Chapter XXIX

by Jack London

　　After my long sickness my drinking continued to be convivial. Idrank when others drank and I was with them. But, imperceptibly,my need for alcohol took form and began to grow. It was not abody need. I boxed, swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the openan arrantly healthful life, and passed life insurance examinationswith flying colours. In its inception, now that I look back uponit, this need for alcohol was a mental need, a nerve need, a good-spirits need. How can I explain?

　　It was something like this. Physiologically, from the standpointof palate and stomach, alcohol was, as it had always been,repulsive. It tasted no better than beer did when I was five,than bitter claret did when I was seven. When I was alone,writing or studying, I had no need for it. But--I was growingold, or wise, or both, or senile as an alternative. When I was incompany I was less pleased, less excited, with the things said anddone. Erstwhile worth-while fun and stunts seemed no longer worthwhile; and it was a torment to listen to the insipidities andstupidities of women, to the pompous, arrogant sayings of thelittle half-baked men. It is the penalty one pays for reading thebooks too much, or for being oneself a fool. In my case it doesnot matter which was my trouble. The trouble itself was the fact.The condition of the fact was mine. For me the life, and light,and sparkle of human intercourse were dwindling.

　　I had climbed too high among the stars, or, maybe, I had slept toohard. Yet I was not hysterical nor in any way overwrought. Mypulse was normal. My heart was an amazement of excellence to theinsurance doctors. My lungs threw the said doctors intoecstasies. I wrote a thousand words every day. I waspunctiliously exact in dealing with all the affairs of life thatfell to my lot. I exercised in joy and gladness. I slept atnight like a babe. But--

　　Well, as soon as I got out in the company of others I was drivento melancholy and spiritual tears. I could neither laugh with norat the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses; norcould I laugh, nor engage in my old-time lightsome persiflage,with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, underneathall their silliness and softness, were as primitive, direct, anddeadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the monkeys womenwere before they shed their furry coats and replaced them with thefurs of other animals.

　　And I was not pessimistic. I swear I was not pessimistic. I wasmerely bored. I had seen the same show too often, listened toooften to the same songs and the same jokes. I knew too much aboutthe box office receipts. I knew the cogs of the machinery behindthe scenes so well that the posing on the stage, and the laughterand the song, could not drown the creaking of the wheels behind.

　　It doesn't pay to go behind the scenes and see the angel-voicedtenor beat his wife. Well, I'd been behind, and I was paying forit. Or else I was a fool. It is immaterial which was mysituation. The situation is what counts, and the situation wasthat social intercourse for me was getting painful and difficult.On the other hand, it must be stated that on rare occasions, onvery rare occasions, I did meet rare souls, or fools like me, withwhom I could spend magnificent hours among the stars, or in theparadise of fools. I was married to a rare soul, or a fool, whonever bored me and who was always a source of new and unendingsurprise and delight. But I could not spend all my hours solelyin her company.

　　Nor would it have been fair, nor wise, to compel her to spend allher hours in my company. Besides, I had written a string ofsuccessful books, and society demands some portion of therecreative hours of a fellow that writes books. And any normalman, of himself and his needs, demands some hours of his fellowmen.

　　And now we begin to come to it. How to face the socialintercourse game with the glamour gone? John Barleycorn. The everpatient one had waited a quarter of a century and more for me toreach my hand out in need of him. His thousand tricks had failed,thanks to my constitution and good luck, but he had more tricks inhis bag. A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me upfor the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several,before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things whichhad long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, aspur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudescedthe laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imaginationso that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with theliveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to thesatisfaction of the pompous mediocre ones who knew no other way totalk.

　　A poor companion without a cocktail, I became a very goodcompanion with one. I achieved a false exhilaration, druggedmyself to merriment. And the thing began so imperceptibly that I,old intimate of John Barleycorn, never dreamed whither it wasleading me. I was beginning to call for music and wine; soon Ishould be calling for madder music and more wine.

　　It was at this time I became aware of waiting with expectancy forthe pre-dinner cocktail. I wanted it, and I was conscious that Iwanted it. I remember, while war-corresponding in the Far East,of being irresistibly attracted to a certain home. Besidesaccepting all invitations to dinner, I made a point of dropping inalmost every afternoon. Now, the hostess was a charming woman,but it was not for her sake that I was under her roof sofrequently. It happened that she made by far the finest cocktailprocurable in that large city where drink-mixing on the part ofthe foreign population was indeed an art. Up at the club, down atthe hotels, and in other private houses, no such cocktails werecreated. 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'ssake, to key myself to sociable moods. When I rode away from thatcity, across hundreds of miles of rice-fields and mountains, andthrough months of campaigning, and on with the victorious Japaneseinto Manchuria, I did not drink. Several bottles of whisky werealways to be found on the backs of my pack-horses. Yet I neverbroached a bottle for myself, never took a drink by myself, andnever knew a desire to take such a drink. Oh, if a white man cameinto my camp, I opened a bottle and we drank together according tothe way of men, just as he would open a bottle and drink with meif I came into his camp. I carried that whisky for socialpurposes, and I so charged it up in my expense account to thenewspaper for which I worked.

　　Only in retrospect can I mark the almost imperceptible growth ofmy desire. There were little hints then that I did not take,little straws in the wind that I did not see, little incidents thegravity of which I did not realise.

　　For instance, for some years it had been my practice each winterto cruise for six or eight weeks on San Francisco Bay. My stoutsloop yacht, the Spray, had a comfortable cabin and a coal stove.A Korean boy did the cooking, and I usually took a friend or soalong to share the joys of the cruise. Also, I took my machinealong and did my thousand words a day. On the particular trip Ihave in mind, Cloudesley and Toddy came along. This was Toddy'sfirst trip. On previous trips Cloudesley had elected to drinkbeer; so I had kept the yacht supplied with beer and had drunkbeer with him.

　　But on this cruise the situation was different. Toddy was sonicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concoctingtoddies. So I brought whisky along--a couple of gallons. Alas!Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into thehabit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasteddelicious going down and that carried the most exhilarating kickimaginable.

　　I liked those toddies. I grew to look forward to the making ofthem. We drank them regularly, one before breakfast, one beforedinner, 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 werevery genial. And when, in the middle of the cruise, Toddy wascalled back to San Francisco on business, Cloudesley and I saw toit that the Korean boy mixed toddies regularly for us according toformula.

　　But that was only on the boat. Back on the land, in my house, Itook no before breakfast eye-opener, no bed-going nightcap. And Ihaven't drunk hot toddies since, and that was many a year ago.But the point is, I liked those toddies. The geniality of whichthey were provocative was marvellous. They were eloquentproselyters for John Barleycorn in their own small insidious way.They were tickles of the something destined to grow into daily anddeadly desire. And I didn't know, never dreamed--I, who had livedwith John Barleycorn for so many years and laughed at all hisunavailing attempts to win me.