Fri 18 Nov 2022
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: MICHAEL ARLEN – Hell! Said the Duchess.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
MICHAEL ARLEN – Hell! Said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story. Heineman, UK, hardcover, 1934. Doubleday Doran & Co., US, hardcover, 1934. Valancourt Books, softcover, 2013. [NOTE: Horror writer Karl Edward Wagner included Hell! Said the Duchess on his list of “The Thirteen Best Supernatural Horror Novels” in the May 1983 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine.]
A slim volume, a real curiosity, and a highly enjoyable read.
Michael Arlen is best remembered (if at all) for his best-selling The Green Hat (1924) which is pretty much forgotten these days. And is there anything so terribly forgotten as the best-sellers of another generation?
Not for me. I read The Green Hat (not to be confused with The Green Hornet) and while researching it for a review, I came across mention of this later work. Well, there’s something inside me that will not pass up anything with a title like Hell! Said the Duchess, so I ran down a copy, and discovered a neglected gem.
Plot-wise, this starts out as a rather obvious Murder Mystery: a series of gruesome crimes, dubbed the “Jill the Ripper†murders is terrorizing London in the 1880s, and evidence points unmistakably to a woman who must be innocent — the eponymous Duchess, who is known far and wide ass the very soul of sweetness and light. Police are puzzled, friends are frantic, and confusion is rife.
All this is carried along with a light, humorous prose that reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, as in:
Or:
The bantering tone fooled me into thinking I had the mystery figured out, only to find that there was no mystery here. Only a terrible truth that surprised & shocked me – if you can imagine being shocked by a work of fiction.
Arlen shifts gears in the last chapter and the ending is a shattering surprise. I can say no more except that I urge you to try it and see if you agree.
November 18th, 2022 at 5:30 pm
Here’s the full list of ‘best 13 supernatural horror novels’. I’ve read zero—with falling angel being the only one on my radar. https://www.listchallenges.com/13-best-supernatural-horror-novels
November 18th, 2022 at 5:36 pm
Here’s the book: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.209057
November 18th, 2022 at 6:00 pm
And here’s that whole issue of Twilight Zone that has a number of interesting things in it in addition to the list….https://archive.org/details/Twilight_Zone_v03n02_1983-06_noads/page/n75/mode/1up?view=theater
November 18th, 2022 at 8:22 pm
Thanks for all the links, Tony!
November 18th, 2022 at 7:37 pm
I’m with you on Michael Arlen, an interesting person who also created The Gay Falcon. Not that kind of guy, Gay as in Gaylord. This led to many imitation Saint films, radio shows, and television series with nothing in common too any of the other dramatizations.
November 20th, 2022 at 3:01 pm
Arlen was one of the most fashionable writers of his time, an escapee from the Armenian genocide (his real name was Dikran Kouyoumdjian) he became the chief chronicler of the fashionable set in London with his witty and often then shocking books (F. Scott Fitzgerald was an Arlen enthusiast as recounted by Ernest Hemingway), and his works were the basis for films such as A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS based on THE GREEN HAT and of course the Falcon series. He also wrote the screenplay for THE HEAVENLY BODY (1944) with William Powell and Hedy Lamar
Although his work is different, he falls in that same category as Frenchman Maurice Dekobra of writers hugely popular and highly fashionable, of vaguely gossipy writers who everyone was reading who are largely forgotten today save for one or two titles no one reads (Dekobra’s once ubiquitous MADONNA OF THE SLEEPING CARS). Simon Raven (who resembles Arlen in many ways including the eroticism and sharply observed commentary of the smart set) seems to be sadly falling into that category today.
It’s an elegant and often accomplished form of fiction that reaches its sell by date as the times the writer chronicles pass all too often, though occasionally an Oscar Wilde or Fitzgerald surpasses them.
His style was noted for its casual voice and “heightened erotic pitch”. In the vein of HELL! SAID THE LADY he wrote a volume of GHOST STORIES influenced by Saki and Oscar Wilde.
His son Michael J. Arlen was a noted critic for the NEW YORKER and bestselling author of two non-fiction books about his childhood in Southern France and the Armenian genocide EXILES and PASSAGE TO ARARAT that reveal a style as easily readable and witty as his fathers).
Arlen seniors last book was THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
As pointed out in many other places here and on the Internet his short story about “Gay Falcon” features a tough laconic and ruthless insurance investigator in the Peter Cheyney or Sam Spade mode, far from the insouciant amateur adventurer of the films though he probably comes closest in the George Sanders entry THE FALCON STRIKES BACK based on Raymond Chandler’s FAREWELL MY LOVELY and the Tom Conway THE FALCON AND THE CO-EDS (the best of the series in my estimation featuring a young Dorothy Malone).
November 20th, 2022 at 3:09 pm
Tony,
I’ve read nine of the thirteen titles missing the Masterman, Ryan, Gregory, and Nicholson. I’ve read something by Masterman, at least the name is familiar, but never heard of the others.
ALARUNE is hard to find in English translation, but there are several film adaptations from the silent era to the Sixties.