Mayfairian

Last week a ship set out from England, bearing to the U. S. that suave young cosmopolite, born Dik-ran Kuyumjian beside the Bulgarian Danube some 35 years ago, whose activities on the banks of the Thames as Michael Arlen, Anglo-Armenian raconteur, spread his fame to the banks of the Hudson and set a fashion in headgear among remotest upcreek settlements. Simultaneous with his return* to the U. S., Michael Arlen's agents last week announced that his novel and play of 1924-25, The Green Hat, are to have a third incarnation, as cinema, perhaps with Norma Talmadge. More directly responsible for Mr. Arlen's arrival was the U. S. publication of his new novel.f

Second comings are less breathless than firsts. Mr. Arlen will not again encounter overt U. S. curiosity about his fancy waist and waistcoats, his night-club complexion, his affinities and affectations. He will not feel whole literary cocktail parties hanging on his lightest utterance, for it is well agreed now what he can and cannot say; what a pleasantly trite clam he is sometimes and how low he once brought bold Edna .Ferber in a single exchange of shots about looking feminine.** He will be permitted to enjoy himself and the U. S. this time and his real friends, of whom he made quite a number, will see something of him besides the back view of a man shaking hands.

Toward his writing, too, he will find a reaction. Here as in England people have decided that his glamor is false; that no one, except in books for maids and butlers, was ever so gallant, arrogant, terse of speech, deep of feeling, precious of wit as Mr. Arlen's high-strung Mayfairians.

But to such criticism, as to lionizing, he is apparently impervious. He seems to be writing about actual friends of his, or people he would like to have for friends, with an inflection that first of all suits himself, however well it may also suit the public. When they call him a literary lackey he is artist enough not to mind. He snickers softly up his poplin cuff. The point has been missed, yet his work is good, it satisfies his Oriental sense of perfection and it sells enormously.

Young Men In Love is another tale of those extravagantly "sporting" English highbreds whose fortunes are rivaled in calibre only by their misfortunes. .(The main characters are six--three of the pre-War generation: "Serle, the politician; Townleigh, the Newspaner Magnate; Vardon, the Financier. Let us call them, merely to be dramatic 'and to please the public, the three horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Politics, the Press, Finance." Then there is Venetia, the daughter of Finance; Raphael, the son of the Press, and Savil, the writer, whose resemblance to Author Arlen will provoke chitchat.

All these people fall in love with the utmost bitterness. Venetia is lost between Peter Serle and Charles Savile. Raphael grows excited about an actress but fails to commit suicide although Author Arlen has thoughtfully put a yacht at his service with this purpose in mind. In the main their actions are unimportant, their manners make the story. Other figures glitter from unexpected portions of the narrative. Mr. Arlen has not entirely relinquished his trick of reinserting personages from previous books. The immaculate George Tarlyon is seen for an instant, playing bridge.

The pages are broken with epigrams: "Good servants are trustworthy and it is doubtful whether there is a great man in history who would not, as a valet, have pilfered from his master." The style is quicker on its feet, less mannered, than before. Occasionally, as indicated, Author Arlen squares off too noticeably for a purple passage, a witty remark.

* He came previously in 1925.

/- YoUNG MEN IN LOVE--Michael Arlen-- Doran ($2.50).

**The conversation (commonest version) :

Miss Ferber: "Why, Mr. Arlen, you look almost like a woman!"

Mr. Arlen (softly) : "And so do you, Miss Ferber."