W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

W. C. Fields the glass seldom shook, and he rewarded himself by lightening its load. For a man who hated drunks, Fields was in an untenable position. His own strongly publicized drinking prompted many of his visitors to overindulgence, so as not to be considered sissified. They were perplexed when their sporting efforts seemed to depress their host. Fields would have preferred that they remain entirely sober, for several reasons. Primarily, he disliked them drunk; also he was reluctant to dissipate his stocks recklessly. Except for a handful of intimates, he did not encourage callers, but they turned up just the same. "It's not my friends but my friends' friends that annoy me," he once told a servant. The beforehand knowledge that strangers were likely to arrive made him ill at ease. He paced around the house, and drank more than usual. He always suspected that they would somehow prove troublesome; in addition, he could be pretty sure that they would swill his liquor, cut up noisily, and tell him jokes, at which he would be expected to laugh immoderately. Everybody told Fields jokes. Just as people meeting a writer have a tendency to dredge up manuscripts, people meeting a comedian treat him as a straight man. A neighbor of Fields, a very slight acquaintance, once appeared at his house and begged that he accompany him to call on a woman "who has been dying to meet you." Fields grumbled, thought up numerous excuses, all of which were brushed aside, and finally went along, in a sour frame of mind. They arrived at a large house, on the porch and front lawn of which was a group of people. "What is it, a party?" Fields asked uneasily. "Oh no, she's quite alone," said his guide. "We'll go in a side entrance." He took the comedian into a room decked with flowers and up to an opened coffin, where he said to the occupant, 244