The Time for Tonic

In a series of columns reprinted from Harpers. Bernard DeVoto discusses America's noblest institution. The Cocktail Hour, and the patriot's responsibility to it.

He starts out simply enough: "We are a pious people but a proud one too, aware of a noble lineage and a great lineage and a great inheritance... we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the martial cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?" He aswers his question: "Not by two-thirds."

From here on he passes on his own prejudices. The correct time for The Hour, he claims is 6 p.m. The proportions for the martini (providing you use 94.4 proof gin) are 3.7 to one, ranging possibly up to a little more than four. If you use less gin, "it is a marriage in name only and the name is not martini. You get a drinkable and even pleasurable result, but not art's sunburst of imagined delight becoming real."

Well, this may be all right for a man who drinks rye when he's not drinking martinis. And it may be all right for the man who has the entire evening free. The people who would say that the correct proportion is six or even seven to one, and the correct time 5:30 p.m. will disagree sharply here as I do, but DeVoto pays them no attention. To him, they are persons who have gone "through ignorance or unfortunate upbringing, not wickedness."

Disregarding these elements of personal taste, his book serves several useful functions. It dispels the theory that a martial cannot be shaken. It ridicules the theory that a woman cannot make a martial. And it warns against leaving the mixed gin and Vermouth in the icebox or mixing more than you need for a particular round.

He writes smoothly and lovingly. With a hush in his voice he describes The Hou". "But when evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost or, if lost, then not altogether in vain."

DeVoto has something to say, and he says it well. He writes tenderly of something that is dear to him. If we disagree in details, it is only as we disagree with a man who prefers redheaded women rather than blondes. We must be thankful for his well-expressed sentiments and heed his call, for it is our heritage.