"Down these means streets a man must go.................." (From Western Telegraph)

"Down these means streets a man must go.................."

1:10pm Friday 26th June 2009

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Down these mean streets……………… Raymond Chandler, an alcoholic former public schoolboy and creator of Philip Marlowe, an icon who endures and is revered for all his flaws.

But then Marlowe seems to me to possess something which is in very short supply: a moral core which is independent of any religious rules and is coroded by them.

The rest of the quote at the head of this piece is “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.”

Marlowe has been described as a tarnished Galahad, a flawed and world weary private eye, and a man who retains amidst the corruption he detests a moral core allied to a lonely independence.

Raymond Chandler attended Dulwich College as did P.G. Woodhouse and G.K. Chesterton. Yet Marlowe appears so much an American archetype although written by a former English public schoolboy.

The Marlowe character has been played memorably in films by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. He has also appeared on television, a medium Chandler was said to dislike, and to describe as the equivalent of ‘B’ movies.

Since Chandler’s death in 1959 much of television now inhabits the lower depths of tat and vulgarity. At least Chandler was spared that.

Apart from the books, with the language, the brilliance of the descriptions of character and location, he preferred radio.

Philip Marlowe is cynical, lonely and hurt. He is never going to be wealthy, and he is not going to be seduced into flattering the corrupt of the planet.

Their titles, pantomine robes and these parades, provided at vast public expense, are there to feed the vanity of those who participate. Take a look at that bunch of pantomime characters that line up to parade at the opening of parliament.

Most of all Marlowe is his own man, professionally competent, morally secure and bends the knee to no one. I don't think the Wimbledon royals would get far with him with the cringing bows and bends before the Royal Box.

He reflects a chivalric code that has all but disappeared from general life. Few may have attained that honour even in the past.

The importance was that the code was recognised, accepted and admired as something worthy of respect even by those who were never likely to attain it. The standard still stood.

Here are some of the tenets of the Chivalric Code of Charlemagne: To protect the weak and defenceless; To give succour to widows and orphans; To refrain from the wanton giving of offence; To live by honour and for glory; To despise pecuniary award; To fight for the welfare of all; To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit; Never to turn the back on a foe.

Today, our rulers seem to have replaced this with “I did nothing wrong; I stuck by the rules; I was advised by the fees office.”

This doesn't seem quite the same, somehow.