The intricate secret world of bridge coats

 What did Widmerpool's mother's bridge coat look like?

 

You are about to read a sentence that the literary critic and academic John Bayley described as a prime example of ‘inexplicably good moments in literary art’, and as having humour, delight, and aesthetic bliss. (Take that, Stephen King, you might say, with his dismissive remarks about clothes mentions earlier this week)

This extract is from A Buyer’s Market by Anthony Powell, (published 1952, set in 1928/29), it concerns a dinner at the Widmerpools’ flat, and the key sentence is the first one.

“Why, Mother,” said Widmerpool, speaking with approval, “you are wearing your bridge-coat.”

The garment to which he referred was of flowered velvet, with a fringe, and combined many colours in its pattern.

[Another guest arrives] Miss Walpole-Wilson…too, was wearing a richly-coloured coat. It was made of orange, black and gold silk: a mandarin’s coat, so she explained.

 

 

This post has been long requested by Chrissie Poulson, and has been a long time coming for a very specific reason. Back in 2019, the idea of bridge coats was under serious discussion around here - you can look at this post, which sums up the chitchat and has a link to another:

An Avenue of Stone by Pamela Hansford Johnson

The problem is that it is hard to define a bridge coat, and even harder to find a really good picture of one.

The original idea was: a fancy jacket you put over your nice frock when you are going to sit down to cards at an evening event, as it might be colder in the card room, and you are not moving around. This from the 1928 Illustrated London News: (Though they had been around longer than this extract implies, you can find references to them from around 1900 on.)

“Bridge has become such a national institution that it is only natural that a mode of its own has been inspired. The bridge coat is the unmistakeable mark of the seasoned player and no well-dressed woman considers her wardrobe complete without one. There is a practical side to them too, for one person is invariably away from the fire, and light sleeves give just the requisite amount of warmth.”

But then, women became aware that this was a sensible addition to other outfits – in the extensive fictional mentions, there is a strong thread of ladies of slender means using the bridge coat to zhush up their ancient evening dresses. As well as, of course, the assumption that the poshest of UK houses can still be rather cold. (See this post on a Cyril Hare book for the intricacies of trying to dress appropriately on a freezing Christmas Eve)

Barbara Pym was a super-fan of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, the novel sequence that includes A Buyer's Market, and was apparently delighted by the idea of Mrs Widmerpool’s bridge-coat, according to her biographer Hazel Holt. She wanted to write ‘a short paper for a literary magazine’ on the jacket – as far as I know she never did, and I do feel that it would have been very short. Although this particular bridge-coat has mythical status, I have only found one actual reference to it in the books (please correct me if I’m wrong). Mrs W herself is very much a power in absence: she hosts the dinner party above, attends another social event (though wearing tweeds rather than bridge coat – wartime I guess) and is otherwise mostly discussed rather than appearing in the sequence. (‘Do you know that she suggested that she should live with us after we were married?’ says a potential bride of Widmerpool. Potential mother-in-law sees her off.)

Anthony Powell was himself a big fan of Barbara Pym, and John Bayley (again) says Mrs Widmerpool’s ‘coat of many colours is indeed a little bit like the contents of [Pym’s] A Glass of Blessings’.

And, in Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle - published two years before A Buyer’s Market, in 1950, (and much of it written a lot earlier) we have this:

‘Belinda…was occupied with the problem of what she should wear. She hoped that Harriet had not also borrowed her black velvet bridge coat, as she wanted it herself on these late September evenings. But then Harriet was probably too stout for it, although she liked her clothes to fit tightly and always wore an elastic roll-on corset.’ Harriet and Belinda are sisters, living together in a small village, and clothes are important in their lives.

In my lately-discovered favourite, Sheila Pim, there is a classic usage in the 1950 A Brush With Death:

“Hester was plumped in a quilted bridge coat for warmth”

– she is attending a tea party in a cold Irish house.

The above-mentioned An Avenue of Stone by Pamela Hansford Johnson has two different bridge coats. The first is a tribute to wartime austerity and clothes rationing – the book dates from 1947:

‘Lovely frock, Jane,’ said Charmian.

‘Oh, do you think so? Do you know what it is? My dear, it’s half my last year’s second-best black, and half Aunt Sarah’s bridge coat, all merged together by me…at one of those Make-Do-and-Mend classes!’

Later on, one of the main characters – Helen, an older woman -

appeared defiantly at dinner-time in a bridge coat criss-crossed with rambler roses, a terrible garment which Daniel had long ago banished.

In Moray Dalton’s 1938 Death in the Dark, we have a very low-rent version, reduced to the bare bones of the look and the necessity:

Mrs. Ramblett came in. She looked very sallow and weary … She was wearing a velvet bridge coat over her old torn cardigan. “Do sit down. What a wretched fire. I tell Mrs. Lacy to pour some oil on it. But she’s so silly. She says it’s dangerous.”

All these ones seem to be black, probably velvet, with embroidery or fringing or some other decoration, probably in additional colours. And no-one ever seems to have a new one, they are venerable garments, brought out year after year, to be thrown over your equally long-serving dress.

But then the shape (straight, not fitted) and name of a bridge-coat migrated as a handy description of something smarter and newer, in other colours and fabrics. People bought, or made, new ones.

In Dorothy L Sayers’ Busman’s Honeymoon (much discussed here lately) the newly-married couple go to dinner with the vicar:

Harriet was glad they had taken the trouble to dress. The vicar’s wife… had done honour to the occasion with a black lace dress and a daring little bridge coat in flowered chiffon velvet.

 

This sounds to me to be on the cusp: I’m guessing a venerable dress, and a recently-acquired jacket – colours not clear.

In a history of weddings, With this Ring by Anne Alloway, there is this description of a 1932 wedding. The bride’s mother wears a ‘charming gown of black satin marocain and Chantilly lace …with which was worn a lace bridge coat and a chic hat of black straw’.

(Marocain is a ribbed crepe fabric)

Designers could see that women like a jacket or short coat over a dress (then and now), so took the name for a different version. Here are some available in Liberty’s in 1928:

..  flowered gauze in soft pastel shades trimmed with marabout ; next, a brown velvet appliquéd with gold; and on the right a double black georgette with appliquéd embroideries in exquisite colourings, a panel of gold gauze ...

Incidentally, there is some everyday sexism apparent when you start looking into them: a bridge coat can also refer to a heavy coat worn by a naval officer (on the bridge of his ship, d’you see?) and that is fair enough, but all dictionaries and reference works inexplicably ONLY give this definition. (And if you do find women’s ones on an internet search, you will likely find my blog turning up – nice for me, but not much help)

I have very much not exhausted the topic, and am also relying on readers digging up a few more bridge coats for my collection – either pictures or literary references.

 

Top picture by William Orpen of Dame Madge Kendal, an actress of the Victorian and Edwardian era.

The second jacket was originally owned by a dancer of the Ballet Russe, from around 1920.

File:Jacket, woman's (AM 1992.77-1).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Black bridge coat from the National Trust:   Bridge coat 1361795 | National Trust Collections

Blogfriend Sovay found the splendid sewing patterns, during a previous discussion (in the comments on this post) on evening wraps/coatees/bridge coats.