August 4, 2020

Cocktail Talk: The Old Curiosity Shop, Part V

old-curiosity-shopOur last (for now – the next time I read the book, and fates-willing there will be a next time, there may well be more) Cocktail Talk from The Old Curiosity Shop is also the longest, and it’s very long as far as Cocktail Talks go. But I couldn’t cut a word, as it highlights so well hot rum, the demon (though a man) Quilp, and his toady and lawyer Sampson Brass. Do heat it up, but don’t let said heating keep you from earlier The Old Curiosity Shop Cocktails Talk, including Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV, or from other past Charles Dickens Cocktail Talks.

 

 ‘No?’ said Quilp, heating some rum in a little saucepan, and watching it to prevent its boiling over. ‘Why not?’

‘Why, sir,’ returned Brass, ‘he — dear me, Mr. Quilp, sir — ‘

‘What’s the matter?’ said the dwarf, stopping his hand in the act of carrying the saucepan to his mouth.

‘You have forgotten the water, sir,’ said Brass. ‘And — excuse me, sir — but it’s burning hot.’

Deigning no other than a practical answer to this remonstrance, Mr. Quilp raised the hot saucepan to his lips, and deliberately drank off all the spirit it contained, which might have been in quantity about half a pint, and had been but a moment before, when he took it off the fire, bubbling and hissing fiercely. Having swallowed this gentle stimulant, and shaken his fist at the admiral, he bade Mr. Brass proceed.

‘But first,’ said Quilp, with his accustomed grin, ‘have a drop yourself — a nice drop — a good, warm, fiery drop.’

‘Why, sir,’ replied Brass, ‘if there was such a thing as a mouthful of water that could be got without trouble — ‘

‘There’s no such thing to be had here,’ cried the dwarf. ‘Water for lawyers! Melted lead and brimstone, you mean, nice hot blistering pitch and tar — that’s the thing for them — eh, Brass, eh?’

‘Ha ha ha!’ laughed Mr. Brass. ‘Oh very biting! and yet it’s like being tickled — there’s a pleasure in it too, sir!’

‘Drink that,’ said the dwarf, who had by this time heated some more.

‘Toss it off, don’t leave any heeltap, scorch your throat and be happy!’

The wretched Sampson took a few short sips of the liquor, which immediately distilled itself into burning tears, and in that form came rolling down his cheeks into the pipkin again, turning the colour of his face and eyelids to a deep red, and giving rise to a violent fit of coughing, in the midst of which he was still heard to declare, with the constancy of a martyr, that it was ‘beautiful indeed!’

 

–Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

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