40
PARTISAN REVIEW
suicide, and play-acting doesn 't guarantee tha t the intenti on is less
serious. So, as Alison remembers, if telephoned with the peremptory
"Unl ess you can get here in half-an-hour you 'll find a mess like
strawberry jam on the sidewa lk," one was there in half-an-hour–
tho ugh sometimes one mi ght arrive
to
find a silent abstracted fig ure,
wrapped in gloom. The oscilla ti on o f hi s mood between exuberance
and despa ir made one reali ze he was having a concealed nervous
breakdown , concealed in tha t he could put up a good superficia l show
on social occasions, but in pri va te he was resolutely and scornfull y
impervious to our suggestions tha t he consult medica l advice for these
extreme episodes. Indeed , he put up a very good show with us when he
was in the mood , cha rming, considera te and wonderfull y funn y–
"spa rkl e" was one of his favorite words, and when he found his vein o f
good humor, it could be a Ca therine-wheel di splay.
At first we didn 't rea lize how muffled anxi ety exi sted even a t the
cosy and undemanding socia l evenings he had in our company in ones
or twos. At the Connaught, he would roll into the bar like a tough o ld
Hemingway returning from a lonely ba ttl e a t sea, he wo uld hurl hi s
order fo r "gimlets" a t the barman , and then slump flabbil y into a
chair-his gestures too expan sive, hi s vo ice ra ther loud, the top ic too
boas tful until , after a time, he began to feel more a t ease. Our judicio us
delay ing of more orders for drinks, combining with hi s increas ing
feeling of safety in the company of fri ends, brought out a gentl er
humor, yet curiously dissocia ted from wha t we knew
to
be hi s true sta te
of mind. However, in bo th des pairing and exuberant phases he seemed
p ropell ed by anxiety. Those virtuoso verbal improvisa tion s a t
luncheon a t the Connaught whi ch , by their elegant outrageousness,
bo th shocked and entranced the neighbors a t the nex t tables into
abandoning all pretence of a ttendin g to their own conversa tions, gave
the impress ion tha t he was wound up
to
concert pitch , and after such
cadenzas were over he was quite exhausted. (La ter, under the titl e "A
Routine
to
Shock the Neighbors," he tried to write out some pieces in
the same vein , but they emerged on paper as fla t, labored and some–
times, in their oddl y au toma ti c tone o f " porn ," ra ther emba rrassing.)
In his despa iring times too, hi s anxiety rose as he talked o f hi s
wife's dea th , and it then seemed strange
to
us tha t
aft er
a tra uma ti c loss
a person could seem anxi ous ra ther than sad , almos t as if still in
anticipa tion of the shock. His misapprehension s about the circum–
stances of our li ves were also a t times suffused with anxi ety. I remember
a whole luncheon taken up with hi s unrea li sti c fears for Jocelyn 's
safety during a two-week absence of her fla t-ma te, though Eaton Squa re
