Falstaff. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered o’er to the voice, the which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. — Shakespeare, History of Henry IV, Part II; Act IV, Scene 3
Under [Oliver St John] Gogarty’s able tutelage, which he decided not to refuse, Joyce began to drink heavily. At first, to assert a fancied resemblance between himself and the buoyant Elizabethans, he called for sack. The news of his ‘fall’ got round, and the day after his first night of utter drunkenness, he was teased by some young men on the street. ‘Who are these people?’ he said haughtily and walked on. Gradually he shifted from sack to Guinness’s unpretentious and less expensive stout, ‘the wine of the country.’ His capacity for alcohol was small, and he was prone to drunken collapses. All releases from excessive consciousness attracted him. … [italics added] — Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1982), pg. 132
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I had quite a few discussions with my therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp Jr. — a scholar and reader as well as physician — about James Joyce. I was reading Richard Ellmann’s biography of Joyce during my employment at Columbia University (I could not put it down). Dr. Colp was greatly interested — the remark about Joyce and excessive consciousness struck him.
I believe that Dr. Colp saw this as an issue pertinent to me; to myself, to my mentality.
There is much more to be said — that I could say — on the subject. Such mental traits seemed intrinsic to my family and to have been manifested in my case beginning in early childhood.
It is not quite the same as raw intelligence.
A further random thought are some remarks of Dr. Colp, such as that on walks home from work he was in brown study (a British idiom that I myself once encountered in the works of Robert Louis Stevenson. meaning a state of deep, serious absorption in thought; or reverie). I once encountered Dr. Colp walking on Amsterdam Avenue when he seemed to totally lost in thought. He told me several times about how Charles Darwin tried hard to relax after mental exertion, and how Darwin was wary of sometimes thinking “too energetically.”
These were acute perceptions on Dr. Colp’s part.
— posted by Roger W. Smith
July 2026
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See also:
drinking is one of life’s pleasures (Handel) … I second that
