A Review:

Saturday 23 October 2004, 3pm

 

MICHAEL ARLEN: THE CAVALIER OF THE STREETS

presented by Mark Valentine

 

How appropriate that the London Adventure should be commemorating the author of The London Venture! Thanks to Mark Valentine's authoritative guidance and in spite of adverse weather conditions - it was raining heavily nearly all the time! - everyone appeared to enjoy The London Adventure's Michael Arlen walk on October 23. I was particularly delighted to take part as I'd been interested in Arlen's life and work for many years, in fact ever since buying the 1968 reprint of The London Venture (1920) with its introduction by Noel Coward, where The Master acknowledged the popular author's kindness in investing in his first play, The Vortex, at the Everyman Hampstead in 1924. This is how he described Arlen's special talent: "On re-reading The London Venture I have been enchanted all over again with the unforced wittiness of Dikran's [Arlen's real name was Dikran Kouyoumdjian - Ed.] writing and the individual elegance of his style. His affectionate evocation of the various aspects of London in the early Twenties seems to me, a possibly prejudiced observer, to be remarkably undated. His descriptions of Bond Street, Soho, the walk from Hyde Park Corner to the Ritz, the charm of the Park itself on an afternoon of high summer, are as delightful today as they were when he first wrote them… Perhaps the blaze of his immediate commercial success blinded critical eyes to the fact that beneath the contemporary glimmer of his prose and in spite of his fashionable acclaim, he was a writer not merely 'of promise' but of immediate and lasting achievement".

 

These aspects of Arlen's work were ably conveyed by Mark's entertaining and informative talk, during which he took us to spots of significance in the novels and short stories and spiced things with readings and good-humoured anecdotes. After meeting in Berkeley Square and being reminded that Eric Maschwitz's romantic ballad was inspired by a story title in These Charming People (1923), we paused near Curzon Street to reflect on which New Age author might have inspired Arlen's creation, Gerald March. Next we visited Shepherd Market in the heart of Mayfair, where Arlen rented rooms opposite The Grapes public house, and where he set the opening of his best-selling 1924 novel The Green Hat.

 

Green Park, near the Ritz, was our next port of call, with a grisly reminder of the plot of Hell! Said the Duchess, and Lansdowne Passage brought us some of the eerie ambiance of one of Arlen's ghost stories, "The Loquacious Lady of Lansdowne Passage". Once more in Berkeley Square, where we sheltered rather like Babes in the Wood (yes, it was still raining!), Mark explained how Stevenson's New Arabian Nights may have influenced Arlen's approach to his short stories. He also gave us a witty account of the "The Ghoul of Golders Green" and talked of Arlen's Armenian background. In the absence of a Hispano-Suiza we walked to Grosvenor Square, where "The Gentleman from America" was set, and concluded things there. All in all an excellent sequel to Mark's detailed piece on Arlen in The Lost Club Journal No 3.

 

After receiving everyone's congratulations for an excellent afternoon, Mark took his train home and The Red Lion, Waverton Street, became our final destination. This was appropriate as it is near The Dorchester, for which - when it opened in 1931 - Arlen wrote a specially-commissioned short story, "A Young Man Comes To London", included in the hotel's publicity brochure. Here is a philosophical reflection from the story that perhaps sums up Michael Arlen's bittersweet career: "How bright are those twin phantoms, fame and riches! How lovely! How elusive! How glorious are the shapes of renown and gold as, standing wearily in the ruck of our lives, we espy their august silhouettes against the horizon of our future!"

 

In 1971 Arlen's son, Michael J, wrote Exiles, a moving memoir of his father (later dramatised for BBC TV with the stylish Alan Badel) which conveyed the frustration of the last part of his life. PG Wodehouse, who was virtually chained to a typewriter all his long career, had been astonished when Arlen told him he had given up writing: "He hasn't written a line in the last fifteen (I think he said) years. He says businessmen retire, so why shouldn't an author retire?" (Performing Flea, 1953).

 

At least Arlen was still included in the Oxford Companion To English Literature the last time I looked and he is also in the new edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, so that's a testament to his unsurpassed ability to capture the heady atmosphere of the 20s.

 

But I have a feeling that Michael Arlen's ghost would have been just as flattered by the tribute given his work by The London Adventure. So full marks to Mark Valentine, who had travelled specially down from Yorkshire for this welcome celebration.

 

Michael Pointon

 

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