Alcoholics -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Alcoholism -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
I remember "----" telling me at Bruges, where so many _mauvais
sujets_ go to kill themselves with alcohol, that wherever he
went, night and day, he was always afraid of a tiger that would
suddenly appear. He had never experienced Delirium Tremens either.
He knew how mad and fantastic this apprehension was but he was
quite unable to get rid of it.
* * * * *
At other times I have the Folie de Grandeur.
My reading has told me that this is the sure sign of approaching
General Paralysis. General paralysis means that one's brain goes,
that one loses control of one's limbs and all acts of volition go.
One is simply alive, that is all. One is alive and yet one is fed
and pushed about, and put into this place or that as the
entomologist would use a snail. So, in all my wild imaginings the
grisly fear is never far away.
The imaginings are, in themselves, not without interest to a
student of the dreadful thing I have become.
I always start from one point. That is that I have become suddenly
enormously rich. I have invented all sorts of ways in which this
might happen, but lately, in order to save trouble, and to have a
base to start from I have arranged that Rockefeller, the American
oil person, has been so intrigued by something that I have written
that he presents me with two million pounds.
I start in the possession of two million pounds. I buy myself a
baronetcy at once and I also purchase some historic estate. I live
the life of the most sporting and beneficent country gentleman that
ever was! I see myself correcting the bucolic errors of my
colleagues on the Bench at Quarter Sessions. I am a Providence to
all the labourers and small farmers. My name is acclaimed
throughout the county of which I am almost immediately made Lord
Lieutenant.
After about five minutes of this prospect I get heartily sick of
it.
I buy a yacht then. It is as big as an Atlantic liner. I fit it up
and make it the most perfect travelling palace the world has ever
seen. I go off in it to sail round the globe--to see all the most
beautiful things in the world, to suck the last drop of honey that
the beauty of unknown seas, fairy continents, fortunate islands can
yield. During this progress I am accompanied by charming and
beautiful women. Some are intellectual, some are artistic--all are
beautiful and charming. I, I myself, am the central star around
which all this assiduous charm and loveliness revolve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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