Coffee!!

This from my good friend Peter Gordon Lavery Esq.........

It was on this day in 1850 that the French writer Honoré de Balzac (books by this author) died, a death that was probably fueled by his coffee addiction. Balzac drank between 20 and 40 cups of intense Turkish coffee every day.

Balzac produced a huge body of work, nearly 100 novels, stories, and plays that are known as La Comédie humaine. He worked for about 15 hours each day, and he sustained himself with massive amounts of coffee, pipe tobacco, and food.

Balzac suggested drinking strong coffee on an empty stomach as a writing method. He said: "Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink — for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder."

Balzac had been married for five months at the time of his death, but his wife had gone to bed and his mother was the only one with him when he died. He was 51 years old.

Good drinking to all........