Christmas presents from London

We’re into December, so it’s time for the annual Clothes in Books trope of Christmas in Books – seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y (particularly, of course, those featuring murders and other miseries)

Many of the entries  - this year and in the past – were suggested by clever readers: so if you have a favourite please do let me know and I will try to use it

The Bachelor by Stella Gibbons

published 1944

 

[excerpt] Miss Fielding did her Christmas shopping as usual. She refused to abandon her custom of giving handsome presents to her friends and acquaintances because of the war, and she went up to London in a day or two with her handbag full of notes and returned in a discontented mood laden with leather blotters, book-ends made like elephants, and gilt fir cone posies. She said that the choice in the shops was very poor and everything was shockingly expensive and it all seemed so senseless, while the difficulty of obtaining the customary attractive wrappings and tyings kept her on the grumble until the very eve of the holiday. 

Kenneth’s presents were all bottles, filled with scent or whisky. Miss Burton was having an austerity Christmas and making bedroom slippers, traycloths and needle-cases of scraps of silk and brocade from her piece bag. She did not concentrate on one gift at a time but darted feverishly from one to another and became progressively more exhausted as time went on and none were finished. Betty bought book tokens for everybody, for she was so overworked at the Ministry that she could not spare the time to hunt for other presents in the denuded shops and she was glad to take this easy way out.

 

 

comments: The Bachelor is a treasure trove for those of us who love a Home Front novel: a funny involving story of an English provincial household, following the very different members on their adventures, and absolutely full of fascinating detail of how they live their lives. There have been a couple of earlier entries, including a Christmas one – the festive season is dealt with in admirable detail.

Stella Gibbons  The Bachelor The Bachelor 2

Another of last year’s Christmas books was EH Young’s Misses Mallett New Year's Eve Ball, and a Virago favourite (clothesinbooks.blogspot.com) – and there are a couple of similarities.

I commented on the other book that, unusually, finances weren’t an issue for the heroines. Here in The Bachelor, the residents have been very much impacted by the war, but they are comfortably off, money is not a problem, though of course getting enough servants IS an issue. It makes a change from most war books.

Then there was this – where one of the residents is getting annoyed about interference:

What has it got to do with Connie and Frances if Mr. Fielding proposes to me? thought Betty. It isn’t even as if he lived at home and his remarrying would upset their lives. No; it’s because they live in such a backwater that they have an exaggerated sense of the importance of their own affairs; and Connie has this absurd notion about no one in the family marrying.

There are two more examples of this type of anti-marriage feeling in the earlier post…

Stella Gibbons will always be best known for the wonderful Cold Comfort Farm, but there is a lot to enjoy in her other novels, several of which feature on the blog, and particularly the Home Front ones – which always give me an excuse to look at the Imperial War Museum photo collection.

Outside Selfridges, 1944  

Shopping in Selfridges 1942, Imperial War Museum

Colour photo from the Old Ralph Lauren tumbler

Old Ralph Lauren Adverts tumbler