MDMD2: The Brotherhood of the Grape

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Nor the Wine.'
   "'Wine.'  Dixon is now the one squinting,  Mason wonders what he's done 
this time.  '"Grape or Grain, but ne'er the Twain," as me Great-Uncle George 
observ'd to me more than once,-- 'Vine with Corn, beware the Morn.'  Of the 
two sorts of drinking Folk this implies, thah' is, Grape People and Grain 
People, You will now inform me of Your membership in the Brotherhood of the, 
eeh, Grape...? and that You seldom, if ever, touch Ale or Spirits, am I 
correct?'
   "'Happily so, I should imagine, as, given a finite Supply, there's be 
more for each of us, it's like Jack Sprat, isn't it.'
   "'Oh, I'll drink Wine if I must...?-- and now we're enter'd upon the 
Topick,--'
   "'--and as we are in Portsmouth, after all,-- there cannot lie too 
distant some Room where each of us may consult what former Vegetation 
pleases him?'
   "Dixon looks outside at the ebbing wintry sunlight,  'Nor too early, I 
guess...?'
   "'We're sailing to the Indies,-- Heaven knows waht's available on Board, 
or out there.  It may be our last chance for civiliz'd Drink.'
   "'Sooner we start, the better, in thah' case...?'"

(M&D, Ch. 3, pp. 17-18)

Again, beer before liquor, you get sick quicker; liquor before beer, you're 
in the clear ...

>From James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (New York: Penguin, 1979 
[1791]), "Part VI: 1776," pp. 195-224 ...

"We discussed the question of whether drinking improved conversation and 
benvolence.  Sir Joshua [Reynolds] maintained it did.  JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; 
before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who 
are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk.  When they 
have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and 
grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he is only not 
sensible of his defects.' [...] '... wine gives not light, gay, ideal 
hilarity; but tumultuous, noisy, clamorous merriment....

[...]

"'Sir, I do not say it is wrong to produce self-complacency by drinking; I 
only deny that it improves the mind.  When I drank wine, I scorned to drink 
it when in company.  I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first 
place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, 
because I would have nobody to witness its effects upon me.'" (pp. 212-3)

But 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. 11, "The Sick Poor," pp. 
88-100 ...

"... Dr. Pringle, the leading authority, was a great believer in the 
curative merits of wine.  'There is nothing compared to wine, whereof the 
common men had an allowance of half a pint a day of a strong kind ... Wine 
was the best antiseptic and ... cordial.'  Convalescents--if any--should 
have 'a quart a day of French wine.'" (p. 100; citing John Pringle, FRCP RS, 
Observations on the Nature and Cure of Hospital and Jayl Fevers, London, 
1750)

By the way, for an online Boswell's Life of Johsnon, this isn't complete 
yet, only up to 1763, but ...

http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/BLJ/

But "The rest is coming--be patient."  See also ...

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1564

And, I swear, back to Chapter 2 shortly ...


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