30 / 226
THE GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION
Yz
jigger of
yellow
Chartreuse. Personally we find the Chartreuse
brings all the sweetening we need, and a squirt of charged water adds
,,
a sparkle. A lovely thing indeed.
AND NOW,
MESSIEURS
et
MESDAMES,
the
ONE
&
01\'LY
TROPI–
CAL DAIQUIRI
We honestly believe that more people have boasted about the origin
of this happy thought than any modern drink. We have had to smile
quietly on at least 4 occasions; once overhearing 3 Cuban gentlemen
who had never been out of Havana,
1
alleged German title on a West
Indies Cruise,
1
Racquet Club Member on a fishing trip-why is it
that so many German alleged titles and fancy club members seem to
talk very loud and authoritatively ?-and
2
female frequenters of the
New York Colony Club. All of these assorted folk either had helped
invent this drink or had been like
THAT
with the ones who had in–
vented it!
The whole business is tommyrot, unless these persons knew.a cer–
tain
2
officials of the Yankee-run Cuban mining firm taken over dur–
ing the great war by Bethlehem Steel, and which operated in the
mountains not too far out of Santiago de Cuba, where the firm of
Bacardi
y
Cia.,
had, and has, its being. The invention was simple, as
so many good things
in
life are simple, and right smack after the Span–
ish-American war, too.
In
those days not
1
American in
10,000
had
ever heard of
Ron Bacardi,
much less invented drinks with it.
There was fever. Doctors still thought that a lot of yellowjack
malaria cases came from drinking water and swamp mists. They
couldn't turn off the swamp mists but they knew that diluted alcohol
w~s
a
di~in~ectant
against germs. So they put a little rum in. t.heir
bmled dnnkmg water. This tasted pretty bad so some bright citizen
squeezed a lime into the thing, and a little sugar to modify the acid.
I~~
made from
.d~stilled
water took the tropical blood heat off th.e
ili.ing. The
2
originators were my friend Harry E. Stout, now donn–
ciled in Englewood, New Jersey, and a mining engineer associate,
Mr.
Jennings Cox. TIME: summer of i8g8. PLACE: Daiquiri, a
. 30.