Huntingdon’s doctrine of moderation

Huntingdon’s doctrine of moderation is a rule he offers to justify controlled drinking as the sensible alternative to both abstinence and excess. His advice to Lord Lowborough does not produce stable self-command: Lowborough’s attempts to follow it give way to repeated drinking, conscience, and relapse. The episode makes the doctrine an example of how an apparently balanced principle can become an instrument of rationalization when its advocate minimizes his own dependence and his companions reinforce the habit.

Origin and Rationale

Huntingdon describes himself as having restored Lowborough to the company of his friends after Lowborough’s health and spirits had suffered. He recounts recommending wine as something to take for his stomach, then urging a middle course he labels “media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours”: neither killing oneself through excess nor abstaining altogether. In his formulation, a rational person should enjoy drink without surrendering entirely to it.

The doctrine rests on Huntingdon’s confident distinction between ordinary enjoyment and destructive drinking. He claims that he is not a tippler and presents his own moderation as a model, arguing that a man who gives himself up to drink will spend part of his life miserable and part of it mad. Yet this warning does not lead him to recommend abstinence. Instead, he makes continued drinking seem compatible with comfort and enjoyment, and frames total abstinence as foolishness.

Lowborough’s Attempts and Relapse

Lowborough’s experience exposes the weakness in this prescription. He was already caught in a pattern of resolving to stop gambling and then breaking his resolutions: a small gain encouraged another attempt, while a loss seemed to require continued play until he had recovered it. Although he kept his oath against gambling, to the surprise of his companions and despite Grimsby’s efforts to tempt him back, he took up drinking as another habit.

When Lowborough followed Huntingdon’s counsel, he managed for a time to appear a model of moderation and prudence. But, as Huntingdon himself tells it, Lowborough could not hold a steady middle course. If he drank beyond his intention, the resulting misery made him drink again the next day in an effort to recover from the previous excess. The cycle could continue from day to day until conscience finally stopped him.

The aftermath did not provide lasting protection. During sober intervals, Lowborough burdened his friends with remorse, fear, and distress. They responded by urging him to drown his sorrows in wine or a stronger drink. Once his scruples had been overcome, he could become as reckless as the rest of the group; after the episode passed, he lamented his own degradation. The social circle thus helped convert a supposed rule of moderation into a recurring route back to excess.

Huntingdon’s Role and the Doctrine’s Limits

Huntingdon tells the story while asking whether Lowborough profited from his advice. His answer is superficially affirmative: Lowborough did follow the rule for a while. But the account that follows qualifies that apparent success so thoroughly that the doctrine’s failure becomes clear. It cannot accommodate Lowborough’s inability to stop once he has crossed the line, nor can it protect him from companions who use his remorse as a reason to resume drinking.

The prescription also reflects the speaker who advances it. Huntingdon presents himself as a guide to rational enjoyment, but the narrative places his assurance beside the consequences for Lowborough and the pressure exerted by their drinking companions. The contrast makes the doctrine less a reliable measure of temperance than a persuasive way to keep drinking available while denying its danger.

Significance in the Narrative

The episode links drinking to a pattern already visible in Lowborough’s gambling: resolve, violation, attempted recovery, and renewed commitment to the habit. Keeping his gambling oath does not prevent him from acquiring another dependence, and Huntingdon’s counsel offers no dependable means of preventing relapse. The distinction between abstinence and excess therefore proves inadequate to Lowborough’s circumstances.

The doctrine also anticipates the conflict between alcohol and domestic responsibility elsewhere in the narrative. Helen recognizes that wine has become more than a social accessory for Huntingdon: it is an independent source of comfort and pleasure, and she fears that illness and weakness will make him rely on it still more. In the next generation, she works to make her son Arthur Graham disgusted by intoxicating liquor, fearing the influence of his father and his father’s friends. Set against these efforts, Huntingdon’s rule reveals the difference between naming a middle course and actually interrupting a pattern of dependence: a maxim of moderation cannot undo the habit, remorse, and social reinforcement that sustain it.