHE ARMS OF REIMS ON THE PORTE DE PARIS.
THE ARMS OF REIMS ON THE PORTE DE PARIS.
Coronation Oath at ReimsLOUIS XVI. TAKING THE CORONATION OATH AT REIMS(From a painting by Moreau).
LOUIS XVI. TAKING THE CORONATION OATH AT REIMS(From a painting by Moreau).
Reims accorded an enthusiastic welcome to the youthful and ill-fated Marie Antoinette, on her passage through the city on May 12, 1770, shortly after her arrival in France;[215]and five years subsequently the Rémois were regaled with the splendours of a coronation, when the young King, Louis XVI., and his radiant Queen passed beneath the elaborately wrought escutcheon surmounting the Porte de Paris, expressly forged by a blacksmith of Reims in honour of the occasion,[216]and received from the hands of the Lieutenant des Habitans the three silver keys of the city.[217]The King was crowned on the 11th June by the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, Charles Antoine de la RocheAymon, a prelate who had previously baptised, confirmed, and married him, when the six lay peers were represented by Monsieur (the Count of Provence), the Count d’Artois, the Dukes of Orleans, Chartres, and Bourbon, and the Prince de Condé. The royal train was borne by the Prince de Lambesq; the Marshal de Clermont Tonnerre officiated as Constable; and the sceptre, crown, and hand of justice were carried respectively by the Marshals de Contades, de Broglie, and de Nicolai.[218]How the ill-fated King exclaimed, as the crown of Charlemagne was placed upon his brow, ‘It hurts me,’ even as Henri III. had cried, under the same circumstances, ‘It pricks me,’ and how his natural benevolence led him to slur over that portion of the coronation oath in which he ought to have bound himself to exterminate all heretics, are matters of history. An innovation to be noted is, that at the banquet at the archiepiscopal palace, after the ceremony, the youthful sovereign didnotsit alone in solitary state beneath a canopy of purple velvet, ornamented with golden fleurs de lis, with his table encumbered by the great goldnef, the crown and the sceptres, the Constable, sword in hand, close by him, and the Grand Echanson and Ecuyer Tranchant tasting his wine and cutting his food,[219]circumstances under which ‘the roast must be without savour and the Ai without bouquet.’[220]The King on this occasion admitted his brothers to his board; and the ecclesiastical peers, the lay peers, the ambassadors, and the great officers of the crown formed, asusual, four groups at the remaining tables, whilst the Queen and her ladies witnessed the gustatory exploits from a gallery.
Clergyman and Peasant
The frightful oppression oftailles,aides,corvées,gabelles, and other dues that crushed the hapless peasant in the pre-Revolutionary era, weighed with especial severity upon thevigneron. In virtue of thedroit de gros, the officers could at any hour make an inventory of his wine, decree how much he might consume himself, and tax him for the remainder.[221]Thefermiers généraux, who farmed the taxes of the province, became his sleeping partners, and had their share in his crop.[222]In a vineyard at Epernay, upon four pieces of wine, the average produce of an arpent, and valued at 600 francs, thefermelevied first 30 francs, and then when the pieces were sold 75 francs more.[223]The ecclesiastical tithe was also a heavy burden, at Hautvillers the eleventh of the wine being taken asdismes, at Dizy the twelfth, and at Pierry the twentieth.[224]The result was one continuous struggle of trickery on the part of the grower, and cunning on that of the officers.[225]The visits of the latter were paid almost daily, and their registers recorded every drop of wine in the cellars of the inhabitants.[226]
But the wine had by no means acquitted all its dues. The merchant buying it had to pay another 75 francs to thefermebefore despatching it to the consumer. When he did despatch it, thefermestrictly prescribed the route it was to take, any deviation from this being punished by confiscation; and it had to pay at almost every step. Transport by water was excessively onerous from constantly recurring tolls, and by land whole days were lost in undergoing examinations and verifications and making payments.[227]The commissionnaire charged with the conveyance of Bertin du Rocheret’s wine to Calais from Epernay had from 70 to 75 francs per poinçon. Despite all these drawbacks, the export trade must have been considerable, for we are told that prior to the Revolution the profits on supplying two or three abbeys of Flanders were sufficient to enable a wine-merchant of Reims to live in good style.[228]
Bas-ReliefBAS-RELIEF ON THE ANCIENT HÔTEL DES FERMES AT REIMS.
BAS-RELIEF ON THE ANCIENT HÔTEL DES FERMES AT REIMS.
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 thefermiers 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 pleasurefor its own sake, and women for their beauty andcomplaisance. Thefermiers générauxof 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.
Accord FraternelL’ACCORD FRATERNEL(From a print published at the commencement of the Revolution).
L’ACCORD FRATERNEL(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 winepar excellence. We can comprehend it wasde rigueurto ‘fouetter le Champagne’[232]at the epicurean repasts held at thepetits maisonsof the richfermiers généraux, and that thetalons rougesof 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 fairémuleof Sophie Arnould or Mademoiselle Guimard in thecoulisses. 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 entitledL’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 representativeof 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 withvin 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 tallflutecharged 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]
Mirabeau TonneauMIRABEAU TONNEAU(From a sketch by Camille Desmoulins).
MIRABEAU TONNEAU(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 1erde 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-crownedflute, and in his right another of those flasks, two of which he was credited with emptying at each repast.[238]
We have seen that the origin of many of the most famouscrûsof 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 inLe Nouveau Pressoir du Clergé, orNew Wine-Press for the Clergy, published in 1789. A man of the people and a representativeof 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.
Pressoir du ClergéLE NOUVEAU PRESSOIR DU CLERGÉ, 1789(From a caricature of the epoch).
LE NOUVEAU PRESSOIR DU CLERGÉ, 1789(From a caricature of the epoch).
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, andflûtesof 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]
Henri IV and Louis XVIHENRI QUATRE AND LOUIS SEIZE.‘Ventre St. Gris! Is this my grandson Louis?’(Facsimile of a woodcut of the time.)
HENRI QUATRE AND LOUIS SEIZE.‘Ventre St. Gris! Is this my grandson Louis?’(Facsimile of a woodcut of the time.)
As to the pamphleteers, who advocated the Rights of Man and aspersed Marie Antoinette; thepoets, 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 thepetit bleuof Argenteuil or Suresnes, consumed in company with Manon or Margot, in one of the dingy smokycabaretswhich thecaféwas 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, styledcrême 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 thecarteof the sumptuous repasts furnished by therestaurateurs, Méot and Beauvillers, to thede factorulers of France,[241]although in 1795 the price of wine generally in Paris had increased tenfold.[242]Ex-procureursof 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]
A Pleasant Company
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 thedive 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.
Russians in ParisLES RUSSES À PARIS(From a coloured print of the time).
LES RUSSES À PARIS(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 favouriteweissbier, his own belovedkuhle 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 ofbockbier. 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 thecrûsof the River possessed a special charm which Nature had denied to his imperial Tokay. Even the red-coatedofficers 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.’
Dîner de Milord GogoLE DÎNER DE MILORD GOGO, 1816(After a coloured print of the time).
LE DÎNER DE MILORD GOGO, 1816(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 agrosse miseat 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 thegros bataillonsof the bankers atrouletteandtrente 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 returnedémigréswho 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 thegardes 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.