He'd always been an early riser, but the dazzle of a young wife and the bright lights of Southern California had seduced him into turning his schedule upside down-and his writing, the quantity and the quality, suffered accordingly.

Perhaps he had tried too hard to keep up with his young wife, burning the candle at both ends, and she eventually accused him of trying so hard to act youthfully that he had instead behaved childishly. In Hawaii, he had planned to crawl in and curl up in a hole to write, and pull the hole in after him-but Honolulu was an even bigger party town than Beverly Hills, and when he wasn't playing poker into the wee hours with his Army and Navy friends, he and his wife were at a??? or a cocktail party or off yachting.

Florence complained that she had turned into his chauffeur, since he was inevitably too tipsy to drive home after a soiree, and felt she had fallen into the role of the serious, "older" partner, while he was the child. Since his Hawaiian writing was going well-by the end of 1940, he'd written not only a new Tarzan novel but entries in his other two mainstay series, Mars and Pellucidar, with a Venus tale in the works-Burroughs didn't think the nights of revelry were hurting anything. Still, Florence began complaining, not only about his "immaturity," but the Niumalu (one of the nicest hotels on Oahu) which she found lacking, condemning it as "cramped, buggy and damp." She was dismayed when he told her they would be living on $250 a month, the salary he was drawing from ERB, Inc.

Five years ago, she had viewed him as a dapper, prosperous, respected gentleman, a father figure; now, he feared, she saw him as just another bald, overweight geezer.