Brandy in Tea
Miss Berry relates, among her earliest Brighton reminiscences, the following odd story of old Lady Clermont, who was a frequent guest at the Pavilion. “Her physician had recommended a moderate use of stimulants to supply that energy which was deficient in her system, and brandy had been suggested in a prescribed quantity, to be mixed with her tea. I remember well having my curiosity excited by this, to me, novel form of taking medicine, and holding on by the back of a chair to watch the modus operandi. Very much to my astonishment, the patient held a liqueur bottle over a cup of tea and began to pour out its contents, with a peculiar purblind look, upon the back of a teaspoon. Presently she seemed suddenly to become aware of what she was about, turned up the spoon the right way, and carefully measured and added the quantity to which she had been restricted. The tea so strongly “laced” she then drank with great apparent gusto. Of course it was no longer “the cup that cheers but not inebriates;” but what seemed inexplicable to my ingenuous mind was the unvarying recurrence of the same mistake of presenting the back of the spoon instead of the front. I was aware that it did not arise from defect of sight. Lady Clermont could see almost as distinctly as myself. Nevertheless, the cordial was permitted to accumulate in the tea till the old lady chose to adopt a better measurer, and then she most conscientiously took care not to exceed the number of teaspoonfuls the obliging doctor had prescribed. I was not then aware that this was a case in which the remedy was the reverse of worse than the disease. Lady Clermont liked brandy as a medicine, and made this bungle in measuring it by way of innocent device for securing a much larger dose than she had been ordered. The gravity with which she noticed her apparent mistake, without attempting to correct it, and her little exclamation of surprise, so invariably uttered, amused me so much that when she quitted the Pavilion, the best part of my day’s entertainment seemed to have departed with her.”
The ludicrous sobriquet of the Ministerial Wooden Spoon originated as follows:—Towards the close of each Session of Parliament, a list of the votes of those Members of the Government who are in the House of Commons is produced at the Fish Dinner then given; and he who is lowest on the list is probably regarded by his Cambridge friends, at least, as the wooden spoon. During the administration of Sir Robert Peel, on one of these anniversaries, when the ministerial party was starting for Greenwich, one of them, in passing through Hungerford Market, bought a child’s penny mug and a wooden spoon. After dinner, when the list of votes was read out, the penny mug, on which was painted “James,” or “For a good boy,” was presented, with all due solemnity, to Sir James Graham, and the wooden spoon to Sir William Follet. This is thought to be the origin of the above strange custom.