The London Venture

MICHAEL ARLEN

By MICHAEL ARLEN

Copyright, 1920,

By George H. Doran Company

THE LONDON VENTURE

— B —

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To

THE SISTER

of

SHELMERDENE

APOLOGIA PRO NOMINE MEO

Out of consideration (in part) to such readers as may read this book I have assumed a name by which they may refer to me (if ever he or she may wish to do so kindly) in the same manner at least twice running—a feat of pronunciation which few of my English acquaintances have performed with my natal name. But there is also another reason, considerate of the author. I have been told that there are writers whose works would have been famous if only their names could have been familiarly pronounced—Polish and Russian writers for the most part, I gather. Since I had already taken every other precaution but this to deserve their more fortunate fate, in changing my name I have, I hope, robbed my readers of their last excuse for my obscurity.

Dikran Kouyoumdjian.
"Michael Arlen."

The London Venture: I

THE
LONDON VENTURE

I

MY watch has needed winding only twice since I left London, and already, as I sit here in the strange library of a strange house, whose only purpose in having a library seems to be to keep visitors like myself quiet and out of harm's way, I find myself looking back to those past months in which I was for ever complaining of the necessity that kept me in London. How I would deliver myself to a congenial friend about what men are pleased to call "the artificial necessity of living"—a cocktail, that courtesan of drinks, lent some artificiality! With what sincerity I would agree with another's complaint of the "monotonous routine of politeness," without indulging which men cannot live decently; how I would mutter to myself of streets and theatres full of men and women and ugliness! Even as a cab hurried me through the Tottenham Court Road to Euston the smile which I turned to the never-ending windows of furniture shops was at the thought that I should not see them again for many days, and I could not imagine myself ever being pleased to come back to this world of plain women and bowler hats and bawdily coloured cinema posters, whose duty it is to attract and insult with the crude portrayal of the indecent passions of tiresome people. If there be a studio in purgatory for indiscreet æsthetics, Rhadamanthus could do no better than paper its walls with illustrations of "The Blindness of Love," or "Is Love Lust?" For it is now a London of coloured drawings of men about to murder or be murdered, women about to be seduced or divorced. One has to see a crowd of people surging into a cinema, by whose doors is a poster showing a particularly vapid servant-girl, a harlot of the "dark-eyed, sinister" type, and a drunken, fair-haired young man who has not yet realised that discretion is the better part of an indiscretion, before one can understand "the lure of the screen."

And even the entrance of Euston, rebuilt and newly painted, gave my eyes only the pleasure of foreseeing that the new yellow paint would soon be dingy, and that the eyes of porters would soon no longer be offended with upstart colours which quarrelled with the greyness of their experience. And in the carriage I leant back and closed my eyes, and was glad that I was leaving London.

But the train had scarce left the station, and was whirling through the northern suburbs which should so fervently have confirmed my gladness, when I felt suddenly as though some little thing was being born inside me, as though some little speck of dust had come in through the open window, and fixed itself upon my pleasure at leaving London; and very soon I realised that this was the first grain of regret, and that I should not spend so many months away from London as my late depression had imagined. Then up will start the strong-minded man, and pish and pshaw me for not knowing my own mind. And if he does, how right he will be! For little do I care whether this mood be as the last, so they both fill up the present moment with fitting thoughts, and pain, and pleasure!

Now, I was already thinking of how I would return to London next year in the spring. What I would do then, the things I would write, the men I would talk to, and the women I would lunch with, so filled my mind, and pleasantly whirled my thoughts from this to that, that Rugby was long passed before even I had come to think of the pleasures that London in early summer has in store for all who care to take. When the days were growing long, it would be pleasant to take a table by the windows of the Savoy, and dine there with some woman with whom it would be no effort to talk or be silent.

Such a woman at once comes to my mind, with dark hair and grey-blue eyes, the corners of whose mouth I am continually watching because it is only there I find the meaning of her eyes, for she is a sphinx, and I do not yet know if what she hides is a secret or a sense of humour. You will say that that means nothing, and that she is quite invisible to you; but you do not know her, and I do—at least, I know that much of her. And with her it seems to me that I could dine only at that table by the windows where I could turn from her eyes to the slow-moving English river, and the specks of men and trams, which are all that the leaves of trees will let me see of the Embankment. Perhaps I would tell her of that novel which I once began to write, but could never finish nor have any heart to try again; for it began just here at this table where we are now sitting, but the man was alone, and if he ever lived outside my halting pages and had the finishing of my novel, he would put himself here again at the end, with you sitting in front of him. For that is the whole purpose of the novel, which I never realised till this moment, that once a young man was sitting here alone and wondering why that should be and what he should do, and in the end he was sitting