I’ve begun reading The Big Sleep Annotated (annotations by
Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto; hereafter HJR), and it’s
fascinating so far. In fact, it has
answered a question for me—why did Nero Wolfe grow (and hybridize)
orchids? As HJR point out (p. 21),
One of the many symbols
of wealth and decadence adorning the
Sternwood residence. Orchid-collecting
fever swept England and America at the turn of the twentieth century. Edward Doheny Sr.’s home [near downtown
LA]…sported a Tiffany-glass-and-steel-domed
conservatory that housed southern California’s first major orchid collection:
more than five thousand specimens collected by Doheny’s wife Estelle. In literature the flowers acquired
associations of decay and disease…[They go on to elaborate.]
So Stout would certainly have
known of the fascination of the rich with orchids, and of the association of
orchids with decadence. And Wolfe is
clearly a man who has, in general, the tastes associated with wealth (but not, particularly,
decadence)—an impressive residence; a resident world-class chef; and
(generally) refined tastes (leaving the beer aside [1]). And raising orchids.
HJR then quote from Chandler’s
1936 story “The Curtain,” a passage that found its way pretty directly into The Big Sleep:
The air steamed. The walls and
ceiling of the greenhouse dripped. In
the half light enormous tropical plants spread their blooms and branches over
the place and the smell of them was almost as overwhelming as the smell of
boiling alcohol.
The butler, who was old and thin and very straight and white-haired,
held branches of the plants back for me to pass, and we came to an opening in
the middle of the place. A large Turkish
rug was spread down on the hexagonal flagstones. In the middle of the rug, in a wheelchair, a
very old man sat with the traveling rug around his body and watches us come.
Nothing
in his face lived but his eyes. Black
eyes, deep-set, shining, untouchable.
The rest of the face was the leaden mask of death, sunken temples, a
sharp nose, outward turning earlobes, a mouth that was a thin white slit. He was wrapped partly in a reddish an very
shabby bathrobe and partly in the rug.
His hands had purple fingernails and were clasped loosely, motionless on
the rug. He had a few scattered wisps of
white hair on his skull.
We don’t get this bit, though
in “The Curtain.” We get this from TBS,
which begins with General Sternwood speaking:
“You are looking at a very dull survival of a rather gaudy life, a
cripple, paralyzed in both legs, and with only half of a lower belly. There’s very little that I can eat and my
sleep is so close to waking that it is hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat…and the
orchids are the excuse for the heat. Do you like orchids?”
“Not particularly,” I said…
“They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of
men. And their perfume has the rotten
sweetness of a prostitute.”
Wolfe never discussed (as I
recall) his motivation for raising orchids.
But he does refer in one of the books to keeping an old woman on the
roof and torturing her daily. And we can
make of that what we will.
[1] I have always thought that
Stout made Wolfe into a beer-drinker in order to avoid the need to incorporate
fine wine into the stories. These days,
with small-batch artisanal craft beer, yo can’t really get around it even with
beer.
