MDMD2: Devotees of the Taproom

[Dave Monroe]

"But the Uniform accords with neither his Quaker Profession, nor his present 
Bearing,--a civilian Slouch grown lop-sided, too often observ'd, alas, in 
Devotees of the Taproom." (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 16)

"A few months later, when it is no longer necessary to pretend as much as 
they expected they'd have to, Dixon reveals that, whilst composing this, he 
had delib'rately refrain'd from Drink." (M&D, Ch. 2, p. 12)

"'If this is as bad as it gets, why I can abide thah'.  As long as the 
Spirits don't run out.'" (M&D, Ch. 3, p. 13)

Again, not only do Chs. 2 & 3 establish economically and indelibly the 
characters of Pynchon's Mason and Dixon, they also demonstrate Pynchon's 
uses and abuses (in that Nietzschean sense of otherwise?) of "the" 
historical record ...

>From H.W. Robinson, "Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779)--A Biographical Note," 
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 94, No. 3 (June 
1950): 272-4 ...

   "Although a recognized Quaker and a member of a large family of Quakers, 
Jeremiah's behavior was not all it should have been, for the following entry 
appears in the Quaker Minute Book of Raby, under the date of 28 October 
1760:--

Jery Dixon, son of George and Mary Dixon of Cockfield disowned for drinking 
to excess.

   "In this he had apparently inherited a family weakness, for his father on 
many occasions repented of his 'loathsome practice of Gitting too much 
Drink.'  This was the period when gin drinking was at its height and it may 
be that the habit acquired by both father and son undermined their health so 
much as to lead to their early deaths." (p. 273; citing a "Letter reported 
to the Society of Friends at Raby on June 6, 1745")

Note, by the way, "Jery" Dixon's disinheritance here ...

But, again, from David Foreman, "Historical Documents Relating to Mason & 
Dixon," Pynchon an Mason & Dixon, ed. Brooke Horvath and Irving Malin 
(Newark: U of Delaware P, 2000), pp. 143-66 ...

"Later, at a Philadelphia apothecary shop, Dixon orders one hundred cases of 
laudanum, apparent proof of alcohol's status as a gateway drug for other, 
more powerful intoxicants ([M&D p.] 267)
   "A look at Dixon's preference for spirits further establishes the links 
between Robinson's article and Pynchon's characterizations.[...]  Pynchon 
refers not only to Dixon's early death; he also notes his taste for 
spirits.[...] '"Grape or Grain, but ne'er the Twain" as me Uncle George 
observ'd more than once.[...]' ([M&D pp.] 17-18).  Pynchon could merely be 
interpreting a common understanding of eighteenth-century drinking habits, 
but it is likely that his information is based on Robinson's article." (p. 
156)

By the way ...

Beer before liquor, you'll get sick quicker
Liquor before beer, you're in the clear

... is how I've heard it, but ...

>From Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, 
Stimulants, and Intoxicants, trans. David Jacobson (New York: Pantheon, 1992 
[1980]), Ch. 5, "The Industrial Revolution, Beer, and Liquor," pp. 147-66 
...

   "At the start of the eighteenth century beer was still the foremost 
beverage of the English people.  Toward the middle of the century 
consumption of liquor, now called 'gin,' suddenly soared.... With a 
population of roughly 6 million, that meant approximately eight liters of 
gin per capita....
   "In the second half of the eighteenth century, gin consumption dropped to 
a more normal level.  In this sense the so-called gin epidemic was a 
historical episode.  But for that very reason it offered clear indications 
of the interconnection between the Industrial Revolution and the need for a 
cheap and powerful intoxicant.
   "Gin struck the typically beer-drinking English populace like a 
thunderbolt.  Its social destructiveness was comparable to the effect 
whiskey later had upon the North American Indian cultures....  Drinking and 
intoxication totally lost their characteristic role of establishing social 
bonds or connections.  Alcoholic inebriation gave way to alcoholic 
stupor.... [and here Schivelbusch cites Tobias Smollett].
   "The gin epidemic has rightly been called a 'social catstrophe of 
enormous proportions' (Monckton).  Yet the drunkenness of the masses at this 
time merely reflected another social catastrophe.  What was euphemistically 
termed 'rural exodus,' the 'flight from the countryside,' and in reality 
meant the expulsion of whole villages from their indigenous soil through the 
so-called enclosures (another euphemism for expropriation by large 
landowners) formed the background, or rather the breeding ground, for the 
gin epidemic....
   "Gin held out the promise to working-class people to help them forget 
their unbearable situation at least momentarily.  It provided alcoholic 
stupefaction, not social intoxication.  So began solitary drinking, a form 
of drinking limited to industrialized Europe and America.  In every other 
age and civilization drinking had been collective.
   "Liquor has never lost the stigma of having been involved with this first 
brutal phase of the Industrial Revolution.  It would henceforth be 
considered the vicious form of alcohol.  Beer in contrast was the benign 
alcoholic beverage ....  It was viewed--as in the engravings of Hogarth--as 
a guarantee of happiness, contentment, health.  The world of beer was all 
right; with liquor it came apart at the seams." (pp. 153-9)

And from Lisa Picard, Dr. Johnson's London: Coffee-House and Climbing Boys, 
Medicine, Toothpaste and Gin, Poverty and Press-Gangs, Freakshows and Female 
Education (New York: St. Martin's, 2001), Ch. 14, "Amusements," pp. 123-32 
...

   "Drinking gin reached the scale of a mania.  It had begun quite 
innocently.  The Dutch made a good warming spirit to keep out the cold damp 
air.  Adding juniper berries increased its medicinal effect and improved the 
taste.  Visiting French soldiers took a liking to it, and called it eau de 
genievre, juniper water.  The next wave of soldiery was English.  Thy 
couldn't get their tongues around genievre, so it became geneva, which 
rapidly became gin.  Samuel Johnson defined it as 'the spirit drawn by 
distillation from juniper-berries,' but for once he was wrong.  They were 
only used to flavour the spirit, which was made by distilling grain.  By 
1751 gin was being flavoured with anything handy, such as turpentine.
   "At first, gin was thought by the nobility and the gentry to be a good 
thing, since it provided na outlet for surplus grain and kept the price up.  
But it gradually deteriorated in quality and increased in quantity ....  
Parliament became a little worried ....  Parliament tried to get the genie 
back into the bottle, by various licensing laws, but the only means of 
enforcing them was by paid inform,ers, who were so unpopular they risked 
being torn from limb to limb....
   "By 1730 the poor drank 6,658,788 gallons of 'official' gin, let alone 
what they bought from wheelbarrows.... the Gin Act passed [in 1736] was a 
dead letter.... [and here Picard cites at length Henry Fielding, Enquiry 
into the Causes of Late Increase of Robbery (1751)]....
   "By now it was everywhere,  It was made and sold--illegally--in prisons 
and workhouses and hospitals....  Over 9,000 children died of gin, in 1751.  
The rich even began to worry about the knock-on effect on themselves....
   "In February 1751, Hogarth published his twin prints, Gin Lane and Beer 
Street.  Beer, 'a common necessity which Briton deem to be part of their 
birth-right' [Joseph Massie, Calculation of the Present Taxes, 2nd ed., 
London, 1761], was shown as a good thing, on which a man could contribute a 
fair day's work to the community.  But gin was different....
   "Another Gin Act became law in 1751.  The sale of gin was limited to 
substantial householders.  No more wheelbarrow sales....
   "Before leaving it, here are some synonyms for gin: cock-my-cap [and note 
Dixon's "red three corner'd Hat with some gaudy North-Road Cockade stuck in 
it" (M&D, p. 16)], kill-grief, comfort, poverty, meat-and-drink, washing, 
lodging, bingo (also used to mean brandy), diddle, heart's-ease, a kick in 
the guts, tape, white wool and strip-me-naked.  If you had been 
hicksius-doxious (drunk) you might feel womblety cropt (hungover) the day 
after...." (pp. 123-5)

[Picard relies here on John Doxat, The Gin Book (London, 1989), as well as 
an article by John E. Linnell in the Autumn 1957 issue of the Seagram 
Distillers house magazine, The House of Burnet ...]

For Hogarth, Beer Street and Gin Lane, see, e.g. ...

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/hogarth/hogarth5.html

http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/beer_and_gin.html

Okay, on to, or, rather, rewinding to, language, the Royal Society, and 
eighteenth century scientific instruments and their makers ...


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp