July 26, 2025 • 35 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 thirty one and thirty two of John barleycorn Or
Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org chapter
(00:28):
thirty one. 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.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
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
(01:17):
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
(01:38):
and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits,
regular drinking and solitary drinking. I was always willing to
drink when anyone was around. I drank by myself when
no one was around. Then I made an other step.
(02:01):
When I had for a guest a man of limited
drinking caliber, 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
(02:24):
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.
(02:45):
If I persuaded him, with his limited caliber, 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
(03:08):
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
(03:31):
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
(03:51):
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
(04:13):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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
(05:22):
the daily schedule. Then too, I was perpetually finding excuses
for extra cocktails. It might be the assembling of a
particularly jolly crowd, a touch of anger against my architect,
or against a thieving stone mason working on my barn,
(05:45):
the death of my favorite horse in a barbed wire fence,
or news of good fortune in the morning mail from
my dealings with editors and publishers. It was immaterial what
the excuse might be. Once the desire had germinated in me,
the thing was, I wanted alcohol at last, after a
(06:11):
score and more of years of dallying and of not
wanting now I wanted it, and my strength was my weakness.
I required two, three, or four drinks to get an
effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out
of one drink. One rule I observed, I never took
(06:36):
a drink until my day's work of writing a thousand
words was done. And when done, the cocktails reared a
wall of inhibition in my brain. Between the day's work
done and the rest of the day of fun to come,
my work ceased from my consciousness. I thought of it,
(07:00):
flickered in my brain till next morning, at nine o'clock,
when I sat at my desk and began my next
thousand words. This was a desirable condition of mine to achieve.
I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic inhibition.
(07:21):
John Barleycorn was not so black as he was painted.
He did a fellow many a good turn, and this
was one of them. And I turned out work that
was healthful and wholesome and sincere. It was never pessimistic,
the way of life I had learned in my long sickness.
(07:45):
I knew the illusions were right, and I exalted the illusions. Oh,
I still turn out the same sort of work, stuff
that is clean, alive, optimistic, and that makes toward life.
And I am always assured by the critics of my
(08:06):
super abundant and abounding vitality, and of how thoroughly I
am deluded by these very illusions I exploit. And while
on this digression, let me repeat the question I have
repeated to myself ten thousand times. Why did I drink?
(08:30):
What need was there for it? I was happy? Was
it because I was too happy? I was strong? Was
it because I was too strong? Did I possess too
much vitality. I don't know why I drink. I cannot answer,
(08:53):
though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me.
I had been in too familiar contact with John Barleycorn
through too many years. A left handed man, by long
practice can become a right handed man. Had I, a
(09:17):
non alcoholic by long practice, become an alcoholic. I was
so happy I had won through my long sickness to
the satisfying love of woman. I earned more money with
less endeavor. I glowed with health. I slept like a babe.
(09:42):
I continued to write successful books, and in sociological controversy,
I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of the
times that daily reared new buttresses to my intellectual will position.
From day's end to day's end, I never knew sorrow, disappointment,
(10:08):
nor regret. I was happy all the time. Life was
one unending song. I begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep,
because by that much was I robbed of the joy
that would have been mine had I remained awake. And
(10:30):
yet I drank, and John Barleycorn, all unguessed by me,
was setting the stage for a sickness all his own.
The more I drank, the more I was required to
drink to get an equivalent effect. When I left the
(10:53):
valley of the Moon and went to the city and
dined out, a cocktail served table was a wan and
worthless thing. There was no pre dinner kicking it. On
my way to dinner, I was compelled to accumulate the
kick two cocktails, three, and if I met some fellows
(11:18):
four or five or six, it didn't matter. Within several
once I was in a rush, I had no time
decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came
to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a
(11:39):
double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I
ordered double cocktails. It saved time. One result of this
regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew
so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that
(12:02):
without artificial means, it refused to spring enliven. Alcohol became
more and more imperative in order to meet people. In
order to become sociably fit, I had to get the
kick and the hit of the stuff, the crawl of
(12:24):
the maggots, the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the
touch of devilishness and sting the smile over the face
of things. Ere I could join my fellows and make
one with them. Another result was that John Barleycorn was
(12:47):
beginning to trip me up. He was thrusting my long
sickness back upon me, in vagling me into again pursuing
truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me
into looking reality stark in the face. But this came
(13:10):
on gradually. My thoughts were growing harsh again, though they
grew harsh slowly. Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where
was this steady drinking leading? But trust John Barleycorn to
(13:34):
silence such questions. Come on and have a drink, and
I'll tell you all about It is his way, and
it works. For instance, the following is a case in point,
and one which John Barleycorn never wearied of reminding me.
(13:54):
I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation.
One morning, a week after I had come off the table,
I lay on my hospital bed, weak and weary. The
sunburn of my face, what little of it could be
seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to
(14:18):
a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside, on
the verge of departure. He glared disapprovingly at the cigarette
I was smoking. That's what you ought to quit, he lectured.
It will get you in the end. Look at me,
(14:39):
I looked. He was about my own age, broad shouldered,
deep chested, eyes sparkling and ruddy cheeked, with health, A
finer specimen of manhood one would not ask. I used
to smoke, he went on cigars, but I gave even
(15:00):
them up. And look at me. The man was arrogant,
and rightly arrogant, with conscious well being. And within a month.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
He was dead.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was no accident. Half a dozen different bugs of
long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him. The complications
were astonishing and painful, and for days before he died,
the screams of agony of that splendid manhood could be
(15:35):
heard for a block around. He died screaming. You see,
said John Barleycorn. He took care of himself. He even
stopped smoking cigars, and that's what he got for it.
Pretty rotten, eh, But the bugs will jump. There's no
(15:58):
forefending them. You're a magnificent doctor. Took every precaution, yet
they got him. When the bug jumps. You can't tell
where it will land. It may be you look what
he missed? Will you miss all I can give you,
only to have a bug jump on you and drag
(16:21):
you down. There is no equity in life. It's all
a lottery. But I put the lying smile on the
face of life and laugh at the facts. Smile with
me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end. But
in the meantime laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I
(16:45):
illuminate it for you. It's a rotten world. When things
can happen such as happened to your doctor. There's only
one thing to do. Take another drink and forget it.
And of course I took another drink for the inhibition
(17:07):
that accompanied it. I took another drink every time John
Barleycorn reminded me of what had happened. Yet I drank
rationally intelligently. I saw to it that the quality of
the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick
(17:30):
and the inhibition, and avoided the penalties of poor quality
and of drunkenness. It is to be remarked in passing
that when a man begins to drink rationally and intelligently,
that he betrays a grave symptom of how far along
(17:52):
the road he has traveled. But I continued to observe
my rule of never taking my first drink of the
day until the last word of my thousand words was written.
On occasion, however, I took a day's vacation from my
(18:12):
writing at such times. Since it was no violation of
my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day
I took that first drink. And persons who have never
been through the drinking game wonder how the drinking habit grows.
(18:34):
Chapter thirty two. When the Snark sailed on her long
cruise from San Francisco, there was nothing to drink on board,
or rather, we were all of us unaware that there
was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for
(18:54):
many a month. This sailing with a dry boat was
mal us a forethought on my part. I had played
John Barleycorn a trick, and it showed that I was
listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were
beginning to arise in my consciousness. Of course, I veiled
(19:20):
the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barleycorn,
and I was very scientific about it. I said that
I would drink only while in ports. During the dry
sea stretches, my system would be cleansed of the alcohol
(19:41):
that soaked it, so that when I reached a port,
I should be in shape to enjoy John Barleycorn more thoroughly.
His bite would be sharper, his kick, keener, and more delicious.
We were twenty seven days on the train Avarice between
San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out, the
(20:07):
thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take
to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic. Sometimes,
during the traverse, looking ahead and anticipating the delightful lane
luncheons and dinners of HAWAIII, I had been there a
(20:30):
couple of times before, I thought naturally of the drinks
that would precede those meals. I did not think of
those drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the
length of the voyage. I merely thought they would be
nice and jolly, part of the atmosphere of a proper meal. Thus,
(20:55):
once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I
was John Barleycorn's master. I could drink when I wanted,
refrain when I wanted. Therefore, I would continue to drink
when I wanted. Some five months were spent in the
(21:17):
various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore, I drank.
I even drank a bit more than I had been
accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The
people of Hawaihi seemed to drink a bit more on
the average than the people in more temperate latitudes. I
(21:41):
do not intend the pun and can awkwardly revise the
statement to latitudes more remote from the equator. Yet Hawaii
is only subtropical. The deeper I got into the tropics,
the deeper I found men drank, the deeper I drank myself.
(22:05):
From Hawaihi, we sailed for the marquesses. The traverse occupied
sixty days. For sixty days, we never raised land, a
sail nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days,
the cook, giving an overhauling to the galley, made a
(22:28):
fine down in the bottom of a deep locker. He
found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had
come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch, along
with the home preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in
(22:51):
the galley, heat had affected some sort of a change
in the thick sweet wine branded it. I imagine I
took a taste delicious, and thereafter, once each day, at
twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and the
(23:14):
snark's position charted, I drank half a tumbler of the stuff.
It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the
cockles of my geniality and put a fairer face on
the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning, below
(23:35):
sweating out my thousand words, I found myself looking forward
to that twelve o'clock event of the day. The trouble
was I had to share the stuff, and the length
of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were
(23:55):
not more than a dozen bottles, and when they were gone,
I even regretted that I had shared any of it.
I was thirsty for the alcohol and eager to arrive
in the Marquises. So it was that I reached the Marquises,
(24:16):
the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in
the Marquises were several white men, a lot of sickly natives,
much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade, rum, and immense quantity
of absinthe, but neither whiskey nor gin. The trade rum
(24:43):
scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know because I
tried it. But I had ever been plastic, and I
accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that
I had to take inordinate quantities in order to feel
(25:04):
the slightest effect from the marquesses. I sailed with sufficient
absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I
outfitted with Scotch an American west key, and thereafter there
were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not
(25:27):
misunderstand there was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood,
no staggering and rolling around, no befuddlement of the senses.
The skilled and seasoned drinker with a strong constitution never
(25:49):
descends to anything like that. He drinks to feel good,
to get a pleasant jingle, and no more than that.
The things he carefully avoids are the nausea of over drinking,
the after effect of over drinking, the helplessness and loss
(26:10):
of pride of over drinking. What the skilled and seasoned
drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semi intoxication, and
he does it by the twelvemonth around without any apparent penalty.
(26:30):
There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort
in the United States today, in clubs, hotels, and in
their own homes, men who are never drunk, and who,
though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober,
and all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed,
(26:55):
that they are beating the game on the sea stretches.
I was fairly abstemious, but ashore I drank more. I
seemed to need more anyway. In the tropics, this is
a common experience. For the excessive consumption of alcohol in
(27:15):
the tropics by white men is a notorious fact. The
tropics is no place for white skinned men. Their skin
pigment does not protect them against the excessive white light
of the sun. The alternate violet rays and other high
(27:35):
velocity and invisible rays from the upper end of the
spectrum rip and tear through their tissues, just as the
X ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so
many experimenters before they learned the danger. White men in
(27:56):
the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. They become savage merciless.
They commit monstrous acts of cruelty that they would never
dream of committing in their original temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable,
(28:18):
and less moral, and they drink as they never drank before.
Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration
that set in when white men are exposed too long
to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption
(28:41):
is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn.
They seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavy drinking
expedites the progress. They don't reason about it, they just
do it. The sun this got me, despite the fact
(29:03):
that I had been in the tropics only a couple
of years. I drank heavily during this time, but right
here I wished to forestall misunderstanding. The drinking was not
the cause of the sickness, nor of the abandonment of
(29:23):
the voyage. I was strong as a bull, and for
many months I fought the Sun's sickness that was ripping
and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All
through the New Hebrides and the Solomons, and up among
the atolls on the line. During this period, under a
(29:46):
tropic sun, rotten with malaria, and suffering from a few
minor afflictions such as biblical leprosy. With the silvery skin,
I did the work.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Of five men.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and
passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a
man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board.
There was no one to check me up on the
working out of my observations, nor with whom I could
(30:22):
advise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals.
And I stood all watches. There was no seamen on
board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch.
I was mate as well as captain. Twenty four hours
(30:42):
a day were the watches I stood at sea, catching
cat naps when I might. Third, I was doctor, and
let me say right here that the doctor's job in
the Snark at that time was a man's job. All
on board suffered from malaria, the real tropical malaria that
(31:05):
can kill in three months. All on board suffered from
perforating ulcers, and from the maddening itch of ngari. Ngari,
a Japanese cook went insane from his two numerous inflictions.
One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with
(31:29):
blackwater fever. Oh yes, it was a full man's job.
And I dosed and doctored, and pulled teeth and dragged
my patience through mild little things like ptomaine poisoning. Fourth,
I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words
(31:51):
a day, every day, except when the shock of fever
smote me, or a couple of nasty squalls smote the
snark in the morning. Fifth I was a traveler and
a writer, eager to see things and to gather material
into my notebooks. And sixth I was master and owner
(32:16):
of the craft that was visiting strange places where visitors
are rare and where visitors are made much of so.
Here I had to hold up the social end, entertain
on board, be entertained ashore by planters, traders, governors, captains
(32:36):
of war vessels, kinky headed cannibal kings, and prime ministers,
sometimes fortunate enough to be clad in cotton shifts. Of course,
I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also
I drank by myself, doing the work of five men.
(32:58):
I thought and titled me to drink alcohol was good
for a man who overworked. I noted its effect on
my small crew when breaking their backs and hearts at
heaving up anchor in forty fathoms. They knocked off, gasping
and trembling at the end of half an hour, and
(33:22):
had new life put into them by stiff jolts of rum.
They caught their breaths, wiped their mouths, and went to
it again with a will. And when we careened the
snark and had to work in the water to our
necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade
(33:45):
rum helped the work along. And here again we come
to another side of many sided. John barleycorn on the
face of it, he gives something for nothing. Where no
strength remains, he finds new strength. The wearied one rises
(34:06):
to greater effort. For the time being, there is an
actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an
ocean steamer through eight days of hell, during which time
we coal passers were kept to the job by being
fed with whiskey. We toiled half drunk all the time,
(34:31):
and without the whiskey we could not have passed the coal.
This strength, John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength. It
is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the
sources of strength, and it must ultimately be paid for
(34:53):
and with interest. But what weary human will look so
far ahead. He takes this apparently miraculous accession of strength
at its face value, and many an overworked business and
professional man, as well as a harried common laborer, has
(35:17):
traveled John Barleycorn's death road because of this mistake. End
of Chapter thirty two
Chapters thirty one and thirty two of John barleycorn Or
Alcoholic Memoirs by Jack Lundon. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org chapter
(00:28):
thirty one. 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.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
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
(01:17):
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
(01:38):
and dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits,
regular drinking and solitary drinking. I was always willing to
drink when anyone was around. I drank by myself when
no one was around. Then I made an other step.
(02:01):
When I had for a guest a man of limited
drinking caliber, 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
(02:24):
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.
(02:45):
If I persuaded him, with his limited caliber, 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
(03:08):
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
(03:31):
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
(03:51):
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
(04:13):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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
(05:22):
the daily schedule. Then too, I was perpetually finding excuses
for extra cocktails. It might be the assembling of a
particularly jolly crowd, a touch of anger against my architect,
or against a thieving stone mason working on my barn,
(05:45):
the death of my favorite horse in a barbed wire fence,
or news of good fortune in the morning mail from
my dealings with editors and publishers. It was immaterial what
the excuse might be. Once the desire had germinated in me,
the thing was, I wanted alcohol at last, after a
(06:11):
score and more of years of dallying and of not
wanting now I wanted it, and my strength was my weakness.
I required two, three, or four drinks to get an
effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out
of one drink. One rule I observed, I never took
(06:36):
a drink until my day's work of writing a thousand
words was done. And when done, the cocktails reared a
wall of inhibition in my brain. Between the day's work
done and the rest of the day of fun to come,
my work ceased from my consciousness. I thought of it,
(07:00):
flickered in my brain till next morning, at nine o'clock,
when I sat at my desk and began my next
thousand words. This was a desirable condition of mine to achieve.
I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic inhibition.
(07:21):
John Barleycorn was not so black as he was painted.
He did a fellow many a good turn, and this
was one of them. And I turned out work that
was healthful and wholesome and sincere. It was never pessimistic,
the way of life I had learned in my long sickness.
(07:45):
I knew the illusions were right, and I exalted the illusions. Oh,
I still turn out the same sort of work, stuff
that is clean, alive, optimistic, and that makes toward life.
And I am always assured by the critics of my
(08:06):
super abundant and abounding vitality, and of how thoroughly I
am deluded by these very illusions I exploit. And while
on this digression, let me repeat the question I have
repeated to myself ten thousand times. Why did I drink?
(08:30):
What need was there for it? I was happy? Was
it because I was too happy? I was strong? Was
it because I was too strong? Did I possess too
much vitality. I don't know why I drink. I cannot answer,
(08:53):
though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me.
I had been in too familiar contact with John Barleycorn
through too many years. A left handed man, by long
practice can become a right handed man. Had I, a
(09:17):
non alcoholic by long practice, become an alcoholic. I was
so happy I had won through my long sickness to
the satisfying love of woman. I earned more money with
less endeavor. I glowed with health. I slept like a babe.
(09:42):
I continued to write successful books, and in sociological controversy,
I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of the
times that daily reared new buttresses to my intellectual will position.
From day's end to day's end, I never knew sorrow, disappointment,
(10:08):
nor regret. I was happy all the time. Life was
one unending song. I begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep,
because by that much was I robbed of the joy
that would have been mine had I remained awake. And
(10:30):
yet I drank, and John Barleycorn, all unguessed by me,
was setting the stage for a sickness all his own.
The more I drank, the more I was required to
drink to get an equivalent effect. When I left the
(10:53):
valley of the Moon and went to the city and
dined out, a cocktail served table was a wan and
worthless thing. There was no pre dinner kicking it. On
my way to dinner, I was compelled to accumulate the
kick two cocktails, three, and if I met some fellows
(11:18):
four or five or six, it didn't matter. Within several
once I was in a rush, I had no time
decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came
to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a
(11:39):
double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I
ordered double cocktails. It saved time. One result of this
regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew
so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that
(12:02):
without artificial means, it refused to spring enliven. Alcohol became
more and more imperative in order to meet people. In
order to become sociably fit, I had to get the
kick and the hit of the stuff, the crawl of
(12:24):
the maggots, the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the
touch of devilishness and sting the smile over the face
of things. Ere I could join my fellows and make
one with them. Another result was that John Barleycorn was
(12:47):
beginning to trip me up. He was thrusting my long
sickness back upon me, in vagling me into again pursuing
truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me
into looking reality stark in the face. But this came
(13:10):
on gradually. My thoughts were growing harsh again, though they
grew harsh slowly. Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where
was this steady drinking leading? But trust John Barleycorn to
(13:34):
silence such questions. Come on and have a drink, and
I'll tell you all about It is his way, and
it works. For instance, the following is a case in point,
and one which John Barleycorn never wearied of reminding me.
(13:54):
I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation.
One morning, a week after I had come off the table,
I lay on my hospital bed, weak and weary. The
sunburn of my face, what little of it could be
seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to
(14:18):
a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside, on
the verge of departure. He glared disapprovingly at the cigarette
I was smoking. That's what you ought to quit, he lectured.
It will get you in the end. Look at me,
(14:39):
I looked. He was about my own age, broad shouldered,
deep chested, eyes sparkling and ruddy cheeked, with health, A
finer specimen of manhood one would not ask. I used
to smoke, he went on cigars, but I gave even
(15:00):
them up. And look at me. The man was arrogant,
and rightly arrogant, with conscious well being. And within a month.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
He was dead.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was no accident. Half a dozen different bugs of
long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him. The complications
were astonishing and painful, and for days before he died,
the screams of agony of that splendid manhood could be
(15:35):
heard for a block around. He died screaming. You see,
said John Barleycorn. He took care of himself. He even
stopped smoking cigars, and that's what he got for it.
Pretty rotten, eh, But the bugs will jump. There's no
(15:58):
forefending them. You're a magnificent doctor. Took every precaution, yet
they got him. When the bug jumps. You can't tell
where it will land. It may be you look what
he missed? Will you miss all I can give you,
only to have a bug jump on you and drag
(16:21):
you down. There is no equity in life. It's all
a lottery. But I put the lying smile on the
face of life and laugh at the facts. Smile with
me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end. But
in the meantime laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I
(16:45):
illuminate it for you. It's a rotten world. When things
can happen such as happened to your doctor. There's only
one thing to do. Take another drink and forget it.
And of course I took another drink for the inhibition
(17:07):
that accompanied it. I took another drink every time John
Barleycorn reminded me of what had happened. Yet I drank
rationally intelligently. I saw to it that the quality of
the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick
(17:30):
and the inhibition, and avoided the penalties of poor quality
and of drunkenness. It is to be remarked in passing
that when a man begins to drink rationally and intelligently,
that he betrays a grave symptom of how far along
(17:52):
the road he has traveled. But I continued to observe
my rule of never taking my first drink of the
day until the last word of my thousand words was written.
On occasion, however, I took a day's vacation from my
(18:12):
writing at such times. Since it was no violation of
my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day
I took that first drink. And persons who have never
been through the drinking game wonder how the drinking habit grows.
(18:34):
Chapter thirty two. When the Snark sailed on her long
cruise from San Francisco, there was nothing to drink on board,
or rather, we were all of us unaware that there
was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for
(18:54):
many a month. This sailing with a dry boat was
mal us a forethought on my part. I had played
John Barleycorn a trick, and it showed that I was
listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were
beginning to arise in my consciousness. Of course, I veiled
(19:20):
the situation to myself and excused myself to John Barleycorn,
and I was very scientific about it. I said that
I would drink only while in ports. During the dry
sea stretches, my system would be cleansed of the alcohol
(19:41):
that soaked it, so that when I reached a port,
I should be in shape to enjoy John Barleycorn more thoroughly.
His bite would be sharper, his kick, keener, and more delicious.
We were twenty seven days on the train Avarice between
San Francisco and Honolulu. After the first day out, the
(20:07):
thought of a drink never troubled me. This I take
to show how intrinsically I am not an alcoholic. Sometimes,
during the traverse, looking ahead and anticipating the delightful lane
luncheons and dinners of HAWAIII, I had been there a
(20:30):
couple of times before, I thought naturally of the drinks
that would precede those meals. I did not think of
those drinks with any yearning, with any irk at the
length of the voyage. I merely thought they would be
nice and jolly, part of the atmosphere of a proper meal. Thus,
(20:55):
once again I proved to my complete satisfaction that I
was John Barleycorn's master. I could drink when I wanted,
refrain when I wanted. Therefore, I would continue to drink
when I wanted. Some five months were spent in the
(21:17):
various islands of the Hawaiian group. Being ashore, I drank.
I even drank a bit more than I had been
accustomed to drink in California prior to the voyage. The
people of Hawaihi seemed to drink a bit more on
the average than the people in more temperate latitudes. I
(21:41):
do not intend the pun and can awkwardly revise the
statement to latitudes more remote from the equator. Yet Hawaii
is only subtropical. The deeper I got into the tropics,
the deeper I found men drank, the deeper I drank myself.
(22:05):
From Hawaihi, we sailed for the marquesses. The traverse occupied
sixty days. For sixty days, we never raised land, a
sail nor a steamer smoke. But early in those sixty days,
the cook, giving an overhauling to the galley, made a
(22:28):
fine down in the bottom of a deep locker. He
found a dozen bottles of angelica and muscatel. These had
come down from the kitchen cellar of the ranch, along
with the home preserved fruits and jellies. Six months in
(22:51):
the galley, heat had affected some sort of a change
in the thick sweet wine branded it. I imagine I
took a taste delicious, and thereafter, once each day, at
twelve o'clock, after our observations were worked up and the
(23:14):
snark's position charted, I drank half a tumbler of the stuff.
It had a rare kick to it. It warmed the
cockles of my geniality and put a fairer face on
the truly fair face of the sea. Each morning, below
(23:35):
sweating out my thousand words, I found myself looking forward
to that twelve o'clock event of the day. The trouble
was I had to share the stuff, and the length
of the traverse was doubtful. I regretted that there were
(23:55):
not more than a dozen bottles, and when they were gone,
I even regretted that I had shared any of it.
I was thirsty for the alcohol and eager to arrive
in the Marquises. So it was that I reached the Marquises,
(24:16):
the possessor of a real man's size thirst. And in
the Marquises were several white men, a lot of sickly natives,
much magnificent scenery, plenty of trade, rum, and immense quantity
of absinthe, but neither whiskey nor gin. The trade rum
(24:43):
scorched the skin off one's mouth. I know because I
tried it. But I had ever been plastic, and I
accepted the absinthe. The trouble with the stuff was that
I had to take inordinate quantities in order to feel
(25:04):
the slightest effect from the marquesses. I sailed with sufficient
absinthe in ballast to last me to Tahiti, where I
outfitted with Scotch an American west key, and thereafter there
were no dry stretches between ports. But please do not
(25:27):
misunderstand there was no drunkenness, as drunkenness is ordinarily understood,
no staggering and rolling around, no befuddlement of the senses.
The skilled and seasoned drinker with a strong constitution never
(25:49):
descends to anything like that. He drinks to feel good,
to get a pleasant jingle, and no more than that.
The things he carefully avoids are the nausea of over drinking,
the after effect of over drinking, the helplessness and loss
(26:10):
of pride of over drinking. What the skilled and seasoned
drinker achieves is a discreet and canny semi intoxication, and
he does it by the twelvemonth around without any apparent penalty.
(26:30):
There are hundreds of thousands of men of this sort
in the United States today, in clubs, hotels, and in
their own homes, men who are never drunk, and who,
though most of them will indignantly deny it, are rarely sober,
and all of them fondly believe, as I fondly believed,
(26:55):
that they are beating the game on the sea stretches.
I was fairly abstemious, but ashore I drank more. I
seemed to need more anyway. In the tropics, this is
a common experience. For the excessive consumption of alcohol in
(27:15):
the tropics by white men is a notorious fact. The
tropics is no place for white skinned men. Their skin
pigment does not protect them against the excessive white light
of the sun. The alternate violet rays and other high
(27:35):
velocity and invisible rays from the upper end of the
spectrum rip and tear through their tissues, just as the
X ray ripped and tore through the tissues of so
many experimenters before they learned the danger. White men in
(27:56):
the tropics undergo radical changes of nature. They become savage merciless.
They commit monstrous acts of cruelty that they would never
dream of committing in their original temperate climate. They become nervous, irritable,
(28:18):
and less moral, and they drink as they never drank before.
Drinking is one form of the many forms of degeneration
that set in when white men are exposed too long
to too much white light. The increase of alcoholic consumption
(28:41):
is automatic. The tropics is no place for a long sojourn.
They seem doomed to die anyway, and the heavy drinking
expedites the progress. They don't reason about it, they just
do it. The sun this got me, despite the fact
(29:03):
that I had been in the tropics only a couple
of years. I drank heavily during this time, but right
here I wished to forestall misunderstanding. The drinking was not
the cause of the sickness, nor of the abandonment of
(29:23):
the voyage. I was strong as a bull, and for
many months I fought the Sun's sickness that was ripping
and tearing my surface and nervous tissues to pieces. All
through the New Hebrides and the Solomons, and up among
the atolls on the line. During this period, under a
(29:46):
tropic sun, rotten with malaria, and suffering from a few
minor afflictions such as biblical leprosy. With the silvery skin,
I did the work.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Of five men.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
To navigate a vessel through the reefs and shoals and
passages and unlighted coasts of the coral seas is a
man's work in itself. I was the only navigator on board.
There was no one to check me up on the
working out of my observations, nor with whom I could
(30:22):
advise in the ticklish darkness among uncharted reefs and shoals.
And I stood all watches. There was no seamen on
board whom I could trust to stand a mate's watch.
I was mate as well as captain. Twenty four hours
(30:42):
a day were the watches I stood at sea, catching
cat naps when I might. Third, I was doctor, and
let me say right here that the doctor's job in
the Snark at that time was a man's job. All
on board suffered from malaria, the real tropical malaria that
(31:05):
can kill in three months. All on board suffered from
perforating ulcers, and from the maddening itch of ngari. Ngari,
a Japanese cook went insane from his two numerous inflictions.
One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with
(31:29):
blackwater fever. Oh yes, it was a full man's job.
And I dosed and doctored, and pulled teeth and dragged
my patience through mild little things like ptomaine poisoning. Fourth,
I was a writer. I sweated out my thousand words
(31:51):
a day, every day, except when the shock of fever
smote me, or a couple of nasty squalls smote the
snark in the morning. Fifth I was a traveler and
a writer, eager to see things and to gather material
into my notebooks. And sixth I was master and owner
(32:16):
of the craft that was visiting strange places where visitors
are rare and where visitors are made much of so.
Here I had to hold up the social end, entertain
on board, be entertained ashore by planters, traders, governors, captains
(32:36):
of war vessels, kinky headed cannibal kings, and prime ministers,
sometimes fortunate enough to be clad in cotton shifts. Of course,
I drank. I drank with my guests and hosts. Also
I drank by myself, doing the work of five men.
(32:58):
I thought and titled me to drink alcohol was good
for a man who overworked. I noted its effect on
my small crew when breaking their backs and hearts at
heaving up anchor in forty fathoms. They knocked off, gasping
and trembling at the end of half an hour, and
(33:22):
had new life put into them by stiff jolts of rum.
They caught their breaths, wiped their mouths, and went to
it again with a will. And when we careened the
snark and had to work in the water to our
necks between shocks of fever, I noted how raw trade
(33:45):
rum helped the work along. And here again we come
to another side of many sided. John barleycorn on the
face of it, he gives something for nothing. Where no
strength remains, he finds new strength. The wearied one rises
(34:06):
to greater effort. For the time being, there is an
actual accession of strength. I remember passing coal on an
ocean steamer through eight days of hell, during which time
we coal passers were kept to the job by being
fed with whiskey. We toiled half drunk all the time,
(34:31):
and without the whiskey we could not have passed the coal.
This strength, John Barleycorn gives is not fictitious strength. It
is real strength. But it is manufactured out of the
sources of strength, and it must ultimately be paid for
(34:53):
and with interest. But what weary human will look so
far ahead. He takes this apparently miraculous accession of strength
at its face value, and many an overworked business and
professional man, as well as a harried common laborer, has
(35:17):
traveled John Barleycorn's death road because of this mistake. End
of Chapter thirty two
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