Five... moments from London's absinthe history
Green fairy or green goblin?
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s a whirlwind tour of London’s on-off love affair with the green stuff, in honour of this free exhibition about the origins and rituals of absinthe, at the Last Tuesday Society in Hackney till 22nd September.
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Cautionary tales part I: ‘reckless Absinthe-mania’
“Let me be mad, then, by all means! mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world!”
The quote’s from Wormwood: A Drama of Paris, written by Marie Corelli in London in 1890 — the title referencing one of the major herbs used in absinthe production.
Still in print (you can buy it here), the novel’s a florid morality tale about absinthe — and specifically, "the open atheism, heartlessness, flippancy, and flagrant immorality” of the French that made them vulnerable to the spirit’s enticements. Although set in Paris, it was aimed at alerting the English to the dangers of slipping into the same dissolution as their Gallic neighbours — and enjoyed a lot of commercial success, both benefiting from and stoking the mythology around absinthe as fearfully potent and deeply dissolute.