Beer Birthday: John Holl

January 11, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 45th birthday of John Holl, a journalist who spent the early part of his career working the crime and politics beat at various newspapers, including the New York Times. Now, he’s writing almost exclusively about beer from his home in northern New Jersey. He was the editor of All About Beer Magazine and has worked for most of the trade publications in some capacity over the years. He’s also written several books including the American Craft Beer Cookbook and the Craft Brewery Cookbook. In recent years he’s done a number of podcasts including Drink Beer, Think Beer, Steal This Beer, and The BYO Nano Podcast. In 2019 he founded the site Beer Edge with Andy Crouch and more recently they bought All About Beer magazine. He also works as a contributing editor at Wine Enthusiast Magazine. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know John during some travel over the years, from Denver to Boston, Brussels, and even in Chile. He’s been a great addition to the fraternity of beer writers. Join me in wishing John a very happy birthday.

After the first Beer Bloggers Conference, having lunch at Euclid Hall in Denver, before flying home.

P1080639 — A few years ago in Chile, judging at the Copa Cervezas de America 2011 (John’s on the right in the back row).

P1080683 — Visiting Maltexco, also in Chile (this time, John’s on the left).

john-holl-euclid-2 — At a lunch at Euclid Hall in Denver; John, me, Greg Koch and Jacob McKean, Stone Brewing’s former blogger, and now owner of Modern Times.

DSCN3986 — With Stephen Beaumont and Stan Hieronymous, taking a pizza from Sandlot Brewing to Great Divide during GABF a few years ago.

In Boston last year at Harpoon Brewery after John missed his flight, after forgetting his keys, which ultimately made for a great afternoon.

john-holl-kid — A portrait of the beer writer as a young man.

Beer Birthday: Maureen Ogle

October 4, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 71st birthday of historian Maureen Ogle, who wrote Ambitious Brew, which was published in 2006. Her next book was In Meat We Trust, but apparently she’s returning to beer for her next as of yet untitled book. So that’s something to look forward to. I first met Maureen shortly after Ambitious Brew was published when she asked me for some help putting together an invitation list for event at Anchor Brewing, and we’ve been good friends ever since. Please join me in wishing Maureen a very happy birthday.

With Jack McAuliffe and Julie Johnson in San Francisco in 2011.

Historic Beer Birthday: Henry Stuart Rich

September 18, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is he birthday of Henry Stuart Rich (September 18, 1841-March 18, 1929). He was born in upstate New York, but moved to Chicago as a young man, and co-founded The Western Brewer in 1876. By 1887, he and some partners bought the trade journal and was its president until his death.

This is his obituary from his own publication, The Western Brewer:

And this obituary appeared in Ice and Refrigeration in April of 1929.

Beer Birthday: Tara Nurin

August 7, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 51st birthday of beer writer Tara Nurin. She’s originally from Annapolis, but now calls Camden, New Jersey her home, where she writes for Forbes, USA Today, Food & Wine, Wine Enthusiast, VinePair, and many others. Her most recent book is about the history of women in beer, entitled “A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs.” She also founded Beer for Babes (f.k.a. Barley’s Angels New Jersey). I don’t remember when I first met Tara, possibly at a North American Guild of Beer Writer events, but she’s been a great addition to the beer writer’s cadre, and a couple of years I worked with Tara on her media panel for the Craft Brewers Conference. Join me in wishing Tara a very happy birthday.

With Herlinda Heras at the Hopland Tap during a recent trip to California.

NOTE: All photos purloined from Facebook.

Out Now!: A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse.

Beer Birthday: Carla Jean Lauter

June 19, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 42nd birthday of beer writer Carla Jean Lauter. I first met Carla in 2010 at the first Beer Bloggers Conference, when it was held in Boulder, Colorado. She was still Carla Companion when I met her, and she was also writing as “The Beer Babe” online. She’s a great champion for the Maine beer scene and many other causes, especially online. Join me in wishing Carla a very happy birthday.

Carla with the other female attendees of the first Beer Bloggers Conference in 2010.

Note: first and third photos purloined from Facebook.

Historic Beer Birthday: Bob Brown

June 14, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of was an American writer and publisher Robert Carlton Brown, who often wrote under the name Bob Brown (June 14, 1886–August 7, 1959). He was very prolific, and wrote over 1,000 pieces, and worked in “many forms from comic squibs to magazine fiction to advertising to avant-garde poetry to business news to cookbooks to political tracts to novelized memoirs to parodies and much more.” His writing was lyrical and ahead of its time, but despite his popularity during his lifetime, very little of his work, if any, is still in print or even been digitized. One of his food books, “The Complete Book of Cheese,” is an exception and you can download a copy at the Gutenberg Project. You can get a sense of his oeuvre from some of his titles, which includes What Happened to Mary (1912) [later turned into the first serial film What Happened to Mary, My Marjonary (1916), The Readies (1930), Globe-Gliding (1930), Words: I but Bend My Finger in a Beckon and Words, Birds of Words, Hop on It, Chirping (1931), Gems: a Censored Anthology (1931), Demonics (1931), and Readies for Bob Brown’s Machine (1931). He also wrote or co-wrote a number of best-selling cookbooks, including The European Cookbook (1936), 10,000 Snacks (1937), The Wine Cook Book (1941), and The Complete Book of Cheese (1955).

But the reason he’s here is because of another book he wrote, published in 1932, and dedicated to H.L. Mencken with this: “To H.L. Mencken for many reasons not the least of them BEER, B.B.” That book was called “Let Them Be Beer!”

Here’s an excerpt from BeerBooks.com:

About the beginning of this century pubcrawling was imported from London, where it had been in existence for centuries, and ws definitely adopted as a daily custom in New York City. The practice of visiting a series of saloons in succession, and having a drink or two in each before crawling on to the next, grew in popularity, every year approaching the peak of perfection, until it was suddenly knocked in the head by prohibition and fell into disuse.

In Philadelphia, with its solid, stolid Dutch drinking tradition and its splendid big beer cellars, pubcrawling was always indlulged in pleasantly in a safe and sedate manner.

But in Boston the pastime was slightly dangerous, especially if continued after closing hours, in clandestine blind pigs. A pub-crawler might sit down to imbibe in such a place and find himself in a group of Boston Irish terriers. Inadvertently he might say something about the Orange men. Suddenly bottles and broom would thicken the smoky air, cut arabesques in it, and if the outsider were not quick, the Irishman opposite would slide sidewise from his chair, whip it out from beneath him with one swift motion and bring it down bang over the pub-crawler’s head. The unfortunate victim would awake a few hours later, at the first dribbles of dawn, lying in an alley ash can with a thick clot on his brow.

The big beer town of Buffalo was always a bit too low for fastidious pub-crawling; it did not offer the finer subtleties and shadings of Manhattan.

In Portland, Maine, and other dry towns of that day, life was just one drug store after another. A damp, drab, soggy species of sub-rosa drug-store dangling. Not a bit of snap to it.

New York was the appropriate center for the strolling drinker. The whole mid-West Anheuser Busch League shipped its best beer and all outstanding pub-crawling customs to Manhattan. Pabst’s sent samples of Milwaukee drinks and drinking, Kentucky kicked in with Bourbon and toasts, Chicago showed how things were done at her home, Hofbrau and barny Bismarck, Cincinnati sent sangvereins and the South in general contributed with scuppernong and nigger gin.

Between 1900 and 1920 the booze boundaries of New York were roughly fixed in an oblong half a mile wide and six miles long. Though all sorts of drinks, from horse’s necks to sherry cobblers, were consumed in this section, it was chiefly noted for its big beer saloons, and included a brewery or two. O’Connor’s Working Girls’ Home, or perhaps McSorley’s, marked the extreme south end of the beer district — “way down south in Greenwich Village, where the artists drank their fillage.” Pabst’s Harlem came to be its fixed North Pole. On the East Side, Ehret’s old brewery over by the river, in the 50’s; and on the West Side a solid wall of saloons all along Sixth Avenue, from Fourth Street up to the Park, where the line wobbled over to Broadway and on up to Harlem.

There were Bowery beer arcades out of bounds, good suds shops and ale houses in the financial district, from the Battery up to Washington Square, splendiferous theatrical and sportive saloons in the Forties as far over as Seventh and Eighth. Even Hell’s Kitchen was not dry in those days, and there were service stations for pub-crawlers as far up as Hell Gate. The famous beer and beef steak Castle Cave stood out like a star in the West, and Terrace Garden was one of the bright Eastern Stars. Luigi’s Black Cat shed its luster under the dingy El; almost every street corner of the city was brightened by a gin mill, but the big beer belt tightened around the center of Manhattan and more ambulatory drinking was done in the three square miles of the section described than in all the rest of the town put together.

If brewery sales-managers had charted the territory at the time, there would have been a hurricane of dots, a huddle of red-headed pins around Union Square radiating out to the Brevoort, the Lafayette, the Hell Hole on Fourth Street, and on up Sixth Avenue past the Old Grapevine. McSorley’s and Scheffel Hall over east, working up to a daze of dots around Luchow’s, one particularly bright standing for Gentleman Jim Corbett’s place near by, though beer was seldom served there, except as a chaser after stronger fire-water; and another for Arensberg’s wine-stube, right on the square.

Luchow’s stuck out like a monogrammed gold buckle on that broad beer belt. Herald Square was a whirlpool of dots centering in the old Herald Square Hotel Bar and radiating out to the Hofbrau and the Kaiserhof. Times Square showed a thick cluster of dots, a hay-pile huddle around the Knickerbocker and Considine’s, in which nobody at that time would have even looked for a needle of beer.

On up Broadway to Columbus Circle. Broadway and beer have always been synonymous. The Great Way foamed White with beer tossed restlessly in a beery froth from Bowling Green to Van Cortlandt Park.

Pabst’s was set like a big iridescent bubble in the center of Columbus Circle, and a sea of brilliant beads swirled around Pabst’s Harlem Casino. Columbus was forgotten, Harlem was but a name. For a while it looked as though these two centers of night life would have to change their names to Pabst’s Best and Pabst’s Blue Ribbon, so the persistent pubcrawler could be sure exactly where he was at.

And here’s a few more excerpts:

And here’s another short biography of Brown.

Bob Brown, born Robert Carlton Brown, liked to say he had written in every genre imaginable: advertising, journalism, fiction, poetry, ethnography, screen-writing, even cookbooks. He wrote at least 1,000 pulp stories, some of which became the basis for “What Happened to Mary?” the first movie serial, released in 1912. He was on the editorial board of the radical magazine The Masses before founding a successful business magazine in Brazil. His output was so varied and his life so far-flung — he boasted of having lived in 100 cities — that some library card catalogs list him as at least two different people.

Brown was also involved in the expatriate literary community in Paris, publishing several volumes of poetry. While in France, Brown also made plans toward, and wrote a manifesto for, the development of a “reading machine” involving the magnified projection of miniaturized type printed on movable spools of tape. Arguing that such a device would enable literature to compete with cinema in a visual age, Brown published a book of “Readies” — poems by Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and others.

He contributed to leading avant-garde journals and wrote, sometimes in collaboration with his wife and mother, some 30 popular books about food and drink, including “Let There Be Beer!” (published after the repeal of Prohibition) and The Complete Book of Cheese. Bob and his family eventually established residence in Rio de Janeiro, where they lived until his wife’s death in 1952. Bob soon returned to New York where he re-married, and ran a shop called Bob Brown’s Books in Greenwich Village until his death in 1959.

Beer Birthday: Eoghan Walsh

June 9, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 38th birthday of Irish beer writer Eoghan Walsh, whose work brought him to live in Brussels, Belgium, where he writes the blog Brussels Beer City. While I was aware of Eoghan’s work thanks to the interwebs, I finally got to meet and spend some time with him during judging for the Brussels Beer Challenge a few years ago, which was great fun. Join me in wishing Eoghan a very happy birthday.

Meeting up with Eoghan at Brasserie de la Senne to pick up a copy of his latest book, “A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects.”

During a trip to visit a brewery in 2019.

Me, Eoghan, and Lisa Morrison in Brissels 2023.

Historic Beer Birthday: Alan Eames

April 16, 2024 By Jay Brooks

fedora-whip
Today is the birthday of Alan D. Eames (April 16, 1947-February 10, 2007). Eames was an anthropologist of beer and a writer, and was known as both the “Indiana Jones of Beer” and “The Beer King.”

From Wikipedia:

Eames acquired a reputation as the “Indiana Jones of beer” in reference to his global quest to learn about the origins of beer and the role it played in ancient societies and cultures. Eames visited 44 countries. In Egypt he found hieroglyphics about beer, and travelled on the Amazon River in search of a lost black brew. In the Andes, Eames trekked in search of a brew made from strawberries that were the size of baseballs.

Eames claimed to have found the world’s “oldest beer advertisement” on a Mesopotamian stone tablet that dated to roughly 4000 B.C.[1] The tablet depicted a headless woman with large breasts holding goblets of beer in each of her hands. Eames claimed that the tagline to the tablet was “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.” Eames believed that beer was the most feminine of drinks, and thought that ancient societies considered it a gift from a goddess rather than a god, as from the gods Ama-Gestin and Ninkasis. With Professor Solomon Katz of the University of Pennsylvania, Eames formulated the theory that beer was an important factor in the creation of settled and civilised societies.

Eames-sa

Here’s Eames’ obituary from the New York Times:

Alan D. Eames, who cultivated his reputation as “the Indiana Jones of beer” by crawling into Egyptian tombs to read hieroglyphics about beer and voyaging along the Amazon in search of a mysterious lost black brew, died on Feb. 10 at his home in Dummerston, Vt. He was 59.

His wife, Sheila, said he died after suffering respiratory failure while he slept.

Mr. Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put forward as the world’s oldest beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 B.C.

In it a Mesopotamian stone tablet depicted a headless woman with enormous breasts holding goblets of beer in each hand. The tagline, at least in his interpretation, was: “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.”

He explored similar topics in seven books, the best known of which was “The Secret Life of Beer” (1995), in myriad radio and television appearances and in speeches at colleges and other institutions. A typical title: “Beer: A Gift from God, or the Devil’s Training Wheels.”

Mr. Eames, who followed the golden liquid to 44 countries, often told about his perilous trek high in the Andes in pursuit of an ancient brew made from strawberries the size of baseballs. Or about Aztecs forbidding drunkenness except among those 52 years of age or older. Or about accounts that said Norse ale was served with garlic to ward off evil.

Mr. Eames’s favorite and perhaps most startling message was that beer is the most feminine of beverages. He said that in almost all ancient societies beer was considered a gift from a goddess, never a male god. Most often, women began the brewing process by chewing grains and spitting them into a pot to form a fermentable mass.

Alan Duane Eames was born on April 16, 1947, in Gardner, Mass. His father was Warren Baker Eames, a Harvard-trained anthropologist. By the time he was 11, young Alan was advertising his magic act. He graduated from Mark Hopkins College in Brattleboro, Vt., now closed.

In 1968, he moved to New York City and opened an art gallery. He spent evenings at the New York Public Library researching beer.

His beer-related business ventures began in the mid-1970s with his acquisition of Gleason’s Package Store in Templeton, Mass., which became known for its large beer selection. He conceived, designed and operated Three Dollar Dewey’s Ale House in Portland, Me., and another with the same name in Brattleboro.

He found ways to cash in on his celebrity, including helping market Guinness stout. In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, he lauded its “rich dark color, the creamy white head that leaves delicate traces of foamy lace on the inside of the glass.”

He concluded, “It is one of the great joys in this vale of tears.”

Mr. Eames was the founding director of the American Museum of Brewing History and Fine Arts in Fort Mitchell, Ky., known for its festive “beer camps.” He contributed items on subjects from ancient times to the mid-19th century to the Encyclopedia of Beer.

But beer did not always pay expenses, and Mr. Eames sometimes had to take jobs like packing boxes in a vitamin factory and tending bar.

Mr. Eames is survived by his fourth wife, the former Sheila Momaney; his sons, Adrian and Andrew, both of Dummerston; his daughter, Elena Eames of Brattleboro; his stepsons Logan and Riley Johnson, of Dummerston; his father, of East Templeton, Mass., and York Beach, Me.; his mother, Mavis Franks of Denham Springs, La.; his sister, Holiday Eames of Westminster, Vt.; his half-brother, Mark Warner of Baton Rouge, La., and one grandson.

There’s also obits from the UK Guardian and Real Beer.

Beer loses its historian

Above all others, Alan Eames loved Guinness. But after traveling the world to find new beers, it seemed too easy to love such a common one. He had another favorite, though: Fruitillata, a milkshake-like beer made with strawberries and corn, brewed only 10 days a year by a tribe in remote South American mountains. One year, he just happened to show up in time for a drink. But then, that was what Eames did.

Eames, a beer historian nicknamed the “Indiana Jones of Beer,” died in his sleep on February 10. He was 59. His career took him across the world, researching beers and the innumerable ways they’re made, and he wrote his findings in books such as Secret Life of Beer.

“He was very passionate about things, and he would develop intense interest in things,” said his wife, Sheila, who was living with Eames in Dummerston, VT. “There’s so much history in beer that he never grew tired of learning about it, reading about it, talking about it.”

She said his introduction to beer came at a beach party in Maine when he was 17.

It was a Ballantine IPA. “He wrote about the attraction of the green of the bottle, the perfect fit in the hand, the wonderful smack of it when the beer hit his tongue,” Sheila says. “He was always interested in history, but I think that was his first real life-changing event, as far as beer went.”

Here’s some of the books he wrote, though he contributed to many more.

Ale Dreams
The Secret Life of Beer!: Exposed: Legends, Lore & Little-Known Facts
A Beer Drinker’s Companion (5000 years of quotes & anecdotes about beer)

And here’s an interview of Eames by Robert Lauriston, though I’m not sure when it took place. You can also listen to him on the Splendid Table program, from a show recorded February 12, 2000.

I remember when he passed away, and even wrote a blog post about him. I only met Eames once, but we spoke on the phone a couple of times. But by a weird quirk of coincidence, I ended up with several boxes of miscellaneous stuff that Pete Slosberg bought. The books in his collection were donated to UC Davis (I think) but the leftover papers, press releases and other oddball stuff ended up in my garage after Pete and Amy moved to a smaller apartment in San Francisco. But there was some pretty interesting stuff among the boxes.

quote-beer-is-a-gift-from-the-goddesses-a-soothing-balm-given-our-species-to-bring-joy-and-alan-d-eames-82-15-09

Beer Birthday: Julie Johnson

April 13, 2024 By Jay Brooks

all-about-beer
Today is the birthday of Julie Johnson, who until several years ago was the editor of All About Beer magazine, headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. Julie is without a doubt one of the nicest people in the industry and a pleasure to work with. Plus she likes odd little German trolls almost as much as I do. Hers is pink, mine’s silver. Don’t ask — or do, if you’d like a long, rambling travel story. Join me in wishing Julie a very happy birthday.

P1030505
Julie with Ray Daniels at Lagunitas during the Journalism Retreat before CBC the year it was in San Francisco.

P1030638
Maureen Ogle, Jack McAuliffe and Julie at CBC in San Francisco earlier a few years ago.

julie-and-me
Julie and me at the Rare Beer Tasting at Wynkoop several years back. (photo by Christopher Miller)

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Julie provides guest vocals on Hop This Town at the Falling Rock in Denver, Colorado during GABF week in 2007.

Historic Beer Birthday: Charles Duff

April 7, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Charles Duff (April 7, 1894–October 15, 1966). He was primarily known as “an Irish author of books on language learning,” although his most famous book was “A Handbook of Hanging,” which also covered “electrocution, decapitations, gassings, innocent men executed and botched executions.” He was an interesting, eclectic person, to say the least, and a couple of years ago Gary Gillman did a nice job summarizing his quirky life in a post entitled “Charles Duff on the Circa-1950s Irish Pub.”

But he also wrote a few travel guides, including one called “Ireland and the Irish,” published in 1952. In it, he starts with Irish history and its folklore, in fact spending nearly 100 pages of the 282-page book, before actually suggesting what the reader should see in Ireland.

Duff also had a lot to say about beer in Ireland at the time, and it’s fascinating to see his views over 75 years later. Gillman also analyzes his writing historically and reprints some of his great writing, and you should read that, too, but I’m also sharing my favorite passages from Duff regarding the beer.

In discussing Dublin, Duff attempts to provide an image of the typical modern Dublin pub, and describes a place I’d certainly like to visit.

The atmosphere is cocktailish, the seats are most comfortable, the carpets soft. I did not find the drinks or service any less efficient, nor, I must say in fairness, any more efficient than in the old days when, before Dublin was really awake in the morning, a kindly and sympathetic barman diagnosed your hangover and might prescribe, as he did for me on one occasion, a seidlitz powder, telling me not to drink anything alcoholic before noon, when he recommended a dozen oysters and a bottle or two of stout “to settle the inside and get back the feelings of a Christian.” Today the atmosphere is convivial and friendly, and you will get a good drink there. But when you go out into the street you will not have the feelings we had after a session there. I think the main difference is that in the old days the drinkers in ‘Davy Byrne’s’ had a higher opinion of one another than they have now. And in the old days you sat on any sort of old chair with a pint in front of you on a very plain table and knew that there was no other pub quite like this. It is almost ill- mannered to make the comparison, and perhaps unfair to the present house which, after all, is not responsible for the age in which we live.

Another interesting insight about Dublin, is that you should read some Joyce before your visit.

It is not a bad preparation for a visit to Dublin to read James Joyce’s Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses—in that order if you have not already read Joyce. On your second visit, or perhaps on some later occasion, you can have a try at Finnegan’s Wake, which a Dublin friend assures me is best read by moonlight as you lean over one of the Liffey bridges, and preferably while in that state of imaginative gestation to which a reasonable consumption of the wine of the country—Guinness’s Stout—is conducive. But you will not need any of this preparation to tell you that Dubliners are not always easy people to understand, and experience of Ireland can lead you to the conclusion that it is more difficult to grasp and analyse the mentality of the Dubliner than of any other kind or class of native. For one thing, Dubliners are a more mixed breed than you will find anywhere in Ireland, because Dublin has been a cosmopoli- tan community longer than any other in Ireland. This ‘town of the ford of the hurdles’ had its original Picts, Celtic Irish, its Norsemen, its Normans and then its English as the principal elements in its ethnic constitution. It has also had a generous sprinkling of the adventurous; and of the adven- turers, military, political and commercial, who invariably find their way to promising territories. In Dublin you will find surnames which come direct or are derived from those of almost every country and race in Europe; one cannot say this of any other Irish city or town.

Duff’s other travel guide was called “England and the English,” in which he followed a similar format as his Irish guidebook. This one was published a few years later, in 1955. Gillman also analyzes Duff’s English writing, too, in a two-part post entitled Charles Duff Eulogises the English Pub – Part I, which primarily provides context and background to the 1950s climate in which Duff was writing. But in Part II he tackles Duff’s take on the Eglish pub.

But I’m more interested in just sharing his stories. Like his previous work, it is filled with interesting anecdotes about like in England, with this one from an experience in World War II involving beer and cider being particularly funny.

By way of final warning, I can tell of an episode I am not likely to forget. There was a shortage of beer in the last years of the Second World War when I was staying at the cottage in Devon. That did not greatly worry local people; they drank their local cider. But very often the American troops stationed in the neighbourhood suffered distress from the lack of alcohol and (I suspect, somewhat to their disgust) were driven back on cider, which they contemptuously regarded as a soft drink 1 Friendly patrons of the pub advised them to ‘take it easy’ until they got used to it. But those hearties just laughed, possibly regarding the civilian adviser as needlessly timid; and they just went ahead. At about the third mug the fun began then the cider started to have effect. Another mug or two and the balloon went up. The usual effects of strong alcohol were felt : in this case of an alcoholic beverage to which those strong, healthy men were quite unaccustomed. We all felt sorry for them, and for their poor heads next day. And as, one by one they rolled off, the locals smiled and called for another mug saying: “Don’t it just show ‘ee !”

My friend would often reminisce and philosophize about cider, telling me that farm-workers used to have little barrels (he later showed me his; it held about a pint and a half) which they took with them to their work, but that the young genera- tion know nothing of this. He thought that modern cider is better and purer than that of his youth. He had known of men who drank themselves to death on cider, but insisted that this is rare; because, he said, cider is one of those rare drinks which carries its own safety-point and, when that point has been reached depending on the drinker’s capacity and head there is no inclination to drink any more. “How very con- venient!” the conservative drinker will say. The illustrious may comment: “How awful! ” There it is.

Duff discusses pubs more generally when covering the “prosperous market-town of Bishop’s Stortford (about thirty miles from London) is on the River Stort, which forms the boundary with Essex.”

It was precisely this easy-going atmosphere which I liked about Bishop’s Stortford. With it goes a great variety of friendly pubs Herts is a good county for beer some of which confront the traveller unexpectedly, and inside are found to be just the sort of typical little country pubs one reads about. You can find a pub almost anywhere in the town. There are the major houses such as the ‘George* and the ‘Chequers’, but I felt attracted by old names such as:

The Feathers
The Falcon
The Anchor
The Swan
The Grapes
The Reindeer
The Boar’s Head
The Half Moon
The Rising Sun
The Castle The Royal Oak
The Bull
The Fox
The Bricklayers’ Arms

most of them with their colourful, interesting signs. The names I have listed do not exhaust the possibilities of Bishop’s Stortford, and merely represent what I recall easily. The little ‘Bricklayers’ Arms’ on the road to Hadham had just received a fresh coat of paint the last time I was there. I thought it looked a very beautiful little pub from outside. Inside I was not disappointed: the beer was delicious, and Mrs. Morgan, the landlady, a great personality whom I am not likely to forget.

I should like to dwell on these pubs, some of which are very old, because of their importance as an institution of considerable import in the social fabric of this country. Hertfordshire, and, indeed, all of this eastern area, can provide examples of more than ordinary interest. At St. Albans there is the ‘Fighting Cocks’, which is said to be the oldest inhabited licensed house in England. Thomas Burke mentions A.D. 795 as the date of its foundation. “The traveller by car who takes the Great North Road the historic highway linking London with Edinburgh will come upon many pub signs which will inevitably attract his attention and often make him stop for a closer scrutiny. A little conversation with landlords and know- ledgeable local people will quickly show that the English public-house (as we usually call it now), with which one may include the terms ‘inn’ and ‘tavern’, embraces a vast social his- tory that can be traced back to Saxon times. For over one thou- sand years the house which provides food and drink for the traveller and wayfarer, and a centre or dub for local people, has been a part of English life. If I have not mentioned the subject until now, it is not because other areas of England are less rich in public-houses than this eastern part, but merely that it falls in more conveniently at this stage. What I say about the pubs here can be paralleled for most parts of England and, as it is, I can deal with it only in the most summary way. Take, for example, the ‘Letchworth Hair at Letchworth, formerly a manor-house and, some may say, too much of an hotel to be considered as a ‘typical’ pub. It is mentioned in Domesday Book. And the ‘Sun’ at Hitchin, which was used by the Parliamentarians during the Civil War (1642-1648), and, in 1745, was the place in which North Hertfordshire men enrolled for the Resistence Movement that was to face the advancing army of the Pretender. Some of these old buildings are architecturally and artistically extremely interesting, externally or internally, and sometimes in both senses. As we move northwards, a slight detour takes us to Buckden and Huntingdon, both in Huntingdonshire. The first town has the ‘Lion’ with a lounge beautifully adorned by some magnificent oak beams; the second town has the ‘George’, with its long frontage and a lovely row of fifteen windows. Stilton, where one of the world’s great cheeses is made, has the ‘Bell’ dating back to the spacious days when men travelled on horseback, more often than not in companies in order to be able to cope with the activities of such gentry as Dick Turpin. Lincolnshire has some noteworthy houses: the ‘George’ at Stamford where, in 1746, William Duke of Cumberland put up after his victory over Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden; and the curiously named ‘Ram Jam Inn’, a haunt of Dick Turpin and his men. At Grantham there is another ‘George’, visited by Charles Dickens in 1838 and about which he wrote to his wife, “. . . the most comfortable inn I ever put up in”. In Grantham there is also the ancient ‘Angel and Royal’ with seven hundred years of history behind it and originally a favourite house of the Knights Templars. Kings held their courts there; the present building dates from about the middle of the i4th century. These few dips will indicate the scope of the subject, but I think I have said sufficient to show the reader that the English pub is a very old, very strong institution and in every way worthy of his attention. I have never yet entered a pub, however humble, from which I did not emerge refreshed in mind and body, and I think that a good argument could be put up in favour of the pub as the most characteristic institution of the people of England: of the men, that is, for it is only in comparatively recent years that women are frequenting licensed premises with the approval of the younger generation of men, of course, but often with the strong disapproval of old regulars. To these it is unbecoming to the spirit and atmosphere of their club that lively and frivolous girls the more attractive they are, the worse it is ! often in slacks or even shorts, should lower the serious tone of the establishment with their disconcerting jazzing, crooning and giggling. This little survival of Puritanism is quickly passing and in many places no longer exists. It will soon be gone. The pub will survive by adapting itself to the social environment: as it always has done in the past.

He also stresses that one should never discuss politics or religion in a pub, good advice now as then.

Again it comes back to the desire for political stability, for if there is one thing that the English have learnt by bitter experience, it is that nothing can cause greater disturbances than religion, especially when used for a political end. A man’s religion is his own affair. Hence, in conversation it is never even discussed! The unwritten law of the English pub is: No religion.

Duff-hanging — Still his most famous work.