Introduction
We return to the topic of good beer and Arthur Machen’s love for it. And, there is much to consider in the following article if we want understand its writer, the times through which he lived, as well as our own. Whether imbiber or teetotaler, I truly think the common man of today would feel solidarity with the working man of 1919, as he is portrayed here. Machen throws down the gauntlet and artfully lambasts government policy, interest groups and profiteers. However, this is more than simply a political rant against his opposition. Machen sees excellent beer (and tobacco) not as a luxury, or even merely a necessity. He describes their value and importance to the English people in near-sacramental terms.
Beer and the Present Discontent
by
Arthur Machen
February 25, 1919
When are going to have an end put to all this nonsense? The nonsense, I mean, of watering good English ale, and talking about “specific gravity” and those “d——d dots,” which no one understands or is meant to understand, and selling the lieges inferior and melancholy wash with a smack of ditchwater about it at a scandalous price, and turning everybody into the street at half-past nine as if they were little children who ought to be in bed? When is all this cantankerous and malignant and most mischievous nonsense going to be stopped?
The Poor Public
I wonder. I suppose it will be ended when the Government no longer desires to conciliate the brewing interest, the publican interest, and the teetotal interest. All these interests are happy in the present state of things. Brewing firms which were on the verge of bankruptcy before the war are now prosperous. Publicans do not dislike the process of buying whiskey at four-and-six a bottle and selling it at the rate of eighteen shillings a bottle. The teetotallers know that non-teetotallers are subjected to all manner of inconvenience, robbery, and discomfort. All these bodies are organised and powerful; the great mass of people are unorganised, and have no power—save that of the strike, which is now threatening the country with disaster and dissolution.
I do not pretend that bad beer and little of it, and that an outrageous price, is the only cause of the present discontents. There are other causes for complaint, legitimate and illegitimate. Tobacco, for instance, another necessity of the good Englishman, more especially of the good Englishman in harassing times, has more than doubled its price; and I sometimes wonder whether the working man as he hands over ninepence halfpenny instead of fourpence halfpenny, for his ounce of shag, is altogether consoled by the thought that the great tobacco manufacturing companies have been paying tremendous dividends. I must say that this thought does not console me; but possibly miners and engineers and such like people feel better for it.
The Value of Good Beer
But I must be careful, or I shall find myself on dangerous ground. I shall be saying that all government should be for the benefit of the people at large, not for the benefit of cranks, who give their votes to the party managers and wealthy manufacturers who give cheques to the party chest.
But putting aside these matters of high politics, admitting that, quite apart from beer, there are many irritating circumstances about the conditions of life to-day, it remains true that the sham-teetotal, pro-brewer policy of the Government is a danger and a menace to the well-being of the whole State of England. Here is a race of men which for the last fifteen hundred years has lived in a bleak isle in the North Sea and has done mighty things and suffered harsh trials and waged great wars, and has done all this, roughly speaking, on a diet of beef and beer.
I know that science said till the day before yesterday that every drop of alcohol—they will call good drink alcohol—taken into the human system weakens it terribly, causes it to deteriorate, and enfeebles its offspring. I know all about that, though now the doctors are clamoring for brandy and whiskey with which to fight the influenza. I know all that, and I know it to be poisonous rubbish. The English race has been drinking beer and, therefore, deteriorating since the dawn of its history; every father, enfeebled with ale, begetting a feebler son; and this is the race which held all the hollow seas of the world, and bore a huge and heavy part in conquering the Germans, that mighty nation, strongly prepared for war! There are propositions so absurd that the bare statement of them is sufficient; no argument is required.
Merrie Englishman
Here, then, you have a people who work hard and fight hard and drink stoutly after their fighting and their working; and you suddenly bring them up from the dust of the black mine, parched and weary— and confront them with closed tavern doors or else with stuff only fit for the pigtub. And if they ask for something a little better—it is very little better—they must pay a monstrous price for it, and drink it as they read about the big brewing dividends in the paper.
We may not succeed in burning down our house; but we are certainly doing our best to set it alight.
In the “Sketches by Boz” there is a picture of the old tavern in Scotland Yard as it was ninety years ago. It is a rough and ready sort of room: bare boards, rough table, rough benches. But there is a roaring fire of coals in the iron basket swinging on the hearth, and on the benches are jolly coalheavers, smoking their pipes, with great pots of ale in front of them. I dare say those coalheavers worked very hard. I have no doubt that they had grievances. But they had their ale, and their cheerful choruses rang “to the very bank of the river”; they were staid and merry Englishmen.
We have taken the tankards of good ale from their descendants and told them to go to bed at nine-thirty. So, instead of humble mirth and rough comfort and good beer and a jolly song; they drink cocoa as they listen to the gentleman with the foreign accent who tells them of the blessings of international Bolshevism.
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Wikipedia’s “Alcohol licensing laws of the United Kingdom” handily gives the disappointing details answering “When are going to have an end put to all this nonsense […] turning everybody into the street at half-past nine as if they were little children who ought to be in bed”. Viz. “In 1921 the wartime restrictions were extended indefinitely with the passing of the Licensing Act 1921. The law meant that pubs in urban areas could open between 11.30am and 3pm, and between 6.30pm and 11pm. Pubs outside urban areas could open between 11.30am and 3pm but only between 6.30pm and 10pm after that. Sunday opening times were limited to a maximum of five hours divided between 12noon–3pm and 6pm–10pm. All licensed premises in Wales and Monmouthshire were banned from opening on Sundays.” And, “When the new licensing laws of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976 came into effect in 1977, local authorities in Scotland were given the powers to determine opening hours. More than 10 years later, the restrictive licensing laws were repealed in England and Wales with the passing of the Licensing Act 1988. On 21 August 1988, for the first time in almost 75 years, British pubs were permitted to remain open through the day; uninterrupted consumption of alcohol was allowed on premises from 11:00 until 23:00. In November 2005, revised rules were introduced which scrapped hour limits. All pubs were allowed to apply for licences as permissive as ’24 hours a day’.”
With respect to beer quality, the Campaign for Real Ale had its first AGM in 1972 and published it first Good Beer Guide in book form in 1974. I’m not sure what to say about the speed and scope of improvement thereafter. When I was in Lincolnshire for an undergrad term abroad back in the day a pint of mild (if I recall aright) was 19 p (the equivalent of something like three shillings and ten pence pre-decimal – almost a much as Machen says publicans could buy a bottle of whiskey for) – and a bottle of Moët & Chandon we bought for a party was 5 pounds (apparently around 40 to 50 pounds there, today!).
Checking for an ounce of shag online, the first example I find is 11 pounds and 25 p, or around more than 326 times the new bad price of “ninepence halfpenny” Machen notes. Maybe a comparison of wages and ‘purchasing power’ would give a less grim impression, but I’m not sure how best to attempt it.
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Very interesting! Thank you for this enlightening information and for sharing your personal experiences. I must admit, as an American, I am quite ignorant of how British money works, its terms and denominations.
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Enjoying Arthur Ransome’s Secret Water (apparently published 28 November 1939, but according to someone’s working out of the timeline, set in the summer of 1932), I just encountered a character from London remarking – when buying fresh milk from a farmer in Essex – “He only charged twopence a pint. That’s a penny less than at home.”
English pints are 20 ounces. There were 12 pre-decimal pennies to the shilling, but the shilling was decimalized as 5 new pence, with the pound going from consisting of 240 pennies to 100. Visiting Britain before decimalization at a moment when one dollar-cent equalled one penny sterling, I found it easy to reckon out prices and great fun at penny-arcades with the huge old pennies – some still with Queen Victoria on them, more with Edward VIII and George V and George VI!: all sadly swept away in daily use, but I think retained as ‘tokens’ in some museum-penny-arcades.
Visiting a famous single-malt-whiskey distillery with an economist friend in the 1980s, we were told (if I recall aright) the cost price of a bottle was one pound and most of the enormous difference between that and the sale price was taxation. It may have been then that my friend remarked, ‘luxury’ taxes were probably preferable to higher taxes on things like food.
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