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Page 1 of 91922 · PDF PAGE 333
…es and the regulations don’t bother us, as soon as we see their object. In civilised life, so-called, at least two-thirds of every one’s time is wasted on things that don’t matter. The idea of this place is to give every one the maximum time for doing his own Will. Of course, if you come here with the fixed determination to resent everything that is different to what you are accustomed to, you can work yourself up into a constant irritation, which is all the worse because there is nothing to interfere with your indulgence. When I came here two …
1922 · PDF PAGE 254
…know that. I won’t trouble my silly head about it, I’ll keep on loving and trusting. October 26 I have forgotten about my diary all this time. I have been too busy with Peter. My memory is fright- fully bad. I don’t seem able to fix things at all. Peter got stronger all the time. He is practically quite well now, and took me out and taught me to shoot pheasants this morning. It was terribly exciting. I actually got one, my very first day. I got a man and wife and their daughter to come in and do for us, so we're really very comfortable, in a co…
1922 · PDF PAGE 101
…own abilities, and after all I had tumbled into a reasonably good fortune. ‘ You’ve got the touch, Pen,’ he said, with animation. “* Any time you're out of a job, I'll give you ten thousand a year as a mascot.” Lou and I were both intensely excited. We could hardly find the patience to listen to the details of our friend’s plan. The figures were convincing; but the effect was simply to dazzle us. We had never dreamed of wealth on this scale. I got the vision for the first time in my life of the power that wealth confers, and I realised equally …
1922 · PDF PAGE 47
Over the Top | 33 embarrassed. For the first time in my life I didn’t know how to behave. A thought popped into my mind: it was simply fatigue—I needn’t bother about that. As if in answer to my thought, Lou took a small cut-glass bottle with a gold-chased top from her pocket, unscrewed it and shook out some cocaine on the back of her hand. She flashed a provocative glance in my direction. The studio suddenly filled with the reverberation of her chant :— ‘“O Thou naked virgin of love, that art caught in a net of wild roses! I adore Thee, Evoe! I…
1922 · PDF PAGE 192
…re was a long quarrel—as there is over every incident of any sort. That is natural, with this eternal insomnia and sleeping at the wrong time. I hated Peter (and K.L.) the more because I knew all the time he was right. If K.L. is a Devil, it’s up to us to get the last laugh. I tore the beastly letter into shreds. Peter has gone out—I hope he has gone to kill him. I want to be thrilled—just once more— if I had to be hanged for it myself. Our watches have run down. It doesn’t matter. I can call on Mabel any time I like. I may as well go now. I’ll…
1922 · PDF PAGE 90
…es were limp and languid. I realised that I was utterly exhausted. | “I couldn’t sleep at all,” she said, ‘after what seemed a very long time in which I tried to pull myself together. My mind went running on like mad—lI’ve had a perfectly ripping time—perfectly top-hole! I simply couldn’t get up till I remembered what that man Feccles said about a hair of the dog. So I rolled out of bed and crawled across to the H. and took one little sniff, and sat on the floor till it worked. It’s great stuff when you know the ropes. It picked me up ina minut…
1922 · PDF PAGE 293
…ows and lights of the sky Of existence are centred in you; The cross-jaggéd lightning, the roar of typhoon Are as good as the slumber of time as we swoon With the sun half asleep in the blue. You’re a dream, you're a mystery, empress and slave, You're like life, the inscrutable beat of its wave, You are always the all-unexpected ! When you've promised yourself, then you push me away; When you scorn me, you suddenly kindle and slay ; You hate truth as the lies She rejected! I love you because you are gallant and proud, (Your soul is a sun and yo…
1922 · PDF PAGE 274
…se silence which was somehow more significant than the sound. The firelight threw doubtful shadow pictures upon the glass roof; and from time to time figures moved with intimate softness through the dark corners and out into the courtyard. These swathed and muffled forms possessed an uncanny quality of unreality. The studio was full of subtle incense. No smoke was visible ; it was as if the atmosphere had somehow been impregnated with it. Our little party fell very silent. He had given Lou and myself some tablets which had the effect of silenci…
1922 · PDF PAGE 42
…in the chariot of the Sun through the circus of the Universe. We didn’t know where we were going, and we didn’t care. We had no sense of time at*all. There was a sequence of sensa- tions; but there was no means of regulating them. It was as if one’s mental clock had suddenly gone mad. I have no gauge of time, subjectively speaking, but it must have been a long while before our mouths separated, for as this happened I recognised the fact that we were very far from the club. She spoke to me for the first time. Her voice thrilled dark unfathomable…
1922 · PDF PAGE 120
…for hours, that we had been rushing through a Universe of our own creation with stupendous speed and diabolical delight. And at the same time I realised that we had been automati- cally ‘coking up” without knowing that we were doing so. The material world had become of so little importance that I no longer knew where I was. I completely mixed up my present journey with memories of two or three previous Continental excursions. It was the first time that Lou had ever been farther than Paris, and she looked to me for information as to time and pla…
1922 · PDF PAGE 151
…ves had become highly suspicious. They were itching to arrest me on the spot. The clerk argued with them garrulously for an interminable time. The manager seemed the most uncomfortable man in Capri. He protested silently roheaven—there being nobody on earth to listen to The situation was set going again by the reappearance of Lou on the arm of a chambermaid, followed by the doctor, who wore the air of a man who has once more met the King of Terrors in open combat, and knocked the stuffing out of him. Lou was exceedingly shaky, paling and flushi…
1922 · PDF PAGE 353
…ervals that did not count. For about a week King Lamus tried to get me out of my groove by giving me cocaine, and asking me to employ my time by writing an account of my adventures from the time when I began to take it. The drug stimulated me immensely ; and I was quite enthusiastic for the time. I wrote the story of my adventures from the night of my meeting Lou to our return to England from Naples. But when the episode was over, I found the old despair of life as strong as ever. The will to live was really dead in me. But two evenings later K…
1922 · PDF PAGE 54
…ase of indiscretion!’’ He'd as good as called me a fool to my face. I thought of him as the sea, shaking with derisive laughter. All the time I had been chuckling over my dear old squad commander. Not a great flyer, am I? This will show him! And that was true enough. I was incomparably better than I had ever been before. And yet I had omitted just one obvious precaution. I suddenly realised that things might be exceedingly nasty. The only thing to be done was to shut off, and volplane down to the straits. And there were points in the problem wh…
1922 · PDF PAGE 82
…r know what’s enough. And then I realised with startling suddenness that the case was not confined to the frailer sex. I got out just in time. If I pass over in silence the events of the next hour, it is not because of the paucity of incident. At its conclusion we were seated once more at the table. We took little sips of very old Armagnac; it pulled us together. But all the virtue had gone out of us; we might have been convalescents from some very long and wasting illness. “‘ There’s nothing to be alarmed about,” said Feccles, with his curious…
1922 · PDF PAGE 216
202 The Diary of a Drug Fiend At the same time, he would feel a certain secret pleasure if he knew that I, on my part, had had some- thing of the same feeling for him. And all the time, he went on playing with the heroin. Once or twice he nearly dropped it in his nervous emotion. It made me jump to think of the danger to that precious powder. But there was clearly only one thing to be done to get it: to fall in with the old fellow’s humour. I let my head fall on my breast and looked at him sideways out of the corners of my eyes. “You can’t expe…
1922 · PDF PAGE 107
…y one shouldn’t spend it in a sensible way. Mr. Wolfe himself had emphasised the difficulty of getting satisfactory investments in these times. He told me how many people were putting their money into diamonds and furs which always keep their value, whereas government securities and that sort of thing are subject to unexpected taxation, for one thing, depreciation for another, with the pos- sibility of European repudiation looming behind them all. As a family man, it was my duty to buy as many jewels for Lou as I could afford. At the same time,…
1922 · PDF PAGE 322
…rock. As the months move the Great Bear wheels about its stable splendour, and one’s mind begins to work on a totally different scale of time. Each revolution of the heavens about the Pole is like the second hand of one’s spiritual watch.”’ We listened with enthralled attention. The beauty of the place beat hard upon our brains. It was un- believable. Patches of cancer. like London and Paris were cut ruthlessly out of our consciousness. We had come from the ephemeral pretentiousness of cities to a land of eternal actuality. We were re-born into…
1922 · PDF PAGE 102
88 The Diary of a Drug Fiend at the same time he. couldn’t risk pulling off the coup of his life in case there was a hitch, so he would get @ move on and see if he couldn’t raise five thousand on his own somewhere else, in which case he’d let me have some of his own stock anyway. He wanted me ‘in the deal if it was only for a sovereign, simply because of my luck. _ So off he ran in a great hurry. Lou and I got a car and spent the afternoon in the Bois du Boulogne. It seemed as if the cocaine had taken hold of us with new force, or else it was t…
1922 · PDF PAGE 265
…f expres- sing yourself—what little self you have to express—you will be repeating, in a debased currency, the words of wisdom that from time to time have dropped from my refined lips.”’ There was a time when I should have resented a remark like that. If I don’t do so now, it isn’t because I’ve lost my manhood, it isn’t because I feel such gratitude to the man who pulled me through ; the reason is that I have learned what he means when he talks like that. He has completely killed out in himself the idea of himself. He takes no credit for his ma…
1922 · PDF PAGE 337
…ry reversal of what seems obvious. But I’ve been through it myself, and the plain fact is this: finding ourselves here with so much more time on our hands than we ever had in our lives, we get desperate. In a big city, if we're bored, we simply look around for some diversion, and there are plenty of them. But here, there’s no alleviation or the possibility of it. We must either go under completely or decide to swim. Hlere’s another case where the Big Lion, who must certainly be Satan himself, econo- mises time. One has to be very stupid not to …