Dear John and Brian
"In Error" from Plain Tales may also provide some insight here. There are some wonderful passages about drinking.
There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more
often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who
drinks secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never
seen to drink.
This is a rule; so there must be an exception to prove it.
Moriarty's case was that exception.
People credited Moriarty's queerness of manner and moody ways to the
solitude, and said it showed how Government spoilt the futures of
its best men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very god
reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night
of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation
with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little nips of liqueurs, and
filth of that kind.
He started a good deal at sudden noises or if spoken to
without warning; and, when you watched him drinking his glass of
water at dinner, you could see the hand shake a little. But all
this was put down to nervousness, and the quiet, steady, "sip-sip-
sip, fill and sip-sip-sip, again," that went on in his own room when
he was by himself, was never known. Which was miraculous, seeing
how everything in a man's private life is public property out here.
His experiences while he was fighting with it must have been
peculiar, but he never described them. Sometimes he would hold off
from everything except water for a week. Then, on a rainy night,
when no one had asked him out to dinner, and there was a big fire in
his room, and everything comfortable, he would sit down and make a
big night of it by adding little nip to little nip, planning big
schemes of reformation meanwhile, until he threw himself on his bed
hopelessly drunk. He suffered next morning.
How he kept his oath, and what it cost him in the beginning, nobody
knows. He certainly managed to compass the hardest thing that a man
who has drank heavily can do. He took his peg and wine at dinner,
but he never drank alone, and never let what he drank have the least
hold on him.
Kipling was a remarkable observer, but this story to me has always seemed to go beyond that. Many of the words about drinking are about what goes on in a man's private space, not to be observed in public. This may have been a point of discussion at the time (when Kipling wrote it), it may have come from Kipling's own experience or he may have simply made it up.
Writers throughout history have used stimulants of all kinds. If Kipling drank in the evenings and wrote, it would not be surprising.
regards
Geoffrey Maloney
----- Original Message -----
From: John Radcliffe
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: RK's drinking habits
Dear Brian
In one of the biographies there is a reference to Ruddy at the table after dinner getting voluble over the brandy and being packed off to bed by Carrie, but generally there are very few references to his drinking that I can remember reading, so Neil Pendock's comment seems surprising.
In putting together the New Readers' Guide we have noted 51 stories in which food or drink figure in the works, but most of these are to do with food rather than drink (see the on-line Themes Database). The most lyrical description of drinking that I know occurs in "The Bull that Thought" (Debits and Credits) when the narrator sits late over dinner with M. Voiron:
The proprietor presently invited me to the dining-room, where, beneath one frugal light, a table had been set with local dishes of renown. There was, too, a bottle beyond most known sizes, marked black on red, with a date. Monsieur Voiron opened it, and we drank to the health of my car. The velvety, perfumed liquor, between fawn and topaz, neither too sweet nor too dry, creamed in its generous glass. But I knew no wine composed of the whispers of angels' wings, the breath of Eden and the foam and pulse of Youth renewed. So I asked what it might be.
'It is champagne,' he said gravely.
'Then what have I been drinking all my life?'
'If you were lucky, before the War, and paid thirty shillings a bottle, it is possible you may have drunk one of our better-class tisanes.'
There is also the account in "Wireless" in Traffics and Discoveries of the drink the narrator makes for Mr Cashell:
I explored many of the glass-knobbed drawers that lined the walls, tasted some disconcerting drugs, and, by the aid of a few cardamoms, ground ginger, chloric-ether, and dilute alcohol, manufactured a new and wildish drink, of which I bore a glassful to young Mr. Cashell, busy in the back office.
And there is also the draught prepared by Nick Culpeper in "A Doctor of Mediicine" Rewards and Fairies in the plague-struck village:
I drenched him then and there with a half-cup of waters, which I do not say cure the plague, but are excellent against heaviness of the spirits.'
'What were they?' said Dan.
'White brandy rectified, camphor, cardamoms, ginger, two sorts of pepper, and aniseed.'
'Whew!' said Puck. 'Waters you call 'em!'
But I don't think any of this is evidence that RK was a boozer !
All good wishes, John R
