THE HOUR OF ABSINTHE : A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FRANCE’S MOST NOTORIOUS DRINK
By Nina S.Studer
McGill Queen’s University Press. 252 pages. £23.99. ISBN 978-0-2280-2220-6
Reviewed by Jim Burns
Many years ago I was delving into the dusty contents of a second-hand bookshop
and picked up a book called Wormwood: A
Drama of Paris. I wasn’t sure what “wormwood” was, but the book also had an
inscription to “Les Absintheurs de
Paris”, and I did know about “absinthe”,
though I’d never tasted it. It was still a banned drink in many
countries. But I’d read enough about writers and artists who, around the
late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century, had experienced its effects
as they searched for inspiration. And I had seen a reproduction of the famous
Degas painting, L’Absinthe, with its
two somewhat bedraggled figures (a man and a woman) sitting at a table with a
bottle and glasses in front of them. It was a great pleasure for me to see the
original when it was included in the wonderful exhibition about Bohemia at the
Grand Palais in Paris in 2012. Two other paintings spotlighting the use of
absinthe among the bohemians, both by Jean-Francois Raffaelli, were also in the
exhibition.
The book I’d picked up was by Marie Corelli, a once-popular novelist in the
period when absinthe was in regular use, and not only in bohemian circles. Like
any writer wishing to attract a wide readership she no doubt kept a watch on
what was in the news and likely to make a good story. Absinthe certainly fitted
the bill, as Nina Studer makes abundantly clear in her exhaustive study of the
drink and how it was used and misused. I have to say at the outset that Studer
isn’t concerned to deal with what might be termed the “popular” notions of
absinthe, nor does she spend much time looking at its circulation among artists
and writers. She doesn’t mention Degas and his painting, and in her notes says
that a couple of books that perhaps got a wide distribution – Phil Baker’s
The Dedalus Book of Absinthe
(Dedalus, 2001) and Jad Adams’ Hideous
Absinthe : A History of the Devil in a Bottle (Tauris, 2008) -
were aimed at a popular audience. She’s not being dismissive, simply
pointing out that her own work is more detailed and academic.
It would seem that absinthe first made a documented appearance around 1760 in
the Val De Travers region of Switzerland. It didn’t become popular in France
until the late-nineteenth century when, Studer says, “it became France’s drink
of choice by the 1880s, a period when the phylloxera crisis – an insect
infestation that destroyed grapevines and had first spread in the South of
France in the late-1860s – caused a shortage of French wine”.
Absinthe wasn’t affected. Let me quote from a description Studer uses to
illustrate what absinthe was produced from : “the tops of the wormwood, flag
root (Acorus calamus), aniseed, angelica root, leaves of dittany (origanum
dictamnus), and sweet marjoram. All these are placed in alcohol of very high
proof, where they are allowed to remain eight days, when the mixture is
distilled, and half an ounce of the essential oil of anise is then added to each
three gallons of the liquor”.
However, absinthe was widely known and used by French soldiers during the
conquest of Algeria in the 1830s and 1840s.
And they, as they returned, introduced it into French society, and so
started what became known as “The Hour of Absinthe”, the time around five in the
afternoon when the bourgeoisie relaxed. There was something of a ritual
involving the preparation and consumption of what was a drink with a high
alcoholic content of close to seventy per cent. Obviously, certain social
guidelines determined how much it was deemed proper to imbibe, and to transgress
them could lead to not only drunkenness but ostracism from polite circles. The
truly dangerous medical properties linked to the over-consumption of absinthe
were not widely realised, though they ought to have been. Military authorities
in Algeria were well aware of them, and Studer refers to a report of
four French officers being sent back to France suffering from mental
problems due to their excessive indulgences in absinthe. Studer adds that “it
was the inclusion of plant essences that was believed to be the main reason for
absinthe’s perniciousness”. And she states that bans on the sale and use of
absinthe in military establishments were enforced in Algeria.
It’s worth noting that not all doctors and others took a negative view of the
use of absinthe. There was a cholera outbreak in Paris in 1832 and it was
recommended that absinthe could be beneficial : “Instead of drinking it (the
water) pure, it will be better to mix in two teaspoonsful of brandy or absinthe
to a pint”. It’s doubtful if absinthe was widely available in 1832, and it’s
unlikely that it would have been cheap enough to allow working-class families to
use it in an attempt to purify their drinking water.
When it did become easy to obtain, and at prices that most people could afford,
it began to arouse concern in government circles. Previously, outside military
establishments, it was mostly doctors, and some temperance campaigners, who had
pointed to the disastrous effects that excessive use of absinthe could have. And
they were challenged by the producers and purveyors of the “green fairy”, as the
drink was popularly known. They pointed to what they claimed were its
attractions, both in health and social terms. Like any alcoholic beverage it was
promoted as an aid to increased sociability. A series of postcards illustrating
aspects of “the emancipated woman” included one showing a woman “preparing a
glass of absinthe for herself”. A poster advocating the joys of cycling for a
woman had a scene where she is seen relaxing in between rides with a glass of
absinthe. As Studer puts it : “Absinthe took the form of a respectable habit
amongst the bourgeois, as a muse amongst artists and members of the
intelligentsia, and of a patriotic, healthy, seductive and even pacifying drink
in advertising”.
Studer says that “Comparable to a loss of creative minds among the
intelligentsia and artists, it was mainly the loss of sheer work force that was
regretted when it came to working-class men’s absinthe consumption”. The
debilitating effects of alcoholism in general, and absinthe in particular, were
blamed for the shortage of workers in industry and agriculture. Employers took
advantage of the situation to deny higher wages and shorter hours on the grounds
that the extra money would lead to more time spent drinking absinthe.
Absinthe, sometimes described as “the morphine of the vulgar” and “the opium of
the West”, was eventually banned in 1915 in France. By that date the country was
locked in a war with Germany, and fit men and women, who wouldn’t have the time
for taking it easy during the “Hour of Absinthe”,
were needed in large numbers. Studer seems to suggest that the ban was
largely a reaction to reports of absinthe-influenced crimes : “It was feared
that absinthe could turn ordinary people into violent criminals when under its
Jekyll and Hyde influence”. I’m more inclined to think that the war probably had
its part to play when politicians took the decision to stop the sales of
absinthe. There is, perhaps, a parallel to be found in Britain where pub opening
hours were limited in 1915 because it was believed that the increased wages from
extended working hours would result in
higher levels of alcohol
consumption having a detrimental effect on war production. Obviously, absinthe
wasn’t a factor in the British decision, which raises the interesting question
of why the drink never seems to have become a problem here?
It was presumably available, though
probably not widely in the standard British pubs. I’m old enough to remember
when many of them in working-class districts didn’t even bother to stock wine.
And absinthe was no doubt expensive in
comparison to other drinks. Some writers
and others who visited Paris acquired a taste for it. The ill-fated poet Ernest
Dowson is an example. Phil Baker, in the book I mentioned earlier, quotes Dowson
as saying: “Whisky and beer for fools. Absinthe for poets.....absinthe has the
power of the magicians; it can wipe out or renew the past, annul or foretell the
future”.
I must admit that it is often the use, or misuse, of absinthe by poets and
artists that has an appeal in terms of wanting to know how it affected their
lives and creative endeavours.
There is a long list of well-known names - Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Alfred
De Musset, Alfred Jarry, and Toulouse-Lautrec, to mention just a few who liked
absinthe - and probably a longer list of
the less well-known who may have succumbed to the fatal attractions of the
drink.
However, Studer doesn’t spend a great deal of time on bohemia and its legends,
and is more concerned with the wider implications of the addiction to absinthe
by a broad section of the French population. Also, she shows how the drink
became acceptable, even fashionable, in French colonies, notably Algeria but
also Indo-China, Madagascar, French Polynesia, and anywhere
French settlers liked to congregate for the “Hour of Absinthe” as they
would have done had they been in Paris.
The Hour of Absinthe
is a book packed with information about absinthe, its history, and
its effects on individuals and French society. There are numerous notes
and a good bibliography. We’re told that the ban on the drink was lifted in
Switzerland in 2005 and in France in 2011, but I don’t think there are any signs
that the French have returned to the routines of the “Hour of Absinthe”.
.