As the countdown to the October 1st start of Literary Footprints 2018 continues, Jen Pedler tells us more about one of the characters who features on her walk Mayfair’s Bright Young Things which features as part of our literary walks festival.  Hear more about Michael Arlen and his contemporaries – Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and Nancy Mitford – on Jen’s walk on 8th October, full details and booking information can be found on her walks page.

To see the full programme (and details of our great value season ticket) click the Literary Footprints 2018 link above.

In homage to Michael Arlen, whose 1920s novel The Green Hat features in my Mayfair’s Bright Young Things walk, I always wear a green hat when leading this walk. Most of my guests have not encountered this writer before and so do not recognise the allusion until I introduce the novel. But this was not the case when I led the walk for the Footprints of London Literary Festival last year.

Michael Arlen by Howard Coster © NPG

“I’m glad to see you’re wearing a green hat,” said one of my guests as she arrived for the start of the tour.

“I’m pleased you realise the significance,” I responded.

She then told me that she was Michael Arlen’s great-niece and that the friend accompanying her was researching his biography, hence their interest in the walk. I was pleased at the end of the walk that they felt I had done him justice.

Michael Arlen was an Armenian, born Dikran Kouyoumdjian in Bulgaria in 1895. His family fled to England to escape persecution in 1901. After a brief spell at Edinburgh University, Arlen moved to London in 1913 to attempt to earn his living as a writer.

But with the outbreak of war a year later his position became difficult; he was disowned by Bulgaria as he would not serve in the Bulgarian army and the British were suspicious of him as Bulgaria was an ally of Germany. This meant that he was unable to change his name or become a naturalised British citizen.

He spent the war in the company of other modernist writers who had been deemed unfit for military service or were regarded suspiciously, including Aldous Huxley (who had volunteered to join up but was rejected due to poor eyesight; he was half-blind in one eye) and D.H. Lawrence (who had been accused of spying and signalling to German submarines while living at Zennor in Cornwall).

For his first published novel A London Venture (1920) he used the assumed name Michael Arlen. In the ‘Apologia’ prefacing the novel he gave two reasons for this name change.

Firstly that his “natal name” – Kouyoumdjian – was “… a feat of pronunciation which few of my English acquaintances have performed…” and secondly that he had “… been told that there are writers whose works would have been famous if only they could have been familiarly pronounced…” He concluded, “… in changing my name I have, I hope, robbed my readers of their last excuse for my obscurity.”

Yes, I used to stumble over the pronunciation of Kouyoumdjian but thanks to Michael Arlen’s great-niece it now trips off my tongue! And my walk is hopefully helping to save him from obscurity.

In 1922 he became a naturalised British citizen and officially changed his name to Michael Arlen. He was a well-known society figure in 1920s London – driving a yellow Rolls Royce and renowned for his immaculate dress and impeccable manners.

The novel that made his name was The Green Hat (1924). The opening scenes are set in Shepherd Market, where Arlen himself was living at the time. It is here that the unnamed narrator first encounters femme fatale, Iris Storm – the mysterious and ultimately tragic heroine of the novel. The story follows his pursuit of her and her yellow Hispano-Suiza car around London and Europe. He first sees her wearing a green hat.

Downwards to my door I looked, and there was a green hat before my door. The light from the one lamp in Sheep Street fell about it, and that was how I saw that it was a green hat, of a sort of felt and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect ‘pour le sport’.

The Green Hat (1924)