Natasha Spender
CHANDLER'S OWN LONG GOODBYE:
A MEMOIR
A few months after the death of his wife, and a few weeks
after his own first suicide attempt, Raymond Chandler arrived in
England and settled into the Connaught Hotel, 67 years old, still
suicidal, ill, very alcoholic and absorbed in what he always called the
"long nightmare" of mourning. Knowing nothing then of this recent
history, I found myself one day in late April, 1955, sitting next to an
elderly American at luncheon in the house of his publisher Hamish
Hamilton. I saw only the lumbering courtesy and humor, which he
seemed to force through an aura of despair to respond to the cheerful
kindly conversation of his hostess. After luncheon when Yvonne
Hamilton had told me the story, I tentatively suggested inviting him,
which she encouraged me
to
do, though I supposed that he.might well
be in no mood for social life. However, he responded with apparent
pleasure and gruff grace to my invitation for dinner in the following
week, "as long as there aren't any literary heavyweights around. "
Hardly wishing to conduct a weighing-in of our friends, we invited
younger nonliterary but intelligent ones, who liked his books.
It
was an amusing evening; he seemed delighted by compliments,
and even rather exhilarated to deliver himself, with a certain flourish,
of a far too deprecating reply.
It
seemed touching that, to quote Adlai
Stevenson , he should allow himself to "inhale some of the flattery "
with a mixture of modesty and swagger, as if a long-immured hermit
should be eagerly overjoyed at anyone even remembering his name.
In
his letter of thanks-which characteristically arrived by special
messenger-he said that his hostess might be thought "a rather over–
enthusiastic appraiser of lowdown literature. I must insist that I am
nothing but a glib and 'quick-brained' character who chanced on a
formula that would permit almost infinite experiment into the Ameri–
can vernacular." Yet in spite of the pace of all our gaiety, and his
sudden flights of glorious nonsense, his great brooding silences and the
shadow of his desperation had hung in the air. Later, one of the guests,
Reprinted by permission of A
&
W Publishers, Inc. from THE WORLD OF RAYMOND
CHANDLER, edited by Miriam Gross. Copyright
©
1977 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
