Barrett's Mixology

By Julian Bubb-Humfryes | Monday, August 11, 2008

The Dartmouth Mule

X parts Absinthe (Dartmouth green)
X parts Scotch
X parts Plum brandy

Method: difficult to discern and of dubious legality.

I had been living in Boston for some weeks, trying to avoid what I can only term the ‘fracas’ over the entire affair. I mean to say, I had only been engaged to the girl a matter of days, and the whole ghastly betrothal had hardly been a matter of my own instigation. Fortunately my good friend Bertie had been handy with a solution. Now at last, with the great Atlantic between me and my woes, I could begin to relax. That morning a rather agreeable young man of my recent acquaintance had called on me in my rooms. Would I care to accompany him on a jaunt to his alma mater? Now, I tend as a rule to treat American colleges with suspicion. They seem to place a rather unhealthy emphasis on work. Brains are all very well in an academic or a banker, say, but in a gentleman? Oxford was so much more sensible about such things. My doubts were soon brushed aside however by his glowing description of the old place and by the fineness of the late-summer day. It was with no little relish therefore that I stowed my cane alongside the picnic-basket in the back of my new friend’s rather elegant two-seater. And so off we sped.

I have to say that the journey was of the pleasantest, and we made good time travelling along those great tranches of asphalt that our American cousins term ‘roads’. Our destination, too, was simply as charming as charming could be. We set up shop on that great pleasaunce known, appropriately enough, as the Green. Now, among the epithets frequently applied to your author, that of energetic and strenuous man of the world is not one that springs to mind. Today, however, was to be different. No effete dandies we. We worked up a hearty and manly appetite for our repast with a vigorous game of croquet. Now, whilst sipping my performance-enhancing G&T I happened to notice one of my new friend’s college acquaintances preparing a most unusual beverage. I suppose that Bunsen burners, condensers and the like are easy to come by in an academic setting, but quite what he was doing with them I could not fathom. “Oh, you’ll see” was all I could elicit in response to my polite enquiry. I did indeed see, dear reader, although perhaps ‘experience’ would be the more appropriate verb. The mysterious concoction went through me like the discharge of a twelve-bore through a thicket. All of a sudden, the light seemed more golden, the trees more verdant, my person more parallel with the ground. I remember only one more thing about that evening. As my consciousness slipped away, a man (I don’t know who) standing over me remarked to his friend: “poor lad. Just doesn’t have the stomach of a Dartmouth man...”

Barrett's Mixology

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