The Errant Æsthete

Detail of The Drunkard’s Progress, Or, the Direct Road to Poverty, Wretchedness & Ruin. J. W. Barber, 1826.

While we at the EA are the first to raise a glass to conviviality and comradeship, there was a time when the curse of strong drink threatened to destroy the family, take away your home, and decree that you burn forever more in “the bad place!” So potent was the message that by 1830 there were 2,220 temperance societies in the United States, “each wielding an arsenal of tracts, leaflets, broadsides, pledges, songs, plays, and illustrations meant to scare, guilt, and bully men back into sobriety.” For example in The Drunkard’s Progress (circa 1846), nine steps to dissolution begins with “a glass with a friend” and ends with “death by suicide.” Pretty dreary career path!

From the pages of the nonist, a small cross section of the rich and varied cornucopia of printed ephemera which has been passed down to us from our temperate forebearers.

Plate titled “Four Stages of the Downward Course” from the book Grappling with the Monster:
Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink by T. S. Arthur. c. 1877.