Antipodean Seredipity

[steepholm]

Having accompanied Daniel Southwell from England to Australia with the First Fleet a decade ago, I did not think that I would again have occasion to follow any of my family members into those southerly waters, but I was wrong!

Yesterday I took receipt of the latest book in my Annie Robina Butler collection, Glimpses of Maori Land (1886).



It's different from the other books of hers that I've read, in that, although (like those) it's published by the Religious Tract Society, it's not aimed at children, and it's actually about her own experiences. I'd known the title for a while, but assumed that (like Stories about Japan and By the Rivers of Africa) it would be some kind of amalgam based on others' travels; but not so. It appears in fact to be her first literary effort, and details a trip made in the early 1880s in which she accompanied her sister Lucy and Lucy's husband, George Tonge (a clergyman working in Birmingham), on a tour of New Zealand - a voyage ordered by George's doctor, apparently, although it seems a strange prescription.

Anyway, I was quickly distracted by this passage, part of a very interesting account of how people passed the time in a 3 month voyage before the advent of Netflix:



What, you are no doubt wondering (as I did) is 'zoedone'? The name suggests something lifegiving, but I'd never heard of it. Pinterest soon yielded this advert, however:



This figures. Annie, like all the Butlers of her generation, was big on temperance. (This lasted several generations. My mother, whose own family background included sailors, soldiers and publicans, was amazed to hear my grandfather - Annie's nephew - once describe a man who occasionally had a pint of beer before supper as 'a bit of a toper.') Ironically, zoedone was manufactured in Wrexham, my mother's home town, which in her own childhood was better known as one of the few places in Britain to make lager. I rather suspect they used the abandoned zoedone plant for the purpose, for the drink doesn't seem to have been popular for long. Having launched in 1880, by 1882 it was in financial trouble, having spent most of its capital on patents to protect its intellectual property.

There was also the matter of the taste. Here's one assessment, from an 1882 Vanity Fair:



In other words, it tasted exactly like Red Bull. Just as Red Bull bought a Formula One team, so Zoedone bought a racehorse, which went on to win the 1883 Grand National. However, although I find odd references to Zoedone through the 1890s, some admiring, some tinged with mockery, it doesn't seem to have had Red Bull's staying power. When did Zoedone give up the ghost? Perhaps, like the Coca-Cola company, they should have used cocaine as an ingredient? But Coca-Cola wasn't invented until 1885.

But I digress from my digression. I've barely seen Annie, Lucy and George through the Azores, and must hurry after if we are to cross the line before tea. More soft-drink adventures soon, perhaps, if they make it to Wellington.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I do love a book with a nice cover- they do say don't judge a book by it, but.......

The other Wellington, naturally! :o)

[steepholm]

The boot's on the other foot!

[cmcmck]

Groan!

Those nice Hesba Stretton editions that I picked up a little while back on the market bookstall locally were also RTS.

[calimac]

I'm reminded of Moxie (a New England soft drink which turns up as a name in the Harvard Lampoon Bored of the Rings), which I know people who insist is objectively vile. I thought it tasted OK.

And root beer (non-alcoholic, like ginger beer) is very popular in the US, but European visitors, especially Germans (I don't recall about Brits), spit it out in disgust. I've heard them say it tastes like bubble gum. Which I don't see at all; it's Inca Kola (popular in Peru) which tastes like bubble gum.

[cmcmck]

I grew up on Tizer which tastes (unsurprisingly) like Tizer. It comes from the same folks who make the dreaded Irn bru.

There there's dandelion and burdock...........

Ginger beer in not entirely non alcoholic however but only very mildly so.

[calimac]

There must be different formulas for ginger beer, then. Probably a UK/US difference. It's definitely non-alcoholic over here. We have other rough-country variants of root beer, like birch beer and sarsaparilla, but they're rare.

[steepholm]

I've had root beer, and thought it fairly pleasant. More so than Dr Pepper, anyway. Mind you, I haven't had either since around 1986, so my tastes may have changed. (I love ginger beer, though.)

[calimac]

Ah, Dr Pepper is the one common soft drink I dislike.

[cmcmck]

I Should have mentioned- you'll be pleased to know that the Wrexham lager brewery is still going strong.

[steepholm]

Good to know! And I see it started just a couple of years after the Zoedone factory...

[adrian_turtle]

Root beer can have somewhat different tastes, depending on the roots (licorice, sasparilla, etc) and how it's brewed. The commercial stuff is completely non-alcoholic, but there are homemade versions that have a little. Possibly microbrew as well as homebrew, these days. By US law, "non-alcoholic beer" means beer that contains less than 0.5% alcohol. You can ferment root beer enough to get 0.5% alcohol.

Moxie is like that because of gentian violet. I don't know if it's possible to drink enough to cure thrush.

[oursin]

I'm a bit shocked that if they were that into temperance, they bought a racehorse, which was surely implicated in The Vice of Gambling?

Zoedone sounds rather like Irn-Bru?

[adrian_turtle]

Zoedone does sounds like Irn-Bru in that they're pitching it as a mineral supplement. It's weird that they were advertising it as healthy phosphorous content, when now we know phosphoric acid in fizzy drinks is especially bad for teeth and bones.

[oursin]

Let us not forget the marketing of 'radium tonics' in the early C20th - between scientific misunderstanding and downright quackery grabbing onto exciting new science, I suspect there was something perhaps similar going on re phosphorus.

[steepholm]

Well, a racehorse of that name began to compete within a year or two of the drink being launched. I assume there's a connection, but perhaps the owner was just an enthusiast for the drink?

[sovay]

However, although I find odd references to Zoedone through the 1890s, some admiring, some tinged with mockery, it doesn't seem to have had Red Bull's staying power.

I had never heard of Zoedone and I adore the contemporary description of the flavor.

[ashkitty]

...that Vanity Fair review is wonderful.