What was life really like for the athletic, humorous, sometimes “seedy” author of Cry, the Beloved Country?
He was a strong athlete. As a young man, Paton was a formidable athlete, who many times walked 50 or 60 miles in a single day, and then got up early the next morning to play tennis. He was very social and convivial. He was a friendly man with a great fund of interesting stories and a very large circle of friends. In later years he would go annually to a cottage in the mountains with a group of other men, and they would perform prodigious feats of drinking. They would sit on the balcony and play a sort of game, throwing their beer cans onto the lawn. The first day the aim was to hit another can. “The second day,” Paton would say wryly, “the aim was to avoid hitting another can.” He sometimes looked rather “seedy.” One of Paton’s drinking companions told the story of getting up late after one of these sessions, and making his way with Paton down to the river to wash. As they climbed through a fence Paton, who was looking pretty hung over after all the whisky of the night before, said to
