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Page 1 of 81922 · PDF PAGE 218
204 The Diary of a Drug Fiend saw that he had taken a little pocket-knife and cut the string of the bottle. He had levered out the cork, and dipped the knife into the powder. He measured out a dose with a queer cunning questioning smile in his eyes. , My breath was coming quickly and shallowly. I gave a hurried little nod. I seemed to hear myself saying, “A little bit more.” At least, he added to the heap. “A little mild stimulant is indicated,” he said, with an imitation of his bedside manner. He was kneeling in front of my chair, and held up …
1922 · PDF PAGE 135
… proposition is equally true. The passions of the pit find outlet only in bestial noises. The automobile stopped at the end of the dirty little street where the Fauno Ebbrio lurks. The motorman pointed to the zig-zag streak of light that issued from it, and cast a sinister gleam on the opposite wall. A bold, black-haired, short-skirted girl with a gaudy shawl and huge gold ear-rings was standing in the door. What with the long journey and the drugs and other things, we were a little drunk—just enough to realise that it was part of our policy to…
1922 · PDF PAGE 272
…would go out with the intention of keeping away from the stuff all day, and how, without my knowing it, I took advantage of ali sorts of little incidents that cropped up to get back to the studio some hours before I had intended. I found myself out at once, of course, having learnt some of the tricks of the mind. And I sat and watched myself finding excuses for starting in. One gets into an absolutely morbid state, in which everything that happens has some bearing on the question, ‘Shall I or shall I not take it?’; and one gets so pleased with …
1922 · PDF PAGE 169
…blood from a nail. One swift prick was enough In days gone by to invoke her: She was incarnate love In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bound, Leprous beyond all loathing. Black, the plague of the pit, Her pustules visibly fester, Cancerous kisses that bit As the asp caressed her. Dragon of lure and dread, Tiger of fury and lust, The quick in chains to the dead, The slime alive in the dust, Brazen shame like a flame, An orgy of pregnant pollution With hate beyon…
1922 · PDF PAGE 230
216 The Diary of a Drug Fiend little birds that fly off it, that come and burrow in one’s skin | I just feel the prick of the beak, and then it dis- appears. They were messengers from the other world. There is a little nest of them in my liver. It is very curious to hear them chirping when they want food. I don’t know what they’ll do so far away from their mother. | It is horrible not being able to sleep. That, too, must be a preparation for the new life. I wandered up all alone to the magic room, and sat with my hands on the table opposite the…
1922 · PDF PAGE 280
…overed what had amused King Lamus on the first occasion. I was conscious of a distinct shade of annoyance at having to get up and make a little cross. It had never occurred to me to break my word. There was a fascination in watching the record. The drive was a revelation. It was like coming out of a charnel house into the fresh air. A keen cold wind beat against our faces, almost blinding us. It was not until we reached the inn that we re- membered that we had come out without any heroin. Lamus was immediately all sympathy when he heard of our …
1922 · PDF PAGE 160
…r. She wears the most wonderful boots. She has a new pair almost every day, and hardly ever puts the same pair on twice. I think she’s a little bit crazy. ... London. seems different somehow. I used to be interested in every funny little detail. I want to get. back to myself. Drugs help me to get almost there; but there is always one little corner to turn and they never take one round.
1922 · PDF PAGE 39
…etel Webster. She was sitting at my right; her left hand was beneath the table, and she was looking at if. I followed her glance. In the little quadrilateral of the veins whose lower apex is between the first and middle fingers, was a tiny heap of sparkling dust. Nothing I had ever seen before had so attracted me. The sheer bright infinite beauty of the stuff! I had seen it before of course, often enough, at the hospital ; but this was quite a different thing. It was set off by its environment as a diamond is by its setting. It seemed alive. It…
1922 · PDF PAGE 97
…ear, and perhaps another fifteen hundred from the rents of the Barley Grange estate, and that infernal income-tax and so on—I was really little better than a pauper, and there was Lou to be considered. I had always thought jewellery vulgar ; a signet ring and a tie pin for a man—for a woman, a few trinkets, very quiet, in good taste—that was the limit. But Lou was absolutely different. She could wear any amount of the stuff and carry it off superbly. I had bought her a pair of ear-rings in Cartier’s yesterday afternoon—three diamonds in a strin…
1922 · PDF PAGE 295
…el in Westminster Abbey. If it isn’t, it ought to be. “Now don’t worry. And above all things, don’t get a fit of repentance and take too little to-day and to- ' morrow. If you do, you'll have another relapse. I know it sounds as though I were contradicting myself. Make the most of it, I don’t care. I’m going to do it again in the following elegant manner. “T want you to get the whole subject of heroin out of your mind; and that is the reason why [ insist so strongly on your keeping a record of every time you take it. It’s a psychological parado…
1922 · PDF PAGE 89
…ime of bells announcing early Mass; and gradually my thought became more slow, more dim; the active pleasure of thinking became passive. Little by little the shadows crept across my reverie, and then I knew no more.
1922 · PDF PAGE 250
236 The Diary of a Drug Fiend the first time I was glad of the war. My Red-Cross training made all the difference. There was a little fever, due to his intense weakness, and occasionally he had delirium. The obsession of the poem still enthralled him. While I was dressing the wounds he said feebly and dreamily :— “She it is, she, that found me ‘In the morphia honeymoon ; With silk and steel she bound me; In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me.” “Yes,” I said, “‘ but it’s your wife who loves you and is going to nurse…
1922 · PDF PAGE 119
Vedere Napolt epoi—pro patrid—mori 105 Granada, of the fanatical frenzy of the religious Moorish ‘rioters chopping at themselves with little sacred axes till the blood streams down their bodies, crazily crimson in the stabbing sunlight, and making little scabs of mire upon the torrid trampled sand. I thought of the mcenads and Bacchus; I saw them through the vivid eyes of Euripides and Swinburne. And still unsatisfied, I craved for stranger symbols yet. I became a Witch-Doctor presiding over a cannibal feast, driving the yellow mob of murderers…
1922 · PDF PAGE 196
…ightless eyes. He began with romantic sadness, changing to demoniac glee. | “She was incarnate love In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bound, Leprous beyond all loathing.” We shouted with delight, and fell into a fit of hysterical laughter. We came out of it completely exhausted. I must have slept for a while. | When I woke he was sitting at the table under the yellow gas jet, reading the books he had bought. Somehow, the past had been washed out of us. We foun…
1922 · PDF PAGE 274
…ity. 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 silencing the nervous restlessness which had begun to seize us after even so short an abstinence from heroin. “‘T want you to hang on a little,’ explained our host. “The sting of abstinence will make the indulgence worth while. You have noticed, I am sure, that the vast majjority of doses fail to produce any definit…
1922 · PDF PAGE 46
…f. But something else obscurely answered it. “That accounts for what the world has always done —made martyrs of its pioneers.”’ I felt a little ashamed, to tell the truth; but Lamus put me at my ease. He waved his hand towards a huge arm-chair covered with Persian tapestries. He gave me a cigarette and lighted it for me. He poured out a drink of Benedictine into a huge curved glass, and put it on a little table by my side. I disliked his easy hospitality as much as anything else. I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was a puppet in his hands. …
1922 · PDF PAGE 136
…lash of sulphuric acid flung in a woman’s face. ’ There was no clock in the den, and of course we had left our watches at home. We got a little impatient. We couldn’t remember whether Feccles had or had not told us how long he was likely to be. The air of the room was stifling. The lowest vagabonds of Naples crowded the place. Some were jabbering like apes; some singing drunkenly to themselves ; some shame- lessly caressing ; some sunk in bestial stupor. Among the last was a burly brute who somehow fascinated our attention. We thought ourselves…
1922 · PDF PAGE 56
…e merely a symbol, a physical projection of our spiritual sublimity. The next two days passed like pantomime. We were married in a dirty little office by a dirty little man. We took back his car to Lamus. I was amused to discover that I had left it standing in the open half over the edge of the lake. I made a million arrangements in a kind of whirling wisdom. Before forty-eight hours had passed we were packed and off for Paris. I did not remember anything in detail. All events were so many base metals fused into an alloy whose name was Exciteme…
1922 · PDF PAGE 267
…him. The factis that the man’s mere presence acted as a powerful stimulant. “It’s only a trifle,” he said, with a curious smile, “just a little literary difficultyin which I find myself. I was hoping you might remember my giving you a poem to read a little while ago.” His tone was airy and supercilious; but yet there was an under-current of earnestness in his voice which compelled the attention. Lou nodded easily enough ; but I could see that in her heart, no less than in mine, an arrow had struck, charged with acid venom. The reference recalle…
1922 · PDF PAGE 287
…e. We were content to have mastered the principle of the thing. It would be easy to attack those clusters of crosses, and eliminate them little by little. King Lamus asked Maisie to sing. Luckily there was a baby grand in the room. He sat down and began to accompany her. I found myself enthralled by watching the man’s mind work. It taught me something con- stantly. This last act, for example. We couldn’t go out as we were, and the singing would be an alternative distraction. At the same time, he wanted Maisie’s back turned so that we could take…