# Through a Glass Lightly/The Enemy

THE ENEMY
THE ENEMY
It was but a question of Time, on whose wings and amid whose plumes shelter all the woes and wonders of the world; it was but a question of Time, and now, at last, he has come. Borne along on soft, odorous winds from Xeres and Oporto, with the sunshine of Bordeaux in his eyes, and the vine leaves from the Côte d’Or in his hair, he has come, and, alas! he has come to stay. Redolent of all that is bright and cheerful in life, the scoff of our youth, the Cassandra of our prime, the scourge and the pest of our old age, he has laid his heavy hand upon our yet heavier boot. We are crucified with what Cicero ​called the dolours of the gout. The old brown sherry, only brought out at funerals and other rare festivals, but then indulged in copiously as the opportunity allowed, has found us out at last. For us his nuttiness, his richness, his dryness, are all mere abstract terms, voces et preterea nihil. No longer, charm he never so wisely with his choice selection of adjectives, those wondrously suggestive epithets of qualification and allurement, no longer dare we let his oily deliciousness gladden the palate of us upon whom Podagra has laid his dolorous finger. Henceforth life must be for us a stern fact, not to be laughed or quaffed away, but to be lived through and down and out. If we would seek for a moment to wander awhile into the shadowy rest-bringing bypaths of fancy ​and thought, or gallop impetuously into the very jousts of love and romance, into the tourney, as it were, of life, if we would watch the tossing, dancing bubbles in our champagne like stars of dawn luring us onward to a new youth, lo! in a moment this griping fiend has us writhing in his talons, and all becomes flat, jejune, unprofitable, stale. The long white fingers, tipped with the almond nails of perfect feature and complexion have grown, it seems to us, a trifle crooked, and there rises now and again an angry flush of ugly purple which irradiates them with an uncanny lurid glare from which we shrink, with a tiny shudder of inconsiderable horror, for we will not swell our own bogie man to unreasonable proportions. There appear, too, on the joints of those ​matchless fingers strange globosities, like the seeds which we were wont once to consider peculiar to the white currant, and if in our first flush of ignorance Ave would make question of our elders and wise-sayers as to what such things may be, get for an answer a contemptuous snort and ejaculatory monosyllables, “Pooh! Chalkstones! Gout! Port! Too much Port!” So, like Adam and Eve when they walked no longer in the beautiful nakedness of nescience, but bedecked themselves in the pants and continuations of acquired knowledge, we became ourselves one of the elders and wise-sayers, and gave up happiness with the acquisition of wisdom. Neither does this dread enemy of ours confine himself to joints and knuckles. His old name of Podagra is all too limited for the ​full scope of his power over the whole body. He will tolerate no sweet to make entrance into a system over which he exercises his tyrannous control, nor permit any acid, however refreshing, to keep harbour therein. What more poetical image in the world than to quaff the juice of the grape from Bordeaux vineyards and sun-bathed slopes of Epernay, and to dream we have clambered along the valleys and up the romantic ravines of snow-topped Helicon and tapped the fountains of Aganippe and Hippocrene, summoning the Muses themselves to play the Hebe for us? What lovelier labour does gastronomy know than to let its hand roam under the dark green strawberry leaves in English garden, and lure from its hiding-place the queen of fruits, as the rose of flowers, whether we ​take it cool and refreshing from the chilly shade, or hot and life-giving with the warmth of sun and heaven thick upon it? And yet—one single glass of claret, some half-dozen strawberries, and this monster will work his vengeance on us by making our blood tingle as though it had been sluiced with curry and ginger powder, and our bodies itch—strong evils claim a sturdy nomenclature—as though they had become the temporary camping-ground of the pestilence that walketh in darkness. The fiend is inexorable. Drink toast and water and he will leave us in peace, eat no fruit and taste no sugar, eschew butter and things which make for slipperiness, and he will go into temporary hiding; but he is there, for he has come, and he has come to ​stay. And on whom may we cast the blame? Surely not on ourselves, for we own not to the gallons we have drunken of wines heady and strong, wines tawny and fruity and loaded, wines creamy and nutty and rich, wines rosily opulent and aridly pale. We confess not to the pecks and bushels of fruits both fresh and preserved—no, we admit no impeachments soft or otherwise; we seek for scapegoats and a herd is at hand. Our fathers have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children are set on edge. The blame lies there, in parents and grandparents in whose veins coursed the nefarious sherry, the treacherous Madeira, the malignant port, the malicious hock, and the deceptive champagne. This is the one blessing with which Podagra tempers his many curses. He justifies our senses in blaming ​our thirsty progenitors for our own sufferings. Frailty, thy name is Heredity, and in thy name how many crimes have been committed? And yet, there was a hardiness in those forbears of ours which we cannot recall without admiration, though twitching toes and tingling blood check an exuberance of rapture. For they were mighty hunters and men of prowess in love and war, and we hear breathlessly of how, when they sat down to drink o’ nights, they bolted the doors and divested them of their shoes and stockings before the wine went round; and as each bottle was finished they dashed it against the door, breaking it into a hundred fragments, so that none of them should make exit before, in the fulness of developed dawn, the servants came in and carried the recumbent forms with slow ​step and the measured rhythm of stertorous requiem to a more legitimate sleeping-place. Maybe these veteran topers, these fontes et origines mali, themselves grew old in years, and suffered their twinges, and swore their expostulatory swears; but they had drunk their fill; while we, a degenerate progeny, have no drink, and begin our twinges in our cradle, interrupting with our infantine oaths the lullaby of our nurses, and finding, as we grow older, our books in the pinching boots, sermons in chalkstones, and Gout in everything.