A History of Champagne, with Notes on the Other Sparkling Wines of France. Henry Vizetelly
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
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