I quoted Conrad Aiken's "Another Lycidas" apropos of the loner's Martini (M,SU, 43-44). Much remains to be said about Aiken, the foremost literary Martini-drinker of the twentieth century. Cf. Cowley's letter to me.
First, the rest of the poetry. Joseph I. Killorin, the editor of Aiken's letters, sent me references to other poems (letter of April 21, 1978), "Obituary in Bitcherel" and "The Crystal." In neither, however, is the Martini mentioned by name, though Killorin told me: "the Martini is intended."
Second, "As for the Life," to quote from Killorin's letter, "as revealed in the correspondence, the martini moves through the dear thousands of pages as a feste Burg. Were the word Martini unknown, it might appear to a reader to mean the Ineffable, the One always overflowing into Being." And yet the Martini is seldom mentioned (Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken [New Haven, 1978], xix, 238, 294 [twice]). Whenever Aiken referred to gin, as he does several times, Killorin undoubtedly understood the Martini.
Aiken's biographer, Edward Butscher, is not much interested in drinking. In his first volume, he mentions this subject only three times (see the Index). Once, it is the Martini. In 1924, Aiken moved to Rye (England), and, at this point, with maddening vagueness, Butscher tells us: "Aiken had developed the habit of downing a batch of martinis before lunch and dinner ... " (Conrad Aiken: Poet of the White Horse Vale [Athens GA, 1988], 431). The second volume of the biography has not appeared.
What kind of Martini did Aiken drink? Killorin wrote to me: "It is two parts gin, one part vermouth, in a silver cup." Other signs of eccentricity appear in SelectedLetters. Aiken refers to celebrating his successful move from England to South Dennis MA "with a fine salvo of dry martinis, sans ice" (238). The year is 1939, and therefore "sans ice" will not mean his Martini was normally on the rocks. The Martini on the rocks did not come into use until about a decade later, so far as I know. It must be that the kitchen in South Dennis did not yet have a refrigerator or the refrigerator was not functioning.
With the silver cup, an odd vessel for a Martini, one can compare the following from a letter of 1951, written in Washington: "I always rush three blocks home [from the Library of Congress] for a couple of quick ones, two Roman Catholic altar-light holders that Mary [his wife] bought at the five and dime, ruby red, which then filled to the brim with martinis give you quite a welcome wallop."
By coincidence, lack of ice turns up in an anecdote about
Aiken. Jack Kahn, in article in The New Yorker, Feb. 6, 1978,
p. 50, wrote:
In Savannah, one is apt to be told stories about its favorite literary lion, Conrad Aiken, who, for reasons that are never quite satisfactorily explained, is said to have enjoyed going with his wife to a cemetery and, in that odd setting, companionably drinking Martinis. One day, the tale goes, the poet looked up and exclaimed, "Oh, God, we're out of ice!" At once, it began to hail.
This anecdote probably arises from confusion in Kahn's
notes. In the course of his research, he learned of Aiken's widow's
custom of taking visitors to his grave with a shaker of Martinis (cf. Cowley's
letter to me). He also heard an unrelated anecdote about God-sent
hail. Then, back in New York or wherever, sitting down to write the
article, he combined the graveside Martinis with the heavenly ice.
Or perhaps someone in Savannah had already created the confusion.
I began this electronic entry with reference to the loner's
Martini in one of Aiken's poems. If, following Killorin, one takes
the cocktails in Aiken's "The Crystal" as Martinis, then they are communal,
and indeed the strongest assertion on record of this amazing function of
the drink. I referred in M,SU
to "the sacramental drink that unites in spirit even those who have never
met" (62). Now hear Aiken:
The cocktails sparkle, are an oblation.
We pour for the gods, and will always,
you there, we here, and the others who follow,
pour thus in communion.
And he goes on in the same vein for a few more lines
(Collected Poems, 954; cf. 947). Killorin was struck by this
passage, which he quoted in the preface to Selected Letters with
the comment: "Aiken assumed that the conversation of the cocktail hour
represents the communion of all friendly minds separated in time and space"
(xvi).
© Lowell Edmunds