These charming people

by Michael Arlen

Now why are people like sheep? But perhaps it would be better to ask: “Why, in nearly all novels and conversations, is there one law for the rich and another for the poor?” For in nearly all novels and conversations there is a sort of asinine implication that among the rich, the social, there is no real friendship, but that real friendship exists only among the poor. For years and years and years England has been living under a tyranny, a silly tyranny: it is called the middle-class, and it is belauded by all because nearly all belong to it. Now if a writer writes of the middle-class he is said to have a sense of the Reality of Life, but if he writes of the poor wretches who continue to eke out a miserable existence on their capital in Mayfair, it is said of him that he is writing of people who do not matter, people who are not worth writing about, people among whom none of the real emotions exist, and so on. The patricians never protest, for a gentleman is one who can take abuse properly, the same, of course, applying to a lady. But the others, the Backbone of England! Oh, what a Backbone that is, and how swiftly it becomes a jawbone when it is scratched by a well-aimed bit of contumely! But what does all that matter, particularly when we were talking of Fay Avalon, and how charming she was. She had many real friends, and these confided much in her, but in them she did not confide. Fay Avalon was not capable of telling even the least of her troubles to any one, for she was shy. Beneath her polish, her wit, her grave courtesy—a rare enchantment, that—her supreme ability as a hostess at whose table enemies were notably changed to friends, she was as shy as a girl. Never, never, in all her brilliant life, and it really was a very brilliant life, had she been able to exclude the idea that she might very easily bore people, that, in fact, she was not nearly so clever and amusing as other people. That is why she never confided: she only seemed to....

One of the many secrets that Fay Avalon hid within herself was that she was romantic, deeply. She had always been romantic. John Avalon, K.C., had never been romantic, and never knew anything of his wife’s trouble. He loved his wife jealously, but being a great K.C. is, of course, a very tiring way of life, and so he spent most of his time with her in sleeping.

Romance came into the life of Fay Avalon at a time when she would sometimes say: “I am older than most women.” She was thirty-eight years old, and so she was sorry for herself, and then romance came. It was Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov who brought it. He was, of course, a refugee from Bolshevy, and it was said that before the Revolution his people had owned half of Petrograd, as was only natural, for there are countless Russians of the old order in London and Paris whose people once owned halves of Petrograd, not to speak of the Grand Dukes who made such a mess of all of it. But Prince N. P. Shuvarov was charming, and he was an artist. You knew that because people went about saying he was charming and an artist. You were asked to respect him because he earned his living, and of course you did what you were asked, although you were not aware of any particular esteem instantly alight in the eyes of those to whom you volunteered the information that you worked in the City. But life is different for Russians, they look so tragic, even when drunk, and so one went on respecting old Shuvarov for earning his living. He did this amazing feat by going about doing ghastly drawings of his friends Lady This and Lady That, which he somehow sold to the illustrated journals of the week, where they appeared in all sorts of colours under headings like “The Third of Five Lovely Sisters” or “Popular Daughter of a Great American,” and boldly signed “Shuvarov.”

He was everywhere, in a quiet and pleasant way. Sometimes he was at Fay Avalon’s, but only sometimes at Fay Avalon’s. Superior people who had read Dostoeffsky called him Nicholas Pavlovitch, which is of course the proper way to address a Russian gentleman; while others just called him Shove-off, though not as though they meant it, for every one liked him. Women found him attractive. These Russians, they said, are so Sombre. Mrs. Mountjenkins said he had Magnetism. “One can feel it,” she said, “when he comes into a room.” Lady Carnal said he was charming and so sound.

In Prince Nicholas Pavlovitch Shuvarov, then, Mrs. Avalon found romance. No breath of scandal had even been breathed against her, and no such breath was breathed now. Her purity and her lovely aloofness were landmarks of London society in the second decade of this century. Colonel Repington, you will remember, remarked them in particular. During the period of the war alone he sat beside her thirty-eight times for luncheon, twenty-eight times for dinner, not to speak of the innumerable times when he said “Good-evening” to her in such a way that she not only heard him but answered him. He reports a conversation in which Fay Avalon was distinctly heard to say to the Home Secretary that she detested all secret vices like drugs and love, especially middle-aged love.

“One should live in public,” said Mrs. Avalon. “It is the private life that has ruined so many great lives and rotted so many good brains.”

“Quite,” said the Home Secretary. “Quite.” But in a few days he had to resign owing to liver trouble—so it was said—and Mrs. Avalon fell in love with Prince N. P. Shuvarov. Her one lapse, you understand. All her life she had longed for this one thing, romance; and at last it had come, in the sombre eyes of a stranger.

Mrs. Avalon did not know much about that Kind of Thing—the “private life”—but she knew a good deal about her friends, and that was a good deal more than she intended they should know about her. She organised her life to suit her love. It sounds beastly, that, but then you do not know Fay Avalon and I do, and that is why I know that nothing she did could ever be so beastly as if any one else did it, for she was a darling. As for Prince Shuvarov, he was Russian all the way and could organise nothing. She adored that....

II

Never, never, did they go anywhere, together: neither to the play, nor to a restaurant, nor to a ball; and only very seldom was he at her house, a guest among many. But every afternoon Fay Avalon would steal to her lover’s studio in a quiet street in Hampstead. Not, of course, in her car, but in a taxi.