In search of lost ale
Photo by Michael Cummins on Unsplash
Like fermentation, Homeric nostimon blooms with age. For most of life the longing bubbles dully within the subconscious, and then in adulthood (usually well into the first mortgage) it runneth over, at which point we try to mop it up with career, travel, gluttony, booze, sex, media, or for the truly desperate, with poetry. We like to rationalize our activities and claim insight into their effects, but they mostly fog the glass we grip at the masthead, scanning the horizon for a way back home. For clarity, we might cast our memory way back to the moment when the original melancholy hits us like a freezing ocean wave. We start and squirm at the shock of it, yanked from our comfort like cockney eels dumped on the slimy banks of the Thames. That the obstetrician or midwife quickly lands us on mother’s naked breast helps a bit, but the fact remains that from the beginning we long to return to the womb.
Conceptions of home vary as widely as personality, family, and culture; particularly among Americans who descend from sundry immigrant groups and lack a unified story. For a long time I simply assumed that a supermajority grew up with mom and dad, ate casserole, did Calvinism, and supported Pax Americana. Then one day my parents took us to the EPCOT Center. Disney’s hackneyed attempts to do the heavy lifting for The Universal American Myth used to provide entertainment value for everyone, even (and perhaps especially) for literate cynics, at least until the corporation became a bloody political football like everything else. (Activism tends to impoverish all our diversions, and so I shouldn’t judge true Disney believers and their right-wing bogies too harshly; most American immigrants eventually become cultural beggars over here and we scratch and claw what we can get.) Maybe the generations who come to the U.S. and move around a few times develop layers of consumerist abstraction to any real origin-sense, such that “where I come from” increasingly abides in talismanic objects—a dish, a drink, a song, a brand—and places like Walt Disney World can bear them away. As I was raised on a steady diet of Albion bread and meat, England does this to me.
It is a naive, anachronistic, somewhat fetishized England, and therefore passé, even hopeless, in polite circles—an England of boyhood daydreams, in which I’m a chorister at King’s on Christmas eve, an armor-clad man-at-arms (more likely a skinny bowman) at Agincourt, a gowned undergraduate destined for a double first at one of the old colleges, a townsman born to be woven into a village like thatch into a roof, a courtier knighted by the sovereign. It’s the England of Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Wordsworth, Austen, the Brontes, and Dickens; of Alice, Aslan, Mole and Ratty, Frodo and Samwise, and Winnie the Pooh; of Jeeves and Wooster, Poirot and Hastings, Lord Peter and Bunter, and Aubrey and Maturin; of Tallis, Byrd, Dowland, Elgar, Vaughn Williams, and Holst; of the Elizabeths and Victoria; of the Montys (Python and Don); of footpaths, sheep paddocks, and stiles in dry stone walls; of the BCP and the KJV; of Saxon churches, wool churches, Wren churches, and the Perpendicular Gothic; of change ringing and nine lessons and carols; of cream tea; and of the beverage that defeated wine at Waterloo—beer.
Beer is the most Englandular secretion, and my nostalgia for the place renders the Janus-faced American brew scene absurd and tiresome by comparison. Pop into any hip American “brewpub” and you’re assaulted by such offerings as: “Hopslam,” “Dirty Dank Juice,” or the frankly Chernobylian “Reactor.” These ales seem formulated as a cruel social experiment testing a bearded dude’s (or gal’s) suggestibility and sheer bullheadedness, rather than offered to slake the thirst after a full day’s work and ease one into a (dare I use this word?) civilized evening. On the other hand, the most popular American swills (you know, the ones that look and sometimes smell like carbonated urine) foil the above excesses and glory in the banality of jingoism and industrial drunkenness.
It’s an old, old story, but the wages of prohibition is American beer. From 1920 until the ratification of amendment twenty-one, the small interesting breweries snuffed it, while the corporations (Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Miller) adapted and grew to eventually supply GIs with the insipid alcoholic rice pop which survives oceanic to this day; the more recent beer renaissance from the 1970’s onwards saw craft breweries not only rise from the ashes but also jump the shark by “out-hopping” one another; and meanwhile no one gained an inheritance in the grand tradition of English alemaking. It is altogether fitting and proper that Americans should suffer some material lacunae, lest in our complaisance we drink to our ignorance, caravan antlike to Florida every Spring Break, and never look beyond our little horizons. But knowledge produces suffering, and suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope—hope for something at once fresh and familiar.
Every year the month of March lengthens its days through the season of Lent, and every year I dread it—the month. Lent I can handle. I understand and accept it. Hunger is the best sauce, and such. But March in gray West Michigan simply doesn’t do what it says; it drags. Alcohol can provide a handy mood adjustment under cloudy circumstances, but by age forty-five the dose-response is unpredictable (particularly given the stratospheric alcohol levels of most American IPAs) and the best effects are much more transient than the worst. Furthermore, I gave up booze for Lent this past year. Yes, I rightly suffer, but in my wretchedness I generally lack the endurance and character to hope without seeking a tangible foretaste, or unction, to tide me over.
Easter feels somewhat more plausible in April “with his shoures soote,” but until then (we follow the kids’ lead here, I admit) the chief anticipation in the drought of March is Spring Break. Spring Break weasels itself to small talk, I suspect as a way to politely avoid the theological implications of the season, and like mainstream American beer the topic quickly flattens into a predictable torpor:
“Florida. You?”
“Gulf Shores. You? Florida?”
“Florida. You?”
“Puerto Rico!”
“Whoa - Puerto Rico! You?”
“Florida…”
My son was wrapping up a mid-March little league baseball practice, and the coach asked, “So where are you going for Spring Break?” His response, “England,” was met with silence, followed by an incredulous “Why??” My son replied,“Well…my parents are making me.” It’s hard for anyone, much less a thirteen-year-old, to reconcile baseball and Anglophilia, and so predictably he buried the truth that we were drawn to a different culture, history, landscape; one which seems proximate and vaguely maternal. But my truth (to coin a clever phrase) was that in addition to the above, I sought something admirable, precarious, and unique to the British Isles—in short, I wanted to taste Real Ale.
Real Ale, as originally defined by the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA, founded in 1971 in response to the commercialization, degradation, and threatened extinction of traditional cask ales), is “a name for draught (or bottled) beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.” The alcohol level in a standard English bitter often weighs in at around 4.0%, meaning you can drink two—let’s be honest, three—pints over an evening and remain above reproach. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Even before the drinking, one already finds resonance in the names, resounding so far above any American beer names: Old Speckled Hen, Theakston’s Old Peculiar, Wadworth 6X, Bateman’s Triple XB, Richmond Gun Dog, Wensleydale Falconer, Bishop’s Finger, Greene King Abbot, and so forth. Poetry in a cask.
Which brings me to the delivery. Unlike American drafts, these draughts are by definition cask-conditioned without “extraneous carbon dioxide,” the artificial fizzy propellant typically injected into kegs. In America, the barkeep flips a switch and the beer squirts out a little faucet under pressure like wee wee. Because it lacks fake gas pressure, a real ale must be hand-pulled at the bar from the cellared cask below by means of a piston mechanism coupled to a hefty lacquered wood and brass hand pump, a device called (brilliantly) a “beer engine.” One pint takes about four, maybe five pumps. I love the machined hinge of the brass pump, the swan neck of the spout. I love watching the pint glass fill in waves (at first it looks way too gassy, but then it clarifies upward to a perfect thumbs width pillow of foam). I love the analog sense of connection between the glass, the bar, the cask, and the brewer. And then there’s the texture and flavor. Creamy, malty, slightly bittersweet with a breath of fizz and hops—in a word, poised. Which, if I may be so bold, seems to sum up the English archetype.
Do I, given the manifold extremes of our culture, feel drawn to an aesthetic of understatement and balance? And what do I actually find when I first land there? Well, I find London. Compared to the American suburbs, London seems traditional. Ah, but to the tradition belongs a long history of global empire and its ricochets, a history that complicates the notion of “Englishness” in all sorts of contentious ways. (I sense the temperature rising already. The ice I tread upon grows thin.) A facile “index” of London Englishness—the native cockney accent—has all but scarpered over the last generation in favor of Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Afro-Caribbean, and Eastern European accents; and given a few nauseating glimpses of overt racism in my visits, I must assume that the prior majority feels it as a seismic shift. (I for one welcome the culinary effects. Brigadiers restaurant, a stone’s throw from St. Paul’s, served us spicy goat belly samosas, guinea fowl skewers with mint sauce, beef shin and marrow biryani, and delicious naan with various intensely flavorful dips.) Ultimately the rulers of the waves own the legacy of colonialism, and London by the very Englishness of its global reach confounds the temptation to dismiss its demographic sea change as “unEnglish.” But like this rather cursory analysis, we trod lightly in London and quickly made our way up north to Yorkshire.
Our first stop was the ruins of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Gardens, which perfectly capture the dissolution of historical English religion and the tasteful artifice built up around its destruction. According to the literature, it is widely considered one of the most magnificent medieval ruins in Europe and for good reason. We spent several hours strolling among the beautiful dry bones of English Christianity. I overheard a passing couple and noted (with some sadness mixed with an inexplicable and perverse satisfaction) that the English tradition of cynicism was alive and well among the ruins. She: “Why don’t they do this to the Church of England?” He: “They should tear them all down, yeah?” I began to thirst.
We continued further north to the old town of Richmond (where a young Lewis Carroll was sent to grammar school, according to my internet sources), and we ventured into our first local pub, The Town Hall, where I broke my Lenten fast. As far as I can tell, North Yorkshire pubs are pretty much standard issue English pubs (as with most genre establishments, differences tend to come by degree, not kind), but with one notable exception: speech comprehension. I quickly secured my first of two pints of Theakston and struck up a conversation with the locals. The young guy pulling the pint found one part of American culture particularly engaging:
“I play a lot ‘o online pohkeh—Texas ‘old ‘em. Akshully got me ticket ‘n should’uh been ta
Vegas ta play ‘n a tourney but I ‘ad a wee’un at ‘ome.”
“Oh. Yeah. Vegas. It’s a pretty strange place…”
(I wondered why on earth anyone would voluntarily fly eleven hours to Las Vegas.)
“Have you been to the States before?”
“Nah, but I’m ‘opin’ ta get ta Vegas as soon as I cahn. I ‘ad a mate gah there, an’ ‘e tells me the
cocktail geils jus’ keep comin’ t’ ye tayble w’ drinks—oh m’ gore, ‘t sounts amaaaahzin’.”
(On second thought, Vegas sounded about right for this guy.)
“So ‘aw long ah’ye ahwvah th’ wooh-ah?”
“Pardon?”
“‘Aw long ah’ye ahwvah th’ wooh-ah?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“‘Aw long ah’ye in this paht uv th’ coontry?
“Oh, right, sorry—‘How long are you over the water’—yes, got it. We’re in Yorkshire for four
nights, in England for nine days total, then back home.”
We settled in at a back table and studied the menu (An exercise that would quickly become superfluous at future pubs. At some point deep within my subconscious, I developed a sneaking suspicion that these places basically function as the non-franchised “Applebee’s” of the UK, a suspicion that I vigorously suppressed in my holiday-time idealism.): Fish and Chips, Bangers and Mash, Steak and Ale Pie w/ Mushy Peas and Chips, Burger and Chips, Chips, Chips, etc. Hmm. Only the first bite of fish and chips fulfills its promise. I don’t care to pay money for sausage and potatoes… But steak and ale pie? The point of the place is the ale, not the steak or the pie. I expected abysmal food and real ale and got exactly what I asked for, with a twist of Yorkie. Things improved, though. The Castle Tavern served very good meals and pints of local Gun Dog accompanied by a live folk music jam session, and later at the George & Dragon, Wensleydale Falconer became my favorite real ale outside of Cambridgeshire.
The gentle challenge of losing ourselves in local pub life and English-American translation somehow brought to mind the gentleness of losing our way rambling in the Cotswolds years ago. England’s network of public footpaths must be a highlight of the place. Using a good map, one can hike through just about any private land, crossing paddocks among the sheep on subtly worn grassy trails punctuated by lovely little stone and wooden stiles. By contrast, the U.S. has to designate “safe spaces” (county, state, and national parks) for hiking, as walking onto an American’s private property might could get you shot with a gun. The stiffest resistance we met in the Yorkshire Dales took the form of two lambs lounging in front of a dry stone stile on a hillside above Hardraw. We quietly approached, the lambs smiled, said “maa,” and skipped off toward their mother.
Eventually we ended up in Cambridge, home of Abbot Ale, the jewel in my potable crown. I landed at The Eagle, the historical pub where boys from the 8th Air Force graffitied the ceiling with lipstick and zippo soot during the war, and ten years later Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA. I ordered an Abbot, the friendly barkeep pulled the pint (one, and two, and three, and four, and…Cheers). We talked a while about the distaff Virginia side of his family until I felt the pull to rejoin mine. Walking among the old schools, it’s natural to feel like vassals among nobility. Or is it more like bumpkins visiting a living history exhibit or zoo? I grant that the vibe differs from Colonial Williamsburg™ to a large degree, but strolling into the quads gave me the same odd touristy feeling; a sense that the colleges, the bell towers, the greens (although who can quibble with a park named “Christ’s Pieces?”), and the soliciting punters were all somewhat staged.
Just when the odor of inauthenticity crept in, I struck up a conversation with a refined older therapist-looking lady outside King’s College who proved that yet another English tradition remains quite resilient, in this case the tradition of self-deprecation. After the requisite small talk and a polite ten-minute silence, I asked,
“Are you from around here?”
“Ah. Well, I spent some time formulating my answer before you asked. I must admit I’m from
Oxford. Although that was years ago.”
“Uh oh! I won’t tell anyone.”
“Yes, and I must confess, if I’m allowed to, [whispers] that I prefer it to Cambridge. It’s just a bit
more manageable in scale.”
“Oxford does seem more concentrated and walkable… May I ask what college?”
“Oh, St. Hugh’s, so nothing special.”
“Well, it’s impressive to an American. And what did you read?”
“Ha ha. English, for my sins. But after journalism I got my therapist’s license, and so I’ve been
doing that for a while now, probably also for my sins.”
Conveniently, it was Good Friday and we were all standing in line to attend Choral Evensong services at King’s College Chapel. We filed in and took our seats in the quire. I didn’t see her in the row behind us, and so I can only assume she quietly reflected upon the adequacy of her academic penances. In that spectacular nave (surely one of the greatest indoor spaces in the world) I mused on megachurches and other aesthetic sins of America, wondering what our spectacular wealth might build if we had any vision beyond a four-year election cycle. (Of course, the English have always mixed religion and politics—the chapel was built by King Henry VI. At least he had some taste; our heads of state eat cottage cheese with ketchup and gild their toilets.) To my relief the choir filed in and soon began the Stabat Mater. For me the highlight of the whole service was the stark and haunting plainsong chant of the Responses which no recording can replicate. The fan-vaulted ceiling resonated all around with one note—a single crystalline overtone, like an angel running a wine-dipped finger around an enormous glass, which sounds overstated unless you've heard it.
King’s College
Coming down to earth, it was past time for dinner. On average, the people of Cambridge are far less devout than your Evensong crowd, and despite being Good Friday most restaurants were booked solid and the pubs were packed. We (somewhat sheepishly) had one more local to check out (Champion Of The Thames), but the place was a sardine can. I consoled myself with a quick pint while Sarah and the kids stepped out to google our last dining option. The pickwickian barkeep pulled the pint in the now-familiar ritual. Ah, bless you, sir. Down the hatch. I returned the glass and he quizzically remarked, “That was quick, sir!” Yes, well, I’m a child of the Reformation, and there comes a point at which I feel guilty making my family wait outside whilst I slowly dispatch yet another Abbot.
The English have supplanted their own traditional religion with a variety of things: football, American-style consumerism, Carslberg beer, hobbyism, pagan dabblings. But the real unifying religion now seems to be a fusion of environmentalism and NIMBYish conservation. It makes sense for a recently diversified island nation to jettison Christianity and its scandalous claims and meld the quixotic (Save The Planet!) and the pragmatic (Save The Countryside!) into a bland luster. Both appeal to a sort of benign ecumenical ideal—one finds identical propaganda in Heathrow, in Sainsbury’s, on TV, and in church—and both ask for offerings that at a personal level remain manageable, tame. (At least until they demand blood sacrifice. Talk to any young Brit trying to build a home, a family, or a small business.)
My own pet theory on the intersection of urban progressive environmentalism and rural conservative gentrification goes like this. Having immolated her empire, England determined in her shame and noblesse to cast her religion (and possibly her intellectual and literary tradition) onto the pyre. Now land-poor, she is desperate to preserve large tracts of forest—but not because she’s interested in building. No, she needs to source vast reams of paper in order to publish the myriad Lamentations, Requiems, and Elegies written about her over the last half-century. That the English would think it only proper to publish their own doomsaying on English paper is very, ahem, English.
Speaking of loss, we ought to touch on the corgi-shaped void in the room. In the wake of the Queen’s death, I more fully appreciate the importance of the monarch. A fundamentally conservative institution provides the ontological space in which traditionalists live and progressives exert their pressures; the monarchy is the clear prism through which the nation’s disparate ideas gather into focus and then disperse into a more or less coherent spectrum. In the absence of Her Royal Maj (who was as traditional as they come), I don’t know how England continues to do this. One can imagine the real and present cultural and economic conflicts growing like metastases throughout all Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Does the “English” traditionalist element still threaten conflict with the progressive “British” order, or have social and political momentum already rolled them into one? Will the weirdly secular synthesis work? Maybe Peter Hitchens and Roger Scruton were overreacting, England is evolving in welcome and necessary ways, and contemporary Brits should let ‘er rip—complete the rehaul into a de facto retirement community-slash-progressive amusement park. I can only assume that the people in charge believe they’re building Jerusalem whilst protecting England’s green and pleasant land, even though the organizing principles seem to derive from the same outfit that did the Magic Kingdom™.
Americans tend to favor a restless superabundance over an elegant sufficiency, compulsively melting down the old machines in order to cast new ones. We roll with the punches thrown by our entertainment and financial and food industries. We watch a few period dramas, think we have England pegged, and then turn off our thoughtfulness with the TV. I contrast our own with British tendencies to deliberate and (with great social and political difficulty) forgo the expedient in order to protect the unique and vulnerable things which embody their homeplace. I don’t envy those weighing dynamism against preservation. Activists, local councils, and His Majesty’s government might as well consist of curators and shamans tasked to catalog and vouchsafe the totems of an abandoned worldview. At what point does this aesthetic maintenance diminish to an elaborate pastiche and an encounter with the stuff of England becomes what Walker Percy called “a rather desperate impersonation” of the authentic? Are the old colleges already turning into museums like the great churches did over the last few generations? Is Evensong at King’s College Chapel nothing more than high class performance art? Is the “working landscape” just a huge manicured park? Is Real Ale even real?
Some moves can be exhilarating, and I’ll offer two cheers for prosperity, but I tend to brood over the legacies of English language and thought and sound, the buildings and landscapes from whence the stories grew, and the most honest drink which nourishes a people. And I figure the idea of England, like the idea of home, is too ancient and complicated and notoriously elusive to reduce to a description of an experience. Creative types can conjure Blakean charms which resonate with the nostimon sometimes. The rest of us search for more mundane talismans, and it seems that in this life the best we can hope for are mere admixtures of the genuine and the contrived. We wander in search of England and can only find Englandland.
