Let’s start by recognizing that English writer Samuel Phillips Day was quite capable of writing polysyllabic words. Consider the title of his book Monastic Institutions: Their Origin, Progress, Nature, and Tendency. Just about every word is two or three syllables. And he gracefully slips in “institutions,” a verifiable four-banger of a word.
Why should this be any surprise, anything out of the ordinary? Because his distinctive shtick was writing books entirely composed of words of no longer than a single syllable. Then again, the rule doesn’t necessarily apply to the titles. Many are the non-mono words in Day’s once-popular book, The Rare Romance of Reynard the Fox, The Crafty Courtier: Together with the Shifts of His Son Reynardine: In Words of One Syllable. Or there’s his adaptation of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, again, all in words of one syllable. For example: “I saw a man clad in rags, with a book in his hand, and a great load on his back! I saw him read in the book, and as he read, he wept and shook.”
Very nice. Let me see if I can keep it going: “The man who wept was sad for he was an antidisestablishmentarianist.” Darn it!
Day was one of those Englishmen who would travel to the United States, writing magazine articles and books detailing the peculiar, backward habits of Americans for the amusement of their cousins across the sea. As Day was a moralist, he particularly enjoyed blustering about the country’s drinking customs, which were, in the back half of the 19th century — how should we put it? — excessive.
But it is just this sort of disapproving fellow who teaches us much, if not the most, about how we used to drink. His article “American ‘Tippling’” is a case in point. In denouncing all the drink around him in the U.S., he provides for us a taxonomy of American drink, many examples of which have long since fallen into obscurity. “The practice is to commence with a brandy or gin ‘cocktail’ before breakfast, by way of an appetizer,” Day reported. After breakfast, one would have a “digester,” followed a little while later, Day tut-tuts, by a “refresher,” a “reposer,” a “settler,” a “cooler,” an “invigorator,” a “sparkler” and a “rouser.”
But these, of course, are categories of drink denoting when they are consumed, not the specifics of the drinks in question. Day, our Virgil of the 19th century mixed drink, stands at the ready to guide us through the “drinks most in vogue. There are many and varied juleps, from the basic mint variety to brandy, whiskey, gin, and rum juleps. Oh yes, and the julep a la Captain Marryat, which uses not only cognac, but peach brandy.”
Another category, once long forgotten but revived in the last 20 years or so, is the cobbler, which included the champagne cobbler and the sherry cobbler. The more colorfully designated drinks are those with names such as Jersey lightning, Scotch whisky skin, beer sangaree, black stripe, sleeper, Stonewall Jackson, yard of flannel, locomotive, alderman’s punch, gin twist, and, among other luminaries, a President Washington.
With Presidents Day approaching, let’s give the Washington cocktail — 2 parts dry vermouth, 1 part brandy, a little simple (sugar) syrup to taste, and a dash of bitters — a try. I must admit that I’m generally not a fan of drinks in which vermouth is the most prominent component. And I can’t say I much like the Washington cocktail as it was originally contrived, sometime in the 1870s. But it’s not bad at all if the vermouth is subordinate to the brandy. Two parts cognac to 1 part French vermouth (I used Dolin brand dry vermouth) and you’ve got something that’s not too bad. Better still, instead of the splash of sugar syrup, I added a tablespoon of orange curacao, a variation sometimes used back when Samuel Phillips Day was writing.
Stir with ice until very cold, and then strain into a cocktail glass. Add a quality cocktail cherry for garnish and in remembrance of the mythology of our first and greatest president.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
