Q: What makes an overcoat theatrical?

 Answer: An Astrakhan collar

Antigua Penny Puce by Robert Graves

published1936

 

 

[Mrs Trent says:] “Mr. Oliver would gladly step into your shoes. If he marries Miss Edith, that’s exactly what he’ll do. He’ll make Miss Edith put up the money to buy you out, and then you’ll see! ‘O. Price, handicap 2, manager of the Burlington Theatre’ —astrakhan collar and all.”

[Jane:] “Yes, he distinctly mentioned plays to me that day he tried to pump me about the twin business. And he’s got just the neck for an astrakhan collar”

I had far too much to say about this excellent  book for just one post, it was getting longer and longer, so I decided to separate off this passing phrase. Reading the initial post will help. The book is about two feuding siblings, Oliver and Jane. She has a very successful theatrical company, and she and an ally are discussing Oliver’s plans to do her down.

Astrakhan is a woolly, curly fur – very distinctive, you’d know it if you saw it – originally coming from a town of that name in Iran. I’m not sure if these items are exactly the same, but there is also Persian lamb, and karakul.

But astrakhan collars for men were a thing, very much part of the lore of the theatre: impresarios and actor-managers wore them. And filmstars - this is Rudolph Valentino.

Oliver himself says later “Jane may joke about astrakhan collars, but I’ll make a jolly sight better manager than she did. I mean, I’ll stage things really worth staging.” Which I feel makes clear to the reader what kind of a manager he will make. Later….

“When Jane happened to pass Oliver in Bond Street one day he was not yet wearing his astrakhan collar…”

And I give you three splendid examples in the picture - couldn't you just stare at them and imagine their lives?

Astrakhan came up in the recently-featured Patrick Butler for the Defence by John Dickson Carr. There is a man wearing this:

A long dark rather shabby overcoat with an astrakhan collar, such as has been seen seldom in the past fifty years. [Not true, by the way, according to my other examples]

It is seen as a ‘theatrical overcoat’ and is part of the evidence for its owner being on the stage.

Long time radio personality Irene Thomas – you need to look her up, there’s no possibility of my explaining who she is – said in her weirdly-compelling 1979 autobiography, The Bandsman’s Daughter:

Donald Wolfit… chilled our blood wonderfully with the ‘Death of Bill Sykes’ from Oliver Twist with that marvellous husky actor-manager’s voice – a voice with an astrakhan collar if ever there was one.

There was some discussion of fur coats in this Ngaio Marsh book, including an astrakhan overcoat for a lady.

In this long-lost Christmas entry, a character has ‘a grey suit with a trim of caracul’ (otherwise Karakul, Persian lamb), and I was very impressed that a male author had done such details, before finding out in a dramatic intervention that it was a woman under a male pseudonym.

After all this, you may be surprised to hear that Antigua Penny Puce is about a postage stamp (that’s the title) – an item which has sparked the feud between the siblings. But as I say in the original post, the book is about much more than that. And there is a blissful discussion in the comments btl about what colour exactly puce is. 

This post is a ragbag already, drifting from astrakhan, so I will throw this in too:

A nice point arises: one of Jane’s company of actors has been married and divorced four times – I have read and written a lot about the divorce laws of the time, but never come across this:

On one occasion, according to Jane, the co-respondent (no, that’s the wrong word ; co-respondents are, technically, male only ; we should say “‘ intervener’’ or ‘‘ woman named ”’ according to the moral indignation of the lady in question) was the wife of a foreign ambassador and the case was heard in camera.

 

Novels are full of lost facts and fascinating details – sociological research as I always say. I don’t NEED to justify my constant reading of fiction, but the benefits are there. I don’t think my regular readers and commenters are going to argue with that.

 

[Rudolph Valentino, 1895-1926, full-length portrait, standing by auto, in astrakhan coat, facing left]