"The Green Hankie" f; and now m, sort of - (2 Parts)

[count tiszula]

This is a parody of "The Green Hat" by Michael Arlen. As ever all the odd bits are genuine and the bits that are normal are made-up. It should be out of copyright by now but with the increase to seventy years after death it isn't; so it's for the purpose of study or review; all right?

The Green Hankie

A romance for a few people.

It has occurred to the writer to call this unimportant history The Green Hankie because a green hankie was the first thing about her that he saw; as also it was, in a way, the last thing about her that he saw. It was bright green, of a sort of silk, and bravely blown; being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hankies affect pour le sport.

I saw it for the first time [writes the author] on the eve of my removal from my two rooms and a bathroom in a mean lane in a place called Shepherd's Market. Now the first thing is to clear the ground for the coming of the green hankie, for Mr H G Wells says that there is no money to be made out of any book that cannot bring a woman in within the first few thousand words. Shepherd's Market is, in fine, a collection of lively odours inhabited largely by novelists and bounded on the South by Piccadilly; and rejoices, therefore, in the polite direction of Mayfair.

I had been that evening at a party; for that is now the name that folks give to a dance, - I am not sure why. Now I had no sooner cast my hat on the bed than I heard, from outside in the lane, a woman's sneeze.

It was powerful, yet high-pitched; with an inhalation that resounded through the night, and an exhalation that bespoke a widespread spray; a sort of HAAH-SHRAAAASHCHAH! Now I am not one to let such a bold and attractive sneeze go by without an attempt to seek out the sneezer; and I could order my privacy by looking down from my bedroom windows for a clear prospect of the lane. Of woman, however , there was neither sight nor sign; only a long, low, yellow car. Open as a yacht, it wore a great shining bonnet, and flying over it was that silver stork by which the gentle may be pleased to know that they have just escaped death beneath the wheels of a Hispano-Suiza car, by appointment to His Most Catholic Majesty.

Downwards to my door I looked, and there was a green hankie before my door. The light from the one lamp in Sheep Street fell about it, and that was how I saw it was a green hankie, of a sort of silk, and bravely blown; being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hankies affect pour le sport.

[iI]

"Do you doe if Bister Barch is id?" asked the voice of the green hankie. But I could not see her face for the shadow of the hem, for it was a piratical hankie, such as, with knotted corners, might very possibly defy the burning suns of El Dorado.

I stepped out into the lane, and the green hankie and I stared up at the topmost windows of the grubby little house. I could see her upturned nostrils, sparkling silver in the reflected light.

"I fear he is out, " I said; "unless you would care to wait for him in my chambers."

She still looked up, thoughtfully. She was tall, not very tall, but as tall as becomes a woman. Slowly, she sniffed a huge sniff, retaining in her little nose the glories that her sneeze had uncovered. Still she held the green hankie in position to cover her mouth, and as she looked up, her eyes began to close, and fill with tears. She gave a little gasp, and then "Huh-HATCHOOOOOOH!", another great sneeze threw her head forward into the silken rapture of the green hankie, so that her nose, which had been tilted up, found itself again on a level with my face. She moved the hankie hurriedly from side to side, then grasped it fiercely in both hands, and, throwing her head up again, gave a colossal blow of her overflowing nose.

"Excuse me," she said in a little voice.. "PSCHWEEEEEEEEEEEEERCH! PPPPWERRRRRRT!" Again she rubbed the rich cloth against her nostrils, and gave a little gasp of pleasure.

"Yes, let us go up." And so, she first, we went up the narrow stair to my landing. In the sudden flare of my match there was revealed a three-penny bit of freckled flesh just above her hankie at the tip of her nose, and I had occasion to rebuke myself on the depravity that is man.

"Oh, here!" She was offering her cigarette-case. It was an oblong white jade case, initialed in minute diamond letters; IS.

"Iris," she said. "Iris Storb. Turkish on the left, Virginian on the right, and snuff in the top compartments. And how I would like," she added in that husky voice, "A pinch of that strog sduff."

I pushed open the door of my room, and let her go into the sitting-room; and so we became friends. She sat in the deep wicker armchair, which had come with me from Chelsea six years before, but would travel nevermore. It creaked madly as she sat down. "Of course, "She said, "It's contagious..."

"What is?"

" This frightful subber cold." Her right hand hung limp over the arm of the chair. It was just faintly dusty, and the nails shone like pink ivory. The emerald on the third finger held my eyes enchanted.

"It's a bit loose," she was saying.

"Aren't you afraid of it falling?"

"Oo, no! I have a knuckle. I crook it. Now take "dreamed the husky voice, " now take a night in Algeria. Take also a hill, and on the hill a garden."

"The Hotel St George, Mustapha Superieur, Algiers".

" And watch, my friend, two shadows that walk there. He said 'Here is a present for you, sweet.' and he gave me this emerald which you are kind enough to admire.

" 'Alas,' I said, 'it is a little big for me?'

"'Yes, it may fall. But if you curve your knuckle in time, it won't dream of falling'. And then I cried miserably 'Hector Storm, what do you mean?'

" 'I mean, Iris, that you are as that ring...'

" 'Beautiful but loose, Hector? Ah, timeo Danaos!' "

She took a small pinch of snuff from the white jade oblong , looking round wisely over the lid of the little compartment. Her straight little freckled nose flared....

[Footnotes and more to follow]

[starpollen]

Oh you HAVE to continue this! It is absolutely superb, and you just CAN'T let it stop here!...

[Here Secretly]

Oh. My. God.

PLEASE go on.

[Vetinari]

It's contagious????

How wonderful! As Starpollen said, please do continue. I mean taking snuff with such an irritated nose.....

[Jemmabean]

*fans self*

Dude... count... you are awesome.

[allergyboy2001]

Great story!

[count tiszula]

She waved the cigarette-case about, sniffing it. A grain of snuff clung like a gem to the edge of her painted lip. It was not fair. I saw that the dawn had slyly thrown a grey handkerchief over the window.

And suddenly she held the green hankie in front of her, at the level of the collar of her leather jacket, where a red elephant marched across her dress. Her eyes closed, her mouth gaped, and after a very big sniff, she began to sneeze.

"HAH-CHOOOOOSH! SHTOOOOSH! HAH- SCHTSCHOOOOO!" The chair creaked and creaked.

"Hah-TISHOOOO! TISHAAAAAH! TCHAAAAH!" The texture of her face was grave, she was busy with the angle of her green hankie. The chair creaked and creaked.....

"HAH-RASHAAAAH! Hih-RASHOOOOOOO! HIH-TCHOOOOO!"

...and then it was as though snapped by silence, and our startled eyes joined over the emerald that lay on the floor like the spray from the sneezes, which were unfair sneezes. She shivered faintly, and drew herself very taut, and was very proud.

And now, like a string of pearls, two silver lines ennobled her lips, as the pearly light of the dawn struck across the empty floor. With a pleasing sniff, she placed to her nose the green hankie, and gave another resonant blow, like the horn of Roland summoning twenty thousand knights.

"PSSHIIIIIIIITT! PSHAAAAAAAAHRSH!" She paused, moving the viridian cloth from side to side, then more sensitively rubbing her nose against the cool, gentle, silk, closing her eyes again in an ecstasy of relief. She took the green hankie in one hand and smiled at me, a sudden smile to break any man's heart.

"No," she said, " certainly not. My ring, please." I was bending down to pick up the emerald to replace it on her third finger when I heard another sneeze from without.

It was clearly a boy's sneeze, but I am not one to quibble. I put my head out of the window, and there, under the one street lamp in Sheep Street, that illumined the primrose car, stood a dishevelled middle-aged man in ancient day clothes and a bowler. Yet such a man could not be such an attractive sneezer, and I saw that he was being approached by a tall, very handsome young man whom I knew to be the writer who had recently moved into the ground floor of No 9, Sheep Street, having come down from Balliol last June. He was in evening dress, having doubtless attended a ball, or a party, or both, that night, and as he greeted the older man, his head tipped back, almost dislodging his tall hat, and I saw, and heard, a fine "HAAAAAH-TCHISHOOOOH!" the twin of the first. The old lamp silvered the burst of masculine spray that burst from his mouth and nose. I turned back into the room. In the dusk of the bedroom, she lay coiled on the bed. She was asleep. It was perhaps then that I realised she was beautiful. The green hankie was gone.

"Iris," I said. Her hair was thick and tawny. It was like a boy's hair, swept back from the forehead, which was clear and brave and sensible as a boy's. Above her neck her hair died a very manly death, and so it comes about that Iris Storm was the first Englishwoman I ever saw with "shingled" hair. This was in 1922. I lit a cigarette. There was a little shiny bit in the valley between her cheek and her nose, perhaps where the pearly strands had brushed away the powder. To this I applied a little "Quelques Fleurs" talc powder, placed on the green handkerchief. Hers was a small, straight nose with an imperceptible curve, just as any straight line might have, and its tip quivered a little as she breathed. I touched the green hankie with its cargo of powdered , perfumed talc , to her nostril. At once it began to flare, and yet the sneeze that disturbed her sleeping breast was delicate and girlish. She simply took a gentle breath and "HA-TISHOOO!" the gentle, vulnerable sneeze barely produced more than a silent sibilance, and a tiny spray of saliva that just misted my hand with a refreshing thrill. And so she awoke. And I would replace the emerald. I would, when hair that was not mine was not pressed to my ear, and fingers not my own did not take the cigarette from my lips, and teeth not mine did not bite my lips.

[iII]

Of all that had once decorated the walls of my sitting-room there was left by the removers only a looking-glass. She stood before that.

In the Upper Fifth at school there was a tall, cold-eyed blood named Dwight-Rankin - I think he died on Gallipoli - whose neck was as clean and unspotted as a girl's. The back of her head affected me like that; it was just like Dwight-Rankin's.

"My hankie, please, " she said. I appeared to have been holding it in my hand. With her left hand she crushed it into a ball and kept her fingers on the hem. Down, down, with two fingers of her left hand, she tucked the hem of the green hankie into her right sleeve.

"Goodbye," she said.

I said "You are like a boy after his first love."

"Oh, if it was boyishness. It is not good to have a pagan body and a Chislehurst mind, as I have. God bless you, dear,"

And I said that He had, with Iris Storm.

"This is the telephone-number, " she said, and on the flyleaf of a book she scrawled the number with her lipstick. MAYf....

High above the sharp noises of the new day I heard the scream of an electric-horn, and the yet more piercing sneeze of an innocent woman.

THE END

Footnote

Shepherd's Market: Visitors to Shepherd's Market today find that all the street signs say "Shepherd Market"; but then complaining is a bit like finding it odd that Marylebone High Street is not labelled "Marrowbone High Street". The taxi-drivers still know what to call them. Anthony Powell , who has inserted himself into the story, uses both forms, a result of editorial interference, I hazard. Supposedly it was built by a gentleman named Shepherd [ which makes the genitive yet more necessary]; but somehow there must be an echo of the old May Fair; after all in the early C18 it was where the sheep ended up when they were driven in from the West [unlike those driven across London Bridge to Smithfield]. It was all green fields along the Bath Road as far as High Street Kensington. Apsley House was called No 1 London partly because it was the first house you came to.

It seems incredible that in the twenties comparatively impoverished young gents could live there, yards away from where the infant Queen lived in Piccadilly. But Powell , who of course only moved into 9, Shepherd Street in 1926, and thus only experienced his first season as a deb's delight in 1927, clearly states that , having read "The Green Hat", he just wandered in there and found diggings in the first place he tried. Arlen's book is referred to Powellianly in "A Buyer's Market", and uncanonical though it be, I could not resist including the scene where the narrator returns home after a hard night at the Huntercombes' ball and Mrs Andriadis's party, to find Uncle Giles inexplicably standing outside his door in the dawn's early light.

Timeo Danaos: I fear the Danaans. Virgil's complete line, Laocoon's prophetic utterance confronted by the Trojan horse in the Aeneid, is "Quicquid id est timeo Danaos et dona ferentes". What that it be I fear the Greeks even carrying presents. The present tendency to translate it as "I fear the Greeks and I fear people bearing gifts" is only possible if you were not taught at your prep school, as Mrs Storm obviously was, that "et" means "and, too, even". It's like saying that "Et in Arcadia ego" doesn't mean "Even in Arcadia I am" but rather something like "I too have been in Arcadia".

On another note, what a wonderful line " Beautiful but loose, Hector; ah timeo Danaos." is! It ought to be the title of a study of Arlen.

Chislehurst: a fine Kentish town, where many of my ancestors lie. I can't think what Mrs Storm is on about, except that the Walsinghams lived there and their men set out thence to murder, or save, Marlowe.

Three-penny bit: at the time the thruppenny bit was the smallest silver coin, a tenth the weight of a half-crown or half a dollar, so a nickel I suppose; what you put into Christmas puddings. and not that strange bulky bronze thing that we all remember. It seems to echo Chaucer's "farthing of grease", a mistranslation of "maille", meaning both metal coin and "macula", that is stain.

initialed: yes, he misspells "initialled".

pour le: for the

quelques fleurs: some flowers.

Nabokov; author of "Pale Fire". Pronounced "NerBORKerff"

Iris Storm: Though the name clearly comes from Iris Tree, daughter of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and niece of sneeze-author Max Beerbohm, it seems Arlen and Aldous Huxley were in a triangular or more relationship with Nancy Cunard, daughter of Sir Bache Cunard and his wife "Emerald". She appears as Lucy Tantamount in Huxley's "Point Counter Point". She was clearly a complete bitch who grew into an irritating mad elderly woman. It is difficult not to identify her with a range of similar characters. Strict Wavians will have noticed that Mrs Beste-Chetwynde in "Decline and Fall" also drives a Hispano-Suiza, and although I don't know if Waugh ever knew her, by the time of that novel she was having an affair with the black musician Henry Crowder, perhaps the model for "Chokey" in uncensored versions of that story. Similarly, the "girl from Afternoon Men" of Powell's memories, ... but no, there must be lots of bitches around, though perhaps none so comprehensively dismissed as by Powell fifty years later in "How the Wheel becomes it."

party; Is this an in-joke by Arlen, who was supposedly involved in the first ever bottle party? Hon Loelia Ponsonby, later Duchess of Westminster, of the courtier family. unexpectedly found herself alone in St James's Palace, and rang up all her friends, telling them to came round and bring a bottle. Arlen arrived with a case of pink Champagne, after which things improved.

[Vetinari]

What a risk to take! All that contagion. And fslling asleep in his bed! What a cheek! The poor fellow might easily have ended up with a cold himself.

Oh so lovely.

How talented you am!

[vignette]

I wonder why I've never read this novel, because it sounds like exactly the kind of book I would enjoy. I fear, however, that it may never live up to your version, count.

[count tiszula]

It's because it's not literature. Well, it may have become it now; thirty odd years ago Huxley was literature but Waugh almost wasn't.

Well, well 2500 posts; it can't really be true, can it?

boo...

[countless]

what a great story !

and very British

C