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.
Shopping in Selfridges 1942, Imperial War Museum
Colour photo from the Old Ralph Lauren tumbler
I do like Home Front books, Moira. And this one shows how the war is affecting people's lives in different ways. I like the writing style, too. I don't know why I haven't read Gibbons before, but I should!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you'd enjoy her Margot, even though she's not in your favourite genre of crime fiction
DeleteSome of Thirkell's books are set during and just after the war, with shortages and evacuees and the despised Them--played mostly for laughs but with an underlying...bitterness?sadness?gloom? She was really down on Christmas, but I think there was a Christmas dance in Happy Return?
ReplyDeleteI've covered a couple of those books, with a children's party and an adult party, both of them well done. [you can look for Thirkell in the authors list at the top] I just looked at the entry for Cheerfulness Breaks in - 1940 - and it links up with recent discussion (on A Fatal Gift) on novelists dealing with the war,and her adapting her style to a different era after the light-hearted (in her books) 1930s.
DeleteI did see the two parties, but Happy Return had a dance (held in the local pub). One of the dances was something called Lancers, which I'd never heard of. Some of the participants had hoped for bad weather so that they could stay home. And Thirkell described the coming of Christmas as seeming gloomier than ever.
DeleteOh I will have to find that one. Yes the Lancers was a country dance I think, there were a number of them that turned up at that kind of event - The Gay Gordons, Roger De Coverley, Paul Jones. We used to learn them at school when it was too wet to go outside for games...
DeleteA good grumpy Christmas will make a good entry.
When I read about Book Tokens in British books I was always so envious! I always got books for birthdays or Christmas but until I started babysitting and had a tiny bit of money to spend I rarely got to go into a bookstore and buy a book for myself. I've made up for it since, however!
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'd realized they were a UK thing! A splendid invention, and there was nothing I liked better than getting a book token as a child - better than cash, because nobody could suggest you saved it, or spent it on something practical.
DeleteA friend of my mother's once gave me some money 'to buy sweeties' for myself, in circs in which I could dash straight out and do so. I bought 2x paperback books, and was nervous she would be cross, but she was delighted.
I'm sure you've absolutely made up for your childhood lack of book tokens!
I have immediately ordered it from The London Library. Love 'on the grumble'! Book tokens, yes, a treat. I now give them to my granddaughter, nephews and niece. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteI think you will enjoy - it is very interesting for many reasons.
DeleteYour lucky family with the book tokens!
"The Batchelor" is in my TBR pile - sounds like this would be a good time to dig it out!
ReplyDeleteSovay
Oh do read it, I really think you will like it.
DeleteNothing to do with Gibbons and not a Christmas book, but, Moira, treat yourself to Nancy Mitford's "Pigeon Pie" (1940). Set in the early phony-war phase of the conflict, it's full of delicious clothes writing. Like this: "[Florence's] hair, which had been brown, was indeed a rich marmalade, and she was rather smartly dressed in printed crepe-de-chine, though the dress did not look like much when seen near Sophia's [summer silk]." Meow. There's Sophia's friend Olga, who has married a British-born and Oxford-educated offshoot of Russian royalty and who therefore affects a passionate Slavicism including a snood or "yashmak," plus a peek at Florence's foundation garments. "A pair of stays and a gas-mask case had been thrown across the bed cover. Sophia, who herself wore a ribbon suspender-belt, looked in horrified fascination at the stays. 'No wonder Florence is such a queer shape.'" Not to spoil the plot, but suffice it to say that Sophia saves England, in a silly farce that seems consigned to the lesser Mitfords but is great fun. Foundation garments, the Home Front, and some bonus digs at nutty American religious movements...this book has your name on it.
ReplyDeleteOh thank you! I read it many years ago and have absolutely no memory of it, but it sounds ripe for resurrection.... I may still have a copy somewhere. Great suggestion...
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