Through a Glass Lightly/Sherry

by T. T. Greg

SHERRY

SHERRY

It is not uncommon to hear of a poet that he is a poet’s poet; of a musician, he is for musicians first and laymen after. So it is scarce matter for surprise to learn that a wine there is that is preeminently the wine merchant’s wine. That this should be Sherry is all but inevitable; for he carries not his credentials with him like the rest, but trusteth chiefly to the praise and the recommendation of another, and that other the wine merchant aforesaid. And though it were too much to say of him that he has inspired a literature, there has grown up around him a copious “derangement of epitaphs,” with no little quaint learning; and let us say at once that, whatever his origin, he has grown manifestly, and flagrantly, bourgeois. As often as not, he is not Sherry, but Sherry-Wine: a most fiery, damnable, and discouraging beverage. In his working suit he tempers the ham sandwich to the shorn stockbroker, and divides the business day into meted periods; and thus far has his uses. His tastes are commercial, and he rarely enters the realm of fancy; for, though he is an emolument of laureates, it is doubtful if he ever inspired a stave of true poetry. The odd part about him is that he is inordinately ours, and is more at home by Thames’ side than on the banks of the Guadalquiver. By travelling hitherward so oft and for so long a time, he has become more British than home-brewed October—and not much less than Burton’s Bitter, or Dublin’s Stout. And the chief factor in his adoption, his territorial sponsor, has been the wine merchant, of whom he has ever been the plaything and the wordy sport.

Mark this, and how thin the line that divides literature and commerce! And log-rolling is seen to be essential and evident in the profession of vintner as in the trade of author. In truth, his importance in the world of wines is as much due to the puff adulatory as are the stories of Mr ———, or the poems of Mr ———, in the world of letters. For look you how this wine has been puffed and extolled! On him has been expended that wealth of superlative patter, for him has been invented that special jargon of exaggeration, whereby his vendors have given him a look of virtue, even though he have it not. And so, from being a mere appanage, a kind of spouse lawful of Plum Cake, this Sherry-White-Wine has attained to the dignity of an aboriginal, and upon him has been set the seal of legitimacy. Yet is he the most degenerate of bastards. His veins channel the mixed bloods of a dozen stocks. He is the very mulatto of wines, and art plays well-nigh as many freaks with his complexion as nature with her noblest creation; for he is now the very brownest of browns, and anon is stricken with a pallor that all but fetches him flush with the dominant race. At one time his odour is pervasive and insistent; at another his bouquet is so volatile that only the most curious observer may discern the essence. And if sometimes he should attain to royalty, it is the royalty of Mumbo Jumbo and Theebaw, not that of Victoria or the Hapsburgs. For his blood has gone wofully astray. The founder of his family lies embalmed in some splendid sarcophagus of Spain, same vinous vat of Xeres; and no man living, no, nor his grandfather neither, remembers when he was born—nor so much as when he was crowned. But his has been the royal privilege, that he should be the father of his people, or, at least, of a great many generations. Divide et impera has been the motto of his house, and the virtue and strength of him have been blended in many strains.

How, then, can we honour him in these innumerable descendants? Birth will out from time to time, but education and environment are potent factors in lineal deterioration. Haply, if we are lucky, we fall in with cadets of the direct line, bearing about them inalienable traces of their sovran origin; and these we lure into our own service at a recognised pay of some fifteen to twenty shillings a head (or bottle). But the great clan itself is so many thousands strong that its value is scarce as many pence per cork. For these needy rapscallions the wine merchant’s office forms, as it were, a Labour Bureau, where they hang about till some one takes them on: or they flow over into the vaults of the Bodega, there to levy blackmail on the stomachs of public citizens, and tweak the noses of the dilettanti. Nevertheless, this Sherry is a force to be reckoned with; he is a monster of our creation, and we must treat him well or he will get the better of us, poor Frankensteins that we are. So, then, we cannot blame the wine merchant for writing the creature up, and allowing his imagination to get the better of his veracity or his professional zeal to top his individual integrity. For our part, when we read of “Magnificent Golden Sherry, thirty years in bottle, full, rich, without sweetness, with superb bottled flavour” we never think of questioning if such things be or no, but are filled with gratitude for so golden an opportunity. It is only five-and- forty shillings; and it were surely cheap at anything under a hundred! A still, small voice (with a strong Scots accent) whispers us to sample; salvation cometh not from the East or from the West, but from the North; and for this “Old Pale Oloroso Pale Sherry”—whatever whiff of romance the re-duplication of the epithet, the reiterated pallor, may have imparted, is now for ever flown. And if it were not, it were utterly dispelled by this further essay in description: “A good, sound, clean wine, with plenty of flavour and free from heat”; for that label, “a good, sound wine,” is even the most damnatory ever conferred. Yet is it meant to please; and would seem to fulfil its destiny—for catalogues are innumerable as leaves in Vallombrosa, and in all lurks the pernicious phrase. Verily, these Balaams of the wine trade set forth to bless, and yet for all their efforts they end by placing a curse upon their wares. The egg merchant is, we presume, the social inferior of the Vintner; yet what a lesson the one may learn from the other! For, consider the magnificent intensity, the superb restraint, of this announcement:

New-laid eggs	2d. each.
Fresh eggs	1⁠1/2⁠ d.each„
Eggs.	1s. a doz.
Cooking eggs	6d.a doz.„
Eggs for electioneering purposes	2s. 6d. a hundred.

Ever so much is said, and how few the words! It is the padding of a volume in the pith of a paragraph. On such lines should catalogues be built. Four epithets at most, and the whole kingdom is neatly and exhaustively differentiated. To the Man of Eggs, you, Man of Wine, and learn wisdom and the “value of reserve.”

Spain’s chivalry was laughed away these many years agone, but you cannot laugh away Spain’s potent Sherries. They grin at you over the tops of multitudinous vats, and there is never an Englishman but knows the grimace. The wine (the Sherry Wine) is present wherever our language is spoken; its appearance with the soup is as regular as the tureen, and very near as indispensable; a dinner without it were second savagery and mere amorphousness. It is the soul of a cocktail and the body of bitters. You still can drink it in hours when to drink aught else would write you down a “nipper.” No funeral is complete without it, and it is never absent from a wedding, where it affords a pleasant stimulus to the hired waiters. In good old-fashioned houses it is held the only refreshment. It is gifted with a peculiar capacity for penetration; and if we are troubled with livers, and things of that sort, it finds us out quicker than any other potable. However, it retains two privileges, one of which it shares with Madeira, but the other, poor thing though it be, is its own. It claims by prescriptive right the extraordinary epithet of “nutty” and—it serves for a whitewash!