More O Douglas: The Proper Place

 

The O Douglas/Anna Buchan books were recommended to me by blogfriend Shay as comfort reads in difficult times, and I have been working my way through them…. today:

 

The Proper Place by O Douglas

published 1926

 

 

Mrs. Jackson chuckled. “What I say is I repay dressing. I’m not the kind that looks their best in deshabille. See me in the morning with a jumper and a skirt and easy slippers—I’m a fright. But when I get on a dress like this over a good pair of corsets, and a hat with ospreys, and my pearls, I’m not bad, am I?” Nicole assured her that the result left nothing to be desired.

Mrs Jackson is not in her Proper Place. She and her husband – self-made, nouveau riche, in trade - are about to buy the home of the Rutherfurd family in the Scottish border country, and move out of Glasgow to try out country life. (The house is – helpfully or confusingly – called Rutherfurds)

The original family – mother Lady Jane, daughter Nicole and niece Barbara -  are sensitive, posh, highly-strung and very poor, which is why they have to go.

A point in their favour is that although Nicole longs to hate the Jacksons, and never visit them, she cannot in the end resist the new owner’s good-heartedness. [ADDED LATER: I confused two kind ladies visiting Mrs Jackson originally - see comment below from Marty - now corrected]

Nicole hears from her friend Jean, who has gone to visit Mrs Jackson. This is what Jean says in her letter:

“I was shown into the drawing-room. Nothing could spoil that gracious room, and Mrs. Jackson, to do her justice, hasn’t tried. I told you I would hate her, but when she rose to greet me in a smart velvet gown complete with a hat covered with Paradise-plumes, and an ermine stole, I thought she was about the most pathetic thing I had ever seen. She gave me a very warm welcome and as I sat beside her on the sofa she confided in me that, except for the minister and his wife, I was her first caller. “ ‘I wish they’d come,’ she said wistfully, ‘for the cook bakes special things for tea every afternoon, and I dress myself, and when nobody comes I hardly know where to look.”

This is, obviously, because of the snobbishness of the neighbourhood. the kind ladies will lead the way in making sure she ends up with friends.

Nicole and her mother and her cousin are all living quite elsewhere by now – they have got a quirky place on the sea called Harbour House in another town, so now O Douglas has two sets of county people and poor folk to play with, and the usual web of relationships, and wonderful servants, and the deserving poor, and children, all turn up.

Some interesting details – ‘I repay dressing’, above is a phrase that always intrigues me. As I have said before, ‘Pay for dressing’ seems to mean something like ‘looks good in nice clothes’ or ‘gets a good return on clothes in terms of appearance’. Perhaps (gives) pay(back) for dressing. Lord Peter Wimsey’s mother says about Harriet Vane that she ‘would pay for really inspired dressing’ (and plainly doesn’t mean ‘she has a lot of money for good clothes’).

It is explained to Mrs Jackson as potential purchaser that the house runs on ten indoor servants: butler, footman, cook, kitchen-maid, under kitchen-maid, three housemaids, two more superior maids. This is to look after three fit able-bodied women – why was there never  a proper revolution in the UK? Much is made of this 'poor' family's new house being ludicrously and hilariously small ie not needing quite so many servants.

There is the usual young schoolboy whom everyone loves (a different such boy appears in most of the books) and quite an unexpected fate for the kindly Nicole. Her cousin Barbara is one of those characters where the author changes her mind about her vices and virtues – both during the course of this book, and in a later book in the series where she features again: She gets slowly more unpleasant.

Several times in the books the author uses a specific phrase about a trip: ‘I had a cold weather in India’ which one assumes was a normal phrase for the right season to go. Young women often went out in the hope of finding husbands – they were known as the Fishing Fleet - but no Douglas heroine is so crude. And in Taken by the Hand, there is a useful list of what you would need for a visit to India:

“Only a supply of washing frocks, and probably you have tennis things that will do admirably. Some tidy clothes for evenings—not too smart, an evening coat to sit about in on deck, a wrap-coat and tweeds for the beginning and end of our pilgrimage.”

See recent posts on evening coats of all kinds…

Washing frocks are not clothes to do the washing in, but ones that are informal and easily looked after - rinsed out and hung up. (By the maids, obv)

The first of Douglas’s book (1912) has the high concept title ‘Olivia in India’ – it is (you would guess) a lightly fictionalized version of the author’s own such trip, based on her letters, and was I believe successful. I found it unreadably dull.

There are some nice clothes descriptions in The Proper Place:

Barbara wore a dress the colour of Parma violets, Nicole was in white, with a spray of scarlet berries tucked into the white fur which trimmed it.

Mrs Jackson likes to make a splash, and talks of champagne-coloured outfit and one made of gold tissue.

 

It is understandable why the books were so popular in their day, and they do work as tosh/comfort reads.

The top picture – a great favourite of mine – shows Bianca Todd, an American painter. The picture is part of the Smithsonian collection, and is on Wikimedia Commons. I originally used it to portray Molly Bloom in full flow in the very early days of the blog.

Parma violets dress NYPL.

Nicole in white with red berries – this is Worth so not very likely for the impoverished young woman.

Le fleur d'or - NYPL Digital Collections

Champagne/gold tissue also NYPL.