"Royal Licorice" (1973/1974)
- Jon Nelson
- Nov 1
- 6 min read
“Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not conscience, refinement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of view faith.” — John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1852), Discourse V, Section 9
Nobody ever heard such a display of shouting, bawling, snorting, neighing, and just plain bad manners as followed. It was enough to make one ashamed of being a man or horse. Slocum beat on the airy shield with now bloody fists and shouted vile obscenities. Pray that his youthful admirers never glimpse that side of the man! Johnson belched sulphur-flame and gave that merchandising conglomerate very hell as he ordered volley after volley to be fired into it. And the ignoble Red Licorice was the worst of them all, cursing in man and horse talk, stomping, gnashing, making dirty noises. That horse should never have been given smart pills. The only bright spot was the golden-haired Flambeau. ‘I kind of liked that rolled-up dung-beetle ball,’ she laughed. ‘When I am next the socially prominent Mrs. Gladys Glenn Gaylord I will obtain a quantity of them and serve them to my guests . . . Now back to being the old character actress and doing the indomitable dame bit. Toodle, all.’ She zoomed away in the Dusie. She was a pleasant golden blob in the far distance. Who else ever had the finesse to grow old gracefully twice? She had class.
Today, Pope Leo XIV made John Henry Newman, one of my intellectual heroes, a doctor of the Catholic Church. The first American pope has appointed the first doctor to have done most of his work in English. Having this on my mind, and rereading Lafferty’s “Royal Licorice,” made me think of Newman’s great poem Gerontius, about an old man accepting death and the journey of his soul in the afterlife, but also about one of Newman’s big ideas: the illative sense. Newman argued that this was the personal, intuitive power of reasoning by which the mind moves from probabilities to certainty. It is closer to how one comes to believe than how one learns to argue, not formal logic, but a faculty that harmonizes countless experiences, evidences, and moral impressions into a confident act of assent. Newman believed this was how real human judgment operates in matters of religion, ethics, and daily reasoning.
“Royal Licorice” is a comparatively simple Lafferty story in the mold of others I am especially fond of, “Interurban Queen,” “Assault on Fat Mountain,” and so on. In them, Lafferty slows down and spends more time painting the scene than he usually does. The story is about aging and wisdom, and about what all the pieces of one’s life amount to when they are finally brought together. Each of its characters except one fails at this, and can be said to have failed at life, despite their great accomplishments. What they fail to do is live the last part of life in harmony with those accomplishments. They can be said to have a defective illative sense.
Here I am thinking about how the characters have instinctive faith in the elixir and the irony of what follows. Each (Slocum, Johnson, Flambeau, and the horse) assents to belief not through logic but by accumulated impressions. Aside from Flambeau, they are nostalgic for youth; they trust in charisma; and they long for the wrong kind of renewal: simple recapitulation. Their conviction that they must have royal licorice arises just as Newman described the illative sense, through an inward, experiential synthesis that feels certain, though it lacks proof. But when their youth and faculties return, wisdom does not, for they never had any to begin with. They regain energy but lack judgment, and Lafferty gives the reader a great ending, showing these failed persons becoming impulsive, vain, petulant, aggressive, and absurd.
They attack the Licorice Man, who is protected by a magical barrier, something that recalls ideas in sacred tradition: hedges, angelic encampments, shields and ramparts, walls of fire, rearguards of glory. Of course, this reverses Newman’s ideal, which is that assent must be guided by the seasoned discernment that comes with age. I read it as a story about misplaced intuition, specifically, about how the natural, illative power that gives meaning to aging collapses when it is severed from conscience and the hard-earned wisdom that time is meant to teach.
In the story, a mysterious, timeless peddler from Lafferty’s Boomer Flats travels the Oklahoma countryside selling an elixir from his medicine wagon. “I, sir,” he proclaims, “am selling Royal Licorice, the concoction that will halt and reverse aging in any creature.” His first customer is Black Red, a once-mighty racehorse now old (but who was always "stupid and rock-headed") and worth little more than "nine dollars for cat meat." After the horse guzzles a jug of royal licorice (licorice was invented for cough syrup before becoming a candy), he is transformed back into a race-winning young colt. His owner watches in amazement as the old horse took off in a “great coltish gallop,” becoming the "finest and fastest colt in the world."
The Licorice Man next meets Cyrus Slocum, a legendary baseball pitcher living out his old age on a ranch in the rocky, bitter gypsum hills. The Licorice peddler offers him a tantalizing proposition: "how would you like to have your arm back again, at its strongest, and at the same time keep your wits at their wisest?” Slocum accepts. He takes a swig, and he feels the change. “It works, doesn't it?” he says as his hair turns black again and his arm regains its power. This lets him return to the game as a rookie pitcher pretending to be his own grandson.
The peddler moves on, and there will be two more people who we see consume royal licorice. He meets a fiery, "indomitable old dame" in a classic Duesenberg car who he recognizes as the former movie star Flambeau La Flesche. She’s smart and classy, and she describes herself as "a fancier of antiques and myself an antique." She buys a jug and is restored to her glamorous youth. The Licorice Man also finds Ex-President Hiram Andrew Clayborne Johnson. He is now a shrunken old man with a dead-fish complexion whose voice is too cracked and broken to inspire confidence. The elixir restores his old born-for-the-stump voice, an Apostolic voice. He launches a new presidential campaign.
Lafferty calls this restoration of salad days a "Springtime of the Giants." The racehorse, now Red Licorice, shatters track records. Cy Slocum dominates baseball. Flambeau La Flesche ascends back to stardom, but eventually decides just to rerelease her old movies because, as she puts it, she is “‘the same kid, only refleshed.’”
It turns out the effect of magic is not lasting. The pitcher tires and ages, the ex-president’s golden voice cracks. Everyone realizes they will need more of the elixir if they are to keep up their youth.
All four converge on a country road. The Licorice Man, who appears suddenly in "clattering silence." But he denies their pleas for more of the restorer and clock retarder. "There's only one jug of it left," he says, "and I'm going to pour it into the car, Dusie." The horse, pitcher, and politician erupt in what Lafferty calls "just plain bad manners," shouting obscenities, with the ex-President ordering his men to "Fire on them!" The attacks bounce off an invisible shield. Only Flambeau stays poised. We get an image of her having eaten a dung-beetle roll, with all of the symbolism that conveys. She accepts her fate with class, calling out a cheerful "Toodle, all," as she zooms away, having grown old gracefully twice.
I’ll close by noting that the story comments on human intelligence. Just as youth can be overvalued, so can intellect. The “smart pills” at the end (and what they do to the Fhorse) make this clear, as does the mid-story jab at MENSA, a reminder that intelligence has its limits. Having spent my life around higher education and many brilliant people, I can confirm this: few are as good at board games and as bad at living. One of my ongoing complaints about Lafferty is that he tends to overvalue intellect and can be uncharitable toward those less quick of mind.
