Punch (32 page)

The concoction was thus made: One of the horse buckets of ordinary size was filled with finely crushed ice; a quart of good brandy, whisky and rum each was poured into the ice, and sugar and lemon added. The bucket was filled to the brim with Champagne, and the whole stirred into delirious deliciousness. Rumor hath it every solitary man of the Blues was put under the table by this deceiving, diabolical and most delightful compound.

There’s little to say here beyond use good bourbon and real Champagne and make sure that the rum has some bouquet to it, but not too much—Planter’s Best rather than Pirate Juice. Round up the usual suspects.

To me there are few more poignant stories in the history of American letters than that of Frank Forester. In part, it has to do with the details of his life. Like me, he was a journeyman writer with a literary background, earning his living by doggedly pursuing a nonliterary genre. Like me, he liked good food, good drink and good company. But he died by his own hand, shunned by his editors, his friends and his family, in the house he never completed, in—worst of all—Newark.

But if I do not envy his fate, I do envy his skill. Henry William Herbert, to give his real name, was born in England to the clergyman son of a lord, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and exiled to America by his family when he couldn’t pay his considerable debts. Once here, he supported himself by writing anything he could get paid for. He finally hit his stride when, as “Frank Forester,” he took to writing about hunting and fishing. His best novels,
The Deerstalkers
,
My Shooting Box
and
The Warwick Woodlands
, are set in the parts of New Jersey and lower New York State that are now covered by malls, tract “homes,” Outback Steakhouses and tight-meshed, strangling strands of blacktop. In his day, they were game-filled uplands, not virgin forest but not yet tainted either, and he captured their beauty as no one has. To read his description of the “defile through which the Ramapo, one of the loveliest streams eye ever looked upon, comes rippling with its crystal waters over bright pebbles, on its way to join the two kindred rivulets which form the fair Passaic” is to weep for what we have done. Today, the Ramapo meets the Passaic a half mile north of Route 80, near the Willowbrook Mall.

Perhaps Forester devoted himself too much to the bottle. Indeed, his works slosh with old Ferintosh Scotch whiskey, good cognac, Holland gin, Jersey applejack and lots and lots of fine Champagne, always described in loving detail. But these potables were always consumed with a conviviality that, by the end, he must have yearned for more than anything in the world.

That conviviality is on full display here, as Forester’s recurring character Henry Archer makes a version of Regent’s Punch for the author’s fictional alter ego and namesake (both Englishmen) and Tom Draw, the Jerry Thomas-like New Jersey tavern-keeper who served as the token American in Forester’s fantasy world of sport and homosocial good cheer.

“It is directly contrary to my rule, Frank, to drink before a good day’s shooting—and a good day I mean to have to-morrow!—but I am thirsty, and the least thought chilly; so here goes for a debauch! Tim, look in my box with the clothes, and you will find two flasks of curaçao; bring them down, and a dozen lemons, and some lump sugar—look alive! and you, Tom, out with your best brandy; I’ll make a jorum that will open your eyes tight before you’ve done with it. That’s right, Tim; now get the soup tureen, the biggest one, and see that it’s clean. . . . [B]ring half-a-dozen of Champagne, a bucket full of ice, and then go down into the kitchen, and make two quarts of green tea, as strong as possible; and when it’s made set it to cool in the ice-house!”

In a few minutes all the ingredients were at hand; the rind, peeled carefully from all the lemons, was deposited with two tumblers full of finely powdered sugar in the bottom of the tureen; thereupon were poured instantly three pints of pale old Cognac; and these were left to steep, without admixture, until Tim Matlock made his entrance with the cold, strong, green tea; two quarts of this, strained clear, were added to the brandy, and then two flasks of curaçao!

Into this mixture a dozen lumps of clear ice were thrown, and the whole stirred up till the sugar was entirely suspended; then pop! Pop! went the long necks, and their creaming nectar was discharged into the bowl; and, by the body of Bacchus—as the Italians swear—and by his soul too, which he never steeped in such delicious nectar, what a drink that was, when it was completed!

Given that a tumbler holds 8 ounces, the only remotely murky things here are the disposition of the peeled lemons and the size of the curaçao flasks. For the former, I say juice ’em, strain ’em and in with the juice. For the latter, well, I know the stuff came in little stoneware flasks, but their precise capacity has eluded me. But maraschino flasks contained a pint—probably a beverage pint, which is 12 ounces—so why not assume that curaçao flasks are the same and pitch in with a 750-milliliter bottle of Grand Marnier? It does no harm, anyway.

In 2007: Trashcan Punch. In 1869: Yale College Punch. Enough said.

One quart bottle of brandy; 1 pint bottle of Champagne; two bottles of soda water; 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar; 2 slices pineapple, cut up. Use Champagne goblets. Six Yale students will get away with the above very cleverly.

It bears repeating that a “quart” bottle of wine or spirits was actually one-sixth of a gallon and a “pint” one-twelfth. Personally, I hate leaving Champagne to sit around in the bottle and go flat. When I make this, I pour the rest of the bottle in.

The Michigan Light Guard, the Georgia Light Guard, the Lawrence Light Guard, the La Grange Light Guard, the Coldwater Light Guard—if there’s one thing America had plenty of in the days before the Civil War, it was Light Guards. Every town that had any pretensions to high society organized one, with fancy uniforms and rich men’s sons. But if there’s one Light Guard that’s probably responsible for this excellent, rather extravagant Punch, it would have to be the “Tigers”—the famous Light Guard of New York. A society outfit through and through, before the war they were tagged by city wits with the line “in peace . . . invincible, in war invisible.” But after Fort Sumter, they were (as George Augustus Sala, the peerless observer of midcentury American life, noted) “not mere carpet knights, but distinguished as being among the earliest to volunteer in this monstrous war, on whose fatal fields they have left many a brave member of their corps.” In which case, the anonymous so-and-so who rewrote Jerry Thomas’s book in 1887 was probably correct when he pointed out, “This is sufficient for a mixed company of twenty, not twenty of the Light Guard.”

(For a party of twenty.)

3 bottles of Champagne.

1 bottle of pale sherry.

1 bottle of Cognac.

1 bottle of Sauterne.

1 pineapple, sliced.

4 lemons, sliced.

Sweeten to taste, mix in a punch-bowl, cool with a large lump of ice, and serve immediately.

The pineapple and lemon should both be in thin rings. As usual, it’s difficult to prescribe for the sugar; the pineapple adds sweetness, but the Champagne soaks it up. I usually begin with 4 ounces and then adjust from there. For the Sauternes, see Captain Radcliffe’s Punch in Chapter XI. For the sherry, use a fino or light amontillado, although white port is an interesting, if more lush, substitute.

The
Richmond
looked like a clipper ship with a stumpy little smokestack sticking up from the middle of its deck. She was a “screw sloop,” one of the new, efficient propeller-driven steamboats that were beginning to replace the awkward side-wheel paddleboats of song and story. Christened in 1860, a year before Fort Sumter, she would become one of the Union Navy’s most modern ships and consequently sailed wherever the shot was thickest. She had a hole punched in her side by the world’s first ironclad warship, the CSS
Manassas
; she helped to take New Orleans; and she stormed Mobile Bay with Admiral Farragut, for which action twenty-seven of her sailors and three of her marines were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

That was not the end of her career: in fact, she would serve until 1917, for a total of fifty-seven years. In 1870, she was flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron; in the 1880s, of the Asiatic Squadron, with ports of call in Yokohama and the like. By then, her half-rotten timbers were a haven to rats and bedbugs, and her stubby eleven-inch smoothbore iron guns were museum pieces, incapable of even denting the armor of the sleek, all-steel battleships of the day, with their turrets full of long, ten-inch rifled guns, a single shot from which could turn her to matchsticks. What kept her afloat?

I like to think it was the Punch. But alas the navy had been officially dry since 1862. So this noble beverage was probably not served on duty or even on board. Of course, that doesn’t mean her officers couldn’t have cooked up a bowl or two of this descendant of Punch Royal when relaxing ashore. I certainly would have: like its ship, it’s a stubborn old-timer hanging on from an earlier age—rich, dark and leathery, and full of charm and worldly experience.