Transcript

‘John Bickerdyke’ [pseudonym, = Charles Henry Cook]
The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History (1886)

Transcript of Chapter 13 (pp365-377): Porter and Stout
Transcribed with annotations by James Sumner, April 2001, from the text held in Special Collections, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, UK.  Webpage created 11 November 2001.

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And what this flood of deeper brown,
Which a white foam does also crown,
Less white than snow, more white than mortar?
Oh, my soul!  can this be Porter?

The Déjeunè.

P raised and caress’d, the tuneful Philips sung
O f Cyder fam’d, whence first his laurels sprung;
R ise then, my muse, and to the world proclaim
T he mighty charms of Porter’s potent name:
E ach buck from thee shall sweetest pleasure taste,
R evel secure, nor think to part in haste.

An Acrostick.

PORTER AND STOUT.—CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH LED TO THEIR INTRODUCTION.—VALUE TO THE WORKING CLASSES.—ANECDOTES.—“A POT OF PORTER OH!”

BEFORE the Blue Last, an old public-house situate [sic] in Curtain Road, Shoreditch, there formerly hung a board which bore this legend:—“The house where porter was first sold.” 

Whether this was true or false we cannot say; certain it is, however, that the drink which has made London and Dublin brewers famed far and wide had its birthplace not far from this spot.

It appears that in the early years of last century the lovers of malt liquors in London were accustomed to regale themselves upon three classes of these beverages; they had ale, beer, and twopenny.  Many who preferred a more subtle combination of flavours than either of these liquors

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alone could impart, would ask for half-and-half, that is, half of ale and half of beer, half of ale and half of twopenny, or half of beer and half of twopenny.  Others again—and these were the real connoisseurs of malt liquors—would call for a pot of three threads, or three thirds, i.e., one-third of ale, one-third of beer, and one-third of twopenny.  The drawer would therefore have to go to three different casks, and through three distinct operations, before he could draw a pint of liquor.  But the hour had come—and the man.  One Ralph Harwood, whose name is too little known to an ungrateful posterity of beer-drinking Britons, some time about the year 1730, kept a brewhouse on the east side of High Street, Shoreditch.  In that year, or perhaps a little earlier, as this great man brooded over the inconvenience and waste occasioned by the calls for the “three threads,” which became more and more frequent, he conceived the idea of making a liquor which would combine in itself the several virtues of ale, beer, and twopenny.  He carried the idea into action, and brewed a drink which he called “Entire,” or “Entire Butts.”  It was tasted; it was approved; it became the fruitful parent of a mighty offspring; and from that day to this has gone on increasing in name and fame. 

Visitors to the great brewery in Brick Lane [Truman Hanbury Buxton] are shown a hole from which steam issues to the accompaniment of awful rumbling noises.  “In there oncefell [sic] a man,” they are told—“a negro.  Nothing but his bones were found when the copper was emptied, and it is said that the beer drawn off was of an extraordinary dark colour.  Some say this was the first brew of porter.  Oh yes” (this in answer to a question), “we soon learnt how to make it without the negro.”  We must confess that we have some doubts as to this account of the origin of porter.  We do not believe that brew could have been much darker on account of the accident, though no doubt, under the circumstances, it contained plenty of “body.”  A similar tale is told of nearly every London porter brewery, and later on it will be found in verse. 

It seems to be to some extent a moot point among the learned how porter obtained its present name, for no record seems to have been kept of its christening.  Harwood, no doubt, stood godfather to his interesting infant, but, as we have seen above, he called it “Entire;” and how or when it came to be known as porter is not quite clear.  There are several theories on the subject, each more or less plausible.  One is that being a hearty, appetizing, and nourishing liquor, it was specially recommended to the notice of the porters, who then, as now, formed a

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considerable proportion of the Shoreditch population.  Pennant, in his London [T Pennant, ‘History of London’, 1790] seems, [sic: comma] to have held this view; he calls it “a wholesome liquor, which enables the London porter-drinkers to undergo tasks that ten gin-drinkers would sink under.”  Another explanation of the origin of the name is that Harwood sent round his men to his customers with the liquor, and that the men would announce their arrival and their business by the cry of “Porter”—meaning, not the beer, but the bearer.  Be this how it may, the embodiment of Harwood’s great idea had not attained its majority before it was known far and wide by its present name. 

In The Student (1750) is thus related the first appearance of porter at Oxford—. . . “Let us not derogate from the merits of porter—a liquor entirely British—a liquor that pleases equally the mechanic and the peer—a liquor which is the strength of our nation, the scourge of our enemies, and which has given immortality to aldermen.  ’Tis with the highest satisfaction that we can inform our Oxford students that Isis herself has taken this divine liquor into her protection, and that the Muses recommend it to their votaries, as being far preferable to Hippocrene, Aganippe, the Castalian spring, or any poetical water whatever.  Know, then, that in the middle of the High Street, at the sign of the King’s Arms, opposite to its opposite, Juggins’ Coffee House, lives Captain Jolly; who maugrè the selfish opposition of his brother publicans, out of a pure affection to this University, and regardless of private profit, reduc’d porter from its original price of Sixpence, and in large golden characters generously informs us that he sells

“As the Captain is a genius and a choice spirit he meets with the greatest encouragement from the gown, and ends porter to all the common-rooms.  He therefore intends shortly (in imitation of the great Ashley, of the Punch House, Ludgate Hill) to  have the front of his house new vamp’d up, and decorated with the following inscription:—

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Though we fear the great Harwood does not fill the niche in the Temple of Fame to which he is entitled, yet his praises are not entirely unsung.  Gutteridge, himself a native of Shoreditch, has commemorated the discovery of porter in these lines:—

Harwood, my townsman, he invented first
Porter to rival wine, and quench the thirst:
Porter, which spreads its fame half the word o’er,
Whose reputation rises more and more;
As long as Porter shall preserve its fame,
Let all with gratitude our Parish name. 

“It is not in my power,” says Pennant in the work we have before quoted, “to trace the progress of this important article of trade.  Let me only say that it is now a national concern; for the duty on malt from July 5th, 1785, to the same day 1786, produced a million and a half of money to the support of the State, from a liquor which invigorates the bodies of its willing subjects, to defend the blessings they enjoy.  One of these Chevaliers de Malte (as an impertinent Frenchman styled a most respectable gentleman of the trade) has, within one year, contributed not less than fifty thousand pounds to his own share.”

The person to whom the Frenchman applied the title of Chevalier de Malte was Humphrey Parsons, a brewer of the last century, and the incident which gave rise to the name has already been referred to.  [p149]

Pennant gives a list of the chief porter brewers of London at the end of last century, with the number of barrels of strong beer they brewed from Midsummer, 1786, to Midsummer, 1787.  Samuel Whitbread heads the list with 150,280 barrels, and among the others may be noted Calvert, now the City of London Brewery; Hester Thrale, now Barclay and Perkins; W. Read; and Richard Meux.  Most of the other names, though famous in their day and generation, are not familiar to the modern reader.  The total amount produced by some twenty-four of the chief London brewers was considerably over one million barrels. 

It is interesting to contrast the state of the Brewing trade a hundred years ago with the proportions to which it has attained to-day.  According to a Parliamentary return made in 1884, there are now six brewers of the United Kingdom who produce annually over three and a half million barrels of malt liquor, and who pay to the revenue in Licence and Beer duty nearly one million and a half sterling per annum. 

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A fine flavour has occasionally been given to stout by extra-ordinary means, as witness the following legend, entitled

PATENT BROWN STOUT.

A Brewer in a country town
Had got a monstrous reputation;
No other beer but his went down.
The hosts of the surrounding station,
Carving his name upon their mugs,
And painting it on every shutter;
And though some envious folks would utter,
Hints that its flavour came from drugs,
Others maintained ’twas no such matter,
But owing to his monstrous vat,
At least as corpulent as that
At Heidelberg—and some said fatter. 

His foreman was a lusty Black,
An honest fellow;
But one who had an ugly knack
Of tasting samples as he brewed,
Till he was stupified [sic] and mellow.
One day in this top-heavy mood,
Having to cross to the vat aforesaid,
(Just then with boiling beer supplied),
O’ercome with giddiness and qualms he
Reel’d—fell in—and nothing more was said,
But in his favourite liquor died,
Like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey. 

In all directions round about
The negro absentee was sought,
But as no human noddle thought
That our fat Black was now Brown Stout,
They settled that the rogue had left
The place for debt, or crime, or theft. 
Meanwhile the beer was day by day
drawn into casks and sent away,
Until the lees flowed thick and thicker,
When, lo! outstretched upon the ground,
Once more their missing friend they found,
As they had often done before—in liquor. 

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“See,” cried his moralising master,
“I always knew the fellow drank hard,
And prophesied some sad disaster:
His fate should other tipplers strike,
Poor Mungo! there he welters like
A toast at bottom of a tankard!”

Next morn a publican, whose tap,
Had help’d to drain the vat so dry,
Not having heard of the mishap,
Came to demand a fresh supply,
Protesting loudly that the last
All previous specimens surpass’d,
Possessing a much richer gusto
Than formerly it ever us’d to,
And begging, as a special favour
Some more of the exact same flavour. 

“Zounds!” cried the brewer, “that’s a task
More difficult to grant than ask;
Most gladly would I give the smack
Of the last beer to the ensuing,
But where am I to find a Black
And boil him down at every brewing?”

Professor Wilson, writing on brewing,* thus relates his conversion to the porter-drinker’s creed. 

“From ale we naturally get to porter—porter—drink ‘fit for the gods,’ being, in fact, likely to be, now and then, too potent for mere mortals.  With porter we are less imbued than with ale (not but that for some years we have imported our annual butt of Barclay); and this we hold to be one of the great misfortunes of our life.  We were early nurtured in love and affection for ‘good ale’ by our great aunt, with whom we were a young and frequent visitant.  Excellent old Aunt Patty!  She was a Yorkshire woman, and cousin (three times removed) to Mr. Wilberforce (the father).  She too hated rum as the devil’s own brewage, but then she loved sound ale in the same ratio.  Thus it happened, as we derived our faith in malt liquor from her, that we

*  Blackwood’s Magazine, vol.xxi.

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penetrated not the mysteries of porter until our elder days.  Our heres [sic: “heresy”?] was first effectually shaken by Charles Lamb, who, in his admirable way, proved to us that, in a hot forenoon, a draught of Meux or Barclay is beyond all cordial restoratives, and after a broiling peregrination (the stages were all full) from Coleridge’s lodgings at Highgate to town, gave us a specimen of the inspiring powers of porter in a perspiration, which we shall remember until the day of our death.”  Lamb was known by all his friends to have an amiable weakness for porter, and the poet, in An Ode to Grog, thus commemorates the fact:—

The spruce Mr. Lamb (’pon my word it’s no flam)
With Whitbread’s Entire makes his Pegasus jog;
I’ll grant he’s a poet, but then he doesn’t show wit,
In thinking that Porter is better than grog. 

Burns was fond of porter, as of all other extracts of malt.  He addressed the following lines to his friend Mr. Syme, along with a present of a dozen of bottled porter:—

O, had the malt thy strength of mind,
Or hops the flavour of thy wit,
’Twere drink for first of human kind,
A gift that e’en for Syme were fit. 

We have given what we believe to be a correct historical account of the origin of porter.  Peter Pindar, in the Lamentations of the Porter Vat, a poem in which he celebrates the bursting of a mighty porter vat at Meux’s Brewery, gives a somewhat less prosaic account:—

Here—as ’tis said—in days of yore,
(Such days, alas! will come no more),
Resided Sir John Barleycorn,
An ancient Briton, nobly born,
With Mrs. Hop—a well-met pair,
For he was rich, and she was fair. 

Yet they—like other married Folke,
When their past vows they can’t revoke—
Were opposite in disposition,
And quarrell’d without intermission;
For He alone produc’d the Sweets,
Which She, with Bitters only, meets!

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Howe’er by dint of perseverance,
By gentle conjugal endearance,
The Sweets predominating most,
In strength excelling, rul’d the roast;
Whilst she, obedient, did her duty—
That greatest ornament of beauty. 

Her Bitters, thus by him controll’d,
Their wholesome properties unfold,
And give to him superior pow’rs—
Superior charms for social hours;
As Beauty, with persuasive tongue,
Tempers the mind, by passion wrung. 

At length, from this domestic Pair,
Was born a well-known Son and Heir;
Whose deeds o’er half the world are fam’d,
By Britons, Master Porter, nam’d. 

Meux’s great vat then contained about 3,555 barrels, and was 22ft. high. In October, 1814, owing to the defective state of its hoops, it burst, and the results were most disastrous.  The brewery in the Tottenham Court Road was at that time hemmed in by miserable tenements, which were crowded by people of the poorer classes.  Some of these houses were simply flooded with porter, two or three collapsed, and no less than eight persons met their death, either in the ruins or from drowning, the fumes of the porter, or by drunkenness.  At the inquest the jury returned the verdict: “Death by Casualty.”  Seven huge vats—the largest holding 15,000 barrels—now take the place of the one that burst.  The Times of April 1, 1785, says, “There is a cask now building at Messrs. Meux & Co.’s brewery in Liquorpond Street, Gray’s Inn Lane, the size of which exceeds all credibility, being designed to hold 20,000 barrels of porter; the whole expense attending the same will be upwards of £10,000.”  About this time the London porter brewers vied with each other in building large vats, a practice they have now discontinued. 

It would be difficult to imagine a liquor more suitable for the working classes than good porter—taken in moderation, of course.  Not only does it afford the slight stimulant which, in another place, we have shown to be beneficial to the human body, but it also contains much

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nutritive matter, both organic and inorganic, together with saccharine.  The old writer who spoke of ale as being meat, drink, and clothing probably had no highly scientific knowledge of the chemical properties of the liquor he was extolling, but the statement—based, no doubt, on experience—can hardly be called an exaggerated one. 

Very satisfactory it is to know that in Ireland porter is steadily displacing whisky. [sic: not ‘whiskey’] Even in the western portions of the island, the younger generation—excepting, perhaps, on holidays, at fairs, and on other festive occasions—are taking most kindly to their “porther”.  It will be a happy thing for that country when “porther” shall have altogether displaced poteen.  The whisky sold a threepence for each small wine-glassful in most of the country spirit shops in Ireland, and always taken neat by the natives, is of a most injurious character, being new, and consequently containing much fusel oil.  far be it from us to say a word against good, well-matured whisky, which, taken in moderation, is a most wholesome drink; but, good or bad, it is not the drink for working men who require a more sustaining and less expensive liquor.  What have the total abstainers to suggest?  Water, the diffuser of epidemics, and hardly ever obtained pure by the labouring classes; tea, which is almost as injurious as spirits to the nervous system, which lacks nutritive properties, and which is by no means an inexpensive liquor; coffee and cocoa, both hot drinks and most unsuitable to slake the thirst of a labouring man; various effervescing drinks, all more or less injurious to the digestive organs, when taken habitually, and of whose composition no man hath knowledge save the makers, and temperance wines, certain vendors of which were not long back prosecuted for attempting to defraud the revenue, when this abstainer’s tipple was found to contain some twenty per cent. of alcohol.  One liquor, alone, have the teetotal party invented, which is nourishing, inexpensive, and wholesome.  This we may term oatmeal mash, or cold comfort.  It consists of scalded oatmeal, water, and some flavouring matter.  For harvesters working in the almost tropical heat of an August sun, this is, no doubt, a wholesome drink, but it can hardly be called palatable  As a matter of fact, no non-alcoholic substitute has been put forward by the teetotal party which is in the least likely to take the place of porter; and until such beverage is invented—an event which we feel perfectly certain will never come to pass—the porter and stout brewers of the United Kingdom will have every opportunity of continuing to confer on the working classes the benefits of cheap and wholesome liquor. 

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One temperance drink we had almost overlooked—herb-beer.  In the House of Commons, on May 6, 1886, Mr. Fletcher asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer why the Excise officers had interfered with the sale of herb-beer, a non-intoxicating beverage.  To this the Chancellor of the Exchequer replied, that the Inland Revenue did not interfere with any liquors which contained less than three degrees of proof spirit, though legally no beer cold be brewed under the name of herb-beer which had more than two degrees of alcohol.  Some of these non-intoxicating liquors, sold as temperance drinks, had been found to be of considerably greater strength than London porter.  For the protecting of the revenue it was necessary—and so on.  Comment is needless. 

As illustrative of the sustaining powers of brown beer, we may mention an instance which recently came under our notice.  A valuable horse belonging to a member of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, & Co. had a serious attack of influenza, with slight congestion of the lungs, and was so ill that it could take no food, and was evidently dying.  As a last resource it was offered stout, which it drank greedily.  For two weeks it entirely subsisted on this novel diet, and at the end of that time the bad symptoms had almost disappeared.  The horse subsequently recovered. 

The name Stout was used originally to signify strong or stout beer  This excellent brown beer only differs from Porter in being brewed of greater strength and with a greater proportion of hops.  Swift thus mentions the liquor:—

“Should but the Muse descending drop
A slice of bread and mutton chop,
Or kindly when his credit’s out,
Surprise him with a pint of stout;
Exalted in his mighty mind
He flies and leaves his stars* behind.”

Many actors, actresses and singers imbibe largely of porter, both for its excellent effects upon the voice and for its restorative and sustaining powers.  Fanny Kemble used frequently to apply herself to a vulgar pewter pot of stout in the green room both during and after her per-

*  Cf. Horace’s “Sublimi feriam sidera vertice,” which was once construed by an ingenious school boy, “I will whip the stars with my sublime top ! !

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formances.  Peg Woffington was president of the Beefsteak Club, then held in the Covent Garden Theatre; and after she had been pourtraying [sic] on her stage “The fair resemblance of a martyr Queen,” she might have been seen in the green room holding up a pot of porter, and exclaiming in a tragic voice, “Confusion to all order, let liberty thrive.”

Macklin, the actor, who lived to be a centenarian, was accustomed to drink considerable quantities of stout sweetened with sugar, at the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden.  Porson used to breakfast on bread and cheese and a pot of porter. 

A favourite mixture of modern Londoners is known by the name of “Cooper,” and consists of porter and stout in equal proportions.  The best account of the origin of this name is one which attributes it to a publican by the name of Cooper, who kept a house in Broad Street, City, opposite to where the Excise Office stood.  Cooper was a jolly,  talkative host, and associated a good deal with his customers—principally officers of the Excise, bankers’ and merchants’ clerks, and men of that stamp.  His guests found on bits of broken plates, pieces of beef steak and mutton chops already priced with paper labels.  These they had but to choose, mark their name on the ticket, and carry to the cook at the grid-iron, which was in the room in which they dined.  Cooper drank and recommended a mixture of porter and stout, the fame of which spread very rapidly.  The combination became the fashion in the City, and finally it was brewed entire. 

An equally plausible but more invidious derivation of the name is given by Andrew Halliday in his Every-Day Papers.  His account is that “Some brewers who are jealous for the reputation of their beer employ a traveller, who visits the houses periodically, and tastes the various beers, to see that they are not reduced too much.  This functionary is called the ‘Broad Cooper.’  When the Broad Cooper looks in upon Mr. Noggins, and wants to taste the porter, and the porter is below the mark, Mr. Noggins slyly draws a dash of stout into it; and this trick is so common, and so well known, that a mixture of stout and porter has come to be known to the public and asked for by the name of ‘Cooper.’”

It has been well observed that “Porter-drinking needs but a beginning: whenever the habit has once been acquired, it is sure to be kept up.  London is a name pretty widely known in the world; some nations know it for one thing, and some for another.  But all nations know that London is the place where porter was invented: and Jews, Turks, Germans, Negroes, Persians, Chinese, New Zealanders, Esqui-

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maux, copper Indians, Yankees and Spanish Americans, are united in one feeling of respect for the native city of the most universally favourite liquor the world has ever known.”  When the Persian ambassador left England some years ago, many of his suite shed tears.  One of them, struck with the security and peace of an Englishman’s life, when compared to a Persian’s, declared that his highest ideal of Paradise was to live at Chelsea Hospital, where for the rest of his life he would willingly sit under the trees and drink as much porter as he could get 

Much as porter’s praises have been sung, one depreciatory remark is recorded to have been made by the late Judge Maule.  “Why do you, brother Maule, drink so much stout?” he was asked by one of the judges.  “To bring my intellect down to the level of the rest of the bench,” was the not very flattering reply.  It may be mentioned that Judge Maule’s joke was not a new one, for L’Estrange has it thus: “One ask’t Sir John Millesent how he did so conforme himself to the grave justices his brothers when they mette.  ‘Why, in faith,’ sayes he, ‘I have no way but to drink myselfe downe to the capacitie of the Bench.’” 

A song well known in the early part of the century is much heartier, and redounds with patriotic sentiment:—

A POT OF PORTER OH!

When to Old England I came home,
Fal lal, fal lal la!
What joy to see the tankard foam
Fal lal, fal lal la!
When treading London’s well-known ground,
If e’er I feel my spirits tire,
I haul my sail and look up around
In search of Whitbread’s best entire. 
I spy the name of Calvert,
Of Curtis, Cox ad Co.;
I give a cheer and bawl for’t,
“A pot of Porter, ho!” 
When to Old England I come home,
What joy to see the tankard foam!
With heart so light and frolic high,
I drink it off to liberty!

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Where wine or water can be found
Fal lal, fal lal la!
I’ve travell’d far the world around,
Fal lal, fal lal la!
Again I hope before I die,
Of England’s can the taste to try;
For many a league I’d go about
To take a draught of Gifford’s stout;
I spy the name of Truman,
Of Maddox, Meux, and Co;
The sight makes me a new man,—
“A pot of porter, ho!” 
When to Old England i come home,
What joy to see the tankard foam!
With heart so light and frolic high,
I drink it off to liberty. 

[End of transcript]