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SWINBURNE

Swinburne was weaned from strong drink in stages, by the poetic persuasion of his friend and nursemaid, Theodore Watts-Dunton. Brandy was the first to go.

'Do you know Algernon, this stuff isn't a drink in any real sense of the word. It's a drug, a medicine, to be taken only when prescribed by doctors. The very smell of it calls up sick rooms, as well as wretched (and retching) Cockney travellers on a Channel steamer in a rough crossing —the last drink in the world for a poet. Look at our great Tennyson. What does he drink? Port, the lifeblood of the vine, distilled by sunshine, caught and chaliced in the red heart of such grapes as grow in old Spain, land of sunshine and lovely women ... '

After a while, the discreetly temperate Watts affected to feel liverish.

'I don't know how you feel, my boy, but you and I are not perhaps such rough and hardy Berserkers as old Tennyson, or maybe we don't get as much active exercise in the day as he, but I begin to find port a little heavy. One of the biggest wine-growers from the Continent told me the other day that Burgundy is the best of all drinks in a climate like ours ... It's the wine that the Three Musketeers thrived on, and made love on, and fought on; and most of all — you're half French yourself, you say — it's the wine of your own La Belle France ... '

In another month or so the rout was complete.

'There is a theory of mine I want to ask your opinion about. It is that wherever you are, you should drink the 'wine of the country'. If one is in Scotland, one drinks Scotch whisky; if in Ireland, Irish whiskey; if in Germany, hock or moselle; if in France, Graves, Sauterne, Claret, Burgundy or champagne; if in Spain or Portugal, port; in Italy, chianti. But where are we? — whether it's drunk out of the cool depths of a pewter or china mug, in some quaint old English inn with diamond-paned windows, sanded floors and oaken benches, or out of a silver tankard from His Lordship's sideboard — the most refreshing, appetizing, stimulating, healthiest, best and most natural of all drinks for an Englishman is Shakespeare's brown October, our own glorious and incomparable British beer!'

At each stage Swinburne complied with excitement, and toyed soberly with one bottle of Bass for the rest of his days.

Abridged from Philip Henderson Portrait of a Poet