‘That’s, of course, true.’
And my subject is—what else with such a text?—Sophistication.
Not sophistication in the original unencrusted meaning of the word, but in the overlaid current understanding of it—an emotional rather than an intellectual condition. It is a condition very hard to define, since it is emotional, yet sufficiently easy to recognize—and admire. To be sophisticated you must be blasé; you must be witty; you must not take anything, especially vice, very hard; you must be gay and casual about problems that unsophisticated people are earnest about, though you may (here you are reaching rarefied heights of sophistication) be as earnest as you like about things that average people consider trivial. You must show familiarity with the world of High Society, but also amused disdain for it; you must know, and prove that you know, everything about ordering a dinner in such places as Ciro’s (Monte Carlo), the Ritz (Paris), and the Café de Paris (Biarritz). You should also be able to let fall—now and then, very carelessly, merely because you cannot at the moment think of the English word—a French or an Italian or even a German word or phrase; but it is not excessively important that you should do this correctly or even appropriately; the effect will be the same anyway. Among contemporary writers Carl Van Vechten and Ronald Firbank are sophisticated; and so is Michael Arlen, and so is Ford Madox Ford (né Hueffer).
There is one small drawback to sophistication: it is impossible without an audience. One cannot pleasurably, perhaps not possibly, be sophisticated all alone by oneself. One cannot think of a man getting into an unshared bed as sophisticated—I mean to say, of course, after his valet has left him. Fiction is full of people marooned on desert islands; but only one writer, M. Jean Giraudoux, has ever thought of thus marooning a sophisticated character. It was a delicious and fantastic idea, which made Suzanne et le Pacifique an irresistibly funny book.
This disadvantage, however, is not grave, since sophisticated people are rarely alone, even at night, and in public are sure of an admiring audience. We all admire sophistication in real life, and we admire it still more in novels. This is partly because it is never quite so perfect and finished in the former as in the latter, but chiefly because there is a touch of envy in our admiration for sophistication in life, whereas we share flatteringly in that displayed in a novel. We, too, love Iris Storm fastidiously and consider Sylvia Tietjens’ complicated vices with tolerant weariness. We, too, are of the haut monde and are very offhand about it. We, too, have lived very, very hard and exhausted everything and have come to look with a mellow amusement on all intensities. It is delightful.
Unluckily for me, I do not know any sophisticated people in real life. I have jealously seen them about, in restaurants and places, but I do not know them—or perhaps I should say that they do not know me. But I know sophistication in novels, none better. The sophisticated novelist must be very sophisticated indeed to satisfy my fine trained taste. Any momentary lapse into ingenuousness, and I am on him like a wolf. Thus, among the writers I have mentioned, and among others whom I have not, I salute most especially Mr. Michael Arlen; and this because, more perfectly than the others, he knows how a sophisticated novel should be written: to wit, in a baroque and decorative prose. Mr. Firbank and Mr. Van Vechten may also know this; but they lag far behind Mr. Arlen in turning their knowledge into achievement. They do not discover such felicities as: ‘ ... and over the breast of her dark dress five small red elephants were marching towards an unknown destination’; or, ‘The stormy brittle sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef, Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the Rue de la Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a very handsome way.’ There you have the authentic manner for sophisticated prose.
The reason why the authentic manner is baroque, even rococo, heavily encrusted with ornament, is a melancholy reason. (‘That was a gloomy reason,’ Mr. Arlen would say). It is that there is a certain lack of body in sophistication. To eschew the passions—or perhaps not to eschew them, but to smile at them—to be polished, suave and unobtrusively superior, is delightful, but limits one a bit. Emerson’s assertion that the exclusive man excludes no one but himself is doubtless an exaggeration; but it is certainly true that the exclusive man does also exclude himself. The technique of sophistication in literature is even more exacting than the technique of the drama. Let no one fancy it easy to write sophisticatedly. It is extremely difficult. A considerable proportion of the writers in two continents is attempting it; yet one can count the successes on the fingers of two hands. There is no mistaking the genuine article in sophistication, for the very simple reason that the false is always ludicrous, sometimes violently so, sometimes faintly. English, French and American bookshops, and once a week the Saturday Evening Post, are half full of hilarious attempts at sophistication. It would be a mistake to deplore them; they add to the gaiety of nations. If you care for clear laughter with no malice beneath it, and must give up one book or the other, which would you sacrifice, Alice in Wonderland or The Rosary?
Sophistication in literature, then, as (I presume) sophistication in real life, is immensely difficult of attainment; it demands a special skillful technique, a wary sense of humour and a narrow selection of material. Therefore, as I have already suggested, its manner becomes of great importance. To avoid a lurking sense of impoverishment you must be provided with decorative flowers to pluck by the wayside. The luxuriously appointed cruise around the world on the Arabic (22,000 tons) is not enough; you need those side-excursions to Capri, the Balearic Islands and the foot-hills of Java. Once again I salute Mr. Michael Arlen. His is the manner. One can be sophisticated without it—Mr. Ford is, and M. Paul Morand—but how much better to have it!
Let us turn now to the two novels from which I have taken, almost at random, my text. The novels themselves I selected with considerable care; for, while their sophisticated qualities of course overlap, there are certain examples of sophistication in The Green Hat that are wanting in Some Do Not ... and a few in the latter book that one will not find in the former. Moreover, the two books are done in very different manners.
What, except any one of a score of others from the same book, could give a more admirable condensed example of sophistication than the passage I have quoted from The Green Hat? The narrator introduces you to two ladies—for no reason at all except your amusement and his own. One lady has a title, the other has not. Excellent! He—I have to call him ‘he’ because I do not remember that his name is once mentioned in the book—pokes good-humoured fun at both, but more especially at the one with a title, and then goes on innocently (innocently!) to reveal the fact that he comes from the lower classes and does not know how to ride. You will go far to find a rarer expression of sophistication. For—do you not see?—the narrator, at his ease in the homes of the great, is smiling at class, is actually smiling at riding. This is, by consummate inversion, raising snobbishness to a fine art. And all in such high spirits.