Arbiters

What's in a name? Nothing, until it's famous. What's in a title? Many things, whether you inherit it, buy it, invent it, or only bask in its resplendence.

Thus, humble, no-name hatters in London backstreets engross their myriad 'scutcheons: "By special appointment to H. R. H. Edward of Wales K. G. ... to H. R. H. Prince George. ... to H. M. Edward VII." Jewelers along Regent Street blazon their joyous servitude "To H. R. H. Princess Adelaide . ."'.' to Her Grace the Duchess of York."

To U. S. merchants, the patronage of great ones is no new boasting point. Millions have been paid to princely sheiks, queenly vamps and kingly pugilists to signify their approval of this or that skin clay, depilatory or vigor food. But of "special appointments" U. S. merchants have not boasted much. Alas, U. S. titles are unglamorous, unhereditary things that often change over night. A President's bootmaker rises and falls with the party. A tennis champion's haberdasher may be leveled by a lob.

Yet many a merchant, including the American Tobacco Co., has published volumes of testimonial advertising. The latter hired Funnyman Will Rogers to drawl about Bull Durham, Funnyman Irvin Cobb to reminisce over Sweet Caporals, Pretty girls Billie Burke, Mae Murray, et al., to render Tuxedo pipe tobacco humanly interesting. The American Tobacco Co. also makes "Melachrino" cigarets, for years advertised as "The One Cigaret Sold the World Over."

Melachrino is a great name in itself; indeed it is almost a royal title in tobacconese. It scarcely needed recognition by personages, great or puny, rich or scrabbling, out of Who's Who or the Almanac de Gotha. Yet the Melachrino-makers decided there was merit in a scheme that combined titles with testimonials. They found a woman, who originating in some outer fringe of the Swedish nobility, had married into the Russian nobility and been "in touch" for 20 years with European nobility in general.

This noblewoman paid out no money directly. In some cases a selected charity received a donation, but there was no crude, out-and-out testimonial-buying. She simply rounded up personages whose appended nomenclature was fit for the lips of gold-laced majors-domo, and persuaded them to write notes like this:

Je trouve tres bien les cigarettes Melachrino.

That was what Jagat Jit Singh, Maharajah de Kapurthala, dashed off for her one day last July at his luxurious Paris pavilion. That was what, reproduced as Jagat Jit penned it, together with Jagat Jit's gorgeous starry-eyed, white-turbaned photograph, with his coat of arms and flaunting crest, that was what began a new series of Melachrino advertisements last week. A.n illustrated map showing the shape, flora and fauna of Jaga Jit's part of the world (India) enhanced the copy, which was marred by one error only. Some careless wight had translated Jagat Jit's words thus: "I find the Melachrino cigarettes extraordinarily good." As all the French-speaking world knows, tres does not mean "extraordinarily," but "very." Jagat Jit had found the Melachrino cigaret "very" good.

Following this Maharajah, who was described as "society leader, man of fashion, arbiter elegantiarum", were to come other arbiters of elegance, their titles, portraits and obliging testimony: Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, Prince Luis de Bourbon (whose brother, Alfonso bestrides the throne of Spain), Count Boris of Russia....