Negus (drink)

For the main but unrelated use, as an Ethiopian title, see negus.

Negus is the name of a drink made of wine, most commonly port, mixed with hot water, spiced and sugared.

History

According to Malone (Life of Dryden, Prose Work. i - p. 484) this drink was invented by Col. Francis Negus (d.1732), a British courtier (commissioner for executing the office of Master of the Horse from 1717 to 1727, then Master of the Buckhounds).

Negus is referred to in Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, when Jane drinks it on arrival at Thornfield Hall; in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, when Catherine is given it at Thrushcross Grange by the Lintons; in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol during the party at Fezziwig's, in David Copperfield, "Dombey and Son", The Pickwick Papers and Bleak House; and in Harriette Wilson's Memoirs. Anthony Trollope in The Small House at Allington portrays the rustic Earl de Guest's violent disgust at the thought of the drink. Negus makes a number of appearances as a tonic in The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Boswell refers to it repeatedly in his London Journal.

See also

• Glogg
• Hot Toddy
• Mulled cider
• Mulled wine
• Wassail

References

• The Gentleman's Magazine (Feb.1799) p.119. Milton, 'Paradise Lost'.

External links

• Negus recipe, The Great British Kitchen, retrieved December 30, 2007

Source

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.