July 26, 2025 • 29 mins
Discover the untold story of renowned author Jack London, who tragically passed away at just forty years old. In this deeply personal memoir, London shares his life through the lens of his relationship with alcohol, personified as John Barleycorn. Despite the prevailing controversies surrounding his demise, Londons candid exposition of his battles with alcoholism was far ahead of its time, pre-empting modern theories of addiction. With an extraordinary blend of honesty and insight, he unveils his encounters with both the demons and deities of his life, personified by his friend and foe, John Barleycorn. (Summary by Peter Kelleher)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapters twenty six, twenty seven, and twenty eight of John
barleycorn Or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
(00:20):
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Chapter twenty six. Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing.
I am afraid. I always was an extremist. Early and late,
(00:41):
I was at it writing, typing, studying grammar, studying, writing
in all the forms of writing, and studying the writers
who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded.
I managed on five hour sleep in the twenty four
and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours
(01:04):
left to me. My light burned till two and three
in the morning, which led a good neighbor woman into
a bit of sentimental Sherlock Holmes deduction. Never seeing me
in the daytime, she concluded that I was a gambler,
and that the light in my window was placed there
(01:26):
by my mother to guide her erringsun home. The trouble
with the beginner at the writing game is the long
dry spells, when there is never an editor's check, and
everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty
well through that winter, and the following summer experienced the
(01:49):
longest driest spell of all in the period when salaried
men are gone on vacation and manuscripts in editorial offices
until vacation is over. My difficulty was that I had
no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul
(02:12):
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
(02:34):
about this at the time, though now I can understand it.
They did not know the trick of successful writing. In
the years eighteen ninety five and eighteen ninety six. They
knew all about Snowbound and Sartore Sartis. But the American
(02:54):
editors of eighteen ninety nine did not want such truck.
They wanted the eighteen ninety nine 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 on, stood off the butcher and
(03:16):
the grocer, pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's macintosh,
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
(03:38):
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,
(04:01):
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 Company,
was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's. Had declined,
(04:26):
and 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 taking my brain to its limit.
(04:50):
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 checks were all
(05:12):
the amelioratives. I needed a thin envelope from an editor
in the mornings mayl was more stimulating than half a
dozen cocktails. And if a check of decent amount came
out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a
whole drunk. Furthermore, at that time in my life, I
(05:34):
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
(05:59):
ordering of laque and of high balls, of particular brands
of scotch. I didn't know what a liqueur or a
high ball was, and I didn't know that Scotch meant whiskey.
I knew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the
Frontier and of sailor town cheap beer and cheaper whisky
(06:21):
that was just called whiskey 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
twenty seven. As I succeeded with my writing, my standard
(06:44):
of living rows 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. Formally, I allowed myself five and one hours
(07:04):
of actual sleep. I added this half hour because I
was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time for exercise.
I rowed 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
(07:28):
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 a very severe exercise, I actually slept
(07:48):
seven hours, but such sleep wargies were not frequent. There
was so much to learn, so much to be done
that I felt wicked when I leapt seven hours, and
I blessed the man who invented alarm clocks. And still
no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths.
(08:12):
Was living at too keen a pitch. I was a
socialist intent on saving the world, and alcohol could not
give me the fervors 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,
(08:35):
my reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my
reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was
invited before clubs and organizations 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
(08:58):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:43):
it that I do not remember my first cocktail nor
my first Scotch high ball. Well, I had a house.
When one is asked into other houses, he naturally asks
others into his house. Behold the rising standard of living.
Having been given drink in other houses, I could expect
(10:05):
nothing else of myself than to give drink in my
own house. So I laid in a supply of beer
and whiskey and tabo claret. Never since that has my
house not been well equipped. And still through all this
period I did not care in the slightest for John Barleycorn.
(10:28):
I drank when others drank, and with them as a
social act, and I had so little choice in the
matter that I drank whatever they drank. If they elected whiskey,
then whiskey it was for me. If they drank root
beer or sasparilla, I drank root beer or sasparilla with them.
(10:51):
And when there were no friends in the house, why
I didn't drink anything Whiskey decanters were always in the
room where I wrote, and for months and years I
never knew what it was when by myself to take
a drink. When out at dinner, I noticed the kindly
(11:12):
genial glow of the preliminary cocktail. It seemed a very
fitting and gracious thing. Yet so little did I stand
in need of it with my own high intensity and vitality,
that I never thought it worthwhile to have a cocktail
before my own meal when I ate alone. On the
(11:34):
other hand, I well remember a very brilliant man somewhat
older than I who occasionally visited me. He liked whiskey,
and I recall sitting whole afternoons in my den drinking
steadily with him, drink for drink, until he was mildly
(11:55):
lighted up, and I was slightly aware that I had
drunk some whisky. Now why did I do this, I
don't know, save that the old schooling held the training
of the old days and nights glass in hand with men,
the drinking ways of drink and drinkers. Besides, I no
(12:17):
longer feared John Barleycorn. Mine was that most dangerous stage
when a man believes himself. John Barleycorn's master. I had
proved it to my satisfaction in the long years of
work and study. I could drink when I wanted, refrain
(12:39):
when I wanted drink without getting drunk, and to cap everything,
I was thoroughly conscious that I had no liking for
the stuff. During this period I drank precisely for the
same reason I had drunk with Scottie and the Harpooner
and with the Oil to Pirates, because it was an
(13:02):
act that men performed with whom I wanted to behave
as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind,
drank very well. There was no reason I should not
drink with them. I who knew so confidently that I
had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn, and the foregoing
(13:27):
was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got
well jingled, but such occasions were rare. It interfered with
my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work.
I remember, when spending several months in the East End
(13:47):
of London, during which time I wrote a book and
adventured much amongst the worst of the slum classes, that
I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with
myself because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very
times were because I was out on the adventure path,
(14:11):
where John Barleycorn is always to be found. Then, too,
with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there
were occasions when I engaged in drinking hours with men.
Of course, this was on the adventure path in various
(14:32):
parts of the world, and it was a matter of pride.
It is a queer man pride that leads one to
drink with men in order to show as strong ahead
as they. But this queer man pride is not theory,
it is fact. For instance, a wild band of young
(14:54):
revolutionists invited me as the guest of honor to a
beer bust. It is the only technical beer bust I
ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of
the affair when I accepted. I imagined that the talk
would be wild and high, that some of them might
(15:15):
drink more than they might, and that I would drink discreetly.
But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of
these high spirited young fellows, whereby they wiled away the
tedium of existence by making fools of their betters, as
I learned afterward they had got their previous guest of honor,
(15:38):
a brilliant young radical, unskilled in drinking, quite pipped. When
I found myself with them and the situation dawned on me,
uprose my queer man pride. I'd show them the young rascals.
I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had
(16:01):
the vitality and the constitution, the stomach and the head,
who could make most of a swine of himself, And
show at least these unlicked cubs who thought they could
outdrink me. You see, it was an endurance test, and
(16:21):
no man likes to give another best faugh. It was
steam beer, I had learned more expensive bruise. Not for
years had I drunk steam beer. But when I had,
I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could
show these youngsters some ability in beer guzzling. And the
(16:45):
drinking began, and I had to drink with the best
of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest
of honor was not permitted to lag. And all my
asteered nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read,
all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the
(17:07):
ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the
abysm of my heredity, atavistic, competitive and brutal, lustful with
strength and desire to outswine the swine. And when the
session broke up, I was still on my feet, and
(17:29):
I walked erect unswaying, which was more than can be
said of some of my hosts. I recall one of
them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as
he pointed out my sober condition. Little he dreamed the
iron clutch born of old training with which I held
(17:53):
to my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of
my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice unbroken and easy,
and my thoughts consecutive and logical, Yes, and mixed up
with it all, I was privily a grin. They hadn't
(18:15):
made a fool of me in that drinking bout, and
I was proud of myself for the achievement. Darn it,
I am still proud. So strangely is man compounded. But
I didn't write my thousand words. Next morning I was sick, poisoned.
(18:37):
It was a day of wretchedness. In the afternoon I
had to give a public speech. I gave it, and
I am confident it was as bad as I felt.
Some of my hosts were there in the front rows
to mark any signs on me of the night before.
(18:58):
I don't know what signs they want, but I marked
signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that
they were just as sick as I. Never again, I swore,
and I have never been in vaggled into another beer
bust for that matter. That was my last drinking bout
(19:22):
of any sort. Oh. I have drunk ever since, but
with more wisdom, more discretion, and never in a competitive spirit.
It is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned to
show that at this period in my life, drinking was
(19:44):
wholly a matter of companionship. I remember crossing the Atlantic
in the Old Teutonic. It chanced at the start that
I chummed with an English cable operator and a younger
member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now, the only thing
(20:04):
they drank was horse's neck, a long, soft, cool drink
with an apple peel or an orange peel floating in it.
And for that whole voyage I drank horses necks with
my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whiskey.
(20:25):
I should have drunk whisky with them. From this it
must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I
didn't care. I had no morality in the matter. I
was strong with youth and unafraid, and alcohol was an
utterly negligible question as far as I was concerned, Chapter
(20:49):
twenty eight. Not yet was I ready to tuck my
arms in John Barleycorn's The older I got, the grit
reader my success, the more money I earned, the wider
was the command of the world that became mine. And
the more prominently did John Barleycorn bulk in my life,
(21:14):
And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance
with him. I drank for the sake of sociability, and
when alone I did not drink. Sometimes I got jingled,
but I considered such jingles the mild price I paid
for sociability, to show how unripe I was for John Barleycorn.
(21:41):
When at this time I descended into my slough of despond,
I never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a
helping hand. I had life troubles at heart, troubles which
are neither here nor there in this narrative, but combined
(22:01):
with them were intellectual troubles, which are indeed germane. Mine
was no uncommon experience. I had read too much positive
science and lived too much positive life in the eagerness
of youth. I had made the ancient mistake of pursuing
(22:23):
truth too relentlessly. I had torn her veils from her,
and the sight was too terrible for me to stand
in brief I lost my fine faiths in pretty well
everything except humanity, and the humanity I retained faith in
(22:45):
was a very stark humanity. Indeed, this long sickness of
pessimism is too well known to most of us to
be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I
had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly as a
(23:05):
Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too
many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for
me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What
really saved me was the one remaining illusion. The people.
The things I had fought for and burned my midnight
(23:28):
oil for had failed me success. I despised it recognition.
It was dead ashes society, men and women above the
rock and muck of the waterfront and the forecastle. I
was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of woman.
(23:52):
It was like all the rest money. I could sleep
in only one bed at a time, and of what
word earth was an income of one hundred porterhouses a day,
when I could eat only one art culture in the
face of the iron facts of biology. Such things were ridiculous,
(24:14):
the exponents of such things only the more ridiculous. From
the foregoing, it can be seen how very sick I was.
I was born a fighter. The things I had fought
for had proved not worth. The fight remained the people.
(24:34):
My fight was finished. Yet something was left still to
fight for the people. But while I was discovering this
one last tie to bind me to life, in my extremity,
in the depths of despond, walking in the valley of
the shadow, my ears were deaf to John Barleycorn. When ever,
(25:00):
the remotest whisper arose in my consciousness that John Barleycorn
was the anodyne, that he could lie me along to
live one way only was uppermost in my thought. My revolver,
the crashing, eternal darkness of a bullet. There was plenty
(25:25):
of whiskey in the house for my guests. I never
touched it. I grew afraid of my revolver, afraid during
the period in which the radiant, flashing vision of the
people was forming in my mind and will. So obsessed
(25:46):
was I with the desire to die that I feared
I might commit the act in my sleep. And I
was compelled to give my revolver away to others who
were to lose it for me where my subconscious hand
might not find it. But the people saved me. By
(26:09):
the people, was I handcuffed to life. There was still
one fight left in me, and here was the thing
for which to fight. I threw all precaution to the winds,
threw myself with fiercer zail, into the fight for socialism,
laughed at the editors and publishers who warned me and
(26:33):
who were the sources of my hundred porterhouses a day,
and was brutally careless of whose feelings I hurt, and
of how savagely I hurt them. As the well balanced
radicals charged at the time, my efforts were so strenuous,
so unsafe and unsane, so ultra revolutionary, that I retarded
(26:59):
the socialist development in the United States by five years.
In passing, I wished to remark at this late date
that it is my fond belief that I accelerated the
socialist development in the United States by at least five minutes.
(27:20):
It was the people, and no thanks to John Barleycorn,
who pulled me through my long sickness, and when I
was convalescent, came the love of woman to complete the
cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a long
day until John Barleycorn again awoke it. But in the
(27:45):
meantime I pursued truth less, relentlessly, refraining from tarring her
last veils aside, even when I clutched them in my hand.
I no longer cared to look upon truth name. I
refused to permit myself to see a second time what
(28:06):
I had once seen, and the memory of what I
had that time seen I resolutely blotted from my mind.
And I was very happy. Life went well with me.
I took delight in little things. The big things I
declined to take too seriously. I still read the books,
(28:27):
but not with the old eagerness. I still read the
books today, but never again shall I read them with
that old glory of youthful passion when I hacked to
the call from over and beyond that whispered me on
to win to the mystery at the back of life
(28:48):
and behind the stars. The point of this chapter is that,
in the long sickness that at some time comes to
most of us, I came through without any appeal for aid.
To John Barleycorn, love, socialism, the people, healthy figments of
(29:10):
man's mind were the things that cured and saved me.
If ever a man was not a born alcoholic, I
believe that I am that man. And yet well, let
the succeeding chapters tell their tale, for in them will
(29:30):
be shown how I paid for my previous quarter of
a century of contact with ever accessible. John Barleycorn, end
of Chapter twenty eight.
Chapters twenty six, twenty seven, and twenty eight of John
barleycorn Or Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
(00:20):
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Chapter twenty six. Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing.
I am afraid. I always was an extremist. Early and late,
(00:41):
I was at it writing, typing, studying grammar, studying, writing
in all the forms of writing, and studying the writers
who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded.
I managed on five hour sleep in the twenty four
and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours
(01:04):
left to me. My light burned till two and three
in the morning, which led a good neighbor woman into
a bit of sentimental Sherlock Holmes deduction. Never seeing me
in the daytime, she concluded that I was a gambler,
and that the light in my window was placed there
(01:26):
by my mother to guide her erringsun home. The trouble
with the beginner at the writing game is the long
dry spells, when there is never an editor's check, and
everything pawnable is pawned. I wore my summer suit pretty
well through that winter, and the following summer experienced the
(01:49):
longest driest spell of all in the period when salaried
men are gone on vacation and manuscripts in editorial offices
until vacation is over. My difficulty was that I had
no one to advise me. I didn't know a soul
(02:12):
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
(02:34):
about this at the time, though now I can understand it.
They did not know the trick of successful writing. In
the years eighteen ninety five and eighteen ninety six. They
knew all about Snowbound and Sartore Sartis. But the American
(02:54):
editors of eighteen ninety nine did not want such truck.
They wanted the eighteen ninety nine 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 on, stood off the butcher and
(03:16):
the grocer, pawned my watch and bicycle and my father's macintosh,
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
(03:38):
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,
(04:01):
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 Company,
was selling sociological articles to Cosmopolitan and McClure's. Had declined,
(04:26):
and 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 taking my brain to its limit.
(04:50):
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 checks were all
(05:12):
the amelioratives. I needed a thin envelope from an editor
in the mornings mayl was more stimulating than half a
dozen cocktails. And if a check of decent amount came
out of the envelope, such incident in itself was a
whole drunk. Furthermore, at that time in my life, I
(05:34):
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
(05:59):
ordering of laque and of high balls, of particular brands
of scotch. I didn't know what a liqueur or a
high ball was, and I didn't know that Scotch meant whiskey.
I knew only poor men's drinks, the drinks of the
Frontier and of sailor town cheap beer and cheaper whisky
(06:21):
that was just called whiskey 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
twenty seven. As I succeeded with my writing, my standard
(06:44):
of living rows 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. Formally, I allowed myself five and one hours
(07:04):
of actual sleep. I added this half hour because I
was compelled. Financial success permitted me more time for exercise.
I rowed 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
(07:28):
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 a very severe exercise, I actually slept
(07:48):
seven hours, but such sleep wargies were not frequent. There
was so much to learn, so much to be done
that I felt wicked when I leapt seven hours, and
I blessed the man who invented alarm clocks. And still
no desire to drink. I possessed too many fine faiths.
(08:12):
Was living at too keen a pitch. I was a
socialist intent on saving the world, and alcohol could not
give me the fervors 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,
(08:35):
my reputation as a writer drew me audiences that my
reputation as a speaker never could have drawn. I was
invited before clubs and organizations 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
(08:58):
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
(09:21):
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
(09:43):
it that I do not remember my first cocktail nor
my first Scotch high ball. Well, I had a house.
When one is asked into other houses, he naturally asks
others into his house. Behold the rising standard of living.
Having been given drink in other houses, I could expect
(10:05):
nothing else of myself than to give drink in my
own house. So I laid in a supply of beer
and whiskey and tabo claret. Never since that has my
house not been well equipped. And still through all this
period I did not care in the slightest for John Barleycorn.
(10:28):
I drank when others drank, and with them as a
social act, and I had so little choice in the
matter that I drank whatever they drank. If they elected whiskey,
then whiskey it was for me. If they drank root
beer or sasparilla, I drank root beer or sasparilla with them.
(10:51):
And when there were no friends in the house, why
I didn't drink anything Whiskey decanters were always in the
room where I wrote, and for months and years I
never knew what it was when by myself to take
a drink. When out at dinner, I noticed the kindly
(11:12):
genial glow of the preliminary cocktail. It seemed a very
fitting and gracious thing. Yet so little did I stand
in need of it with my own high intensity and vitality,
that I never thought it worthwhile to have a cocktail
before my own meal when I ate alone. On the
(11:34):
other hand, I well remember a very brilliant man somewhat
older than I who occasionally visited me. He liked whiskey,
and I recall sitting whole afternoons in my den drinking
steadily with him, drink for drink, until he was mildly
(11:55):
lighted up, and I was slightly aware that I had
drunk some whisky. Now why did I do this, I
don't know, save that the old schooling held the training
of the old days and nights glass in hand with men,
the drinking ways of drink and drinkers. Besides, I no
(12:17):
longer feared John Barleycorn. Mine was that most dangerous stage
when a man believes himself. John Barleycorn's master. I had
proved it to my satisfaction in the long years of
work and study. I could drink when I wanted, refrain
(12:39):
when I wanted drink without getting drunk, and to cap everything,
I was thoroughly conscious that I had no liking for
the stuff. During this period I drank precisely for the
same reason I had drunk with Scottie and the Harpooner
and with the Oil to Pirates, because it was an
(13:02):
act that men performed with whom I wanted to behave
as a man. These brilliant ones, these adventurers of the mind,
drank very well. There was no reason I should not
drink with them. I who knew so confidently that I
had nothing to fear from John Barleycorn, and the foregoing
(13:27):
was my attitude of mind for years. Occasionally I got
well jingled, but such occasions were rare. It interfered with
my work, and I permitted nothing to interfere with my work.
I remember, when spending several months in the East End
(13:47):
of London, during which time I wrote a book and
adventured much amongst the worst of the slum classes, that
I got drunk several times and was mightily wroth with
myself because it interfered with my writing. Yet these very
times were because I was out on the adventure path,
(14:11):
where John Barleycorn is always to be found. Then, too,
with the certitude of long training and unholy intimacy, there
were occasions when I engaged in drinking hours with men.
Of course, this was on the adventure path in various
(14:32):
parts of the world, and it was a matter of pride.
It is a queer man pride that leads one to
drink with men in order to show as strong ahead
as they. But this queer man pride is not theory,
it is fact. For instance, a wild band of young
(14:54):
revolutionists invited me as the guest of honor to a
beer bust. It is the only technical beer bust I
ever attended. I did not know the true inwardness of
the affair when I accepted. I imagined that the talk
would be wild and high, that some of them might
(15:15):
drink more than they might, and that I would drink discreetly.
But it seemed these beer busts were a diversion of
these high spirited young fellows, whereby they wiled away the
tedium of existence by making fools of their betters, as
I learned afterward they had got their previous guest of honor,
(15:38):
a brilliant young radical, unskilled in drinking, quite pipped. When
I found myself with them and the situation dawned on me,
uprose my queer man pride. I'd show them the young rascals.
I'd show them who was husky and chesty, who had
(16:01):
the vitality and the constitution, the stomach and the head,
who could make most of a swine of himself, And
show at least these unlicked cubs who thought they could
outdrink me. You see, it was an endurance test, and
(16:21):
no man likes to give another best faugh. It was
steam beer, I had learned more expensive bruise. Not for
years had I drunk steam beer. But when I had,
I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could
show these youngsters some ability in beer guzzling. And the
(16:45):
drinking began, and I had to drink with the best
of them. Some of them might lag, but the guest
of honor was not permitted to lag. And all my
asteered nights of midnight oil, all the books I had read,
all the wisdom I had gathered, went glimmering before the
(17:07):
ape and tiger in me that crawled up from the
abysm of my heredity, atavistic, competitive and brutal, lustful with
strength and desire to outswine the swine. And when the
session broke up, I was still on my feet, and
(17:29):
I walked erect unswaying, which was more than can be
said of some of my hosts. I recall one of
them in indignant tears on the street corner, weeping as
he pointed out my sober condition. Little he dreamed the
iron clutch born of old training with which I held
(17:53):
to my consciousness in my swimming brain, kept control of
my muscles and my qualms, kept my voice unbroken and easy,
and my thoughts consecutive and logical, Yes, and mixed up
with it all, I was privily a grin. They hadn't
(18:15):
made a fool of me in that drinking bout, and
I was proud of myself for the achievement. Darn it,
I am still proud. So strangely is man compounded. But
I didn't write my thousand words. Next morning I was sick, poisoned.
(18:37):
It was a day of wretchedness. In the afternoon I
had to give a public speech. I gave it, and
I am confident it was as bad as I felt.
Some of my hosts were there in the front rows
to mark any signs on me of the night before.
(18:58):
I don't know what signs they want, but I marked
signs on them and took consolation in the knowledge that
they were just as sick as I. Never again, I swore,
and I have never been in vaggled into another beer
bust for that matter. That was my last drinking bout
(19:22):
of any sort. Oh. I have drunk ever since, but
with more wisdom, more discretion, and never in a competitive spirit.
It is thus that the seasoned drinker grows seasoned to
show that at this period in my life, drinking was
(19:44):
wholly a matter of companionship. I remember crossing the Atlantic
in the Old Teutonic. It chanced at the start that
I chummed with an English cable operator and a younger
member of a Spanish shipping firm. Now, the only thing
(20:04):
they drank was horse's neck, a long, soft, cool drink
with an apple peel or an orange peel floating in it.
And for that whole voyage I drank horses necks with
my two companions. On the other hand, had they drunk whiskey.
(20:25):
I should have drunk whisky with them. From this it
must not be concluded that I was merely weak. I
didn't care. I had no morality in the matter. I
was strong with youth and unafraid, and alcohol was an
utterly negligible question as far as I was concerned, Chapter
(20:49):
twenty eight. Not yet was I ready to tuck my
arms in John Barleycorn's The older I got, the grit
reader my success, the more money I earned, the wider
was the command of the world that became mine. And
the more prominently did John Barleycorn bulk in my life,
(21:14):
And still I maintained no more than a nodding acquaintance
with him. I drank for the sake of sociability, and
when alone I did not drink. Sometimes I got jingled,
but I considered such jingles the mild price I paid
for sociability, to show how unripe I was for John Barleycorn.
(21:41):
When at this time I descended into my slough of despond,
I never dreamed of turning to John Barleycorn for a
helping hand. I had life troubles at heart, troubles which
are neither here nor there in this narrative, but combined
(22:01):
with them were intellectual troubles, which are indeed germane. Mine
was no uncommon experience. I had read too much positive
science and lived too much positive life in the eagerness
of youth. I had made the ancient mistake of pursuing
(22:23):
truth too relentlessly. I had torn her veils from her,
and the sight was too terrible for me to stand
in brief I lost my fine faiths in pretty well
everything except humanity, and the humanity I retained faith in
(22:45):
was a very stark humanity. Indeed, this long sickness of
pessimism is too well known to most of us to
be detailed here. Let it suffice to state that I
had it very bad. I meditated suicide coolly as a
(23:05):
Greek philosopher might. My regret was that there were too
many dependent directly upon me for food and shelter for
me to quit living. But that was sheer morality. What
really saved me was the one remaining illusion. The people.
The things I had fought for and burned my midnight
(23:28):
oil for had failed me success. I despised it recognition.
It was dead ashes society, men and women above the
rock and muck of the waterfront and the forecastle. I
was appalled by their unlovely mental mediocrity. Love of woman.
(23:52):
It was like all the rest money. I could sleep
in only one bed at a time, and of what
word earth was an income of one hundred porterhouses a day,
when I could eat only one art culture in the
face of the iron facts of biology. Such things were ridiculous,
(24:14):
the exponents of such things only the more ridiculous. From
the foregoing, it can be seen how very sick I was.
I was born a fighter. The things I had fought
for had proved not worth. The fight remained the people.
(24:34):
My fight was finished. Yet something was left still to
fight for the people. But while I was discovering this
one last tie to bind me to life, in my extremity,
in the depths of despond, walking in the valley of
the shadow, my ears were deaf to John Barleycorn. When ever,
(25:00):
the remotest whisper arose in my consciousness that John Barleycorn
was the anodyne, that he could lie me along to
live one way only was uppermost in my thought. My revolver,
the crashing, eternal darkness of a bullet. There was plenty
(25:25):
of whiskey in the house for my guests. I never
touched it. I grew afraid of my revolver, afraid during
the period in which the radiant, flashing vision of the
people was forming in my mind and will. So obsessed
(25:46):
was I with the desire to die that I feared
I might commit the act in my sleep. And I
was compelled to give my revolver away to others who
were to lose it for me where my subconscious hand
might not find it. But the people saved me. By
(26:09):
the people, was I handcuffed to life. There was still
one fight left in me, and here was the thing
for which to fight. I threw all precaution to the winds,
threw myself with fiercer zail, into the fight for socialism,
laughed at the editors and publishers who warned me and
(26:33):
who were the sources of my hundred porterhouses a day,
and was brutally careless of whose feelings I hurt, and
of how savagely I hurt them. As the well balanced
radicals charged at the time, my efforts were so strenuous,
so unsafe and unsane, so ultra revolutionary, that I retarded
(26:59):
the socialist development in the United States by five years.
In passing, I wished to remark at this late date
that it is my fond belief that I accelerated the
socialist development in the United States by at least five minutes.
(27:20):
It was the people, and no thanks to John Barleycorn,
who pulled me through my long sickness, and when I
was convalescent, came the love of woman to complete the
cure and lull my pessimism asleep for many a long
day until John Barleycorn again awoke it. But in the
(27:45):
meantime I pursued truth less, relentlessly, refraining from tarring her
last veils aside, even when I clutched them in my hand.
I no longer cared to look upon truth name. I
refused to permit myself to see a second time what
(28:06):
I had once seen, and the memory of what I
had that time seen I resolutely blotted from my mind.
And I was very happy. Life went well with me.
I took delight in little things. The big things I
declined to take too seriously. I still read the books,
(28:27):
but not with the old eagerness. I still read the
books today, but never again shall I read them with
that old glory of youthful passion when I hacked to
the call from over and beyond that whispered me on
to win to the mystery at the back of life
(28:48):
and behind the stars. The point of this chapter is that,
in the long sickness that at some time comes to
most of us, I came through without any appeal for aid.
To John Barleycorn, love, socialism, the people, healthy figments of
(29:10):
man's mind were the things that cured and saved me.
If ever a man was not a born alcoholic, I
believe that I am that man. And yet well, let
the succeeding chapters tell their tale, for in them will
(29:30):
be shown how I paid for my previous quarter of
a century of contact with ever accessible. John Barleycorn, end
of Chapter twenty eight.
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