Dress Down Sunday: The Bedjacket Business Plan

LOOKING AT WHAT GOES ON UNDER THE CLOTHES



The Dream Walker by Charlotte Armstrong

published 1955



Dream Walker



Cora was propped high on the bed, having climbed back in to play invalid for this occasion. She wore a rose-pink woolly bed jacket and careful make-up. Set among her froth, that could not entirely conceal the hospital white and hospital austerity, she was rosily and frivolously pretty, except for the pawn-of-fate mask on the face and the nervous slide of the hands along the edge of the sheet, back and forth…


Dream Walker 2

[A later incident]

Cora was wearing a gold-coloured robe of silk, embroidered with black dragons. She was sitting in an easy chair, talking to a strange young man…

I went over to the high bed and lay myself upon it. ‘I’m exhausted,’ I said. ‘Go on with whatever it is.’

Cora got up and swished about, the long folds of golden silk boiling about her quick feet.

commentary: These young bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers, Snapchatters - one gathers that they make a fortune by linking up with fashion houses who pay them to push goods, or they are given their own line of clothes or accessories. When Clothes in Books gets a hugely lucrative deal (any day now I'm sure) then the CiB line of nightwear ('nightwear to entertain in') must be the way to go: a few negligees and kimonos, some elegant lounging pyjamas and - above all, our signature line - bedjackets. We have a built-in audience, my readers seem to love bedjackets as much as I do, and they are very hard to find in real life... 

We, blogger and readers, have always liked them – there are examples all over the blog. And the splendid comments and memories from readers are what make those entries so delightful.

This bedjacket turns up in a truly excellent forgotten book. Charlotte Armstrong isn’t much remembered now, and perhaps is seen as one of a number of American writers of the era, producing smart tense crime novels, usually with a female protagonist.

The heroine will have a career, and some jeopardy, and some romance coming through the plot, but it would be a mistake to underestimate these books because of that. Ursula Curtis, Mary McMullen, Helen McCloy – all wrote excellent books. I have clear memories of a couple of Armstrong books – Mischief is a tour de force, and was made into a film that gave Marilyn Monroe an early role – the 1952 Don’t Bother to Knock. A Little Less Than Kind, on the blog a while back, is a Hamlet re-write nearly as good as The Lion King, and was one of the inspirations for a Guardian article.

This one I read in the 1980s, but had no memory of it at all. I’m surprised, because it is an absolute corker, and very unusual and clever. It has the routine cast of characters – rich, influential, arty, all in New York or Washington, all knowing each other and attending the same social events. We see everything through the eyes of Olivia, a schoolteacher with a private income and an important family. And from the beginning we know half of what is going on. Armstrong has calculated precisely what she wants us to know, and when, and how she is going to trickle out further information: it’s a stunning performance.

We know that a very elaborate plot has been set up to bring down a man who has ‘served his country better and longer than most people alive… he has been like a wise and beloved Uncle John to the entire USA.’ We know who has arranged the plot, and why, and where the money has come from. But we don’t know how it is going to work…

Cora, above, is a small-time actress on the edge of the charmed circle. In a series of very strange incidents, she seems to pass out in front of a crowd of impeccable witnesses. After a while, she wakes up and says she ‘dreamed’ that she was in a certain place, that she walked along a beach in Florida, as it might be, and spoke to someone. It emerges that at that exact time (all this is checkable) she apparently was on the beach, hundreds of miles away, and did speak. Well. There are several of these incidents, and they become the focus of considerable attention.

As readers we KNOW that these are fakes, and we know how they are done – there is a careful plan, and a double has been found for Cora. All that is laid out for us. But still this book is incredibly tense because you cannot work out what the full plan is, and how it is going to be thwarted. It is full of surprises and twists, and moments where I had to think hard about where people were. The only thing that lets it down is a very-much-of-its-time political attitude towards leftwingers. ‘Is she pinkish?’ – McCarthyism was surely starting to decline by 1955, but not in Armstrong’s world.

And on the plus side, it is a short book, 190 pages – in those days, apparently, you could bring in a tight, tense and complex story in that kind of length. How some modern authors could learn from this…

There’s a nice article about Armstrong’s books here.

The bedjacket is a knitting pattern (you too could make one if my online business is slow in coming!) and the woman in the black kimono is Ava Willing Astor. (Colours the wrong way round, but any excuse to use this lovely picture.) Thanks to Marion S, who found the bedjacket for me.






















Comments

  1. You're right about Charlotte Armstrong, Moira. She deserves more attention. In fact, I need to do a spotlight on one of her books sometime soon. I'm glad you reminded me of her. And about the bedjacket? It's an absolute classic! I can see you making a tidy fortune in that line!

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    1. Oh I'm glad to think of you writing about her Margot, that would be great. And yes, bedjackets are the way to go. I will reserve one for you! (It may be quite a wait. I'm holding out for a REALLY GOOD DEAL from a top designer...)

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  2. Designers stole patterns for Victorian shawls, pelerines and hug-me-tights and repackaged them into bedjackets. Not long ago they repacked bedjackets as "shrugs". They didn't last.

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    1. That's fascinating Lucy - makes sense but I hadn't heard that before.

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  3. In one of those wartime "Britain can take it" knitting books, there's a picture of a woman breast-feeding in a bedjacket (back view).

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  4. I read a lot of Armstrong when I was younger and thought she was amazing. I've forgotten a lot of them now, but it's so wrong that she is "all but forgotten" today. Authors like her, and McCloy and Margaret Millar and Shirley Jackson and the rest, created exciting and new crime fiction in the 50's and 60's. Thanks for calling attention, Moira!

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    1. yes, I'm just the same Brad. I don't think I fully appreciated them back in the day, but now I do...

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  5. I suspect that she isn't as well known as she should be because her writing style isn't self-consciously clever-clever. I read one some years back (MISCHIEF I think), and I remember the solid construction and unfussy feel of it .Critics are much happier if a writer trumpets out their intention to be 'profound' out loud, and doesn't try to be too readable.

    This novel sounds a bit like an average episode of MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE from TV. The structure was always that we knew what our heroes needed to do, but we were never told how they were going to do it. It played out in front of the viewers eyes, but only about three-quarters of the way through were you able to see all of the thread coming together. In novels like this we know who the bad-guys are, but there is a sort of pleasure in getting ahead of the unfolding of the narrative. Like a whodunnit, there is an unspoken challenge to the reader.

    I don't know about bedjackets, but just recently I saw a very nice dressing gown on TV. It was a video of Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes in the BBC Classics Serial version of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES from 1982, and at various points he was wearing a dressing gown that looked so warm and solid that it looked as though it could stand up by itself. I want it!

    ggary

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    1. Blimey - Tom Baker as SH is a surprise to me. Now I am going to have to try to find the dressing gown scene. I think we all are very fussy about our dressing-gowns, they need to be exactly right.

      I don't in general like reverse narrations, or knowing books, or ones where 'the question isn't who, it's how' - so when gets past my armour I think it must be pretty good.

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    2. Baker has a good shot at the part. Physically he's a little bit too leonine rather than saturnine, but he's got the presence and that marvellous voice, and he is given a lot of Doyle's wonderful original dialogue to say. Just a shame that the plot requires him to be offstage for about 30 minutes in the middle of the story. There are, I think, 2 dressing gowns in the production. The one at the end of the story is red in colour, and is rather nice, but the one that I really love is worn at the beginning of the story. It's dark green in colour.

      ggary

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    3. So going to have to find this...

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    4. OK, found the opening minutes on YouTube, and yes that is one fantastic dressing-gown: not flashy, but just looking so comfortable and cosy yet smart. And Tom Baker looks like he's doing a surprisingly good job...

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    5. He's certainly got the beak.

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  6. Oooh...found this on Open Library and it's on my ebook TBR list (Moira, you have a lot to answer for).

    If you yearn for lovely vintage bedjackets, a French blogger posts scans from vintage magazines every Monday, and there has never been a week when she doesn't feature a liseuse. You just have to learn to knit.

    http://benesaddict.fr/

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    1. I assume you already speak French?

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    2. Un petit peu seulement! I'm OK on a trip to France, or to read something short with a dictionary nearby - but a knitting pattern might be beyond me. I even found the difference with US patterns a little bit difficult. I am thinking it over as to whether my French or my knitting is better...
      Anyway, that website is amazing, I scrolled through a few entries with complete delight in the patterns, the clothes and the pictures - I want them all!

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  7. Moira: Should you need some legal services when you set up your Canadian subsidiary please call. I am sure we can work out a satisfactory arrangement.

    On the other hand please do not expect many sales in Saskatchewan. In my 65 years I have yet to see a Saskatchewan woman wear a bedjacket or ever mention one. They do not seem to have made it to the prairies.

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    1. Is it that Saskatchewan women never wear bedjackets, or is it that you can't see the bedjacket under all the other layers of clothing?

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    2. Exactly my question Shay. Now, Bill, the question is this: if a lady of your mother's era was sitting up in a hospital bed receiving visitors, what would she have been wearing? Or indeed, if she was ill (or having given birth) at home and might be expecting the doctor or her mother or sister - surely she would have put something on over her nightdress?
      Well anyway - when the business is booming, with my Canadian legal team in top form, we will persuade the women of Saskatchewan that they need them...

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    3. Moira and Shay: The women of rural Saskatchewan of my youth did have need of warm bed wear in an era where heating was limited and bedrooms could be cold by morning.

      What I remember of my mother was that she would wear what ladies called a housecoat over her nightgown. They could be decorative or functional but I never saw a bedjacket.

      Those women were practical ladies who probably would not have seen a bedjacket as useful as a housecoat. I expect they would have worn their best housecoat to receive a doctor or mother or sister.

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    4. Bill: I grew up in Michigan, and my parents in the interests of either economy or character-building, chose not to heat the top floor of our house where the children's bedrooms were.

      Housecoats are lovely but they bunch around your legs in bed. If you're trying to read, a warm bedjacket covering those parts of the body not protected by the blankets is ideal. Of course, once you are up and about, you really want that housecoat. And fuzzy slippers.

      Only hooligans run around the house in their sock feet.

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    5. Shay: The bedroom I shared with my sister was cold on winter mornings.

      I had forgotten about fuzzy slippers. Every woman had them. I thought them cute and cozy. I am sure they were warm though no boy was ever going to wear them.

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    6. I love all this detail - will be valuable to future historians. Shay is absolutely right about the bunching problem, but I can quite see that a thrifty lady might resent the expenditure of buying something that was only useful in limited circumstances.
      Fuzzy slippers. Oh yes. Round where I came from, they often had a pompom on the toes.

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  8. I just found about 6 or 7 books by Charlotte Armstrong at the book sale. I did read her books years ago. I don't remember specific books but I do remember some of them being very chilling.

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    1. Oh good for you. I think your memories are correct, and you will like them, and they are mercifully short...

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  9. There is a lovely bit at the end of Catherine Fox's latest novel, Realms of Glory, where Miss Blatherwick puts on
    "her ankle-length housecoat. I'm glad I kept you all these years, she thinks. Dove grey wool, navy blue piping. Handmade on Mother's Singer sewing machine. Perfect for those draughty Cambridge corridors."
    It sounds a very venerable garment - though my father still wears his dressing gown, bought for university, nearly fifty years later, so probably not impossible. If the CiB nightwear range is too durable, though, you won't make much money, so plenty of flimsier items will be needed too!

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    1. Oh lovely! I've read several Catherine Fox books and loved them, though strangely haven't blogged, I should do that dressing gown! It's the worrying ethics of business isn't it? Durability versus repeat customers...

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  10. I remember my mother knitting bedjackets when I was young, on very fine needles, with very fine wool but I don't ever remember her wearing them - I think they were for my grandmother. By the way, the lingerie range would need boudoir caps, lovely, wispy, frothy, concoctions to go with your bedjacket or kimono and cover your messy hair when you receive guests!

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    1. Oh yes, boudoir caps! And yes, I should start knitting. there are patterns available....

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  11. Don't people wear bathrobes? My parents both wore bathrobes. My mother often wore hers during the day if she didn't feel like getting dressed and didn't have to go anywhere. I have loved my flannel bathrobes. Can't find what I want these days though. So I just get dressed in warm shirts and pants in the cold weather. Have clothes for going places and for staying home.

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    1. I just got the most lovely new bathrobe for Christmas. It has a thick fleecy lining and is so perfectly warm and cosy. I just want to wear it all the time and never get dressed...

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