Mourning again– Black Plumes and Jewellery

Black Plumes by Margery Allingham

pubished 1940

 

 

Last week I looked at mourning clothes: something that was a huge part of life for hundreds of years, with complicated rules and implications, but has practically disappeared now.

Of course it featured a lot in books, and in particular the Golden Age detective fiction that is so big on the blog. So much so that there is plenty of material left over for more entries.

This one is triggered by a Margery Allingham book, Black Plumes.

Now, until a few weeks ago, if asked, I would probably have claimed that Black Plumes was a book in Margery Allingham’s Campion series and that I had read it many years ago when I read all those books. If pushed I would have thought about funerals – unhappy families – bad atmospheres among upmarket arty types. An imagined mishmash of Police at the Funeral, Coroner’s Pidgin, More Work for the Undertaker (based on the title).

But it is actually a standalone murder story, (although the rest of my predictive description holds) and I do not think I have ever read it. So that was a treat  - an undiscovered book from an author I have loved for years. Very recognizably Allingham, and just a good read, without being the best crime story ever.

The mourning is important:

She did what she was told and bought black for herself, Phillida and every servant in the house… Startled dress-shop women with a couple of mannequins apiece were shown into Gabrielle’s bedroom, where she kept them parading up and down in funereal splendour until she was satisfied that her granddaughters were to be suitably clad. Nobody wept. There was a grim purpose in the proceedings and a strange element of gallantry. Frances, her arm full of black chiffon, ran into David outside Phillida’s door on the night before the interment.

 

Later, Phillida is ‘a graceful greyhound figure in her black suit’. (I liked the top picture for mourning, but she should be wearing black stockings.)

But then – the young heroine, Frances, is invited out by family friend David (this is days after a death in the house):

 

“Put on a nice blue dress and I’ll fetch you at seven-thirty.”

“Gabrielle says we’re all to wear black for a month.”

“Does she indeed? I say, I like her. Old Grandmamma Intestinal Fortitude, isn’t she? Have you got a mourning dance garment?”

“Yes.”

 

They go to a nightclub – ‘outrageously expensive, comparatively exclusive, pleasant without being in any way good’. And whom should they see there but the grieving widow…

 

Sitting well back and dressed in a dark frock, but nevertheless there in public not ten days after the disaster, was Phillida herself. David looked from one to the other of them. He was white and his jaw had set. “You blithering fools,” he said, the old-fashioned expletive giving the remark an emphasis which no stronger word could have done.

Phillida was wearing the chiffon which she had thrown so carelessly on one side on the night before the funeral. The smoky drapery mingled with the shadows and was hidden, but on her corsage glittered an enormous spray of diamonds. Frances gaped at it. Phillida had a good many jewels, but a staggering effort of this sort was not a thing one brought out lightly from a drawer in the dressing-table or even from a safe in the wall. It seemed incredible that she should never have seen it before.

To me it’s slightly surprising that any of them can go out to a nightclub at all at this stage – just wearing black doesn’t seem to make it OK. And my 1940s etiquette book says this:

Even the most generous-minded will find it hard to believe that the one who chooses to go to dances, night clubs, or [large] dinner parties really feels very sad.

(This book, which is full of good sense, also feels that it needs to be spelled out that those in deep mourning shouldn’t go to prizefights, ie a boxing match. The mind boggles slightly.)

The big thing, and something we probably can’t instantly see in 2024, is the jewellery – in the earlier post there was mention of a heavy necklace of old jet, and that gives a clue: wearing diamonds is a dreadful faux pas. The only jewellery – certainly for a widow within days of the death – should be black or maybe pearls, maybe touches of silver. No diamonds, no coloured stones, no gold. What is Phillida thinking?

jet jewellery

An older member of the family has a better idea of how to dress:

she came forward alone. She was in full mourning, made almost bulky by a fox cape hanging to her knees and surmounted, most unexpectedly, but very charmingly, by an old-fashioned widow’s cap with a starched and goffered lining and a long dark veil hanging down behind. Her natural dignity saved the situation.

The veil from a startlingly enjoyable collection of mourning pictures at the NYPL, collected (as they so kindly do) into a digital book to gawp at. Jet jewellery, same source.

And there will be more to come on mourning and on the Allingham book...