Ironing Nylon & a Hatshop: The Blue Sapphire by DE Stevenson

The Blue Sapphire by DE Stevenson

published 1963

 

  [excerpt]

‘Miss Julia,’ [the housekeeper] said. ‘Are you sure you’d not like me to give yon petticoat a wee press? It’ll not take me any time at all when I’ve done his pyjamas.’

‘Maggie, I’ve told you nylons shouldn’t be pressed.’

‘They needn’t be pressed,’ declared Maggie, making the all-important distinction, ‘but it brings them up so nice.’

‘It spoils them,’ said Julia with a sigh.

The matter of Julia’s nylon underwear had already been discussed, ad nauseam.

 

Well! After the detailed look at late-50s underwear in the post on Anatomy of A Murder this week, here is a splendid glimpse of life in the early 60s – still servants, but new-style underwear: picture is a fashion ad from a couple of years later. (And see also the recent entry on Margot Bennett’s Someone From the Past – more discussion of the underwear du jour.)

The works of DE Stevenson are fascinating: beloved by so many people, and the ultimate comfort read. And breaking every rule in the creative writing book. (I have covered two others of her works on the blog)

Her style, and her structures are quite strange, and hard to organize in your head. I keep reading them, whenever one is particularly recommended to me, and every time I shake my head in awe at the woman’s randomness.

Recently we have been looking at hats on the blog, several posts, and one of my lovely readers mentioned this book, which has its heroine going to work in a hatshop. Excellent. Off I went in pursuit…

Julia is a nice young lady: she is engaged to be married, and lives a life of some comfort. But, her widowed father has recently remarried and Julia feels surplus to the situation. Her new stepmother Retta (wandered in from a Patricia Wentworth book have we? – she being the queen of strange names) thinks it would be an awfully good idea if Julia found herself lodgings and a job.

So she does, and oh my dear it was so heart-breaking, so difficult but oh, here we are, lodging with an ex-theatrical in a beautiful house. And landlady Miss Martineau knows a hatshop owner in need of an assistant. Yes, life is very hard for poor Julia.

Miss M must have been a good actress -  she does a very funny skit to show Julia what she needs to do to excel in her new job:

Suddenly she was a different person, languid and affected. ‘The very latest from Paris,’ she drawled, bending her head from one side to the other and patting her curls with the tips of her fingers. ‘So chic, so becoming . . . the line so original, so intriguing! Let us see if it becomes Madame,’ she added, removing it from her own head and settling it carefully upon Julia’s. ‘Beautiful!’ she cried in sudden ecstasy. ‘What could be better? It is Madame’s colour; it enhances the loveliness of Madame’s eyes; it shows off her delicious complexion! Let me pull it this way a trifle—no, that way! Exquisite!’ cried Miss Martineau, clasping her hands and rolling her eyes. ‘Such faultless taste! Such perfect line! Quite ravishing! It is Madame’s chapeau . . . and only twenty guineas. Too expensive?’ asked Miss Martineau in surprise. ‘Oh no! Oh dear me, no! Twenty guineas isn’t out of the way for such a beautiful chapeau. Oh, I do want Madame to have it! Well—for Madame—let us say eighteen-ten.’

Julia learns her lesson well, and is a big success in the hatshop, although the other assistants don’t like her and have some sabotage plans. Her fiancé, who we can tell is not right for her, doesn’t really approve of her working, but then he takes himself off on an extended holiday – with mentions of new golfing friends of both sexes -  so who is he to complain?

Julia meanwhile has allowed herself to be picked up on a parkbench

Julia herself was greeting the sunshine in a simple white frock and large straw hat with a sapphire-blue ribbon round the crown (it so happened that the ribbon matched her eyes; perhaps she was aware of this fortunate circumstance)

- by another young man, Stephen, who decides to ignore the engagement and just chase after her. He seems to me to behave quite badly in this, and also encourages her to invest in his business – in another kind of book he would undoubtedly be a conman/murderer.

So this is all going nicely, and Madame Claire’s hatshop is full of interesting detail

Some of the hats came from wholesale manufacturers and some from well-known houses in Paris, but many of them were made by Madame with her own clever fingers. Quite often these consisted of a few artificial flowers and a piece of gauze or straw. The materials cost a few shillings and the ‘creations’ were sold for pounds. It seemed wrong, somehow, but Julia comforted herself by the reflection that the clients were paying for Madame’s skilful work. Like a picture, thought Julia. How much did a picture cost in actual money? The canvas and paint were practically worthless. It was the skill of the painter which made the picture valuable.

 

But then suddenly Julia ups sticks and takes herself off to Scotland to look after a long-lost relative who is very ill. Did Stevenson forget where she was in the story? Did she get her manuscripts mixed up? Occasionally she says that maybe Julia will go back to the hatshop and to her room in London, but not very convincingly. There is one more mention, which I did enjoy:

[Maggie] was dressed in a black cloth coat with a brown fur collar and a black straw hat (which would have given Madame Claire a migraine).

This is the housekeeper in her uncle’s house: and what a twinkly-eyed wonderful servant she is, someone we feel we know from every single similar book. It is she who does the ironing, and she insists poor exhausted Julia has breakfast in bed every day, and so ‘Julia found her dressing-jacket and went back to bed’.  Dressing-jacket! I guess we can assume this is the same as a bedjacket?

There are problems with the house, finances and the health of the lost uncle, and Julia gives a hand to sort everything out. Another man turns up, Neil, a medical student, who helps out with all this. Do you know, it really wasn’t clear to me which of these men Julia was going to end up with: there was a genuine question in my mind.

I wondered if the book was part of a series, or contained series characters: if not, there were an awful lot of loose ends. Perhaps a fan could enlighten me? There is a character called Peter, who turns out to be Peta, a woman, who never actually appears, which seems strange. And it’s not really clear where geographically everyone is going to end up, or what Julia’s father is going to say about it all. I was befuddled by some of the outcomes.

I do wonder if DES should have been writing crime fiction – between the conman-style activities above, and this later scene:

The spasm left her as limp as a rag. She lay there helpless. [He] was rolling up her sleeve. ‘What are—you doing?’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to give you an injection—just a tiny prick—you’ll scarcely feel it.’ Her arm was dabbed with something cold and then there was the prick of the needle. ‘You’ll be all right in a few minutes,’ he told her.

We’d know what to make of that in other circs.

DE Stevenson was at the far end of her career now – she wrote 40 novels in 40-odd years, and lived from 1892-1973 – and good for her, keeping on going and plainly bringing great delight to her readers. And see how much I found to say about this light book.

Hatshop – from many years earlier, but this kind of shop wasn’t being photographed much in the 1960s – Wikimedia commons.

White dress from clover vintage

Hat from NYPL