An umbrella story

Friday, December 9th., Les Sablons.

Glad to be here again. Stormy weather. I have been out and about in my big overcoat, rain or shine, and feel how splendid it is to be in the country. 

Stll working on "Sacred and Profane Love" and making steady progress. I was extremely pleased with what I did yesterday, but when I read part of it this morning my enthusiasm was a little dampened. 

Martin, who I met in Paris the other day, described the general sensations of being well drunk as magnificent, splendid, "But", he says, "you mustn't set out to get drunk. It must take you unawares." He told me that when sober he frequently lost umbrellas, but when drunk, never. He made a special point of retaining his umbrella then in his hand; it became his chief concern in life. Once he got badly drunk (not by design) at Maxim's. He just had sense enough to take a cab to the rooms of a mistress he had then. She received him, undressed him, and put him to bed. But he would not leave go of his umbrella in the process. He passed it from hand to hand as she divested him of his coat, waistcoat and shirt, and he took it to bed. "She became very angry with that umbrella", he said. He did not vouchsafe me whether there were therefore three in the bed! A good basis for a farcical story.

For myself I rarely get drunk, and never now so drunk as to be incapable. Not for any moral reasons, but purely because alcohol has a detrimental effect on my sleep which is already bad enough. As a young man if I drank too much I found that I slept heavily and woke up feeling unwell; unable to keep anything at all in my stomach. Somebody advised me (Shuff. I think) that the thing to do is to drink at least as much water before retiring as you have taken alcohol, so you do not dehydrate. Good advice, which works well, but that means getting up several times in the night for bladder relief. On balance, I prefer to stay sober.