On the other hand, it must be stated that on rare occasions, on
very rare occasions, I did meet rare souls, or fools like me, with
whom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars, or in the
paradise of fools. I was married to a rare soul, or a fool, who
never bored me and who was always a source of new and unending
surprise and delight. But I could not spend all my hours solely
in her company.
Nor would it have been fair, nor wise, to compel her to spend all
her hours in my company. Besides, I had written a string of
successful books, and society demands some portion of the
recreative hours of a fellow that writes books. And any normal
man, of himself and his needs, demands some hours of his fellow
men.
And now we begin to come to it. How to face the social
intercourse game with the glamour gone? John Barleycorn. The ever
patient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me to
reach my hand out in need of him. His thousand tricks had failed,
thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks in
his bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up
for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several,
before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which
had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a
spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudesced
the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination
so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the
liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the
satisfaction of the pompous mediocre ones who knew no other way to
talk.
A poor companion without a cocktail, I became a very good
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92
companion with one. I achieved a false exhilaration, drugged
myself to merriment. And the thing began so imperceptibly that I,
old intimate of John Barleycorn, never dreamed whither it was
leading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine; soon I
should be calling for madder music and more wine.
It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy for
the pre-dinner cocktail. I WANTED it, and I was CONSCIOUS that I
wanted it. I remember, while war-corresponding in the Far East,
of being irresistibly attracted to a certain home. Besides
accepting all invitations to dinner, I made a point of dropping in
almost every afternoon. Now, the hostess was a charming woman,
but it was not for her sake that I was under her roof so
frequently. It happened that she made by far the finest cocktail
procurable in that large city where drink-mixing on the part of
the foreign population was indeed an art. Up at the club, down at
the hotels, and in other private houses, no such cocktails were
created. Her cocktails were subtle. They were masterpieces.
They were the least repulsive to the palate and carried the most
“kick.” And yet, I desired her cocktails only for sociability’s
sake, to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from that
city, across hundreds of miles of rice-fields and mountains, and
through months of campaigning, and on with the victorious Japanese
into Manchuria, I did not drink. Several bottles of whisky were
always to be found on the backs of my pack-horses. Yet I never
broached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, and
never knew a desire to take such a drink. Oh, if a white man came
into my camp, I opened a bottle and we drank together according to
the way of men, just as he would open a bottle and drink with me
if I came into his camp. I carried that whisky for social
purposes, and I so charged it up in my expense account to the
newspaper for which I worked.
Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth of
my desire. There were little hints then that I did not take,
little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents the
gravity of which I did not realise.
For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winter
to cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay. My stout
sloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove.
A Korean boy did the cooking, and I usually took a friend or so
along to share the joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machine
along and did my thousand words a day. On the particular trip I
have in mind, Cloudesley and Toddy came along. This was Toddy’s
first trip. On previous trips Cloudesley had elected to drink
beer; so I had kept the yacht supplied with beer and had drunk
beer with him.
But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so
nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting
toddies. So I brought whisky along–a couple of gallons. Alas!
Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into the
habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted
delicious going down and that carried the most exhilarating kick
imaginable.
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93
I liked those toddies. I grew to look forward to the making of
them. We drank them regularly, one before breakfast, one before
dinner, one before supper, and a final one when we went to bed.
We never got drunk. But I will say that four times a day we were
very genial. And when, in the middle of the cruise, Toddy was
called back to San Francisco on business, Cloudesley and I saw to
it that the Korean boy mixed toddies regularly for us according to
formula.
But that was only on the boat. Back on the land, in my house, I
took no before breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap. And I
haven’t drunk hot toddies since, and that was many a year ago.
But the point is, I LIKED those toddies. The geniality of which
they were provocative was marvellous. They were eloquent
proselyters for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way.
They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily and
deadly desire. And I didn’t know, never dreamed–I, who had lived
with John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all his
unavailing attempts to win me.
CHAPTER XXX
Part of the process of recovering from my long sickness was to
find delight in little things, in things unconnected with books
and problems, in play, in games of tag in the swimming pool, in
flying kites, in fooling with horses, in working out mechanical
puzzles. As a result, I grew tired of the city. On the ranch, in
the Valley of the Moon, I found my paradise. I gave up living in
cities. All the cities held for me were music, the theatre, and
Turkish baths.
And all went well with me. I worked hard, played hard, and was
very happy. I read more fiction and less fact. I did not study a
tithe as much as I had studied in the past. I still took an
interest in the fundamental problems of existence, but it was a
very cautious interest; for I had burned my fingers that time I
clutched at the veils of Truth and wrested them from her. There
was a bit of lie in this attitude of mine, a bit of hypocrisy; but
the lie and the hypocrisy were those of a man desiring to live. I
deliberately blinded myself to what I took to be the savage
interpretation of biological fact. After all, I was merely
forswearing a bad habit, forgoing a bad frame of mind. And I
repeat, I was very happy. And I add, that in all my days,
measuring them with cold, considerative judgment, this was, far
and away beyond all other periods, the happiest period of my life.
But the time was at hand, rhymeless and reasonless so far as I can
see, when I was to begin to pay for my score of years of dallying
with John Barleycorn. Occasionally guests journeyed to the ranch
and remained a few days. Some did not drink. But to those who
did drink, the absence of all alcohol on the ranch was a hardship.
I could not violate my sense of hospitality by compelling them to
endure this hardship. I ordered in a stock–for my guests.
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94
I was never interested enough in cocktails to know how they were
made. So I got a bar-keeper in Oakland to make them in bulk and
ship them to me. When I had no guests I didn’t drink. But I
began to notice, when I finished my morning’s work, that I was
glad if there were a guest, for then I could drink a cocktail with