FRANCE: Brutish Wormwood

In its early stages absinthe produces an agreeable feeling of intoxication. By its continual employment the character becomes changed. To the brightness and gayety of the first effects succeeds a somber brutishness. What is worse the descendants of absinthe drinkers suffer from the sins of the fathers.

Thus in the second year of the War the Paris correspondent of London’s pompous Times described to anxious wives and sweethearts of Britain’s warriors the insidious green potion that had been tempting their dear ones in bistros from Montmartre to Montparnasse. This harrowing revelation that British children yet unborn would pay for their father’s absinthe drinking could never have passed His Majesty’s censor had not the Times been privileged to announce simultaneously that the French Government was banning and prohibiting le diable vert (the green devil). Last week, after 19 years, all Europe was startled by persistent re ports of fresh absinthe deviltry in Paris.

To balance the French budget in these hard times lotteries and roulette have again been made legal. Last week, Paris was sure that absinthe will be next. The Cabinet of Premier Gaston (“Gastounet”) Doumergue was reported considering whether to legalize absinthe at its full pre-War strength of 66% alcohol or perhaps go further and legalize what used to be called Swiss absinthe (80%). According to inspired reports, “The Government feels that by monopolizing the sale and manufacture of absinthe they can keep consumption within moderate limits and yet obtain a large revenue.”

Absinthe connoisseurs contemptuously observed that the humdrum bourgeois statesmen who make up the present Cabinet were wasting their time debating anxiously such a minor factor as the alcoholic strength of a drink which gets its chief effect from wormwood (absinthium) which contains the powerful narcotic absinthin. The alcohol in absinthe acts as the carrier and catalyst of the drug in its subtle assault upon the brain. Neither wormy nor a wood, wormwood is a bitter-tasting weed fairly common in Europe and the U. S. under such local names as madderwort, mugwort, ming-wort, warmot and wermuth. Swiss farmers never think of buying absinthe, but make it at home from their own weeds. Swiss law, while banning the sale of absinthe in Switzerland, permits every farmer to make as much as he likes “for his own use.”

Absinthe capital of the world today is no city of Europe or Asia but New Orleans. Louisianans have been sipping absinthe almost as long as the French who brought it back from their expeditions into North Africa centuries ago. The big New Orleans absinthe firm is L. E. Jung & Wulff Co. In 1926 Mr. Jung died worth some $250.000 and was succeeded by Mr. Wulff as president. Swank Son Frederick August Wulff is treasurer, plays crack polo and is a captain in the 108th Cavalry of Louisiana’s National Guard, but the firm’s “Grand Old Absinthe Man” is James Bartholomew Higgins, 78, who has been in absinthe for 63 years.

“Absinthe is not as bad as it is painted,” said Mr. Higgins last week. “In the old Sazerac Bar on Royal Street I have seen the same men come in every day between 4 p. m. and dinner time, for years. They ordered absinthe frappe, a long cold drink you can sip while you sit and read your afternoon paper or talk with friends. There were scores of men who always took that one drink a day before dinner, and who I never saw take two drinks of absinthe the same day.”

President Wulff, himself a judicious oldster of 62, blamed such victorian decadents as the late Oscar O’Flahertie Wills Wilde and Charles Pierre Baudelaire for leading Paris on to rash absinthe swizzling. “It was the young fools of the ‘sophisticates’ of Paris who started all the trouble. Like the young fools of today they tried to ‘show the world they could take it.’ They would lounge around at tables and drink a quart of absinthe a day and boast about it. Finally they got where they drank their daily quart of absinthe straight, without mixing it with anything. French workmen began to copy their habits. So France made the sale of absinthe illegal—in France! French absinthe makers were permitted to continue making absinthe for export. France wasn’t worked about what absinthe did to anybody except the French in France! As a matter of fact one, two or three drinks of absinthe a day never hurt anybody. Absinthe has definite medicinal properties. It will quiet an upset stomach.”

If such statements border on pure New Orleans absinthe romance, they are piquant evidence of the sturdy enterprise of Jung & Wulff who during the U. S. period of Prohibition sold 4,000 cases yearly of “non-alcoholic absinthe.” In what New Orleans calls “the legal confusion which followed Repeal,” Jung & Wulff sold 1,500 cases of absinthe until ordered to desist last May.

Under President Taft who was fond of Sazerac cocktails containing absinthe, as was President Harding, absinthe was outlawed throughout the U. S. by Decision No. 147 under the Pure Food & Drugs Decision of 1912, remains outlawed today despite Repeal.

A famous French recipe for absinthe requires two kinds of wormwood, “grande absinthe” and “petite absinthe.” Proportions: grande absinthe 250 grams; petite absinthe 50 gm.; hysope 100 gm.; citronelle 100 gm.; anis vert 500 gm.; badian 100 gm.; fenouil 200 gm.; and coriandre 100 gm. Directions: Soak the above in 5 litres of pure alcohol (85° C.) for 24 hours. Add 2^ litres of water. Distill this mixture. Take off 21/20 litres of pure distillate. Add to this 2½| litres of pure alcohol (85° C.) and 2¾ litres of distilled water to obtain, in all, about 10 litres of absinthe. Color with chlorophyll.

In Europe most connoisseurs take their green devil in the form of an “absinthe drip.” Sugar is placed in a special absinthe spoon pierced with holes which is held above a tall glass. Some begin by putting absinthe in the glass, pouring water over the sugar. Others begin with water in the glass, pour absinthe over the sugar and achieve the same effect, a cloudy, greenish, diluted drink. Only fools sip absinthe straight.

“Absinthe frappe” is really an absinthe julep. New Orleans masters put half a teaspoonful of sugar in the bottom of a tall glass, fill up with finely shaved ice, let the sugar dissolve, pour in 1-oz. (jigger) of absinthe, stir with a spoon, and finally add one ounce of carbonated water, drop by drop, stirring all the time until the frappe turns cloudy and thick frost forms on the glass. Similar are French absinthe frappes except for the carbonated water.

Doctors agree that absinthe, bad for men, is definitely worse for women. A famed and horrible exhibit in Europe is Buveuse d’Absinthe, painted by Belgium’s late great Felicien Rops (1833-98) and showing a girl in the sodden stage of an absinthe drunk (see cut, p. 21). Most absinthe neophytes begin by taking too much, enjoy a brief stage of exhilaration (often quarrelsome), then lapse into an absinthe stupor, followed by sleep. They wake up with a terrific pounding headache which lasts all the next day and is punctuated by fits of vomiting.