him.
Now I was so clean of alcohol that even a single cocktail was
provocative of pitch. A single cocktail would glow the mind and
tickle a laugh for the few minutes prior to sitting down to table
and starting the delightful process of eating. On the other hand,
such was the strength of my stomach, of my alcoholic resistance,
that the single cocktail was only the glimmer of a glow, the
faintest tickle of a laugh. One day, a friend frankly and
shamelessly suggested a second cocktail. I drank the second one
with him. The glow was appreciably longer and warmer, the
laughter deeper and more resonant. One does not forget such
experiences. Sometimes I almost think that it was because I was
so very happy that I started on my real drinking.
I remember one day Charmian and I took a long ride over the
mountains on our horses. The servants had been dismissed for the
day, and we returned late at night to a jolly chafing-dish supper.
Oh, it was good to be alive that night while the supper was
preparing, the two of us alone in the kitchen. I, personally, was
at the top of life. Such things as the books and ultimate truth
did not exist. My body was gloriously healthy, and healthily
tired from the long ride. It had been a splendid day. The night
was splendid. I was with the woman who was my mate, picnicking in
gleeful abandon. I had no troubles. The bills were all paid, and
a surplus of money was rolling in on me. The future ever-widened
before me. And right there, in the kitchen, delicious things
bubbled in the chafing-dish, our laughter bubbled, and my stomach
was keen with a most delicious edge of appetite.
I felt so good, that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable
greed to feel better. I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my
happiness even higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts
with John Barleycorn had taught me. Several times I wandered out
of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle, and each time I left it
diminished by one man’s size cocktail. The result was splendid.
I wasn’t jingled, I wasn’t lighted up; but I was warmed, I glowed,
my happiness was pyramided. Munificent as life was to me, I added
to that munificence. It was a great hour–one of my greatest.
But I paid for it, long afterwards, as you will see. One does not
forget such experiences, and, in human stupidity, cannot be
brought to realise that there is no immutable law which decrees
that same things shall produce same results. For they don’t, else
would the thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar
delights to the first, else would one cocktail, instead of
several, produce an equivalent glow after a year of cocktails.
One day, just before I ate midday dinner, after my morning’s
writing was done, when I had no guest, I took a cocktail by
myself. Thereafter, when there were no guests, I took this daily
pre-dinner cocktail. And right there John Barleycorn had me. I
was beginning to drink regularly. I was beginning to drink alone.
John Barleycorn
95
And I was beginning to drink, not for hospitality’s sake, not for
the sake of the taste, but for the effect of the drink.
I WANTED that daily pre-dinner cocktail. And it never crossed my
mind that there was any reason I should not have it. I paid for
it. I could pay for a thousand cocktails each day if I wanted.
And what was a cocktail–one cocktail–to me who on so many
occasions for so many years had drunk inordinate quantities of
stiffer stuff and been unharmed?
The programme of my ranch life was as follows: Each morning, at
eight-thirty, having been reading or correcting proofs in bed
since four or five, I went to my desk. Odds and ends of
correspondence and notes occupied me till nine, and at nine sharp,
invariably, I began my writing. By eleven, sometimes a few
minutes earlier or later, my thousand words were finished.
Another half-hour at cleaning up my desk, and my day’s work was
done, so that at eleven-thirty I got into a hammock under the
trees with my mail-bag and the morning newspaper. At twelve-
thirty I ate dinner and in the afternoon I swam and rode.
One morning, at eleven-thirty, before I got into the hammock, I
took a cocktail. I repeated this on subsequent mornings, of
course, taking another cocktail just before I ate at twelve-
thirty. Soon I found myself, seated at my desk in the midst of my
thousand words, looking forward to that eleven-thirty cocktail.
At last, now, I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol.
But what of it? I wasn’t afraid of John Barleycorn. I had
associated with him too long. I was wise in the matter of drink.
I was discreet. Never again would I drink to excess. I knew the
dangers and the pitfalls of John Barleycorn, the various ways by
which he had tried to kill me in the past. But all that was past,
long past. Never again would I drink myself to stupefaction.
Never again would I get drunk. All I wanted, and all I would
take, was just enough to glow and warm me, to kick geniality alive
in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots of
imagination slightly in my brain. Oh, I was thoroughly master of
myself, and of John Barleycorn.
CHAPTER XXXI
But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to
produce the same response. By and by I discovered there was no
kick at all in one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There
was no glow, no laughter tickle. Two or three cocktails were
required to produce the original effect of one. And I wanted that
effect. I drank my first cocktail at eleven-thirty when I took
the morning’s mail into the hammock, and I drank my second
cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the habit of
crawling out of the hammock ten minutes earlier so as to find time
and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became
schedule–three cocktails in the hour that intervened between my
desk and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking
John Barleycorn
96
habits: regular drinking and solitary drinking.
I was always willing to drink when any one was around. I drank by
myself when no one was around. Then I made another step. When I
had for guest a man of limited drinking calibre, I took two drinks
to his one–one drink with him, the other drink without him and of
which he did not know. I STOLE that other drink, and, worse than
that, I began the habit of drinking alone when there was a guest,
a man, a comrade, with whom I could have drunk. But John
Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was a wrong thing to
trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him drunk. If
I persuaded him, with his limited calibre, into drinking up with
me, I’d surely get him drunk. What could I do but steal that
every second drink, or else deny myself the kick equivalent to
what he got out of half the number?
Please remember, as I recite this development of my drinking, that
I am no fool, no weakling. As the world measures such things, I
am a success–I dare to say a success more conspicuous than the
success of the average successful man, and a success that required
a pretty fair amount of brains and will power. My body is a
strong body. It has survived where weaklings died like flies.
And yet these things which I am relating happened to my body and
to me. I am a fact. My drinking is a fact. My drinking is a
thing that has happened, and is no theory nor speculation; and, as
I see it, it but lays the emphasis on the power of John
Barleycorn–a savagery that we still permit to exist, a deadly
institution that lingers from the mad old brutal days and that
takes its heavy toll of youth and strength, and high spirit, and
of very much of all of the best we breed.
To return. After a boisterous afternoon in the swimming pool,
followed by a glorious ride on horseback over the mountains or up
or down the Valley of the Moon, I found myself so keyed and
splendid that I desired to be more highly keyed, to feel more
splendid. I knew the way. A cocktail before supper was not the
way. Two or three, at the very least, was what was needed. I
took them. Why not? It was living. I had always dearly loved to
live. This also became part of the daily schedule.
Then, too, I was perpetually finding excuses for extra cocktails.