The Old Soak was published by Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1921, collecting Marquis’s newspaper columns featuring Clem Hawley — a genial, bibulous old man whose monologues defend drinking, attack Prohibition, and offer philosophy on marriage, religion, work, and the general condition of humanity from the perspective of someone who has found life’s answers at the bottom of a glass.
The Old Soak appeared the year after Prohibition took effect, and his timing was perfect: he became the comic voice of everyone who resented the Eighteenth Amendment, arguing not from political principle but from personal experience that a man who cannot have a drink is a man deprived of his fundamental rights. His arguments are cheerfully illogical, his anecdotes unreliable, and his moral positions indefensible — which makes them enormously entertaining.
The character was successful enough to generate a Broadway play (The Old Soak, 1922, which ran for 423 performances — an enormous hit), a sequel collection (The Old Soak’s History of the World, 1924), and a film. Clem Hawley was, in commercial terms, Marquis’s most successful creation before archy — a character who crossed from print to stage with ease because his voice was so distinctive and his appeal so broad.
The humor has dated somewhat — Prohibition-era jokes require historical context — but the character’s essential quality endures: the cheerful refusal to accept moral authority, the conviction that pleasure is its own justification, and the amiable wit that makes dissipation seem like wisdom.
Collecting The Old Soak
First edition (Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, NY, 1921): Cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $30–$80
- Very good: $10–$30