The Green Hat

By Michael Arlen

Iris Storm has a bad reputation. Her first husband committed suicide and when asked why he did it, Iris said he did it "for purity." Which society took to mean her lack of it. But does Iris deserve her bad reputation? Maybe not.
Pretty, captivating and enigmatic, Iris makes her own way through the world, snapping her fingers at those who dare to sneer at her. But when her path crosses that of a former lover who is about to be married, tears and blood will be shed. Will Iris fight for her own happiness and destroy a newly wed couple's bliss? Or will she bow out the only way she knows how?

This book was a big hit when it first came out in the 1920s. It still holds up although it might be considered a bit over-dramatic what with three suicides and an almost fatal illness.
Here are some quotes from the book that give a little of its flavor:

And one of the reasons why there can never be a Marxist revolution in England is that the rebels will be told they are sneering at the King. They will be abashed.

"Wait till you're so free that you just daren't do what you like. Wait till you're so free that you can be here one minute and there another. Wait till you're so free that you can see the four walls of your freedom and the iron-barred door that will let you out into the open air of slavery, if only there was some one to open it. Ah, yes, freedom...."

"I couldn't tell her," I said.
Guy smoked thoughtfully, looking over my head. "I'll tell her," he said, "in the morning. Had an idea he might blow his brains out."

"And I do so hope, Naps," she said with a fine large smile, "that your friend won't die, for then how will I manage a man who has nothing left to live for?"

New Words

Mulcted: To be punished for an offense or misdemeanor by imposing a fine. 'When the law had gone he would come back wiping his mouth, and jokes were exchanged with the butcher and the fishmonger; but when the law really wanted him, say twice a year, a posse of policemen would simultaneously rush both ends of our lane, and the hearty-looking man was mulcted in a fine not exceeding so much and was back again the next morning within a yard of my door.'

Mondaine: disenchanted, blasé, cynical, disappointed, disillusioned, knowing, sophisticate, sophisticated, worldly. 'It was a sort of blasphemy in her to be so beautiful now, to stand in such ordered loveliness, to be neither shameful like a maiden nor shameless like a mondaine, nor show any fussy after-trill of womanhood, any dingy ember of desire.'

Caddish: offensive, discourteous; low-bred; mean, vulgar. 'I was startled at her eyes in the looking-glass. They were cold blue stones, expressionless, caddish as a beast's.'

Assoiled: assoil means to absolve or pardon; to atone for. '"And oh, if one could be assoiled in human understanding!"'

Declassée: having lost social standing or status. 'His sister was, as it's not impossible to have gathered, what is called declassée -- even for a March or a Portairley.'

Bye-election: a by-election or bye-election is a special election held between general elections to fill a vacancy. 'Hilary, Guy wrote from Mace, was helping a Liberal to fight a musty bye-election in some Staffordshire place.'

Cenotaphs: a cenotaph is a monument built to honor people whose remains are interred elsewhere or whose remains cannot be recovered. 'Yet they would verily seem, those few dead young men, to have a certain god-like quality of immortality denied to the multitude that died with them and for whom cenotaphs and obelisks and memorials must do duty for memory: that they should retain the regret of their many friends is not remarkable, but it is odd, and pleasant, how they will ever and again loiter, gay and handsome and "sound," in the imagination of those who never knew them.'

Puissant: powerful; forceful. 'But would I had the debonair truculence of that puissant nobleman, the Earl of Birkenhead, who has dared to say, in an age given over to the new-rich snobbery of exalting plain, normal men: "I do not like meek men."'

Shagreen: an untanned leather, often dyed green, sometimes made from the skin of a shark. 'Born of Machiavelli by Demoiselle Demi-monde, crafty, thin, pale, dry-shiny as shagreen, he walked to fortune about every great restaurant in Europe, adding always, but with discrimination, to his order of l'aristocracie internationale; and to bankruptcy twice, of truly patrician magnificence, about the baccara tables of his less inspired but more cautious colleague, M. Cornuché of Cannes and Deauville.'

Lysis: recuperation in which the symptoms of an acute disease gradually subside or in biochemistry, the dissolution or destruction of cells such as blood cells or bacteria. 'But in these things the patient just continues ill, two, three, four weeks, might live, might not. Lysis, not crisis.'

Aigrettes: an aigrette is a long plume (especially one of egret feathers) worn on a hat or a piece of jewelry in the shape of a plume. '"Dear, it takes a woman who once had a passion for aigrettes and who loves eating lobsters to be so sensitive."'

Drugget: an inexpensive coarse woolen cloth, used as a covering for finer carpets, as a layer between the carpet and the floor, or as a cheap floor covering. 'Beneath my careful feet was a narrow strip of drugget slanting from the door across to the bed, but on all sides of this strip the floor shone vast and brown in the dim light of a shaded lamp that stood on the heavy oak mantelpiece.'

Funked: to funk is to be afraid of, to shrink in fright. '"Here I am at thirty, a nothing without even the excuse of being a happy nothing, a nothing liked by other nothings and successful among other nothings, a nothing wrapped round by the putrefying little rules of the gentlemanly tradition. And, my God, they are putrefying, and I bless the England that has at last found us out. And if they hadn't been putrefying, sir, and if we hadn't been going rotten with them, you couldn't have taken advantage of the fact that Iris never funked anything in her life to bring her down here and drag her through the slime---"'