The room within which they found themselves, proved to be the shop of an undertaker — but an open trap-door in a corner of the floor near the entrance, looked down upon a long range of wine-cellars, whose depths the occasional sounds of bursting bottles proclaimed to be well stored with their appropriate contents. In the middle of the room stood a table — in the centre of which again arose a huge tub of what appeared to be punch. Bottles of various wines and cordials, together with grotesque jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality, were scattered profusely upon the board. Around it, upon coffin-tressels, was seated a company of six….
The Tale
The story is a fairly simple one; two drunken sailors flee from a tavern without settling their bill and are chased through the streets of London by the proprietor. They escape into a deserted part of town that has been closed off because it’s Plague-ridden. They run into an old undertaker’s shop where they encounter a party of four men and two women drinking at a bottle-littered table, surrounded by skeletons and coffins and other funereal artifacts. The leader of the group (who calls himself “King Pest the First”) is annoyed by the interruption and as punishment orders the two sailors to drink “a gallon of Black Strap…at a single draught — and upon your bended knees.” The two instead create a diversion and manage to escape, each carrying off one of the women from the group.
This has got to be one of Poe’s most grotesque tales. (See the Poe-Script below for a bit more on this point.) The characters are all grossly exaggerated, the settings are cluttered and wild and baroque, the action is overplayed, the dialogue is florid. Oh, and the whole thing plays out as a farce or perhaps even a comedy, depending on your disposition, I suppose.
The full story is available here.
The Drink
We, being of a more serious temperament, are going to zero in on that “blackstrap” that the sailors were sentenced to drink. This would be blackstrap rum, which is unusually dark and is made with molasses. (I procured a bottle of Cruzan Estate Diamond Black Strap Rum for this project.) With the addition of some espresso, a liqueur, and a few drops of tabasco (trust me on this one), you’ll have some proper “humming-stuff” (as the story’s main characters call it).
Ingredients:
1 gallon Blackstrap rum (or, if you don’t want to be that vérité, just use two ounces)
1 shot espresso
1⁄2 oz crème de cacao
A few drops of tabasco sauce
Stir all the ingredients in a mixing glass filled with ice. Strain into an iced skull cup (which is the vessel of choice used by the characters of the story). Garnish with something interesting if you like, but I demurred because didn’t want to distract from the imagery of the skull.
This cocktail isn’t for everyone, and when you take your initial sip your taste buds will become disoriented and perhaps threaten to kill you. But once they get re-oriented, you’ll find that this is actually a fairly balanced and interesting drink. The molasses flavor dominates, offset a bit by the bitter and astringent espresso and the spicy Tabasco. The creme de cacao softens the palate; it’s kind of a peace offering to your tongue. In the course of taking a sip, you’ll experience a range of emotions, from “why on earth did I make this drink” to “actually, I think I’ll have another.” Which is precisely what I did.
Poe-Script
Although King Pest was first published in 1835 in The Southern Literary Messenger, five years later it was included in a collection of Poe’s stories called Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. The story “King Pest” presumably is described by the first of the two adjectives.
Chasing Phantoms 