Babes in the Wood by Michael Arlen (1929)

This consists of five novellas, and sits well within the usual Arlen remit. They show all the hallmarks: sardonic wit, nervous positivity of an urbane kind, the romance of the twenties, tragic staginess, all blended together with a special skill in piquant detail which makes for enjoyable reading. Confessions of a Naturalized Englishman takes the author as character into a romance with the bored, vivacious wife of a blood. She does not fix readily on anyone, rather appealing to their brightest parts in a superior way and then moving on. The author makes a date, almost against his own good judgment, to see her at the Carlton Grill and is stood up. When she turns up later at his measly Chelsea flat the angel of unhappiness has lighted on his shoulders, and she gets a frosty welcome. They end up as friends. A Girl with a Future has three men, a chivalrous young Frenchman, a young swarthy Spanish millionaire and a stylish English drunk, competing for the charms of a beautiful young American staying in the south of France with a fearfully fierce mother. Angling, suspicion, fellow-feeling, rumours of others and confusion play their part in a round of events where all of their felicities and failures come home to roost. Portrait of a Gentleman places a severe middle-aged Englishman within the grasp of a young, wealthy and beautiful Swedish widow. He is fascinated by her despite himself and gets caught up in jealousy and self-loathing at his own weakness. But, having asked her to marry him, she hesitates. She has realised exactly who he is and what her free ways would do to him. The "Lost Generation" places an English mining engineer in the way of a free spirited bohemian socialite. He is gripped by her, even though there is plenty of evidence that she's anything but pure. At her holiday house in the south of France, surrounded by young people, he fixes on a youthful English soldier, who looks a little sad, but seems upright. Then the strike hits as he realises that this 'dangerous' woman has the soldier in her sights as a conquest. He aggravatedly interposes in the affair at her bedroom door in the middle of the night, and disillusions the soldier even more, who leaves in disgust (of a sort). She forgives the Englishman amusedly, and everything fizzles out. Nettles in Arcady has a romantic young Frenchman fall for the belittled and squashed wife of an English bully. It is the first time a woman has appealed to him as other than a conquest; there is some powerful attraction in trying to save her from her tormentor. But what he doesn't realise is that she has accommodated her place in life and no longer really wants 'saving' - she just needs a friend. Of course, his passion spoils what they might have had. The bright colours and contrasting post-war cynicism here zing with the usual style and witty flow, making for reader involvement beyond that which the material might have commanded in other hands.