Rue Euphoria Quotes

The storm which swept me into a hospital in December began as a cloud no bigger than a wine goblet the previous June. And the cloud—the manifest crisis—involved alcohol, a substance I had been abusing for forty years. Like a great many American writers, whose sometimes lethal addiction to alcohol has become so legendary as to provide in itself a stream of studies and books, I used alcohol as the magical conduit to fantasy and euphoria, and to the enhancement of the imagination. There is no need to either rue or apologize for my use of this soothing, often sublime agent, which had contributed greatly to my writing; although I never set down a line while under its influence, I did use it—often in conjunction with music—as a means to let my mind conceive visions that the unaltered, sober brain has no access to. Alcohol was an invaluable senior partner of my intellect, besides being a friend whose ministrations I sought daily—sought also, I now see, as a means to calm the anxiety and incipient dread that I had hidden away for so long somewhere in the dungeons of my spirit.

The landed and aristocratic classes, though contemptuous of those “in trade” or otherwise concerned with money-making, were also able to surmount their pride and come aboard—money often has that effect. The scenes in the Rue Quincampoix were now repeated in the streets and alleys of the City; the stock of the company, which had been at around £128 in January 1720, went to £330 in March, £550 in May, £890 in June, and to around £1,000 later in the summer. Not before in the kingdom, and perhaps not even in Paris or Holland, had so many so suddenly become so rich. As ever, the sight of some becoming so effortlessly affluent brought the rush to participate that further powered the upward thrust.