According To Pepys

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 3

According To Pepys

Drinking With Pepys. By Osc r A. Mendlesohn. Macmillan. 125 pp. The author, living in Melbourne, has been associated with science, invention, music, farming, and writing, and he believes a student of human behaviour possesses in the diary of Samuel Pepys a mine of data from which varied discourses can proliferate. In this short and very agreeable study, Pepys’s allusions to alcohol have been collated and used as the basis of an erudite and witty commentary on alcoholic beverages as they were to Pepys and as they have subsequently evolved. New Zealanders cognisant only of a national beer, consumed at the rate of 21 gallons per capita pea - annum, conveyeo from brewery to trough in the world’s largest tankers, can reflect on a more discriminating order of English ales of celebrity. Pepys spoke of Lambeth, Northdown, Margate Hill and butter ale —and the inimitable Cock ale. The technique of writing has been to cite the Pepysian references and then to divert into commentary on brewing phenomena, evolution of ales to wines. The author has ranged widely, covering reasons for high average quality of Australian wines, the art of making casks, cellars, English country wines, usquebaugh from Ireland. He is even able to make “shikkered” an acceptable term of Hebrew derivation. Evidently to Pepys, ale was a mundane dietary staple; wine was the badge of the English person of quality. Cider was just cider and Pepys is thought to have failed to discover the true virtues of this. In parts the work is repetitive—claret, sherry, sack have been defined at least three times. Amateur brewers can learn from the author that a plot of land 20 x 12 yards will yield a bottle a day throughout the year and many other facts are well indexed, making the book one useful to those who follow these pleasant and profitable arts.

The Rocks Remain. By Gavin Maxwell. Longmans. 185 pp. Illus. This beautifully-illustrated book will be welcomed by those who were enthralled with the author's first book about his otters, “Ring of Bright Water.” His lonely little house on the ocean shore of the Scottish West Highlands became the mecca for visitors to see the otters he had domesticated. Major Gavin Maxwell secured other i otters, and this book is mostly I about them. They proved to i be delightful companions with i a streak of vindictiveness that caused alarm to the i household, yet the story of i their sojourn has all the ’magic of the first narrative. This work gives several acl counts of journeys to North Africa, including a vivid account of the Agadir earthquake. The book is not a I sequel to “Ring of Bright I Water”; it stands on its own 'merits as a delightful chronicle of suspense and comedy.

Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have a favourite hunting ground, which he would wish others to share with him. —John Galsworthv. LIT PAGE—Syllabilitis ffi TAKE ONE—2 takes ffi