But the vacancy did not occur, nor did a steady job; and I
employed the time between odd jobs with writing a twenty-one-
thousand-word serial for the “Youth’s Companion.” I turned it out
and typed it in seven days. I fancy that was what was the matter
with it, for it came back.
It took some time for it to go and come, and in the meantime I
tried my hand at short stories. I sold one to the “Overland
Monthly ” for five dollars. The “Black Cat” gave me forty dollars
for another. The “Overland Monthly ” offered me seven dollars and
a half, pay on publication, for all the stories I should deliver.
I got my bicycle, my watch, and my father’s mackintosh out of pawn
and rented a typewriter. Also, I paid up the bills I owed to the
several groceries that allowed me a small credit. I recall the
Portuguese groceryman who never permitted my bill to go beyond
four dollars. Hopkins, another grocer, could not be budged beyond
five dollars.
And just then came the call from the post office to go to work.
It placed me in a most trying predicament. The sixty-five dollars
I could earn regularly every month was a terrible temptation. I
couldn’t decide what to do. And I’ll never be able to forgive the
postmaster of Oakland. I answered the call, and I talked to him
like a man. I frankly told him the situation. It looked as if I
might win out at writing. The chance was good, but not certain.
Now, if he would pass me by and select the next man on the
eligible list and give me a call at the next vacancy–
But he shut me off with: “Then you don’t want the position?”
“But I do,” I protested. “Don’t you see, if you will pass me over
this time–”
“If you want it you will take it,” he said coldly.
Happily for me, the cursed brutality of the man made me angry.
“Very well,” I said. “I won’t take it.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I
always was an extremist. Early and late I was at it–writing,
typing, studying grammar, studying writing and all the forms of
writing, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to find
out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours’ sleep in the
John Barleycorn
84
twenty-four, and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking
hours left to me. My light burned till two and three in the
morning, which led a good neighbour woman into a bit of
sentimental Sherlock-Holmes deduction. Never seeing me in the
day-time, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the light
in my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring son
home.
The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long, dry
spells, when there is never an editor’s cheque and everything
pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty well through
that winter, and the following summer experienced the longest,
dryest spell of all, in the period when salaried men are gone on
vacation and manuscripts lie in editorial offices until vacation
is over.
My difficulty was that I had no one to advise me. I didn’t know a
soul who had written or who had ever tried to write. I didn’t
even know one reporter. Also, to succeed at the writing game, I
found I had to unlearn about everything the teachers and
professors of literature of the high school and university had
taught me. I was very indignant about this at the time; though
now I can understand it. They did not know the trick of
successful writing in the years 1895 and 1896. They knew all
about “Snow Bound” and “Sartor Resartus”; but the American editors
of 1899 did not want such truck. They wanted the 1899 truck, and
offered to pay so well for it that the teachers and professors of
literature would have quit their jobs could they have supplied it.
I struggled along, stood off the butcher and the grocer, pawned my
watch and bicycle and my father’s mackintosh, and I worked. I
really did work, and went on short commons of sleep. Critics have
complained about the swift education one of my characters, Martin
Eden, achieved. In three years, from a sailor with a common
school education, I made a successful writer of him. The critics
say this is impossible. Yet I was Martin Eden. At the end of
three working years, two of which were spent in high school and
the university and one spent at writing, and all three in studying
immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazines
such as the “Atlantic Monthly,” was correcting proofs of my first
book (issued by Houghton, Mifflin Co.), was selling sociological
articles to “Cosmopolitan” and “McClure’s,” had declined an
associate editorship proffered me by telegraph from New York City,
and was getting ready to marry.
Now the foregoing means work, especially the last year of it, when
I was learning my trade as a writer. And in that year, running
short on sleep and tasking my brain to its limit, I neither drank
nor cared to drink. So far as I was concerned, alcohol did not
exist. I did suffer from brain-fag on occasion, but alcohol never
suggested itself as an ameliorative. Heavens! Editorial
acceptances and cheques were all the amelioratives I needed. A
thin envelope from an editor in the morning’s mail was more
stimulating than half a dozen cocktails. And if a cheque of
decent amount came out of the envelope, such incident in itself
was a whole drunk.
John Barleycorn
85
Furthermore, at that time in my life I did not know what a
cocktail was. I remember, when my first book was published,
several Alaskans, who were members of the Bohemian Club,
entertained me one evening at the club in San Francisco. We sat
in most wonderful leather chairs, and drinks were ordered. Never
had I heard such an ordering of liqueurs and of highballs of
particular brands of Scotch. I didn’t know what a liqueur or a
highball was, and I didn’t know that “Scotch” meant whisky. I
knew only poor men’s drinks, the drinks of the frontier and of
sailor-town–cheap beer and cheaper whisky that was just called
whisky and nothing else. I was embarrassed to make a choice, and
the steward nearly collapsed when I ordered claret as an after-
dinner drink.
CHAPTER XXVII
As I succeeded with my writing, my standard of living rose and my
horizon broadened. I confined myself to writing and typing a
thousand words a day, including Sundays and holidays; and I still
studied hard, but not so hard as formerly. I allowed myself five
and one-half hours of actual sleep. I added this half-hour
because I was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time
for exercise. I rode my wheel more, chiefly because it was
permanently out of pawn; and I boxed and fenced, walked on my
hands, jumped high and broad, put the shot and tossed the caber,
and went swimming. And I learned that more sleep is required for
physical exercise than for mental exercise. There were tired
nights, bodily, when I slept six hours; and on occasion of very
severe exercise I actually slept seven hours. But such sleep
orgies were not frequent. There was so much to learn, so much to
be done, that I felt wicked when I slept seven hours. And I
blessed the man who invented alarm clocks.
And still no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths,
was living at too keen a pitch. I was a socialist, intent on
saving the world, and alcohol could not give me the fervours that
were mine from my ideas and ideals. My voice, on account of my
successful writing, had added weight, or so I thought. At any
rate, my reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my
reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was invited
before clubs and organisations of all sorts to deliver my message.
I fought the good fight, and went on studying and writing, and was
very busy.
Up to this time I had had a very restricted circle of friends.
But now I began to go about. I was invited out, especially to
dinner, and I made many friends and acquaintances whose economic
lives were easier than mine had been. And many of them drank. In
their own houses they drank and offered me drink. They were not
drunkards any of them. They just drank temperately, and I drank
temperately with them as an act of comradeship and accepted
hospitality. I did not care for it, neither wanted it nor did not
want it, and so small was the impression made by it that I do not
remember my first cocktail nor my first Scotch highball.