Kentucky whiskey vs vodka
This blog is a collection of thoughts, stories and moments in the ongoing fascination/hatred dynamic between American and Russian/Soviet culture. And where better to start than in 1854, at a dinner in London? At that point, Russia and the United States were both rapidly expanding nations involved both in the extinction of native people and the ownership of others. But these background horrors, as related by the perceptive Russian exile Alexander Herzen, could all be reduced to a drinking contest.
Herzen had been invited, along with other political dissidents hiding out in London at the time, to the home of the American consul, a man named George Sanders. Ostensibly, Sanders invited troublemakers such as Herzen, the French socialist Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, Hungarian Lajos Kossuth, German Arnold Ruge and a few Italian nationalists, in order to celebrate George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 21st. But Herzen astutely noted that such a gathering was guaranteed to irritate the existing rulers in Europe while also diverting “the eyes of all the radical parties…from the main jewel [of US policy]—the imperceptible expansion and consolidation of slavery.”
As of to solidify that notion, the charming but altogether evil Ambassador, James Buchanan, attended as well. “The sly old man Buchanan […] was then already dreaming, in spite of his seventy years, of the presidency, and therefore was constantly talking of the happiness of retirement, of the idyllic life and of his own infirmity,” Herzen notes.
But the party really got underway after old man (and future disaster-President) Buchanan left. His consul Sanders “wanted to compensate himself for the absence at dinner of the vehement toasts to the future universal (white) republic, which the cautious Buchanan must have forbidden,” Herzen writes. So his host got to cooking up some flaming punch with Kentucky whiskey. After the booze flamed awhile, Mrs. Sanders gave it a swig, pronounced it fine, and served it up in teacups.
“With no thought of danger I took a big mouthful, and for a minute I could not draw breath,” Herzen says. As he recovered, he warned the other Europeans to drink carefully. “‘I am Russian, and even so I’ve scorched my palate, my throat and my whole alimentary canal: what will happen to you? Punch in Kentucky must be made from red pepper with an infusion of vitriol.’”
At this, the American consul “smiled ironically, rejoicing at the feebleness of Europeans.” So to maintain the Continent’s (and especially Russia’s) pride, Herzen held out his cup for more, raising his esteem highly in the consul’s eyes.
“‘Yes, yes,’ [Sanders] said: ‘it’s only in America and Russia that people know how to drink.’
“Well,’ I thought, ‘there is an even more flattering affinity: it’s only in America and Russia that they know how to flog serfs to death.’”
Sadly, but perhaps wisely, Herzen was sober enough to keep the comparison to himself.
You can read this anecdote and so much more in Herzen’s fascinating autobiography My Past & Thoughts. Despite his wealth, the man did not have an easy life, as related by Tom Stoppard in his nine-hour-long trilogy The Coast of Utopia.
The London dinner makes a cameo in Ben Wilson’s great book on the 1850s, Heyday. Hey, and while you’re at it, read Kurt Andersen’s novel Heyday, too, about the European revolutions of 1848 and their impact on America.
