Trevor Joyce, the generous and inquisitive Irish poet so frequently seen around here as a source of Hattic items, writes as follows: “I’m sifting through some files of research on family history, and came across this, which drew my attention for its boozy air. The anecdote is obviously the thing, but when I went googling, expecting to find very many instances, I found myself flooded with BMX bikes, but divil the cocktail of this name.” Here’s the thing itself, quoted from the Boston Globe of June 11, 1893:
UNDER THE ROSE Considerable curiosity has been aroused as to the exact nature of the beverage alluded to in Dr Frank Harris’ editorial of last Sunday, to wit, the “Frogtown racer.” None of the wine clerks seems to be familiar with it. Happening to meet the doctor, I ventured to ask him for the recipe. He said that the beverage was invented, or at least exploited, by that bohemian of medicine and literature, the late Dr Robert Dwyer Joyce, who consumed. according to his own account, two gallons of the “racer” while endeavoring to get Deirdre down from the tower into which he had put her in the course of his construction of the poem of that name.
The recipe indicates that the Frogtown racer is a very light whisky punch made with soda, into which a teaspoonful of maraschino is put and on top of this is carefully laid a “lemon float,” that is, a thin section of the fruit cut at the middle of the lemon. On this is gently poured a little port wine.
The effect is to make a drink of delicate flavor and presenting alternate zones of amber, yellow and purple whose relations, owing to the difference in specific gravity, are maintained during its consumption. This drink was a favorite not only of the doctor, but of the late Edgar Parker and many others of the Papyrus at a time when the club coat was a tradition.
Apropos of this drink, Dr Harris tells a good story of his friend Nat Childs. Both were abroad seeing Europe “while you wait,” and in Paris Nat was much amused at the so-called American bars, where the barkeeps were more English than a unicorn, and where a man was especially employed to sweep out at regular intervals the h’s dropped by the barkeeps and the regular customers. At these bars were sold as American drinks compounds with names entirely unheard of in this country, such as “corpse-reviver,” “beautiful lap,” “pick-me-up,” “eye-opener,” etc.
Now, Nat used to go into one of these places after the other and inquire: “Do you sell American drinks here?”
“Oh yes, sir, hall of them.”
“Then,” said Nat, “make me a Frogtown racer”
“A wot, sir?”
“A Frogtown racer.”
“Wy, bless me soul, Hi never ‘eard of it sir.”
“What! never heard of a Frogtown racer, the commonest of all American drinks – what they put children on to as soon as they are weaned? Very well. I’ll try elsewhere.
“The same conversation would be repeated in all the bars – Champs Elysee, Place de Madeline, rue de l’Opera, etc. Finally one night, pretending great vexation that so simple and common an American drink could not be served, he asked the privilege of making one himself. This was granted, the ingredients furnished and the racer concocted. The barkeeper watched the process very closely, and next day Nat found, done in soap work on the great mirror behind the bar:
*****************************************
* FROGTOWN RACER *
* NEW AMERICAN DRINK *
******************************************
and “tout Paris” consuming the article. He always has claimed that he was entitled to a large commission which he never got. At all events, the consumers found a thirst-quencher which fulfilled the conditions which Dr Joyce claimed for the shillelah, “light to the hand and pleasant to the head.”
Now I want a Frogtown racer. (I also imagine a song “Frogtown racer, that’s a drink, Doo-da, doo-da…”) I post the anecdote not only for its own boozy sake but in the hope someone can come up with independent verification of its existence… although, come to think of it, it may well have been the invention of an exuberant and sloshed Globe reporter.
FWIW, “Papyrus” in context is almost certainly a reference to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Club. An account of the group’s formation can be found in Roche’s _Life of John Boyle O’Reilly_, available scanned in the google books corpus. Both Nat. Childs (with a period clipping the first name) and Robert Dwyer Joyce are also mentioned in that volume, as well as a “Dr. F. A. Harris” who may have been named Frank. Control-F finds no references to “Frogtown,” however.
Vital background information; thanks!
I can’t help but wonder if the Dr Frank Harris is the (in)famous author of My Life and Loves.
Here’s a WP snippet:
“ Harris became an American citizen in April 1921. In 1922 he travelled to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his autobiography My Life and Loves (published in four volumes, 1922–1927). It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Harris’ purported sexual encounters and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. Years later, Time magazine reflected in its 21 March 1960 issue “Had he not been a thundering liar, Frank Harris would have been a great autobiographer … he had the crippling disqualification that he told the truth, as Max Beerbohm remarked, only ‘when his invention flagged’.” ”
That Frank Harris, as a point of interest to our very own expert on such matters, had two—count ’em!—Welsh parents.
The “Dr. F.A. Harris” I mentioned above in connection with the Papyrus Club is confirmed to have been Dr. Frank A. Harris in a relevant passage of _Many Celebrities and a Few Others: A Bundle of Reminiscences_, by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Rideing. But the pornographically-notable Frank Harris is not said to have either lived in Boston or practiced as a physician and also looks to have been too young by at least a decade (maybe more) to be Dr. Frank A. Rideing describes that Harris as e.g. bantering at Ober’s* w/ Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) while the visiting Nugent Robinson (1838-1904) looked on. The literary endeavors of this Harris (some in collaboration with the aforementioned Nat. Childs) are described in an 1880 issue of _The Harvard Register_, which characterizes Harris as an alumnus from the class of 1866.
*Presumably the Boston restaurant latterly known as Locke-Ober: opened by 1862, owned by Monsieur Ober (of Alsatian origin) no later than 1875, closed in 2012. Said to have been the birthplace of the _Ward Eight_ cocktail, which has at least a somewhat higher modern profile than the Frogtown Racer.