Old Bestseller Review: Hell! Said the Duchess, by Michael Arlen

Review: Hell! Said the Duchess, by Michael Arlen

by Rich Horton

The very first review on this blog -- a decade ago come next month! -- was of Michael Arlen's The Green Hat. And for that matter my first contribution to F&SF's Curiosities column concerned Michael Arlen's Man's Mortality. So, yes, he is a writer I take some interest in! Michael Arlen (1895-1956) was an Armenian-Bulgarian-British-American, though his fiction was all while he was primarily British (though living in France for much of this period), and entirely published between the wars: his first novel appeared in 1920 and his last in 1939. He was born in Bulgaria to Armenian refugees, and christened Dikran Kouyoumdjian. His family emigrated to the UK in 1901. His parents wanted him to be a doctor, but he wanted to be a writer, and indeed his family disowned him. He adopted the pen name Michael Arlen, and eventually legally changed his name. It's clear that his point of view was profoundly affected by his identity conflicts, not to mention a fair amount of ethnic prejudice directed his way. 

His primary subject matter was the smart set of the Lost Generation, and this eventually proved sort of a trap. Certainly this was the subject matter of his most famous novel, The Green Hat (which remains readable in its highly melodramatic way even now) and many of his later stories come off as less successful variations on that book. Two of his efforts to break out of that typecasting are Man's Mortality, an SF novel that suffered from appearing just a year after his rival Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and the novel at hand, Hell! Said the Duchess, which as we will see is a strange mixture of near future SF (with a very satirical cast) and gothic horror (and all set among the same privileged set as are many of his other works. Neither of these works received the respect he craved, and during his last years, in the US, he was nearly wholly blocked. There were a few short stories that Mark Valentine claims were reworkings of earlier work, and one of his stories, about a detective named Gay Stanhope Falcon, became the basis for a series of movies starring George Sanders as the Falcon (in imitation of Sanders' earlier role as Leslie Charteris' The Saint.) (Some people conflate this character with an unrelated later TV detective called The Falcon.) It's tempting to say that his only true subject was high society between the World Wars, and with the passing of that era he had nothing to write about.

Hell! Said the Duchess was published in 1934. It got good reviews -- Mark Valentine, in his fine introduction to the edition I read, calls it "his last great success." Despite that early notice, it fell out of print for decades, as did, really, all of Arlen's books save The Green Hat. But the estimable publishers Valancourt Books reprinted it in 2013, and that is the edition I bought. It's a very short novel, roughly 36,000 words by my estimate.

It is set in about 1936, and the Fascists have taken over the Conservative Party (and Oswald Mosley is Minister of War.) Arlen is cuttingly satirical about this, and about the Conservatives, and English tradition, in general. But his subject here is the Duchess of Dove, a beautiful, modest, and retiring young widow. After setting up her situation, he reveals that her reputation has taken a (surely unfair!) blow, as there have been reports that she has been seen in low bars with inappropriate people. Her friends begin to investigate, and spy on her movements, and it seems that there is a mystery ... she is almost never seen to go out at night, despite these reports. 

But just as her friends are ready to insist that all the rumors are false, a series of murders shocks London. Soon they are called the "Jane the Ripper" murders, for they seem to have been committed by a woman who seduces men, and after taking them to bed kills them. And what evidence there is points to the Duchess ... Naturally, the authorities are convinced that such a modest and beautiful and high-ranking lady is innocent, and they begin their investigation with every intention of exonerating her. Unfortunately, one of the police officials is actually competent despite being politically suspect (there is a screamingly funny chapter detailing the first steps in the investigation ....) As things continue, the evidence that the Duchess must be guilty seems overwhelming but there are still curious aspects.

And then the novel takes a strange turn, as a certain sinister Dr. Axaloe comes into focus. He seems to be a sexual predator of some sort, or perhaps just a man into free love. And there are connections to the Duchess. The chief investigators track Axaloe down, and what they find is truly unexpected and horrifying.

The tone shift, roughly halfway through the novel, is rather striking, and I'm not sure it's wholly successful. What we have, in my opinion, is a quite amusing and pointed satirical first half, making dark fun of the British aristocracy and their Fascistic drift; followed by a second half that only intermittently maintains the satirical point of view but is instead a piece of definite gothic horror. That mode is less interesting to me, though it may appeal to a lot of readers, and I think it is actually pretty well done. I think this is a novel worth attention -- and enjoyable and sometimes quite wonderful book, a bit overcooked in places but certainly fun to read.