Bacchus in Romantic England: Writers and Drink, 1780-1830

277 Pages·1998·22.048 MB·English

by  Anya Taylor

ROMANTICISM IN PERSPECTIVE:
TEXTS, CULTURES, HISTORIES
General Editors:
Marilyn Gaull, Professor of English,
Temple University/New York University
Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor of English Language and Literature,
University of Glasgow
This series aims to offer a fresh assessment of Romanticism by
looking at it from a wide variety of perspectives. Both
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as yet unexplored aspects of Romanticism as a Europe-wide
phenomenon.
Titles include
Richard Cronin {editor)
1798: THE YEAR OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS
Peter Davidhazi
THE ROMANTIC CULT OF SHAKESPEARE: Literary
Reception in Anthropological Perspective
David Jasper
THE SACRED AND SECULAR CANON IN ROMANTICISM
Preserving the Sacred Truths
Malcolm Kelsall
JEFFERSON AND THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM
Folk, Land, Culture and the Romantic Nation
Andrew McCann
CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE 1790s: Literature, Radicalism
and the Public Sphere
Ashton Nichols
THE REVOLUTIONARY T: Wordsworth and the Politics of
Self-Presentation
Jeffrey C. Robinson
RECEPTION AND POETICS IN KEATS: 'My Ended Poet'
Anya Taylor
BACCHUS IN ROMANTIC ENGLAND: Writers and Drink,
1780-1830
Michael Wiley
ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY: Wordsworth and
Anglo-European Spaces
Eric Wilson
EMERSON'S SUBLIME SCIENCE
Romanticism in Perspective
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Bacchus in
Romantic England
Writers and Drink, 1780-1830
Anya Taylor
Professor of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The City University of New York
ffi
m
First published in Great Britain 1999 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-333-72521-2
M First published in the United States of America 1999 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-21499-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Anya.
Bacchus in romantic England : writers and drink, 1780-1830 / Anya
Taylor.
p. cm. — (Romanticism in perspective)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-312-21499-5 (cloth)
1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism.
2. English literature—18th century—History and criticism.
3. Drinking customs—England—History—19th century. 4. Drinking
customs—England—History—18th century. 5. Drinking of alcoholic
beverages in literature. 6. Authors, English—19th century-
-Biography. 7. Authors, English—18th century—Biography.
8. Romanticism—England. I. Title. II. Series.
PR457.T39 1998
820.9'355-<lc21 98-3237
CIP
©Anya Taylor 1999
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or tiansmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 32
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
For Mark

Contents
List of Plates viii
Acknowledgemen ts ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 Dionysian Myths and Alcoholic Realities 5
2 Romantic Homage to the Dionysian Burns:
Wordsworth and Others 32
3 Fragmented Persons: Charles Lamb,
John Woodvil and 'Confessions of a Drunkard' 61
4 Coleridge and Alcohol: Songs and Centrifuges 93
5 In the Cave of the Gnome: Hartley Coleridge 126
6 'Joy's Grape': Keats, Comus, and Paradise Lost IX 157
7 Bacchus Contra Venus: Alcoholic Husbands and
Their Wives 191
Notes 223
Index 259
vu
List of Plates
1. Statue of Dionysos and Hope, in Thomas Hope's galleries on
Duchess Street, London, from 1796 to 1841. A Roman copy of
the late 1st century AD after a Greek original of the 2nd quarter
of the 4th century, with restorations added in the late 18th
century by Vincenzo Pacetti, the statue was the best known
of Hope's collection, and the galleries 'became the centre of a
brilliant social scene frequented by the important figures of
Regency London'. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum.
2. A doctor trying to administer medicines to a drunken, carbuncled
sailor. Coloured etching by W. Elmes, 1811. Courtesy of
Wellcome Institute, London.
3. Drunken sailors round a table cheering and throwing hats in the air as
man with wooden leg recounts the Battle of the Nile. Reproduction
of an etching by C. H., c. 1825, after G. Cruikshank. Courtesy of
Wellcome Institute, London.
4. Three men carousing beneath a mulberry tree, with a poem accompa
nying the image. Etching by G. Cruikshank, 1808, after himself.
Courtesy of Wellcome Institute, London.
5. Sound Philosophy: Captain Morris's drinking song illustrated by five
men at a table drinking. Engraving and etching, c. 1806. Courtesy
of Wellcome Institute, London.
6. Children Grape Gathering. Samuel Palmer, 1852. Courtesy of
British Library Print Room, London.
7. Bacchus on a chariot preceded by a drunken procession of nude men,
women, and satyrs all carrying grapes. Engraving, early 16th
century, after G. Romano. Courtesy of Wellcome Institute,
London.
8. Three very drunken men unaware of 'death', as a crowned skeleton,
emerging from under the tablecloth. Engraving by S. Natim,
c. 1815, after W. Craig. Courtesy of Wellcome Institute, London.
vm
Acknowledgements
Many people have helped to gather, structure, and find meaning in
the unusual materials that form the substratum of this book. The
staffs of The Senate House Library of London University, The
British Library and The Wellcome Institute Library in London
brought up musty temperance tracts and songs without complaint.
Librarians at Manhattan College, especially Catherine Shanley, and
at Columbia University kindly found and shared their holdings.
Librarians in the Rare Book Collection of the Hunter College
Library permitted me to roam amid women's novels published
between 1780 and 1830; the New York Public Library annex shared
its Temperance Collection. The PSC-CUNY Research Foundation
supported my work in London for four summers. Early versions of
some ideas in Chapters 4,5 and 6, appeared in very different forms
in my '"A Father's Tale": Coleridge Foretells the Life of Hartley',
Studies in Romanticism (Spring 1991), in my 'Coleridge and Alcohol',
Texas Studies in Literature and Language (Fall 1991), and in my
'Coleridge, Keats, Lamb, and Seventeenth-Century Drinking
Songs,' in Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism, edited by Lisa
Low and Anthony John Harding (1994).
A number of friends have struggled with my interpretations and
sharpened them, though I fear I have not always done justice to
their insights. Willard Spiegelman and Nicholas Roe commented
incisively on Chapter 2; Judith Ryan brought a keen psychological
perspective to Chapter 5, along with suggestions for bibliography
about father-and-son relations; Jeffrey Robinson studied Chapter 6
with Keatsian gusto; and Andrew Taylor reassured me of the
current relevance of my description of male groups in Chapter 7.
Marilyn Gaull, who has fostered my work since she published my
first article in 1972, grappled with many recalcitrant sentences. I am
grateful to J. Robert Barth, S. J., John Beer, James Engell, Roger
Forseth, Norman Fruman, Debbie Lee, Larry Lockridge, Allen
Mandelbaum, Millicent Pinckert, Robert Pinckert, Judith Plotz, and
Donald Reiman for advice and encouragement. I thank Anthony
Harding for finding Plate 5, Karl Kroeber for suggesting the perti
nence to my study of Wordsworth's 'Letter to a Friend of Burns',
and John Nagle for the title of Chapter 7.
ix