Pilgrim’s Rest by Patricia Wentworth


published 1946








Excerpt from book:

[Nurse Lona Day has had her dressing-gown ruined: a jug of cocoa was spilt down it. Miss Silver is investigating:]

‘What was the dressing-gown like?’

Maggie’s face lighted up. ‘Oh, it was lovely – all birds and flowers and butterflies, worked on black satin. Done in China, she said. A lady she was with in India gave it to her.’

‘It sounds extremely handsome – too good in fact for everyday wear as a dressing-gown.’

‘Oh, but it wasn’t – more like one of those house-coats really. She’d wear it for dinner in the evening when it was cold. Lovely and warm it was, with a beautiful silk lining.’

‘Then she did not usually wear it as a dressing-gown?’

‘Oh, no, she didn’t.’


[Later] He discerned Miss Janetta amidst pink bed-linen with an embroidered coverlet drawn up to her waist. She appeared to have sufficient strength to sit up. She wore a bed-jacket trimmed with a great many yards of lace, and not a hair of her elaborate curls was out of place. A boudoir cap composed of about two inches of lace, a rosebud and a bunch of forget-me-nots nestled coquettishly amongst them, and she wore several valuable rings. He reflected that she looked a good deal more like a Dresden shepherdess than a mourning invalid.


comments: Regular readers know that I cannot resist a dressing-gown, a kimono, a bedjacket. It is all research for when my branded Clothes in Books bedwear (Tm) range comes out. Well that’s my excuse - see particularly The Bedjacket Business Plan post here.

Miss Silver herself always has outfits that can best be described as memorable:
She wore a figured silk dress, bottle-green with a sort of Morse code of multicoloured dots and dashes, which had been her last summer’s best, and over it a short black velvet coatee.
Other regular features, reassuringly present in this book, include a ‘hortatory cough’ from Miss Silver; a female character with a ridiculous name (Lona, the owner of the Chinese dressing-gown); an engagement/wedding broken at the last-minute. And the mysterious and hideous bog-oak jewellery:
She wore a row of bog-oak ingeniously carved, and a large brooch of the same material in the shape of a rose, with an Irish pearl at its heart.
For a previous Miss Silver book I found this picture for you:


The books – and I have featured many of them on the blog – always feature outfits I want to illustrate:
So there was Miss Day, with a skirt of russet tweed and a soft yellow jumper. Not very young, but she had a good figure, and the jumper showed it off.


There are also many mentions of women doing the gardening in trousers.

And versions of this ensemble feature in many a Miss Silver book:
there came past her into the room a tall, dark girl in a fur coat with a small black hat tilted at a becoming angle. The coat was squirrel, the hat undeniably smart…


(Picture from the Ladies Home Journal of 1948.)

As I read this one, I thought it has been far too long since I had a good Miss Silver fix (although there are posts on her all over the blog – click on labels below). Pilgrim’s Rest is a most enjoyable entry in the series, with its miserable family, illnesses, unexpected use of cannabis, unlucky heirs, and many suspicious characters. A complex plot, and a great couple of hours reading.

Woman in a Black Kimono is by Alexander O. Levy from the Athenaeum website.























Comments

  1. Lovely post. I like Miss Silver as long as she's in the story from the start.

    The description of Miss Janetta in bed reminded me so much of that fluffy woman whose name I forget in Private Enterprise by Angela Thirkell. Staying in someone else's house, she has full make up on in bed before her breakfast is brought to her. Good grief.

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    1. Oh I like the sound of that one! I have read a lot of Angela Thirkell, but maybe not that one.Will have to go and find it.

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  2. I like Miss Silver, too, Moira. She does, in her way, live within the confines of her generation/the era/etc, so she doesn't feel anachronistic. At the same time, though, I like her original thinking and her way of getting to the heart of the matter before you're aware that she did. Does that make sense? Oh, and about your new bedjacket/dressing gown company? As soon as your line is available, I want the website to order. I can only imagine how great a CiB kimono/caftan/bedjacket would be!

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    1. She absolutely has her own ways and you put it very well Margot. She is how she is, and we can all enjoy her...
      And I'm going to promise you friends&family discount when the fabulous CiB nightwear comes into being!

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  3. That pattern! Now I know what to do with the hospital gown I seem to have stolen...

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    1. Will absolutely need to see a picture when it's done. Bedjackets are such a good idea, still so useful, I don't know why they went out of fashion. People in my family used to have a 'good' one tucked away in a drawer, ready for if they ever had to go into hospital. (Wouldn't be in long enough to need it these days.)

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  4. Well, I am a dressing gown addict, always on the hunt for the perfect one - or simply one more. A long, slinky dressing gown is infinitely useful, IMHO. (Or a long, warm, velvety one - opera coats from the 1920s or 30s come in useful here.) But what is a "row" of bog-oak? Is it a brooch? Or is it like a string of pearls, only you don't say "string" about bog-oak? (And would knowing that this is the case be proof of your impeccable upbringing?)

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    1. I too cannot resist a good dressing-gown, and think it's important to have a range of them for different purposes. I LOVE the idea of using an opera coat!
      I double-checked to see if there was a word missing. But no, that's how it appears in the book. (and there are no references to the phrase that I can find online). So presumably beads? There are a number of examples online.
      I always like the intriguing fact that bog-oak is also mentioned in Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar, when it really isn't something that comes up very often...

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    2. I made myself one out of burgundy velveteen back in 1991-ish? Floor-length, like all proper dressing gowns, cut like an Edwardian dress with a stand collar, full skirt and leg 'o' mutton sleeves, and buttoned all the way up the front. We lived at the time in a house on the edge of what was known locally as Five-Mile Swamp (in rural North Carolina - as the old saying goes, the family trees of some of our neighbors did not fork) and I'm sure the possums and the mockingbirds just loved to see me take out the garbage in it.

      It went missing during our last move and I still mourn it.

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    3. Oh that sounds so beautiful - I was reading the descritpion and saying to myself 'photo please' so was very disappointed by your last line!

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  5. I don't get along with Maud at all. Her attention getting "hortatory coughing" and her knitting and her "supernatural" detective powers. She may be a genuine private detective who earns her living that way, but in this one she guessed a lot and relied on intuition. This was the first (probably the last) Wentworth mystery I read a couple of years ago. For the most part I enjoyed the characters, the intricate plot, and the use of cannabis as a poison. But in the final chapter the story devolved into silly-cliché-thriller mode with an egocentric and garrulous villain who did all but twirl a mustache and throw back a head while laughing manically. I have no patience for that kind of book anymore -- unless its done as intentional parody with tongue firmly in cheek like a couple of books Mark Gatiss wrote. Great series of books for clothes talk so its completely understandable why she's a hit over here.

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    1. Totally take your point John, though for me she stays just on the right side of readable. There are times when I can just sink into a Silver book. And I do love the sociological details, as well of course as the clothes.

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    2. There are some WITHOUT Maud. I ought to try at least one of those. I believe PURSUIT OF A PARCEL is a Silver-less mystery. I have a copy...somewhere. May take days, perhaps weeks, to uncover it.

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    3. Apparently there are more than 30 without her! How busy Patricia Wentworth was. They are all re-published by the Dean Street Press here. I love the thought of you divining into your stacks to try to find one - you may be gone some time.

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  6. How many coughs were there this time? Lol

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    1. How could I have missed out that vital detail? You are right to pull me up. I have double-checked just for you, and there are 61 coughs - including also a gentle one, a prim one, a reproving one, and a slight reproving one.

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    2. Yes, I'm afraid the coughs put me off -- 42 in the last one I tried hard to enjoy, and didn't -- along with the TSTL young women (aka "girls"). THREE of them; the killer had a heyday! Nope, she's not for me, which is a shame, since there's such a deep well to draw from.

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    3. Maybe try them again some time? I used not to read her after being disappointed, I think, that she was not Agatha Christie, my great heroine then (and now tbh). But later I came to them again and realized I could enjoy them on their own terms. They are very good for the blog of course - always plenty of good clothes! Agatha much less generous in that respect.
      I think Wentworth started putting the coughs in deliberately to tease readers...

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    4. Though what Agatha Christie says about cothes is always to the point, I think. Down with a flu I have been reading a collection of Christie's short stories from the 20s .Very uneven quality-wise (to put it charitably) but I was delighted with the reference to a Caillot dress in a story called "Magnolia Blossom". It was somehow so right and so well done.

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    5. Yes, I think clothes are usually a clue in Christie, and I agree are done well. She doesn't describe what characters wear for the fun of it, where Wentworth would. For years Magnolia Blossom wasn't available in the UK - but now everything is, which is nice for completists like me! I must re-read it for that reference, which I absolutely did not remember.

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  7. After putting off reading Miss Silver mysteries for so long, I have fallen for her mysteries and have yet to read one that disappointed me. That is only three in three years, but still. The cough can be irritating, but only a bit. I only have one book by Wentworth that is not a Miss Silver book, but I would like to try that one and more of those.

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    1. I know, Tracy, there's nothing like finding you DO like an author who has written dozens of books. (even though we have our TBRs to consider). I like to know that every so often I will get a hankering to read her and there will always be something there for me.

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  8. I do find her books entertaining although some of the attitudes
    I do find her books entertaining and she clearly knew her audience. While I suspect I would have disagreed with her on many things, I do like that she (like Angela Thirkell) had the characters who we were meant to admire being people who believed that rank had its obligations as well as its privileges. Also I wonder whether she is someone who believed that getting some details of real life when she was writing correct (or at least fitting in with her readership's experience) means she is good at reminding or instructing us of the social niceties of the late 39s to late 50s in England.






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    1. You sum this up very well Adrian, that is very much how I feel about the books. I also believe that because murder plots are intrinsically unlikely, some authors felt it was important to get ther other details right (clothes, manners, social events) to make the books convincing - very much as you say. And Wentworth is an exemplar of that.

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  9. I have something from Wentworth in a tub somewhere. I think I'll stick to that.

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    1. To be perfectly honest, one is probably going to enough. But you should try her sometime...

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  10. I love this one. Lona Day has the most interesting clothing, right up to the end, and I really want that satin housecoat. I also liked that the romance we assume is going to happen doesn't fly in the end. (Trying not to spoil this for anyone!)
    And let me know when the bedjacket plan takes off! I will be your best customer!! :)

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    1. Patricia Wentworth really does have the best clothes descriptions, and is indeed very good on dressing-gowns and housecoats.I think even if I didn't enjoy the plots (and I do) I would read them for the clothes! When the haute couture line comes into being I will be sure to inform everyone ;) !!

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  11. Not read this one, but I will read it. I love Miss Silver, and how could I resist a boudoir cap?! I think they should be reinstated as 'must-have' fashion items for bad hair days - much better than woolly hats, elastic bands or hair clips that look like bulldog clips...

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    1. Yes exactly - I think we can all see ourselves in an elegant, flattering boudoir cap. I shall certainly add them to my (theoretical) line of Clothes in Books Nightwear.

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  12. Many of Wentworth's books are online here: https://www.fadedpage.com/sc/wentworth.php

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